Armor of Roses and The Silver Voice

by Marjorie M. Liu

  I stared, for a moment unsure what I was looking at. I saw depressions for eyes, a hard jaw and rows of teeth . . . but it was all wrong, and eerie.

  Yes, there was a head in the bowling bag. A skull.

  But it was carved from crystal. And it did not look human.

  “Groovy,” I said. “But what the hell?”

  The demon tore her gaze away, trembling. Moments later, I also started quivering—unable to help myself as a tiny tsunami rolled over every inch of my skin. Zee stretched and rippled, as did the rest of the boys, all of them tugging, pulling, struggling toward the crystal skull in my hand.

  The truck’s engine roared. I jumped back as the vehicle jolted forward, spitting dust in my face. The driver’s side door was still open, swinging wildly, but the possessed woman had pulled her leg inside and was twisting at the steering wheel, her aura flaring wild and dark. I dropped the skull inside the bag, and ran after her.

  Too slow, too late. The front bumper hit my knee as she accelerated past, but the boys deflected the impact. I tried to grab the door, but all I caught was air—and a glimpse of her determined, terrified expression.

  I stopped running and watched the truck tear down the driveway in a choking cloud of dust. Bewildered, feeling stupid. Would that possessed woman have been able to pull off the same escape a year ago? Was I that sloppy?

  Or am I getting too used to letting demons go?

  I hated both possibilities. Might as well stick one foot in the grave. I was losing my edge.

  That, or the edge had shifted sideways. Demonic possession didn’t mean the same thing anymore. It didn’t feel like the same threat I’d always thought it to be—not now, not after being exposed to far more immediate, and terrible, dangers.

  I had lived my life believing that I was supposed to kill demons—all demons.

  But the truth was worse.

  I was the very thing that needed to be feared most. My body, a prison for five of the most dangerous demons ever to exist.

  Reaper Kings. Devourers of worlds.

  And I was their Queen.

  2

  I was back on the porch, sipping that ginger ale, when Grant and Byron came home. I heard them coming before the dust started rising. My mother’s station wagon hadn’t been driven in close to fifteen years, and the engine had a complaint for every half mile—grumbling and coughing, spitting like it was some cranky old man. The wagon had been old before its retirement: one of those gas-guzzling tanks that whole families could camp inside on summer road trips into the mountains. Like a Disney movie, or something.

  My mother and I had lived in that car for years. Comfortable. Lots of windows. Always an interesting view.

  I felt strange every time I heard the engine. Too many memories. But that seemed to be what I needed right now, because I had Johnny Cash playing on the other side of the open window, his thunderous rumbling voce filling the warm air, and there was nothing like his music to inspire some deep contemplation of my mother and magic, demons, and murder.

  That, and what we were going to have for supper. I was hungry.

  I ambled down to meet the station wagon. Byron was behind the wheel, a nervous half smile on his face. He looked like a city kid with his floppy black hair, and the kind of pale skin you could only get from living in a place that never saw the sun. Like Seattle.

  He was skinny, strong, all his fingernails painted black. An earring dangled, shaped like a feather. He’d had it for three days, bought from a local at a farmer’s market, and I was pretty sure it was his favorite thing.

  Byron braked too hard, slamming him—and his passenger—against his seat belt. Dust flew. Creaks and pops filled the air, like settling bones. I bit back a smile, tapping the hot hood with my dark fingernails, and made my way around the bumper to the other side of the station wagon where Grant leaned out the window like he was thinking of crawling free.

  “Save me,” he mouthed. I laughed out loud, and he reached out to hook his fingers inside the waist of my jeans, pulling me close until he could kiss the part of me that was closest to eye level—which just happened to be my hip. Heat spread through me, along with tenderness so big, I didn’t know why my heart wasn’t beating outside my body, maybe in the same spot where his mouth pressed against me.

  “Welcome back, Mr. Cooperon,” I murmured, running my fingers through his thick brown hair. I felt, inside me, a tug—right below my heart—and inside my head saw a vision of golden thread burning bright.

  Our very real bond, linking us, soul to soul. My strength, his. His strength, mine. Married, in more ways than one.

  He made a small, contented sound. “Good to be alive, Mrs. Kiss.”

  Byron, mostly out of sight on the other side of the massive station wagon, murmured, “I didn’t drive that bad.”

  “Even the road tried to get out of your way,” Grant retorted, and opened the door with a groan. I grabbed his cane before it fell out, and held it for him as he swung his bad leg from the car. A hammer-wielding schizophrenic had crushed those bones some years back, but even with that old injury, my husband kept up with me better than anyone else in this world.

  My husband.

  Two words that made me warm and goofy. I had never imagined I would have this kind of relationship. It was not done. It was not safe. No woman in my family, to my knowledge, had ever tried to make a life with a man.

  Of course, there was a lot I didn’t know about my ancestors. My bloodline was ten thousand years old. Assumptions were stupid. People fell in love. My grandmother had. So had my mother. But neither of them had stayed with her man, for better or worse.

  For better or worse, I had.

  Grant winced as he got out of the station wagon. Tall, broad, dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt that strained against his hard chest and shoulders. He radiated warmth and light, in ways that everyone felt, from young to old. He had a strong, masculine face, and eyes that could see right through a person. Or a demon.

  Grant could see souls.

  Souls, which were nothing but energy. Energy that could be manipulated, altered . . . and transformed.

  With nothing but his voice.

  My mother would have killed him, just for that. No hesitation. No second thoughts.

  Byron slid from the driver’s seat and walked around to the station wagon’s rear hatch. I saw grocery bags inside and began to go and help him. Grant, though, touched my arm. The boys stirred beneath his hand, straining to be closer to him.

  “Something happened,” he said, with a slight frown. “Your aura is . . . tense.”

  I didn’t know what a tense aura looked like, but that possessed woman had been terrified—her demonic shadow fluttering like hummingbird wings. I could only imagine Grant was seeing something slightly more low-key around me.

  “We had a visitor,” I told him quietly, while Byron wrestled with plastic bags. “She left a gift. It’s on the porch.”

  Grant’s frown deepened. I kissed his cheek and went to grab some groceries.

  Byron was still trying to load up on bags, like he was aiming to carry all twenty at the same time. I nudged him aside with my hip and a grin, and he smiled back, shyly.

  “See any cute girls?” I asked him, watching from the corner of my eye as Grant limped to the porch.

  The boy shook his head and touched the dangling earring. “I’m not sure I quite fit in, anyway.”

  “You miss Seattle?” We still had a home there: a warehouse loft that sat above a homeless shelter that Grant operated out of his own deep pockets. It had been a month since we’d left it behind. There was too much death inside those walls. We needed time, not just to let the memories fade but to air out the stink of blood.

  “Maybe.” Byron hesitated. “But this is nice. I like it away from the city. It’s . . . quiet.”


  “Quiet feels safe,” I murmured, wondering if that was why my mother had made us live here after years on the road.

  “Yeah.” He gave me a thoughtful glance. “How safe are we?”

  I hesitated a heartbeat too long. Byron blinked, and looked away. I nudged him again and ruffled his hair.

  “Safe,” I said. “You’re safe with us.”

  He didn’t say anything, wrestling instead with grocery bags—jaw tight, eyes dark and far away. I wondered, sometimes, if he remembered anything of all the lives he had lived—those thousands of years lingering somewhere in his cells, despite all attempts to keep him ignorant of his true, immortal nature.

  Byron was no ordinary teenager. I was no ordinary woman. Grant was probably the most human of us all, but even he wasn’t from this world.

  Our little family. Crazy and wonderful. And that was even without Zee and the boys.

  Byron grabbed some bags, and I took the rest. Looked like vegetables and fruit, and baking materials. I spotted a lot of frozen dinners, too, along with motor oil, a dozen bottles of rubbing alcohol, and about that many family-sized bags of M&Ms. Good eats.

  We lumbered to the house. Grant sat on the porch, staring at the crystal skull. I had set it out on a chair, nestled on a tattered red cushion. Johnny Cash still rumbled, this time about the apocalypse—which seemed incredibly appropriate.

  Byron paused, staring at the skull. “Wow.”

  “Yes, wow,” Grant muttered, and gave me a piercing look.

  I shook my head and went into the house just long enough to dump the grocery bags and put away the frozen dinners. Byron opened the cabinets, unloading rice and cans. I patted his shoulder on my way out, and he only flinched a little. It wasn’t personal. He still had trouble, sometimes, being touched.

  Outside, I found Grant sprawled in his chair, staring at the hill where my mother and grandfather were buried. He was humming beneath his breath, less a melody than a rumble, less music than power. His flute was in the house, but he’d been using it less, learning instead how to rely on his own voice to twist at the threads of energy around him.

  “What’s the verdict?” I asked him.

  “Who brought it?” he replied, instead of answering my question.

  “A possessed woman. Terrified. She said that she was . . . ordered. In a dream.”

  “That makes me feel so much better.”

  I snorted and leaned against the rail. “It’s not shaped like a human skull.”

  “No,” he said softly, “it’s certainly not.”

  The cranium was wide, with three ridges across the brow and a similar protruding crest at the cheeks. The eye sockets were huge, and the carved jaw thick. The upper and lower rows of teeth were sharp as dagger points, jutting at odd, uneven angles that reminded me of a piranha’s mouth.

  It should have been ridiculous. But it wasn’t.

  It was disturbing as hell.

  My first view of the skull, out in the driveway, had been too quick. I had not appreciated, then, just how unsettling it really was—but I’d been sitting with the thing for over an hour, and it was pretty much getting on my last nerve.

  “I assume you’ve heard of crystal skulls,” Grant said.

  “New Age bunk,” I replied. “Signs of alien life. Hosts of supernatural powers. Ancient computers. I spent a lot of late nights watching bad hotel television before I met you.”

  His mouth twitched. “Pre-Columbian fakes. At least, that’s what one camp says, while others believe . . . well, everything you just said.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, rubbing my tattooed arms, soothing the boys. “But I bet demons didn’t deliver up those skulls in a bowling bag and red pickup truck.”

  “No, you’re special,” he replied dryly. “This skull, sweetheart, isn’t from earth.”

  Ace Books by Marjorie M. Liu

  THE IRON HUNT

  DARKNESS CALLS

  A WILD LIGHT

  THE MORTAL BONE

  Anthologies

  WILD THING

  (with Maggie Shayne, Alyssa Day, and Meljean Brook)

  NEVER AFTER

  (with Laurell K. Hamilton, Yasmine Galenorn, and Sharon Shinn)

  INKED

  (with Karen Chance, Yasmine Galenorn, and Eileen Wilks)

  eSpecials

  HUNTER KISS

  ARMOR OF ROSES AND THE SILVER VOICE