A Wild Light (9 page)

“Hunter,” Blood Mama whispered. “Dearest little Hunter.”

THERE were rules when it came to demons. Rules and hierarchies that I had only just begun to understand. My mother had never found it important to delineate between different kinds of demons—at least not to my face. If it wasn’t human or animal, it was dead meat. If it was human or animal, and tried to hurt us, it was also dead meat. My mother did not fuck around.

The most dangerous of the demons, so the stories went, were the Reaper Kings.

World Eaters
, some of my ancestors had called them. Living only for their bellies, and the hunt, and the kill.

I knew nothing else about the Reaper Kings, except that they were death—and the leaders of the demonic army. Imprisoned in the First Ward, the core of the veil, for the last ten thousand years. I had tried asking Jack about them, but of all the myriad things my grandfather had
not
wanted to discuss,
they
seemed to be at the top.

My mother had warned me, though. But not in so many words.

Right. Easy. Thanks for the advice.

The lowest of the low within the ranks of the imprisoned army were the parasites. Rats, cockroaches, fleas. Slipping between cracks in the outer ring of the prison veil to farm for pain. Some were young, others old. The old ones could exert complete control over hosts. The young ones simply rode along, choosing humans already predisposed to abuse, and merely . . . egging them on. I couldn’t blame every random act of violence on a parasite turning some human into a zombie puppet, but if there was pain, and fear, and death—all three of those together—then a demonic parasite was probably close by, feeding on that dark energy.

And the zombie seated in front of me was their queen. Queen of the demonic parasites. Queen of the gutter rats.

I walked to the table, turned a chair around, and straddled it. My gloves were still off. I shrugged out of my jacket, and pushed up my sleeves. Tattoos rippled across my skin, scales shimmering and heaving, those red eyes on my palm glinting like fire. Grant and Killy watched me, but I didn’t look at them. Just Blood Mama. Just that cold smile.

“Have something to drink,” she said, as a stringy-haired zombie in jeans and Birkenstocks walked out from behind the bar and set down a tray filled with three cups of coffee, steaming. Killy gave the zombie a disgusted look.

I poured a little from each cup over my tattooed finger, allowing the boys a taste. Blood Mama said, “Poison, my dear, is for cave-dwelling types with no sophistication. I’m better than that.”

“Bullets aren’t better,” I replied, and drank from the last cup tested; a slow sip that burned my lips and the inside of my mouth. I glanced at the others. “It’s okay.”

Grant’s mouth twitched into a faint smile, which took me off guard. So did the fact that I almost smiled back. Just a little. Like this was some game. Which it was, but nothing that should have inspired kicks and giggles.

Don’t know you. Better off not knowing you,
I told him silently as he picked up a cup. Killy tapped her foot a little harder and gestured with her chin toward the zombie who had brought the coffee. “Don’t. He just took a shit and didn’t wash his hands. In fact, he
smelled
them afterward.”

Grant hesitated. I put down my cup. The zombie edged away from the table and Blood Mama, who also stared at her coffee.

“Awkward,” I said.

Blood Mama’s hand shot out and grabbed the zombie’s wrist. His aura sputtered like a flame, and sweat broke out on his pale forehead. He did not try to break free, though—frozen, frozen like a rabbit—and I sensed a shift in the other zombies, a hunger in their eyes that reminded me of a mob watching an execution. Horror and excitement, a strange arousal: the promise of a good feeding.

“Bad child,” Blood Mama whispered. “I like this host. If I wanted it polluted with filth, I would find a sewer to roll in.”

Her pale hand tightened. I heard a crack—bone, I thought—but that was the snap of the zombie’s breath in his human lungs as his head snapped back, mouth open, eyes rolling in his head. His aura flared once, brilliantly dark, like a prairie storm cloud—and then sucked inward until it was the size of a fist. A scream vomited out of him, choking off into a strangled sob. Grant pushed back his chair.

“Stop this,” he said, deadly quiet. “Give him to me if you don’t want him, but stop this.”

I stared. Blood Mama’s lips peeled back over her teeth in a grotesque smile. “Another pet, Lightbringer? No. This one’s
mine
.”

She yanked hard on the zombie’s arm, and he fell on his knees, mumbling and weeping. His aura writhed, cut with streaks of frantic light. Blood Mama leaned forward and slammed her mouth against his. Not a kiss. A feeding. Her aura surrounded the other zombie in a storm of red lightning, and I thought—I marveled—that any human could be so blind not to see this, or feel it, or fear it.

Grant reached for his cane, like he was going to stand. I grabbed his arm. He shot me a hard, haunted look—but it was too late for whatever the hell he thought he was going to do. I heard a popping sound. The human host collapsed on the floor at Blood Mama’s feet, still pricked by her aura. She kicked at the body with one red heel—and dabbed delicately at her lips.

I knelt and touched his neck. Found a strong pulse. Just unconscious. He would wake with amnesia, and a host of sins on his shoulders—sins he’d have no memory committing. I felt completely sympathetic.

“Mmmm,” she murmured. “I should do that more often.”

“You ate your own child,” Grant said.

“I’ll make another.” Blood Mama snapped her fingers, and a second zombie rushed forward to take away the coffee. “Now, what were we discussing?”

“Nothing,” I said, returning to my chair—giving Grant a warning look. “Though it’s no coincidence you’re here.”

“Why, did something happen?” Blood Mama smiled, still rubbing her lips. “Oh, yes. Jack.”

“Jack,” I echoed. “Word travels fast.”

“Depends on the word.” She glanced around the bar, her demeanor careless, relaxed. her fingers trailing up her leg, as though she couldn’t stop touching her stolen human skin. “You mentioned coincidence, but that’s merely a path finding its proper course. Call it destiny. And I am here, Hunter, because I felt something disturbing cross
my
path. All the way in the veil.”

I leaned back in my chair, holding her gaze. “So you brought an army with you. Seems overdone. You and I both know we’re not allowed to kill each other.”

She tilted her head, mouth quirked with either puzzlement or amusement—and I wondered what I had said wrong. I glanced at those zombies standing around the bar, none of whom could meet my gaze. Auras shrank when I looked at them.

And when
they
looked at Grant.

I sat up straighter. “Last time I saw this many demons in a bar, I was eight years old. I’m sure you heard about that encounter.”

Her red lips thinned. “Your mother should have killed you when she saw what you were capable of. She was young enough to have another child. A
safer
child.”

“But you got me.”

Blood Mama waved a dismissive hand—but the glint in her eyes was anything but. “Let’s not waste time on the past. Your bloodline has always been an abomination. But a useful one. Even the war with those Avatar skins proved beneficial to me and mine. How else would we have thrived all these thousands of years while the rest of the old Lords were locked tight in their prisons?”

She leaned forward, her aura dancing with such quiet violence, I felt the table vibrate. “You and I both know the veil is cracking. Only a matter of time before the inner rings break, and the army goes free. And now those Avatars . . . those skins . . . will be returning, as well. Drawn by the murders of their own kind, here on earth. At both your hands.” Blood Mama glanced at Grant. “Which is worse, I wonder? We, who want to eat you? Or those who wish to
play
with you?”

I couldn’t speak. I wasn’t even certain I could look at Grant, but I did, wondering who the hell he was—what he was. And maybe I wasn’t careful, maybe I showed too much on my face, because I glanced back at Blood Mama and found her watching me with that same puzzled glint. And then, slowly, her gaze slid sideways to Grant.

“I’m sure you have an opinion,” she remarked, softly. “Seeing as how you’ll be the first person the Avatars enslave.”

“I think you should be more worried about yourself,” Grant rumbled. “Seeing as how I’ve made no bargains not to kill you.”

“You talk so dirty. I don’t suppose you’re ready for me yet? I could do so much with your body.”

“I could do so much with yours.” Every word he spoke hummed through me, low and sonorous, making the boys shift against my skin, stretching themselves as though they were cats wrapped around a fireplace. Tingling warmth settled into my bones—and in my heart. A tug, like something clung there, pulling outward, toward
him
. I didn’t know what it meant, but it felt real as a hand gripping my wrist, or the wind, or sunlight.

Blood Mama’s eyes narrowed. “I did not come here for that. I will not let you control me.”

“You won’t have a choice,” he said coldly. “I think it might do us all some good.”

She bared her teeth, hissing. Grant barked out a single word—a word that sounded like a wild musical note—and the zombie’s breath cracked in her throat, eyes flashing wide in rage, shock. Her aura shuddered.

“Fuck,” I muttered, even as Killy scrambled to her feet. One of the zombies grabbed a barstool and ran toward Grant, swinging.

I swung off my chair and slammed into the possessed man. We tumbled hard into the bar, but I didn’t feel a thing except for the soft yielding sensation of my nails piercing wool and flesh, fingers sinking straight through fat like a hot knife in butter. Blood spurted, instantly absorbed into my skin.

The zombie staggered away, holding his gut. It wasn’t lethal what I’d done, but it would require stitches, a hospital. More damage than I usually did to a human host—those blameless hosts. I felt ill.

I got knocked off my feet, and hit the floor so hard I bounced. Wood cracked beneath the back of my skull. The boys howled in their sleep as zombies held me down: arms, legs, sitting on my stomach with hands around my throat. I smelled smoke: my clothes, burning. The boys, burning. Like sitting in water slowly boiling—the zombies didn’t know what was happening until they fell away from me, hands on fire, choking on their screams.

I sat up, charred and smoking. Zombies stood between me and Blood Mama. I couldn’t hear Grant. I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t—

—
feel him,
came the unbidden thought, and the fear that ripped through me was startling and fierce, tearing straight into the core of me, beneath my ribs, below my heart. Darkness, coiled. Blinking awake from deep slumber. Leaving me breathless, unsteady, sick with dread. It had been some time since I had felt . . . the creature . . . inside me. A spiritual force so strong it might as well have been physical—separate from me, but of me—with a mind of its own.

This
was what Jack feared. This was what my mother had feared. Something inside me that no one could, or wanted, to explain. A force that slept, ever more lightly as time went on, and that seemed to be growing stronger with every terrible waking. It was connected to the falling of the prison veil—I knew that—just as I knew that if I let it, if I ever grew too weak to contain it, the thing would destroy all that I loved. Maybe even this world.

Like my ancestor had almost done.

I closed my eyes, ignoring everything around me. Focusing just on my heart, on quelling the ripening, throbbing sensation beating a drum in my gut: a body unwrapping like some worm made of endless night, stretching, unfolding like a butterfly beneath my spun skin.

My muscles and bones grew warm, liquid as mercury, and my veins filled with a fire that licked my heart into a pounding scream.
I
would have screamed, but all I could do was choke, and choke some more, on hunger.

No,
I told the thing, fighting for control; afraid and sick, reminded again what it must feel like for those humans to be possessed.
Not now. Not here.

The zombie with the baby stepped forward. The infant squirmed, making wet, sobbing sounds. No dark aura over its head. Kid had a devil for a mother, aiming a gun in my face. Blood Mama, hidden, barked out a sharp word. The zombie’s right eye twitched, mouth twisting with displeasure—but she lowered the weapon and backed off, stepping around those possessed men and women who were clutching burned hands to their chests.

Most demons would have abandoned their hosts by now, but they were holding on. Because of their queen. The minute she left, those humans would be shed like yesterday’s underwear, leaving them with headaches and palms that looked like hamburger.