Each talya studied it with predatory interest, eyes flaring brighter, before passing it on. Until it got to Jilly, who gasped. “I think that’s Andre.”
Ecco plucked it from her grasp. “Who? I thought I knew everybody who’s tried to kill me before.”
“He’d gotten kicked out of the homeless-youth shelter where I worked, for dealing solvo. We thought he was dead, or at least soulless. I was out looking for him the night I ran into my first feralis. And met Liam.” Jilly took a step closer to the tall man and he shifted the hammer to make room for her under his arm.
How romantic. Nim cleared her throat. “Why would your kid be leading a bunch of murdering demons?”
“Let’s say we go find out,” Ecco said.
Finding out started with a forty-foot descent via the ladder set into the wall of the elevator shaft. The elevator car was nowhere in evidence. Liam went first, then Archer and Jilly.
As they dropped into the darkness, Sera handed Nim the backpack she’d been carrying. “Since you don’t have any pockets, this might be handy.”
Nim considered a few snarky comments and a few self-deprecating ones. She tucked the map and flashlight in the big main pocket and settled on “Thanks.”
Sera nodded and backed out onto the ladder.
Nim started after her, but Ecco shouldered her aside. “Let me go before you,” he said. “I’ll catch you if you fall. Farther.”
She eyed him. “You want to look up my skirt.”
“Nah, I’ve seen it already. Remember?” He leered at her, then backpedaled as Jonah stepped between them.
Though the big talya topped Jonah by a head and a half, something about the smaller man’s utter stillness made Nim put her hand on his arm. He said nothing.
“What?” Ecco grumbled. “You’ve seen more than me.” He backed up another foot. “Fine, fine. I’ll go last.”
Jonah moved to the ladder.
“Will you be okay on the rungs?” Nim murmured.
“Yes.” His tone was flat. As flat as the pancake he’d be if he lost his grip and plummeted to the bottom of the shaft. She berated herself for asking as he dropped out of sight.
“Even if he fell, his demon probably wouldn’t let him die,” Ecco said. “Unless he smashed his head into a wall or impaled himself on something on the way down.”
Nim looked at him. “Everybody here has a girl except you.”
He grinned. “Go figure.”
“Don’t step on my fingers.” She swung out onto the ladder.
Under her hands, the metal reverberated with the scrape of Jonah’s hook. She concentrated on placing her feet firmly on the slick, rounded rungs. Thank God she’d worn sneakers and not her high-heeled sandals.
The pack bounced against her hip, and she forced herself not to hold her breath. At least the dark meant she didn’t have to look down. Not that she had a fear of heights, but if ever she were going to develop one, now seemed like a good time.
When her foot hit solid concrete, the contact jarred all the way up her spine. She hadn’t realized she’d come to the bottom of the shaft, and the talyan were so quiet she hadn’t known they were gathered close.
Jonah tugged her out of way as Ecco dropped the last few rungs.
Liam gave some hand gesture that made the rest nod. Strippers learned only a few hand gestures, most of them variations on “fuck.” This wasn’t one she knew, but she had a sneaking suspicion—depending on what they encountered in the next few minutes—it could easily become another alternative.
They stepped out of the elevator shaft and into an empty concrete corridor.
The men were able to stand upright in the center of the arched passage, though Ecco’s head would’ve almost hit the trolley wire if it had still been hanging above them. The tracks, a couple feet apart, were perfect for tripping over, especially in the distracting black-light, disco-ball glow of the demon sign smeared across the walls.
She swallowed hard. From the map, she knew the corridor to the right ran toward the club. To the left was the murdering demons’ escape route.
Though none of them had bothered bringing out their flashlights except her, the talyan were already moving down the path to the left.
Of course they were.
Like winter wolves on one of those nature programs that always ended with the voice-over mournfully droning on and on about extinction, they loped down the corridor. Smooth, silent, and coordinated, they avoided as if by instinct the tracks that kept trying to break her other ankle.
“Let the demon choose where your foot falls,” Jonah said.
“Why would I trust it?”
“Because it wants to keep you in one piece.”
That was more than her customers—at least the ones who were still alive—could claim. They liked seeing just a few parts. Still, should she give in to a demon that had stolen a piece of her?
She kept the flashlight on. She remembered what had happened to Obi-Wan when he trusted in the Force and turned off his light saber while Darth Vader was still swinging. The dark side didn’t bother with fair play. But she stopped watching the tracks and concentrated on the man beside her.
She’d be an idiot to trust the Shimmy Shack regulars, and even stupider to trust a demon. But strangely, it was easy to believe in Jonah. “What happens if we catch up with the demons?”
“We destroy the tenebrae and take possession of the horde leader. If it is Andre, as Jilly believes, and he took the anklet, we’ll convince him to give it up.”
“We don’t turn him over to the cops? For justice and whatnot?”
He said nothing. Well, there were different kinds of justice, she’d learned.
The tunnel curved abruptly into pitch-blackness, except for the glow of demon sign. The talyan slowed. All of Nim’s senses screamed to keep moving. Her demon must really want its jewelry.
Archer paced the curve of the tunnel. “Nim, toss me your flashlight.”
“Shouldn’t you master your demon’s vision . . . ?” she started. His gaze flashed violet at her, and she threw the light.
He cast the oval of illumination back and forth across the floor. He paused on a section of track. Between the otherwise clean-swept and tidy rails, a lump of something stuck up.
Nim peered closer, then recoiled, bumping into Jonah. “Is that a foot?”
“Feralis leftovers,” he said. “The downside of a physique cobbled together from disintegrating corpses.”
Archer sent the beam down the corridor, toward Nim and Jonah. She stepped out of the way and realized she’d been standing on a black stain. The beam went behind her and she turned to follow its track. Another black puddle stained the concrete back the way they’d come.
“Ichor,” Jonah said. “The stump was leaking as it traveled that direction.”
“Well, we already guessed they came this way,” Nim said. “And I suppose it’s good news they were falling apart before they even got to the club.” Not that the weakness had helped the victims there.
Sera’s voice was soft, but it carried. “And where are the pieces they left on the way out?”
“Not even any blood trail from after the feast.” Ecco scratched one razor tip of his gauntlet across the wall. Nim gritted her teeth at the blackboard screech. “And if cleanliness is next to godliness, there’s a reason ferales are damned.”
From down the corridor behind them, an answering screech echoed, thin and high. And hungry.
As one, the talyan turned to face the way they’d come.
“Who woulda thought they’d wait around below the club,” Ecco said conversationally.
“Ferales hunted Sera last winter,” Archer said. “Apparently, these want more than the anklet.”
“They waited for me?” Nim wished her voice hadn’t squeaked. No wonder her demon had wanted to keep moving.