The Iron Hunt (12 page)

“Here,”
Jack said, smiling triumphantly. I still held Zee in my arms, and swayed close,
peering at the object in the old man’s hands. It was covered in a fine linen
that he swiftly unfolded, revealing a round flat stone. A disc. Filled with
deep concentric lines that seemed to shimmer, as though the stone itself was
laced with veins of pearl.

My
vision blurred. My stomach clenched. I leaned against the kitchen table. Zee’s
hands tightened around my neck.

“What
is it?” I asked. My voice sounded strange in my ears.

“A
gift,” Jack said slowly, “from your mother. She said if we ever happened to…
bump into one another… you should have it.”

“Bump
into one another?” I rubbed my aching eyes. “What were the odds of that?”

“My
dear girl… you’re here, aren’t you?”

Raw
and the others stopped eating. They sat on the floor, staring at the stone in
Jack’s hands. Dek and Mal collapsed from the shadows inside my hair to drape
across my shoulders.

He
held out the disc. I took it from him. My hand tingled. Zee seemed to hold his
breath.

But
nothing happened. It was just rock. Smooth rock, polished to a butter-soft
shine. Sandstone, perhaps. It felt good to hold, and the design in its heart
was simple. Those circles within circles. I touched the outer ring, dipping my
finger into the carved line. I could not help myself. I began to trace it, and
again, my skin tingled. I felt dizzy, and stopped.

“What
is it?” I asked again.

Jack
never answered. We both heard his door creak open, and then a woman called,
“Are you in there, Old Wolf? Something’s happened.”

Zee
vanished from my arms, while Raw and Aaz winked into the shadows beneath the
sink. Dek and Mal stopped purring. Jack hesitated, as though he was seriously
contemplating silence. “Yes, Sarai. We have company.”

I did
not hear the woman move through the other room, but suddenly she was there, at
the corner of my eye. I turned.

And
one piece of the puzzle slipped into place.

Sarai
was the woman from Badelt’s photograph. No mistake. She was slender, shorter
than I, with long silver hair that framed a face so ethereally perfect, so
lovely, I could only imagine Troy and Helen and one thousand ships, and think
that
yes
, maybe such a thing could have happened, perhaps a woman could
be that beautiful.

Sarai
certainly was. A hundred times more beautiful in person, as if Badelt’s
photograph had captured only a rough copy of the woman—and though I guessed she
was in her forties or fifties, I could hardly find one wrinkle, one flaw, in
her skin. No makeup, either. She was unreal.

“You,”
I said slowly. “It was you who sent Badelt after me.”

“Oh,”
Sarai said. “Damn.”

ODDLY
enough, I thought of Shakespeare first. Part of a birthday present when I was
twelve: a book of quotes from the Bard. Poetic maxims. My mother was big on
those.

But
they whose guilt within their bosoms lie, Imagine every eye beholds their
blame.

Maybe.
But Shakespeare would have been waiting for a cold day in hell before he saw
guilt—or any other emotion— in Sarai Soars’s eyes.

“He’s
dead, isn’t he?” she said. “Brian?”

I did
not answer. I was too busy studying her reaction. My mother had kept her
emotions hidden with most everyone but me. Survival, she called it, and maybe
Sarai was the same—though I had questions that took precedence over
personality. I wanted to know how she knew me. Or why seeing me would make her
assume a man had died.

“He
was murdered,” Jack said quietly. “I’m sorry, Sarai.”

She
closed her eyes and bowed her head. Silver hair fell around her face, and she
pressed one finger against her brow, like she ached there. I suddenly felt more
sorry for her—and wondered if that was a trap.

“You
were close,” I said carefully. “I was in his office. I saw the picture of you
together.”

“We
were married. Briefly. Years ago.” Her voice held little emotion; a faint sharp
edge, nothing more. “How did he die?”

“Shot.
Last night.” I did not cushion the truth. Lying about the dead, when they had
no voice to speak for themselves, had always rubbed me the wrong way. “He had
my name on him. The police found it. They came to me because they thought I
might have killed him.”

Sarai’s
head remained bowed, but Jack’s hands tensed. I gave him a long, hard look.
“What am I missing here, Meddling Man?”

The
woman made a small choked sound. Her delicate hand, smeared with paint, passed
over her eyes. “Meddling Man. It’s been years since I heard that name.”

“But
you know mine.”

Sarai
finally looked at me. Unshed tears glistened. “Maxine Kiss. Hunter and Warden.
Guardian of the prison veil. The last of your kind.”

My
voice refused to work. The edges of the stone disc cut into my hands. Her gaze
flicked down, across the object, and that careful mask slipped back into place.
“You should leave. Come back tomorrow. We can talk then.”

“No,”
I managed, hoarse. “I’m sorry for your loss, but I need answers.”

“You
need nothing,” she snapped.

“Sarai,”
Jack said firmly, and the woman spun away without a word, walking down the
narrow, cluttered path of books with swaying, impossible grace. She did not
look back.

I
wanted to chase her down. I would have, except Jack’s hand tightened. “Let her
be.”

I bit
back a coarse response. “You seem like an odd couple.”

“We’ve
had years to work out our differences,” replied the old man, with a particular
gentleness that made it impossible to stay angry.

I
pushed back my hair, holding my aching head. “How does she know who I am? Did
you tell her?”

Jack
did not answer. I looked at him. Found his gaze focused on the edge of my jaw,
which was exposed now. Took me a moment, but I remembered Oturu, how he had hit
me with his hair. I had forgotten about it, but Jack was staring—staring with a
sick, slick flush in his cheeks. He had been so calm downstairs, so cheerful
throughout all of this. I had hardly thought it possible to see that expression
on his face.

But
he looked at that spot on my jaw like it was a nuclear bomb, countdown sequence
already ticking from ten seconds to one. A frozen, resigned fear, fat with
dread.

As
though he wanted to run—and knew it was too late.

I
touched my skin and felt those marks. I looked for a mirror. Found one near the
kitchen sink, next to a copy of Everett Wheeler’s
Vocabulary of Military
Trickery
, the cover of which was the repository for a dangerously rusty old
razor and a wooden bowl of old-fashioned shaving soap, complete with bristle
brush.

The
mirror was delicate but heavy, framed in solid silver. The glass seemed to
shimmer slightly as I looked into it, and I saw, below my ear, a small fan of
lines that was almost invisible. No welts, no blood. Just indentations, as
though a cold brand had been laid into me, pressed so hard it had left a
permanent mark. The lines flowed into each other; fluid, as though unfurling,
like the outline of a wing. Or a cloak. Or that demon’s living hair.

I
held my breath. Jack still stared, his gaze distant, hollow.

“You
know this,” I whispered. “What this means.”

He
hesitated. “No. But I know who gave it to you.”

I
almost dropped the mirror. “How is that possible?”

Jack’s
warm hand slid over mine, a brief contact I was totally unprepared for, so much
that I stood there, dumb, until I realized the only reason he had touched me
was to take the mirror out of my hand. The old man set it down, very carefully.
“Tomorrow, my dear. We will be here.”

“We’re
here now,” I protested, part of my reluctance due to fear, an irrational dread
that if I left the old man, I might never see him again. I felt weak for it,
like a little kid, and squeezed the stone disc until I hurt. Pain was the only
way I could remember myself, but even that was hollow.

Zee
caught my leg, pleading with his eyes. All the boys were watching me. I hardly
knew them, either.

I
looked at Jack. “Tomorrow. You promise?”

“Not
a force on this world could make me break my word to you,” he said, with such
solemn grave dignity I felt those words hang heavy and rich, as though a
promise from Jack was something a person could mark on a treasure map and hold
with an utter certainty of truth.

“All
right,” I breathed. But before Jack could relax, I added, “One more question.
How does Sarai know me?”

Jack
sighed. “She also met Jeannie. And your mother.”

“Impossible.
My mother, maybe, but not my grandmother. That woman is too young.”

“Not
that
young. You have to look deeper than the skin to know Sarai Soars, my dear. Much
deeper.”

“Zee
said the same about you,” I told him coldly. “ ‘Meddling Man is all skin,’ he
said.”

“Did
he?” Jack smiled sadly. “Well. You should listen to your friends.”

And
with that, he walked me from his office.

I
took my time driving home. Not a good night for pushing my luck. The boys were
quiet. My head hurt.

I
heard the piano while I was still on the stairs. When I opened the apartment
door, Grant did not stop playing. He did not smile, either. His fingers flowed
over a waterfall of Mozart, and I could feel the tension in every note.

I
kicked off my boots, threw aside my jacket, and slumped beside him on the piano
bench. My bones felt like jelly. So did my heart. Dek and Mal chirped, then
disappeared from my shoulders. The apartment always felt safe enough to take a
break from bodyguard duty.

“Okay,”
I said to the side of Grant’s head. “According to the zombies, the world is
going to end, there’s a demon who can choke me with his mind who claims I
summoned
him, and I may have found my biological grandfather. Who seems to be living
with Badelt’s ex-wife.”

“Wow.”
Grant did not stop playing the piano. “All I’ve got is gas.”

I
cracked a smile. “Maybe you can pray real hard for it to go away.”

Grant
lifted his hands off the keys. I took over, playing “Chopsticks.” He joined me
a moment later, our duet growing increasingly complicated, until I was
practically in his lap, our hands and arms tangled together.

“Apocalypse,”
he finally said, when we stopped. “That’s old news. Tell me about the
grandfather and ex-wife.”

So I
did. And then I backtracked and described the demon, the reaction of the boys.
Their refusal to fight the creature. Oturu.

Grant
said nothing for a long time. His arms were heavy and warm around my waist.
With all that had happened, I could not imagine sleeping, but my eyelids began
to feel heavy.

“Don’t
pass out on me,” he said gently, kissing the back of my ear. “The boy is
awake.”

I
straightened, rubbing my face. “When?”

“Less
than an hour ago. I convinced him to stay, but he’s not feeling well. The
chloroform.”

“He
must be frightened.”

“He’s
scared of men. I couldn’t stay in the room with him, even to talk. And no, I
didn’t try to… modify… him. Though I was tempted to take the edge off.”

I
thought about that. “Anything else happen? Suwanai and McCowan call back?”

“No.”

“Mary?”

“Rex
is down in the basement, cleaning up the mess.”

“Personal
zombie assistant.”

Grant
grunted. “I know he bothers you.”

“He’s
a human possessed by a demon.”

“He’s
reforming.”

“Does
reformation include giving up his host?”

Grant
said nothing. I turned in his lap to look at him. “The demon and the man are
not the same. One is still a prisoner of the other.”

“I
can’t kill Rex,” he said quietly, searching my gaze. “I can’t kill any of them,
Maxine. Not while I know their natures can change.”

“Because
you force them to.”

Grant
shook his head. “Because I show them another way. If they didn’t want my
influence, they could abandon those bodies, go anywhere in this world. You know
that. They stay because it’s their choice.”

Unfortunately,
I did know that. And it wracked me. I killed demons. I killed them because I
believed, unequivocally, that they deserved to die. I had been taught so from
birth, told again and again that demons were irredeemable predators of the
human race, and for my entire life had accepted that, without a single doubt,
or question.

Until
Grant. And now I lived under the same roof as zombies. My poor mother.

I
scooted off his lap, but he caught my wrist and his eyes were dark, haunted. He
very carefully turned my head to look at the mark beneath my ear, and after a
long moment of silence, peeled down the collar of my sweater to examine my
throat. I held still, eyes closed, trying not to remember what it felt like to
choke to death. Wishing I could forget that cloak, or hair, those feet, and
that smile.