The Iron Hunt

by Marjorie M. Liu

  I did not care. I gripped a knife and threw it hard. The blade slid through her chest and thudded into the wall behind her. Beneath my ear, Oturu’s mark burned.

  “You cannot take my life,” said the girl distractedly. “Not even the demons in their prison could ruin me. Though they tried.”

  I crouched, sickened. “What are you, then?”

  She finally looked at me. She had never met my eyes. Her gaze was black as a shark, black as a doll, black as oil rich from rock, slick and hot, and the ageless intelligence of her gaze coated me in a miasma filled with such forebodings I could hardly think straight.

  “I am an Avatar,” she whispered. “I am what rests beneath the skin.”

  I heard sirens again, louder. I had shut them out, but I knew they were coming here. Any moment now, this place would be crawling with police. “And Sarai? Jack?”

  The little bud of her mouth hardened. She wiped her finger on Sarai’s blood-spattered dress. “They are dead. They will be dead. Here, or in the Labyrinth.” Her gaze flicked to the man and woman lying behind her, who were both finally beginning to stir.

  I glimpsed a braid of hair in her right hand. She said, very quietly, “This should not have been. Someone is interfering. ”

  Blood Mama. I struggled to stand, trying not to look at the gaping hole in Sarai’s perfect face. “She’s gone. What more do you want?”

  “Answers,” said the child absently, staring off to her left, as though listening. She stood and drifted toward the books. I saw my mother’s gift in front of her. The stone disc, shimmering like a smooth dark pearl.

  I ran. If I had not been invulnerable, I would have broken my bones leaping over those books, but I slipped and slid across jagged mounds of leather and cloth, fighting to reach the disc before the girl.

  I was too slow, and she was too close. Her hand closed over the stone, and her expression turned cold, so vicious that the entire room—the air itself, the books and paper—seemed to stiffen in shock. A tremble washed through me, a prescient flutter of horror. Zee tugged against my chest so hard I stumbled.

  I saw things in my mind: buried memories, flashes, strokes of lightning. My mother, standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon with the sun blazing on her tattooed skin, jumping into the abyss with her arms outstretched like a bird—her descent bleeding into the eyes of wolves—a pack of wolves, racing at my mother’s back toward a purple sunset striking golden against the crowns of evergreens. And in front of her, standing on a rocky outcrop, tanned and strong and smiling—

  —Jack.

  I lost him. I lost it all. Pain stabbed, and I slammed my palm against my eyes. Found myself on all fours, tumbled in books. I sensed movement, and looked up in time to see the girl—whatever she was—drop the stone disc as though burned. Her face was a mess, contorted as though caught in the reflection of a fun-house mirror, her eyes and nose scrunched so tight in her brow she resembled a Cyclops. She threw back her head, shuddering, and swiveled around to stare at me with that awful gaze.

  “Where?” she breathed. “Where did you get this?”

  I snarled at her, lurching to my feet. Her features smoothed, but this time she did not take my face; another woman instead, small and dark, hardly a wisp. Sharp teeth glinted in her mouth.

  “I will kill you,” she whispered. “Tell me.”

  I did not remember stripping off my gloves, but my fingers flexed free and hot, and the boys raged. I lunged, tearing books beneath my boots, and slammed my hands into the cloud of her body.

  The boys tried to latch on, but as before, she was slippery like water, utterly different from holding the essence of a parasite. She spread out, across the man and woman beside us—who were sitting up, staring. I could not stop her.

  And then, just like that, they were all gone. The Wonder Twins. The girl—demon or not. I stood alone with a dead woman and a roomful of books, and the sirens of the police wailing inside my head.

  I had no time. I swiped the stone disc from the floor—startled at the heat that poured through into the boys—and shoved it deep into my pocket. The knife I had thrown was nearby. I grabbed it up, then scrabbled across the books to kneel by Sarai. I brushed the back of my hand against her cheek. Her skin was still warm, but I told myself it was just casing, empty. A shell. All skin.

  All skin. I felt a tickle in my brain, but I was dense as a brick, too sick to think. I wiped my hand over my burning eyes, grief swelling in my throat. I did not know why. I had hardly known the woman. I hardly knew anything at all. I closed my eyes, darkness fluttering behind my ribs. “Trust me,” I breathed to the dead woman. “Trust me to take care of this.”

  I left fast. On the landing, I called out Jack’s name again but got no response. The sirens were loud through the walls. No time to leave through the front door. I turned and ran up the stairs. I found a studio. Empty, clean floors, empty walls, large windows that flooded the space with sunlight. One neatly made bed in the corner, and a tiny uncluttered bathroom. No Jack.

  On my left I saw a table covered in a careful arrangement of paints and brushes, and one canvas that was at least twelve feet square. Sarai had been working on a painting. Nothing but dark space on the canvas, painted a rich black full of blue undertones. An abyss, or some starless sky. A hungry dark. I thought of Oturu. His smile. The girl and her rage.

  Sarai dead. Shot.

  I needed to find Jack.

  Sirens arrived. I wondered who had called the police. Maybe it was a setup. I had already been linked to Badelt. Placing me here, at the murder of his ex-wife, would make Suwanai and McCowan delirious.

  I ran to the windows. There was a fire escape outside, over the alley. No police there yet. I scrambled outside. Closed the window behind me, and started climbing. The fire escape was old and rusty, and the hinges squealed beneath my weight. Made me cringe.

  But no one shouted at me. No one told me to stop.

  I climbed faster, and had to scale a narrow ladder the last ten feet to the roof. I hit the top hard, at a run. I still had to get down again, but this was no trap. The buildings on this particular street were old and connected, the joined rooftops constructed at the same height. I ran over gravel and exposed tar paper, splashing through puddles. When I hit the end of the block, I heard more sirens and peered over the edge of the roof. Counted three squad cars, and one ambulance. I took another moment to scan the street for Jack, but saw nothing. Just gawkers, any one of whom, I supposed, could be working for Edik. And Blood Mama.

  There was an access door that led down into the building I stood on. No lock. I walked into the stairwell and warm air flowed over me. Smelled like old tennis shoes. Below, silence.

  I ran down the stairs as quickly and carefully as I could. I thought it might be an office building. I heard telephones ringing through the walls, and near the bottom, a voice: young, silly, some girl having a one-sided conversation about another person in her class.

  I nudged open the stairwell door, just a fraction, and saw her standing in a lobby. There was a small candy shop and a New Age bookstore on her left, and just beyond, a glass door that led onto the street. I almost walked out, but remembered my appearance. I buttoned my mother’s jacket to hide the holes in the sweater. Checked out my jeans and stripped off a glove to touch my face with my bare fingers. No blood.

  The girl barely looked at me as I exited the stairwell. I walked fast into the crisp, sunny day. Just down the street were the police and a growing crowd. It had been hard finding parking near the gallery. My car was one street over. I walked to it, keeping my head up, trying to look relaxed. I managed to maintain the façade just long enough to reach the Mustang, but once inside, doors locked, my entire body began to shake. I had trouble sticking the key in the ignition. I had to sit for ten minutes and just breathe.

  I kept remembering Sarai. Flashing back to my mother. Thinking about veils and demons and teenage boys.

  I fumbled for my cell phone and called Grant. He answered on the third ring. He s
ounded tense.

  “Byron has two broken ribs, a concussion, and one busted nose. Could be some internal bleeding. Might be other injuries we don’t know about yet. Convincing him to sit tight hasn’t been easy. He’s scared to death of the police and the welfare people.”

  “Have any of them shown up?”

  Grant hesitated. “I’m handling it.”

  Handling it. That could mean anything. I had to take a moment to collect my thoughts. I smelled like blood. “Something happened. Sarai is dead. Jack is missing. We were attacked. Shot at. Edik’s people were responsible. I’m afraid Byron is going to be another target.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m fine,” I muttered, which was a blatant, screaming lie. “You need to be careful. I’ll try to be at the hospital in less than an hour, but if I don’t show up, call Suwanai and McCowan. Tell them you think Byron witnessed Badelt’s murder and that someone came after him. They might give you protection.”

  “It’ll lead back to you, Maxine. And Byron won’t take it.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Do whatever you have to. These people are fast, Grant. They’re professional.”

  “Maxine.”

  “Promise me.”

  His silence was hard, uncompromising. I said his name again and heard, in the background, someone else do the same. “Mr. Cooperon,” a woman said, and tension flowed through me; a terrible, awful dread.

  “They’re moving him,” he said. “I have to go.”

  “Grant—”

  “I’ll do whatever it takes,” he interrupted quietly. “Love you.”

  He hung up on me. I stared at the phone, then slipped it into my coat pocket. I thought about going to the hospital—right then, right there—but my knuckles turned white around the wheel, and I kept driving in the opposite direction. One more thing to do. One more.

  I parked the Mustang in the garage below Pike Place Market. I smelled fish. Elliot Bay was one good leap away, waters sparkling like diamonds kicking the waves. The boys stirred in their dreams.

  I used the skybridge to walk over Western Avenue to the Main Arcade of Pike Place. It was dark inside the market, a rambling maze, walls cream-colored and cracking, the far edges of the floor caked with layers of fine debris. The air smelled ripe, and there was a buzz in my ears—voices, cars, the odd slide of roller skates—along with a hum, a soft throb that was not human, or of this world.

  I did not like coming to Pike Place Market. It held only one good memory—that I had met Grant here, saved his life—but there was nothing else that comforted me. The veil was thin between land and sea, where so many humans gathered. The prison walls were weak, so sheer I could hear another kind of ocean, dark and red as blood. Made of blood. I could almost imagine Blood Mama’s children gathered on the edge of the wall, spying on the humans who passed through these tangled halls. Looking for souls, someone broken. Temptation enough to squirm and squeeze through the cracks in the veil and fight for a good possession.

  I felt those eyes watching me. I felt them through the veil, and beyond them, Blood Mama herself—bearing down on the other side, making her babies, listening to them clamor for a quick rush to feed.

  I wandered. Waiting for a message to get passed on through the veil. I ambled through the Main Arcade, past the artisans and their jewelry and leatherworks; soap stalls, jam, T-shirts. I smelled flowers. Cars honked. People everywhere; kids with their mothers, and some out-of-towners laughing with coffee cups in one hand and cameras in the other.

  I felt naked, exposed. I kept thinking someone was going to look at my face and point out blood or bullet holes; as if death were contagious; or witnessing brutal violence created a mask over the eyes, so that everywhere I looked, I saw Sarai, so still, with that awful finger-sized hole in her head.

  Your mother wanted you to stay a good person. What she did was for that reason only. Her last words, whispered inside my mind. Which only begged more questions. First and foremost, why something so seemingly innocuous would be worth killing over.

  I dragged out the stone disc, the little labyrinth. Nothing looked different. But I remembered. I remembered that vision of my mother. And Jack.

  Not a fantasy. Not my memories. Something else.

  Oturu’s mark began to burn.

  “Raspberry?” asked a silken voice, close on my right. I glanced sideways, and found a statuesque woman dressed in a red leather jacket and matching leather pants. Long red hair had been teased into loose curls that cascaded around a face that was beautifully groomed—plucked and polished and tight. Her mouth was striking—a cruel red slash of lips—and her eyes were dark as polished river stone, cold and hard. She had an aura like a hurricane, spitting shadows and thunder. Aura big as the sky, crammed into a space the size of a watermelon.

  She held a container of raspberries, plump and out-of-season. She plucked one up and took a slow bite between perfect white teeth. “Delicious. Honestly, Hunter. I do not know how you stand it, living amongst such a wealth of sensation.”

  “Blood Mama,” I replied, “I was expecting someone else.”

  “Edik,” she said, smiling coyly. “Oh, my little pet is around.”

  “Killing people.”

  “This and that.”

  “You’re trying to hide something from me.”

  “Am I?” Blood Mama ate another raspberry. “Let us walk, Hunter. I have a desire to travel amongst mortals and lower myself to their ignoble existence.”

  “You faker. You wish you were one of them.”

  “Never,” she protested. “I am a traveler, only. A nomad of souls. To be bound in one body, from squalling babe to wrinkled incontinent prune, with no reward but death . . . oh, Hunter. That is a prison. I do not envy you. Not now, not ever.”

  “But you come and go as you please.” I stared out of the market at the ocean, imagining all those prison rings folded upon one another, rubbing borders with this dimension. An army of demons, hidden from sight. No telescopes, no eyes keen enough to discern their beating hearts. If they had hearts. “The veil is weak.”

  “The veil has always been weak.” Blood Mama smiled lushly at a gawky young man in glasses who openly stared at her as she swayed past. “But the difference is that the veil is coming down entirely, and when it does, this world will have no one to protect it. Save you.”

  “Right,” I said, fingering the tingling skin below my ear. “And you care because you’re afraid of the others.”

  Her smile slipped. “I risk a great deal by meeting with you. If Ahsen sees me—”

  “Ahsen,” I interrupted her. “The one who came through the veil?”

  “Ahsen. Avatar.” Blood Mama glanced sideways. “Wayward Prison Builder.”

  I stopped walking. She said, “Don’t pretend. I know you’re not surprised.”

  Blood Mama did not know me that well. I was surprised. But not as much as I could have been. I rarely thought about the builders of the prison veil. They were a force unknown, briefly mentioned in the family histories but never with details. All I knew was that they had fought alongside humans against the demons. All I was certain of was that they had created the prison veil.

  After that, nothing. Never another mention. Sometimes I thought they might never have existed.

  Until today. Jack and Sarai had changed everything.

  Blood Mama was still eating her raspberries, savoring each bite like it was some long kiss good-bye. Men were watching her. Good luck, I thought. She’ll eat you alive.

  “Why,” I said slowly, “are you here?”

  She smiled. “I have an interest in keeping you alive.”

  “Because you want me to save your babies from the big bad demons. Even though I take them from you.”

  “I am willing to sacrifice a few lambs to keep your hunger satisfied.” Her aura crackled, like her smile. “A Hunter must be fed.”

  “And distracted. Tamed into complacency.” I also smiled, grim. “How many angles do you play, Blood Mama? What did you promi
se this Ahsen? What did she make you promise? ”

  Blood Mama’s aura danced. She tossed the rest of her raspberries on the ground, container with them—even though a garbage can was nearby. No one complained, but I noticed dirty, even incredulous, looks.

  She wiped her hands together. Her nails flashed crimson. “I promised nothing but a temporary door. And, perhaps, some aid. If required.”

  “You ordered Badelt’s death. Jack and Sarai. The boy.”

  Blood Mama said nothing. I looked around. There were very few places to stand that were out of the way. Ahead of us was the fish market. I saw men in orange overalls lobbing a salmon at one another like a football, laughing and shouting. Tourists everywhere. Cameras flashing, children squealing. Disneyland for seafood lovers, and all the other fish sellers were looking at those jokers like they wanted to stab red-hot pokers in their backs.

  “A good world,” murmured Blood Mama. “And I am queen of it.”

  “One day I’ll kill you. Or someone else will.”

  She gave me a sharp look. “You are not permitted to harm me. I made a bargain with your ancestors. On your blood.”

  “Maybe. But I don’t have to save you.” I smiled, cold, hard; savoring the calculation in her eyes, the reevaluation. I thought of my mother, my grandmother . . . hundreds of women murdered by the demonic parasite inhabiting the body in front of me. I could act civil because I had to. Because Blood Mama might be useful. But it was shallow as a dry riverbed, and just as cracked.

  I hated her. I hated her so bad I could taste it.

  “Why?” I said again. “Why hurt them?”

  “Because it served a purpose.” Blood Mama stepped out from under the market awning, into the sun. She raised her hand, and a black sedan rolled into sight. “Ahsen is dangerous, Hunter. She is old and powerful—but her anger makes her weak, easily manipulated.”

  The sedan parked beside us, and the back door opened from inside. I glimpsed Edik in the shadows. Blood Mama balanced a red patent-leather stiletto against the edge of the interior and looked back at me. “If you know what Ahsen wants, Hunter, you can use it against her. You can stall. Keep her so hungry, she will not want to return to the veil.”