Darkness Calls

by Marjorie M. Liu

  Instead, I kept walking, taking a westerly route away from the rail yards, toward Chinatown. I saw no one but caught glimpses of headlights crossing distant intersections. The rumble of the trains seemed louder. The air tasted sharper, and suddenly electric, as though a city full of alarms had just gone off and I was feeling the pulse of thousands of eyes opening at once. In my ear, Dek and Mal began humming more Bon Jovi. “Have a Nice Day.”

  “You, too,” I said hoarsely, reaching into my hair to scratch their necks. “See you tonight.”

  I stopped in the shadows, well off the street, and the rest of the boys slipped free of the darkness to gather close, hugging my legs, running their cheeks against my knees. The boys liked to be tucked in. I slid my knuckles against their warm jaws and savored the rumble of purrs. Their skin steamed in the rain.

  Zee peered up at me and tugged on my hand until I knelt before him. Very carefully, he cradled my face between his claws, searching my eyes with a sad compassion that made my throat burn.

  “Maxine,” he rasped gently. “Sweet Maxine. Be your heart at ease.”

  We had seconds, nothing more. I kissed my fingers and pressed them against his bony brow. I thought of my mother again and caught myself in heartache. She had said good night to the boys like this, for all the years they were hers. I could not stop thinking of her tonight.

  “Dream,” I whispered. “Sleep tigh—”

  I never finished. I got shot in the head.

  Just like that. Right temple. Not much sound. The impact shuddered through my entire body, every sensation magnified with excruciating clarity as the bullet drilled into my skull—the inexorable pressure of a small round object, crushing my life. I could feel it. I could feel it. My brain was going to explode like a watermelon. I had no time to be afraid.

  But in that moment—that split second between life and death, the sun touched the horizon somewhere beyond the clouds—

  —and the boys disappeared into my skin.

  The bullet ricocheted, the impact spinning me like a rag doll. I fell on my hands and knees, and stayed there, stunned and frozen. I could still feel the punch of the shot—the sensation so visceral I would not have been surprised to reach up and find the bullet grinding a path into my skull.

  I touched my head, just to be sure. Found hair and unbroken skin. No blood. My entire right arm trembled, and a dull, throbbing ache spread from my sinuses to my temple, all the way through to the base of my skull. My heart pounded so hard I could barely breathe. All I could see was pavement and my hands.

  My transformed hands. My skin had been pale and smooth only moments before, but tattoos now covered every inch: obsidian roping shadows, scales and silver muscle shining with subtle veins of organic metal. My fingernails shimmered like black pearls, hard enough to dig a hole through solid rock. Red eyes stared from the backs of my wrists. Raw and Aaz. I closed my eyes, trying to steady my breathing, and felt five corresponding tugs against my skin. Demons, inhabiting my flesh. Minds and hearts and dreams, bound to my life until I died.

  My friends, my family. My dangerous boys.

  Somewhere distant I heard police sirens wailing. My 911 call, coming this way. I had to get up. I tried, and fell. Gritted my teeth and dug my nails into the concrete. Tried again.

  This time I managed to stand. I started walking, stumbling, but did not go down. My head pounded. I bent over once, still moving—afraid to stop—gagging uncontrollably. Felt like my stomach was going to peel right up through my throat, but instead of making my head hurt worse, the pain eased.

  I touched my right temple with a trembling hand, savoring the smooth, unbroken skin. Momentarily in awe that I still lived.

  I had been shot before. Frequently. All over. Never felt a thing. Bullets bounced off me during the day. A nuclear bomb could hit me in daylight, and I would survive—without a scratch. Might be a different story at night, when the boys peeled off my body, but I never underestimated their ability to keep me alive.

  But no one—no one—had ever had the foresight—or the balls—to try killing me in that moment between night and day, caught in transition between mortal and immortal.

  Near-perfect timing. Any earlier, and the boys would have killed the shooter before the bullet could be fired. Any later, and I would have been invulnerable. Which was exactly the case. Saved by a fraction of a second.

  Too damn close. I scanned the shadows but saw nothing except for warehouses and dark windows, and the glitter of downtown Seattle to the north, all the lights of the city frozen like the unwavering pose of fireflies. Nothing unordi nary. No shooter, waving a flag. But I felt watched. Someone, somewhere, out there in the darkness. Long range, or else the boys would have felt their presence well before the attack.

  Zombie, I thought. Had to be. No one else who knew what I was would try to hurt me.

  “You almost died,” I said out loud, needing to hear the words, to hear myself—as though I required some proof of life. Maxine Kiss. Almost taken out, just like my mother—with a bullet through the brain.

  A zombie had killed her. But that was different.

  It had been her time to die.

  CHAPTER 2

  IT took me thirty minutes to return to the Coop. The walk did me good. By the time I reached the rear door of the homeless shelter’s kitchen, I had stopped shaking, stopped suffering those gulps of weakness in my knees and hands. But I still felt the bullet, pushing into my head. Nor could I dismiss my absolute certainty that whoever had shot me knew exactly where I lived. Which meant they probably knew who I cared about.

  Nightfall could not come soon enough.

  The sky had lightened, revealing a canvas of clouds. Still gloomy out. Raining harder. I remained bone-dry. Even when asleep, the boys had a knack for consuming things, and all the water that had been dragging down my clothes and hair was no exception—absorbed within minutes of dawn, and now within seconds of hitting me. I only hoped no one thought too hard about how I managed to stay dry when everyone else coming inside looked as though they had been dunked in a pickle barrel.

  That was the problem with secrets. There was always something to trip you up. Especially if you stayed too long in one place.

  The Coop took up an entire block; a jumble of warehouses that had been renovated and linked together to form a center for the homeless that provided temporary shelter, meals, and a host of other services. Corporate and private donations funded some of it, but not enough to name rooms after anyone or hand out gold stars. Almost all the bills were paid for by one man, Grant Cooperon—and he preferred it that way. There was no such thing as a price on autonomy.

  Seagulls hovered, screaming. The loading dock was crammed with vans, white and unmarked. The shelter had a system of sending out vehicles in the middle of the night, scouring local bakeries and grocery stores for day-old food that might otherwise be thrown out. Doughnuts and bread were a popular castoff, though I passed several giant crates of oranges being wheeled in through the back. One of the new volunteers, a young woman with blond dreadlocks sticking out of her striped hemp cap, staggered in front of me under the weight of several gallons of milk, piled high in her arms.

  I snagged two of them—nodded brusquely at her startled yelp of thanks—and kept walking. My leather gloves were back on, hiding my hands, and my long-sleeved navy turtleneck hid the rest of my upper body. I had a limited wardrobe. With some exceptions, I never let anyone see my tattoos. Raised too many questions, too many possible problems. The boys, after all, disappeared from my skin at sunset—and never slept in the same place twice.

  I could feel them all over me—beneath my hair, between my toes—in unmentionable places. My face was the only area the boys did not regularly protect, their one concession to my vanity, although a small trace of a tattooed body curled from my hairline, just below my ear against my jaw: a wink of dark scales, a silver glimmer of Dek’s tail. Just large enough to cover my only scar.

  The kitchen was hopping. Crazy clocks shaped lik
e cats covered butter yellow walls, and a dozen calendars were tacked up, surrounding a white erase board where the day’s jobs were written—and that someone kept decorating with pictures of flowers. Grease sizzled, overwhelming the air with the scents of bacon and eggs, and a radio crackled; some deep voice dispensing the weather report in a vaguely ironic tone: rain, rain, and more rain, with a break tonight—maybe—and a shot at viewing the moon. All around me, a mostly female crew of yuppies and hippies bumped hips—a clash of pearls and hemp, cashmere and fleece, loafers and Birkenstocks—creating an earthy, irreverent vibe that was, nonetheless, just slightly pretentious. Seattle had that way about it.

  I hovered for a moment, soaking it all in—listening to laughter and shouts; the bang of pans, the squeal of rubber soles on the tile floor. Industrious noises, folks getting things done. I liked that. It was homey. Refreshingly normal. I had no sense of temperature during the day, but the sounds of good living made me warm on the inside in ways the sun never would—regardless of the weather.

  This is what you’re fighting for, I told myself. All the lovely moments of the world.

  I placed the milk on the stainless-steel counter, next to some bags of frozen blueberries set out to defrost. There were muffins within reach, and I grabbed one and took a bite. Banana and walnut. Very nice. I was suddenly starving. I had a lot of bodies to feed. Based on the way my morning had already started, I might not have another chance to eat for a while. And I was not a good grouch when the blood sugar dipped. Hell, no.

  “You’re late,” said a quiet voice, off to my right. No accusation, just a statement of fact.

  “Five minutes,” I replied, leaning against the counter. The tip of my scuffed cowboy boot nudged an equally dirty tennis shoe. “Sorry.”

  “S’okay. I knew you’d be here.” Said in that same matter-of-fact tone. Said with trust. A rare compliment, startlingly unfamiliar to me, and one that made my heart do a funny little twist. My mother would not have approved.

  The boy in front of me was young, no older than fifteen. Byron. No last name. Maybe not his real name. A mystery, in more ways than one. Thin as a rail, with black spiky hair that framed a pale, elfin face. Tough, sweet kid, in that quiet way people underestimated. No swagger, no charm—just a backbone made of pure intelligence. He had lived on the streets, been abused on the streets, and was finally adjusting to a roof over his head. Regular meals. Toilet paper. A lock on his door.

  He had jeans on, and a loose, long-sleeved gray shirt that was fraying around his bony wrists. Over that he wore a stained white apron covered in red lips, like some giant woman slathered in lipstick had kissed the hell out of him. Byron hated the thing, as any self-respecting teenager would, but the rest of the kitchen staff loved seeing him in it, and the kid was surprisingly polite—or appropriately terrified—when it came to talking back to an army of women.

  He held a folded newspaper, which he slid onto the counter. Nothing interesting about the headlines, except for one brief column that read: MONSTER OR HOAX? SIGHTED IN PARIS.

  I leaned in, too sensitive to weird news to dismiss anything out of hand, but all the article said—with an air of utter disbelief—was that some woman claimed to have been bitten by a very hairy man with extremely long and pointy teeth—and that he had apologized profusely afterward, and run off sobbing. Not exactly what I would call a sign of demonic activity.

  I raised an eyebrow. “I’ve told you not to talk to hairy strangers, right?”

  “Define hairy,” Byron said, but there was a rare faint smile on his face, and I almost smiled back.

  “So, did you finish it?” I asked him, taking another bite out of the muffin. Trying not to think of the dead girl when I looked at his face. She had been his age. It could have been Byron dead in that alley, once upon a time. I was beginning to regret letting Archie Limbaud off the hook. I had killed the demon responsible for the girl’s death, but that did not feel like enough.

  You never blame the hosts, whispered my mother’s memory. Not even for the weakness that let the demon in. We’re all weak, baby. Just in different ways.

  Byron scowled. “The math, or Schopenhauer?”

  I handed him a muffin of his own, forcing myself to breathe. “Both.”

  He picked at the paper wrapper with a chipped black fingernail. “I left the algebra problems on Grant’s desk. I also read the pages you gave me.”

  “And?”

  “And I’m not in college,” he replied, though he sounded older, and more mature, than most of the university types he had begged money from not so long ago. “German philosophers make no sense.”

  “You’re smart,” I said, knowing I was pushing him; knowing, too, that he could take it. “Tell me what you read.”

  Byron rubbed his nose. “Stuff. Reality is an illusion. Desire, instinct, is a thing.”

  “Good.” I crumpled my muffin wrapper and tossed it in the garbage. “Think about that, then write me a paragraph or two about whether you agree, and why. I want it by tomorrow.”

  He froze in midbite. “You gave me history homework yesterday. And more math.”

  I ruffled his hair. “So?”

  Any other kid would have shot back some zinger, a roll of the eyes—a tremor of defiance, at the very least—but Byron was not like most teens. He studied me with a solemn thoughtfulness that made his young face age—boy to man, to wizened sage—but it was his eyes that made him appear profoundly old, as though years beyond reckoning were piled upon his soul.

  It’s time, I thought, caught in that gaze. He’s going to ask me why I try so hard with him.

  But Byron didn’t. He finished taking a bite out of his muffin and nodded slowly.

  “Tomorrow,” he said, still chewing, and looked behind me, just for a moment. I glanced over my shoulder. Found the dreadlocked girl who had been carrying the milk deep in conversation with one of the older volunteers, a woman with tanned, sinewy legs, who wore shorts and clunky sandals every day—no matter the weather.

  They were staring at me. The young woman flinched guiltily when she found me looking, but the other woman—Doreen, I think she was called—held my gaze, frowning.

  “Let me guess,” I said to Byron. “I did something.”

  “She thinks you’re violent,” replied the boy bluntly. “She told me so. Warned me to stay away from you.”

  I gritted my teeth and deliberately smiled at the middle-aged woman. “Obviously, you listened.”

  I had an ugly smile. Doreen finally looked down and turned around to busy herself with unpacking cereal boxes. Byron said, “She doesn’t know anything. Except that you sleep with Grant. And that you scare her.”

  “She told you that, too?”

  “No,” he said softly. “You make a lot of people uneasy.”

  I gave him a sharp look. “Is that how you feel?”

  “I feel safe,” he replied, without hesitation; and finally there was some defiance in his voice, in the tilt of his chin and the glint that flickered in his eyes. Again, my heart twisted; and again, I thought of my mother. Dangerous, she would have said. You put yourself, and others, in danger. Our kind were not born to make roots. Or friends. Or love.

  But I was not my mother. I was a sucker. An idiot. My free will was my reality—for better or worse.

  “Good,” I said, which was all I could manage; and then: “Stick close to the shelter for the next couple days, okay? If you decide to go running around, find me first. Find Grant. But don’t go out by yourself. Got it?”

  Byron frowned. “No. Why?”

  Because someone shot me in the head this morning, and he might know you’re a weakness of mine. But all I said was, “Perverts.”

  “Perverts,” he said, giving me a piercing look. “Right.”

  I patted his shoulder—and then turned around to look at Doreen again. Her, and the rest of the kitchen. Watching faces. Letting the men and women watch me in turn, on the sly, from the corners of their eyes. For six months I had avoided answeri
ng personal questions—as had Grant—and so gossip and speculation had become my own mythology and mystery: the woman who lived with the man in charge, the quiet woman, the dangerous woman. Reinforced, here and there, by the occasional act of violence. Folks who came to the shelter occasionally misbehaved. I lent a hand when that happened. And though I had never stayed in one place long enough to earn a reputation, I had one now.

  I was security. A good right hook. A thousand yard stare. A woman reduced to adjectives, all of them well placed and accurate—in that way only half-truths could be.

  I took another look at Doreen’s back and got hit with a wave of loneliness so profound I wanted to run—run back to the solitude I had left behind. Being alone was easier than this. I had no skills in dealing with running mouths and bad opinions. I had never imagined I would find myself in a situation where I would give a damn.

  And I still didn’t. I couldn’t. I mustn’t.

  I looked for Byron and found him already on the other side of the kitchen in the serving line, spooning hash browns onto trays. Penned in by two old ladies, his head carefully down—though he made brief eye contact with the few women who held out their trays to him. None of the men, though. He avoided men, except for Grant.

  The boys stirred against my skin; a rumble in their dreams, some uneasy discomfort that tugged suddenly, quite sharply, between my breasts. Pulling me forward, toward the serving line. Not to Byron, I sensed. Something else. I started walking, weaving around workstations and volunteers, and peered from the kitchen into the cafeteria. I couldn’t catch sight of much. Mostly just the center of the dining area, in front of the double swinging doors.

  Which was enough to see the man who walked in, moments later.

  He was not a zombie. But he made my skin crawl—literally—and the boys, even in their dreams, went wild with fury, their agitation so violent their tattooed bodies felt like bubbles in my blood, breaking against the underside of my flesh. I rubbed my arms to calm them, but the boys kept fussing. They wanted to kill that man.