A Wild Light (34 page)

I leaned hard on my elbow, rubbing my face—still unsure about what had just happened. I stared past Ha’an at Jack’s wavering light, imagining for a moment that I could see an imprint of his face, there and gone, in an instant.

“War is coming,” I said, still staring at my grandfather. “With the Aetar. It’s only a matter of time.”

Ha’an followed my gaze. “But he is not your enemy.”

“No,” I said.

He made a small, thoughtful sound. “Fighting the Aetar was a simple thing compared to the war we left behind.”

I wanted to know more, but now was not the time to ask. “I can’t afford a war. Too many innocent people will get hurt.”

“And you are alone.”

“No.” I touched my chest, suffering a strange twist in my heart, that I could say that out loud and mean it. “I’m not alone. Just outnumbered.”

“As are the Mahati.” Ha’an leaned back, surveying the surrounding demons. “We are not your kind, but you are part of us. You feel it. Not just because of the thing inside you.”

I feel it, I want it,
I thought, as though I had slid on a glove worn some hundred years past, only to find the fit was still just right. Forgotten, but familiar.

Give in,
said the darkness.
Choose. Let us hunt.

I tasted blood in my mouth.
No.

Yours,
said the darkness.
Your army, your people, your responsibility.

No,
I said again, struggling with the need heating my veins. But another part of me, shivering, said:
Yes. I want this.

This. Not just power. But the Mahati themselves. Their lives.

I looked at Ha’an and found him studying me with those cold green eyes. Alien, but not. My threshold for the strange was becoming ever more tolerant. Dek purred against my ear. Raw and Aaz prowled, while Zee watched me: solemn, thoughtful.

“Here, now, we must make a decision,” Ha’an said. “Especially as you plan to close the veil.”

I flinched. Ha’an touched his mouth with those impossibly long fingers. “I saw many things inside your mind.”

“Too much,” I said.

“Enough,” he replied. “I see now that each of us is bound by different needs, but one is the same. To protect. To save.”

“Always, that,” Zee muttered to himself, looking at Raw and Aaz.

“Yes,” Ha’an said gravely. “It was why you brought the clans together.”

I closed my eyes, unable to imagine that life, that history. My boys, as they must have been.

Magnificent,
said the darkness, and I glimpsed five hulking shadows bearing down on a stone city, shadows large as the city, each step, each coiled slither, shaking the ground with lethal violence.

Then, nothing. I sagged forward, covering my eyes. The armor throbbed against my hand.

“I’m going to need an army,” I said, before I could stop myself. The words sparked a cold, heavy dread inside me. I had held that thought for a long time, I realized. Ever since my encounter with the Erl-King, and the knowledge that the Avatars—the Aetar—would be coming. I just hadn’t wanted to admit it.

“And we will need to be led,” Ha’an said. “Perhaps not now, but soon. I do not trust the other High Lords. I am not certain I trust you. But them”—he pointed at Zee and the boys—“them I would follow, back into the inferno.”

Zee touched my hand, his sharp black claws a stark contrast to my frail human skin. Raw and Aaz laid their claws on top of his, and Dek coiled even more tightly around my throat. All of us, family. Jack, with his light. Grant. Byron. I had been raised to believe that was something I could never have. But I had made the choice to do something different. Led by my heart, not my head.

Be relentless in the things you do,
my mother had once said.
Make a choice, don’t look back.

“Okay,” I whispered to myself. “Okay.”

I looked up and stared into Ha’an’s eyes. “The parasites, Blood Mama’s children, have been slipping through cracks in the veil for thousands of years. Use them to get a message to me if there’s trouble here.”

“It will be the Shurik,” he said, leaning forward. “The wall between us is thin.”

I didn’t know who the Shurik were, or what they were capable of, and it didn’t matter. “If there’s trouble, I will find a way to return here. I’ll stand with you.”

“You will bind their High Lord?”

“Yes,” I said, with no clue what I was promising—just that I had to. “I promise.”

Ha’an stilled. And then, with an odd gleam in his eyes, said something unexpected.

“I heard your name, inside your head,” he told me. “Maxine.”

I frowned, unsure where this was going or what it had to do with anything I had just promised. “Yes.”

He regarded me with that terrible thoughtfulness. “The Reapers went by another name, before the war. They are the last five of their breed. The rest of them, murdered. An entire world, exterminated.” He glanced down at Zee, who shifted uncomfortably. “What was your race called, my King?”

“Kiss,” Zee said, so softly I could barely hear him. “Born from, bled from.”

“Maxine Kiss. Hunter Kiss.” The Mahati Lord smiled faintly, while I sat, stunned. “That will do, young Queen of the Kiss. I find your promise acceptable. We will wait to hunt until you lead us. In return, you will protect us.” His smile twisted into something wry. “We will try not to be a burden.”

I swallowed hard, but my voice was still hoarse. “Thank you.”

He inclined his head, then leaned in, close. “My people are still starving, and they will riot if they know the veil is closing against them. They will feel it. It has already taken all my power to keep them from breaking free and hunting, wild. So I must fight you. I must hunt you, I must try to kill you, or else my people will not respect me. I must try to break through the veil, or I will not live to see another hour. I must do this, with all my power, and throw the lives of my people on your sword, so that when it is time for you to be what we need, I will still be here as your ally and not some memory of a fool who risked his race on the mystery of a strange and powerful Queen.”

“I think I like you,” I said.

The corner of his mouth softened. “Then do not kill me when I hit you.”

I blinked. And then found myself slammed backward, Raw and Aaz taking me to the ground as Ha’an leveled a blow at my face that most certainly would have left his fingers buried in my eyes. Zee snarled at him.

“Fuck,” I said, scrambling to my feet. Ha’an threw back his head, a rattling roar tearing from his throat. All the Mahati leapt to their feet. I turned and ran like hell toward the stone pillar, and Jack. The darkness burned beneath my skin.

You are strong against us,
it said.
Will you stay strong?

You don’t own me,
I told it, heart thundering.
You never will.

We are in your blood, Hunter.
I could taste its smile.
We own each other.

Hair cracked through the air like bright whips. My right hand glowed white- hot, and seconds later my fingers gripped the hilt of a sword. I swung it hard, vision blurred, unable to look at the faces of the Mahati I struck. My skin was vulnerable, but Dek protected my neck and head, and Raw carved a path of guts and bone between Jack and me. Thick layers of gore covered the little demon’s body, his grinning mouth frothing red. He and Aaz held spikes in their clawed hands, and they tore through the Mahati, ripping flesh like butter.

I reached the pillar. Zee was already there. I glanced over my shoulder, but there were too many Mahati to see more than bared teeth, silver skin, and the flash of those delicate chains. I saw Ha’an, behind his people, watching me. Regret in his eyes.

I didn’t know how to free Jack, but I felt the stone vibrating with a hum that sank into my bones. Zee reached the top, and jammed his claws against the spike that rose up into Jack’s light. He snapped it.

Jack exploded upward—a fireball, wings, a glimpse of sunlight—and then shot down with the same speed to shimmer over my shoulders like a cape of pure warm light.

My dear,
he said, inside my mind.
My lovely girl.

The Mahati closed in, snarling. I called out for the boys, thought of Grant—

We winked out, slammed into the void, and in that moment of stillness I felt my heart beat and my blood roar, and sensed a great weight bear down upon my soul, as though I were the door holding back a heavy storm that railed against me, howling in my ear.

And then the void spat us out into the forest.

It was raining. Winds strong and cold. Jack spilled away from my shoulders. I collapsed on my knees. Hands slid around me. Grant.

I shuddered, gripping his arm, noticing as though from a great distance that my hand was covered in blood. “Close the veil. Now.”

“They are coming,” said the Messenger.

I looked up. Bodies poured free of the veil, falling toward us. More than I had expected.

“Zee,” I said, hoarse. “Can Ha’an be trusted?”

“Yes,” he said, but with concern. I looked for Grant, and found him behind me, on the ground, eyes closed, mouth set in a determined line. Rain dripped from his hair, down his face. He was soaked.

When I began to stand, he grabbed my wrist.

“I need you with me,” he said.

“I will fight,” said the Messenger, flexing her hands. Claws pushed through her fingertips, and her skin seemed to glow. “Attend to the veil.”

I barely heard her. Grant had begun to sing.

His voice rolled from his throat with the same power as a thousand monks chanting, ten thousand, countless thousands of voices rolled into his one. Overwhelming, inhuman, a primeval
om
that could have been the hum of a star burning, or blood in the veins—the sound of the spark that was the difference between the living and the dead.

Mahati slammed into the ground around us. Zee and the boys pressed against our sides. I glimpsed the Messenger, her head thrown back, mouth opening in a scream I could not hear, but that made one Mahati warrior stagger into stillness, staring at her with horror. And then, with that same horror, he turned and began attacking his own kind. I looked for Jack, but did not see him. The scar beneath my ear tingled. More bodies poured from the veil.

I closed my eyes. I couldn’t watch. I had to trust we would be safe. It was all I could do to stay upright as Grant’s voice sank into my bones, gaining strength. Golden light strained beneath my eyelids, threads of light, and I imagined that light burning brighter and brighter inside my chest, even as the darkness grew larger, spreading through my body until I thought I would burst at the seams and flood the world with shadow.

The darkness fed the light, and the light fed the darkness. I could see it, feel it, working inside me with every heartbeat, every breath, music and blood flowing together in terrible harmony.

I felt myself begin to change. It was not a subtle thing. My joints ached, and my muscles stretched, and the world seemed to grow infinitesimally small—my flesh fire. I burned with power. A killing, wild power that made death and life seem insignificant against the abyss yawning beneath my glowing, golden heart.

My eyes flew open, and the world was red, my skin shimmering with moving shadows that twisted like snakes. I turned my head to Grant, slowly, with effort. Rain sizzled against him, steaming, and his eyes were black—black, all the way through—obsidian veins pulsing against his throat and through his temple.

Awful, monstrous, beautiful. I couldn’t hear his voice anymore, but the air around him vibrated in waves of heat. The ground shook, sending some Mahati to their knees. Others lunged at us, driving sharp fingers toward our hearts. I expected Dek and Mal to stop them, but the little demons didn’t move—and the Mahati turned to ash before they touched us. Grant threw back his head, shuddering. His skin split, bleeding—and so did mine, all along my hands.

Stop,
I said, inside my mind.

You wanted this,
replied that voice.
This, which is nothing to what I can give you.

Voices filled my head, a screaming howl. I shut my eyes, focusing on my bond with Grant, wrapping my soul around it, and him. Trying to protect him from the darkness inside me.

Don’t change,
I told him, hoping he could hear me.
Don’t lose yourself to this.

Not like me.

My right hand burned. Against the backdrop of darkness and light, I suddenly found myself within the memory of the seed ring—the tower, the books, the scent of roses. An oasis. Grant stood with me, shivering.

The man—my father—was there. I could not see his face.

“This is what you must do,”
he said, pointing to the dagger in his hands. The blade shimmered with engravings so intricate, so dizzying, I wanted to be sick.

He shoved that dagger into Grant’s head. I felt the blow, and screamed as threads of tangled radiance fell over me, and cut.

“Make this, and you will close the veil,”
said the man, somewhere beyond my sight.
“See it. Will it.”

And the darkness whispered,
So be it.

I opened my eyes. The Mahati had stopped fighting. Their silence was immense, deafening. Some stared at us—others, the sky.

The veil had begun to close. I watched the red seam fade.

The Mahati howled. Most leapt into the sky, racing to return to the prison. To family, to friends, I didn’t know or care. Others were too slow, and Zee, Raw, and Aaz killed them quickly, without mercy, their bodies moving like bullets through the shadows, quick as thought. Covered in gore.

The Messenger fought alongside them—her, and one Mahati. She was also covered in blood, nicked with wounds, but she looked over her shoulder at Grant and me, and there was something in her eyes that was made of fear, awe.