Free Seduced by Shadows by Jessa Slade Page A

stake. She spread her fingers, and the remaining splinters pattered to the ground. “I missed it. Geez, that close, and I still missed.”
    Archer sat back on his heels and raised one eyebrow. That was the last she remembered before the hollow-ness inside her reverberated with a cry even more terrible than the dead beast’s wail, and the blackness took her.
    Corvus left his tower, three leather satchels bumping against his hip with a tinkle of glass. In his wake, the whining darklings made the shadows quake. A few followed, unbidden.
    On a corner lit not by a streetlamp but by flames flickering in a bullet-pierced, fifty-gallon drum, he passed a man, fidgety as the darklings.
    “Hey, Jack, nice night.”
    Corvus slowed, then turned on his heel. “Lovely.”
    “You looking for somethin’? I got it.”
    The ancient malevolence in Corvus recognized more
holes in the man’s soul than in the scudding clouds in the cold lead sky. “I seek my freedom.”
    The man laughed, a sound as muddy as ruined glass. “Got your freedom right here in my pocket. Wanna smoke it or shoot it?”
    “Along that path lies freedom through death. Not what I seek.”
    The man threw up his hands. “You an idiot? A priest? Get the hell outta here.”
    “Why, yes. That is indeed the way to my freedom. Getting hell out.” Corvus tipped his sunglasses down his nose and peered over the rim.
    The dealer stiffened. “Hey, I gotta go—”
    “Unbeknownst to yourself, you have been long gone, my friend.” The poison burned in the back of Corvus’s eyeballs. He stiffened against the pain, but the acid leak of tears spilled over, blistering his cheeks. He raised his hand. On his finger, the opalescent stone was a second icy burn against his scarred and callused skin.
    The man scrambled backward, far too slowly. Corvus slashed his ringed hand like a scythe.
    Following his sweeping gesture, a patchwork mist tore from the dealer’s body. To Corvus’s scalded eye, the severed soul glistened like a snail’s broken trail.
    The dealer staggered back, clutching at the drum. It tipped, and flaming debris washed across the sidewalk. The dealer fell into the embers, gagging and weeping.
    Darklings swarmed around Corvus’s feet like ducks flocking around a retiree bearing loaves of stale bread. Of course, they were embodiments of pure evil with needle teeth, and he threw them scraps of shredded soul.
    Corvus left the darklings to their insatiable feast; not even a memory would remain to pass into eternity. He turned to the corpse sprawled on the sidewalk. The body groaned and stirred, clutching its head. Not a corpse quite yet.
    Corvus hauled the dealer to his feet and brushed
away the clinging embers. “Did you fall?” he asked solicitously.
    The dealer hitched up his pants. “What you want, Jack?” He recited his mantra in a muddled tone. “I got it.”
    “Not anymore,” Corvus said softly. “But you will still be of use.” He lifted one satchel over his head and settled the strap around the dealer’s shoulders. “Here is the fruit of your wicked labors, the harvest of your sins. With it, you will help me sow the next—nay, the last crop.”
    The dealer boggled at him. Corvus sighed. “It’s the hot new shit, man. Everybody’s doing it.”
    The dealer plunged his hand into the satchel. Glass clinked when he lifted out a slim vial. Even in the smol dering light of the dying cinders, the small tablets reflected a lunar glow like unstrung pearls. “You got sol?”
    “Like you would not believe.” Corvus plucked the vial from the dealer’s grasp and returned it to the pouch. “Don’t set the price too high. Impatience and greed, my friend, will be the death of you.” Already had been, in fact.
    He steered the dealer’s still-animate body through the pool of indifferent darklings. They already had what they wanted.
    The dealer squinted at Corvus with vague suspicion. “What do I owe you, Jack?”
    “Nothing. Do you know what a corvus is?