Darkness Calls (6 page)

“Ah,” I replied, and thought of all the lies my mother had told me. “So?”

“So nothing,” he muttered tersely, reaching back to swipe the necklace off the desk, the chain flashing soft and golden as it draped over his wrist. “But a year is a long time, Maxine. The nine months before that even longer.”

I finally understood. “Your real father might be a different man than the one who raised you.”

He was so grim. “Wouldn’t make a difference. It wouldn’t.”

But it would. Not in love, but in identity. Blood was serious business. It was good, knowing the roots of what flowed in your veins. Helped put your feet on the ground, when you had nothing, no one else to anchor your heart.

I did not know who my father was.

Grant held up the necklace and studied the gold links, the pendant sunk deep in his large palm. “I thought she was buried with this. But after my father died, it was found in his papers.”

I studied the golden lines, knotted in a circle half as large as a compact disc and almost as flat, with a natural opening near the top where the chain looped through. No end, no beginning, just a tangled coil that became ever more intricate the deeper one looked; as though there were layers buried in layers, buried deeper still, despite the deceptively level shape of the disc. Made me dizzy. I had to look away, blinking hard. Grant’s fingers closed around the pendant.

“First time I’ve seen it,” I said, nauseous.

“I bring the necklace out about as often as you handle your mother’s guns. Receiving those files made me want to hold it again.”

I leaned in, pressing my brow against his warm, hard shoulder, trying to steady my upset stomach. “So, what now?”

“I don’t know.” Grant slid his fingers through my hair. “My dad . . . was normal. All business. Aggressive, ruthless. But not . . . not like me. I took after my mother. Except for . . .” He waved his hand—still holding the pendant—around his head. “If she could see what I saw, do what I did, she never let on. And I only told her . . . a little.”

“You thought you were unique.”

“But I’m not. Especially if what I do marks me with a name.”

“Lightbringer,” I whispered.

He held me closer and placed his mouth against my ear. “Not human.”

I closed my eyes. “Old news, man. Join the club.”

He set down his mother’s necklace. “I need to find out what I am. I need more information. I’ve been running on instinct all this time because I thought that was all I had. I thought I was alone in what I do. But I’m going to slip one day. I’m going to do something I shouldn’t. Push a mind too far. Make too big a change in some person’s soul. Maybe it’ll be an accident. Maybe not. But if there’s someone who could teach me—”

Grant stopped, a tremor running through him. “It’s in me, Maxine. The possibility of becoming what I hate. I don’t . . . want to hurt people. I don’t want to be the man who justifies hurting people. I don’t want to be that man who believes in his own righteousness, without question.”

I did not want that, either, though I had more faith in Grant than that. The boys liked him. That said a lot. If Grant did go sour, I had a feeling it would not be the end of the world. Not that I could tell him that. My own brand of callous realism was not something he particularly needed, not now. His urgency was painful—which pained me, too, because Grant was a good man. Driven, in that same spirit, never to do harm. But when you could influence, with nothing but the sound of your voice, the very integrity of a person’s soul—

Well.

I reached between us, sliding my hand up his thigh. “How’s your leg?”

He gave me a wry look. “Don’t distract me. We still have a bullet to discuss.”

“Bullet done gone and rebounded into a building,” I replied, with more ease than I felt. “And it was an honest question, about your leg.”

“Then it’s honestly sore. Crushed bone never does heal right.” He leaned in, brushing his lips over my cheek. “I need a heating pad, baby. A lawn chair on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.”

“It’s probably snowing there, you know.”

“With you in nothing but your tattoos.”

“Because looking at demons on my breasts is such a turn-on.”

“And no one,” he breathed, kissing my ear, “no one for miles around.”

I turned my head and kissed his mouth. Warmth slid through my heart, down to my toes. I felt catalyzed by his heat: turned over, mixed, becoming something new. His strong hands—already beneath my sweater—moved a fraction higher, his thumbs caressing me, just so; and my breath caught. I tilted back my head, arching into his touch. Aware, keenly, that feeling anything at all was due to the good graces of Zee and the others.

Bothered me, sometimes. I had never had privacy in my life. But a person could get used to anything. Almost.

I wanted him to forget.
I
wanted to forget. I wanted something better to remember than bullets and zombies and dead girls. I wanted to be free and warm, and human.

I brushed my lips over his cheek, and reached for the zipper of his jeans.

CHAPTER 4

I
could not fly in an airplane; that much was clear. Not a commercial aircraft, and probably not even a private one. Airplanes were dangerous territory. Short flights, I suspected, would be all right—but long international travel, the kind that crossed date lines where the sun rose and set while you were in the air, might prove disastrous. The boys woke when the sun went down. Peeled straight off my body, hungry and ready for trouble. Simple as that. No matter where, or how inconvenient it might be.

Nor did I have time to arrange the proper documentation for a visit to China. A quick search on Google made that perfectly clear. I had a passport, but no visa. Grant’s luck was better, if more dubious. Due to whatever influence Father Cribari had brought to bear on his contact in the local Chinese embassy, Grant would have his visa within hours as opposed to days. He was scheduled to fly to Shanghai late that morning. Which meant I had less than the wink of an eye to come up with a solution.

Luckily, I had one. If I could find him.

But first, that bullet. I needed some answers. Confirmation, if nothing else. Which led me on a circuitous path through the homeless shelter, searching for a zombie.

I found Rex in the basement. Years ago the warehouses that made up the Coop had been used in the manufacture of furniture. Most of the old equipment had been cleared away, but the lower levels—off-limits to everyone but a handful—still housed an array of mysterious and elaborate iron machines whose purpose, I was sure, could not be nearly as remarkable as what I preferred to imagine (which was that some genius inventor had made his home in this concrete tomb and assembled, in wild fits of mental operatic fury, his own collection of devices meant to change the world into an odder place than it already seemed to be).

The basement smelled like damp concrete and motor oil. My cowboy boots were loud on the floor, and Dick Van Dyke’s voice echoed merrily through the shadows; the
Mary Poppins
sound track, Chim-Chim-Chereeing against steel pipes and iron gears. I followed the music to a room that was a good distance from the stairs, watching shadows move through the light that spread from the crack around the half-closed metal door.

I peered inside. First thing I saw was row after row of racks holding wooden flatbed containers filled with soil and careful rows of small green plants. Sunlamps hung haphazardly from chains and ropes strung from the ceiling. In the aisles, on the floor, were some very pretty rag rugs—homemade, I knew—and several cardboard crates piled high with brightly colored yarn and bolts of cloth.

I heard muttering beneath Dick Van Dyke’s voice. Choice expletives. I pushed open the door a little more and saw a dark aura thundering above a bowed brown head covered in a red knit cap. Grizzled hands flexed, and a tool belt hung low around narrow hips.

The zombie was watching Mary, who seemed completely oblivious to his presence. She was singing along with the music, barefoot, standing on her toes as she carefully, and with a great deal of affection, watered her marijuana. She had pulled back her wild white hair, stuffing it into a bun, and her arms were bare. No trace of fat, just sinew and bone. Old track marks covered her pale skin. Grant had found Mary in an alley, years ago, almost dead from an overdose. Nursed her back to health. The old woman had never left. I wasn’t certain she could.

“Jesus Christ,” Rex muttered. “Holy fucking shit.”

“Yes,” I said, surveying the illegal growth. “Remarkable how this happens.”

Rex turned, giving me a dirty look—though his aura betrayed his fear, flaring in all directions like rockets powered the shadows in his soul. He was the oldest of the zombies who had come to be converted by Grant—oldest, in that his parasite was old—and while I distrusted the idea that any demon could willingly desire a change in its nature, I was convinced of this zombie’s devotion to Grant. For now, that was enough to let him live.

“I just found this new stash,” Rex said, like he thought I would try to blame him. Make good, finally, on my longstanding threat to exorcise the shit out of him and feed his writhing body to the boys.

“Last week it was the south side of the basement,” I replied mildly, watching Mary, who was now singing along with the always-melancholy melody of “Feed the Birds.” “Any clues yet to where she’s getting all the equipment?”

“Fuck,” muttered the zombie. “Take your pick. Just one of her harvests could pay for an army of little helpers.”

“No one else has been down here. I’m certain of it.”

“Whatever.” Rex rubbed his jaw, aura settling; assured, maybe, that he was not going to immediately meet his end. “If the police ever find out, Grant’s ass will burn. All of us will.”

“No one would blame Grant,” I said, but I knew that was not the point. Grant loved Mary. He had saved her life. If she went to prison for selling drugs, it would hurt him in ways I did not want to contemplate. Problem was, Mary and marijuana were like conjoined twins: where one was, so was the other, no matter how impossible. The woman loved her weed.

Mary still ignored me. I thought about all the effort it had taken to get rid of her last harvest, and sighed. “Someone tried to shoot me this morning.”

Rex laughed. “Lovely. Did it make you feel closer to your mother?”

I punched him. He staggered to one knee, clutching his face. I bent close and, in a loud, sickly-sweet voice, said, “Wow. Those migraines are really bothering you, huh?”

“Bitch,” Rex murmured.

“Don’t fuck with me,” I whispered. “I want to know if a demon was responsible.”

“I don’t know,” he snapped, staggering to his feet—one hand pressed to his face. “Doubtful. The smart ones all left town, and no one else would dream of trying that stunt. None of us could get away with—” Rex stopped, staring. “They got
away
with it?”

“They just think they did,” I snapped, still peeved about his remark concerning my mother. “So if it wasn’t one of you, then who?”

There was a gleam in his eye I did not like. “Nothing large has escaped the prison. Not recently. And anything powerful enough to break through those walls wouldn’t use a bullet to kill you.”

I’d already had a sense of that. I would have felt a crack in the prison veil if a demon larger than a parasite had come through. “And before my time? Something already here?”

“There were some breaks from the outer rings of the veil. But that was centuries ago. Again, a bullet would not be their style. Too human.”

Demons did not lie. Even if the zombie had told an untruth, I would see it in the shadows of his aura, which remained steady, unflinching.

I thought of Cribari, though the idea of humans hunting me was more disturbing than a demon. “You ever heard about anyone in my bloodline being called
Dark Mother
?”

“No. But all you bitches do is breed and kill. That’s plenty dark.”

“Mouthy little parasite,” I replied. “I bet you wouldn’t like that body so much if it was missing its tongue.”

His aura flared, though his expression remained flinty. “Try another one. You don’t harm hosts. Not like that. And you won’t kill me because that would mean breaking your word to Grant. You won’t even exorcise me, because I would just find another body to inhabit. No-win situation, Hunter.”

“We’ll see,” I said, looking past him at Mary, who had finally stopped watering her plants and now studied me with that piercing, farseeing gaze that was all kinds of crazy and sane and otherworldly; a mixed bag for a mixed-up mind. She took a step toward me and held out her hand.

On her palm, in ink, was an exact drawing of the pendant Grant had shown me only an hour before: his mother’s necklace, etched in neat coils and knots, tumbling into eternity upon her pale skin. My vision blurred. I swallowed hard, gut churning like I was riding a roller coaster on a full stomach.

“Iron hearts make murder,” I heard her say, though her voice sounded very far away. “Those who eat sin will be cast away and burned.”

The boys rippled. A chill raced through my bones. I said, “Mary,” and she shook her head, folding her hand into a fist that she pressed above her heart.

“We are lost in the Labyrinth,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “We are lost.”