The Mortal Bone

by Liu, Marjorie M.

  A nursing home in Montreal was missing five residents. Cadaver dogs had found bits and pieces of them in a nearby park.

  “It’s a big world,” I said, quietly. “This is probably just the tip of the iceberg.”

  “So you do think it’s those demon lords who are responsible.”

  “What I think is that they’ve been loose for two days, and they’re starving—and ruthless. So yes, I’m sure they had a hand in it.”

  “It feels as though they’re being discreet.”

  I thought about the earthquake in Memphis, wondering if that was still a coincidence. “They’re arrogant but not stupid. I’m sure this is a scouting mission for them, a chance to iron out their future with Zee and the boys. Get a feel for what’s changed in ten thousand years. Hell, from what I saw, they’re probably fighting over what continent each of them will control.”

  “Are they vulnerable to guns?”

  “Don’t know. I think there’s a difference in strength between the demon lords and those they rule.”

  “So? What next?”

  A deep ache struck my heart, full of sadness. “First thing we do is break this bond with the boys. Their intentions may have been good—”

  Grant grunted.

  “—but I won’t be controlled. Not now. Not ever.”

  Because you are a Queen, whispered the darkness, from deep within.

  Because I am my mother’s daughter, I told it.

  My mother’s daughter.

  My daughter.

  It hit me, then. Finally, it hit me. Nothing I had ever felt before, in my life, compared to the determination and resolve that struck me, in that moment. Nothing. All my conflict slipped away, replaced by a straight road, a single path. It was a moment of pure, raw clarity.

  Grant was right. Priorities had changed.

  I was going to be a mother. I was going to have a baby.

  And if I had to, I would kill the entire fucking demon race to keep her safe.

  CHAPTER 20

  I didn’t like slipping into the void, knowing I was pregnant, but there didn’t seem to be much alternative. We needed to speak with the Messenger about breaking this bond the boys had sunk into me, and there was only one way to reach her.

  Before we left, though, I changed out of my blood-spattered clothes—and went to find Rex. Some volunteers pointed us to the warehouse basement, which was the first place I would have looked anyway. Secrets always seemed to end up underground.

  The door was locked, but Grant had keys. Like most basements, it was usually dark, but when we looked down the stairs, a golden light was splashed across the concrete floor. I walked slowly, not wanting to rush Grant as he limped after me—closing and locking the basement door behind him.

  The basement was large, filled with huge mechanical equipment from the warehouse’s previous life as a furniture manufacturer. At the far end, well away from the stairs, a sagging couch had been set out—surrounded by Tiffany-style lamps and several plywood crates covered in sheets of glittery wrapping paper, like makeshift tablecloths.

  Byron sat on one end of the couch, elbows on his knees. He had taken out his earring and was holding it between his fingers with a distant, thoughtful look in his eyes. Mary sprawled beside him, one leg propped on the back of the couch, a sword resting on her stomach. The blade had clean edges and an overdecorated hilt that resembled something out of a fantasy role-player’s handbook. When I got close, I saw—sure enough—the word EXCALIBUR stamped on the shining flat surface.

  “Grant’s woman,” said Mary—and then frowned, and sat up quick.

  “Hey,” I said, feeling nervous about the way she looked at me. “What are you both doing down here?”

  “Mary had a bad feeling. So did Rex,” replied Byron, tossing his earring on the crate in front of him. “They won’t let me leave their sight.”

  “Good,” Grant rumbled, as Mary studied my face and whispered, “Something wicked, something in the shadows comes.”

  Rex walked from a side room and stopped dead in his tracks. His aura shuddered.

  “Fuck,” he muttered, staring at me. “They bonded you.”

  I raised my brow, alarmed at how much he might say in front of Byron. “No swearing in front of children, please.”

  Byron’s mouth softened into the faintest of smiles though that did nothing to erase the concern and confusion in his eyes. Rex crossed the room, watching me.

  “You let them,” he said, incredulous, as if just seeing the bond was enough to know exactly how everything had gone down.

  Grant sighed, leaning on his cane, shoulder brushing mine. Quiet, warm strength. I soaked it in, listening to our bond—and the bond with the boys, which was still tumultuous, and disturbing. I felt violence from them—and had to steel myself to not be infected with those same emotions. If our roles were reversed, and I had been forced to live on them and share their hearts for ten thousand years, I could not predict how that influence might change me.

  I gestured for Rex to come close. Grant and I led him to the stairs.

  “The demon lords are loose,” I said, trying to pitch my voice low enough that Byron wouldn’t hear. “I just watched Draean vomit his guts out.”

  “Should I be impressed?”

  “I need to know more, what their weaknesses are, the way they think.”

  “No,” he snapped, “what you need to do is begin saying your prayers, assuming you believe at all in a compassionate God.”

  I reached for him. Grant beat me to it, grabbing Rex’s collar and twisting that material around his fist. His eyes were pure ice, and his voice quiet as death when he said, “No jokes. Answer the questions.”

  I had a moment’s déjà vu. It reminded me of when I was young with my mother, watching her on those rare, brief occasions when she confronted the demonically possessed in my presence. Specifically, I remembered a backwoods bar, dark, full of possessed men and women. A snowy day. A broken-down car. A trap for us. A test.

  The demon stared as though my husband held a bazooka in his hand. “Let go first.”

  Grant’s hand loosened, slowly, without apology. Rex tugged on his collar, giving him an uncertain look.

  “I can’t tell you much,” he said, his aura turning gray as it hugged his skin with tiny nervous flutters. “By the time I was born, stories about the demon lords had been reduced to little more than old tales.”

  “They are not old tales to me,” said a low, feminine voice.

  Cool air moved across my neck. Rex stiffened, and so did Grant. For a split second, I forgot that the boys weren’t with me, and almost told one of them to go investigate that voice. A strange sense of loss hit me, and vulnerability—all made worse by the intense, daggered emotions flowing through the bond.

  I glimpsed movement in the deep shadows behind the old machinery—a massive irregular shape that was deeper and darker than any night. Red eyes glinted like tiny strokes of lightning.

  “Blood Mama,” I said.

  “Hunter. Meet me outside in the parking lot.”

  WE found Blood Mama sitting inside a red Mercedes. Her human host was a redheaded bombshell; tall and shaped like an hourglass on steroids. Small waist, massive breasts. Her low-cut dress was red, and so was her lipstick.

  The shadows around her head and beneath her eyes were purple and black.

  Grant slid into the backseat of the car, and I got in up front. The interior smelled like a lemon had exploded. I rolled down the window so that I could breathe. It also gave me the illusion of room: her aura was huge, thunderous, and took up most of the front seat in a billowing, heaving coil of shadows.

  Blood Mama gave me a long look. “Hunter. You always were a fool.”

  “I didn’t come here for a lecture. Didn’t you swear your fealty?”

  “At least I knew what I was doing.”

  “So how does it feel?” I shot back. “Having their hearts inside you?”

  “The same as it did before,” she replied. “Disgus
ting.”

  “But you said yes. You were terrified not to.”

  “While you just have blind faith in their goodness.” Blood Mama’s lips peeled back in a grotesque laugh, and she glanced at Grant. “How do you feel about that?”

  He gave her a flinty look. Blood Mama’s smile did not fade, but it did grow strained. “They are butchers. You know that. You, with your eyes, can see that shadow.”

  “I see a shadow in you,” Grant replied. “I think I prefer theirs.”

  Blood Mama’s aura flared, and she closed her eyes. I said, “Tell me about the other demon lords. Tell me how this shit started.”

  “War,” she muttered. “We were different, then. All of us. Not peaceful, but at peace. Our worlds were connected by a series of stable gates that led through the Labyrinth. We traded. We shared our cultures.”

  “Even you?”

  She gave me a hateful look. “We had hosts, then. Not human. Other creatures that served our needs. We evolved together, our species beneficial to one another. They were the Puri and we were the Boha.”

  I let that sink in. “Lord Ha’an said that the demon kind did not always need to feed on pain.”

  “I hardly remember those days, darling.” A smile touched her mouth, but it seemed self-mocking. “Those days are dead. The Puri are dead. All of them. I watched them burn, an entire world destroyed. Not just our world, but others. You think five clans were all there ever was?” Unexpected grief struck her eyes, and she looked away from my stare. “There were twenty worlds in our link. Twenty clans. Billions of lives, lost.”

  “Who killed them?” Grant asked.

  “They have no name,” Blood Mama whispered. “We never named them. We spoke of them as wraiths, or a wind made of light. A fistful of lightning, perhaps. No bodies. Nothing to fight. Just a . . . howl.”

  Chills struck. The darkness, oozing through me, stilled. As though listening.

  “Zee and the boys,” I said, touching my chest, my heart. “The boys summoned something to stop that . . . howl.”

  “Those Reaper bastards,” she said bitterly. “Their world was farthest from any other. Few went there, few traded with them. Their kind were barbarians and slave hunters. They would send raiding parties through the Labyrinth to invade other worlds and bring back females and children. Sometimes to wed. Sometimes to sacrifice to the God they worshipped.”

  Blood Mama gave me a haunted look. “The God that is inside you.”

  It was very quiet inside the car. In my mind, the darkness sighed, and in a slow whisper said, We were not the God of their vast temples. We were not the God of their dreams. But we heard that world, praying. And though we were too late to save more than a handful, we answered. We left the stars for that answer.

  A mortal is not a star, but a star does not dream. We had never known dreams.

  We had never known the hunt, in flesh. We had never hunted pain. We did not know it could be sweet.

  I closed my eyes. Grant’s hand touched my shoulder and squeezed.

  “It possessed Zee and the boys,” I said, hoarse. “And then they gathered up the remaining clans, and turned you all into an army.”

  “An army based on their culture and their values. And all they valued was strength and an ability to fight. The Boha were worthless to them, but they took us in because they did not believe in waste.” Blood Mama spat those words. “Once they had us, we all changed. It was slow at first. We didn’t realize until it was too late. My kind did not need pain to survive. Just life. Ours was a peaceful symbiosis. No longer. The same with the Shurik. In the old days, they did not eat their hosts. They did not always take hosts, even. They ate plants and algae, and . . .”

  She stopped, bowing her head. Her aura slammed against the window, the ceiling of the car, raging against the confines of her body. Lightning flashed inside those roiling shadows.

  “All these years,” I said softly. “All these fucking years. Why didn’t you ever speak of this?”

  Blood Mama gave me a grim, sidelong look. “Zee? Why not the others? They never told you.”

  “She’s asking you,” Grant said.

  “This story is agony,” she snapped at him. “It is madness. What we were, what we became . . . we lost everything . We lost our souls. Lord Draean? He was a swamp slug, a peaceful nothing. But after the war, he grew teeth. We all grew teeth. We had no choice, and now the Reaper Kings are reaping what they sowed.”

  I sat back, staring at her. “Lord Draean didn’t seem keen on following the boys again. Nor did K’ra’an.”

  “There will be war,” she said, simply. “I always knew there would be. Lord Ha’an is too loyal, and Lord Oanu, too predictable. Draean and K’ra’an always chafed at the yoke.”

  I looked back at Grant. “We need to stop this. I have to speak with the boys.”

  Blood Mama gave me a dismissive wave of her hand. “It is done, now. You are nothing but a thing they can use, Hunter. Your opinion means nothing. You might as well let me kill you.” A cold smile touched her mouth. “It would solve so many problems.”

  No warning. No hesitation. The moment those words left her mouth, Grant’s hand shot out, sinking through her aura into her hair. He did not pull on her head, but she froze at the contact, eyes widening in fear and shock.

  “I can kill you with my voice,” Grant said quietly, and the power that rolled off each word was immense, and terrible. “You’ve always known it.”

  “I also knew you were too soft,” she whispered. “Too kind.”

  “Not anymore.” My husband leaned forward, giving her a look that chilled me to the bone. “You will help us. You will protect us. You will do everything you can to keep harm from us. Your children will be our spies.”

  Each word swelled with power: ripe and lush, making the air shimmer with fleeting arcs of golden light. I had never seen light when Grant used his power, not like this, but it surrounded me like a soft veil made of sunrise.

  But it wasn’t just light for Blood Mama. She writhed in her seat, making a keening sound that cut me to the core. Her hands strained around the steering wheel, and her aura swelled, fighting at the bonds of her host.

  “Stop,” she gasped, but his voice drowned out hers, twisting, bending. Sparks of golden light flashed within her aura, burning through the shadows. Burning her.

  “Grant,” I said, as his voice dropped into that powerful, transforming hum. “Grant.”

  He released Blood Mama—with his hand, and his voice. The demon queen slumped forward, breathing hard, trembling. Her cheeks were wet with tears.

  I stared at Grant.

  He did not look at me. He leaned away, staring at the back of Blood Mama’s head. Pale. Barely breathing. I recognized his eyes again. Without a word, he fumbled for the car door and stumbled out, half-falling on one knee. He started vomiting.

  I did not leave the car. I exhaled slowly and focused again on Blood Mama.

  “He altered you,” I said. “Be thankful he didn’t kill you.”

  “I should have killed him,” she whispered, and gave me a hateful look. “You do it, Hunter. Do it, before he becomes someone you don’t recognize.”

  “I’m a bleeding heart,” I told her. “And I’ll bleed out before I hurt that man.”

  Blood Mama shut her eyes. “You deserve what you get.”

  I waited a beat, then got out of the car. She drove away before I shut the door. It had started to rain, and I stood there, soaking in the open sky, listening to my heart pound. My heart, five hearts . . . and Grant’s, deep in our bond.

  He was sitting on the concrete, head bowed, rainwater sliding down his face and neck. I sat beside him and pushed wet hair from his eyes.

  “I lost control of myself,” he whispered. “I reacted from the gut, without thinking.”

  I was silent a moment. “What did you do to her?”

  “I did what I said. She will protect us. Her children will be our spies. For all intents and purposes, she’s ours.” Grant could b
arely meet my gaze. “I crossed the line.”

  I put his hand on my stomach, and held it there. “What are we fighting for?”

  His jaw tightened. “Life.”

  “Life,” I repeated softly. “When this is over, I’ll be there to help you sleep at night.”

  CHAPTER 21

  THREE months after my mother’s murder—back when I was twenty-one and still unaccustomed to the boys sleeping as tattoos on my body—I chased a demon into a Detroit car dump and realized that for all my training, all my knowledge, I just didn’t have the stomach to punch out a ten-year-old kid—even one who was possessed and had murdered his baby sister in the backseat of a parked Chevrolet.

  So I played coward. I let that demon run. I waited until nightfall. I made Zee and the others go hunting for me, and I followed, and only when the possessed boy was down on the ground, screaming in rage, did I lay my hand on him, gently, and exorcise the parasite out of his young, wounded soul.

  I relied on Zee and the others, like that. I relied on them to protect my soul.

  Now it was time for me to get my own hands dirty.

  And protect them.

  EASIER said than done.

  When I tried to go to the boys, the armor refused me. Grant and I stood in the middle of the apartment, hair and clothing still damp from the rain, backpacks slung over our shoulders. I held my right hand in a fist, pressed against my chest. Eyes closed, I focused on those five heartbeats throbbing.

  Five heartbeats, filled with anger.

  I had felt their anger from that first moment of the bond. It had not yet eased. I was becoming used to it, but it frightened me. Feeling their rage didn’t explain the cause.