Darkness Calls

by Marjorie M. Liu

  Inside was a bedroom. Nothing fancy. Just a mattress on the tile floor, with folded blankets stacked on top. One large window, hidden behind a partially drawn curtain. Low ceilings. Dirty white walls, holding in the strong scent of some acrid cleaning product that was not quite strong enough to hide an old odor of vomit.

  Killy said, “Sometimes I let people sleep it off up here. Don’t worry. I use bleach to clean up after them.”

  “I couldn’t give a shit,” I replied. “Who are you, and why do you know so much?”

  She gave me a long, steady look, and it was her eyes, I realized then, that did the most to offset her appearance: large, heavy-lidded, and hazel. It was hard to hold that gaze, like I was exposing part of myself, and it occurred to me that I just might be. It was not such a hard concept to grasp, not after everything I knew about the world.

  I could hear Jack’s voice rumbling. Tricks can happen, my dear, quirks of birth. Those who were given gifts long ago still pass them on to their descendents, in blood.

  A faint smile touched Killy’s mouth, but it did not reach her eyes. Grant laid his hand on my shoulder, drawing me away from her—and I watched the woman’s smile fade when she looked deep into his face. I saw the color drain ever so subtly from her cheeks, and her eyes narrowed, growing colder.

  “I know what you do,” she said softly. “Don’t try it with me.”

  “Then stop,” he replied, something deadly in his voice. “Stop looking.”

  A tremor raced through her, but she recovered instantly, shrugging, looking away from me. “Nothing to see, anyway. She’s got a mind like a steel trap.”

  “And me?” Grant asked dangerously.

  “You’re on the Internet,” Killy replied, and smiled coldly. “I did some research when Father Frank gave me your names.”

  She yanked off the headband and tossed it on the bed. “He said to hide you, so that’s what I’m doing. Stay or not, but I’ll do my best. I owe the man.”

  “And this . . . demon?”

  “He’s coming,” she said, and shivered. “I can feel it. Someone is coming.”

  Killy turned abruptly and opened the door. I went after her, but she dodged my outstretched hand, and paused in the hall to look back at us. “Stay here. But if things get hairy, go out the window. There are stairs just beneath it.”

  She slammed the door in my face. I stood looking at it, then glanced over my shoulder at Grant.

  “She has an interesting aura,” he said, somewhat mildly. “It’s . . . active.”

  I raised my brow. “How active?”

  “It stretches from her. Surrounds people. I saw it happen in the bar, but it didn’t make sense until she started talking to us. She can read minds. Some, anyway.”

  “Psychic,” I muttered. “Damn.”

  Grant very carefully lowered himself upon the mattress. Dek and Mal poked free of my hair, and the rest of the boys pushed aside the curtains covering the window. Zee hopped to the floor on light feet, claws flexing. Raw and Aaz grabbed the curtains and swung down like little Tarzans. All of them looked at me, waiting for an answer I did not have. I did not know what to do except keep moving. We had to keep moving. Someplace safer than here, which was too close to the church, Cribari, too much shit. Where and how, that was the problem. Where and how.

  You know how. If I could make it work. If I could do it without ending up inside a brick wall, or in the wrong time.

  I began to strip off my right glove and knelt by Grant. “Your leg?”

  He winced, rubbing his calf. “Nothing to complain about.”

  “Tough man,” I said. “I’ll be sure to ignore the girly tears once they start.”

  He began to smile, glanced down at my hand, and froze. I looked, and did the same.

  A needle-thin line of quicksilver stretched from my finger armor across the back of my hand—attached to an equally thin metallic band now encircling my wrist. I flexed my hand, and the metal moved fluidly with my skin, as though organic, embedded down to the bone.

  I had been wearing my glove the entire time. Never suspected.

  “Maxine,” Grant said.

  “My other plan for getting to China fell through,” I whispered, finding it difficult to speak. “I used this to get here. It was an accident.”

  “It grew.”

  “That happens. You remember.”

  I remembered. I remembered the Wasteland, entombed in darkness, caught in the endless river that would have ended my life had the boys not kept me alive. I had found a corpse in that place. A body covered in armor, bearing a sword. A sword that had inexplicably transformed into a small ring upon my finger.

  The corpse had been my ancestor. Another Hunter, thrown into the Wasteland. She had died there. The ring had been hers. Now it was mine. Before being transported to China, I had already used it several times—been flung back into time—and that was enough to make the ring grow over my entire finger. Not every use of the ring made a transformation happen, but once was enough.

  And now, this.

  I was suddenly beginning to think that the armor covering my ancestor’s bones had not been there entirely by choice.

  “This is a problem,” Grant said, as though reading my mind.

  I curled my hand into a fist. “We have bigger problems.”

  “Maxine,” Zee rasped, tapping the tile floor with his claws. “Gotta go.”

  Below us, I heard screams.

  TROUBLE follows us, my mother once said.

  “Stay with Grant,” I said to Raw and Aaz. “Protect him.”

  “Maxine,” Grant argued, struggling to stand from the mattress. I left him there, slamming the door behind me. Running down the stairs, taking them two at a time. I slowed down at the bottom, just before I entered the hall to the bar. I listened hard, heart pounding.

  No more screams. Above me I heard a clicking sound. Grant, moving fast. Zee slipped from the shadows.

  “Blood spilled,” he said.

  “How many bad guys?”

  “Not the numbers,” replied the little demon. “Just quality.”

  I gritted my teeth, reaching inside my jacket for a blade. Not that plain steel had ever helped much, but it made me feel better. The metal was cold against my fingers. I had forgotten my right glove upstairs.

  I pushed open the door and entered the hall. Saw nothing. Heard nothing except a faint crunching sound that flashed me back to Jack and the forest and made my stomach hurt with fear. I swallowed it down, sweating, and crept forward. Zee kept pace, while Dek and Mal uncoiled, rising from my hair until I felt like Medusa with a heart full of stone.

  The sounds of chewing got louder, maybe because everything else was so damn quiet. I reached the end of the hall and peered inside the bar.

  I saw blood. Slick on the tables, spattering the walls in red splashes that looked like paint had been flung and heaved from cans and brushes. Bodies sprawled on the floor, crimson puddles expanding from wounds I could not see, and some that were plain: craters in heads, cracks in chests, as though sharp teeth and axes had been at work. Fast. So fast eyes were open, staring.

  Crunch. Some jaw working hard. I turned, searching out that sound, heart beating so rapidly it was difficult to breathe.

  A man sat at a table, his back turned to me. Short. Fat. Bulging from a wrinkled tan suit that fit so poorly I could see every excess roll in his round shoulders. He was eating from a bowl of pretzels. A dead woman slumped beside him. Half her head was missing, and the blood still trickled from her wound, pooling on the table. I watched the man dip his pretzels in her blood, then eat them.

  Killy sat on his other side. She was still alive. Staring at him with absolute horror, so frozen and pale I wondered if her heart would give out, if her mind would make her faint simply to save her from dying out of fright. She looked ready to die.

  The man paused in his chewing. “My Lady. So good of you to join us. And you, as well, Hound.”

  Zee snarled. Not at the man. He stared at
the front door of the bar, and I discovered three slender bodies deep in the shadows, standing so still I had not noticed them. Even when I did, it was difficult to see much. All three stood close together, shoulders rounded, hunched tight as though sharing warmth. Tall. Pale. Clothed in simple black. Watching me.

  I did not see them move. Not even a muscle. But in seconds they crossed that slick red floor.

  All I saw were three gaping mouths, brimming with impossible rows of sharp teeth—piranhas and chain saws—so close to my face I could smell the blood on their breath, see giblets of flesh dangling from their gums. I raised my knife.

  They never touched me. Zee slammed against them—and then Raw and Aaz were there, plowing so hard into the men, their small bodies lodged headfirst. The twins chewed their way through two of them, straight past spines and out the other side. The men continued to writhe, thrashing wildly. Staring at me—only at me—with their teeth flashing. Raw and Aaz ripped spikes out of their spines and plunged them through their necks.

  Zee was more elegant. He waited for the last man to attack him—headfirst, hands pressed to his sides like a torpedo with teeth—and the little demon slammed his fist into the man’s open mouth, breaking his jaw, catching him like a shark on a hook. Zee grinned, licking his lips, and opened his clawed hand inside the man’s mouth.

  I looked away. Seconds later I heard the solid thump of a body hitting the floor. That was all. None of the men had screamed. Not one had shown fear, even as they were mauled to death. Just that same cold, mindless hunger—rage, even.

  My ears rang. I stared at the devastated bodies, but my mind refused to register faces. Instead, I heard Grant’s voice in my head, telling me about Father Ross: how the real man had still been in there, trapped behind instinct.

  Me or them, I thought, and turned away, drawing a deep breath into my lungs. Raw and Aaz flanked me, their skin absorbing the gore that covered them. I looked at the remaining man, still sitting at the table with his back turned. He had not moved once. Not once to look.

  I walked toward him. I had no choice but to step in blood. The metallic scent was powerful. Zee kept pace, trailing his claws against the wet red floor. Dek and Mal growled.

  I walked around the table, and looked into a sagging face and piggish eyes, half-obscured by the dirty lenses of his glasses. Killy’s gaze ticked upward to glance at me, but the rest of her stayed perfectly still, and I did not look back. I stared at the man. I stared at him so long and hard my eyes began to burn.

  “Mr. King,” I managed to say. “What brings you here?”

  “Oh,” he said, stuffing some blood-covered pretzels in his mouth. “This and that. I wanted to stretch my legs.”

  Such a game he played. “Seems you managed that.”

  “Quite.” He looked at Zee. “So here we are, Hound, again at the crossroads. Still bound to the blood of your Lady.”

  “Bound to kill you,” rumbled the demon. “No more, skinner. No more cuts.”

  “You still think you can give me orders.” Mr. King lifted his gaze and smiled at me, tight-lipped, the corners of his mouth stained red. “You should discipline them.”

  “They’re perfect,” I replied coldly. “Angels.”

  His smile tightened even more. “I have Jack, you know. I was pleased to discover him going by that name again. He’s used it so often it must be his favorite. Old Jack. Jack in the Green. Jack the Giant Killer, Jack the Knave, Merlin Jack, Jack Rabbit, Jack Shit, every man Jack of them.”

  He said the names faster and faster, his voice becoming rougher with each syllable he spilled, and bits of blood and pretzel sprayed from his mouth. It was terrifying to watch. I could feel his control slipping away, rushing, and behind him, behind him I saw movement, and it was Grant entering the bar, staring, seeing me first, then him, and the blood, the blood, and I flicked my fingers at Zee.

  The demon attacked Mr. King. He hit the man in the chest, and Raw and Aaz joined him, raking his body with their claws. Flesh ripped. Jaws tore chunks from his bulging, suited body. I grabbed Killy by the arm and threw her away from the table. She fell on her ass in a puddle of blood, and scrambled backward toward the bar.

  Mr. King laughed, and looked at her. “Don’t go yet. Don’t go, little girl. I got your scent in me now, and I like what I smell. Got some old-time magic in your blood.”

  He showed no pain. Not even a flinch. Just that tight-lipped smile. He reached around Zee, stroking his head, and the tips of his fingers sliced through the razor needles of the demon’s hair and tumbled to the tabletop like fat, fleshy dice. Zee snarled as blood splashed against his face.

  “Nerve endings,” said Mr. King calmly, without a glance at his mutilated hand, “are the first thing any good grafter removes. Something Jack should have remembered. But then, he was always a bit . . . old-fashioned.”

  Saying Jack’s name seemed to break his control again. Cold hate flickered through his eyes. I found myself taking a step closer, blade held loose in my hand. I heard the click of a cane, and Grant moved near, as well—staring at the man with such command and intensity he seemed more like a soldier in that moment; a warrior, as much a wolf as the boys. The bad leg, the cane—none of that mattered. He suddenly looked like a man who could kill an immortal, in his dark eyes, something primitive, more than human.

  Mr. King turned his chair to look at him, and all that hate flickered into fear: primal, wild, like a buried instinct rearing.

  Then it was gone, and he whispered, “Lightbringer. Imagine that, in the flesh.”

  Grant showed nothing, except a perfect mask of stone-cold menace. “You’ve hurt people I care about. You don’t plan on stopping.”

  “So stop me,” whispered Mr. King, as Zee jumped from his chest, slinking around to my side. “Or have you weakened yourself too much? Not strong enough to help even one friend?”

  Grant snarled; guttural, formless words lashing from his mouth. Power whipped along my skin, and Mr. King threw back his head, choking.

  Only for a moment, though. Grant’s voice broke into a cough, blood trickling from his mouth. He tried to take another deep breath and had to bend over, gasping like it was hard to breathe. Raw bounded close, peering up into his face with concern.

  Mr. King shuddered. Veins had burst under his skin, lending him a mottled appearance. Saliva glistened at the corners of his lips. He stared at Grant with such hunger I could almost hear the cracking of bone between his teeth.

  “So you are unbonded,” he whispered. “Untaught.”

  “Shut up,” I hissed.

  He ignored me. “Lightbringer. Last of your kind, I think. But then, we will have to be certain, won’t we? Before the Reapers break loose, we will have to tear this world to pieces to make sure you are alone.” He held up his hand, where blood still leaked from the ends of his fingers. “Old Jack could tell you about the hunts if he was here. Chasing the skins of your kind across the Labyrinth. Stealing babies into shackles from their cribs.”

  I took a step, then another, and the world blurred until I found myself slamming into Mr. King, taking us both into the floor. He started laughing on the way down—and then stopped when I smashed my left palm into his forehead and began muttering words of exorcism. Zee and the others bounced from the shadows, landing on top of his arms and legs.

  His mouth twisted. “Will you exorcise me? Will you drive me from this body? Hunter. It will be a shell. Nothing remains of the heart I stole.”

  I grabbed his face and felt behind my ribs a tickle, a flutter: darkness, rising. Pinpricks of hunger, slow-burning in my heart. I had killed an Avatar with such hunger. Ruined Franco and his men. If I let go, I would do the same to Mr. King. I needed to. I had to.

  And if you hurt Grant?

  Grant. He stood too close. I could touch him if I reached out. He would let me touch him, no matter what power raged inside me. If I were handling a nuclear bomb, he would take it from me. I tried to turn my head to look at him, to tell him to run, but my throat choke
d, and my right hand began to burn. Electricity raced up my arm. My vision shifted from eye to mind, until the room around me faded, and all I could feel was the spirit inside the body beneath mine. But it was wrong. I had exorcised demons, stripped the bastards from human souls—but this was different; there was no other soul left, nothing but a hollow shell. Whoever had owned the body before Mr. King was long gone. The skin beneath me had as much value as a good winter coat.

  “You want me dead,” I managed to whisper.

  “I want you out of the way,” he breathed, eyes glittering. “You were great once, Hunter. A treasure. But the Lightbringer is a better prize. As is the key you bear.”

  “This?” I held up my right hand, which still gripped my small blade. Quicksilver glinted along my ring finger and wrist. “You want this? You goddamn try to take it, you fuck.”

  And I slammed the knife into his forehead.

  Bone cracked. Mr. King jerked, eyes widening, and when I wrenched the blade free, brain matter and blood seeped through the jagged hole. He still breathed, though—nostrils flaring as if scenting the air around me. Something wild and startled passed through his face.

  “Your blood,” he whispered weakly. “Jack. What have you—”

  Zee reached out and snapped his neck before he could finish. Mr. King went limp. How that was a better killing blow than a stab wound to the head, I did not know—nor did I care. I felt the Avatar leave its body. In my gut, I felt it go. I could taste the damn thing: bitter, twisted, like seawater mixed with sewage.

  I leaned back, heart pounding. My right hand was sticky with blood, and warm, rough tongues licked my fingers and palm. Raw and Aaz rumbled with purrs. I felt cold. So cold. The knife slipped from my grip, and Zee caught it.

  Strong hands gripped my shoulders, pulling me away from Mr. King. Grant knelt beside me, breath rasping like there was a razor caught in his throat.

  “Maxine,” he said hoarsely, pressing his lips to my brow. “Maxine, are you okay?”

  “Dandy,” I breathed, and leaned over and vomited.