by Marjorie Liu
“For most of my childhood. We’d sleep in the back sometimes. I was little. Mom made it fun, and the boys always brought me things.” Zee poked his head from the shadows at my feet, and I stroked his spiky hair. “I think that’s when they got into teddy bears.”
“Soft and huggable,” Zee rasped, and fled back into the shadows. Grant laid his arm over my shoulders and pulled me close. It was strange, sitting in this car with him. But it felt right, too. Even though my memories still seemed far away, even though it was impossible to catalog our two years all at once, it was enough that I felt the weight of that history between us. Anchoring me.
“I saw Oturu,” I said, quietly, and told him everything. About my mother, my ancestor. I unburdened myself, and he didn’t say a word until I was done.
“That’s a lot to take in,” Grant said.
“I don’t think I’ve processed it. I’m not certain I believe.”
“You believe. The difference is that you know yourself, the parts that matter. You’re strong. You love the boys. What Jack and those demons told you is superficial compared to that.”
“Superficial,” I echoed, with a bitter smile. “Reaper Kings. End of the world.”
“Superficial,” he said again, with particular gentleness, and poked Zee with his foot. The little demon was eavesdropping on the floor. All the boys were in the car. I smelled popcorn and beer, and listened to Raw and Aaz behind us, chewing loudly.
“What do you think?” Grant asked Zee. “Seeing as how you’re the other half of this.”
“Other half of light,” Zee whispered.
The other side of dreaming, added that lithe voice in my mind, each word making the darkness stir and uncoil a little more beneath my skin. A chill rolled through me. My sight wavered. All I could see, for a moment, was my dream of being inside the belly of the wyrm, surrounded by swallowed stars.
But there are things we have never known.
“Maxine,” Grant said.
I blinked, and the world returned. I just wasn’t certain I was still in the world. One foot out of it, maybe. Everything felt so distant.
“I’m tired,” I told him, which wasn’t exactly a lie. The moment I said the words, I suffered a weariness that was soul-deep, destructive. I wondered what it would feel like finally to give up, to just lie down and die. I wasn’t certain I had the energy for anything else.
Grant’s jaw tightened, and he pulled me into his lap, holding me close. I leaned against him, my cheek pressed to his chest, breathing in the scent of cinnamon, soaking in his heat. Dek and Mal purred.
“Come on,” he said roughly, kissing the top of my bald head. “Don’t hurt.”
I thought of my ancestor, with ropes around her ankles and hands. Thrown into a hole, like garbage, to spend an eternity buried alive. My mother, pregnant and on her own. If she had dealt with this same darkness that was inside me, never speaking a word . . .
I buried my face even tighter against Grant’s chest.
“You’re scared,” he breathed. “Maxine.”
“I’m scared of being alone,” I told him, hardly able to get the words out. Unable to hold them in.
His arms tightened. “That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“It is. You don’t understand.”
He laughed, but it was a coarse, wet sound, verging on grief. “I was never lonely until I met you, Maxine. I wasn’t lonely until I realized what life would be like without you.”
My fingers dug into his shirt. “Don’t say that.”
He stilled, staring at me. Silent such a long time I felt uneasy.
“Zee,” he said finally, softly. “Get the hell out of here. Take the others with you.”
Zee didn’t argue. He snapped his claws. Dek and Mal chirped, licked my ears, and faded into the shadows. A deep silence replaced Raw and Aaz’s chewing.
“Now, listen,” I said, but Grant shook his head, jaw tight, eyes glittering with that odd golden light.
“You listen,” he said, and kissed me hard on the mouth.
Heat burst through my chest, wildness rising inside me, filled with dizzying hunger. I twisted Grant’s shirt in my hands, pressed so tightly against him I could feel every hard line of his body. Felt like years, a lifetime, since I had been so close to him; and there was a small part of me that weighed each second and sensation, holding it up against the rest of my life.
Grant broke off the kiss and grabbed my hand to hold against his chest. I felt his heart pounding beneath my palm, and he smoothed his thumb over my cheek, the corner of my mouth. Both of us, trembling. “Listen to me. Listen to how much I need you. And don’t you dare . . . don’t you dare, Maxine, tell me I shouldn’t say how much I love you.”
He kissed me again, gently. When he pulled away, I followed, sensing words on his tongue. I kissed him hard, afraid of what he would say, and he sighed against my mouth and held me so tightly I couldn’t breathe. So tight that if the world fell, he’d still be holding me.
I wanted to hold him that tightly. I wanted to show him the heartache he eased, how full I felt, simply being in his arms. I wanted him to know he was my home. It seemed more important than ever that he know that—because I hadn’t known it. I had forgotten. And the enormity of that loss stole my breath away.
Grant pushed me down on the car seat, tossing his cane on the floor. I forced my hands to unclench from his shirt, sliding them down his hard stomach to the waist of his jeans. His skin was hot. Muscles tight.
Grant made a small sound, his hands touching me in fleeting motions that felt as breathless as he sounded—and if I died a hundred, thousand years from now, I didn’t think I would ever forget the way he looked at me.
“Your eyes,” I murmured.
“What about them?” Grant slid his hand under my sweater, resting his large palm on my stomach, then higher, on my breast. I arched into his touch, sighing, and swallowed my words. I couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t tell him how it made me feel, to be looked at with such naked hunger and grace.
Maybe he knew. He slid off my vest and pulled my sweater over my head. I shivered, fumbling with his jeans, both of us moving faster, urgency making us rough. I needed him. I needed him so badly.
Clothes off, pushed aside, tangled. His skin was hot and hard, and we rolled over so that he lay on his back, his bad leg hanging off the seat. I couldn’t think, couldn’t speak; all I could do was touch him, sliding down until my mouth caressed his inner thighs, and then higher, higher, sucking gently on the tip of his thick hard shaft, my hands wrapping tight around him, stroking.
Grant cried out, hips bucking upward, pushing himself deeper into my mouth. His hands slid across my head and shoulders, and he sat up, breathing raggedly, trying to reach my breasts. I teased him with my tongue, then slid up against his body, closing my eyes as his fingers sank between us, touching me hard, then soft, his mouth never leaving mine.
I reached between us, too, and guided the tip of him against me, holding him there, rubbing. Grant strained, his expression pure agony. I kissed his throat, tasting the salt of his sweat, suffering the most excruciating pleasure as I pushed my hips down hard against him. He filled me to the point of pain, then everything eased, and we began moving against each other hard and fast.
Somehow, we rolled over so that he was on top of me, half-kneeling off the seat. I hooked my leg around him as he pushed deeper, harder, driving into me with a relentlessness that made me cry out with every sharp thrust. He didn’t ease up as I came, only clutched me tight in one arm, still moving inside me as he reached down between us to touch me, just so, just right. I climaxed again, digging my nails into his back, and finally he let go with a wordless shout, his hips jerking so hard, so long against me, I came one last time.
He collapsed on top of me, and I loved it. I loved feeling him exhausted, and I loved being exhausted, like this: pressed to him, feeling his heartbeat shuddering against mine as something passed between us—light or energy—until the glow I imagined insi
de my chest burned white-hot, bathing the coiled spirit stirring lazily in its dreams.
“You’re my sunrise,” Grant murmured against my throat. “Always. No matter what happens, just remember that.”
I ran my fingers through his thick hair. “Speaking to the girl who had amnesia.”
He groaned. “Don’t. I didn’t think I could take it. It killed me when you looked at me like I was a stranger.”
“I can only imagine that I was trying to protect you.” I held his hand against my chest. “Our bond . . . the energy you take from me . . . you realize, don’t you, what you’re drawing from? The boys said this thing inside me is the worst part of them, and it’s going to get free. It’s going to change me. And if you’re there, too—”
“I love how you always underestimate me.”
“Do not.”
Grant raised himself up on his elbows and gave me a long, steady look. “You can’t make everything right. Sometimes, you just have to let go, and have a little faith that the world will keep spinning, and the sun will rise, and that life will be okay.”
“It won’t,” I said. “It can’t.”
“Which part?” Grant ran his hand through his hair, tugging hard, a little something wild in his eyes. “I know it wasn’t just protecting me that made you run. You were afraid of something else. I’ve never seen you so afraid, inside.”
“Because I’ll lose you,” I said, without thinking. “I love you, and I’ll lose you. Nothing keeps. Not in my life. Not even my life. And it’ll be my fault.”
And my life is cheaper than my heart.
I tried to sit up. Grant placed his hand on my shoulder, holding me down. “It’s not your fault your mother died.”
“She died because of me.”
“The boys transferred their protection. If you’re going to blame anyone—”
“Don’t,” I said sharply, feeling tight and cold on the inside. “She could have had more time.”
Grant stilled, staring into my eyes with that look he got, sometimes, when he saw too deep.
“More time for you,” he said. “More time for you to figure things out.”
I looked away, stung. “I never appreciated her. I loved her, but I was angry with her so much. I hated our life. I hated it so much that we never had a home. I hated this car we lived in. I hated that I never could be alone. I hated all the violence and knowing . . . knowing I didn’t have a choice because that’s the way things were. I hated it all; and then she died.” I forced myself to meet his gaze. “I didn’t have time to tell her I loved her. I couldn’t even tell her thank you for being my mother. I didn’t understand. I thought I did, but I didn’t. I didn’t understand what she’d gone through, everything she protected me from, until it was me.”
“She knows you loved her. She knows, Maxine.”
I drew in a deep, shuddering breath. “Everything I have here . . . everything about you . . . is all I ever wanted. But that was . . . I had those dreams before she died. After that . . . I stopped wanting. I stopped. I just . . . did what I was supposed to. And I told myself it was what I wanted.”
Grant wrapped his arms around me, pulling me gently against his chest. His warmth soaked through my muscles, like I was drowning in sunlight; and he hummed a brief note that soared and rumbled into my chest, in the pulse that matched my own heart.
“You never told me any of this,” he murmured.
I wiped my nose on the back of my hand, but the tears still flowed. “I didn’t let myself think about it.”
He was silent a moment. “There’s nothing I can tell you to make it better, Maxine. Except that things change. You can’t . . . let what happened make you believe that what you want is wrong.”
I covered his hand, stroking his warm fingers. “You always have an answer for everything.”
“You love that about me.”
“Big ego, too.”
“Humble as pie. Sensibilities of a lamb.”
I grabbed his ear, dragging his head toward mine. Grant cupped my throat with his large hand.
“If you had forgotten and left me,” he began, but I stopped him with a deep kiss. Grant stretched on top of me. I loved the weight of him. I loved the heat of his hands cupping my face, then my hip, spanning my waist, and his thumb brushing the bottom of my breast. My eyes and cheeks felt sticky with tears, but he didn’t seem to mind.
He was kissing my breast—and I was enjoying it very much—when Zee appeared in the front seat, red eyes glowing with agitation.
I froze. So did Grant.
“Maxine,” Zee rasped. “Trouble.”
CHAPTER 16
I heard the shouts all the way to the barn. I ran, Grant behind me, with the boys racing like wolves through the shadows around us.
I burst through the front door and saw Jack first. Alive, seemingly unharmed.
And then I looked past him, at the Messenger.
She stood in the center of the room, tall and pale, all sharp angles that were male and female, and alien. Her cheeks were wet, splotchy—her eyes bloodshot. She had been crying. Tears still leaked from her eyes. Naked, piercing, grief.
She had lifted the raw hem of her silken shirt. Long white scars covered her torso, and a razor-thin cord was wrapped around her waist, its very tip locked inside a slim handle—which she touched, carefully. The tip slid free, and the cord fell away from her body with a hiss. It looked as though it was made from crystal, and resembled a very short whip—until she flicked her wrist and the cord snapped into a needle-thin blade. Happened in the blink of an eye.
I grabbed my grandfather, intent on pulling him away, but he dug in his heels—his gaze never leaving the Messenger.
“Little bird,” Jack pleaded, with utter heartbreak in his eyes. “Please, don’t.”
I thought she was going to attack him. I was certain of it, ready to tell the boys to kill her—but the Messenger bowed her head, steadied her grip on the weapon—and angled the blade over her own heart.
“No,” Grant snapped, behind me. The Messenger looked at him—then settled her stricken, miserable gaze on Jack.
“Praise be your light,” she whispered, and pushed the blade into her chest.
Unsuccessfully.
Her muscles strained. Everything about her, committed to running that blade through her body. But the tip pierced her clothing, and no farther.
Jack sighed. The woman shot him a desperate look.
“I must die,” she breathed.
“No,” Jack said, gently. “Your Maker built a command into your mind. You are incapable of suicide or self-harm.”
She made an anguished sound and tried again. I edged past my grandfather, feeling Zee and Raw in the shadows on my right. Aaz prowled to my left, while Dek and Mal were quiet on my shoulders. Ready. Waiting.
“Stop,” I said, feeling a disturbed sort of awe at the violent shift of her emotions. What I was seeing now ran closer to the woman I had first encountered in the loft—but a far cry from the robot who had stood earlier in this room, staring at walls. Something had snapped since then. All that self-reflection.
She looked at me—really looked—and hate flickered through her eyes, a loathing that saddened me more than it frightened. She raised the blade in her hands, trembling, looking ready to drive it through my chest. I held up my hands—but not at her. Just to the boys, waiting so close, red eyes burning.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked her.
Her hand trembled violently, the blade glinting like ice. “Nothing is as it should be. Not even me.”
I edged closer. “And how should things be?”
The Messenger made a strangled sound and swung the blade toward my face. Dek and Mal rose up like hissing cobras, shielding me—and the crystal shattered against their heads. Raw and Aaz swarmed around my feet, growling, and the woman gazed down at them and bared her teeth.
“Kill me,” she said. “You tried before. I will not save myself this time.”
“Don’t,” I
told the boys, and looked the Messenger dead in the eyes. “I’m a contrary woman. Tend to do the opposite of what people want. You say death, I may just force you to live.”
The Messenger stared at me with a look on her face that reminded me of the woman at the gas station—the woman with the pink sweater—who had looked so miserable, like someone had ground her down, destroyed her world. Uncanny, how much the two reminded me of each other.
“I opened the prison veil,” she whispered. “I was careless, and misused the power given me by my Aetar Masters. That alone is a crime. But what I feel here”—she stopped, and touched her head—“is equally terrible. I have been compromised by doubt. I am worthless, now.”
“No,” Grant said, but I held up my hand and walked to the woman, so close I had to tilt back my head to look into her eyes.
“You should be compromised by doubt,” I said. “You should be afraid, and sick, and shaking with the enormity of the uncertainties in your world. But you should also be burning up with a desire to learn what is true. Because that’s why you were sent here, isn’t it? To learn the truth. And the truth, lady, is that a war is coming, the war is here.”
The hunt, said that voice inside my head. The hunt is at hand.
I swallowed hard. “If you’re so loyal to your Aetar Masters, then you’ll stop being a coward who wants to die, and you’ll suck it up and fight. Because those demons in the veil, after they’re done with this world, they’ll go looking for the ones who locked them up. And you don’t want to know what they do to the Aetar you love so much.”
The Messenger trembled. “You are one of them. You are worse. There are stories about you. I did not believe you could be the same woman, but it must be so. Covered in the bodies of our enemies. Wearing the key. You, who traveled the crossroads—yesterday on some worlds, and a million years ago on others. Time passes so oddly in the quantum rose. But she also killed the Aetar.”
She gazed past me at Grant. “And you. I have hunted the wild ones, and watched the Makers steal their mouths and throw their skins in chains. But you . . . you are different. I saw the emblem on the old woman, and if you came from the Labyrinth with her, and others . . .”