I glanced at Tracker and caught him analyzing the demon in a way that struck me hard—both with my own inadequacy and a terrible sense of familiarity. Déjà vu, even. As though I had done this before—crouched with this man, prepared to hunt. It made me uneasy. Frightened me, even.
“Mahati,” Tracker whispered. “Second-ring prisoner.”
“How could anything like that hide on this planet?”
“Easily. But that isn’t a real Mahati.”
Ahsen. The stone circle was hot in my pocket. I did not dare touch it. “How did she find us?”
“Energy.” Tracker’s lips pressed together in a hard line. “Every living creature gives off a quantum signature, a vibration that is distinctly unique.”
“She could have come for me at the hospital,” I muttered, and tapped Zee’s shoulder. “Ready?”
“No,” Tracker said.
“Ready,” Zee told me, as Dek and Mal settled heavily on my shoulders. “But we got a crowd, Maxine. More than one slicer. More coming for the blood.”
“Stop,” Tracker said, more firmly. “Something is wrong. This doesn’t feel right.”
“No choice,” I replied, thinking of the injured just behind us and all those approaching rescuers: people unprepared for another kind of disaster, for something that belonged only in nightmares. No invisible spirits, not some weak zombie parasite—instead a demon made of flesh and bone and blood, one that could feed easily in this wreckage, without leaving a trace of its existence behind. Dead bodies would be expected. Missing bodies anticipated. No one would think twice.
I stepped free of the rubble, the boys gathered close. Felt a charge beneath my skin, momentum, as though as I were driving one hundred miles per hour down a desert road at midnight, blasting through the world in a body of armor. Not invulnerable, but full of something big and breathless—old-fashioned, even. Pure grit.
Ahsen’s silver skin and sharp fingers frayed into smoke as I approached, enveloped in a shimmer that momentarily collapsed like a balloon with all its air sucked out; all that was alien fell away like a dream, until, moments later, a little girl stood before me. Still wearing my young face. A braid of hair in her hand.
The air was so cold I could see my breath. Ahsen gazed slightly to her left, like a doll stolen from a little girl, dropped, polished and shining, within a gruesome pit. Nothing sadder; nothing more chilling.
“You travel with dogs now,” she said.
I tilted my head, confused; then felt Tracker step close. A bitter smile touched his mouth. “Skinner. I don’t believe we’ve met.”
Ahsen swayed, her small body almost lost within the rubble, my young face smooth as virgin snow. “You were but a germ in my mind before I was placed in the veil. Enkidu. Tracker.”
Tracker showed nothing on his face. Neither did I. But inside I wobbled. Ahsen took another step, light as air, her gaze drifting like two black beetles. “I have had time to consider the situation, Hunter. My brothers and sisters were hypocrites. They despised my methods. They valued the results.” Her gaze floated across my body. “I believe I could have done a better job with you, as well. The mistakes made with your bloodline . . . reprehensible, born of desperation.”
I had no idea what she was talking about. “Care to elaborate?”
A faint cruel smile touched her mouth; she was amused, but in the way an executioner might be, as though savoring the final drop of a good hard kill. “Hunter. You should ask yourself what is so different about your runts, that instead of being imprisoned in the veil, they were sentenced to an eternity upon human skin? The veil, I can assure you, would have been large enough to accommodate five extra bodies. But for some reason . . . not theirs.”
Zee snarled, his claws raking trenches in the concrete. Ahsen said, “You, runt. Little king without your crown. Do you know what you are?”
I heard an uncomfortable echo in her words, too much like the memories I had seen in the seed ring. I thought of my mother. My hand slipped into my pocket. Ahsen’s gaze dipped, as well, and the skin of her face pulled so taut it seemed there must be hooks in her scalp, yanking back. Tracker stepped even closer to me, as did the boys.
“Ahsen,” I said quietly. “You were, you are, one of them. An Avatar. Why are you here? Even if you were imprisoned, why are you helping the demons? Is it just revenge?”
“Because I have no choice,” she whispered, her adult voice eerie and throbbing. “But I have reevaluated my priorities. I have decided to reshape my destiny.”
She clicked her fingers. I felt a breath of air on my face, caught a scent so raw, so vile, it was like someone made of sulfur and shit had just cut open a vein and bled on my feet. Bodies shuffled from the darkness, skeletons made of flesh and shadow. No eyes or mouths, but only dripping holes where noses should be; limbs long, knitted with rough sinew, thick veins that pulsed like ropes made of crude oil. I had never seen anything like them. There should not have been so many. Beyond, the world pressed— a surreal reality: low cries, sirens, the chop of helicopter rotors.
“I was first amongst my people,” said Ahsen quietly. “First of the grafters, the spinners, the connivers; first to master the divine organic. And I will begin once more. I will make my own army. I will not be denied the Labyrinth. Never again.”
The creatures surrounding us swayed and snuffled. On one of them I glimpsed a whisper of blond hair peeking through the crude scalp, like the last threads of a quilt, not quite bound. Horror slit my heart. I stared harder, seeking anything recognizable, and wondered if those broad shoulders were familiar.
“They’re not demons,” I said, sickened. “They used to be human.”
Ahsen made a quiet humming sound. “Humanity is such a tenuous classification, so easily rendered obsolete. Something you should know, Hunter. You, who are hardly as human as my shambling constructs.”
The creatures attacked.
It had been a long time. Expectation meant nothing. They were fast, and I was out of practice, mortal, my hands full of knives and nothing else. I forced myself into a cold, hard place, trying not to think of the people they might have been. Made me sick. My heart pounded in my throat, and sweat stung my eyes as all those years of training bled into my muscles, taking over like I was another kind of zombie, slave to my mother’s lessons.
I lost track of numbers. Too many. Too many to have hidden here, unseen, unless they could move like Tracker and the boys—through shadows, winking from dark to light. What she was doing made no sense, though. Throwing bodies at us, just throwing them away. Zee and the others tore through the human constructs like they were made of paper, ripping holes, tearing off limbs—while on my shoulders Dek and Mal lunged, hissing fire at those who got too close. Hot ash blew against my face. I saw charred stumps where hands should have been.
I looked for Tracker. Found him fighting at my back, a length of pipe in his hands, wielding it with impossible grace, as though it were a sword, the most perfect ever made. He met my gaze only once, and in it I felt a shock, a dreadful familiarity; again, that I had done this before. With him.
Ahsen never moved a muscle. Not for the entire fight. She simply watched me, just as I watched her, until I suddenly stopped fighting, facing her like a showdown in Tombstone. No guns, but an army at my back and knives in my hands. I trusted the boys to keep me safe. I trusted them so much I paid attention to nothing else but Ahsen as I stalked near, never once taking my eyes off her small body, that ghost of me.
“You want the seed ring,” I said to her.
“It is a trinket to you,” she replied. “Give it to someone who understands its worth. Just one touch, Hunter . . . just one, and I became more. Powerful enough to make them.”
I shook my head. “You didn’t come here to ask.”
“No.” Her body began evaporating. “But I enjoy our conversations.”
It was night, and I was mortal. Eminently killable. I already knew I could not harm her. I steadied myself, one hand holding a blade—the other
hand in my pocket, gripping the seed ring like it was a lifeline. My mother’s life.
Behind me, Tracker still fought. So did the boys. Her plan, I realized. Wait for the right moment. Then distract, occupy anyone who could help me, overwhelm them with numbers—while she overwhelmed me. I thought it might work. My heart was afraid—dearly, deathly afraid. I heard a small voice inside my head whisper, Please.
Oturu’s mark tingled. I heard a low roar of wind, like the first riot of a winter storm. Suffered a pang in my chest, an eloquent calculation of need and knowing. I looked up. Just in time.
A sleek tall body slammed into the rubble like a hammered blade, the impact so violent I was lifted off the ground. A massive black cloak flared backward, just short of touching me, and I gazed—throat closed, heart pounding— into a breathing abyss that pulsed and writhed: a hard, pale jaw, the curve of a smile, the brim of a black hat, and hair that coiled, wild.
“You will not touch her,” Oturu whispered.
Ahsen stared, her pitiless eyes old and glassy. “Not all the Queen’s men can hold the Hunter together. Not again.”
She vanished. And reappeared around my body. That pulverizing strength, brought to bear on mortal flesh; squeezing inexorably as though I were inside the stomach of a python, being slowly digested. I felt tremendous pressure around the hand that held the seed ring, but I refused to let go. I refused, with all my heart.
I stopped breathing. Lights flickered in my eyes.
Something shifted inside me. A shadow behind my ribs. I remembered that sensation. Old and dogged, a childhood nightmare; a click, a key turning, and the seed ring suddenly grew so hot I was certain my hand was going to catch on fire.
Anywhere but here, I thought, as I began to die. Anywhere she won’t follow.
And another voice, deep inside my mind, said, Yes.
The world disappeared from under me. I fell. The pressure eased, but I kept falling. There was no floor to catch me. I imagined Tracker’s voice calling my name, but the darkness swallowed him, swallowed night—and I had nothing, I was nothing, I was consumed.
I fell, without end.
I fell, and did not stop.
CHAPTER 15
THERE were things a person learned while falling in the dark.
Anticipation, for one, was a thing of terror. Every moment I thought, This is it; next I will hit, but the moment passed, and still I cringed—and it was the anticipation that made my heart thunder, my skin crawl. A body was never meant to fall forever.
There was something else, too.
Darkness made it worse.
I could not see. I felt air pass over my body, the plummet of gravity, but that was the only sensation, the only reason I knew I was still moving. I went on and on, and finally closed my eyes. Afraid of losing myself. Unable to do anything but endure.
I lost track of heartbeats. I forgot the world. In my head, I heard Grant’s flute. I saw his face, and clung to that.
I held tight.
FINALLY, rock.
Sprawled on rock. Air, cold in my lungs. I had no memory of impact, just that I had been moving, and now I was not. I saw only darkness, and lay quiet, listening hard. I heard my heart, the rasp of my breath; farther, a drip and faint splash. Water.
I pushed myself up and felt like an old woman: dizzy, thirsty, disoriented. I could not see. I waited for my vision to adjust—my eyes that had never failed me, no matter how dark. But I saw nothing. I was blind.
The boys were on my skin. Restless. Dreaming.
I was also naked. My clothes, knives, boots—gone as though made of air. Including the seed ring. I tried searching but encountered nothing. I was blind, my hands outstretched. My belongings could have been hanging from a hook only a heartbeat distant, but my sight was so nonexistent, I wished I could ask a stranger if I still had eyes inside my head. I could feel them, sure, but the possibility of losing one’s mind tended to undermine even the most obvious of certainties.
I had lost everything.
Desperation rolled through me. Fear. I fought for calm. Took deep breaths. Nothing helped.
I was sitting in a narrow, rocky crater, a broken crack roughly the shape of my body. I could feel it with my hands. I stood slowly, teetering when my balance faltered, and forced myself to hold very still in the darkness. Listening, sensing. I rubbed my arms. The boys stirred against me. I heard the drip again and started walking. Reluctant. Slow and careful, shuffling along like a baby with my hands outstretched. I encountered nothing but air, and the stone beneath my feet.
Until, finally, I heard another drip, close.
I stepped in something wet. I knelt, and my fingers encountered a pool of water surprisingly deep. My hands lingered, allowing the boys a taste. When I felt no resistance from them, I leaned in to drink. The water tasted cold and sweet, which was some relief. I could live off the boys if I had to—share their metabolism—but it would do nothing to assuage my thirst or hunger.
When I had drunk all I could, I sat back, knees held to my chest, quiet and still. The darkness was heavy. I had never been afraid of the dark, of empty places, but this was the first time since my mother’s death that I had felt so totally alone. I wished I had the seed ring. I hoped desperately it had not ended up in Ahsen’s hands. Or that it was not lying here, somewhere, out of sight.
“Get up,” I told myself, just to hear my voice. It sounded tinny, small, but in my head, an endless litany: no time to feel sorry for myself, no time for fear, no time to dwell. Nothing I did was going to make me feel better. I might as well get going. The boys tugged at me. I whispered, “Hey. I need some direction.”
After a moment, the right side of my body tingled. I took that as a sign.
I wandered for a very long time. The boys guided me, and I found myself turning, slowing, depending on tingling sensations in my limbs. I knocked my head once, but for the most part, the path was clear and silent. I stopped only when the boys found water again. Swift-moving, churning, and cold; a creek, perhaps. I heard it for quite some time before I reached its rocky shore, and considered resting. But I thought of Grant and Byron, even Tracker, Jack—the entire world—and I kept moving. I had to.
I was in the Labyrinth. I knew it. I could not explain how or why, or what it meant, but I had opened the door myself. I had fallen into the world between, but there were no doors here, and if this was a crossroads, then no one else was traveling. I had a feeling I had made a terrible mistake. I was not on a road. I was in a holding cell. A place to be forgotten, forever.
I stopped only for water. There was no food. The boys shared, metabolisms linking to mine, but that did nothing for the ache in my gut. After a while, too, the darkness hurt my eyes, the strain of trying to see.
I closed them. Imagined lights on the other side of my eyelids, but those were just tricks of the brain. So many tricks. I tried talking out loud again, but hearing my voice, small and lonely, just made the isolation worse.
Quiet was easier. Moving was easiest of all. I tried not to think about whether there was anything in the darkness, watching me. I did not know what would be worse—to be lost in a true void or to know that I was being hunted.
I thought about my mother. I forced myself to think about that day, almost twenty years past, standing in the snow. That bad. The zombie in his suit with his skin flaking off, telling my mother to have another—another child. The rattle of his screams inside the bar. Those zombies gathered, fighting to possess me.
Part of the game, I had read in my mother’s journal, after she died. A game, an ancient bargain with Blood Mama. Chance or wits, played for the life of a child. To test that child and discover her strength. Strong enough to fight; more importantly, strong enough for the boys. Because if a future Hunter could not fend off a demonic possession as a child, then she had no business carrying the burden as an adult.
The concept, brutal as it was, made sense to me—but I had never understood why Blood Mama would care whether a Hunter was strong—or why she
would have a vested interest in maintaining that strength. Never why my ancestors would have allowed such a test.
But I understood now. There were demons even Blood Mama did not want to face. Demons that were my responsibility to fight.
I thought of my mother, pregnant, standing in the street, facing down the zombie queen with a smile. Secrets in her heart, then and now. But I could live with that. Even if I never discovered what she had hidden—even if I did, and it was terrible—everything would be all right.
I might be falling down in secrets, but I knew something true:
My mother had loved me. No matter what.
I was loved.
I felt as though I walked for years. I measured time by the length of my nails and hair. No lies there. No distortion. My nails grew long. My hair, longer. Matted and wild.
My mind changed as well. I did not know how it began. I never guessed. But when I closed my eyes, as I walked, I dreamed.
Waking dreams. Walking dreams. Swift dreams, black and white like old scratchy movies tinted and blurred with age. I dreamed in sparks and moments, and saw women in moonlight, pale as snow, hair as black as a raven’s wing— steel in their hands, always, sword bound, hair bound, in sunlight, tattoo bound—and I flew with them, I ran, and their bodies merged into one, a woman large as thunder, with eyes like the starry night, and wolves at her back.
I chased echoes in my dreams. I sprinted after flights of notion and fancy: dragons wet with ocean spray and men with bows and hooves and long, sleek tails; giants slumbering in mountain streams; or the sphinx, riddle-heavy, crouched with a whisper. I dreamed of moons; I dreamed of war, armies breathing down my back with armored princes begging; and I dreamed the boys unleashed as hounds of Hell, burning the earth beneath their claws, destroying it with a fury.
When I closed my eyes, I dreamed. But my eyes were always closed, and here, in the Labyrinth, dreams coated the walls, dreams painted my eyes, and as I walked, surrounded and nourished by the boys, aching with days or years of hunger, I lost myself in trails of blood, cast in the veins of paths I traveled, walking—then dancing, then running.
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