And suddenly, hell loomed on the deep.
The Styx was a great upside-down anvil of a war cruiser, its deck blazing with the kind of light that drew misguided moths. The armored vessel hulked under the starlight, a product of industry and war, fitted and braced against nature.
Talia’s heart stuttered at the sight. No doubt the Styx had long seen the Charon’s approach. The demon Death Collector had to know someone was coming—another person ready to trade their humanity for immortality.
The old man brought the boat alongside the great ship with a wrenching scrape and idled near a narrow ladder. He turned, the pallor of his skin sickly yellowed in the ship’s light.
“The Styx.” He cocked his head at the wall of gray steel.
Talia’s nausea peaked as the wind died and the Charon rocked. She clenched her teeth against throwing up and gripped the side of the boat as mute terror blanked her mind.
“You want me to take you back?” The old man didn’t look like he cared much either way.
Talia shook her head slightly, so as not to be sick.
She could do this. Only yesterday her shadows had protected her and Adam during the failed attempt to save Custo’s life. And in shadow, she could manipulate objects with her mind. The combination of abilities would get her to Adam and then get them both to safety. She wasn’t asking for more than that. The destruction of the demon who called himself the Death Collector could wait for another time.
Right now was for Adam.
Her fear transmuted into an electric clarity that ran in a bristling current, just under her skin.
Talia stood, gathering shadow from the night. The cold, veils of darkness hung off her shoulders in billowing layers, at the ready. She pulled them more tightly around her to mask her boarding as she took hold of the ladder.
The rungs were chilly and wet on her hands.
A wraith—a woman with the slender face of an angel—leaned down the ladder to look for the demon’s newest supplicant.
Talia waited, heart pounding. Below, the Charon pulled away, leaving her one choice. Up.
“Must have chickened out,” the wraith called to the others and ducked out of sight.
Talia continued her climb, and near the top she glanced about the deck. To one side, a raised helipad hosted a faster mode of transportation to and from the ship. Handy. Wraiths clustered nearby. Ten, twelve, their attention directed on a pair that were sparring. The cracking blows they landed each other would have killed any normal person.
With this distraction, Talia crawled on deck.
Across a flat gray expanse was a narrow doorway, rectangular with rounded edges, leading to the interior of a bulky metal structure.
She forced herself to breathe more slowly, her heart to ease its frantic pace. Freaking out would help no one. She’d start with inside rooms and work through the ship. Check every corner, carefully and methodically.
Buried in shadows, Talia kept to the edge of the deck as she moved toward the door. She insinuated herself along the natural shades of dark and light that fell in the sharp lines of the ship’s construction.
She glanced at the Charon, now a spark in the distance.
A deep-toned click and snap on deck brought Talia’s head back around.
The door was open, a figure just emerging.
A single glimpse of dense blackness, and time ground to a halt. The Earth stopped spinning on its axis. The ocean stilled and the stars winked out.
All of Talia’s senses were overridden by a roar of static in her ears.
The thing that crossed the threshold was Wrong. He might call himself the Death Collector, might style himself as a giver of immortal youth, but Talia’s mind and soul rang with the more apt term, demon.
Had it not been for her grip on the side of the ship, Talia would have fallen to the deck in revulsion.
The demon was a snaking horror of black absence fitted in a sinuous twist around the body of a man. His human host. Deep in shadow, Talia could see the slick offal of the demon penetrating the host to his core. Whoever the man might’ve been was gone, his identity destroyed. Now his body, used and broken, shared his life with a terrible intelligence in writhing misery. Expression vacant, jaw slack, the man moved as if in a long nightmare, looking only for an end. Whatever end that might be was clearly beyond his caring.
The thought that Adam faced that horror stripped Talia of all hope that he might still be alive. The wraith soul-suckers were bothersome insects compared to the genocidal seethe of the demon. The only being powerful enough to destroy that thing, that condensation of defiling chaos, was Shadowman. Shadowman could be demon enough himself if need be. He and he alone could cut the demon out of the world.
A sudden pressure welled up inside her.