What could possibly lure this many tenebrae to one place?
As if he even needed to ask.
He hit the first feralis before it knew he was there and easily scaled the eight-foot, sloping spine to bury his hook in its chest. In silence, he wrenched the hook upward. Ichor spilled in a stinking gush.
The demon’s frustrated power rebounded through him, and its frenzied craving to be unleashed aligned with his one desire: to be with Nim.
The two nearest ferales cringed away. He ripped through them in one blow and clambered over the husks to boost himself into the open window.
The interior was awash in tenebrae. The sour scent of rot yanked his breath away as effortlessly as he had disemboweled the ferales.
Ecco was a dervish, gauntlets invisible under ichor and feralis chunks. He slashed with deadly grace, but only the sheer mass—the horde getting in its own way—kept him from being overwhelmed. At his back, Sera and Jilly formed the other two points of a triangle, holding back the tide with their small and deadly knives.
Nim stood in the middle, looking lost in the fray.
As Jonah launched himself through the window, he wondered acidly why Jilly—who loved to visit the league’s weapons depot—hadn’t seen fit to arm Nim before their girls’ night out.
Since he’d carelessly not seen to the task himself. He’d kick himself later. If they survived.
He cried out a warning, his throat cracking with the crisscross of human fury and demonic ecstasy. He’d sacrifice the surprise attack to let the defenders know help had arrived. Although only four more talyan against the horde . . .
Liam and the other two talyan exploded through the windows on either side of him, and they fell on the rear of the packed ferales.
As if oblivious to the new attack, the ferales continued to press inward. Liam swung his hammer, blasting through three ferales at a time, yet they didn’t turn to rend him or try to flee. Instead, they yearned toward Ecco and the women. Toward Nim. They had to get to her and stop the lure, or who knew what else she’d bring down on their heads.
First, though, Jonah had to get through the concentric rings of ferales. And while the tenebrae weren’t focused on him, they’d exterminate him if he made it convenient enough.
As he spun past the outer circle, a feralis with spiderlike forelegs reached for him. He ducked, found himself face to . . . mandibles with its second, lower head. When he lashed out, it reared back, and he followed, knocking it over. He scrambled across its belly, his boots slipping on the ulcerated gray skin, and then sprang toward the next layer of tenebrae.
Disoriented in the melee, he couldn’t see even Ecco’s tall form. And yet some awareness drew him irresistibly onward. The bond or Nim’s lure? Or were the two the same? Certainly every man in her orbit felt the magnetism, bonded or not. And so, obviously, did every demon.
He had to stop it. Stop her.
The ring of tenebrae drew tighter. He leapt from one gutted feralis corpse to the next—except that one moved. It tossed him off his feet and he sprawled in a pool of ichor. The acidic black burned at his hand as he pushed himself upright.
Inside him, the teshuva reached greedily for the feralis’s death throes, matching itself to the resonance and drawing off the emanations to refresh itself. But he didn’t have time to indulge its hungers. He tore free, just in time to dodge a winged feralis that dove in and tried to grab his head from his shoulders. He ducked behind another lumbering, roachlike monstrosity.
The flying feralis shrieked and winged backward with a blast of fouled air. Jonah spun away as the feralis dove at him again.
A wicked whistle of blades cut through the air. And through the feralis’s outstretched talons.
It screamed, a piteous sound, but Ecco had zero pity. With a series of blurred punches like a speed-bag boxing workout, he diced the feralis. He reached out with his other hand and pulled Jonah into the inner circle.
“Jonah!” Nim’s voice rang with pure elation. She threw herself against his chest.
He grabbed her arm and forced her back a step. “You have to stop calling the tenebrae.”
She stared at him. “Didn’t you bring the others? Is it just you?”
His jaw worked. She hadn’t been waiting for him alone. Wisely. Since there was nothing he could do. No, he couldn’t stop the feralis onslaught, but he had to stop Nim’s lure. “There’s only Liam and two others. Not enough to face what you’ve brought here.”
She winced, and he realized his grip had tightened. “We didn’t know this would happen,” she said.
“So you waited until the worst possible time, until we’d gone, to take your demon for a spin.”
“We knew you’d try to stop us.”
“For very good reason, wouldn’t you say?” He gave her a shake. “Now you must stop it.”
Stop flaunting his orders. Stop calling to the horde. Stop making him want. . . .
“I don’t know how.” She flinched away from him. “You can’t just beat it out of me.”
To his horror, he realized he was halfway there. His hand sprang open without his conscious thought to release her. He staggered back, as if there were someplace to go, to escape. Jilly and Sera were occupied with the rising body count, or they probably would’ve added him to the pile of corpses for grabbing Nim so harshly.
He had never—never—handled Carine with such disregard. He’d rather sever his remaining hand than see Nim shrink from him. “Nim . . .”
“I told you, I don’t know how—”
How could she know? He hadn’t tried to teach her, not even with the same naïve but sincere fervor he’d taken with him to converting all Africa. Or at least the same exhilaration at the adventure. From the first, he’d faced her with his arms crossed, resisting temptation.
“Like you did in the VIP lounge,” he said.
She stiffened. “What?”
“Dance. Dance like you did then, just for me.” He took a breath, seeking the warm scent of her skin under the miasma of rot and rust and brick dust. And he took a step closer to her, to fill her view. “As if there were just the two of us. Alone.”
She gazed up, her eyes glazed in a violet storm. “You don’t want this. Don’t want me.”
“But you know I do.” He gathered her close, gently, cursing his lack of poise—he couldn’t even blame the unbalance of his missing hand this time—that had made him push her away when she had reached for him with such sweet relief. If she rejected him now, rejected the focus he offered, she’d let the last of the horde close around them. And he’d have only his own ridiculous inhibitions to blame.
“You want to stop me.” The demon was in her voice, in the lower octave and an almost inaudible shrill of condemnation.
“I can’t stop you,” he admitted. He brought her up against his body, let her feel the hard truth in the violent need of his flesh, the pulse that lifted him to her—never mind the constraints of his jeans or the certain death around them. “You danced for me once, and I’ve wanted you ever since.”
The violet in her eyes flared and dimmed.
Somewhere, Jilly called out wordlessly, and Liam answered with her name in a full-throated cry as he broke through to the inner circle. Stronger for being together.
Jonah knew he needed to convince Nim. But how? With his body, with a look, with words? “I have nothing to give you in return,” he whispered. “My life is pledged to the league; my soul to the teshuva.”
“I didn’t ask for either of those.”
A heated flush rose in his face. This was the dance, he realized. The back-and-forth of what they could be to each other. For each other. “What’s left of my body isn’t worth the having.”
“You lie,” she said. “And anyway, I’ve had that already.”