Vowed in Shadows (6 page)

“The teshuva—the repentant demons—are. This is an impenitent demon, escaped from the demon realm to wreak havoc in this realm.” He twisted the hook and another flow of black liquid gushed from the creature's throat.

She put her hand over her mouth. “Stop it.”

“You want me to let it go?”

“No!”

“Do you believe in demons now?”

“Yes.” Her voice sounded ragged from the screaming. When he just stared at her, she said more shrilly, “Yes. How can I not?”

“You'd be surprised what people will ignore, even when it's right in front of them.”

“I believe it's bleeding on me.” She recoiled from the rivulet of ooze, stinking and smoking across the floor.

“Ichor. The rot of a physically manifested demon like this feralis. I need to incapacitate it before I drain it completely.” He ignored the thing's half-choked sob.

“You knew it was here.”

“I baited the area yesterday. If you calm yourself—”

She hissed, and he gave her a reproving glance. “If you calm yourself and pay attention with your sharpened senses, you will notice the demon smears on the walls. I drained a dozen malice—another sort of demon—here last night and left their remnants. This feralis came poking around, hoping for an easy meal.”

“And found me.” Outrage warded off the sickness in her belly. “You were going to let it kill me to prove yourself.”

“Don't exaggerate. I was waiting right here.”

He'd wanted her to come with him just for this. “This wasn't the scenario I had in mind.”

He stared at her. “No, this wasn't intended to be sexy.”

At the intensity of his focus, she realized the strap of her camisole had drooped down her shoulder. She dragged it into place with a snort. “Not sexy at all.”

“But you believe. Now watch and learn.”

She couldn't help but watch in sick fascination as he garroted the creature. Half-decapitated, the thing sank into its own creased flesh. The black flow slowed, then ceased. “You killed it.”

“No. The horde-tenebrae can't be killed. I merely incapacitated this feralis's husk, which it scavenged and stole from this realm, to keep it from killing me while I siphon its energy.”

She scooted out of the way of the ichor river. “I'd say it's siphoned.”

“Not of the demon's etheric emanations that energized it. See the eyeballs?”

The spidery row still glowed a furious orange. “If looks could kill . . .”

“Not looks alone. Fangs, claws, whipping tails—yes, those can kill us. We are immortal,but not indestructible.”

“Immortal. Monsters.” Nim shook her head. As if emptying his words could stop her spinning head from rotating right off her shoulders. Kind of like the creature sagging from his hook.

“Immortal monsters? Yes, that's us. But with this act, I win back a piece of my soul from the darkness.” His gaze, almost solid indigo now, held hers, but she felt he was far away. She curled her fingers into the concrete, torn by conflicting impulses. Part of her longed to run while he was distracted. Another part demanded she step up to his side and . . .

And what exactly? She was no crime fighter. If anything, she sometimes slipped a few degrees to the wrong side of that line. With all Jonah's clear loathing of what he alleged himself to be, she wondered how he had ever done wrong enough to believe a demon wanted him.

A demon. Oh no. She was starting to think like him.

In his grasp, the feralis's orange eyes dimmed, clouded with white. She remembered her dream, the white eyes crawling with black, and she shuddered.

Jonah dropped the husk at his feet with a dull thud. The tip of the hook gleamed through the clinging gore. “Does that appall you?”

“Which part? The ooze? The reek? The fact my Louboutin sandal just fell out of a monster's slit throat?”

His jaw worked. “The part where I'm missing half my soul.”

“Aren't we all?” Nim pulled her knee to her chest and clutched her ankle. She winced at the burst of pain.

After a moment, he came to her side and crouched beside her. “What's wrong?”

“Broke my ankle trying to escape your little show-and-tell.” She hadn't even gotten around to feeling the pain of the knee she'd skinned or the bruise spreading across her hip. “If I'd known I'd be sliding across a concrete floor, I wouldn't have worn short-shorts.”

He bumped aside her hands, gently, and probed the bones. She winced and clamped her teeth down on another scream.

He cradled her heel in one hand, his long fingers brushing her arch. “You can cry if you want. This time it's justified.”

“They were all justified,” she said around gritted teeth.

“None of the bones are displaced. Just wait a minute.”

“And waiting is going to make a difference how? Oh, let me guess. The demon.”

He nodded. “As recompense for hijacking your body, the teshuva gives you greater speed and strength, enhanced senses, and unnatural healing.”

“I remember. Along with the immortality.” She didn't bother hiding the snide twist in her voice.

But he just nodded again. “The demon won't, or maybe can't, deaden the pain.”

“And apparently it doesn't rejuvenate limbs either.”

His fingers, warm around her ankle, never tightened, but his face fell into those harsh lines that reminded her he'd just mostly lopped the head off a monster. “No,” he said softly. “It gives much, but what is lost is lost forever.”

“Lost . . .” His words froze her in place for a long moment. “Once again, aren't we all?”

He rose from his crouch and stared down at her. “For someone who doesn't believe in demons, you have a very bleak outlook.”

“I never said I didn't believe in hell.” Her gaze slid to the inert hulk collapsed in the ichor puddle. “And maybe I should blame all those late-night horror movies, but I'm starting to believe you about the rest.”

He snorted. “Starting to?” He held out his left hand to her, the hook tucked unobtrusively behind him. “Let's see what else I can find to finally convince you.”

“I'd really rather not. I think I'll just stay here and nurse my broken ankle, if it's all the same to you.”

“The bones are strong enough to hold you now. They'll knit solid in another hour.” He gave his fingers an imperious waggle.

She leaned away from him. “I thought you didn't want me screaming anymore?”

With an annoyed huff, he reached down, took hold of her arm, and lifted her to her feet without even a grunt of exertion, though she did her stubborn best to keep herself anchored to the ground. With a curse, she hopped upright on one foot.

“Just trust me,” he said.

“Ha. Not a chance.” But when he gave her a short tug, rather than fall on her face again—or, worse yet, stumble into the carcass—she put her foot down. And after one sharp twinge, nothing happened. “This is crazy.”

His lips quirked. “Aren't we all?”

Jonah knew he'd finally broken through Nim's resistance when she agreed numbly to return to her apartment to clean up and kicked up hardly any fuss when he didn't bother asking her address as they got into his car.

“You followed me home,” was all she said as she settled into the passenger's seat, and she sounded more resigned than angry, so he neither confirmed nor denied.

Bewildered as she was, with her new demon scarcely settled and its capabilities still unknown, he didn't want to risk pushing her. Not if he didn't have to. The soothing power of a hot shower was allowable, now that she couldn't convince herself her world was still the same.

Her teshuva had already sealed over the scrapes on her knee, and the ugly bruise on her hip was fading fast. But the streaks of blood on her tawny skin remained, and the feralis had spattered ichor on her, burning holes in her already indecent shorts.

He retrieved Mobi's case from the backseat while Nim unlocked the security screen on the front door of the old brick building. Side by side, silent, they walked past the rows of mailboxes. He paused at the elevator, then had to hurry a few long steps to catch up with her when she opened the door to the stairs.

She smiled at him crookedly. “What? Are your legs broken?”

“You live on the seventh floor.”

“Apparently, you haven't been watching me all that closely. I always take the stairs. Did you think taking an elevator gave me these legs?”

On cue, his gaze dropped to her legs, as if he had to make an assessment. Even streaked with blood, they were gorgeous. Slender ankles, toned calves, and
reven
-marked thighs that curved into well-rounded buttocks . . . not that he could see those overflowing handfuls, even with her indecent shorts. But he remembered.

Until the day some feralis took off his head, he'd never forget.

He snapped his attention to her face. “You like to do that. Make me look at your body.”

She padded up the stairs, her bare feet slapping her ire on the treads. She'd refused to put on the sandals he'd retrieved from the feralis's maw. “That's how I pay the rent.”

“You do it to distract.” He realized he was watching the sway of her hips, back and forth as she climbed the stairs. Distracting? Worse: mesmerizing. “You didn't like to think that I've been watching you when you weren't in charge.”

She stopped so abruptly he almost collided with her. “Watching, but not closely,” she reminded him.

“So you want me to watch closer. But only those parts you want me to see.”

“Thanks for the analysis. Will you charge me for that, along with the orgasm?”

Though he was coming to understand her tactics, the low blow brought heat to his cheeks. “It was necessary.”

“The psychoanalysis?” The wicked twinkle in her eyes dared him to disagree.

So he did. “No, the . . . orgasm.” In all his years, had he ever said that word aloud? He rubbed his thumb against the base of his ring finger, ticking the band with his nail.

Suddenly, uneasily, he wondered what else he'd be forced to do. He'd wanted only a way to fight harder, to redeem himself. He hadn't quite anticipated that opening himself to another meant . . . to another person. To Nim.

She continued up the stairs. “The demon likes to fuck you over? But not be fucked.”

“I'm uncomfortable with your foul language.” He almost winced at how prim he sounded, how outdated.

“Oh, so it wasn't the demon that was uncomfortable with what happened between us. It was you.”

“I was told the most prudent method to balance your rising demon was the . . . orgasm.”

“ ‘Prude' is right,” she mumbled.

She slammed out of the stairwell and headed down the hall. He stood aside as she opened the door.

The apartment was messier than when he'd cased it previously, although the same earthy patchouli incense drifted out to tease him. He'd been surprised a stripper kept such a tidy abode. This—the magazines tangled in the folds of a blanket across the red corduroy couch, the dirty dishes piled in the sink—had been what he expected. Obviously, she'd been increasingly disturbed by the restive energies of her unbound demon.

Nice to know he hadn't been alone.

She slipped Mobi's case from his shoulder. “Okay, then. Thanks for everything. I'll call you later, yeah? Bye.”

He gave her a look. Turning her back on him with an aggrieved sigh, as if that would do the trick, she went to the coffin-sized glass case against one wall and slid the snake inside. She bustled past him again to retrieve a bowl from the counter and then returned to the terrarium.

He wrinkled his nose. “Dead rat?”

“Can you think of a better use? At least this one won't morph into a monstrosity like that one you massacred.” She whispered something nonsensical to the snake and placed the dish in a corner. She fussed with the water bowl before closing the lid, then slid a black sheet across most of the case.

“Praise be.”

She shot him an arch glance. “That's not for your sake. Mobi doesn't like an audience when he eats. When he's done, he'll need to be left alone for a day or so.”

“You dance without him?”

“Not anymore.” She pointed at the framed poster above the snake's tank that showed the curves of a woman, breast to hip, body painted in tiger stripes. COMING SOON, it screamed in crimson type,
VIVA LAS SHOWGIRLS
INTRODUCES BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. “We're rehearsing for the
Showgirls
semifinals. I'll have to take a couple days off, but by the weekend, he'll be raring to go again.”

By then, the Naughty Nymphette—like the rat—would be only a bad memory. She'd be fully immersed in the talyan world, never to return to her own. Jonah thought that could remain unsaid for now. “In the meantime, there are a few things we need to work out. The demon, when it came to you, might have felt like a dream or a hallucination. But did it leave you something tangible—a piece of jewelry, perhaps?”

She shrugged. “Maybe.”

He struggled to keep his voice level. “Nim, this is important. I noticed you don't wear any jewelry when you dance.” After Liam and Archer had explained how the women's teshuva had come to them bearing gifts of mutated metals, Jonah had made a point of checking Nim for jewelry through the week. He had looked very carefully and seen nothing.

No jewelry, anyway.

“I hocked it.”

Her breezy admission snapped him back to painful reality. “What?” He took a quick step toward her, then stopped himself when she stiffened. He raked his hand through his hair. “You sold it? But you never went to a pawnshop.”