A Wild Light

by Marjorie Liu

  “No,” Grant said, alarmed. He lunged forward. “Jack—”

  My grandfather’s eyes rolled back, his mouth going slack. He collapsed, boneless, but I caught him before he hit the ground. All the boys bounded from the shadows, red eyes glowing.

  I gritted my teeth. “Jack.”

  “That’s Byron again,” Grant said, grim. “Jack’s not inside him anymore.”

  I touched the boy’s face. His skin was warm, but not feverish. Pale, though, and hollow. His mouth began moving, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying.

  I picked him up in my arms. Staggered a little, but managed his weight. Grant stayed close, his hand lightly gripping Byron’s ankle. His gaze was distant. I heard him humming.

  I carried Byron inside and skirted boxes and old dusty furniture, searching out the stairs. Up and up, until we reached Jack’s apartment. The door stood open.

  No lights burned inside, but I heard shuffling sounds and a lamp switched on. Dek’s tongue was hot on my ear, and both he and Mal sang a brief snatch of Gladys Knight’s “Walk Softly.”

  Grant said, “There’s a rip inside him. It’s bleeding.”

  I gave him a sharp look. He added, “In his spirit, not his body.”

  I hefted Byron higher in my arms and tried to navigate the narrow maze of books. I knocked quite a few down, Grant faltered behind me, trying to walk over them. I apologized silently but didn’t stop or look at the Messenger, who sat at the kitchen table and watched me pass with a growing expression of alarm.

  “The Maker,” she said.

  I shook my head at her and carried the boy to the bedroom. It was a small, closed space—bed unmade, clothes on the floor, along with more books. I didn’t get the feeling that Jack had spent much time in here. Even for an immortal, too much to see and do. He gave lectures on archaeology, sometimes. I wished, now, that I had attended more of them.

  Byron stirred when I set him down. He was still mumbling. I leaned close, letting my ear hover over his mouth.

  “Knock,” he said, so softly I could barely understand him. And even so, I thought I misheard everything.

  “Knock once for light, knock twice for death, knock three times to find the world all dead . . . and four, always, to raise the dead.” Byron twisted, lines of pain and fear etched in his brow. “No, don’t touch me. Please. Please, don’t . . .”

  We would not, said the darkness.

  His face crumpled, and he started sobbing. I crawled onto the bed and pulled him tight against me.

  Grant laid his hand on Bryon’s head. Closed his eyes, his hum taking shape, strength, his voice rumbling like a rolling explosion deep underground, so deep all I could feel was the shaking beneath my feet. I watched him, and when I blinked—in those flashes between blinks—I could almost see the threads between us, golden and hot. Pulsing together like one heartbeat.

  I smoothed back Byron’s wet hair. The teen stirred again, eyes flickering open.

  He saw me first. Maybe. He seemed so dazed he might as well have been blind. Hs looked at me, past me, around me—wildly—before focusing on my face again.

  He stared. I tried to smile. “Hey.”

  “Maxine,” Grant said. Byron looked at him, then me—quick, still wild—and his face crumpled again. This time with a trace of fear.

  “Who are you?” he said.

  I sat back, breathless. “Byron. It’s me.”

  He shook his head, and I had the most terrible feeling that this was my punishment for forgetting Grant. I had spent my whole life being a stranger, an unknown, but for this boy to look at me like that . . .

  It terrified me. More than demons. More than the end of the world.

  Grant’s hand clasped my shoulder. I steeled myself. “You don’t remember anything?”

  I don’t—” Byron stopped and touched his head. “I don’t know. It’s all a blur.”

  “You’ve been sick,” Grant said, his voice flowing with reassurance and power. “We’ve been taking care of you.”

  I blinked hard and slid off the bed. “Rest, kid. You’ve had a tough couple days.”

  Byron’s gaze was piercing, sharp. I thought he would argue. Maybe even try to run.

  But Grant started humming again, and the teen had trouble keeping his eyes open. He frowned, rubbing them, then swayed back down on the bed. He still watched us, though, uneasy and pale.

  Hollow, I thought again. His eyes, so old.

  “I don’t know you,” he murmured.

  “That’s okay,” I said softly, and tried my hardest to smile. “Just rest.”

  Grant’s voice rumbled to a deeper pitch. My skin tingled. Red eyes blinked in the shadows. Raw stared down at him with sorrow, memories in his gaze. The boys had known Byron in another life. Never spoken of it, except in snatches that were always pained.

  Byron’s eyes drifted shut. His body relaxed.

  Grant touched my elbow. We left the room, and I closed the door. Leaned against it, bending over, covering my face. Grant kissed my head. I was aware of the Messenger standing close, watching us.

  “Sit down,” he said.

  I shook my head. “Bad enough it was me. At least I still remembered some things.” I reached for his hand, holding it tight. “Can you help him?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, hoarse. “I’m not sure I should try. I’ve never seen this before. It’s as though Jack’s possession, and departure, punched open a hole inside the boy’s spirit. I can see into that hole, but it’s like looking inside a body for the first time if you know nothing about medicine. You see the parts, but that doesn’t tell you how they go together or what they do.”

  “He is right,” said the Messenger, staring at the bedroom door. “There will be complications.”

  Grant gave her a grim look. “We have to assume this has happened before, and Byron always survived. But it looks wrong. I don’t know what Jack did to him all those years ago.”

  And where did Jack go? I asked myself, desperately afraid of the answer. I glanced down at Zee. “Can you find him?”

  “She can,” said the little demon, pointing at the Messenger.

  The woman fingered the iron collar sitting so heavily around her neck and stared at Zee, then me. “Yes. I can track him.”

  I matched her stare, studying those narrow eyes, which were far more thoughtful now than when we had first met—trying to kill each other, with her sent to abduct Jack.

  She might still take him. I didn’t trust her. Not with my grandfather, not with Grant.

  “Please,” I said.

  The Messenger looked away, her expression unreadable. “I will try.”

  And just like that, she vanished. Papers blew loose onto the floor in her wake. My ears popped.

  “Sometimes I think I’m losing my mind,” Grant said.

  “Race you,” I muttered. “What are we going to do about Byron?”

  He sat down hard in one of the chairs at the kitchen table and stretched out his leg with a wince. “I don’t feel comfortable trying to bring back his memories. I might make him worse. You know that’s a possibility.”

  We could fix the boy, murmured the darkness, rolling beneath my skin. We could find what was lost.

  I closed my eyes. Grant said, “What?”

  I tapped my head. “The thing inside me has an opinion. It thinks it can heal the boy. But it’s also the same genius that suggested I break the Messenger’s bonds with those men.”

  “You couldn’t have predicted their reactions.”

  “I could have imagined there would be consequences. Nothing is free, nothing is cheap. You taught me that.”

  “You knew it before we met.”

  “Whatever. I can’t take that risk with Byron.”

  “You know,” Grant said, “when you couldn’t remember me, I was just about desperate enough to try anything. If I could have gone into your mind, I would have.”

  “I trust you more than I trust myself.”

  “Don’t,” he replied. />
  “You’ve got too much faith in me.”

  “No more than you. You wouldn’t have stayed in this town, otherwise. You believed in something, Maxine, and it wasn’t just us.”

  I sat down beside him. The bone fragment was near my hand. I almost touched it, but remembered where it had come from, and stopped.

  “Tell me,” I said. “Tell me what I believed in.”

  Grant leaned over, and his lips brushed mine. Heat rode down my throat, into my heart, spreading beneath my skin. I closed my eyes.

  “Possibilities,” he whispered. “You believed in possibilities. You still do.”

  I took a deep breath. Grant picked up my right hand and traced the armor with his fingers. “I felt you go very far away from me. Jack complained that I couldn’t concentrate, but that was why. I thought we would break.”

  I shivered, hunching deeper into myself. “I saw something terrible. I saw what I could become.”

  Grant slid his hand beneath Dek to rest his large warm palm on the back of my neck. Mal lounged across his shoulders. Both boys purring.

  “Look at me,” he said softly.

  I looked. Brown eyes, intense, thoughtful. I loved his eyes.

  “It’s going to be okay,” he said.

  I touched his cheek. I wanted to speak, but my voice wouldn’t work. My voice wasn’t enough to tell him what I needed to say.

  “I know,” he said.

  I frowned.

  “I know that, too,” he added.

  I poked his chest, and he captured my hand, leaning in to kiss me hard on the mouth. I climbed into his lap, and he broke away just enough to bury his face in the crook of my neck.

  “I couldn’t do it,” he said tightly, as something hot and wet touched my skin. “Jack tried to teach me. I could see the surface of the pattern in my head, but it was impossible to hold on to.”

  “You tried.”

  “That’s not good enough.”

  “We’ll find another way.” I tightened my arms around him. “I hope Jack doesn’t do anything stupid.”

  “Like closing the veil on his own?” Grant pulled back to look into my eyes. “I could tell he was considering it, even before you came back.”

  Dek licked my ear. I bowed my head and met three sets of red eyes, peering up at me from under the table. “He’s going to kill himself if he tries that.” My voice broke when I said those words. “I have to stop him. If that’s why he left here—”

  “Maxine,” Zee rasped, crawling close. He held the seed ring. I hadn’t felt him take it from me, but he pushed it into my hands. He grabbed Grant’s hand, too, and placed it over mine.

  Grant and I shared a quick look.

  “Zee,” I said, but he backed away, taking Raw and Aaz with him. Dek and Mal stopped purring.

  “I wonder—” Grant began, but never finished.

  The world began to burn around us.

  LAVA. We were in lava.

  Or something that reminded me of it: liquid fire, viscous, thick as quicksand, burning bright and golden hot. Buried in it, over our heads. I could not see Grant, but I knew he was there, wrapped around me. Just as I was wrapped around him, so close together we were in one body.

  My mother was beside us, bald and naked, covered in tattoos. No mouth, no nose, no eyes—the boys forming a solid cocoon.

  Just a vision, I told myself. Grant and I weren’t really there.

  But her memories felt real.

  I didn’t know how long she had been inside the lava, but her hands moved, and she clawed upward until her head broke the surface. She was on the outer edge of an entire lake filled with lava. The air shimmered with heat. Thunderous gray clouds roiled overhead, and the shore was nothing but shining black rock, cracked with fire.

  I saw movement, far away. Tiny figures riding creatures that could have been horses—except with six legs and armor that made them look like black armadillos. My mother watched them. No eyes, no mouth—nothing to indicate her thoughts—but I knew she was afraid.

  She had been hiding.

  My vision blurred, flashing into deserts, mountains, cities floating on clouds—jungles where the skies were purple—plateaus where reptilian humanoids lounged on stone platforms beneath two blazing suns—until, finally, I found myself with Grant in a room full of books and shadows, stone pillars shimmering like pearls, and my mother buried in soft blankets. I smelled roses. Birds trilled. She had hair, but it was very short. Her face so young. Younger than me. Covered in tattoos.

  “You will carry my heart when you leave me,” said a low, strong voice. “The heart of the Labyrinth. Unto you, and no other. I have never loved another as I love you.”

  “Then let me stay,” said my mother. Her voice was shocking. I had never heard her sound so soft, so full of need. It embarrassed me. I wanted to see who she was speaking to. I was desperate to see, but no matter how much I struggled, the vision did not change. All I could see was my mother, but even she became indistinct, as though trapped behind a blurred lens.

  “I wish you could stay,” that deep voice murmured. “But I cannot stop the future I see. You must go.”

  The room faded a little more. I glimpsed the man, moving like a ghost. I could barely see my mother—little more than a tattooed figure shrouded in shadows.

  But I saw the seed ring that was pressed into her hand.

  “You know how to use this,” he said, quietly. “I have already imprinted the things she will need to know.”

  My mother grabbed his arm. “I can’t do it without you. I don’t know how to be a mother. I can’t protect her.”

  “You can shape her,” said the man. “She will do the rest.”

  My mother faded away. But not the man.

  I still could not see him—not clearly—but for one chilling moment I felt as though he could see me, searching through time, and whatever space separated us, to stare into my eyes.

  “Reborn in blood,” he said. “Remember, both of you, that thoughts become things. For all that exist with a will, this is true. But for you both, especially. You, born from the heart of the quantum rose.”

  He stretched out his hand—in it, a dagger.

  Which he threw at our heads.

  The blade sank through my skull. Grant’s skull. Both of our minds, locked together. The steel burned through my brain like fire, carrying flashes of golden threads, starlight, sunlight, lightning bolts braided into long ropes that wove through the sky—

  —and then, nothing.

  I opened my eyes and saw the Messenger.

  I stared, not really seeing her, and tilted my head sideways. Grant lay beside me. Both of us in a tangled heap on the floor. Dek and Mal sprawled on top of us. Zee, Raw, and Aaz crouched at our heads, red eyes large with concern.

  Grant made a small groaning sound and rubbed his eyes. I didn’t move. All I could think of was my mother, and that mysterious man.

  Your father, said the darkness. Your father, who looked into our eyes and did not flinch.

  Just like your man of light.

  Zee grabbed my shoulders and pushed me up. Raw and Aaz did the same for Grant. My palm hurt. I looked down and found my hand clenched tight around the seed ring. The Messenger also looked at it, with displeasure.

  “Our Aetar Master,” she said slowly, “has been taken.”

  Her words were cold and went right through me. A roaring sound filled my blood, my ears.

  “Taken,” I echoed dumbly.

  “The demons,” she said, and a heavy weariness entered her voice. She stood very straight, her hands clasped together in a tight, bone-breaking grip. “I tracked the quantum fire of our Aetar Master and arrived at the mouth of the veil, in time to see his light borne up into the prison.”

  Jack. My grandfather. Inside the prison veil.

  “Shit,” I said.

  CHAPTER 20

  MY mother had raised me on myths and fairy tales, on riddles based in keys of three—three daughters, three sons—always the third pat
h, the third charm. In hindsight, I sometimes wondered if she hadn’t done so in order to prepare me for my grandfather, upon whose shoulders rested Odin, Merlin, Puck—every wise man, every trickster, every old god and meddler. And even if none of it was true, and my grandfather had passed through history as nothing more than an anonymous witness—that was the possibility of Jack. Jack could be anything, anyone. Magic was the same as the man.

  And I wasn’t going to let him rot in hell.

  Grant grabbed my arm as we stood. “You’re not going without me.”

  I covered his hand with mine. “We don’t know how to close the veil. Someone has to stay here in case things get bad. You’ll be needed.”

  Needed to fight if those Mahati decided to bust ranks and tear through the world. More likely than not, even if I managed to scare them again.

  Or you can lead them, murmured the darkness. Lead them on the hunt you want, preserving the lives you want. That is your right.

  “Maxine,” Grant said, covering my hand that held the seed ring. “I know what to do.”

  Pain spiked through my skull. Like a dagger, sinking into my brain. “What do you mean?”

  There was a look in Grant’s eyes that was sharp, so grim it made me afraid. “Whatever hit us at the end of that . . . vision . . . left something in my mind. I know how to close the veil.”

  “What do you speak of?” asked the Messenger. “What vision?”

  I didn’t know how to answer her. All I could do was hold Grant’s gaze, watching determination sink into every line of his face. Whatever he had seen, he believed.

  “Thoughts become things,” he said, softly. Dek chirped, licking the back of my ear. Mal did the same to Grant. The other boys scattered around us, quiet. I looked around Jack’s home, feeling dazed, and focused on the closed bedroom door. I imagined the boy sleeping on the other side, in the dark.

  “Call Killy,” I said. “We’ll need her to watch Byron.”

  He didn’t argue. Just reached inside his back pocket and pulled out a cell phone. He limped away, leaning hard on his cane. I watched him, then stared again at Jack’s home, at the maze of piled books, and the paintings on the walls—the lovely mess that was chaos and a perfect tumble of words and cozy charm. I had eaten birthday pie at this battered table. I had blown out candles and made a wish.