The lure was broken.
The realization sent him reeling upright. “Nim!”
Where was she? The milling claws could easily tear her apart if she lay unconscious.
Or maybe she was already . . .
No. He wouldn’t think that. A fleeing feralis knocked him over. He reeled up again. Realized neither arm was working right. Didn’t care.
Where was she? He caught a glimpse of scarlet amid the black. Human blood slicked over ichor.
His own blood stopped in his veins. He staggered, slipped again, and went to his knees beside her crumpled body.
He heard Liam’s shout, a million miles away, and the answering roar from his warriors. At the talya war cry, the ferales fled in all directions.
Jonah huddled over Nim as claws crushed down on him. His back strained to take the weight off her body, lest some inadvertent pressure sever an artery or pierce a vital organ before the teshuva worked its tricks.
“You fell barely two stories,” he murmured. “Anyone who can do splits vertically on a pole while wearing heels as high as you do can survive a little bounce off concrete.”
He barely noticed when the last of the ferales had escaped or been dismembered by the talyan. He knew only that the battering had stopped. Externally, at least.
He leaned forward to press a kiss to Nim’s lips, but his face was too ichor scorched to feel if she breathed. “Wake up.”
“Jonah!” Archer skidded to a stop a yard away. The battle-axe in his hand thumped to the floor, and from the stark widening of his eyes, Jonah wondered how bad they looked.
“She’s hurt,” he said. He would not allow for anything worse.
Archer opened his mouth, then closed it. “Can you stand?”
They must look bad if he had to ask. “I’m fine.” Jonah gathered his legs under him, hoping he wouldn’t tip over and reveal his lie. “We have to get her to the warehouse. The energy sinks will block her lure if she’s still broadcasting when she regains her senses.” Another hope; maybe another lie. He met Archer’s gaze and was horrified to see a spark of pity. He’d rather see fury there at his failure. “I couldn’t stop her.”
Archer just shook his head. “I couldn’t stop Sera either. I’m just sorry it took us so long to get back here. I thought the alarm bells in my head were only about that drinking game. . . .” He rubbed his temple wearily. “Let’s get you out of here.”
Sera limped up to them. The chill of the tenebraeternum clung to her skin.
Behind her, Jilly was streaked with feralis gore. “We need to set his arms first. If the teshuva heals them in that state, we’ll just have to rebreak them.”
Archer’s eyes blazed violet. “Now you two care about hurting someone?”
“No more fighting,” Jonah said. “We need to get Nim out of here. The ferales might circle back if she wakes and casts the lure again.”
“We’ll rip them apart if they do,” Archer snarled. Despite the eddies of teshuva fury, Sera leaned against her mate.
Jilly shook her head. “Now that you’re here, Jonah, you’ll be able to guide her.”
“I couldn’t control her before.”
“It’s not about controlling her.” Sera crossed to his side and gave him a few exploratory pokes in the arm that made his vision blur. “Displaced fractures of the humerus in both arms. But they’re still attached, obviously. No catastrophic blood loss and no excessive neural severing, which is all the teshuva needs to get to work. You’ll be good as . . . before in a couple days.” She held out her hand to Jilly, who knelt beside Nim. “Can I have your bandages? I think you need them less than Jonah.”
Jilly fumbled down her neckline to unwind a swath of gauze.
“Save it for Nim,” Jonah protested.
“She’ll be fine,” Jilly said. “Her hands are healing already.”
Hearing the words sapped what strength was left in his knees. “If she’s okay, why hasn’t her teshuva brought her around?”
Sera and Jilly exchanged glances. “She’ll wake when she’s ready,” Sera said.
He gritted his teeth. “Is that what you said to your dying patients—‘You can go when you’re ready’?”
“And it always worked,” she said. “So don’t worry.”
“Let’s go,” Archer growled. “Maybe you’re convinced this will end all right, but there are a half dozen other wounded who’d like to be done with tonight.”
Sera’s jaw flexed, but she finished wrapping Jonah in silence. She straightened the upper bones, politely ignoring the groan of protest he couldn’t hold back, and bound his arms to his chest. Knowing she’d been a than atologist, ushering out the dying, made him feel as if she were burying him in winding sheets.
Sweat popped out on his forehead. This was how it might feel to have no arms. He’d not been grateful enough for what he still had.
He stood over Nim.
Jilly had straightened his fallen mate so she looked less like a broken doll. He didn’t think she’d appreciate a Sleeping Beauty reference, not with her skin streaked with blood and ichor thick as war paint. He couldn’t even reach down to brush back the tangle of her hair. He’d tip over in his sick fatigue. Oh, and not to forget, he had no hands.
He turned away. “Get us out of here.”
Archer tipped his head toward Nim. “May I?”
Jonah nodded sharply. Archer gathered up Nim’s limp body, careful to support her head against his chest, his two strong arms making easy work of her unconscious weight. Jonah stared fixedly away to where a half dozen talyan, under Liam’s watchful eye and ready hammer, were emptying the tenebrae energy from the last twitching ferales. Swells of demonic emanations swept the brick dust and crystallized malice remains in eerily beautiful ribbons of black and red.
A chunk of the ceiling crashed down, bisecting the patterns.
Jilly ducked her shoulders. “I’ll have to remind Liam to send an anonymous complaint to the city. Make sure they condemn this place.”
“Yeah,” Archer drawled. “Wouldn’t want anything bad to happen here.”
That kept them silent out to the line of haphazardly parked cars.
Archer tucked Nim into a backseat of a truck that had skidded in sideways; then he turned to stab a finger at each of the other women. “You two, separate cars. And not the one with Ecco.”
Sera put her hands on her hips. “We’re not criminals.”
“Actually, you were once.”
“No,” Jilly said. “That was me. Sera was a good girl.”
Archer shot her an acid look. “You meaning female talyan. The league banished you for a reason. And I think we’re getting a hint why.”
Sera’s hands fell slowly to her sides. “Don’t.” There were no demon harmonics in her voice, just one woman’s plea.
Archer scrubbed a hand down his face, over lines of strain the teshuva had been too busy to erase. “Damn it, Sera. Can you imagine how that looked, coming through the window and seeing . . .” A shudder racked him. “Not the ferales. But you, surrounded.”
Jonah bowed his head. The image blistered too fresh in his mind. “Can we go?”
Archer spun away. “Of course.” Sera didn’t follow.
Jonah climbed into the backseat with Nim. He couldn’t hold her, but he could let her lean against him, though her slack shoulder dug into his broken arm as they jolted over the railroad tracks.
“Not to the warehouse,” he told Archer. “Take us to the marina.”
“Jonah . . .”
“You saw that horde. If Nim wakes with the lure still engaged, I don’t think the energy sinks can contain the emanations. Until we have the anklet back—if the anklet is an on-off switch or a padlock or a fail-safe—she’s a danger.” He gave the other man a hard look in the rearview mirror. “And not an ancient-history, theoretical sort of danger either, as you might have noticed.”