Sidney’s heart stopped too. He saw Alyce’s demon, all right.
And he saw the ravenous verge didn’t know the first thing about hunger.
CHAPTER 9
“I remember …,” Alyce said. But the memory suddenly blurred in a haze of other images—ferales in pieces; red-eyed malice and salambes shrieking as they fled.
Sidney blanched, and she bit her lip. Disappointing him hurt worse than the scratches on her back. She wanted to tell him, she did, but the memory was smeared away, as if the touch of the cold cloth had sopped it up with her blood.
She lowered her gaze miserably. “I would tell you, but it’s all gone.” Her voice sounded so plaintive, she didn’t even believe herself.
“I’m sure you would tell.”
She contemplated the odd emphasis he’d placed on the word while he busied himself with his papers again.
He wrote with authority, his strokes as smooth and steady as his hands on her skin. She clutched the front of the torn dress under her chin, and the quickening pulse in her throat banged against her knuckles.
When she’d kissed him before, in his room, he had told her to wait.
She had waited. She had been waiting a very long time, though she couldn’t say how long exactly. And from what she’d seen in the demon-pierced eyes of the talya males, immortality did not make waiting any easier.
And if she followed that thought, as Sidney would do, she came to the question: What was she waiting for?
Before she could answer, Sidney was back at her side. “I want to get a closer look at your reven.” When she gave him a quizzical look, he added, “The demon’s mark around your neck.”
The throb of tension that had seized her twisted from anticipation to something darker. “I do not like it. It’s ugly.”
“I need to register you in the league archives, and the reven can tell us the class and potency of your teshuva, even if we can’t get a detailed history.” He touched her hands and gave a downward nudge.
Her muscles vacillated between resistance and surrender. She didn’t want him to see that part of her—or at least not just that part of her.
He rested his hand on her clutched fists, his palm so wide it nearly covered both of hers, but he didn’t push again. “The reven isn’t ugly, Alyce. It’s uniquely you.”
Unlike her grip, his eyes did not waver. She let him uncover her neck. His gaze, tracing down her skin, made her shiver again.
Her cheeks heated, and her heart pounded in wild beats. “It is the mark of the devil.”
“Yes, I said that already.” His tone was absentminded.
The acceptance in his imperturbable words loosened her desperate clutch on her dress while he went to a shelf of books and pulled out a particularly thick tome. He flipped through its pages as he returned to her side. “Look—here is our visual dictionary of reven.”
The big book thudded on the table next to her. “So many.”
“Yet so much we still don’t know.” He ran his finger down one page and flipped to the next and then the next to continue his perusal.
He had big hands, strong hands. She sighed. Big hands for big books—she wasn’t big.
As if he’d heard the thought, he stopped to display the penned illustrations. The page looked as if someone had taken an entire goose and dipped it upside down in ink and dashed it across the paper.
“These are depictions of the reven of some of the strongest talyan ever to fight.” He traced one complex swirl. “The depth and intricacy of the mark echoes the power of the teshuva.”
She lifted her chin. “Mine is nothing like that.”
He flipped a few more pages, then more and more until the lines petered out. These reven were as much like the first as a cup of tap water resembled Lake Michigan wind-whipped to viciousness on a stormy day. “More like this,” he agreed.
“Does possession by a weak demon mean I am less damned?” She couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice because, at least to this question, she already knew the answer.
Sidney gave her a chiding look. “Your teshuva may not have the same destructive capabilities as some of its brethren, but the strength of its repentance is no less.”
“Will that save me?”
“Save what? Your soul or your life?” He hurried on, as if he didn’t want to hear which she meant. “As Nanette noticed, the emanations of a weaker teshuva get disrupted—tangled—in competing energy. When it can’t hold its coherence against another signal, it will be altered and lost.”
“You think that is what happened to me? I’ve been lost because my devil isn’t strong enough to save me?”
Sidney backed away—giving himself room to think, she decided—and leaned against the counter across from the exam table. “I think your teshuva is trying very hard to save you. To save you from things you don’t want to remember.”
She froze. He stiffened too.
Maybe he hadn’t been giving himself room to think, but room to escape.
“I do want to remember.” She made sure each word came out distinct from the others, lest there be misunderstanding.
“I don’t think the teshuva believes you.”
“And do you not believe me?”
He marshaled his words with the same care the illustrators of the book had used when laying out their reven drawings, in tidy blocks, no matter how messy the depiction within. “I know part of you wants to remember. But which part is you, which part is the demon, which part is the other parts of you?”
“I am not so complicated,” she protested.
“We all are. Even me. Part of me wants …” He shook his head. “But that doesn’t matter.”
What did he want? The urge to know prickled through her. This must be how he felt about his many books—to open them up and to know them.
She stared at the capable width of his hands as he thumbed farther through the book. Toward the end, intricate and simple reven shared the pages, compared and contrasted.
His finger landed on one. “Ah, you don’t have to worry about what your demon wants. But everything else will worry. You have a dread demon.”
She tilted her head and squinted at the design, but it seemed too fanciful to match hers.
“Don’t believe me?” He repeated her words with a little smile and took another step closer to her, one forefinger on the book, the other at her neckline. Since she was sitting up on the table, her face was even with his and he had to reach up to touch her. “It starts boldest here.” His finger was warm at the crook of her neck and shoulder. “Maybe not so dark on you as in the book, but close enough. A sudden burst of energy, like a startled heartbeat.” He traced her reven forward. “And here it stutters, like a frantic pulse.”
Oh, what was her pulse doing? As if he controlled it with his words, her blood throbbed.
His voice lowered—and the throbbing in her body spread lower too—as his finger dipped into the hollow of her throat. “And here it pools and flares. …”
“Like what?” she whispered.
“Like …”
But words seemed to fail him, so she canted forward and pressed her lips to his.
His touch had not soothed her hurts; instead he had kindled a fever.
And it was good; deliriously good.
The torn gown she’d been holding slipped from her fingers as she reached for him, to bring him closer. He made a noise. Was that supposed to be a protest? She measured the width of his unhurt shoulder with eager pets of her hand, and then he was between her knees, the rough denim of his pants rubbing her bare inner thighs.