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

interrupted, his tone brusque with a hint of warning.
    Ecco grumbled but didn’t press the issue. “Get me up. Now that I know we haven’t been infiltrated by a djinnipsycho bitch, I can go bleed in peace. Since she’s just a rogue psycho bitch.”
    Sidney crossed his arms. “Don’t be rude. That was what got you here in the first place.”
    “I wasn’t rude. I said I liked her dress.”
    Sidney glanced at Alcye inquiringly.
    She folded her hands in front of her. “His tone was insincere. And then I saw the devil in his eyes.”
    “Baby blue gunnysack dresses with no bra underneath always bring out the devil in me.” Ecco ignored Sidney’s hand and pulled himself upright to one foot. He balanced gracefully despite the twist to his other leg. “I guess meeting an unbonded possessed female made me forget myself.”
    He stood two steps down from them, and still he was nearly a head taller than Sidney—almost twice that to her. She took a step away from the glitter in his eyes. Not the demon. Something darker.
    Sidney stood back from the byplay with a bland expression. But behind the shield of his glasses, his eyes narrowed, and his hands, tucked tight against his ribs under his crossed arms, were fists.
    Which signs should she believe? She angled toward him hesitantly. “Sidney?”
    “I want you to meet Liam and Sera and the other talyan.”
    Still his body sent her conflicting messages, and his words of welcome didn’t match his flat tone. The discord jangled her nerves. “No. I want to leave.”
    “You can’t go,” Ecco said, as if she hadn’t just broken his leg. “You belong with us now.”
    That decided her.
    She took Sidney’s hand and pulled him behind her as she jumped down from the concrete platform, avoiding the devil-man dominating the steps.
    Sidney gave a surprised yelp, but she steadied him. Before he recovered his balance, she tugged him toward thefence’s gate. When she’d come for him, she’d squeezed past the chain that padlocked the parking lot fence. Sidney’s shoulders were too broad to fit through the gap, so she ripped the chain loose with a squeal and spark of metal.
    “Alyce,” he gasped.
    “Damn it, Westerbrook,” Ecco hollered. “Dereliction of duty, man.”
    “Oh, now they care about my duty,” Sidney muttered.
    But he did not pull his hand away, and so Alyce did not stop. His willingness eased the tension in her chest, because she would not have left without him. And she had to get away from the low thrum of devil energy. It made her want things—bad things; things she daren’t want.
    A tiny twist, deeper in her chest, around her heart, made her wonder if Sidney would be the one to pay for her fear and flight.
    No, he had promised to explain, and then the fear would go. But she could not listen with the devils whispering around them.
    The October air swirled as she hurried Sidney down the street. Large rumbling carriages—trucks, she reminded herself—blasted past them on obscure errands. There was so much scurrying around her. The sounds and the stenches ached in her head. Sometimes she understood why the devils wanted to bring everything to a halt.
    In still, cold silence, she might finally remember.
    “Alyce,” Sidney said. “Wait just a moment.”
    She paused as he pulled back. She hadn’t realized how far they’d come from the devil building. Her only thought had been to get away. Sidney’s lips were compressed, the soft curves tightened with pain.
    Remorse plucked at her. “Your wounds.”
    “I can’t feel them through the cold.”
    “Cold?” She had forgotten to feel that too.
    He fumbled with the buttons of his shirt and hissed under his breath.
    Gently, she bumped aside his fingers. She hadn’t noticed the bite in the air, but his skin burned through her like ice. “Let me.”
    She did up the buttons, but the thin fabric offered little protection, just as she’d done little to protect him from the devil-men. She’d let her fear pull him