by Marjorie Liu
“Better than your own arm.”
His eyes narrowed, and he glanced down at Zee. “How can she be the vessel and not know what we need?”
“Different times, different needs,” Zee answered simply. “She is our Queen.”
Ha’an flinched. “But you are still our Kings.”
Zee raked his claws through the dirt, spines flexing in agitation. “Yours. Hers. Together.”
The Mahati Lord leaned backward, fixing me with his glittering gaze. “I feel the old one breathing beneath her skin. I know, in my mind, she is the Vessel. But without you embracing her body . . . she is too human. The others will not accept her as a Queen.”
“Must,” Zee told him. “You must.”
Ha’an gave him a long, unreadable look. And then he did the same to me—his full regard, lifting his chin, challengingly. “You, with fat and meat on your bones. Do you know what it is like to suffer such hunger that you must eat your own flesh to survive?”
“Do you?” I asked coldly. “You look intact.”
A terrible stillness stole over him. I almost took a step back, but Raw leaned against my legs, holding me in place. Dek placed a reassuring claw on my ear.
“The hunt,” he whispered, “is not just for flesh. That might fill our bellies but not our souls.”
“You hunt for pain,” I said.
“Pain is a sharp force,” Ha’an replied, as though that should explain so much. “If livestock were enough, we would consume those slow beasts. But minds . . . dreaming minds . . . make power, have a taste, infuse every cell, every lick of blood, every crack of bone, with a force we must have to be strong.”
You have tasted it, said the darkness. You have ridden the edges of what he speaks. Imagine being bathed in the light of ten thousand minds, crashing to a final death at your feet. Last moments burn strongest in the feast.
I stared into Ha’an’s green eyes, trying not to tremble with the terrible, nameless hunger rising in my throat. “Take what you already found, and no more. Return to the veil.”
Ha’an fixed me with a hard, hollow gaze. “If I do not?”
I glanced down at Raw and Aaz, and they hit the nearest Mahati like bullets made of teeth and claws. I forced myself to watch with pure dispassion as Raw swallowed an entire arm, just stuffed it down his throat, before biting it off the screaming Mahati’s shoulder. Aaz burrowed through the other demon’s chest, nearly chewing him in two.
I didn’t move. I didn’t flinch. Screaming on the inside, but there was stone in my heart because there had to be. Ruthless, because it was the only way to keep the people I loved alive.
I looked at Ha’an. “Get the fuck back in the veil. Now.”
He held my gaze a moment longer than was smart, then flicked his long fingers at the other Mahati, who began hastily gathering up the remains of their hunt, and newly dead. I wanted to tell them to stop, leave the human bodies—but I had an instinct for how far I could push, and this was all for time. Time for Grant and Jack to make a miracle happen.
“This is not the end,” Ha’an said, looking from me to Zee. “Forgive me, but we will hunt. We will hunt to live.”
We will hunt with you, murmured the darkness. We will lead the armies of starlight into the horizon, into the war-fires, into the Labyrinth where the shadow rises—
I bit my tongue and tasted blood.
“We will hunt,” Ha’an said again, as though reassuring himself. “We will survive.”
“That remains to be seen,” I told him quietly. Ha’an was a giant, towering at least three feet above me, with muscles that made him several times as broad. But I felt larger than him in that moment, full with rippling power, and a certainty that my life was rooted deeper than a mountain, older than stone. I didn’t like what gave me that feeling, but it was there, and I used it to hold his gaze and make him back down.
“Queen,” Ha’an said, softly, with speculation.
He turned and leapt into the sky. The other Mahati followed him.
I remained very still, watching them until they were out of sight.
“Zee,” I breathed.
“Doing as you said,” he rasped, clutching my hand.
My knees trembled. I was going to fall.
So I fell backward, to home.
I tried to, anyway. The armor had other ideas.
I stepped from the void into moonlight. A river of moonlight, shining through clouds upon a dark plain.
I heard a woman screaming. I smelled smoke. Zee and the boys gathered close, gripping my hands and legs.
“No,” he said, his claws digging so deep into my skin I thought he would cut me. And then he did, and the touch of my blood made him flinch away from me, eyes large. I reached for him, but he stayed just out of my touch, shaking his head and scratching his arms, his face, his eyes.
I stared at him, helpless; but that woman screamed again, and something about her voice cut through me like a knife. Even the darkness stilled, hushed.
“No.” Zee grabbed for my hand when I turned to look for that woman, but this time it was me who slipped away, and I ran.
I ran with all my strength, urgency sweeping over me, and fear. My heart thundered in my throat, and the darkness rocked within me, small, smaller, as though hiding. My bond with Grant felt faint, pale, the thread holding us together so thin it might snap if I breathed wrong. I held my armored hand over my chest, as if that would hold us together.
But I didn’t stop running. Boys, chasing me like wolves, skipping through the shadows with their red eyes blazing.
I skidded to a stop at the crest of a small hill and looked down at the smoking remains of what had been a small village. I couldn’t tell what it had looked like before its destruction, but the fires had long burned out.
The woman had fallen silent, but I found her sitting in the moonlight, hunched over a limp, broken body.
Oturu stood beside them both. His cloak and hair drifted against the wind, graceful, soaking in the silver light. Head bowed, the brim of his black hat swept low.
He looked up and saw me. But did not say a word.
I was afraid to look at him. More afraid to look at the woman. She sat up for a brief moment. Stole my breath, made me ache.
My mother, I thought. She was pregnant, not hugely, but enough to strain the front of her clothing.
But then I looked closer, and I knew I was wrong. Not my mother. The face might be similar, the right age, but there was a subtle difference no one but me would have known. Like listening to the same song played by two masters and hearing the difference only in the tone.
That, and this woman’s entire right arm was made of silver.
My ancestor. Five thousand years in the past. Might as well have been another world. Me, a ghost in time.
She screamed again, her voice breaking into a sob so torn, so cut with grief, I wanted to sink to my knees and hold my heart. Something in that sound was too familiar, too close for comfort. I forced myself to study the person she wept over, the person she touched with hesitant hands that clutched and fluttered, and curled into fists that she pressed against her heaving chest.
A woman. I couldn’t see her face, but I saw the long dark hair, and the shape of the still body—and I knew. I just knew.
Mother. Her mother.
Red eyes glinted in the shadows near both women. Blinking, staring up the hill at me and my boys. She hadn’t noticed us, and I wanted to keep it that way. I backed up, slowly, listening to her sob. Struggling not to weep with her. My mother’s body had fallen on the kitchen floor just like that. I had crouched over her, screaming—also, just like that. I could still feel those screams in my throat.
So could the boys. Raw and Aaz shuddered against my legs. Zee stumbled through the grass, while Dek raised a mournful cry. My boys. Monsters. Kings of an army that destroyed worlds.
Like fucking hell.
I turned and came face-to-face with a dark cloak, and tangled hair that moved through the air around me like
some aura of night. I suffered a jolt, but only because I couldn’t remember Oturu after seeing my ancestor, and her mother. The world could have dropped away, and I would have seen nothing else.
“Lady Hunter,” he said. “You should not be here, in this moment. It is not your time.”
I closed my eyes, swaying, and the tendrils of his hair reached around my body, holding me up, holding me to him. “Who killed her mother?”
Zee made a small wailing sound, deep in his throat. Oturu hesitated.
“She did,” he said.
I flinched, shaking my head. “No.”
“It was fast,” he went on. “An accident. A rush of temper. Her mother—”
“Stop.” I pushed against him, but my hands sank into his cloak, sank deep without touching anything except unimaginable cold. Raw and Aaz grabbed my waist and pulled me away, quick. My hands felt burned when they left his body, but only with ice. I could barely bend my fingers. Zee gripped them in his claws, blowing gently. His warm breath soothed over my skin.
“She lost her mind,” I whispered. I could still hear her sobs, drifting over the hill. Gut-wrenching. So alone.
Horrified me. Not just for my ancestor, but myself. If she could do this, no matter the reason . . . if she could just snap . . .
It was not us, said the darkness. Not us.
But you cut her mind with power. You made her insane.
She was damaged, it murmured. Already damaged.
I tugged on Zee’s hand, needing to hold something, anything, to anchor me away from that voice inside my head. I spoke aloud, determined to drown out the voice. To find answers to the unanswerable. “Her mother should have died long before this. You were already bonded to her daughter’s skin when she was thrown into the Wasteland. But down there, she has the armor, she’s pregnant. Must have been years. And her mother was alive all that time? How? Demons should have killed her.”
Killed her, like my mother was killed. Like my grandmother. Like all the others before us.
“Different, then,” Zee rasped, so softly I could barely hear him. “Wardens around, mothers lasted longer. No bad bargains.”
I heard growls, behind me. Zee stiffened. I turned to look, but Oturu touched me again, held me still.
“Do not,” he said. “Your wards are not the wards of the past.”
“No Zee would ever hurt me.”
His mouth tightened. “You must go, young Queen.”
I wished I could see his eyes. “How do you know me? We won’t meet for another five thousand years.”
“Time,” he breathed. “Time means nothing, between us.”
His hair wrapped around my right hand.
“Go,” he said. “Remember us, as we remember you.”
Behind me, Zee snarled. Raw and Aaz leaned against my legs, claws out, teeth bared. Dek hissed into my ear. On the other side of the hill, my ancestor wailed like she was dying.
I shut my eyes, focused on Grant—
—on my mother—
—Grant—
—home—
Take me away, I thought. Take me.
The armor tingled against my skin. I slipped into the void.
But I could still hear her screams.
CHAPTER 19
I walked from the past into a quiet apartment. So quiet, so hushed, I knew without looking around that I was the only one there. Zee confirmed it for me, moments later. Raw and Aaz prowled. I didn’t let myself panic. There were no signs of violence. No blood.
I found a note on the kitchen counter.
Jack’s place. Love, Grant.
I frowned, glad that Mal had stayed with him. I almost left then, but took a moment to check out the room, drinking in the familiarity of it, the warmth. Not as warm without Grant, but I felt the good echoes.
And the bad, when I glanced down at the floor and saw bloodstains.
Dek hummed “Let’s Stay Together.” I scratched his head and walked to the piano bench, where the shoulder rig filled with my mother’s knives was still draped. Since seeing Jack’s body, I hadn’t wanted to even think about the blades, but I reached out to stroke the steel—
—and got a good look at my right hand.
My palm was still flesh, but that was all. That fluid, organic metal covered everything else: my fingers, the back of my hand. Couple more jumps, and all of it would be gone. For my ancestor to have lost her entire arm and shoulder meant that she had been even busier.
I shut out my thoughts of her. Pushed them away, down where I put all the distasteful things in my life. I wasn’t sure I sympathized with, or hated, that woman. Maybe both. Maybe I felt the same way about myself.
No, murmured that deep voice in my mind. Your hearts are not the same.
But you still want to manipulate me, I told it. There are things you want me to do.
I received no response to that.
I grabbed the shoulder rig and shrugged it on. The sheathed knives fit snugly against my ribs. I slid into my mother’s leather coat. It still smelled like her, after all these years. Made me feel as though I wore another kind of armor.
Outside the apartment, on the stairs, I heard footsteps, humming. Mary. It made sense they hadn’t taken her along, especially if the Messenger was with them. Fire and oil. Explosive.
The doorknob rattled.
I had thought about driving to Jack’s apartment, just to save me some skin. The idea lasted for all of two seconds.
Five more after that, I stood in a dark alley.
I was disoriented at first, until I realized I was behind Jack’s building. It was drizzling, and the air was cold against my head. Dek hugged my scalp. Red eyes blinked in the shadows.
A low voice said, “Dear girl.”
I turned. Saw a slender figure leaning on the wall beside a propped-open door. Dark hair, pale skin, those familiar eyes that were too old. I half expected him to be smoking a cigarette.
“Old Wolf,” I said. “I was worried when I got back to the apartment.”
“I couldn’t concentrate there. I still can’t. I needed air.” He pushed off the wall, studying my face. “What happened with the Mahati?”
“I played tough.” I joined him, not minding the rain as I stood and watched my grandfather just as intently as he did me. I soaked him in. “Bunch of pussycats when you get right down to it.”
“That so?” Jack’s brow lifted. “I can think of several other words to describe them.”
I shrugged. “So, no progress?”
He gave me a tired smile. “My kind are made of infinitely complex threads of energy. Brains without flesh, you might say. It’s the reason we’re capable of understanding—and actualizing—certain . . . elusive concepts.”
I smiled back. “Like building an interdimensional prison out of a rift in space-time that’s capable of housing a demonic army.”
My grandfather inclined his head. “Something like that.”
“So we’re not smart enough to close the veil? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I’m saying that no one has the wiring necessary to understand what we did. Even I have trouble with it, and I was one of the designers.”
“Right,” I said slowly, filled with a hundred different things I wanted to say to him, and ask—nothing that couldn’t keep, a little while longer. “How are you teaching them?”
Jack tapped his head. “We’ve been on the surface of each other’s thoughts. If I were even a little bit nosy, I’d be having a field day.”
“Groovy.” I leaned against the wall, turning my face up to the rain. “I’ll stick with intimidating the Mahati.”
He sighed, maybe with laughter, or sadness. “Maxine—”
“She killed her own mother,” I said. “My ancestor.”
I hadn’t known I was going to say that until the words were done, gone. Speaking them felt wrong—not the act, but the words themselves, the meaning of them, the truth. I felt ugly for giving them up.
Jack’s mouth clicked shut.
“You said you wanted to do things differently this time. You just ignored her before, is that it? Let her run wild until it was too late?” I met his gaze, unable to stop talking. “Did you know that some of the Wardens threw her into the Wasteland?”
Zee had said that Jack didn’t know. I needed to see it for myself. I wasn’t disappointed. Shock moved through my grandfather’s face, a trembling disbelief that made him shake his head and back up a step.
“Never,” he said.
“I saw it,” I told him. “Straight from memories she gave Oturu. One of them was a woman with wings, and there were twins with rubies in their foreheads—”
Jack’s breath caught.
“—and a giant with one eye, a cyclops. He was against the others. Too slow to stop it, though.”
“No,” he murmured, but his gaze was distant, like he was talking to himself. “Oh, oh, no.”
“The Wasteland fucked her up, Old Wolf. The Wasteland ripped open the hole to that sleeping shit inside her. But it started with them.”
Jack sagged against the wall, shutting his eyes. Even in the body of a teen, I could see the old man. He looked frail, and I felt bad for telling him. I could have made it easier. Tried to, anyway.
I heard heavy footsteps on the other side of the door. A cane. I straightened and touched Jack’s bony shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go in.”
But he shook his head and gave me a look so pained, so miserable, I stopped breathing.
“I didn’t know,” he whispered.
“I know that,” I said. “I know, Jack.”
“She was so angry,” he went on, as the door beside us pushed open. “The things she did to them, I never understood.”
Grant peered out, Mal draped over his shoulders. He looked at me with relief, and a deep warmth that was all in his eyes and not the grim line of his mouth. I had a feeling he had been listening a long time. Our voices would have drifted easily through that open door.
I shook my head at him, just as Jack shuddered violently and rubbed his chest, like it hurt.
“I will make this right,” he said, closing his eyes. “I was a coward then, but not now. I will fix this.”
I frowned. “Jack?”
He looked me dead in the eyes. “I love you, my dear. I love you, always.”
