Darkness Calls (34 page)

“No bullet,” Zee rasped, somewhere near. “Taken already.”

“Broken bones?” asked a woman, her voice low and tense. “I can’t tell from looking.”

“Healed. Done and fixed.”

“But not the rest of her? Damn fool bitch.” Soft cloth was pressed to my chest, just above my right breast. “What was she thinking?”

“Too much blood,” Zee murmured. “Couldn’t let her blood be scented. Not in the maze.”

The woman grumbled something under her breath, but her hands were strong and competent, and even when she poured some burning fluid over my wound, making me scream, I was not afraid of her.

I heard a door slam, and another low voice that was young and soft. A cool cloth touched my brow, and water dribbled into my mouth. Dek and Mal were quiet. After a while, all I could hear was harsh breathing and the thundering skip of my heart.

Then, not even that.

I did not dream. I entered darkness and abided there, and when it was time, I opened my eyes and was awake.

I hurt. I noticed that first. I could not breathe without pain, and so I breathed carefully, inhaling so very little it felt as though breathing were the same as skipping a stone across still water, light, quick, careful.

I was in a bed, with covers folded up to my waist, and warm, hard stones tucked around my elbows, lower back, and neck. The boys were heavy on my skin, but the heat of the stones soaked through their tattooed bodies, and I was grateful. It felt good.

I was in a simple bedroom, with no windows. Cigarette smoke clung to the air. On my right, wood creaked—and a woman said, “Never the easy way with you, is it?”

I managed to move my head, just a fraction. I glimpsed long legs clad in brown trousers, tucked inside tall, scuffed boots. A white blouse gleamed, obscured by a long scarf and dark braids. Smoke drifted around a tattooed hand. I looked into a face that was mine, only older, lined with the pulse of the wind and sun.

“Maxine, again,” whispered my grandmother.

I stared, and she stabbed her cigarette into a porcelain dish that held the brown core of an apple and some bread, as well as the stubby remains of more cigarettes, which had spilled over onto the table. She cleared her throat, then picked up a teacup and held it to my mouth. I needed help to drink. Water dribbled down my chin, but I hardly noticed. I stared into my grandmother’s eyes.

“Don’t strain yourself,” she said, after a minute. “Not like I’m going anywhere.”

I did not look away. “
When
are we?”

“Nineteen seventy-four. Been two years since you found us in Mongolia.” Jean Kiss gestured sharply at the interior of the bedroom—not looking particularly happy with her surroundings. “Now we’re in Paris. Renting a flat from an old soldier I know.”

I remembered my brief glimpse of Mongolian grass-lands and the blue sky that had burned itself into me as surely as the presence of the woman seated now at my bedside. Three months ago, right before my last battle with Ahsen, I had made the mistake of traveling through time—the first of many, it seemed. The finger armor had brought me to my grandmother then—but I had never thought to see her again.

“Why did you leave Mongolia?” I asked.

“Because I’m not going to be around forever,” she said bluntly, “and this world is unkind to ignorant women. Paris has good tutors. Jolene will learn some things.”

“I’m sure she hates it.”

“I didn’t raise a whiner,” replied my grandmother, though I could tell she was none too pleased, either, about where they were living.

I did not, however, know what else to say. Maybe she didn’t, either. I lay on the bed, aching—watching her watch me. In silence.

Until she said: “Look at us. Talking.”

I smiled. “I like it.”

“Don’t like it too much.” My grandmother stood, and pulled an old creased-leather wallet from her back pocket. She unfolded it on the nightstand, revealing thin papers and a tin of loose tobacco leaves. She began rolling a cigarette and glanced at me. “You can make mistakes, but not with time.”

“I didn’t choose to come here.”

“That’s right.” Jean Kiss struck a match and lit her cigarette. “You were dying, and Zee got you help. Survival comes first. I know that. But this”—and she waved her hand between us—“is dangerous.”

“I don’t think I’m in any state to change world history.”

She smiled grimly. “And what about just ours?”

I stared, unsure how to respond. My grandmother started smoking her cigarette and leaned back in the small wooden chair, stretching out her legs. Still watching me. Watching me so long and hard I felt uneasy.

“Jolene is downstairs,” said my grandmother, suddenly. “I made her promise not to speak to you.”

“My mother,” I said.

“My daughter,” she added. “Letting you meet that first time was a mistake. She developed an . . . unhealthy . . . preoccupation with your existence.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, unsure what that meant. “I didn’t mean to cause trouble.”

“Trouble,” echoed my grandmother, knocking ashes to the floor. “You should have seen the look on her face when you were brought here, bleeding to death. If you had died in front of her, mere
trouble
would have been the least of it.”

I could not argue with her about that. I tried to sit up, and managed to do so after a long and careful negotiation with the pain inside my body. Breathing was easier, which was a small consolation. When I looked down at where my wound should have been, all I saw was an unblemished line of tattoos.

My grandmother came to sit beside me. “You’ll still have some signs of injury after sunset, but within a day or two even those will be gone. The boys take care of us, when we let them.”

“You know this from experience?”

“My mother was hurt once.” Jean Kiss picked up my right hand. “You have to go now, Maxine.”

I searched her eyes. “Something’s happened to you since we last met. I can tell. You weren’t this . . . brittle . . . before.”

“Brittle,” she echoed, and her entire face tightened with pain—just before sliding into the cool, thoughtful mask that had greeted me upon waking. “All of us change. Everyone in this world, from birth to death, becomes someone new. Again and again, we are remade.”

“And you lose pieces of yourself along the way?”

“You compensate,” she replied, stubbing out the cigarette on her tattooed hand. “You remind yourself of what’s important and let that guide you.”

“I’ve heard this before,” I said, searching her face. “From my mother .”

My grandmother blinked. “Is that so?”

“And Jack,” I added softly.

She blinked again, but this time it was more of a flinch. “I suppose he’s still causing trouble?”

“He’s
in
trouble,” I said, searching for her reaction. “For many things. But also for having a child with you.”

“Ah,” she breathed, and for the first time, a hint of vulnerability appeared in her eyes. “And you? Are you in trouble for having him as a grandfather?”

“I don’t care if I am,” I replied sharply. “He’s mine.”

“Good girl.” Jean Kiss closed her eyes and smiled—even as her hand tightened around the armor. “Jolene isn’t the only one who thinks of you often.”

I think of you, too,
I wanted to say—but the world spun around, and the pain in my chest flared white-hot, and nauseating. I could not breathe, I could not speak, and from the bottoms of my feet to the top of my head, a sucking sensation riddled my skin, pulling me in every direction. My right hand burned. Light shimmered behind my eyes, and a dark hand shook me, rattling my heart and bones—throwing me into the abyss like a baseball. I hurtled. I screamed in silence.

Until, abruptly, I could see again.

And found myself surrounded by skins.

CHAPTER 21

I
was inside a frozen room, made of ice, polished to diamond sheen. Men and women hung from meat hooks, embedded in the ceiling. Men and women stood inside the walls, stored behind plates of clear ice. Men and women rested upon ice tables, naked and exposed to air so cold my entire body steamed, and my breath burned white.

I lay very still on an ice-carved floor, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. I could not. I knew my eyes were not lying, but in my heart—it was too much. The people hanging from racks in the ceiling wore clothes: business suits, jogging outfits, Goth chic leather, jeans and T-shirts. As though they had all been plucked from their lives and packed immediately on ice. Fifty in total, maybe, including those on the tables and stored in the walls. Lost lives.

My chest hurt. Breathing was hard, but the cold air helped. I sat up, slowly, hissing in agony as nausea passed over me. I thought I might vomit and doubled over, breathing hard. Staring at my hands. The finger armor had changed once again. It had been happening over the last few jumps, but I had stopped looking. Resigned to the inevitability of its growth.

My middle finger was completely encased in metal, and a second silver vein trailed from its base to the cuff around my wrist. I flexed my hand and felt nothing of the armor, which was so much like my flesh it would have been indistinguishable had its appearance not been so different: engraved with coiled roses and knots made of wings.

I rolled over on my hip, struggling against rolling waves of pain, and managed to get my knee under me—then my leg—until I stood on two feet, swaying. My head swam. So did memories of my grandmother. Seemed to me she knew a little too much about time travel and the armor I wore. Seemed, too, that when time-traveling, a person could stand to take a day or two to heal before being shot back to the future—and the time—you wanted.

I turned in a slow circle. The room was perfectly quiet, but the men and women hanging above me were alive. I could see the faintest haze of breath puffing from their nostrils and open mouths. Their eyes were closed, faces slack. The massive hooks they hung from were mostly lost inside their clothing, which gave me some hope that they had not been speared like so many trout.

Zee and the boys were warm on my skin. Even my face was protected in their tattoos: Dek and Mal, coiled in symmetry upon my cheeks. I could feel them, dreaming, as I shuffled painfully around the room, looking for a door.

Aaz tugged sharply on my hand. I followed his lead, but he did not take me to an exit. Instead, I found myself at one of the ice chambers, peering through the cold wall at a slender nude body, and a pale face surrounded by dark hair.

I had my nails sunk into the ice before I stopped to think—but I did think—and my hands stilled. If I freed Killy, and she was alive, was it wise of me to take her along? I was in no shape to protect anyone. I could hardly care for myself right now.

On the other hand, if I left her behind and something happened, if I never found my way back to this room . . .

I jabbed my hard black nails into the ice, digging into the wall—gritting my teeth as pain raced through my chest. Moments later, Aaz and Raw began heating my palms, and I pressed them flat against the cold surface. Clouds of steam drifted into the air, and water streamed down the wall. I applied pressure, changing angles, running my hands across the ice—sinking deeper, slow and easy—until suddenly I broke through to Killy.

First thing I noticed was that her face had color. Pale, but with a faint rose in her cheeks. Her lips were pink. I had expected blue, some pallor of extreme cold and death. She was breathing, though. She had a pulse. No reaction when I reached through the hole in the ice to touch her.

I ripped away the remains of the ice—stopping once to catch my breath—and pulled Killy free. I hardly had the strength to lower her to the floor and ended up dumping her awkwardly, focused only on protecting her head. I stood, staring at her body, trying to decide what to do for clothes—and then started yanking off mine. I did not feel the cold. I stood naked, except for the shoulder holster holding knives against my ribs.

Not until I began dressing Killy did I realize that the clothes I had been wearing were not mine. Soft pants, a soft shirt, and wool sweater. No boots, just thick socks. My grandmother’s clothing. Or maybe my mother’s. I pressed the shirt to my nose, inhaling deep. Smelled warm, with some indefinable quality, like spice and sunlight, that hit me deep in the gut. My mother. My mother had worn these clothes.

I was selfish. For one second I regretted dressing Killy—losing that precious scent to another person—and then I pushed those feelings aside and focused on keeping the woman warm. Not once did she stir. I checked her pulse again. It was strong and steady. Stronger, maybe, than mine.

Once I had the woman in my clothes, I knelt and pressed my warm hands between her breasts, then her hands and face. Patted her cheeks—lightly, then harder—suffering a rising panic. Count on me to kill the person I was trying to rescue. Out of desperation, I pressed my right hand on her brow—armored fingers tight against her skin—and thought,
Please.