Darkness Calls

by Marjorie M. Liu

  “Grant is a man,” I protested. “He’s not a force of nature.”

  “Isn’t he? My kind are victims of their own existence, little more than energy. And you, lad . . . you manipulate energy. You could manipulate us. You could kill us, with nothing but a whim. And not just us, but any living creature. You have that power.” Jack gave the man a chilling look. “Lightbringer. You, who can force light into any heart. Light or darkness.”

  Grant twitched. “Don’t call me that.”

  “In the priesthood you were called Father. What I just named you—Lightbringer—is more of the same. It is part of your identity, whether you acknowledge it or not.”

  I shook my head, frustrated. “You’re skirting the essentials. There were others, like Grant. What happened to them?”

  Jack hesitated. Grant said, very quietly, “You murdered them.”

  Sickened me to hear those words said out loud. Horrified me when the old man did not deny it. My grandfather. My grandfather, who only looked human. But worse, I was not surprised. I had already tasted fragments of the truth—out in the dead circus, the forest—and the pieces began falling into place. I watched Jack shudder and swallow hard, as though ill.

  “We were desperate,” he said. “We had no sense of right and wrong. Morality came later, after watching human-kind, and living in their skins.”

  Grant stood so still, pale, his knuckles white and straining. Breathing heavier than usual, as though his lungs strained. I was afraid for him. He looked unhealthy. My imagination conjured cold breezes wracking his chest with pneumonia; or blood vessels bursting in his brain from the strain of using such force on Cribari.

  Unbonded. Mr. King’s voice, hissing a trail of unease into my brain. Untaught.

  “Jack,” Grant said, his gaze searching the old man’s face. “How desperate could you have been?”

  “More than you can imagine,” he said, brokenly. “We needed the bodies. And the Lightbringers . . . would not share their people. Nor could we hide from them in human flesh.”

  Instinct crept—and memory. “You told me they were the first. First of what?”

  Grant gave me a sharp look, but I ignored him, unable to tear my gaze from Jack. I was watching him die, I thought—in little pieces, each word he spoke cutting him to the bone. He closed his eyes, turning his face from me—and I knew, in that moment—I knew what he was going to say.

  “They were the first humans,” he whispered. “Found on one world. One distant, now-dead world. All humans, my dear—every human—is descended from them.”

  “No,” Grant said roughly. “Impossible.”

  “We stole their bodies,” Jack told him, relentless, with a growing heat that was desperate—frantic to confess, to unburden. “We bred them, molded their flesh. And when a particular breed of human was conceived, a world was found through the Labyrinth, and seeded with that strain of flesh. Allowed to evolve, and become. Time moves differently in the Labyrinth. What took millions, billions, of years, we could have instantly, merely by opening and closing a door.”

  Jack finally looked at me, his gaze ancient and terrible. “Humans were brought to this planet as nothing but proteins and molecules. Thrown into the hot sea and left to gestate. Part of the lab, the farm. The grand experiment. A reservoir for bodies.”

  My brain felt numb. I thought I might be sick. “You told me your kind brought humans to this world to escape the demons.”

  “Truth. But there were humans already here, my dear, and those we brought with us were more . . . advanced. They formed an empire in the south, but it was destroyed during the war with the demons. The survivors scattered.

  “But you,” he went on, staring at Grant. “The Lightbringers were long dead before that. Guardians, truth-sayers, judges, warriors. They were all those things, and more. And we killed them. We hunted them. We erased every memory of their civilization, and those we did not murder, we enslaved.”

  “Old Wolf,” I whispered.

  He began to reach for me, and stopped. “When the others of my kind discover Grant exists, it will happen again. If they learn that you, my dear, are a threat to them, it will happen anyway. The Avatars will come to this world and destroy it.”

  No worse than the demons, I thought. Fucked six ways to Sunday.

  Dek and Mal stirred against my scalp. I reached up to scratch them, and my little boys eased back into their dreams. I wished I could do the same. I wished this were all just a dream.

  I flexed my right hand, finger armor sinking tendrils of heat through tattoo into bone. “Is it too late?”

  “We know when our kind die. We feel it, even across the Labyrinth. Ahsen was bad enough. Kill him, and others will come.”

  “He has to die,” I said.

  “And if I give myself up to him?” Grant asked.

  “That’s stupid,” I told him. “That’s so stupid.”

  “If I give myself up,” he said again, flashing me a hard look. “Would that be enough to keep them away from this world?”

  I wrenched my hand out of his grip, furious. Jack shook his head. “You mustn’t.”

  “Listen—”

  “No,” he snapped, eyes feverishly bright. “Not if you’re the last. Do you understand? What you are has not existed for millennia. But you are here, now, because the Labyrinth hid you, and opened a door to this world, and this time.”

  “I won’t let people die because of me.”

  “They’ll die if you aren’t here,” Jack rasped, crashing his fist into the table. “They’ll die because of the demons, when the prison veil fails. Or they’ll die when my kind come and search this world for more of you. It will be the old days, lad, of gods and monsters, and nothing will be the same when it’s over. Sacrificing yourself now won’t accomplish anything but to save you some pain. And leave her to suffer it.”

  Grant stiffened. I held out my hand to Jack. “Stop.”

  “No,” he whispered, still staring. “Not until he understands. There is no win here.”

  “Just possibilities,” said Grant grimly, slamming the tip of his cane into the floor with such force I felt a shock run through my bones. His eyes were dark with fury. “Are you all such bastards, Jack?”

  “No,” said the old man wearily. “But there are enough.”

  I sensed someone watching. Turned, and saw Mary in the bedroom doorway, hair wild, clutching her sweater closed. Her gaze was ferocious, the whites of her eyes brilliant as snow. The hard line of Mary’s mouth was thin as a blade.

  Jack saw her, and flinched. “Marritine.”

  “Wolf,” she whispered unsteadily, and looked at Grant. “He wants to send me back to the dark place.”

  For one second Grant’s face crumpled, but he pulled it together—sucking in a deep breath, visibly steeling himself. He limped to the old woman, and gathered her close. She looked very small within the curve of his arm, and infinitely fragile.

  “No,” he whispered, kissing the top of her head. “That won’t happen.”

  No, it would not. I could end this. I could end this now.

  I held up my right hand, staring at the delicate armor that encased my hand and trailed like a silver vein to the shimmering cuff around my wrist. Jack looked, as well, and weary resignation filled his face.

  “Do you know where he is?” I asked the old man, trying to sound calm, strong. “Where Mr. King is hiding?”

  Jack said nothing. His eyes were so grave. Grant turned slowly around to stare at me. I could hardly look back. Hurt too much.

  “Maxine,” he said roughly. “Maxine, no.”

  Jack moved. Fast, like a viper, his hand snaking out to grab my shoulder. I dodged him, dancing lightly into the maze of books. He did not follow—simply stood, hunched over, one hand clutching at air. I looked from the old man to Grant, and tried to smile for them. My family. Mine.

  “I’ll see you when I see you,” I whispered, heart in my throat. “Stay alive until then.”

  Grant grimaced, launching h
imself toward me. His cane slipped, and he went down sloppily. I grabbed my right hand with my left, and stepped backward. Armor, already burning.

  Take me to him, I thought, picturing the fat little man. Give me what I need.

  Grant shouted my name, but he sounded very far away—and I could not see him, I could see nothing as the abyss sucked me down, stealing my breath. For one long moment I drowned, heart battling like a butterfly trapped in a bone cage. But I saw light, and emerged—breathing hard, faint—not flat on my face, but standing.

  In a bathroom.

  Checkered tile, three metal stalls, one of which was occupied. The air smelled like marijuana and antiseptic, and the two mirrors above the chipped sink were broken and had been painted over with lipstick kisses.

  I turned in a full circle, baffled. Behind me, the stall door rattled. I glanced over my shoulder.

  And watched my mother come out.

  She froze when she saw me. Both of us, staring. My heart hurt so badly it felt like a fist was squeezing it to death, and there was heat behind my eyeballs, and fire in my gut, and if I had been feeling faint before, I was definitely going to lose it now. I stepped back and bumped into the porcelain sinks. Stayed there, needing the support.

  My mother looked young, like me, but with a deeper wrinkle in her forehead. Same jacket, similar jeans, but my mother had preferred high-top sneakers to boots, and hers were scuffed and gray. Just like I remembered. Zee and the others tugged on my skin, aching.

  “Well,” she said, after clearing her throat, “your grandmother told me this might happen again.”

  “Again.” I could hardly speak, my voice rusty and broken. “The first time was in Mongolia. You were—”

  “Only fourteen. But I’ve seen you twice since then. Your grandmother was still alive, at the time.” My mother lifted her shoulder in a faint shrug, her calm enviable—any emotion she might have felt at seeing me tucked neatly away. “You knew her. She knew you. She liked that. She liked you.”

  I was going to have a nervous breakdown. “I’m not supposed to be here.”

  “Obviously.” My mother leaned against the bathroom stall, each movement carefully controlled. Her behavior was not cold, not exactly, but it was deliberate. As though she was afraid to touch me. “Baby, what do you need?”

  I need to find a genocidal Avatar, I thought, staring down at the armor glittering on my right hand. I needed to save the lives of the people I loved. I needed to go and fight. I needed to open myself to the darkness in my heart, and lose my heart.

  I needed my mother.

  “I have to do something,” I told her. “I have to kill someone. But if I do this, I’m afraid of what I’ll be afterward. I don’t know what I’m becoming.”

  My mother searched my face, and I held still under her scrutiny—as I had held still many times, waiting for her to find the words that never came easily. I wanted to cry, standing there. I wanted to laugh and stamp my feet, but instead I fell into our routine. I savored our old habit like it was breath and heartbeat, and my life. Like it would save my life.

  “I don’t know what you’re becoming,” said my mother, finally. “I don’t know what sleeps inside us, but I know what you fear. I can’t save you from that. No one can. All you can do is trust yourself.”

  “I don’t,” I said. “I can’t.”

  “Then you have nothing,” she replied gravely. “Everything we are, everything we become, is born of what we believe ourselves to be. What we trust ourselves to be, here, even in moments of doubt.” My mother placed her gloved hand over her heart. “So who are you, Maxine Kiss? Who did I raise you to be?”

  “A good person,” I whispered.

  “So be good,” she breathed, something bright glittering in her eyes. “Even when the darkness swallows your heart, be good in your heart. Trust that. Trust that your mother did her job right.”

  I laughed, but it was quiet, and full of tears. “I love you. I don’t think I told you that enough.”

  “You’re ten now,” she said, smiling faintly. “I’ll remember that, the next time you throw a tantrum.”

  I searched my memory for any night when I was ten that my mother had come home acting strange, as though she had encountered her adult daughter in a grimy bathroom, talking heart to heart across death and time. Nothing came to me. Except the night of her murder. I almost said something about that. I would have. A warning, if nothing else.

  Maybe it showed on my face. My mother’s mouth tightened, and she pushed away from the stall door. “You need to go now, baby. Time is dangerous. We’re not meant to cross those borders.”

  “I didn’t have a choice,” I replied.

  “You had a choice,” she countered wryly. “But you were always stubborn.”

  “Look who’s talking.” I held up my right hand, and the armor hugged my skin like quicksilver. “What do I do?”

  “Go home,” she said quietly, warmth and sadness gathering in her eyes. “Go and save the people you love.”

  Grant flashed through my mind—Jack, Byron. I wondered how much she knew, but there was no time to ask. No time. She began to fade, as though little more than a ghost. I could see right through her.

  At the last moment she took a step, lurching toward me with great urgency and indecision. Her mouth moved. I did not hear her voice, but I read her lips.

  You’re not alone, she said. There are others.

  Then, nothing. I still stood in a bathroom, but my mother was gone. So were the lipstick kisses on the mirror, and the stalls were painted black now instead of olive green. The floor was the same, though. Checkered and dirty. Hardly seemed real. The only thing in my mind that remained solid was my mother. Her words echoed. Her face, her presence. Everything.

  Behind me the door opened. A woman walked into the bathroom—big, busty, dressed in leather, with dyed blond hair teased and frizzed into pigtails that stood out from the top of her head like basketballs.

  “What day and year is it?” I asked her, managing to choke out the words just before she disappeared into the same stall my mother had been in.

  She stopped and looked at me like I was nuts. Maybe I was. But she told me. It was the same day and year I had left Grant and the others in. I was not home in space, but I was home in time.

  I left the bathroom and entered a dark hall, lit by only a single lightbulb that swung from a long chain in the ceiling—begging to be used as a glass piñata. Metal walls were slick with condensation, and the peeling remains of posters and phone numbers, painted over with graffiti art that was either some very magnificent porn or a pod of humpback whales fighting giant squid.

  The hall was narrow, packed with people. I saw more skin than leather, smashed with studs, masks, and whips. My tattooed hands fit in fine. Must have been daylight somewhere, but it felt like the sweaty side of midnight as a deep bass throbbed and ached through the walls. Odd time for a party.

  Odd life, period.

  I started pushing through the crowd. At the end of the hall I found a cavernous room with fake stone stalactites for a ceiling, and a disco ball glittering red, large enough to crush the bodies crammed, teeming and undulating, beneath it. I saw a bar on the far side of the club, and some platforms with stripper poles being put to liberal use.

  The music was loud. High-heeled boots stepped on my toes. Sweat rolled down my back, quickly absorbed. The boys stirred, restless and uneasy.

  A young man swayed in front of me. He wore a leather loincloth and nothing else. I tapped his shoulder, and he leaned backward, smiling when he saw my tattoos. I shouted, “Where is this place? What city?”

  The young man didn’t even blink. “Toronto, lady!”

  Toronto. It sounded mundane. I might have stood on the moon and not known it.

  A hand caught mine. A young woman, with a cool grip. She could have been fourteen or forty, and was dressed more conservatively than the others, her curves covered by a flowing black dress that shimmered and clung. A glossy blonde, with
Cleopatra eyeliner, and lips that were unevenly plump, like some doctor had been after her with a needle.

  “The Erlking is waiting,” she said.

  “Well,” I replied. “Let’s do something about that.”

  CHAPTER 15

  WE walked, weaving around men and women who gave us room as the beat pumped harder, dancers melting into the thumping groove. I saw no zombies, which struck me as odd. Demonic parasites liked such places, where there was always some kind of drug use—mind-weakening substances that made a person susceptible to influence and possession.

  But, nothing. Just the unending crowd, most of whom seemed to know my guide, and watched her move amongst them with glinting, feral eyes. The young woman ignored them all, walking gracefully, carefully, with a polished elegance that reminded me of old-time movie starlets—girls of good breeding who glided across soundstages as though they were more than human.

  I saw other women like her, standing unnaturally still amongst the dancers: dressed in silk, with perfect hair and bodies. Heads tilted, as though listening to something very distant. No one paid attention to them; but once, briefly, I glimpsed one of the girls leading a man in black clothing, just as I was being led. I tried to see more, but the crowd swallowed them up.

  I felt swallowed. Men and women brushed tight against me. Hot air made it hard to breathe, though the hard, thrashing rock music fit my mood as I found my own stalking rhythm, traveling amongst flesh and leather across a stone floor that matched the fake, painted roughness of the immense, sharp ceiling. It took us a long time to cross the room. The path the blonde walked made no sense, not even with the excuse of the crowd. She wound and twisted, without rhyme or reason, curving us from the edge of the walls toward the center, and back again. I got dizzy. My vision blurred.

  Someone bit my neck.

  A hard bite, through my turtleneck. I heard teeth break, and spun around. Saw nothing but a wall of dancers, none of whom was spitting blood.

  Hands grazed my back, followed by a sharp blade, angled between my legs. I felt nothing but the pressure of the blade as it pierced my jeans and underwear, but the disgust that filled me was instantaneous. I slammed my elbow backward, encountering nothing but air—just as fingers tangled in my hair, yanking back my head. Sharp nails raked harmlessly across my throat, and the boys flowed over my face in response, protecting me.