The Mortal Bone (23 page)

WE found Blood Mama sitting inside a red Mercedes. Her human host was a redheaded bombshell; tall and shaped like an hourglass on steroids. Small waist, massive breasts. Her low-cut dress was red, and so was her lipstick.

The shadows around her head and beneath her eyes were purple and black.

Grant slid into the backseat of the car, and I got in up front. The interior smelled like a lemon had exploded. I rolled down the window so that I could breathe. It also gave me the illusion of room: her aura was huge, thunderous, and took up most of the front seat in a billowing, heaving coil of shadows.

Blood Mama gave me a long look. “Hunter. You always were a fool.”

“I didn’t come here for a lecture. Didn’t
you
swear
your
fealty?”

“At least I knew what I was doing.”

“So how does it feel?” I shot back. “Having their hearts inside you?”

“The same as it did before,” she replied. “Disgusting.”

“But you said yes. You were terrified not to.”

“While you just have blind faith in their goodness.” Blood Mama’s lips peeled back in a grotesque laugh, and she glanced at Grant. “How do
you
feel about that?”

He gave her a flinty look. Blood Mama’s smile did not fade, but it did grow strained. “They are butchers. You know that. You, with your eyes, can see that shadow.”

“I see a shadow in you,” Grant replied. “I think I prefer theirs.”

Blood Mama’s aura flared, and she closed her eyes. I said, “Tell me about the other demon lords. Tell me how this shit started.”

“War,” she muttered. “We were different, then. All of us. Not peaceful, but at peace. Our worlds were connected by a series of stable gates that led through the Labyrinth. We traded. We shared our cultures.”

“Even you?”

She gave me a hateful look. “We had hosts, then. Not human. Other creatures that served our needs. We evolved together, our species beneficial to one another. They were the Puri and we were the Boha.”

I let that sink in. “Lord Ha’an said that the demon kind did not always need to feed on pain.”

“I hardly remember those days, darling.” A smile touched her mouth, but it seemed self-mocking. “Those days are dead. The Puri are dead. All of them. I watched them burn, an entire world destroyed. Not just our world, but others. You think five clans were all there ever was?” Unexpected grief struck her eyes, and she looked away from my stare. “There were twenty worlds in our link. Twenty clans. Billions of lives, lost.”

“Who killed them?” Grant asked.

“They have no name,” Blood Mama whispered. “We never named them. We spoke of them as wraiths, or a wind made of light. A fistful of lightning, perhaps. No bodies. Nothing to fight. Just a . . . howl.”

Chills struck. The darkness, oozing through me, stilled. As though listening.

“Zee and the boys,” I said, touching my chest, my heart. “The boys summoned something to stop that . . . howl.”

“Those Reaper bastards,” she said bitterly. “Their world was farthest from any other. Few went there, few traded with them. Their kind were barbarians and slave hunters. They would send raiding parties through the Labyrinth to invade other worlds and bring back females and children. Sometimes to wed. Sometimes to sacrifice to the God they worshipped.”

Blood Mama gave me a haunted look. “The God that is inside you.”

It was very quiet inside the car. In my mind, the darkness sighed, and in a slow whisper said,
We were not the God of their vast temples. We were not the God of their dreams. But we heard that world, praying. And though we were too late to save more than a handful, we answered. We left the stars for that answer.

I closed my eyes. Grant’s hand touched my shoulder and squeezed.

“It possessed Zee and the boys,” I said, hoarse. “And then they gathered up the remaining clans, and turned you all into an army.”

“An army based on their culture and their values. And all they valued was strength and an ability to fight. The Boha were worthless to them, but they took us in because they did not believe in waste.” Blood Mama spat those words. “Once they had us, we all changed. It was slow at first. We didn’t realize until it was too late. My kind did not need pain to survive. Just life. Ours was a peaceful symbiosis. No longer. The same with the Shurik. In the old days, they did not eat their hosts. They did not always take hosts, even. They ate plants and algae, and . . .”

She stopped, bowing her head. Her aura slammed against the window, the ceiling of the car, raging against the confines of her body. Lightning flashed inside those roiling shadows.

“All these years,” I said softly. “All these fucking years. Why didn’t you ever speak of this?”

Blood Mama gave me a grim, sidelong look. “Zee? Why not the others?
They
never told you.”

“She’s asking you,” Grant said.

“This story is agony,” she snapped at him. “It is madness. What we were, what we became . . . we lost
everything
. We lost our souls. Lord Draean? He was a swamp slug, a peaceful
nothing
. But after the war, he grew teeth. We
all
grew teeth. We had no choice, and now the Reaper Kings are reaping what they sowed.”

I sat back, staring at her. “Lord Draean didn’t seem keen on following the boys again. Nor did K’ra’an.”

“There will be war,” she said, simply. “I always knew there would be. Lord Ha’an is too loyal, and Lord Oanu, too predictable. Draean and K’ra’an always chafed at the yoke.”

I looked back at Grant. “We need to stop this. I have to speak with the boys.”

Blood Mama gave me a dismissive wave of her hand. “It is done, now. You are nothing but a thing they can use, Hunter. Your opinion means nothing. You might as well let me kill you.” A cold smile touched her mouth. “It would solve so many problems.”

No warning. No hesitation. The moment those words left her mouth, Grant’s hand shot out, sinking through her aura into her hair. He did not pull on her head, but she froze at the contact, eyes widening in fear and shock.

“I can kill you with my voice,” Grant said quietly, and the power that rolled off each word was immense, and terrible. “You’ve always known it.”

“I also knew you were too soft,” she whispered. “Too kind.”

“Not anymore.” My husband leaned forward, giving her a look that chilled me to the bone. “You will help us. You will protect us. You will do everything you can to keep harm from us. Your children will be our spies.”

Each word swelled with power: ripe and lush, making the air shimmer with fleeting arcs of golden light. I had never seen light when Grant used his power, not like this, but it surrounded me like a soft veil made of sunrise.

But it wasn’t just light for Blood Mama. She writhed in her seat, making a keening sound that cut me to the core. Her hands strained around the steering wheel, and her aura swelled, fighting at the bonds of her host.

“Stop,” she gasped, but his voice drowned out hers, twisting, bending. Sparks of golden light flashed within her aura, burning through the shadows. Burning
her
.

“Grant,” I said, as his voice dropped into that powerful, transforming hum.
“Grant.”

He released Blood Mama—with his hand, and his voice. The demon queen slumped forward, breathing hard, trembling. Her cheeks were wet with tears.

I stared at Grant.

He did not look at me. He leaned away, staring at the back of Blood Mama’s head. Pale. Barely breathing. I recognized his eyes again. Without a word, he fumbled for the car door and stumbled out, half-falling on one knee. He started vomiting.

I did not leave the car. I exhaled slowly and focused again on Blood Mama.

“He altered you,” I said. “Be thankful he didn’t kill you.”

“
I
should have killed him,” she whispered, and gave me a hateful look. “You do it, Hunter. Do it, before he becomes someone you don’t recognize.”

“I’m a bleeding heart,” I told her. “And I’ll bleed out before I hurt that man.”

Blood Mama shut her eyes. “You deserve what you get.”

I waited a beat, then got out of the car. She drove away before I shut the door. It had started to rain, and I stood there, soaking in the open sky, listening to my heart pound. My heart, five hearts . . . and Grant’s, deep in our bond.

He was sitting on the concrete, head bowed, rainwater sliding down his face and neck. I sat beside him and pushed wet hair from his eyes.

“I lost control of myself,” he whispered. “I reacted from the gut, without thinking.”

I was silent a moment. “What did you do to her?”

“I did what I said. She will protect us. Her children will be our spies. For all intents and purposes, she’s ours.” Grant could barely meet my gaze. “I crossed the line.”

I put his hand on my stomach, and held it there. “What are we fighting for?”

His jaw tightened. “Life.”

“Life,” I repeated softly. “When this is over, I’ll be there to help you sleep at night.”

CHAPTER 21

T
HREE months after my mother’s murder—back when I was twenty-one and still unaccustomed to the boys sleeping as tattoos on my body—I chased a demon into a Detroit car dump and realized that for all my training, all my knowledge, I just didn’t have the stomach to punch out a ten-year-old kid—even one who was possessed and had murdered his baby sister in the backseat of a parked Chevrolet.

So I played coward. I let that demon run. I waited until nightfall. I made Zee and the others go hunting for me, and I followed, and only when the possessed boy was down on the ground, screaming in rage, did I lay my hand on him, gently, and exorcise the parasite out of his young, wounded soul.

I relied on Zee and the others, like that. I relied on them to protect my soul.

Now it was time for me to get my own hands dirty.

And protect
them
.

EASIER said than done.

When I tried to go to the boys, the armor refused me. Grant and I stood in the middle of the apartment, hair and clothing still damp from the rain, backpacks slung over our shoulders. I held my right hand in a fist, pressed against my chest. Eyes closed, I focused on those five heartbeats throbbing.

Five heartbeats, filled with anger.

I had felt their anger from that first moment of the bond. It had not yet eased. I was becoming used to it, but it frightened me. Feeling their rage didn’t explain the cause.

But no matter how much I needed to see them, the armor refused to obey.

Or maybe it was obeying. Just them, and not me.

I started to grind my teeth. Grant raised his brow at me and reached into his back pocket for his cell phone.

“Hold on a minute,” he muttered, and I peered over his shoulder, watching him dial Rex.

“Hey,” my husband said, “I need you to do something for me. Find one of your kind. Doesn’t matter who, just make sure the demon is bonded to Blood Mama. Tell the demon we need information about the Reaper Kings—what they’re doing, who they’re with. Everything.”

I heard a very loud
fuck
on the other end of the line, then some equally strident, inarticulate mumbling.

“No,” he replied, glancing at me, “I’m really
not
crazy. Just do it, Rex.”

He hung up the phone in the middle of another explosive round of cursing. I crossed my arms over my chest. “Happy to help, was he?”

“He’s having a bad day.” Grant slid his arm around my waist. “If we can’t reach the boys, what’s next? Trying to break this bond?”

I touched my chest, closing my eyes.

Talk to me,
I said.

You do not wish to listen,
replied the darkness, oozing through the bond with the boys.
You wish to hear only what pleases you.

The darkness sighed with pleasure, a sound that I found perfectly chilling.

They are hunting,
it whispered, and the center of my mind bloomed open like an exploding rose, revealing a red haze slashed with movement and coiled, tangled lines heavy with shadows that housed teeth and claws. I heard snarls. I tasted blood on my tongue. I felt an overwhelming, desperate hunger to
make someone hurt
.

It was a desire that was born from anger, but also pain and misery . . .

. . . and a terrible self-hate.

I leaned hard against Grant, breathless.
Take me to them. Please.

The darkness did not answer me. Like a bird settling on a clutch of eggs, I felt that entity sink deep, deep inside me, back into its nest beneath my soul. Part of it remained in the bond with the boys, but not much. I could feel that. It was just a taste.