Hunter, whispered a sibilant, coiled voice. We are one.
I shuddered, unable to control myself. It was almost sunset, and I pushed up my sleeve, revealing tattoos that glimmered in the air with strikes of silver light; scales, claws, red, glinting eyes shining like chips of rubies; and though the boys were not yet smoke, they were close, so close that when they surged upon my skin, I saw them ripple; and I knew the men saw, too. I slid a knife over my arm, sharpening the blade. Feeding steel to the boys. Sparks lit the dim air. The men flinched, and choking hunger bubbled up my throat, making my heart break open like the cloud of a burning storm.
“Tell me,” I whispered. “Tell me why Cribari wants me dead.”
The men said nothing at first—perhaps they did not even hear me. They were too busy staring at my arm, horrified, making the sign of the cross.
Franco stirred, though, coughing. I looked down and found his cheek pressed against the tile. Saliva ran from the corner of his mouth, but his inhuman eyes were open. Gazing at the finger armor on my right hand.
“You are an abomination,” he whispered, and the gloom of the basement was suddenly the dead of night, hollow and stale. “Dark Mother. Dark Lady of the Labyrinth. We are sworn against your promise.”
I held up my right hand. “And this?”
“A relic that does not belong to you,” he breathed, then snapped off a sharp word that sent the men moving. Guns flashed in the dull light. I felt sunset pushing—pushing close—
One of the men fired too early, the roar deafening, so much like a crash of thunder the floor trembled. The bullet bounced off my chest.
And that terrible hunger snapped.
I could not stop it. I bared my teeth, a wet rictus of a smile that tasted of blood, and that filled me with an exhilarated terror that was rapturous and horrifying, as though it were someone else smiling, stretching beneath my skin, stretching so much I imagined seams tearing around my joints—me, rag doll. My vision blurred. I went blind. But the men—the men began to scream—and my ears worked just fine.
My entire world became those screams. The sound of them tasted like wine on my tongue, cut with the nuance of each man’s voice, which broke in rising discordant rhythms that my body swallowed and swayed to, as though riding the strums of a macabre guitar. All my horror could not compensate for the delight of the creature inside me, but I fought—I fought myself as though my life depended on it—because I was going to die from those screams. Something of me was going to die when those screams stopped.
Please, I begged. Please.
The boys rumbled over my skin. My right hand burned. Light filled my vision. I could suddenly see again, but not the men. Just the finger armor: glowing, as though infused with moonlight and pearls, piercing the shadow writhing slow and easy around my heart. The light made me think of my mother—take care, baby, take care—and just like that, as though her memory was an antidote, the slow-coiled presence rising beneath my skin receded. Darkness, gone—but the absence felt like teeth had been pulled from my soul, leaving tender holes. My knees trembled. Chills wracked me. Going into shock.
I held my ground. Planted my feet and pretended I was stone. No more smiles. No more. I had always wondered what it would feel like to be possessed—and now, again, I had a taste.
I hated it. I hated that I could so easily be lost. Lost to nothing but myself, with no understanding, not a goddamn clue as to why, or what was inside me. My hand curled into a fist, and the light in the ring died. I finally saw the men.
They were still alive. Mostly. And I was touching them.
I had no recollection of approaching the men. No memory of laying a hand on them. Only, I stood before a pile of limbs, piles of parts still attached to bodies, and my hands were buried elbow deep into the tangled flesh. I stared, horrified. The men had collapsed together so tightly, so knotted, that for a moment it seemed as though the air had dismembered them where they stood and that they had merely dropped to the floor, as one.
But they were separate: hands twitching, heads nodding spastically. Full-bodied, strong men—still alive—but their faces were frozen in expressions of pure agony and horror, jaws open in silent screams.
I staggered, yanking free my hands. I still clutched the dagger, but the blade was turned inward, pressed flat against my forearm. No blood on the steel. I had not stabbed anyone. Just turned them into gibbering idiots with nothing but a touch.
I was going to be sick. I clutched my stomach, then my right hand—so tightly it felt like I was trying to pull free of something—maybe free of myself. The finger armor was warm through my tattoos, which were stirring, stirring. Sunset, swallowing me. Seconds, at most.
“Why?” I whispered to the men, who no longer seemed conscious of anything, save breathing, and who certainly, at this point, were beyond blame, or the ability to answer any inane question my brain vainly fixed on.
“Because you are you,” said an aged, deep voice, directly behind me. “And because you bear a key to the Labyrinth.”
I began to turn, but strong hands grabbed my shoulders, pulling me against a warm chest that smelled like leather and books; or the men who worked the ranches out in Montana: old cowboys, hard with dust and sunlight.
“Dear girl,” whispered Jack Meddle, my grandfather. “You are in a great deal of trouble.”
And then he pulled me out of the world, into the abyss.
CHAPTER 7
I remembered, in the darkness, what it felt like to be lost.
I had tried to forget. I had fought to keep my dreams clean of the Wasteland, the endless night of the Labyrinth oubliette. And though I knew—I knew—this was not the same, something else in me died when Jack dragged me into the abyss. Consumed by the void, stripped of sight and sound and touch. Hovering like a long heartbeat, reduced to a thud of muscle and blood. Fighting not to scream.
Until the moment broke. I returned to the world, slipping from the dark into silver shadows, and found my body, and breath, and swallowed my voice before my pride broke, as well.
I fell. My knees hit snow-patched grass, packed hard and wet, crunching beneath me like a soft mash of bone. It was full night, with a hook of a moon in the sky. Hours ahead of schedule.
Sun down, sun gone. The boys woke up.
It hurt. My skin burned. My heart shimmered into fire. Like being swallowed naked down a throat full of barbs and acid. My gloves were lost, and all I could see as I bowed my head were my hands as tattoos dissolved into black smoke, sparking with glints of red lightning—flaying me from my toenails to the roots of my hair. I could not breathe. I could not make a sound.
The boys ripped free. No beginning, no end. Just a weight that gathered on my shoulders, a sliding heat from sinuous bodies unfolding as though they were petals dripping with lava. Claws scraped. Whispers pattered. In small pieces, the pain eased.
Hard not to shake. I remembered the first time the boys awakened from my body—the night after my mother’s murder, the night after my first inheritance—and it was always that night, again and again.
“Maxine,” whispered Zee. “Sweet Maxine.”
My mouth was too dry for words. Cold pinched through my thin sweater. I had not dressed for snow, had not anticipated such a quick fall into night, somewhere else, where the temperature felt like true winter. Snow stung my palms, and a stiff breeze yanked against me like a chain of ice. Had the sun been up, I would have felt nothing of the cold, but my skin was vulnerable now. I was human again. Until dawn.
“Maxine,” said Zee again, breath stirring hot against my cheek. I looked up. Met a solemn gaze, red as rubies buried in tumbled steel, steel that was skin the color of soot smeared with silver and veins of mercury.
Raw and Aaz appeared: twins, little hunters. Steam drifted from the rakish spines of their wild hair, razor-sharp as the rest of their skin. Less than a minute upon waking, and they had already been busy. Metal flashed between Aaz’s claws. He held up a brace of knives. Small daggers sheathed in a cu
stom shoulder holster. My mother’s weapons of choice, stored in her oak trunk back in Seattle. I was stupid not to have worn them earlier, but carrying those blades against my body felt like trespassing, sometimes. Or like I was too much of a kid again. Not grown-up enough to handle the sharp stuff.
Raw slid around his brother, holding another of her belongings: a battered leather jacket and her gloves, the soft black leather laced with steel.
Seeing her things made the tight knot in my heart unwind, just a little. I needed my mother right now. I needed to feel her around me. I planted quick kisses on Raw and Aaz, while Zee pushed close for a hug. Dek and Mal hummed a Bon Jovi classic: “I’ll Be There for You.”
“My boys,” I whispered. “You wonderful boys.”
Zee looked past me, dragging his claws through the snow. “Meddling Man.”
I looked over my shoulder, but did not see Jack. There were no lights, except for the grace of the moon. I saw the bones of a broken, slumping Ferris wheel, and a battered merry-go-round that had been stripped of horses, leaving nothing but cracked mirrors and chipped wood. Collapsed tents had been abandoned in the dirt, and an iron cage stood with the door propped open. Nearby, torn apart, was half a crate with a clown’s face painted on the side, grinning from ear to ear. Felt like I was inside the corpse of a circus.
“Find him,” I said to the boys, throat aching. “Now.” Zee snapped his claws. Raw and Aaz disappeared into the shadows, while Dek and Mal poked free of my hair, testing the air with their tongues. I scratched their heads, grateful for the warmth of their bodies, and began stumbling through the snow, shrugging on the shoulder holster and my mother’s coat. Zee loped ahead of me.
Near the decaying remains of a battered wagon—wheels missing, wood siding ripped away and pocked with bullet holes—I heard the sounds of someone vomiting. I broke into a run.
I found Jack on his knees in the snow. Suffered a rush to my head, a roar of blood in my ears. I skidded to his side, breathless. Raw and Aaz were already there, peering at Jack from beneath the wagon. Somewhere, somehow, they had found time to reach into another part of the world for a bag of popcorn and two Yankee baseball caps, which they wore at identical slants upon their heads. Punks.
“Old Wolf,” I whispered, sliding behind the man. I wrapped my arms around his chest and drew him back against me, trying to share my warmth; to hold him; to assure myself he was alive. Alive, and still with me.
My hand grazed the side of his face, and lingered. “You’re burning up.”
He tried to bat me away, and slumped forward again in the snow to retch.
“It’s nothing,” he said hoarsely, seconds later. “I’m not . . . made . . . for cutting space. In fact, I’m so ill equipped for this method of transportation I find it easier to pretend it doesn’t exist at all.”
“Yes, well,” I muttered, snapping my fingers at Zee, who gave Raw and Aaz a dirty look before disappearing into the shadows. “I had no idea you were capable of . . . whatever that was. Though if you did have to make yourself sick, you should have transported us to your apartment.”
“That would have been a supremely poor idea.” Jack slumped sideways into the snow, and I fell with him, still trying to protect his body from the cold air. He grabbed my hand and held it over his chest. I buried my face, briefly, against his shoulder. Savoring the hard, quick thump of his stolen human heart.
“I’m a wanted man, my dear,” said my grandfather quietly. “And so, I’m afraid, are you and Grant.”
ZEE brought back a tent. Given the sleeping bags and thong underwear I found when I poked my head inside, I had a feeling it had recently been in use. I looked back over my shoulder, staring at the little demon. He shrugged.
“Left them a car,” he rasped.
“How magnanimous of you,” Jack murmured, crawling into the tent, which was only several degrees warmer than outside. He fell on his side with a sigh and flicked away the thong underwear with both idle curiosity and distaste. “And how good to leave us this slingshot with which to hunt for our dinner.”
“Yes,” I said dryly. “I’ll go now and take down a deer with it.”
Jack rolled over on his back. I lay on top of the other sleeping bag, a headache pricking the base of my neck, spreading upward into my scalp. Dek and Mal wound through my hair and began pressing their tiny claws against my head. Little masseuses. One of my ancestors had studied briefly with a master of acupuncture. Three hundred years later, the boys still remembered some things.
Raw and Aaz tumbled into my lap, already sucking on their claws. Purrs rumbled, and I smelled popcorn on their breath. Babies. I rubbed their hot, round tummies. Zee crouched by the tent entrance, gazing into the cold night, and the moon glinted against the silver scales of his blunt little nose.
I openly studied Jack. The old man must have been in his eighties, but he seemed younger. Lean and strong, with silver hair and a strong, rugged face. Handsome as a classic movie star. Respected archaeologist and adventurer, a man of dignity and secrets. Not-quite-human secrets.
He was dressed in khakis and a battered navy overcoat, beneath which I spied a pale blue denim shirt that matched the color of his eyes. A stained cloth messenger bag that looked as old as the Russian Revolution slung over his chest.
“How did you find me?” I asked quietly. “Why now?”
Jack’s eyes glittered, even in the darkness of the tent, human eyes, with an inhuman soul, in residence. “I found you easily, my dear. I felt you. I felt . . . it. And so I came.”
It. Inside me. I closed my eyes, bowing my head as Dek kneaded a particularly tender knot. “I needed you before that. Months ago. But you disappeared, without a word. Not even the boys could track you. I was . . . worried.”
Frantic. Terrified. For the first time since my mother’s death, I had family—an impossible, miraculous discovery—and then Jack had gone away. My mother had been murdered. I could not discount the possibility that the same had happened to my grandfather.
And now that he was sitting in front of me, I still could not relax.
Jack said, “I had business. Matters that needed my attention, not the least of which was cleaning up the mess Ahsen created during the brief time she was free.”
“I could have helped you.”
The old man hesitated, glancing down at Zee, who watched him, as well, red eyes glowing faintly. “Yes. But it was something I wanted to do alone.”
I forced myself to breathe, and the air around my mouth puffed white. I suddenly noticed the cold again. I was freezing. Zee reached up and brushed his knuckles across my brow, gazing deep into my eyes. “Hard dreams, Maxine.”
“Strange days,” I told him, and gently squeezed his little hand. “Need you to do something for me, if you can. Find Grant, wherever he is. If he’s on the plane, you must take care.”
Zee nodded, scratching his bony spine. “Words?”
“Warn him about Cribari. Tell him to stay away.”
“Sharp man,” he said, glancing at the others, who all looked at him with red, glittering eyes. “Dead man.”
“Not dead yet,” I warned him. “First Grant. Find him.”
“Done,” Zee whispered, and disappeared into the shadows. My heart went with him. I could not predict what would happen once Cribari realized I was still alive—but whatever he had planned could not be good.
Jack tried to sit up. “Grant. He’s on a plane?”
“Going to China. A trap.”
“You let him go?”
“I had a plan,” I replied roughly. “Tracker.”
Even saying his name was difficult. Tracker. A man betrayed by my ancestor five thousand years ago, and now slave to the demon Oturu—a demon who had pledged himself to my bloodline in perpetuity. Both had disappeared months ago, vanishing as surely as Jack—but Tracker had the ability to slip through space. Just like the boys.
Only, he could take me with him.
I needed that. And Oturu had been drawn to my need, once b
efore. I had hoped he would come to me again, bringing Tracker with him.
But now I had Jack, for better or worse. The tent was very small. The old man had only to reach out to touch me, and I let him. His fingers brushed back my hair, sliding warm and dry against my skin. He stared at the scar below my ear.
“A poor plan,” he whispered.
My cheeks warmed. I pushed away his hand. “Who’s hunting you?”
“One of my own kind.” Jack cradled his hand, his gaze far too compassionate for comfort. “We share the same pursuer, my dear.”
Same hunter. Avatar.
Franco. His eyes.
Pieces fell into place. New possibilities. I had thought, at first, that Franco might be a traveler from the Labyrinth. Demons had come to earth from other worlds, after all; as had Mary, and God only knew what else.
But Franco had perfect American English, with a slight Southern twang. If I had heard him on the phone, I would have guessed he was a normal professional, someone who liked to go to football games and drink beer with his buddies at the bar. If I could forget his eyes, I would say he was human, unequivocally.
Franco is from earth, I told myself. From earth and human.
Human. Until he had been physically altered.
I had seen it done before. Men and women, transformed so profoundly it was impossible to tell that they had ever been human. It was an ability of the Avatars. Mind over matter. Mind over DNA.
Ahsen, I thought, recalling the Avatar: her stolen face, her voice. I had killed her. She had turned humans into monsters, stripped them down to bubbling skins of sinew and bone, tearing away noses and ears and eyes—until nothing was left except gaping holes filled with teeth.
First of the grafters, she had named herself. First of the spinners and connivers. First to master the Divine Organic.
Genetic manipulation, I called it. Accomplished with nothing but thought.
“Shit,” I muttered to myself. “Goddamn it.”
You killed one of their own. You thought none of them would notice?
Jack raised his brow. I tapped the corner of my eye. “One of the men who kidnapped me had been . . . altered. Here. His saliva, too.”
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