I steadied my breathing. I told myself nothing was different, that I was not different. Boys, here. Grant, here. My heart, here.
The storm of parasites gathered in a funnel that hit the dune in a thunderous impact and blasted sand against our bodies. I blinked hard, watching as the base of the funnel formed the loose figure of a woman, with red lightning for eyes and tendrils of smoke that waved about her head like snakes.
I knew who stood before us, though I’d only ever seen her in the body of a stolen human being.
Blood Mama. Queen and mother of the demonic parasites.
She had ordered my mother’s murder.
She ordered every death of every unprotected Hunter—part of a strange bargain she had struck with one of my ancestors, who I could only imagine had been incredibly desperate or appallingly stupid.
Over the years, I had been forced to deal with Blood Mama, and though I would have wiped her off the face of this world if I could have, she had made another deal, long ago, to keep herself safe from Zee and the boys—who had been forced by their Hunter to promise that they would not kill her.
Demons always kept their word.
“Blood Mama,” I said.
“Hunter Kiss,” she murmured, and her voice was dull and strange. Throughout all our encounters, she had been a sly creature, confident and full of power. Flashing smugness and cruel humor.
But I recalled, too, that she had always feared the falling of the prison walls. On earth, she had power. Amongst the other demon clans, she was nothing. Her children, food. Her children, whores amongst the warriors.
I expected her to say more; instead, all the shadows that formed her body poured forward in a thick funnel of smoke—and collapsed at Zee’s feet, spreading outward like a stain until the very edges touched the tips of Raw’s and Aaz’s claws.
Dek licked my ear and slithered off my shoulder, dropping to the sand. Mal did the same, and the boys crawled to the writhing stain, dipping their heads to taste it with their long, black tongues.
All those screams quieted. Cries, falling into a hush.
“My Kings,” said Blood Mama, her voice rising from that pool of darkness. “I have come first, of all the clans, to proclaim my loyalty.”
Zee’s eyes narrowed. “Ten thousand years. Ten thousand revolutions. Never heard you say that word.
Loyalty.
”
Lightning flashed within the churning stain. “None would have. You know the hunger of the demon lords. Had it been them, and not me, ten thousand years would have been reduced to one. They would have killed you to be Kings.”
Raw and Aaz snarled at her, and all that smoke flinched.
Zee’s lip curled. “Not
all
the demon lords. But, truth, for some.”
Blood Mama rippled across the sand. “We have a bargain. You cannot kill me.”
“Not kill. But hurt.”
“If you must,” she said, very quietly. “But I would beg for mercy.”
“Mercy,” Zee whispered. “Mercy is, as mercy does. You and your
mercy
, upon our old mothers, and our young Queen.”
“Those women were your prison. You expected me to show them kindness?”
Raw hissed, raking his claws through the shadowed stain. Blood Mama cried out, high and sharp, while the bodies of her gathered children shuddered—and wailed.
“Played with
arrogance
,” Zee told her, a quality to his voice I had never heard—superiority, edged with violence. “Arrogance, because we blood and prison-bound. So you ran free. And you bled
free
.”
Aaz stamped his foot upon the stain with such vicious brutality, it was a struggle for me not to flinch—especially when he bared his teeth in pleasure. He did not stop with one blow but continued with increasing speed and violence, throwing back his head and closing his eyes with a shuddering sigh as though he were soaking, drowning . . .
. . . or feeding.
I stared, chilled, as Blood Mama grunted with pain, and twisted, and leaked hard bolts of lightning into the sand. Yet she did not try to flee. She stayed, and endured, while Dek and Mal snapped their teeth upon the edges of her shadow—and Raw slashed her yet again, and again, growling with hair-raising, deep-throated fury.
I had no love for Blood Mama. But watching this . . . beating . . . felt wrong. It didn’t feel like my boys. Not the boys I loved.
Grant swayed close, watching the abuse with hard, cold eyes. Never had he looked at the boys like that. The Messenger, who stood beside him, also studied the boys—with narrowed, intense thoughtfulness.
I sensed movement on my right: the Mahati warrior, drawing near, graceful as a cat. Silver chiming chains pierced his gaunt body, and his fingers, which were long and shaped like the tines of a pitchfork, rubbed against one another in a steady, coarse rhythm. His gaze met mine, briefly, then he glanced at the boys, staring at them with hunger and fear—and hope.
Zee looked at the Mahati, who immediately bowed his head and held out his remaining arm in what seemed a very specific, ritualized gesture.
“King,” he whispered. “If hunger. My flesh, yours.”
I had never heard him speak. I had not realized he could. His voice was raspy, quiet, with a particular dignity that reshaped my entire view of him.
The Mahati never received a response, though. He was jerked backward, off balance, as though yanked by strings.
“No,” said the Messenger sharply, and the Mahati’s eyes flashed with fury and humiliation.
Aaz laughed at him. Dek and Mal raised their heads, and pieces of Blood Mama’s shadowed body dribbled from their mouths. They had been eating her. I thought, perhaps, I heard weeping in the air around us—but not from Blood Mama. Her demon children, crying softly with terror.
“Mahati-bound,” Zee rasped, and flicked his hand at him, dismissively. “Slave.”
Raw spat on the tall demon, and that spit burned like acid upon his pale silver thigh, already pocked with old wounds. The Mahati winced—and looked away at the Messenger, with hate and venom, and despair.
My skin prickled. A cruel smile touched Zee’s jagged mouth, but it faded as he looked back down at Blood Mama’s flickering stain.
“You,” he whispered, crouching with menace. “You, pretender. Walking as queen of warriors. Instead, queen of whores.”
“Mercy,” murmured Blood Mama. “Please, your forgiveness.”
Zee glanced over his shoulder at me, his eyes glinting with terrible, cold light. For a moment, the first moment of my life, he made me uneasy—but when he flicked his claws at me, I went to him. Spine straight, head held high. I realized how important this was. How it was as much a performance as any play. Only the stakes were beyond imagining.
“You are our Queen,” Zee said to me.
Dek and Mal coiled around my ankles, and I scooped them up under my left arm. Purrs radiated from their thick chests, and their muscles flexed around me as they slithered to their perches on my shoulders.
“Yes,” I said. “I am your Queen.”
Raw and Aaz gave me approving looks and stopped smashing Blood Mama with their feet and fists.
“Our Lady of the Kiss,” whispered Zee. “Do we forgive?”
I hadn’t expected to be asked that question. I remembered my mother’s head exploding from a rifle blast. Her blood and brain matter, and fragments of her skull—soaking me, as I stared in stunned horror. The boys, weeping. The boys, digging her grave and singing her funeral song.
I could still taste her blood, spattered on my lips. I could see her wry smile, just before her death.
Forgive
that
?
Rage touched my heart—and with it that darkness stirred, deeper than any shadow, and vaster than the void of
between
. I imagined a soft crack beneath my ribs, like the shell of a breaking egg—and that
presence
oozed free, bearing my soul down, down, into the core, its own heart and coil. An alien entity, separate from me, swelling inside my throat, stretching my mouth into a shuddering, euphoric smile that was not my smile but the darkness growing inside me, tearing my seams.
Will you forgive, Hunter?
I gazed down at Blood Mama’s stain upon the sand, and she seemed suddenly small and insignificant: an inkblot, a puddle made for a child’s foot, an afterthought. If I stepped on her, she would break. If I touched her, she would burn. That power simmered on the cusp of my heart, on my fingertips, swelling inside me with a whisper.
Once I started . . . I would not be able to stop. Once I said
yes
. . .
I closed my eyes and shuddered.
“We
forgive
,” I said, with great difficulty—and the darkness sighed, and retreated.
Zee pressed his face close to Blood Mama’s fluttering, obeisant shadow.
“Forgive, for now,” he added, rasping those words on a hiss. “Go.”
The stain retreated, like water flowing backward, bumping and heaving over the sand and gathering into that churning funnel of smoke. Whispers rose, and soft sobs, but there was also a hush around us that dulled the sounds, until I felt as though I were imagining all that misery floating, falling, through the air.
Then, like an arrow shot, that storm of demons leapt upward into the sky—and scattered.
I watched as the stars reappeared, and felt like a wreck. Knees trembling. Trouble breathing. My heart . . . my heart, pounding . . .
Grant limped close, bearing me up with his shoulder. I leaned on him. Maybe he leaned on me. Neither of us said a word. No need.
Zee stared at the sky. I wanted to hug him—or shake him—but was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get back up again. So I kicked sand in his direction.
“What,” I said slowly, “just happened?”
He didn’t respond immediately though his bony shoulders sagged. And just like that, all his menace faded, leaving him small and lonely. Raw and Aaz flopped down in the sand, reaching into the shadows beneath each other for fistfuls of cigars—which they licked like turd-shaped lollipops.
Dek and Mal exhaled noisily and began humming a particularly high-pitched version of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” I scratched their heads, and so did Grant, his hand leaving them to rest warm against my neck. My muscles relaxed, just a little.
“Zee,” I said.
He shuddered, raking claws over his arms—and tilted his head just enough to look at me. Grief, in his eyes. Or maybe that was wishful thinking. Grief and fury, I’d found, were sometimes no different at all.
“Told you,” he rasped. “Our prison falls, other opens. Cutter Mama knows it.”
And if your prison was restored?
came the unbidden thought. I didn’t know if, even thinking it, I was betraying them or saving us all. Maybe both.
Who sent me the crystal skull? Who knew this was coming? Was it a warning?
“Zee,” I said, a million questions in my voice.
“Memories same as resurrection,” he whispered, unblinking, then tore his gaze from mine to look at Raw and Aaz, who threw aside their cigars to peer up at the stars.
“Don’t want to remember who
we
are,” he said.
CHAPTER 11
T
HERE was nothing left for us at the oasis. The Messenger exerted her bond over the Mahati warrior and dragged him off into the desert for God only knew what—though Grant assured me it was simply a time-out session for unruly demon warriors who defied their assassin handlers.
Whatever. I wanted a bathroom, a cold ginger ale, and a small dark spot where I could rock back and forth and contemplate all the reasons why I might take up thumb-sucking again, after a twenty-three-year absence from that competitive sport.
Unfortunately, it was not to be. The first thing I saw when we slipped from the void into the Seattle loft was a naked old woman sprawled chest first on the floor, with her legs contorted over her head—eating from a plastic bag filled with fresh marijuana leaves.
The crystal skull was in front of her, and she was peering into its eyes.
I stared because there was little else to do in that situation—and heard Grant mutter under his breath. Even the boys stopped in their tracks. Raw and Aaz shielded their eyes. Zee tilted his head, frowning. Dek and Mal buried their faces against my neck.
I might have blamed their reaction on the old woman, but it could have also been the crystal skull. Or, just as likely, the soft light streaming through the large windows. It was overcast outside, but somewhere beyond the clouds the sun was in the sky. Making day.
Even though the boys were standing in front of me—clinging to my neck—I forgot, for a moment, that our bond had been broken. I glanced down at my arms, expecting to see tattoos. When I didn’t, I suffered a disorienting moment of shock—which transformed into aching loss. It reminded me of the first year of my mother’s death. I’d think of something I wanted to say to her, and look around—right before I remembered.
I rubbed my face. Grant said, “Mary, what are you doing?”
“Shhh,” she told him, frowning at the skull. “I’m
listening
.”
Zee hunched down, giving the skull an uneasy look. “Nothing to hear.”
The old woman poked the skull in the eyes. “Voices remain. Sins whispered. Thirteen crimes, thirteen signs.”
I’d learned to stop being surprised at Mary’s insights, but nonetheless, I was taken aback. And slightly uncomfortable. The boys had been ripped from my body. This was one of the artifacts used in the original binding. Which, conveniently, had been delivered to me by a
demon
.
Not a coincidence.
Had Blood Mama told the demon to bring me the skull? Or had someone else? And for what purpose? If my . . . father . . . was responsible for ripping the boys off my body, what was the point? My mother wouldn’t have gone along with
anything
that would hurt me . . . unless there was a good reason.
Seeing this skull, however, was a reminder that Zee and the boys
could
be bound again. Imprisoned. I couldn’t imagine how that made them feel. I didn’t want the boys to think that I would consider it. Because that would be wrong.