Darkness Calls (39 page)

BOOK: Darkness Calls

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Grant brushed close, and gave me a faintly bitter smile. “Think maybe we’ll live to see morning?”

I kissed his shoulder. “The odds are good. But I’ll be gone by then.”

Grant flinched, and his heart shuddered inside mine, as though our pulses merged, momentarily, to beat twice as strong. The sensation made me sway, but only because of the consternation that followed it. Not mine. His.

I grabbed the front of his sweatshirt, leaning in with the same urgency I had felt, clawing him from ice. Such a surreal thing to think of now. Ice and men with wings, and death. Like a dream.

“I meant,” I whispered roughly, staring into his eyes, “that I needed to go hunt that creature. I’ll be back. I’m not leaving you. You’re stuck with me.”

“I know,” he said, slightly hoarse, his thumb caressing the corner of my mouth. “But I wasn’t certain how you felt about that. What’s between us now is different, Maxine.”

“Is it?” I asked him simply. “I don’t think so.”

Grant closed his eyes and pressed his brow against mine. I heard the television behind us, and soft voices, but it might as well have been another world. Me and my man, inside our own labyrinth.

“I still don’t know what I am,” he whispered. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Don’t steal my lines,” I replied softly, and kissed his mouth. “Don’t be afraid.”

Grant’s arm tightened, and he leaned us both against the counter, taking the weight off his bad leg so that he could put his cane aside and use his other arm to hold me. His fingers wound through my hair. Dek and Mal purred.

“I never had a plan,” he told me, so quietly I could hardly hear him. “I had power, and I used it. I took it for granted. I pretended it was harmless.”

He stopped, staring into my eyes. “It’s the same thing, isn’t it, what was done to Father Ross? What I do to demons, how I alter them and others against their wills? There’s no difference.”

“You’re wrong,” I said. “Not in a million years could you compare the two.”

“But if I were a million years old?” Grant smiled bitterly. “Older, even? What would I be like with this gift, Maxine, if I lived too long? As long as an Avatar? Would I become like Mr. King? Is that what the power to change people does?”

Is that why the women in my family live such short lives?
I wondered, briefly.
Because we are corruptible, and the boys are ruled by our hearts? Because power needs to be given and lost, and not hoarded?

I looked down and saw Zee peering around the kitchen counter. Raw and Aaz were with him, baseball hats tugged low, their teddy bears still dragging behind them. My boys. Sweet and deadly.

Zee gave me a toothy smile, and I laughed, clutching a fistful of Grant’s sweatshirt and dragging him even closer. I stood on my toes, and stared into his eyes, savoring the heat between us, the light in my heart that curled around the darkness.

“You’re a good man,” I told him fiercely. “You’re going to die a good man, a long time from now.” I reached out and brushed my fingers over his cheek. “Maybe in a bed, in my arms. You old, ancient man.”

Grant’s gaze never wavered. “I could live for that.”

And so could I.

Also Available from New York Times
Bestselling Author
Marjorie M. Liu
THE IRON
HUNT

“The boundlessness of Liu never
ceases to amaze.”

—Booklist

Demon hunter Maxine Kiss wears her armor as tattoos, which unwind from her body to take on forms of their own at night. They stand between her and her enemies, just as Maxine stands between humanity and the demons breaking out from behind the prison veil. It is a life lacking in love, reveling in death, until one moment—and one man-changes everything.

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