Free Darkness Undone: A Novel of the Marked Souls by Jessa Slade Page A

because he was tired and distracted, and when I stepped in front of him, he dropped his cigarette down his shirtfront.” Otherwise, he would have been able to kill her with one blow—maybe two if she’d ducked. The lethal energy in him was much stronger than anything she could summon. “If they want to destroy me, I cannot stop them.”
    Leaving off buttoning his shirt, Sidney pulled her into his embrace, though she felt him cringe at raising his wounded arm. “
I
will stop them.”
    She nestled into his side and took the opportunity to slip her hand across his bare chest. Her hectic pulse settled into time with his. “I trust you.”
    His breath hitched under her palm. “You’re going to kill me first, Alyce.”
    She tilted her face up to his. He did look flushed. “Fever,” she guessed. “The devils are rotten with pestilence. I did not get to you soon enough.”
    “You’re here now. Just stay close.” When she tucked herself tighter against his side, he chuckled. “Maybe leave us room enough to walk.”
    She settled for holding his hand as they walked out into the hall. With only one hand free, he couldn’t finish buttoning his shirt, and the intermittent glimpses of his skin soothed her. Walking these halls was better with him. The intense echoes of conflicting power that had nearly frozen her when she snuck into the building were muted when she stood with him, as if when they were together she could rise above her fear, control it.
    She thought maybe she could kill these devil-men if she had to, for Sidney.
    “You said you trusted me,” he said.
    She realized the low sound vibrating in her throat wasn’t pleasure this time, but a growl. She put her hand over the demon’s mark around her neck. “I do.”
    “Show me where you left the talya.”
    She picked her way through the building, avoiding the pools of power behind closed doors where she knew the devil-men were waiting. Sidney had said he would teach her the differences in the etheric flows so she wouldn’t be confused as she had been before, thinking the restless forces crowding the alley during the attack had been anything besides the vicious horde. She would keep her mouth shut and not make any more mistakes as she had again today.
    At the back door, she gestured. “I left him outside.”
    A surge of nerves made her bite her lip. Had she destroyedone of Sidney’s friends? It had been so long since she
hadn’t
destroyed those she encountered. It was the only thing she remembered how to do.
    Sidney pushed up the big rolling door. A wave of cold air and vicious curse words accompanied the movement.
    “Jesus fuck,” shouted the man. He lay just outside the door, one leg twisted at an unnatural angle. The blood trail on the gray concrete steps behind him showed where he’d pulled himself along despite the gash on his close-shaved skull. “Westerbrook, get away from that crazy bitch!”
    Sidney squeezed her hand. “You didn’t kill him. Good girl.” He released her and went down the steps, hands spread low out front and his voice soothing, as one would approach a wounded animal. “Ecco, relax. She’s talya, new to the league.”
    That silenced the curses. “Another one? We missed a teshuva coming through the Veil?”
    Sidney shook his head. “She’s been rogue, unnoticed.”
    “Then she could be djinni.”
    From his tone, Alyce guessed that meant something worse than the beating she’d given him.
    But Sidney just shook his head again. “She’s one of ours. Yours.”
    “Mine,” she whispered under her breath.
    The man—Ecco—jerked toward her. Of course the devil-man could hear her. The devil was always listening.
    She moved forward to the edge of the steps and looked down at him. “I thought you had stolen Sidney away; that you were keeping him prisoner in this fortress.”
    He scowled. “Was that an apology for throwing me into the Dumpster?”
    She tilted her head in consideration.
    “It was an explanation,” Sidney