by Marjorie Liu
“Put aside your concerns for the boy, just for a moment. What we need to discuss has nothing to do with my . . . death.”
“What, then?”
He shifted uneasily, rubbing his hands in a washing gesture, scrubbing at them until his skin looked red. Out, damned spot. “You don’t remember. You should remember.”
I grabbed his wrist, stilling him. “You’ll break his skin if you keep that up.”
“It wouldn’t matter.” Jack closed his eyes. “Do you know how many times this boy has died over the last three thousand years—through murder and beatings, and simple starvation?”
I froze, cold to the pit of my stomach. Zee twisted against my skin. I touched my breastbone, steadying him, and me.
Jack whispered, “You love Byron so much.”
“I love him.” I could barely speak. “He’s not my child, but I love him.”
His face crumpled, raw misery and heartache filling his eyes—fleeting, before he rubbed them hard and sighed. Amazing, how much of the old man I could see in Bryon: the way he set his jaw, the tilt of his head, how he studied Grant, then me. Like a rough caricature, superimposed upon the teen. I had to look away.
Jack said, “It shouldn’t have been like this. I realized, last night after the party, that someone was coming for me. I could feel a ripple from the Labyrinth—and there were things you needed to know in case the encounter went badly. Now I have to tell you again.”
Something in his voice made me afraid. I couldn’t even swallow. Grant said, “What is it, Jack?”
“The truth about who Maxine really is.” My grandfather looked from him to me. “Because I love you, my dear. I should not have loved your grandmother, but I did. I should not have loved the daughter I made with her, but I did, with all my heart. Just as I love you. Please, remember that.”
Zee was struggling harder now. All the boys were. Even the armor tingled. I clenched my hand into a fist and pushed it against my stomach, hard. The boys pushed back.
Jack said, “The others should tie you down. Rope won’t be strong enough. Neither will chains, but they may have to do.”
Grant made a small sound. I stared.
My grandfather gave us a dark, hollow look. “It’s a kindness.”
“You think I’ll hurt Byron. To get to you,” I said, stunned with the realization; and then, “Oh, my God.”
Grant’s hand tensed. I pushed him away, backing up until I hit the racks. “I did kill you. I cut your throat.”
“No,” Jack said gently. “But you didn’t stop Zee when he did.”
Grant stepped between us. “Enough.”
“No,” Jack said, again. I could not see him around Grant. His voice sounded distant, far away. I wanted to melt into the floor, or explode through my skin. I wanted to run like hell and never come back.
“No,” Jack said, a third time, even more softly, as though the word was a chant, or prayer.
I stepped out from behind Grant and faced my grandfather. “Zee killed you because of something you told us.”
“It was an emotional reaction. Happened so quickly I’m not certain you could have stopped him, even had you wanted to.”
“Maxine would never condone hurting you,” Grant said tightly.
“Lightbringer,” Jack said. “Maybe you don’t see as much as you think.”
I glanced around the room but saw no rope, no chains, nothing at all to tie me down with. I didn’t feel particularly in need of restraints, all things considered. Just answers. Something to cut the pressure building in my skull.
“Tell me,” I said. “The boys are asleep. I’m unarmed. I won’t hurt Byron. I won’t hurt you, no matter what you have to say.”
Jack was quiet for such a long time, I wasn’t certain whether to feel insulted or frightened. He hardly seemed to breathe. Grant was also still, tension and power crackling in his silence. I wished I could see through his eyes. I wanted to know what the world looked like as energy and light. I wanted to know what he saw inside me, what he saw that did not scare him.
Jack edged close, and extended his hand. Byron’s hand. I took it, and Dek trembled against my skin. Grant grabbed my other hand and squeezed. Heat traveled through my palm, up my arm, into my heart.
“I have a story to tell you,” Jack said.
“Make it simple. Tell me the truth.”
“You’re not who you think you are,” he replied, with all the pain of a man confessing murder. “Your bloodline isn’t what you think. My kind didn’t create the Wardens to guard the prison veil, and though your ancestors might have lived amongst them, and believed they were one of them, those mothers and daughters were never Wardens to begin with.”
He paused, pale and sweating. Rex made a low, dismayed sound—as though something had just clicked into place for him. I didn’t look in his direction, but I felt him on the periphery, shrinking back against the racks. Staring at both of us with unmistakable horror.
I whispered, “Jack.”
“I need a drink,” he said.
“Jack,” I said again, just as the boys began trembling on my skin, quivering with a simmering rage that felt like shallow earthquakes, or sandpaper scraping.
Outside the room, I heard a shuffling sound. Jack’s head snapped up. Mary glided toward the door, muscles tight with the promise of violence. Rex reached for his gun.
The door opened.
The Messenger stood on the other side.
Time slowed. I watched her. She watched me. Her small eyes glinted golden in the basement light. Alien, in the details—her neck too long, her eyes too small, her cheeks a little too sharp and delicate. She could pass for human, but with a double take. Mothers might hide their children. I would. Not because of her bone structure. She radiated an otherness that was not simply eerie, but cold, aloof, menacing in the way a predator menaced—with stillness, and patience, and promise.
So much promise.
She was not alone. I saw two men and a woman behind her, deep in the shadows: not zombies, just human, wearing jeans, a business suit, a jogging outfit. Nothing in their eyes. Mouths slack.
“There is no place you can hide from me,” she said softly, her voice lilting with power. “For I am the hand, and the light, and I am justice, swift, in the name of our Aetar Masters. Praise be their light.”
Grant stepped in front of me. I began to cut him off, but Jack was even faster, darting around the both of us. Slender, young in body, old as a star.
The Messenger had been focused on Grant and me—but when she saw Jack, a shudder ripped through her. She hadn’t expected to find him here—that much was clear. The amulet had worked.
The shudder faded into a quiver—a tremor that made her eyelid tick—and then down, down she went, her knees hitting the floor so hard I heard a crack. That tremor faded into perfect stillness.
“Maker,” she said. “Praise be your light.”
“No, don’t,” Jack said. “Don’t.”
For a split second I thought he was telling her not to worship him. And maybe for a split second that was the case. But the Messenger’s head lashed up, staring at Grant, then past him at me.
“You will not defile him again,” she said, and grabbed Jack’s arm. I had already started moving, but two seconds was an eternity. Two seconds couldn’t compete with the speed of a thought.
Jack’s eyes widened. I reached out—
They disappeared. So did the three humans. I staggered into Jack’s last position, hit on all sides by the air in the room, rushing to take up the space that five people had just been occupying.
I fell on my knees. Slammed my armored fist into the floor. Concrete cracked, and went flying. Grant grabbed my shoulder. I didn’t try to push him away. Instead, I stared at the armor.
Please, I thought. This needs to happen.
The armor pulsed, once. I imagined a voice reply: Yes, it does.
Then, nothing. My vision slipped sideways, fading to black. Hearts thundered on my skin. I felt the cold of the void in
my soul—and just when I thought I’d been lost too long, too long for that soul—I hit rock.
Daylight. Sky silver, leaking mist and a fine rain. I could see my breath, and smelled sap. Above the thick tree cover, shrouded in clouds, loomed the craggy stone fingers of a mountain buried in snow.
Heavy breathing. A low grunt of pain. I found Grant on his knees, clutching his cane in a white-knuckled grip. His bottom lip bled. Bitten, maybe. He was very pale, deathly so—but if he was afraid, I didn’t see it in his eyes.
“Behind me,” he said. “Listen.”
I didn’t need to listen. That woman’s voice was everywhere, flowing through the trees in a strange, minor key that sounded like a distant cousin to nails on a chalkboard. Made the boys ripple on my skin. Even Grant, now, had spoken with power in his tones, each one rolling over me like a hard ocean wave. Except I was the reef, the mountain, with my roots in stone.
“Stay here,” I told Grant, but he grabbed my wrist and used me to haul himself to his feet. His strength surprised me. And once he was standing, I didn’t waste time trying to convince him to sit back down. All he had to do was look at me. Intense, thoughtful, grim. And then the corner of his mouth twitched, and his gaze filled with warmth and resolve. Like this, what we were about to do—whatever that might be—was nothing.
I gave up. Any man who could scare Blood Mama—any man who could kill an Avatar with nothing but his voice—was no fool, and no one who needed to be protected.
Even though I would. With my last breath.
I turned, ran. Grant jammed his cane into the ground and kept up, only a few steps behind. He moved fast for a man with a bad leg.
I saw Jack first. Standing with his eyes closed, face uplifted to the sky. Quivering. Shaking. Cold, or under terrible strain. I thought it might be the latter. The Messenger stood beside him, her face also uplifted, mouth open so wide she could have swallowed a large man’s fist. Her jaw had come unhinged. The vein in her long neck vibrated like a hummingbird’s wings. Grotesque. So was her voice.
I’d heard strains of a melody in the beginning, but it was as though something had been keyed in, locked, and all she needed now was power. The three humans lay on the ground in a crumpled heap. They looked dead. As though they had been out in the desert for a week, drying under the sun.
I didn’t stop running. I picked up speed and slammed into the Messenger with all my strength. We flew into the nearest tree. I heard a massive cracking sound. Bone. Wood. Didn’t feel a thing, but the Messenger coughed blood, and her jaw sagged like old underwear.
Her voice, though, still rose from her chest, rising and rising. Even her coughs were melodic. Every sound, laced with power. Every sound, energy.
She stared at me. I gritted my teeth and slammed her head into the tree. I wasn’t going to let her get away. Not again. She continued to look at me. Her gaze never wavered. Uncanny, golden. I didn’t blink. Least I could do was not flinch when I killed her.
“No,” Jack said, behind me. Grant fell down on his knees, close, and slammed his hand against the woman’s brow. She gasped, trying to free herself from him, but I climbed on top of her body and held her still.
“Open your eyes,” Grant said, each word shimmering in the air and clinging to his voice, his voice that sank into my heart. My heart, that was stronger than my brain, because I saw things in that moment, flashes of heat and memory filled with Grant: standing on the beach with him, laughing as the wind lashed us so hard we spread our arms, pretending to fly; or nights in candlelight, in little restaurants where the booths were deep and private, and our toes wrestled beneath the table; or his hands sliding down my bare shoulders, against my back, holding me to him, tight, tighter, always—
I gasped, touching my head. Drowning, overwhelmed. I tried to remember more, but there was too much, all at once. My head hurt. I had to lean hard on the tree.
“No, don’t,” Jack said once more, still out of sight. “You can’t.”
“Open your eyes,” Grant said again to the woman, ignoring my grandfather. I knew what he was trying to do. I knew, because I knew him. I remembered.
She screamed. Jack cried out. Grant winced but dug in harder, his face almost unrecognizable. He was humming, but so low it was barely audible. I felt it, though. The ground vibrated with his voice. Fallen evergreen needles trembled. So did rocks, shaking loose from the hard dirt. The boys raged against my skin, flowing upward over my face and head.
Her scream didn’t end. Just rose and rose, her jaw flopping sideways as she tried twisting away from Grant. His eyes glowed. So did hers. I didn’t tell him to stop. I was afraid to. I heard more cracking sounds, but they were beneath us, in the ground, in the trees. The armor rippled and shimmered. So did the silver veins running across my hands, and the red eyes burning hot in my skin. Everything was burning. Every breath, hot. I smelled sulfur.
Jack collapsed beside me. Blood trickled from his nostrils. His eyes, wild. He tried to grab me, but his hand bounced off the air around my body, and he clutched it to his chest. My grandfather. Byron. Looking at me with such horror.
“It’s tearing,” he breathed. “Maxine.”
I was still distracted by Grant, my memories. I didn’t understand what he was telling me. Not until I vomited.
There was nothing in my stomach, but the act was violent and shocking. I never got sick. Never.
Except for one time, only. For one reason, only.
Pain spiked inside my head. Zee pulled so hard on my skin I felt certain he would break free. He was trying. All of them were, with all their strength. I looked around, heart hammering in my throat—
—and the world bled light. A storm of light. A wild, aching light that was white-hot, and caressed with undertones of rich reds and purples, kisses of turquoise that broke apart like hissing sparks. I was blind, for light.
Until I looked up and saw darkness.
I blinked, and the light disappeared, the forest slamming back into my vision like a slap. I still felt blind, though—only because the world appeared so dull: gray, bled out, drained.
But the darkness was there. In the sky, above our heads. A crack in the sky, a seam shaped like a lightning bolt, red and bleeding through the clouds. I smelled blood. I heard screams on the other side.
“Maxine,” Jack whispered.
I see it, I wanted to tell him, but my voice wouldn’t work.
The prison veil was open. And something bigger than a parasite was about to come through.
CHAPTER 11
I felt like a kid in one of those nightmares where the halls never ended and the doors were all locked, and even though you couldn’t turn to see what was behind you, you heard the hard breathing and felt the heat on your neck, and knew that if you stopped, even for a moment, something worse than death would happen.
Right now, the halls were going on forever. Doors locked. Except there was no running. I’d see the monster coming.
The screams intensified, and the wind shuddered through the forest with one wild heave, tearing at my clothes and making the trees sway and groan. I smelled blood—thick, cloying—and beneath those harrowing cries I imagined the sound of crashing waves, full of storm.
Grant was finally silent, watching the sky with grim horror. Even the Messenger stared past his shoulder, her small eyes opened wide. I looked at Jack, but he was staring at the woman.
“You fool,” he said to her. “You thought you were opening the Labyrinth? There is more than one kind of door.”
The Messenger flinched. I grabbed Jack’s arm. “Can it be closed?”
“Not by me.” He looked at the others. “Not alone.”
“Tell me how,” Grant said.
“Lad,” Jack replied slowly. “I told you. It took almost all of my kind to build the veil, and the effort still killed some of us. You can’t.”
Grant stilled. “We don’t have a choice but to try.”
I rose on unsteady feet and stared up at the sky. I felt the weight of somethi
ng coming, but some of that weight was inside: a part of me, reaching for that hole with aching hunger, a yearning that bordered on homesickness. As though whatever was up there, I needed to find. I needed to touch, and breathe, and see.
Yours, all of it, a sinuous voice said in my mind. Yours to lead, to hold.
I tore my gaze from the hole to look down at Jack. It was a struggle. I didn’t see him at first, even though I stared into his face. My head was still in the sky, and my mouth was dry. “Go. If you can cut space, then go. Take Grant, take her, and get the hell out.”
“No,” Grant said, trying to stand. Jack shook his head, looking only at me. His eyes frightened me. I was afraid of what he could see in my eyes.
I grabbed the Messenger by the throat. Her dazed gaze cleared, focusing hard on me.
“There are things happening you don’t understand,” I said, desperation making my voice break. “Maybe you can’t. Maybe you’re not wired that way. But you keep them safe. You protect them. That, I think you understand.”
She shook her head, face screwed up as though in agony. “I understand you are one of them. And that he . . . the Lightbringer . . . did something to me.” Her trembling fingers brushed her brow, and her already pained gaze turned haunted. “I owe you no honor.”
The Messenger tried to grab Jack’s wrist. My grandfather wrenched backward, out of her grip, giving her a horrified look. “No, we will not run. We will not. She is my blood. She is the blood of my skin and soul—”
I cut him off, ruthless. “You remember what they did to Ahsen because she was an Avatar.” I looked at the Messenger. “I don’t care what happens to me. You protect them.”
The Messenger looked from Jack to me, her gaze sharper, but in a different way. Thoughtful, almost.
“If you are certain,” she said.
“No,” Jack snapped.
I forced myself to smile. “I love you, Old Wolf. Take care of Byron.” I looked at Grant. “Go.”
“Not a chance.” His hand shot out to grab the Messenger’s shoulder. “Remember what I told you.”
“My eyes were always open,” she said, her voice cracking on the last word.
