Horace choked on a scream, stiffening beneath my hand.
Behind me a gun fired.
No impact. Just sound. I shoved Horace away from me, biting back a scream when his fingers slipped hard off the knife in my breast. I staggered, light-headed, blood rolling hot down my skin. I refused to look down, even when I grabbed the knife and pulled it out of my body in one hard yank. I should have been used to pain, dealing with the boys waking up every night—but dragging a knife out of my breast made me want to scream.
No time, though. Three possessed humans walked in, from the hall where I had entered.
Two men, one woman, with auras black as night and flecked with lightning. All were regulars at the shelter, Grant’s pet demons—and willing converts. I didn’t know their names.
In each of their hands, a gun. Pointed at me.
I looked for baby Andrew and found him a short distance away, sheltered in the arms of the big homeless man. Blood streamed down his face, but he was standing, trying not to draw attention to himself. Kind of like an elephant, lying low.
I moved away from him and the baby, keeping the demons focused on me. I was sweating and dizzy, still holding Horace’s slick bloody knife. “Takes three of you to put a bullet in me? Only took one to kill my mother.”
The woman glanced at Horace, who had slumped to the floor, unconscious. Fully human, no longer possessed. The parasite was dead. I had killed it. Whoever Horace had been before, he would wake up without his memories . . . and find himself accused of kidnapping a baby. His life, officially over. Again.
In the distance, police sirens wailed.
“No hard feelings,” said the woman, as her demonic aura flickered. “We have to change with the times.”
“Horace made a mistake with the baby,” said one of the men, tightening his grip on the gun. “He should have gone for you . . . last of the Kiss women. That
means
something.”
I didn’t bother replying. My entire body throbbed with awful, gushing pain. Each breath, agony. No place to run. Big, empty room. A baby still crying.
I flexed my right hand around the blade, and slipped into the void. One thought in my head. One focus as I drowned in that endless night.
I fell back into the world—
behind
the three demons.
My sword hit the woman’s demonic aura, burning through her shadow with a hiss. She screamed, dropping her gun and clutching her head. I swung at the man next to her—but my wound hurt like hell, slowing me down. He threw himself out of the way.
The last man shot me in the back.
I heard the blast—flinched—but the bullet did not hit.
Instead, long coiled bodies draped around my neck, purring like steam engines. I turned to find Zee standing behind me, holding a bullet in his hand—and staring at the horrified demon with a look of pure snarling death. Raw and Aaz held down the other possessed man.
“No one touches Maxine,” Zee hissed, and the rage that rolled off him carried an actual scent: hot as fried pepper, rancid as rotting meat. It seemed to coat the inside of my throat, and I coughed, eyes watering, forced to swallow hard in some vain attempt to ease that coarse sensation. It was hard to breathe.
“Forgive me,” begged the demon, dropping the gun and getting down on his knees. “Please.”
“No,” Zee rasped, and swiped his claws, knocking that possessed man’s head clean off his shoulders.
It happened so fast. Blood spurted, gushing across the floor. I stared in shock, watching that demonic parasite flutter loose of its dead host, attempting in vain to escape.
Only it couldn’t. It tried, a small dense mass of shadows straining to be free, but unable to break the bonds of its corpse host.
Zee started to laugh: a chilling, unpleasant sound.
“Your Mama bonded to
us
now,” he whispered, “and you bonded to
her
. Own you, cutter. Own your soul.”
Zee wrapped his claws around that demonic cloud, and the shadow squeezed inward, within his fist.
“Tell others,” he rasped. “Tell your mother. Maxine be
ours
. Touch her, like touching us. Hurt her, like hurting
us
.”
Dek and Mal, sitting heavy on my shoulders, sighed in pleasure. Small rough tongues licked the backs of my ears, but that was no comfort.
My boys had never killed a host. Not while on my watch. Hosts were innocent. They knew that. But this . . . what I had just seen . . .
I heard a choked sound behind me: the big man, still holding the baby, his one good eye wide with horror. Swaying, tilting, pale. I held out my hands to him, my trembling hands. Dagger gone, absorbed. I didn’t know when that had happened, but the armor radiated a rich warmth that sank into my bones.
“Oh, my God,” he whispered, staring at the decapitated man. And then he flinched. “God!”
I looked over my shoulder. Raw and Aaz were tearing into the possessed man they had pinned. Crouched over his body like feeding wolves. His head was already gone, and so was one of his arms. Blood sprayed their bodies, spreading across the floor. Aaz raked a long claw down his back, opening up his spine. Raw laughed, reaching deep inside the body. I heard a sucking sound as he pulled out the man’s heart.
I spun away, vomiting.
The big man ran, taking the baby.
I staggered after him, following the child’s cry. Outside, sirens. I pressed my hand over my breast, trying to staunch the blood and put pressure on the pain. Dek and Mal felt especially heavy.
“Wait!” I croaked, but the man disappeared down a dark hall at the back of the shadowed room. Andrew’s wail echoed.
Tears burned my eyes. I tried to run faster, desperate to catch up, but it was hard to breathe. My breast and shoulder felt like they were on fire, and the boys, the boys . . .
The man clattered up a set of stairs. I groaned, following him, leaving streaks of blood on the steel rail as I pulled myself along.
He turned on the landing, and let out a strangled shout.
“No,” I gasped, pushing harder.
I was afraid I’d find a corpse when I reached the man, but he was still standing—staring at Zee, Raw, and Aaz—who crouched on the stairs above him, bodies nearly lost in the shadows, their eyes glowing red.
I stepped in front of the man, heart thudding in my throat, so breathless I could barely speak.
“It’s okay,” I whispered raggedly, trying to get the man to look at me. “Sir, please.”
His terror was profound, a quivering horror that seemed to shave years off his life. He still wasn’t looking at me, and I shrugged Dek and Mal off my shoulders, their rippling muscles gripping my arms as they dropped to the floor with quiet thuds.
Rasping growls behind me. Deadly, hungry sounds. I forced myself to breathe, and edged closer to the man. Andrew cried, hiccuping on his sobs.
“Hey,” I said in a gentle voice. “Hey.”
The man finally looked at me, and the devastation in his eyes was almost more than I could bear.
“I’m crazy,” he whispered.
“Let me hold the baby,” I said.
He stepped back, shuddering. “No. No, no. Behind you.”
“I know,” I said. “Please, give me the baby.”
His face crumpled with terror, and he tried to run back down the stairs. Raw and Aaz slipped from the shadows, blocking his path—and the man teetered, crying out. I grabbed his jacket, trying to steady him, but my touch only made things worse. He flailed in shock and terror, spinning around with his fist raised.
Raw attacked.
I shrieked at him, but it was too late—and he was not listening. The little demon took off the man’s left leg at the kneecap, and in the same breath grabbed his stump and yanked down. The man crashed, screaming, and I fought to reach the baby slipping from his arms.
I tumbled on all fours, scrabbling and crawling. Raw reared high over the writhing man, sharp teeth bared in a hideous grin that bubbled with blood and strips of flesh.
I threw myself on top of the man’s chest—and the baby—just as Raw’s claws raked down. I gasped as something hard hit my shoulder, but felt no pain except for the stab wound in my breast.
Breathless, heart pounding, I peered over my shoulder.
Dek had blocked the blow. Over him, Raw stared at me in horror. I was sure I had a similar look on my face.
Aaz dragged his brother away. Zee took his place, staring down at me with grave, solemn eyes. Silence, between us all. Silence, except for the rasp and moan of the man beneath me and the quiet sob of a baby.
I closed my eyes, swallowing my own sob.
Slowly, carefully, I slid off the man. His chest hitched for air, like a wet hiccup. Blood gushed from his lower leg, flowing down the stairs. It was a terrible wound, accompanied by bone-deep lacerations across his thigh from where Raw had grabbed him.
I eased the crying baby from his arms. Except for my blood on his blanket, he seemed fine. It was a miracle. I bowed over him with a trembling sigh. At the bottom of the stairs, just out of sight, I heard police radios crackle and the pound of feet. I hesitated, torn, and laid Andrew on the floor beside the man who had tried to save him.
I tucked the blanket higher around the baby’s face, then peered down the stairwell.
“Hey!” I cried, hoarse. “Help! There’s a baby up here!”
Shouts. A flashlight beam pierced the shadows. I leaned against the wall, and pressed my armored fist against my brow. Around me, the boys gathered—quiet, and solemn. I heard the police running up the stairs.
“You’re safe,” I whispered to the baby, but I was looking at the dying man beside him, whose eyes were mere slits as he stared at my face.
I grabbed his jacket, and we slipped into the void.
CHAPTER 15
I
left the man just inside an emergency room, listening to startled screams as I pushed him from the void onto the cold tile floor. I had never done that to another person, but it was instinctive, a moment when I hovered between this world and another—lost and found, half darkness and half light.
Maybe people saw disembodied hands. Maybe they saw my face, peering from a window of darkness—maybe all that anyone noticed was the blood-soaked, dying man who fell into the hospital, out of thin air.
Only a week ago, a day, I would never have done anything so public. So flamboyant. But the demons had been right. The rules were different now. Times were changing.
Starting now.
I left the man and closed the void.
Next time, I stepped into the apartment. I staggered, clutching my breast, blood running slick over my fingers. I started to fall, and strong hands caught me.
“Maxine,” murmured Zee.
“Hey,” I whispered, hurting from more than a stab wound. Raw crawled on his belly toward us, claws curled under his hands, out of sight. Aaz was close behind, gaze torn between him and me, eyes big with worry. Dek and Mal slithered near, rough tongues scraping blood off my fingers.
I sat down, exhausted. Now the boys seemed calm.
Now
, here. It was surreal. I felt as though I was losing my mind. I had seen the boys wild before, seen them kill in hideous ways. Not once had it bothered me.
But
this
time had been different. Not just for what they’d done, but
how
.
“You killed hosts,” I told them, hoarse. “Innocent hosts. You may have murdered a man who was trying to protect a
baby
. You know better. I know you do.”
Raw looked away. Zee murmured, “Knowing not instinct. Instinct is hunger. Instinct is blood.”
“No. If I hadn’t put myself between Raw and that baby . . .”
I was unable to finish the sentence. It was too horrible to contemplate.
Raw gave me such a mournful look my heart broke again. I had to breathe through gritted teeth, trying to control the terrible, awful pain radiating from my breast. It filled and consumed my entire body. My aching heart felt worse.
I fumbled for the cell phone in my pocket, but moving my arm made my wound rage. I had to stop, holding my breath. I told myself this was no worse than having the boys wake up off my body—and went again for my phone.
Aaz beat me to it, reaching under me and slipping his claws into my back pocket. He put the phone into my hand. Raw placed a cool wet rag on my brow. I didn’t know where he’d gotten it, but Zee nudged him out of the way and lifted my head just enough to push a straw in my mouth. Ice-cold ginger ale fizzled and burned down my throat with perfect sweetness.
“Little nurses,” I muttered at them, and dialed the phone.
This time Grant answered, voice strained, tense.
“Upstairs,” I told him.
“They found the baby. But Maxine—”
“I was stabbed,” I interrupted, and lay flat on the floor, wincing. “In a not-so-great place.”
I heard the sharp intake of his breath. “I’ll be right there.”
“Bring Rex,” I said, and hung up. Dek pushed his snout beneath my head, slithering beneath my neck until he became my purring pillow. Mal crawled under my knees, propping them up. Aaz threw a blanket over me, curling against my side—and moments later, Raw joined him, still watching me as though he expected anger, a cutting word.
I had no anger. No cuts. Just concern.
I had been told all my life that if the prison veil broke, and the demon army was set loose, it would mean the end of the world. I’d had a taste of that. The veil
had
broken, and some of the army had escaped: the Mahati, a warrior clan, imprisoned on the second ring. Fierce, starving, ready to kill.
But still loyal to Zee and the boys, who had been their Kings.
Kings, who were loyal to me.
Learning that the boys were the Reapers, the most dangerous of the demons, had been horrific . . . but we had gotten through it because the boys had changed. Zee and his brothers were not the vicious, ruthless creatures they had been ten thousand years ago.