“Ah.” Jack was silent a moment, lost in thought. “What else did you learn?”
“That my kidnapper is working in association with the Catholic Church—and that I was taken there to die,” I told him simply. “He knew about a weakness I hadn’t considered. That moment between the transition.”
Might as well have spoken pure lightning. Jack’s mask slipped, and something ancient and terrifyingly deadly moved through his gaze. I began to shake—with cold, I told myself—and reached without thinking into my hair, grabbing the razor ruff of Dek’s neck. Clutching the warm little demon for comfort. Mal growled.
And then the moment faded, and Jack became nothing but an old man again, pale and too thin. Run ragged. Starving. Chilled to the bone and lost in winter. I realized suddenly that a profound toll had been taken on his body. He was gaunt beneath his clothing. I glimpsed his collarbone beneath the open neck of his denim shirt, and it was sharp and pronounced.
“Old Wolf,” I whispered.
But he said nothing. Just remained grim and quiet; and dangerously thoughtful. Zee slid from the shadows. I knew as soon as I saw him that it had not gone well.
“Sun still shines,” he rasped. “No go on Grant’s side.”
“And Cribari?” I asked, still shaken, almost breathless. “Can you get to him?”
Zee snarled, punching his fist through the floor of the tent, creating a hole as deep as his elbow into the frozen ground. “Tried. Out of reach. Still got sun.”
Raw and Aaz snuggled deeper into my lap, though their eyes slivered open and they pushed back the brims of their hats to watch their brother fume. Against my throat, Dek and Mal purred Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive.” I scratched their heads and looked at Jack. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“I was careless,” he said, with a straightforwardness that surprised me; as wily, and full of riddles, as he had been in the past. “I did not forget that Ahsen had allies on this world, but I underestimated her ability to free some of them.”
“But she did.”
“Months ago. It must have been one of the first things she did upon gaining her freedom.”
“I thought Ahsen was the only one of your kind who had been imprisoned in the veil.”
“She was,” he said, after a brief hesitation. “But there are other prisons on earth.”
I stared. “How many?”
Jack looked away from me, rubbing his jaw. The shadow beneath his stubble suddenly looked too much like a bruise. “A handful. That’s why I left. I had a sense that one of the seals had broken. I’ve spent the past several months strengthening the others.”
“Is it Avatars or demons who are trapped on earth?”
“Both,” said the old man, still refusing to meet my gaze. “This world was never meant to be a penal colony, my dear. Regardless of what you might think.”
I hadn’t been thinking much except Holy Shit, but imagining this planet as one big prison for nonhumans elevated that to Holy Fucking Shit. I glanced down at Zee and the others. Raw and Aaz were staring at Jack, idly picking their noses and eating the large, steaming black lumps sliding down the tips of their claws. Baseball hats still askew. Zee, on the other hand, was very still. Intent, quiet, thoughtful. Dangerous.
I said to the little demon, “Did you know?”
Zee shrugged. “No harm crossed paths. No matter.”
Which was a definite yes. The problem with the boys was that if they didn’t want to tell you something, they simply wouldn’t. If they didn’t think there was a problem in their Hunter’s life, they wouldn’t cause one. And if a Hunter didn’t know the right question to ask—the answer would simply never exist. Riddles were their game. Patience had to be mine.
“Just one . . . seal?” I said to Jack, unsure what that meant, though I had an idea. “One Avatar loose?”
Jack stared at his very human hands. “One is enough. Especially this one. He was Ahsen’s protégé. Another master of the Divine Organic, though he fancied himself an artist more than a realist of the flesh. He made . . . creatures . . . that should not have been.”
“What kinds of creatures?”
“Creatures with an instinct to kill,” he replied shortly, glancing at Zee. “You know of them. The Gorgon and harpies. All manner of vampire. Werewolves. Banshees. More, and more than I can count, or remember. Think of the dark lives of legend, my dear, and you can most certainly lay the blame at this one’s feet.”
My brain hurt. “I thought—”
“—that myths are not real?” interrupted the old man gently. “Sweet girl. If it can be imagined, then there is always the possibility of reality. We are made of possibilities.”
Whatever. I had no time to confront the incredulity I felt at the idea of vampires running loose on this world. Jesus Christ. I had enough problems. I leaned forward, close to grabbing Jack’s wrist. My fingers hovered just above his skin. “If Ahsen freed him, then he’s been loose for months. You can’t tell me he’s only just started to cause trouble.”
“He’s been laying the groundwork. Establishing himself.”
Establishing himself with members of the Catholic Church, for starters. Fuck knew what else. “So why target you? Why any of us?”
“I imprisoned him. A long time ago. It was . . . unpleasant. He probably thinks I could do the same again, and I’ve tried these months to capture him.” Jack hunched over himself. “But I had help the first time.”
“You imprisoned Ahsen, too. And others?”
The old man remained silent, studying me. I tried not to be bothered. He had done this before: stolen moments simply to stare at me like I was rare, and curious. But it felt odd, just as being near him remained strange to me; too new for comfort. I had never called him Grandfather, not to his face. I did not think I could do it now, not even under duress, no matter how strongly I felt our connection in my heart. The word did not come naturally. Nor did his presence, near mine.
“Old Wolf,” I finally managed. “Why are you staring?”
“Because you are so much like my Jeannie,” he replied gently. “I look at you, and I see her staring back.”
Not even hearing my grandmother’s name could make me smile; or help me feel less vulnerable than I did at that moment. “Does this Avatar want revenge on me for killing Ahsen?”
“Perhaps.” Jack still watched me carefully. “Though I suspect he is more interested in the ring you wear.”
I held up my hand. The finger armor hugged my skin, riding every groove of my knuckle and nail, as though it was little more than metallic paint. I remembered the glow of it in the basement and shivered as other memories flowed, deep and hard, into my mind. “You called it a key to the Labyrinth.”
“A key to many things. But then, I think you’ve had a taste of that,” Jack replied, very gently.
I looked away from him, down at Raw and Aaz, who reached simultaneously into the shadows and pulled out a teddy bear; brand-new, store tag still attached. Dek slithered from my neck and attached his mouth to one furry ear, tugging the bear up my body, toward my hair. I turned my head, ignoring the sounds of teeth grinding as two demons ate bear legs, while two more chomped down on ears and plastic eyes. Stuffing drifted into my lap like snow.
“He has to kill me to take it off my hand,” I said. “Why not do the dirty work himself? Why manipulate humans?”
“Because that is his way.” Jack’s voice was elegant and quiet in the confines of the tent. “It is his habit and game.”
“I murdered one of your kind. That might be reason enough to avoid me.”
“If he knows, which he might not. No Warden was ever made who could kill an Avatar.” The old man touched my hand, carefully. “It would be best if no one ever discovered that you had.”
I did not like the sound of that. “And Grant? Why him?”
Zee pushed under my arm, hugging me. Jack hesitated. “Because he is just as dangerous to my kind as you. More so, my dear. More so by far.”
L
ightbringer. Ahsen’s voice crept into my thoughts. Lightbringer.
I closed my eyes, balling my hands into fists. “Jack—”
“We have to move,” interrupted the old man, with a delicate edge to his voice that said quite clearly that he did not want to answer questions about Grant.
But soon, I thought, heart clawing up my throat as I watched him stumble out of the stolen tent. Damn soon.
CHAPTER 8
THERE was a road. Moonlit, buried in the forest surrounding the dead circus. Curved like a malformed spine, out of sight, out of mind, and I stared at the snow-riddled track and thought of fairy tales breathing the winter air. Vampires and elves. Werewolves. Dragons, maybe, exhaling dreams of fire.
Demons who walked as men, and spirits who did the same.
“Where are we?” I asked, as we walked away from the circus corpse.
“Eastern Europe. As far as I could take us. There should be a village nearby.” Jack stumbled in the snow, and I grabbed his arm, hooking it through mine. “No one comes here anymore. Bad things happened, and the Romani clans put a curse around the borders of this place. To set foot on this land means death.”
I glanced over my shoulder, and found Aaz and Raw trailing behind, red eyes blinking lazily in the shadows. “What kinds of bad things?”
“Genocide.” Jack kicked something out of the snow. I looked down. Saw what I thought was a polished white stick, until the contours of its shape began to burn in my mind. Bone. I was looking at bone. Part of a leg or arm. Too small to belong to an adult.
Spots of light danced in my vision. I forced myself to breathe. Zee pressed his nose to the bone and hissed.
I almost asked when these people had been murdered, but I was afraid of the answer. Six years, ten years, twenty—made no difference whether I had been born, or inherited the boys. People had died in a part of the world very far from me, and I could not have saved them, even had I wanted. People were dying at this very moment that I could not save—and not just from demons. From humans. All of us, wicked in the bones.
I looked back one more time, just before the forest curved and swallowed the circus graveyard. “You act like that curse means something.”
Jack gave me a sharp look. “Because they believed, and you must respect the power of belief. Because humans are not always so . . . mundane. Tricks can happen, my dear, quirks of birth. Those who were given gifts long ago still pass them on to their descendents, in blood. Best not to underestimate that.”
“Like the man who kidnapped me,” I said slowly, thinking of that little boy in Franco’s arms—wondering if that was his real child. “He’ll pass on those physical changes?”
“He might have,” Jack replied. “But I believe you took care of that.”
And then some. I almost placed a hand over my heart, as if that would help me listen to the secrets buried deep inside me. Instead, I shoved my fist into my pocket, stubborn and frightened. “He seemed willing. Grateful for the opportunity to kill me.”
“Perhaps he thought he was answering the call of his god.”
“A false god, if an Avatar had anything to do with it.”
“What are gods?” Jack threw back his head as he trudged through the snow, and the moon made his hair glow; and bitterness touched his mouth. “I was a god once. As others have been. You know the stories. Deities, discovering beautiful maids and filling their bellies with children gifted with power. Or men blessed by gods with only a single touch, granted abilities that make them legends.” He finally looked at me, and the bitterness was replaced with grief. “And in our temples where humans prayed and sacrificed, gods might be there, yes. But only for the right kinds of skins.”
I did not let go of his arm, but his bones and muscle suddenly felt brittle; and my knees, my heart, could sympathize. I said, quietly, “You make it sound as though humans were cattle.”
“You eat cattle. You don’t play with them. Humans are closer to dolls. Dress them up, toss them about. Experiment with all the endless variations.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I did, once.” Jack’s gaze turned dead and cold, glinting hollow; then he turned his head, staring into the darkness of the forest. “We can be killed, my dear. My kind are not true immortals. But we are hard to murder, and so we have lived years past the size of death and dreaming. We have lived past sanity. And to creatures like us, who exist as little more than energy and thought, keeping sane was, long ago, a preoccupation you might not understand.”
“I was in the Wasteland,” I told him, feeling a different kind of cold. “I think I’ve got a clue.”
Jack tried to pull away, but I held him close. Slippery road, I told myself. Snow up to our ankles. The cold bit through my cowboy boots. Zee ranged ahead, while Raw and Aaz continued to watch our backs. I heard owls hooting, and the rustle of branches as a soft breeze kicked more frigid air against our bodies. I shivered. Dek and Mal warmed my ears with their breath, but Jack’s chest rattled, and I snapped my fingers at Zee.
The little demon paused, glancing over his shoulder—from me to the old man—then slipped sideways into the shadows, vanishing from sight.
Jack said, “We found humans. And we discovered that to be in their flesh kept us sane. That was enough, at first.”
“You played games with their lives. You entertained yourselves.”
“We juggled worlds,” he whispered. “Until one day we found ourselves believing our own lies.”
Zee reappeared with a small bundle in his arms. Two hot water bottles, two hats with earflaps dangling, and a pair of wool gloves for Jack. The old man slid the hot water bottle beneath his coat and held it, sighing. I tugged the hat over his head and helped him with his hands, which refused at first to uncurl from their fist shapes. I slid his mittens on, and jumped, startled, when his lips brushed my brow.
“Dear girl,” he said softly. “You were right, all those months ago, when you compared us to the demons.”
I could not look at him. Just shook my head, took his arm, and started walking again. “Do you still feel the same about humans?”
“No. Many of us changed our thoughts about them.”
“Some who didn’t?”
“Just as many,” he said, breath white in the moonlight. “Particularly those who doubted their own ability to stay sane without their grafter games and connivances in the Divine Organic. The internal struggle was put aside during the war with the demons, and afterward, when many of my kind left this world to tend their wounds, the issue became moot. Those of us who stayed behind were inclined to guide the humans who had managed to survive the devastation. And help guard against breaks in the prison veil.”
I lost the moon behind the trees. Zee disappeared into the forest, and Raw took his place, nose low to the ground, baseball cap tugged backward. Razor spikes of hair poked through the cloth, and the sharp spines of his back flexed. Dek and Mal purred a familiar tune; Richard Marx, for a change. “Children of the Night.”
I peered into Jack’s gaunt face, trying to see his eyes. “Why are you telling me this now? I begged you for answers months ago, and all you gave me were riddles.”
Jack hesitated but said nothing. Simply pulled me to a stop, staring ahead of us at the road, where Raw had suddenly disappeared. Aaz pushed close against my cold legs, growling softly. Dek and Mal quit singing.
I heard crunching. Not snow. Something harder, crusty, as though in the forest some massive jaw chewed bone. A primal, ugly sound, dry and heaving, like I was listening to someone vomit backward, down a deep throat into a stomach lined with lead. I could almost see it: a mouth like a wood chipper, hands shoving corpses into the tooth-riddled maw. I could see it. I knew it. I knew that sound, somewhere deep in my blood.
And it got louder. I heard movement, in the shadows of the forest. Lips smacked.
My lungs refused to work. Took all my strength to breathe around the massive thundering in my chest. If my heart beat much harder, it was going to break. I
forced my knees to bend. My legs moved. I stepped in front of Jack. Reached inside my jacket to unsheathe a blade. Metal gleamed in the night, silver and smooth as silk.
Raw reappeared, baseball hat gone. He reached over his shoulder and yanked a spike from his spine, wielding it like a spear. Aaz did the same, and the wet sounds of tearing flesh briefly drowned out the ghostly echoes of mastication emanating from the forest.
“Old Wolf,” I whispered. “Can you take us out of here?”
“Not both of us,” he said, staring at the trees. “He’s tracking me faster now. Resurrecting his creations.”
“How—” I began to ask, but Jack grabbed my arm and spun me around so that my face was buried in his chest. I felt, more than saw, his hand dip into the messenger bag hanging against his hip—but there was no mistaking the sawed-off shotgun he suddenly held.
“Find Grant,” he said urgently. “Keep moving. Stay away from familiar places.”
“Jack—”
“He wants Grant.” The old man pushed me away, bending to peer into my eyes. “He wants to hurt me, he wants to kill you, but Grant . . . Grant he wants alive. You remember that.”
“Where do you think I’m going?” I snapped. “I can’t leave you.”
He grabbed my right hand, holding it between us. Finger armor, glinting. Behind me, in the woods, I heard a wail so loud and pained I clapped my other hand over my left ear.
Zee, deep in woods, snarled a long, melodic word. Raw and Aaz flicked away into the shadows, and from those trees more sounds of movement: crackling, crunching, snuffling like an entire army was trying to breathe through one collective nose. Then, thrashing. Screams, broken like a thousand rusty hinges.
Jack gazed over my head into the forest, blue eyes glittering within the ghostly wash of his face. For a moment I could see my mother in him. She had held her gun the same way, one-handed, across her chest like a shield.
“Oh, a merry chase I’ll lead,” he murmured, and squeezed my right hand even more tightly.
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