A Wild Light

by Marjorie Liu

“Oh, God,” he said, swaying. He took a step, nearly went down, and swerved from the old man to stare at me again with something terrible in his eyes. He leaned on his cane so hard I thought it would break. His face was bloodless, white.

  “Maxine,” he said, and the sound of his voice, rough and broken, sent chills through my bones. “Maxine, are you hurt?”

  I stared at him. Zee had not moved, not one inch, but Raw and Aaz crawled into my lap again, making sounds of distress. I was too numb to hold them, and the man still didn’t seem disturbed by their presence—though he clearly looked down at their faces.

  “Maxine,” he said again, louder. I listened to him say my name, and the hole in my heart, in my mind, grew wider: vast and cold, making me feel small, incredibly lost. I had not felt so lost in years, or alone.

  The man lowered himself to the floor with some difficulty, wincing visibly when his bad leg twisted at an awkward angle. His gaze, though, never left mine, not for an instant—nor could I look away. Something bad would happen if I did: death or lightning, or earthquake. Maybe the complete and utter loss of my ability to breathe. I was certain of it.

  The man tried to take my hand. I snatched it away. Raw and Aaz shuddered. Del and Mal began humming again, but I barely heard them over the roar of blood in my ears. Behind the man, Zee rubbed his red eyes, dragging his claws directly over the pupils as though he were trying to dig them out and reach inside his head. I understood how he felt.

  I looked at the man—looked at the way he looked at me—and trembled with another kind of horror that had nothing to do with my murdered grandfather.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “But I don’t know who you are.”

  I did not know his face. I did not know those cheekbones, or that firm mouth. I did not know those eyes, which stared at me, unblinking, edged with an odd light that seemed born from more than the reflection of the lamp on the table beside him.

  Nothing about the man was familiar. I had never met him. Never breathed the same air as him.

  I had never been stared at so relentlessly, or with such concern.

  “Maxine,” he whispered.

  “No one knows that name,” I said, but faces flashed, memories: Jack, Byron, Mary, a handful of others; and it felt as though I floated outside my own mind, listening to echoes of some television program that was a fantasy, only.

  I have friends. This is home.

  Home. Most elusive word. But I glanced around the room at those brick walls and enormous dark windows, at the piano and books, and—hell, my mother’s leather jacket draped over the back of the couch—and again, I suffered the heat of some pure knowing. This was home. I had friends, impossible as that should have been.

  I had a grandfather whose corporeal body was dead. Murdered.

  And I had a man sitting in front of me with another kind of knowing in his eyes, looking at me like no one ever had. No one I remembered. Paying no mind to the demons surrounding him, as if he didn’t care.

  I edged away. The man grabbed my wrist, and the contact burned. So did the fact that Zee and the others didn’t even twitch. They watched us with hooded eyes, spikes drooping, claws twitching. Anxious. Upset.

  “Maxine,” said the man, with quiet urgency. “You know me.”

  I twisted my wrist, breaking his grip—ignoring his hiss of pain. I shoved demons off my lap, scrabbling backward, and somehow managed to stand. Only for a moment, though. My knees buckled. I sat down hard on the couch, aching and brittle.

  Jack’s corpse haunted the edge of my vision. When I flexed my fingers, his dried blood cracked and pulled my skin. I rubbed my hands, numb inside: numb except for the ache in my throat; numb to death except for the fear in my heart; so numb I wanted to scream, or run.

  Dek and Mal pushed free of my hair, slithering down my arms into my lap. Muscles flowed beneath their long, serpentine bodies, and tiny vestigial arms gripped my wrists as they licked the blood off my hands. Their tongues were hot. The man looked at them, then me. Grim, haggard—but unafraid.

  “Zee,” he croaked. “You know who I am.”

  Hearing him say the demon’s name made my heart stop. Zee closed his eyes. The man twisted, searching him out. “Zee.”

  “Know you,” rasped the demon, after a terrible hesitation. “Grant.”

  I shoved Dek and Mal off my lap and staggered from the couch. Took two steps toward Jack’s body, and stopped, holding my stomach, my throat. This couldn’t be happening. We’d had pie last night. He’d sat on books and rambled about the beekeeping practices of the ancient Romans. He’d hugged me good night, kissed my cheek.

  I knelt in blood and touched his foot. I had never paid attention to his shoes, but they were sensible and brown, leather cracked with age. Made for walking. The only part of his body that I could look at safely.

  “I knew something was wrong,” whispered the man behind me, accompanied by the sound of wood scraping against the floor. I envisioned that cane in his hand, and it jarred me like another good blow. “I was in Bellevue. Do you remember that? I left hours ago to deal with one of our morning suppliers. You stayed because Jack called in the middle of the night. He wanted to talk with you. He said it was important.”

  Important. Everything was important to Jack.

  But nothing else the man said rang any bells. Except, perhaps, the word suppliers. An image arose: a massive, homey kitchen crawling with volunteers, music from Oklahoma! blaring from speakers in the ceiling; counters stacked with industrial-sized containers filled with juice and Egg Beaters and frozen sausages. I imagined I smelled sausages; that the scent was drifting through the open apartment door.

  From the kitchen, I told myself. The Coop. I lived above a homeless shelter.

  I could not recall why.

  The cane clicked on the floor. “I felt you, Maxine. I felt . . . something terrible happen. I came back as soon as I could.”

  Too late. Maxine is gone.

  Dek and Mal rolled across the floor toward me, whole bottles of whiskey lodged in their mouths, choked halfway down their throats until all I could see were the glass bottoms, golden liquid sloshing inside. Their eyes rolled back as they swallowed the bottles. I had no idea where the liquor had come from, but the boys were like that. Beside me, Raw and Aaz touched the tips of their long black tongues against the bloody floor. Slowly, thoughtfully, as if tasting stories. The hems of their baseball jerseys were stained red.

  My skin tingled. Head to toe, along the edges of my fingernails, and the roots of my hair. Windows were dark, but this was Seattle, and it had rained for the past week. Sunrise was coming. I had minutes at most. Not long enough for all the answers I needed.

  I still touched Jack’s shoe. “Zee. What happened?”

  Still no reply. I heard a shuffling sound. Glanced over my shoulder in time to see the man bend down and grab Zee’s arm. I flinched, waiting for him to scream.

  He didn’t. He should have lost his hand. Fingers, at the very least, or skin. No one touched the boys but me, and that was their choice. Every inch of them was razor-sharp, when they willed it to be. But the man held on, staring at Zee. With fury, I realized. Pure inconsolable rage.

  “Answer her,” he said.

  Zee shook his head. I stood, swaying on my feet. I looked at the knife lying in the blood. I could not bring myself to touch it.

  “Zee,” I said, hoarse. “Who killed Jack?”

  Zee mumbled to himself and glanced away. So did the rest of the boys. None of them would look at me, and that alone chilled me to the bone.

  “Don’t make me beg,” I whispered. “What happened here?”

  The demon closed his eyes. “Mystery.”

  “That’s no answer.” I stepped toward him, every part of me aching. “Did I kill him? Did I murder my own—”

  Zee snarled, wrenching away from the man. Blood spurted from his hand. He hissed, clutching it in a fist against his stomach—and stared at Zee, white- lipped, eyes hard as flint.

  “There’
s no way you could have hurt your grandfather,” said the man, looking at the demon and not me. “No way, Maxine.”

  I didn’t answer him. Zee stared into my eyes, little chest heaving, the floorboards beneath him cracked and ruined. Smoke rose off his bony back, filling the air with a sulfuric scent that burned my nostrils. He looked angry, but that was a nervous, grieving odor.

  I touched my brow, light- headed. “I killed him. Yes or no.”

  “Don’t know,” rasped Zee, and a shudder rolled through his body, wracking him until he hunched on the floor in a bony ball. “Can’t remember.”

  “What—” I began, and stopped myself, swallowing hard. That’s impossible, I wanted to add, but demons never lied. Riddles might be told, or words twisted into knots, but lies were anathema; and so was breaking a promise.

  “Can’t remember,” Zee breathed, staring at his claws as though they were new to him. “Remember nothing. Opened eyes, opened eyes to blood, and nothing, nothing, nothing.”

  “Zee,” I whispered, but he shuddered again and banged his head against his knuckles and claws, trying once more to dig out his eyes. All he got for his trouble were sparks in the air, but I fell on my knees in front of him and grabbed his gnarled wrists. He could have broken my bones with a twitch, but he stilled, trembling, chest heaving. I yanked him into my arms.

  He had been so quiet before, so emotionless, but when he finally looked at me, there was something broken in his gaze, the closest thing to horror that I had ever seen on his sharp, craggy face.

  “Like lightning gone,” he whispered. “Our memories, gone.”

  I felt heat against my shoulder. The man, drawing near. I tilted my head just enough to see Raw and Aaz clinging to his legs, burying their faces against his knees.

  I was too numb to feel surprised. But not too numb to acknowledge that there was some deep shit missing from my brain. Deep, intimate shit.

  I tried recalling anything of the man—anything, before the last ten minutes—but all I got for my trouble was an aching heart, a heart that felt cut to shreds—and a feeling of loneliness so vast, so terrible, I couldn’t breathe.

  Blood streamed between the man’s fingers, staining his green flannel shirt and dripping on the floor. I couldn’t look any higher than his hands. I was afraid to see his eyes, and that fear made me feel so small. I had never been a coward.

  Cowards died. Cowards let other people die.

  Zee studied the blood, then him. Him, and me.

  “Good heart,” rasped the demon, with an urgency that made my vision blur with tears—and then spill over as he placed his clawed hand against my chest. “Don’t lose the good heart.”

  I scrubbed my eyes. Dawn was on the edge of my skin, tingling with an echo of the sun rising somewhere beyond the walls and clouds. “Go to sleep. Tonight, answers.”

  “Maxine,” Zee whispered mournfully. “Afraid answers kill.”

  Dek and Mal ceased humming. Raw and Aaz glanced at Jack. I tried to do the same, but could only look as far as his shoes, his legs, the edge of his pale hand, fingertips dipped in blood.

  “Then we better find out why,” I breathed, and steeled myself as sunrise arrived.

  Happened fast. Less than a second, quicker than a heartbeat, half of a moment and half of that: The boys disappeared. Fading into smoke that reappeared on my skin.

  I stared at my arms and hands. My skin had not seen the sun since my mother’s murder. Never would again. Pale flesh gone, covered entirely now in tattoos: sinuous, tangled bodies etched in coal and mercury, shimmering with veins of silver fire. Scales, claws, teeth, tongues: pressing upon my skin, covering every inch from toes to scalp, between my thighs. Only my face was free, but that was vanity—easily rectified if threatened. Happened more often than not: bullets, the buses I had been thrown under.

  Mortal at night. Immortal by day. Nothing could kill me from now until sunset. Not a nuclear bomb, not water or fire, not the worst monster in this world—or any other.

  My bloodline had been made to fight monsters. To protect this world from the very worst creatures no one dreamed existed. There had been others, once. I was all that was left. Just me, standing against a demonic army locked away inside a prison surrounding earth. Me, standing against Jack’s own people, Avatars, alien beings who had created my bloodline ten thousand years ago, and who were almost as much of a threat as the demons imprisoned behind the veil.

  I rubbed my hands together, dried blood gone, absorbed by the boys. Black nails, hard enough to cut steel, glimmered in the lamplight like an oil stain. Even the armor had changed its appearance, like a chameleon—etched with knots and tangles that resembled roses. I felt heavier. The boys were dense. Red eyes stared from my palms: Dek and Mal, sleeping on each hand. The boys never rested in the same place twice. Just like me.

  But that was wrong. I had a home. I had put down roots, lived here for—

  —almost two years, I told myself. Two years of living warm.

  I could feel that warmth. Not heat, but something deeper, in my gut—as though I was observing the life of another Maxine Kiss. Another woman with my face and blood, living a life I had never dreamed for myself. A life where I remembered sitting down at a table with strange friends and the boys, all of us together—without secrets, laughing, making happiness beneath the skin. Beneath a roof that was . . . mine?

  “Maxine,” said the man, quietly.

  I sat a moment longer, gathering my resolve. Stood slowly, ignoring his proffered hand, which was cut and bleeding. The blood didn’t bother me, but I was afraid to touch him, in the same way I was afraid to look into his eyes. Give me a demon to kill, but not this. Give me a war, but not this.

  Grant, Zee had called him. His name was Grant.

  I forced myself to meet his gaze. A mistake. I felt naked when he looked at me, stripped down to bone, muscle, nothing but my sick, thundering heart shuddering behind my ribs. All he did was look, but that was enough to shatter a part of me that couldn’t afford to be broken. Not now.

  “You really don’t remember me,” he breathed, all kinds of pain wrapped up in that low, deep voice.

  I shook my head. “Not even a little.”

  He sucked in his breath like I punched him. “You love me.”

  You’re crazy, I almost said.

  But I didn’t. I kept my mouth shut.

  Because all it took was the look in his eyes, and the way the boys had behaved around him, to know that he was telling the truth.

  I had loved this man.

  Just not anymore.

  CHAPTER 3

  I backed away from him, feeling cornered in that expansive room. My heel stepped in blood.

  “Don’t run from me,” he said. “I’m the last person you should be afraid of.”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  He smiled, but it was tense and sad, and faintly bitter. “Liar.”

  I turned from him. Faced Jack’s corpse. Took a moment, pretending to look at the body, when all I was doing was stitching my nerves back together. Liar, liar, pants on fire.

  I didn’t remember this man, no matter how tightly the boys hugged his legs. I didn’t know him, no matter how he stared at me: like I was his. His, in that way that had to do with secrets and holding hands, breathing the same air. Naked skin.

  Jesus, enough. You’re a fighter.

  So fight.

  I sucked in my breath and focused on Jack. Worse than a roller coaster. My head was going to turn inside out, and my stomach punched upward into my throat like some ham-fisted drunk. I swallowed hard—pretended that I wasn’t vomiting a little inside my mouth—and pushed past heartsickness and revulsion to look at his waxen face.

  Throat cut. I had already seen that. I prowled the edges of his body, searching for anything else. Not much of a detective. I usually relied on the boys for small details, but that would have to wait until tonight.

  Stupid. Should have had them check for scents.

  Maybe they already had. Maybe t
here weren’t any. Just ours. Maybe something had gone wrong. Wrong with me.

  “You’re being self-indulgent,” said the man, behind me. “When you blame yourself. When you even think about it.”

  I froze, then turned my head, slowly. “What did you say?”

  “You heard me.” The man limped toward me, his expression so hard and cold I wondered what the hell I had been doing with him. “You always blame yourself first. You think the worst of who you are.”

  “I’m a killer,” I found myself saying, even though I’d had no intention of speaking. “If you know me—”

  “I know you,” he rasped. “I know you, Maxine.”

  As he loomed over me, I held my ground and suffered a wash of heat from his body to mine. Smelled cinnamon, and other warm things. Made me think of sunlight, and fire.

  He got close and stopped, studying me. I didn’t know why it felt so unnerving. Other eyes from other men flashed through my memories—crazed, murderous, sly, cold—but none burned me like this man.

  He was right: I was a liar. He scared me. I was an unbreakable woman, unless you started from the inside out.

  “You going to talk, or look?” I asked, unable to speak above a whisper. “My grandfather is dead. You’re standing in his blood.”

  “Jack’s not dead. And you didn’t murder his body. I’d bet my life on it.” He searched my face. “How much do you remember? You know, don’t you, that Jack isn’t exactly . . .”

  “Human. Yes.”

  “And you know where you are?”

  “The Coop,” I answered, more slowly, having a sense of where this was going and dreading it.

  The man leaned back, frowning. “Why are you living here? Who are you living with?”

  I swallowed hard and pointed at Jack’s corpse. “Don’t change the subject.”

  “Your memory is the subject.”

  “I would never love you,” I said.

  He leaned over his cane, not breathing. I bit my tongue, hating myself a little, and turned back to Jack. There was little to see that I hadn’t already noted: cut throat, clothes in order. Men who fought for their lives usually tore something, or looked scuffed up. Not Jack. I crouched in his blood and picked up his hand. His skin was cooling. He was looking more like a shell to me, a wax figure. Unreal.