Darkness Calls

by Marjorie M. Liu

  Father Lawrence hesitated—no anger in his eyes, nothing but remorse. “Our mission is very old. We do what must be done. Even if it goes against . . . practices of forgiveness.”

  Grant shook his head. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

  Father Lawrence’s jaw tightened, and he held his gun out for me to hold. Grant took it from him instead, but my distaste for the weapon must have shown. It was too visceral. The priest gave me an odd look but said nothing. He rolled back his sleeve.

  A tattoo covered the underside of his upper forearm, a dance of lines that swam briefly in my vision—because I lost my mind when I saw them. I knew those lines. I knew that symbol.

  I wore it as a scar beneath my ear, against my jaw. Hidden by my hair.

  “We have no name,” he said quietly. “Just this.”

  Grant went very still when he saw the tattoo. I leaned into him, fighting for my voice. “What does it mean?”

  Father Lawrence’s eyes glittered. “Many things. Death, mostly. But death can be rebirth, or death can be destruction. Depends on how you look at it.”

  “Where did it come from?”

  Father Lawrence rolled down his sleeve. “I don’t know. But we watch for it.”

  I had more questions, but he took back the gun from Grant and, without another word, opened the landing door and gestured for us to follow. I did not want to, but Dek and Mal were purring, and Grant touched my elbow, very gently. Below us, shouts. The distant pound of boots on stairs. Our mysterious pursuers had finally broken through.

  The hall looked the same as all the others: narrow, long, crowded with doors. Father Lawrence led us to the first door on the right, closest to the stairs, and opened it. Inside was a room like the one we had left, except the mattress was bare and a thick layer of dust covered the floor and furniture. Dust bunnies the size of real bunnies leapt away from my boots.

  “After World War II and the Cultural Revolution, the Jesuits who came back to China were a bit paranoid,” Father Lawrence said quickly, locking the door behind us. Quite a few locks were in the door—three dead bolts, two chains, and a thick bar that slid into the floor. The hinges had been reinforced, too. “So they took precautions when they had a chance to build this place. Safety measures that never made it onto the blueprints.”

  He opened the closet. Grant said, “You’re kidding.”

  “Oh, please,” Father Lawrence replied. “You were the historian. Don’t tell me you’re surprised.”

  Grant looked on as the priest lifted a panel out of the floor. “Secret doors and passageways? Of course not. I was talking about the size of that thing. You’ll never fit.”

  “I’ll have you know my fat gut is a highly malleable part of my anatomy,” replied the priest. “You bet your ass I can make it fit through this hole.”

  He stood back, pointing at the open square in front of him, black with darkness. “Ladies first.”

  I sat on the edge, dangling my legs inside. Little hands grabbed my ankles with reassuring strength, and I lowered myself. There was no drop. My feet touched the floor immediately. The air smelled musty and cold. I had a feeling that not many people had ever used this secret room.

  Red eyes blinked at me. I reached up, along with Raw and Aaz, to help Grant. It was a tight squeeze. His chest and shoulders got stuck, and he had to wiggle and exhale all his breath—with the rest of us pulling—before he got through. He hit the floor on his good leg, hopping slightly against our arms to keep his balance. The little demons scattered out of sight as Father Lawrence lowered the cane and flute case inside.

  But he did not join us.

  “I lied,” said the priest. “I’m fat as a pig. Something our Brothers did not take into account when they made this escape hatch.”

  He held down a piece of paper, some money, and the gun. “There’s an address written there. Go to the French Quarter. It’s near here. Travel the main road, Henshan Lu, until you see a bar called Lucky John’s. Ask for Killy. She’ll help you.”

  Grant took the paper and gun. “What about you?”

  “Those men know me. I’ll be fine.”

  He was lying. I stepped directly beneath the hole, staring into his eyes. “Why are you helping us?”

  Father Lawrence hesitated, and a faint but genuine smile lifted the corner of his mouth. Sad and wry, and tinged with fear. “Because I believe in you, Hunter. I believe you are good, and that your promise is good. I believe you can save us, even as you can destroy us. But I have faith in your heart. I have faith.”

  “Why?” I breathed. “How do you know so much about me?”

  He leaned back, picking up the floor panel. “Not every mystery becomes forgotten. Not the demons. Not the Wardens. And not you, Hunter.”

  Father Lawrence slid the panel back into place. Just before he closed it for good, he said softly, “I’m sorry about Father Ross.”

  And then we were left in darkness.

  THE room was small. Against the wall, boxes filled with old rusty cans and jugs of water. Folded blankets that mice had gotten into. I found stairs behind us, wide enough for only one person, and steep. Grant could not see the steps, but my eyesight was fine.

  I asked him to feed the gun to Aaz. I told him I was afraid of it firing by accident. Which I was. But that was only part of the truth. Grant knew, though. He understood, and did as I asked, without comment.

  We moved slowly, carefully, down the stairs. I held his free hand. Zee guided his cane. No sounds permeated the walls. All I heard was the scuffing echo of our footsteps, and the rasp of our breath. Dek and Mal sang the melody to Elton John’s “Someone Saved My Life Tonight.”

  “What colors do they make?” I asked, after a while. “When they sing?”

  “A black rainbow,” Grant replied, his fingers tightening. “Curving streaks of scales shaded with the deepest purple, and obsidian flickering with shooting stars. I see night when they sing. I see the Aurora Borealis, but without color, as though their voices come from a place too ancient to have known anything but darkness.”

  “And yet, you trust them.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with an absence of light. It’s just another way of being. A different kind of energy.” He glanced in my direction, and I realized he could see me through the light created by the sound of my voice, and movement. “Conflict defines that energy, and we judge its worth on whether the action, and outcome, helps or harms.”

  “Cribari thinks I’m the Antichrist.”

  Grant grunted, and his fingers tightened again, almost painfully. “He can go to Hell.”

  I hesitated. “I’m sorry about your friend.”

  “No, you’re not,” he said. “But I understand why.”

  “You really think you could have reached him?”

  “I know it. No one is broken forever, Maxine.”

  I had less faith in the matter. But less was not the same as none at all.

  Took us almost thirty minutes to reach the bottom of the stairs. Grant was exhausted at the end of it. He had been fading since his encounter with Cribari and Father Ross. I let him rest on the lower steps until Zee and I found the exit, a metal door that opened into a claustrophobic alley much like the one I’d found myself in, after falling into Shanghai.

  Cold air outside. Quiet night. No sounds of pursuit, or gunshots, or round little priests being dragged away. Grant pulled the address from his pocket and showed it to Zee. “Can you find this?”

  The little demon studied the letters and numbers. Raw and Aaz peered over his shoulder, and the three of them quietly conferred in the melodic quiet language they shared only with one another.

  “Done,” Zee rasped. “But not so close. Take wheels.”

  Shanghai was not a city that slept. We left the alley and found ourselves on a crowded street bustling with steaming food stalls and small groups of young people standing around, talking, listening to headphones. Wagons filled with apples and oranges were parked on the corner, alongside women who s
tood near hot oil drums that had been converted into ovens. Baked sweet potatoes and roasted corn were displayed on top. We stepped around tablecloths on the sidewalk, covered in hairclips and fuzzy hats, packaged underwear, chopsticks, bowls, and other useful odds and ends.

  The locals gave us some looks but nothing serious. Dek and Mal receded deeper into the shadows beneath my hair.

  “I’ve been in this city before,” Grant said. “Only for a day or two, years ago with my father when he came here on business. It was different then. Quieter. There was more farmland around the outskirts.”

  “You know this French Quarter we’re going to?”

  “No.” Grant smiled briefly, painfully. “I sat in an office all day listening to him argue through a translator, which looked just as ugly as it sounded. I was sixteen.”

  “Guess I was six then. Probably sitting in a car, listening to Johnny Cash on the radio.”

  “I would have preferred that.”

  “Maybe.” I glanced at him. “But never being able to settle down got old, too.”

  We reached a larger road, and after less than a minute of walking, managed to hail a cab. Grant knew some words of Mandarin, and the driver was familiar with Henshan Lu. We got going in the right direction, and the boys rode along in the shadows between our feet, occasionally crunching on M&M’S packets and small bags of nails.

  It was a short drive. We careened down streets that got progressively quieter, and darker, until we came to a district where the road was lined with immense trees and gray walls that were tall and cracked with green things growing from the stone; and narrow iron doors. The entire neighborhood gave the impression of being a fortress. I glimpsed, on the other side of the walls, clay-shingled roof-tops and large windows.

  Henshan Lu was not as elegant, or as residential. Neon sparkled. Restaurants beckoned. Bars everywhere. Until, finally, I saw a large blinking sign surrounded in white lights and yellow stripes, and in red letters the name: LUCKY JOHN’S. Two slender Chinese girls stood outside the door, dressed identically in high-heeled black boots, dark hose, and denim miniskirts. Puffy white coats with fur hoods covered the rest of them, and they stepped lightly from foot to foot as we left the cab and approached. Cold, maybe. The bite in the air was getting worse.

  Both of them smiled, but it was tired, fake, as though their smiles were part of the paycheck. Grant did not smile back. He said, “Ni hao. Killy zai bu zai?”

  Smiles faded, and the girls stopped seeing through us and really looked at our faces. One of them muttered a short word, and her companion pointed at the door.

  “Bar,” she said, in faintly accented English. “Expecting you.”

  We went inside, traveling from a dark night into a darker interior that was decorated like a country-kitsch antique store for alcoholics. Vintage signs advertising liquor and loose women covered every inch of the walls, along with the occasional saddle, cowboy hat, and more than a handful of mounted antlers upon which small whiskey bottles had been hung, like Christmas ornaments. Yet more bottles—this time vodka—dangled from the ceiling in a massive chandelier, each of those slender necks stuffed with a tiny lightbulb. Smoke clung to the air. So did the mournful voice of Alison Krauss, playing on the radio.

  The place was half-full. No zombies. Just tired drunks slumped in their seats, most of them white men with their ties loosened and hands clutching drinks. No one sat alone. Each had a companion, all lovely young Chinese girls who looked sober as stone but far more cheerful. All of them, smiling. Leaning in. Solicitous. Ignored.

  All the men were staring at the bar. I stared, too. A woman sat on top, long legs crossed, dressed in a skirt so short I could see the edge of her ruffled pink panties. She wore a pink gingham shirt tied at the waist, and her cleavage sparkled. Red cowboy boots covered her feet.

  She was Chinese, but something else, too. Short black hair framed a striking face dotted with freckles, and she wore a pink headband with little metal coils attached—alien antennae—the kind that had hearts stuck on the bouncing ends. A microphone was in her hands. She was singing along with Alison Krauss and doing a magnificently bad job of staying on tune. Not that anyone seemed to care.

  “Wow,” Grant said. “You should see what I’m seeing.”

  “Don’t get any ideas,” I replied. “I’m seeing plenty.”

  No one else was behind the bar serving drinks, and we shook our heads when one of the waitresses pointed to an empty table. I stood, half turned, keeping an eye on the front door. Zee peered at me from the shadows of the coat-rack, and vanished. Raw and Aaz sat just behind a decorative pickle barrel, drinking beer and scratching their stomachs. Baseball caps on again. Red Sox, this time.

  Grant touched my elbow. I looked at the bar again. The woman was still singing, but her gaze was locked on us. A faint furrow gathered between her eyes, and she tilted her head, ever so slightly, to the right of us. I saw a dark hall and glanced at Grant.

  “Father Lawrence has interesting friends,” I said.

  “Father Lawrence is not the man he used to be,” Grant replied, and started limping toward the hall, away from the bar and that awful crooning voice pouring into the microphone. “Not that I’m complaining.”

  “You knew him well?” I heard dishes clinking ahead of us, and a door swung open, pushed by a waitress who held a tray full of pretzels.

  “Not well enough,” Grant muttered, and bypassed the kitchen. There was a door at the end of the hall, but also some bathrooms on our right. I grabbed his elbow. He nodded, started to enter the men’s room—but I pulled him back at the last moment. Forced him to follow me into the ladies’ room. I was afraid to let him out of my sight.

  We were alone. My stall smelled dirty, and there was no toilet paper. When I finished and came out, Grant was already at the sink, staring at his reflection in the mirror. I joined him, studying my face.

  I was twenty-six years old, but for a moment I could see myself at forty. A wrinkle was starting in my upper forehead. I looked tired and dirty, my black hair tangled, greasy with stress. Shadows gathered under my eyes.

  My skin had never seen the sun. Only my face had color, but that was gone now, and my pallor was sick, exhausted. Grant looked like crap, too. Gaunt and pained, a trace of grief still in his eyes. Maybe a thread more of silver in his brown hair. We were aging overnight just from the trauma of living.

  I looked at both of us, together. His broad shoulders filled the reflection while I stood just slightly behind him, my cheek pressed against his arm. Our gazes met in the mirror.

  “Hey, pretty lady,” Grant murmured. “Ready for the Grand Canyon yet?”

  I tried to smile for him, but my mouth refused to cooperate. Grant turned, his strong arm sliding up my back, holding me close to a warm chest that smelled like cinnamon and the cedar of an old forest. I rubbed my cheek against his shirt, one hand clutching loose flannel, and listened to the rumble and pulse of his heart.

  I noticed something hard beneath my cheek. Stood back, studying his neck, and saw a familiar gold chain glinting just outside the collar of his T-shirt. I reached up, fingering the soft, thick links. Grant’s hand closed around my wrist, preventing me from pulling out the pendant.

  “I thought it was important to bring her necklace with me,” he said self-consciously.

  I unzipped my jacket. Flashed him my mother’s knives, holstered neatly against my ribs. Jewelry or weapons, there was no difference when it came to needing the comfort of something familiar against our bodies. I understood. I was the same.

  “Like two peas in a pod,” Grant murmured, and reached down to finger one of the blades. His knuckles brushed my breast, and lingered.

  Behind us someone coughed. Grant flinched. I shut my jacket and turned. The woman from the bar was peering around the bathroom door, pink antennae bouncing. Her eyes were dark and serious, but her mouth quirked into a smile and in a pure Texan drawl she said, “I’ve got rooms for that. In fact, I’ve got a room just for the two of you.”r />
  “We were sent—” I began to say, and she cut me off with a shake of her head.

  “Father Frank,” she replied, smile fading. “I know. He warned me.”

  “Just what did he warn you about?” Grant asked cautiously.

  “Oh,” said the woman, a mysterious glint in her eyes. “Almost nothing.”

  She backed out of sight, but her soft drawl floated into the bathroom. “I’m Killy, by the way. Come on, now. Got a demon coming soon.”

  CHAPTER 11

  KILLY led us through the door at the end of the hall and up a flight of narrow, creaking stairs. Her cowboy boots sounded sharp as mine, and we could have waked the dead with the racket we made climbing to the second floor. Pink panties flashed beneath her denim miniskirt. Dek and Mal angled for a better look. I slapped their heads, pushing them back into my hair. Grumbles rumbled against my ear, but they receded, warm and heavy, into the shadows of my scalp.

  I managed to hold my tongue just long enough to make certain we were completely alone.

  “What did you mean,” I asked, “when you said that a demon was coming soon?”

  Killy made a tuneless humming sound and looked past me at Grant, who was very carefully navigating the stairs with his cane. “You need a heating pad for that, honey?”

  “I believe she asked you a question,” he replied gravely, finally making it to the second floor, which was stacked with crates full of whiskey bottles and boxes of cigarettes.

  She ignored him. “Someone took a sledgehammer to you, right?”

  Grant stopped moving, and leaned hard on his cane; his gaze speculative and dangerous. “You’re nice at heart, but don’t push it.”

  Killy held up her hands. “Fine. But the offer still stands. You’ve only been able to walk for, what? A little over a year now? Bet you ache fierce.”

  “Demons,” I said, stepping in front of Grant. Unsettled that she knew so much about him. Ill at ease about quite a few things.

  Killy’s lips thinned, and she walked backward to a nearby door, reaching for the handle. “It’s a convenient word. Covers a lot of bases.”