Darkness Calls (11 page)

“Find him,” I said to the boys, throat aching. “Now.” Zee snapped his claws. Raw and Aaz disappeared into the shadows, while Dek and Mal poked free of my hair, testing the air with their tongues. I scratched their heads, grateful for the warmth of their bodies, and began stumbling through the snow, shrugging on the shoulder holster and my mother’s coat. Zee loped ahead of me.

Near the decaying remains of a battered wagon—wheels missing, wood siding ripped away and pocked with bullet holes—I heard the sounds of someone vomiting. I broke into a run.

I found Jack on his knees in the snow. Suffered a rush to my head, a roar of blood in my ears. I skidded to his side, breathless. Raw and Aaz were already there, peering at Jack from beneath the wagon. Somewhere, somehow, they had found time to reach into another part of the world for a bag of popcorn and two Yankee baseball caps, which they wore at identical slants upon their heads. Punks.

“Old Wolf,” I whispered, sliding behind the man. I wrapped my arms around his chest and drew him back against me, trying to share my warmth; to hold him; to assure myself he was alive. Alive, and still with me.

My hand grazed the side of his face, and lingered. “You’re burning up.”

He tried to bat me away, and slumped forward again in the snow to retch.

“It’s nothing,” he said hoarsely, seconds later. “I’m not . . . made . . . for cutting space. In fact, I’m so ill equipped for this method of transportation I find it easier to pretend it doesn’t exist at all.”

“Yes, well,” I muttered, snapping my fingers at Zee, who gave Raw and Aaz a dirty look before disappearing into the shadows. “I had no idea you were capable of . . . whatever that was. Though if you did have to make yourself sick, you should have transported us to your apartment.”

“
That
would have been a supremely poor idea.” Jack slumped sideways into the snow, and I fell with him, still trying to protect his body from the cold air. He grabbed my hand and held it over his chest. I buried my face, briefly, against his shoulder. Savoring the hard, quick thump of his stolen human heart.

“I’m a wanted man, my dear,” said my grandfather quietly. “And so, I’m afraid, are you and Grant.”

ZEE brought back a tent. Given the sleeping bags and thong underwear I found when I poked my head inside, I had a feeling it had recently been in use. I looked back over my shoulder, staring at the little demon. He shrugged.

“Left them a car,” he rasped.

“How magnanimous of you,” Jack murmured, crawling into the tent, which was only several degrees warmer than outside. He fell on his side with a sigh and flicked away the thong underwear with both idle curiosity and distaste. “And how good to leave us this slingshot with which to hunt for our dinner.”

“Yes,” I said dryly. “I’ll go now and take down a deer with it.”

Jack rolled over on his back. I lay on top of the other sleeping bag, a headache pricking the base of my neck, spreading upward into my scalp. Dek and Mal wound through my hair and began pressing their tiny claws against my head. Little masseuses. One of my ancestors had studied briefly with a master of acupuncture. Three hundred years later, the boys still remembered some things.

Raw and Aaz tumbled into my lap, already sucking on their claws. Purrs rumbled, and I smelled popcorn on their breath. Babies. I rubbed their hot, round tummies. Zee crouched by the tent entrance, gazing into the cold night, and the moon glinted against the silver scales of his blunt little nose.

I openly studied Jack. The old man must have been in his eighties, but he seemed younger. Lean and strong, with silver hair and a strong, rugged face. Handsome as a classic movie star. Respected archaeologist and adventurer, a man of dignity and secrets. Not-quite-human secrets.

He was dressed in khakis and a battered navy overcoat, beneath which I spied a pale blue denim shirt that matched the color of his eyes. A stained cloth messenger bag that looked as old as the Russian Revolution slung over his chest.

“How did you find me?” I asked quietly. “Why now?”

Jack’s eyes glittered, even in the darkness of the tent, human eyes, with an inhuman soul, in residence. “I found you easily, my dear. I felt you. I felt . . . it. And so I came.”

It.
Inside me. I closed my eyes, bowing my head as Dek kneaded a particularly tender knot. “I needed you before that. Months ago. But you disappeared, without a word. Not even the boys could track you. I was . . . worried.”

Frantic. Terrified.
For the first time since my mother’s death, I had family—an impossible, miraculous discovery—and then Jack had gone away. My mother had been murdered. I could not discount the possibility that the same had happened to my grandfather.

And now that he was sitting in front of me, I still could not relax.

Jack said, “I had business. Matters that needed my attention, not the least of which was cleaning up the mess Ahsen created during the brief time she was free.”

“I could have helped you.”

The old man hesitated, glancing down at Zee, who watched him, as well, red eyes glowing faintly. “Yes. But it was something I wanted to do alone.”

I forced myself to breathe, and the air around my mouth puffed white. I suddenly noticed the cold again. I was freezing. Zee reached up and brushed his knuckles across my brow, gazing deep into my eyes. “Hard dreams, Maxine.”

“Strange days,” I told him, and gently squeezed his little hand. “Need you to do something for me, if you can. Find Grant, wherever he is. If he’s on the plane, you must take care.”

Zee nodded, scratching his bony spine. “Words?”

“Warn him about Cribari. Tell him to stay away.”

“Sharp man,” he said, glancing at the others, who all looked at him with red, glittering eyes. “Dead man.”

“Not dead yet,” I warned him. “First Grant. Find him.”

“Done,” Zee whispered, and disappeared into the shadows. My heart went with him. I could not predict what would happen once Cribari realized I was still alive—but whatever he had planned could not be good.

Jack tried to sit up. “Grant. He’s on a plane?”

“Going to China. A trap.”

“You let him go?”

“I had a plan,” I replied roughly. “Tracker.”

Even saying his name was difficult.
Tracker.
A man betrayed by my ancestor five thousand years ago, and now slave to the demon Oturu—a demon who had pledged himself to my bloodline in perpetuity. Both had disappeared months ago, vanishing as surely as Jack—but Tracker had the ability to slip through space. Just like the boys.

Only, he could take me with him.

I needed that. And Oturu had been drawn to my need, once before. I had hoped he would come to me again, bringing Tracker with him.

But now I had Jack, for better or worse. The tent was very small. The old man had only to reach out to touch me, and I let him. His fingers brushed back my hair, sliding warm and dry against my skin. He stared at the scar below my ear.

“A poor plan,” he whispered.

My cheeks warmed. I pushed away his hand. “Who’s hunting you?”

“One of my own kind.” Jack cradled his hand, his gaze far too compassionate for comfort. “We share the same pursuer, my dear.”

Same hunter. Avatar.

Pieces fell into place. New possibilities. I had thought, at first, that Franco might be a traveler from the Labyrinth. Demons had come to earth from other worlds, after all; as had Mary, and God only knew what else.

But Franco had perfect American English, with a slight Southern twang. If I had heard him on the phone, I would have guessed he was a normal professional, someone who liked to go to football games and drink beer with his buddies at the bar. If I could forget his eyes, I would say he was human, unequivocally.

Franco
is
from earth,
I told myself.
From earth and human.

Human. Until he had been physically altered.

I had seen it done before. Men and women, transformed so profoundly it was impossible to tell that they had ever been human. It was an ability of the Avatars. Mind over matter. Mind over DNA.

Ahsen,
I thought, recalling the Avatar: her stolen face, her voice. I had killed her. She had turned humans into monsters, stripped them down to bubbling skins of sinew and bone, tearing away noses and ears and eyes—until nothing was left except gaping holes filled with teeth.

First of the grafters,
she had named herself.
First of the spinners and connivers. First to master the Divine Organic.

Genetic manipulation,
I called it. Accomplished with nothing but thought.

“Shit,” I muttered to myself. “Goddamn it.”

Jack raised his brow. I tapped the corner of my eye. “One of the men who kidnapped me had been . . . altered. Here. His saliva, too.”

“Ah.” Jack was silent a moment, lost in thought. “What else did you learn?”

“That my kidnapper is working in association with the Catholic Church—and that I was taken there to die,” I told him simply. “He knew about a weakness I hadn’t considered. That moment between the transition.”

Might as well have spoken pure lightning. Jack’s mask slipped, and something ancient and terrifyingly deadly moved through his gaze. I began to shake—with cold, I told myself—and reached without thinking into my hair, grabbing the razor ruff of Dek’s neck. Clutching the warm little demon for comfort. Mal growled.

And then the moment faded, and Jack became nothing but an old man again, pale and too thin. Run ragged. Starving. Chilled to the bone and lost in winter. I realized suddenly that a profound toll had been taken on his body. He was gaunt beneath his clothing. I glimpsed his collarbone beneath the open neck of his denim shirt, and it was sharp and pronounced.

“Old Wolf,” I whispered.

But he said nothing. Just remained grim and quiet; and dangerously thoughtful. Zee slid from the shadows. I knew as soon as I saw him that it had not gone well.

“Sun still shines,” he rasped. “No go on Grant’s side.”

“And Cribari?” I asked, still shaken, almost breathless. “Can you get to him?”

Zee snarled, punching his fist through the floor of the tent, creating a hole as deep as his elbow into the frozen ground. “Tried. Out of reach. Still got sun.”

Raw and Aaz snuggled deeper into my lap, though their eyes slivered open and they pushed back the brims of their hats to watch their brother fume. Against my throat, Dek and Mal purred Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive.” I scratched their heads and looked at Jack. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“I was careless,” he said, with a straightforwardness that surprised me; as wily, and full of riddles, as he had been in the past. “I did not forget that Ahsen had allies on this world, but I underestimated her ability to free some of them.”

“But she did.”

“Months ago. It must have been one of the first things she did upon gaining her freedom.”

“I thought Ahsen was the only one of your kind who had been imprisoned in the veil.”

“She was,” he said, after a brief hesitation. “But there are other prisons on earth.”

I stared. “How many?”

Jack looked away from me, rubbing his jaw. The shadow beneath his stubble suddenly looked too much like a bruise. “A handful. That’s why I left. I had a sense that one of the seals had broken. I’ve spent the past several months strengthening the others.”

“Is it Avatars or demons who are trapped on earth?”

“Both,” said the old man, still refusing to meet my gaze. “This world was never meant to be a penal colony, my dear. Regardless of what you might think.”

I hadn’t been thinking much except
Holy Shit
, but imagining this planet as one big prison for nonhumans elevated that to
Holy Fucking Shit
. I glanced down at Zee and the others. Raw and Aaz were staring at Jack, idly picking their noses and eating the large, steaming black lumps sliding down the tips of their claws. Baseball hats still askew. Zee, on the other hand, was very still. Intent, quiet, thoughtful. Dangerous.

I said to the little demon, “Did you know?”

Zee shrugged. “No harm crossed paths. No matter.”

Which was a definite
yes.
The problem with the boys was that if they didn’t want to tell you something, they simply wouldn’t. If they didn’t think there was a problem in their Hunter’s life, they wouldn’t cause one. And if a Hunter didn’t know the right question to ask—the answer would simply never exist. Riddles were their game. Patience had to be mine.

“Just one . . . seal?” I said to Jack, unsure what that meant, though I had an idea. “One Avatar loose?”

Jack stared at his very human hands. “One is enough. Especially this one. He was Ahsen’s protégé. Another master of the Divine Organic, though he fancied himself an artist more than a realist of the flesh. He made . . . creatures . . . that should not have been.”