Zee and the boys, however, seemed larger, sleeker, as though the rough edges of their skins were being polished away.
“Draean,” whispered Zee, again, as Raw and Aaz edged forward, dragging those spikes through the stone floor. “Draean, come to us.”
The demon lord trembled but did not move. K’ra’an and Oanu backed away from him. Only Ha’an remained, watching Zee, then me.
My legs moved. I did not lurch or stumble, but instead walked with grace, like a dancer, across the floor toward Lord Draean.
But it was not my own free will. I had not intended to take that first step toward the demon lord, and once I started, I could not stop.
“Bring him,” Zee said, and this time the power had faded from his voice but not the command.
I started reaching for Lord Draean before I even knew what I was doing.
I had some free will, though. When he tried to knock me aside, I punched him in the gut. He bent over, grunting, his blood-soaked shirt clinging to his now-jutting ribs. Up close, he smelled like a meat grinder. His eyes were horrible.
“I’m going to kill you,” he whispered to me. “I’m going to eat your bones.”
“You and a million other jackasses,” I muttered, and grabbed the back of his neck, shoving him toward Raw and Aaz, who caught him as he staggered to his knees. Blood poured from his mouth when he hit the ground, as though the impact had jogged his guts loose.
“Power, you feel,” Zee rasped. “Power, in us.”
Draean laughed, wiping his wet mouth. “Fine. You have power. But what does that even mean? Nothing, Zee’akka. Nothing at all.”
I smiled, and this time it was all me. “Do you want to die? Do you want your entire people to die?”
“Better than being their slaves,” he said, as his left eyeball began sliding free of its socket. “Better to die in defiance than live at their whim.”
“It was not like that,” Oanu growled, slamming the tip of his tail into the ground. “We were not slaves.”
“They owned us,” K’ra’an said. “Is that not the very definition?”
“We were at war.”
“Exactly,” Draean stabbed his finger into the stones, and it crumpled as if his bones were turning to mush. “And where is the war now? Where is the purpose to all that power? Power is nothing without an eye on the horizon. A hunger. A need. No war, no need. And this world is ripe. This world is soft, and lush. We will feed a long time. We will make it last. And if it the Aetar come, we will fight free, with alliances of our own choosing . . . that have nothing to do with you. We have seen the consequence of your failure. All that great and mighty strength was not enough to save us. You were weak. You were always weak.”
He glanced over his shoulder at me. “Nothing has changed. Except that now you must draw your power from a human. That is pathetic.”
“She is the Vessel,” said Lord Ha’an, softly.
“She is nothing but flesh and blood,” replied Draean. “If that great power chose to inhabit a pregnant human woman, then I have no fear of it and no respect.”
His words. His words hit me.
My world stopped. My entire world.
Draean frowned at me, spitting out several teeth. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
I tore my gaze from him, staring at Zee. He showed nothing on his face, but I felt regret pour into my heart. Regret and resolve. Behind those emotions, though, was the darkness and its hunger, spreading through the demon like an infection.
“You knew,” I said, stung with a betrayal so deep I could hardly stand it.
“Got what we need,” he rasped. “Leave us.”
“No—” I began, but the armor tingled, and I felt a tug on my body that was familiar, and cold.
Just before I was forced into the void, Zee stepped forward and slammed his fist into Draean’s chest. Bone cracked. Blood and other fluids gushed from the hole, as though his innards had already liquefied and were waiting for an outlet. The smell was terrible. I felt like I was going to vomit.
Which I did, moments later, when I fell through the void into the Seattle apartment, sprawled on all fours and holding my stomach.
Dek spilled onto the ground beside me, as did Mal. Both of them, hissing softly. I shoved them away from me, hissing back. Furious and hurt.
That darkness still oozed, an endless snake uncoiling inside my veins.
Emotions not my own continued to pummel me. Five heartbeats, filled with hunger and rage—and concern. I tried to push it all aside but could do no such thing. I could barely handle my own feelings.
I was pregnant. I was going to be a mother.
“Maxine,” Grant said, behind me.
I burst into tears.
CHAPTER 19
I was still crying thirty minutes later, but the tears had slowed to nothing but damp eyes and the sniffles. So had the outpouring of that dark power, which was quiet now, resting. Whatever the boys were doing, it didn’t involve any shock, awe, and destruction. Not yet, anyway.
I lay in bed, wearing nothing but my underwear. Grant was with me, his head resting on my stomach. Every now and then, he would hum. Occasionally, he drew in a shuddering breath.
“How could I not have noticed?” he whispered. “When I was healing you, after the fall. I should have seen.”
“You were distracted.”
“I should have seen,” he said again. I didn’t mind. I kept wondering the same thing about myself. Wasn’t I supposed to be aware of these things? Shouldn’t I have known I was pregnant?
Weren’t the boys supposed to tell me—instead of tricking me into giving over control of my body? Weren’t they supposed to give me some kind of warning instead of playing demon knows best?
How could I ever trust them again? Or was that a moot point now?
I rubbed my aching head and pressed a tissue to my nose. “Must be early on.”
“Very,” he said, in a tight voice. “Just a little light. Such a tiny little light.”
I buried my fingers in his hair. Grant sighed and crawled up the mattress until the entire length of his body pressed against mine. His arms were warm, and very strong. I held him as tightly as I could.
Dek and Mal were on the floor, coiled around each other. Eyes closed. Pretending to be resting. I felt uneasy with their presence. On guard. Maybe they were there to protect me . . . or maybe it was to keep an eye on me for reasons that had nothing to do with my safety. I couldn’t be sure.
The longer I lay here, though, the easier it was for me to sort their five hearts from mine. Zee’s emotions were the strongest, the texture of them like a chewed fingernail dragged over sensitive flesh. Raw and Aaz, on the other hand, were as much twins emotionally as they were physically: a guitar wire strung between two posts, strumming constantly.
Dek and Mal did not share each other’s emotions in the same way. Dek was softer. Mal harder. Like the difference in warm dark chocolate—and candy stored in the refrigerator, filled with nuts.
The irony wasn’t lost on me. I had grieved losing my bond with the boys, and now I had a new one with them. Different. Not better.
Not better for me, anyway.
“I’m hungry,” I said, and covered my face. “How can I even say that?”
“You’re going to have a baby. Of course you’re hungry.”
“I don’t know if it’s my hunger or theirs.” I peered at him between my fingers. “I’m scared.”
“I’m terrified,” he muttered, and gave Dek and Mal a flinty glare. “You two. Leave.”
They raised their heads, looking at him as if he must be kidding.
“You abused her trust,” Grant snapped. “This is not a game. She is not one of your toys.”
Mal hissed, and the anger that flooded from him was hot and rough, and indignant. I didn’t like it—it scared me, in fact—and I turned that anger back on the little demon by grabbing the clock off the nightstand and throwing it at him. Dek darted sideways, but Mal got hit in the hea
d. I reached for the lamp next.
Mal hissed—and my arm froze.
I couldn’t move. It stunned me all over again—and this time I was the one who was furious. I snarled at the demon, and Grant muttered ugly words beneath his breath.
Dek gave his brother a hateful look and bit his tail. Mal snapped at him, but suddenly I could move again. Instead of reaching for the lamp, I leaned against Grant’s chest, trembling with anger as he wrapped his arms around me.
Regret poured into my heart—from Dek.
From Mal, I sensed the same, but to a lesser degree. He wanted to protect me but not here. This was more of the same, but somewhere, elsewhere, the demon lords were free—and that called to him. The need to punish them, and feel their fear . . . called to him. He yearned for it.
It wasn’t just Mal I was feeling. Each of those five heartbeats was an earthquake inside me, a tremor filled with loneliness and hunger, and fury. Shaking me down, as though my heart had split into five fractured pieces.
Disconcerting. I felt lost in my own body. I felt possessed.
“I’m sorry I hit you,” I told Mal, hearing strain in my voice and hating that. “But don’t you understand why I’m upset? I’m pregnant, and you didn’t tell me. Not only did you not tell me . . . you did something to me.”
Grant’s arms tightened. “Get out of here.”
Mal gave us a long look and slid into the shadows beneath some magazines, disappearing as though a hole was in our floor. Dek hesitated, his little ears pressed flat against his skull.
“You, too,” I said.
Dek sighed and grabbed a half-eaten teddy bear with his mouth. He dragged it over to me, placing it on the edge of the mattress. Stuffing leaked. A glass eye had gone missing. He nudged the broken bear into my hands and rested his chin beside it. His gaze was so mournful.
“What happened?” I whispered to him, not even sure what I was asking, just that some terrible heartbreak was bubbling inside me, and his was the kind gesture—that note of sweetness—that I needed so much.
Dek didn’t answer me with a song, but his heart was gentle in mine. I scratched behind his ears and leaned forward to kiss his snout.
“Why can’t you be less lovable?” I asked him, tears burning my eyes again. I wanted to hate him. I wanted to be angry with them all but just couldn’t.
Not yet.
Dek gave me a toothy grin. I was taken aback by the burst of love that flowed from him: explosive and hot—and infected with the dark hunger drawn from the entity living beneath my soul. A strange circle of emotion and power, deadly and confusing.
Dek licked my cheek. Then, before I could say a word, he slid into the shadows beneath the comforter and vanished. I wanted to know where—on the other side of the world, with his brothers, on the moon.
Grant let out his breath. I turned, facing him.
We stared at each other. Just stared. Words were worthless in that moment. I’d seen television shows and movies where people cried and laughed, and had meltdowns in each other’s arms, but that was fake, and this was us, and I’d found that more could be said in our silences than in colloquy.
He pushed a strand of hair from my face. “You okay?”
“I don’t know.” I wrapped my hand around his wrist, rubbing my thumb against his palm. Touching him soothed me, and so did the warmth that pushed through our bond.
“It’s strange,” I said quietly. “I feel them inside me. All five, right now.”
“I can see the bond,” Grant’s gaze flicked from the crown of my head, down to my chest. “Five shadows. Five . . . hooks.”
“Can you break them away from me?”
He looked so grim. “I want to say yes, but they’re . . . deep in you, Maxine. It reminds me of our bond, only . . . more tangled. To get them loose will require extreme care.”
“Extreme,” I echoed. “What happens if you’re not extreme?”
“You could lose pieces of yourself. Maybe. Remember, I’m no expert. This is only . . . instinct.”
I trusted his instincts. If he said breaking the bond would be dangerous, then I believed him. But I didn’t think I could live like this. Not forever. Not now, with a baby inside me.
The boys are guided by the strength of the Hunter’s heart.
Those words. Those words I’d heard so often. Now it was my turn to be guided by them, but I didn’t like what I was feeling. I didn’t like all that anger flooding me, anger that was so close to hate it made my skin crawl. I was afraid the anger would become part of me, permanently. If I lived with the boys for ten thousand years, maybe it would. Perhaps that was what had happened to them, once upon a time. Maybe, in another life.
“I feel what they feel,” I said. “It’s all so close to me, I don’t know what’s real.”
Grant held me tighter. “You know.”
I shook my head. “The boys are angry and spoiling for a fight, like it’s some grudge they’ve been holding. I wish I knew . . . I wish I knew if they felt that way while imprisoned on me . . . or if this just started with their freedom. Maybe those demon lords.”
I hated the idea that all these years they might have been resentful of me, my mother, all us women . . . full of anger they could never express, for being imprisoned on bodies they could never escape.
Grant studied my eyes. “It must be strange to feel anything at all.”
“What’s strange is that their emotions are so familiar. So . . . human.” I reached behind me for that teddy bear, and flopped it between us. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. Zee and the others have always expressed themselves through emotion. Feeling their feelings, though . . .” I had to stop, and fussed with the stuffing leaking from the bear’s eye. “Makes me wonder if all demons share that . . . emotional vocabulary.”
If they do, I thought, then what really separates any of us?
Grant seemed to read my mind—or maybe my own emotions were just that transparent. “Speaking the same language, emotional or otherwise, doesn’t mean anything, Maxine. The boys shouldn’t have done this to you.”
“Gah,” I said, squeezing the teddy bear’s head. “I hate thinking about it.”
“Okay.” Grant gently loosened my fingers from the bear. “Let’s think about how we’re going to be parents.”
Heat spread through me. I thought about my mother . . . and on the heels of that, my earliest memory of wondering who my father might be. Sitting in the station wagon at a gas station, watching some man carrying his son on his shoulders and thinking that was weird—because I didn’t know any better. Asking my mother. Hearing the word dad for the first time.
“Most girls in my family never know their fathers,” I said to Grant, feeling vaguely uneasy, and afraid.
He pulled me even closer. “That’s not going to happen here.”
I took his hand and placed it on my stomach. “No. It won’t.”
He briefly closed his eyes. “We need a plan.”
“Yes,” I said, then, softer: “Maybe I deserve this. I never realized what it was for the boys, being imprisoned. I probably still don’t get it. But if it’s anything like this . . . I don’t know how they stood it for all those years.”
Grant gave me a hard, incredulous look. “You know what, Maxine? I don’t care. I really don’t. I want them back on your body, imprisoned. Short of that, I want to break the bond they’ve got sunk into you and make sure they can never force you again to do anything against your will.”
“What if this is necessary? What if this is what it takes to control that army?”
“From what you told me, nothing’s going to control them. They’re not going to listen to Zee and the others.”
“Not unless they terrify them. Or just kill them.”
“If we killed them?” Grant asked bluntly. “What if? We could do it. I could. The Messenger.”
“It’s not just the demon lords. You take them out, you might kill an entire race.”
“That’s what they’re going to do to
us.” Grant’s gaze softened, troubled. “Don’t think I’m saying this lightly, because I’m not. But I’m talking about survival.”
So had Zee. So had Lord Ha’an. All anyone wanted to do was simply live another day, with food and peace, and safety. The problem was competing needs. The problem was uncertainty and a lack of trust, and solutions.
“I could have killed the Mahati,” I said. “But they’re just . . . people, Grant. Different, but not that different. I don’t know what the others are like, but . . . genocide?”
“I’ll do what it takes.”
I pushed him away. “Zee said the same thing.”
“Then we agree on something,” he muttered, reaching for me again. “Maxine, don’t. Come back.”
I let him pull me close but didn’t relax.
“I’ve always liked the name Lucy,” he said.
“Shut up,” I muttered.
“How about Agatha?”
“Be serious.”
“Helga?”
I poked his chest. “Focus.”
“I can multitask,” he replied, capturing my finger. “Okay, none of those names. And I’m not ruling out killing those demons. I won’t, Maxine. Neither should you.”
“I never thought I’d hear you say that.”
“I had a revelation today,” he murmured. “And then another one, half an hour ago. My priorities have changed. I’m feeling particularly ruthless at the moment.”
I rested my hand on my stomach. “Do you think all this is hurting . . . her?”
He was silent a moment. “I don’t know.”
“I wish my mother were here.”
“I wish my mother were here.”
Both of us snorted and looked at each other. Grant kissed my nose.
“I’m happy,” he said. “I’m terrified, and beside myself. And I love you.”
I gave him a crooked smile. “Are we going to be okay?”
“You bet.” But something strained passed through his gaze, and he chewed the inside of his cheek. “There’s something you need to see.”
“I hate it when you say things like that.”
“I hate saying it,” he replied, and rolled sideways to pick up the laptop computer that was on the other nightstand. He flipped it open and set it on the bed between us. Minutes later, I was reading the news—specifically, articles relating to mysterious mass killings, all over the world. A small apartment building in Paris was the site of a horrific massacre, in which all residents had been found dead—dismembered, partially eaten. A cruise ship in the Mediterranean had radioed for help when nearly ten people had disappeared, with no evidence except for some bloody spots on the deck—and one severed head.
The Mortal Bone Page 16