Darkness Calls (7 page)

DEMONS were not of earth, any more than a comet might be. Demons had journeyed to this world, as had the Avatars. As had humans, though I still questioned that particular revelation.

Either way, the method for reaching this planet had not involved space travel—though it had involved travel through space. A particular space.

The Labyrinth.

I still did not understand, not fully. I could not bring myself to imagine the possibilities. Other worlds, doorways into alternate realities. A maze of interdimensional highways bound together by a neutral zone—a crossroad between here and there—a place of possibilities that was a world unto itself. Or so I had been told. I had traveled through only a fragment: a prison, a place where souls were thrown to be forgotten. I had fallen into the Wasteland. Walked the dark side of the Labyrinth.

I had forgotten myself there. Forgotten everything. Buried alive. Nothing but a heartbeat in the endless dark.

According to Jack, I was the only person ever to escape the Wasteland. And though I knew, intellectually, that the Labyrinth was much more than that dark, endless hole, I could not help but associate one with the other. Because even if you fell into the good side of the Labyrinth, you might find yourself lost, forever. Wandering from your world to another, and another: a stranger, eternally in a strange land. Abandoned in the maze.

As Mary had been abandoned. Elsewhere, far from this world. Only she knew how or why it had happened, or where she was from, but it was enough that she was here. Grant called her an Alice who had fallen through the rabbit hole. Like fairy tales told, of men and women who discovered hidden hills, or magic stones; or fell asleep, only to find a hundred years had slipped by. Time passed differently in the Labyrinth. Everything did. And not everyone who stumbled through its doorways was human.

The demons had used the Labyrinth to slip from one world to another, again and again, harvesting human lives that had begun elsewhere. Following trails of flesh. Until, ten thousand years ago, they had come to earth—and this planet had become the last stand between the demons, Avatars, and humans. As it would be again, when the veil failed. We were all alien in our origins, our roots and blood soaked in worlds I could not dream existed.

I tried questioning Mary about the drawing on her hand but gave up when she turned away, floating on her toes like an aged ballerina, and started singing
Mary Poppins
’s “A Spoonful of Sugar.” I left Rex to handle her, and the marijuana. My mother was probably turning in her grave. A Hunter, working with a zombie, trusting a zombie to be left alone with a human. I was so far removed from everything I had been taught, I hardly knew myself anymore.

I had friends now. I had a man I loved. I no longer lived in my car or in hotels scattered across North and South America. I was making roots, day by day, and never mind my concerns that I was doing the wrong thing.

Because if I was here, in this city, no one else was
out there
. On the road. Traveling from city to city to save the day like some ball-busting, demon-hunting crime fighter (a one-girl
A-Team
, I liked to imagine). No matter if running around two continents like a chicken with its head cut off had been, in retrospect, the least productive way to save this world from the impending failure of the prison veil. Never mind that there was only one of me, and all I could do was scratch an itch on the toe of a giant. At least I had been doing
something
. I had saved some lives. Changed a few for the better. Small consolation for knowing that I was going to spend my entire life mostly alone. And die young, murdered. In front of my own child.

I had no illusions. No way out. I would have a daughter one day. Eventually, the boys would abandon me for her—as they had abandoned my mother. When that happened, I would die. Perhaps shot in the head, just like her.

Nor was going childless an option. My blood belonged to Zee and the boys. My body, their immortality—their only connection to this world. If I died,
they
would die. If I never had a child, they would die with me. The boys would never let that happen. They had survived for more millennia than even I could guess, and part of that existence had been upon the bodies of my ancestors—a line of women stretching so far in the past I could not dream their existence beyond my mother and grandmother: a steely-eyed woman murdered six years before my birth.

My only consolation was that the boys would remember me—in dreams, of women dead and buried and turned to dust. But that did not make the melancholy any less. That did not make me stop missing my mother. Even now, with Grant in my life.

Nor did it make my choices any less difficult. I still hunted demons, here in Seattle. Tried my best to save people. But it felt wrong not to be on the move. Like a sin. A crime. My mother’s voice, always in my head, telling me I was doing something infinitely wicked by staying more than one night in any city.
Move, move now.
Or invite yet more pain.

Bad enough that I didn’t know what to do about the prison veil. How to stop it from failing, how to save this world. I had no plan. No answers.

And I needed some. Fast. But not just about that.

I found Byron in the hall when I walked out of the basement stairwell. The door was kept locked from the outside. Mary did not have a key, but changing the locks once a month did little to deter her. Smart crazy woman.

The teen leaned against the wall, his eyes cold and dark, and his mouth tense. I had a feeling he had been waiting for a while.

“There’s a pervert here to see you,” he said.

“Well,” I replied, after a moment. “Introduce me.”

He led me down the winding corridors to the lobby of the homeless shelter, what had once been the corporate entrance of the furniture company. Old-time elegance was in the details: a mosaic in the expansive tile floors, dark wood trim, and stained glass in the windows alongside the oak door. A small office was visible through two archways divided from the lobby by staffed desks screwed into the floor. One desk was to check in folks who wanted to use the shelter—and the other was part of a help center where men and women could make appointments to meet with volunteers about jobs, housing, and educational opportunities.

The check-in line did not open until after three in the afternoon, but there was a good crowd in front of the help desk. I saw one of the zombies from breakfast making an appointment. He did not notice me, but Archie Limbaud’s face flashed before mine, as did his victim’s. Little girl lost. I swallowed hard, tearing my gaze from the zombie. Wondering if he had ever forced his host to murder.

Byron did not need to point out the pervert. I saw him as soon as I entered the lobby. He sat on a wooden bench, alone, eating a hot dog and peanuts. Dressed in a tan suit and wrinkled blue dress shirt that strained over a round stomach. A loosened striped tie hung around his neck, silk, stained with ketchup. He was bald on top, and his glasses were dirty. So was his chin. He ate violently. Each bite looked strong enough to tear a steel pipe in half. Peanuts mashed around his mouth, which I saw clearly because he continued shoving food between his teeth before everything had been swallowed.

“So,” I said to Byron, as we stood on the other side of the lobby. “I can’t imagine you struck up a conversation of your own free will.”

“I was around the office. I heard him talking. He wanted the woman in charge, so I volunteered to find her.”

“You thought of me?”

He shrugged, scrutinizing the stranger with a cold, hard stare that belonged to a war-torn veteran, not a teenage boy. “I used to know men like him.”

“Not anymore,” I murmured grimly, and pushed past the boy to walk across the lobby.

Pervert or not, the man was gross—and not just because of the remnants of a hot dog greasing his lips. An indefinable
something
was wrong with him, and his pale, bulging body made me imagine cockroaches, millions of them, swarming under his straining skin. He studied my feet as I approached, then the rest of me, small blue eyes wrinkling into slits behind the dirty lenses of his wire-rim glasses.

“Ah,” he said, around a mouthful of hot dog and peanuts. “My Lady.”

His tone was surprisingly elegant. I tilted my head, searching his gaze. “Someone said you were looking for me?”

“Across eternity,” he replied, wiping his mouth with his tie. “And eternity has become
now
. Lovely how that works, is it not?”

Zee rippled between my breasts, struggling in his dreams. I hesitated. “Who are you?”

“You may call me Mr. King. Mr.
Erl
King, if you will.” The man heaved himself off the bench, bits of peanut falling to the floor. Ketchup still smudged the side of his mouth, and he held out one hand for me to shake. His palm looked greasy, sticky and red. He smelled like onion and nuts.

I did not take his proffered hand. His smile widened, though it was tight-lipped, without a hint of teeth. He let his hand linger between us for a moment longer, then dropped it into his pocket. I thought,
Gun
, but what he pulled out was a wax parcel, which he quickly unwrapped to reveal a small pizza pocket. It looked cold, but he clamped down his jaws upon the soft crust, and red sauce flowed around his mouth like blood.

Mr. King closed his eyes, sighing as he chewed. I stood, watching him. Waiting. Waiting for something to break. He was ready to break, though there was nothing brittle about him. Just a load of dynamite stuck in a dam. Fuse lit.

“Well,” he said finally, around a mouthful of pizza. “This was most pleasant.”

And like that, he turned on his heel and shuffled away, toward the front door—parts of his body wiggling in opposite directions, as though those insects I imagined still fought to be free. I stared, and followed.

Mr. King was already outside when I caught up. I did not touch his shoulder, but matched his pace so that we walked down the steps, side by side. I said, “You had a reason for coming here.”

He glanced sideways at me and poked the last of the pizza pocket into his mouth. Chewing did not stop him from speaking, which was a wet, red, and messy affair. “Merely to see how things stand, to remind myself that worlds may change, but some things stay the same. Like you.”

Again, he wiped his mouth with his tie and stopped to look me square in the eyes. He was quite short and had to gaze up, teetering as he did on his toes. I did not move under his scrutiny, not even to blink—as though that would reveal some insufferable weakness. Instead, I studied him in turn, forcing myself to stay calm even as my heart began to race. Zee shuddered against my skin; all the boys did. Fighting to wake. Hate curling in their dreams.

Gross little man,
I thought, suddenly.
Do not touch me.

His tongue slipped over his lips, licking them. Hungry, piggish eyes blinked once, slow and drowsy. The scent of onions suddenly reminded me of blood, and it was too easy to imagine that the stains around his mouth had little to do with tomato sauce.

Mr. King pulled a piece of red licorice from his pants pocket and jammed it halfway into his mouth. Again, without another word he turned and walked away, accompanied by the sound of his teeth smashing candy.

I stood, watching him go. Then followed. This time from a distance. I let a Dumpster come between us, just for a moment, but when I rounded the corner, the man had disappeared. Gone clean away, on a street that was empty except for two parked cars in the distance, and a ramshackle line of chain-link fences so battered the next rainstorm might bring them down.

I checked the inside of the Dumpster, but Mr. King had not stashed himself inside. He was gone. Into thin air. Except for the scent of onions.

I stood very still, thinking about that, and after a minute got some young company. Both of us stayed quiet, until finally I lied. “He didn’t seem to want anything.”

Byron replied, “Men like him always want something. Some just take longer to get around to it. Depending on how much they think they’ll have to pay.” He glanced at me with red-rimmed eyes. “Or how hard they sense you’ll fight not to give them what they want.”

“Byron,” I said.

“But sometimes,” he continued, whispering. “Sometimes a fight is what turns them on.”

CHAPTER 5

I
lived above the homeless shelter with Grant. His loft was accessible via a private outer door and one long staircase—steep for a man who could hardly walk without a cane. He said it was good exercise. Whatever.

The door stood open at the top of the stairs. Golden sunlight raced through immense windows, chasing the floors with heat. I entered the apartment and felt washed in warmth, steeped in light like dry tea leaves dropped in miracle water. Expanding, growing, shedding flavors—becoming more, and more, myself. Bookshelves lined the walls, crowding paintings and hanging masks, while a grand piano held court in the corner, along with guitars and a table heavy with half-made flutes. My own belongings were there: my mother’s trunk, her leather jacket, hanging on the arm of the couch.

I loved this place. Made me feel safe, in ways I had forgotten since my mother’s death. I was an impossible woman to hurt. A hard woman to kill. But that did not mean I had ever felt safe: safe in the heart, safe in spirit. Not for a long time.

Flute music floated from the spare bedroom, swelling high and sweet.
Peer Gynt,
I thought. My mother had taken me, years ago, to see James Galway perform—and while I could not say that Grant was the man’s equal in technique, the soft power in each of his notes carried so true and pure it was as if every breath pulled me close, easing the sores in my soul.

And yet, I was immune to his power. Zee and the boys were, as well. I had found no one else who could resist him. Demons could possess, overpower—but not affect the human soul, or consciousness. Those were simply buried. Grant had no such boundaries. He could rearrange the colors of the spirit to make something new.