Darkness Calls (8 page)

Which he did, regularly, in bits and pieces. Healing broken hearts, mending mental fissures. Small and profound acts that sent people away better, more capable, more hopeful.

My mother, my grandmother—every woman in my bloodline—would have killed him for the things he could do. For what he could make demons—and humans—do. His potential was dangerous. His potential terrified.

But no worse than mine.

Mary was with Grant. Sitting on the edge of the bed with her eyes closed and spine straight—ankles crossed demurely. Her hands rested in her lap. I could not see her palm. Grant sat opposite her, near the door, his golden Muramatsu flute pressed to his lips. He nodded when he saw me, and a moment later the melody faded. Mary did not stir, and I had to look close to make certain she breathed.

Grant slid his flute into the case slung across his back; like sheathing a sword, which he did with reverence and appropriate seriousness. I grabbed his hand and pulled him from the chair. He was pale, with faint shadows under his eyes. I had seen that sick weariness on his face more often than not. He told me that using his gift did not tire him, but I had a feeling he had been hedging the truth.

He took his cane and limped from the room. Mary remained unmoving, as though in a trance. I closed the door behind us.

“She show you her hand?” I asked.

Grant rubbed the back of his neck. “I went looking for you in the basement. She could hardly contain herself.”

“Had she seen your mother’s necklace before?”

“No.” A grim smile touched his mouth. “Funny how that works.”

Hilarious. I was in stitches. “She give you any explanation?”

“She mentioned the Labyrinth.” Grant limped toward the bedroom, and I saw through the open door a small carry-on suitcase on the bed. I followed him, watching how his knuckles turned white around the cane, and listened to the hard pound of wood against wood, which was louder than usual. “She started sobbing. I brought her up here to see if I could calm her down enough to talk. So far, nothing.”

Grant stood in front of the bed, gazing down at the suitcase as if it were a live snake. I said, “You can still change your mind.”

“I need to do this,” he replied heavily.

“Not just for Ross.”

He glanced at me. “I left the Church in a bad way. Forced out. I wasn’t ready. I believed in my calling. Like being married to someone you love with all your heart, then waking up one morning to find them looking at you like you’re filth, the most disgusting thing that ever crawled. Destroyed me. Then I got better. But seeing Cribari again, hearing about Ross . . .”

I stripped off my gloves. Took his hand. “You still have issues, man.”

“A few,” he said wryly, and turned over my palm, staring at the glittering veins of organic metal that wound through the scales and flattened claws of my tattoos. Red eyes glittered from my palm, staring at Grant, and a faint purr of pleasure rumbled against my skin. Grant kissed my hand.

“I’m not sorry they kicked you out,” I said quietly, heart aching for him. “But I’m selfish.”

He smiled, and squeezed my hand with that gentle strength, which always made my eyes burn at the most unexpected moments. Like now.

Grant said, “I’m worried about leaving you, Maxine. I’ve got a bad feeling.”

“Told you, I’m coming along.”

“You haven’t said how.”

“I think you know.

He gave me a long, steady look. “And you’re sure?”

“Grant,” I said quietly. “I’ve never had answers. I just do what has to be done. Same as you.”

“Same as me,” he murmured, and then: “You need me. You need someone to watch your back.”

“Trust me, I’m covered.”

“Ha,” he said. “You’re afraid. Ever since this morning, you’ve been afraid.”

“No.”

Grant’s fingers tightened. “Bad liar.”

I shoved his hand away. “Don’t look at me.”

He grabbed me again, but this time it was a fistful of my hair. It did not hurt, but the way he did it, the intensity of his gaze, shocked me into stillness.

“I love you,” he said, dragging me so tight against him I could hardly breathe. “You’re an easy woman to love, Maxine, but you’re a hard one to be around. Because of this. Because the world hurts you, and I can’t stop it. Because I know . . . I know we won’t have fifty years. Maybe not even twenty, or ten, or one.” Grant leaned in, and I felt swallowed by the pain in his eyes; a mirror to mine, that I had never voiced, never dared say out loud.

“You’re going to leave me,” he whispered. “By choice, or by death. And maybe . . . maybe you’ll leave someone behind. Someone we’ll make together. But you’ll still be gone, and you don’t know . . . you don’t
understand
—”

I placed my hand over his mouth before he could say another word. I understood. I knew. I had been the one left behind.

I said, “We have time.”

Grant closed his eyes. “I want time. But I want something more, Maxine. I want to protect you. I want you to let me help you. Because I’m not going to let you die. When the boys leave you—when they abandon you for your daughter—I’m not going to give up. I’m not going to say good-bye. Not like that. You’re not going to be like the others in your family. I want you to die an old woman, with me. In our bed. In my arms. Your heart’s going to give out, Maxine, but it’ll be when you’re ready. And not because a demon put a bullet in your brain.”

I stared, stricken. No idea I cried until I blinked, and tears rolled down my cheeks. I started to wipe them away, but Grant kissed my face, and his thumb brushed my skin, and my heart pounded so hard I could not breathe.

“Maxine,” he murmured, in my ear. “Don’t cry.”

Don’t die. Not before me,
I replied silently; and sniffed hard, rubbing my nose. “You go. I’ll be there. We’ll take care of this together.”

He hesitated. “You thought it was a trap.”

“Still do. So go, or don’t—but not because you’re worried about me. Otherwise, you’ll always wonder. You’ll regret. And regrets . . . can turn to resentment.” I forced a smile, trying to be light. “You talk about wanting me all old and wrinkly, but let’s try to get there without you wishing you’d done things different.”

Grant shook his head. His cheeks were flushed, the skin around his throat mottled. Eyes bloodshot. He swept my hair from my face, his palm lingering over my temple, where I had been shot. Whether he touched me there on purpose, or by accident, I could not tell—but the heat of his hand was a comfort.

“Stubborn,” he said. “If something happens?”

“I’m hard to kill,” I replied dryly. “You’re just flesh and bone. Frankly, I’m more worried about you.”

“I feel obligated to remind you that I am a grown man, and not without some ability to take care of myself.”

“You’re very capable.”

A bemused smile touched his mouth. “Say it like you mean it.”

“I mean it,” I said. “Any of those priests even sniff at you wrong, you fuck them over until they see Jesus.”

Grant laughed quietly. “Yes, ma’am.”

Behind us, the bedroom door creaked open. Mary walked out, but her eyes were still closed. She moved upon her toes like a dancer, and the poodles of her shapeless dress swirled around her pale, hairy, sinewy legs. She never opened her eyes, but I thought she must be looking at us through her lashes, because she took an unerring path directly toward us, and stopped only an arm’s length away.

She reached out. Grant took her hand. I hesitated, and then did the same, gingerly. Trying to be gentle. I was not good at healing. I had no gift for setting things right. Just tearing apart. Hunting for the good kill.

She made a low, grunting noise, and her voice slurred from her chest, deep and slow as fat molasses.

“Grant,” she murmured. “You’re going to die.”

I froze. “Mary.”

But the old woman said nothing else. We stared at her, and I felt sick to my stomach, sick to death. Proclamations of doom were nothing new, but there was something in the way Mary voiced the words that felt worse than a promise, as though there was truth in her insanity, a taste of some fate that had already come to pass—only, I had not yet realized it.

“Well,” Grant muttered. “I feel good about this trip.”

I drove him to the airport. SeaTac smelled like gas, stale air, and despair—all poured into a concrete bunker. Not much different from prison.

I stayed long enough to see him through security. Cribari had already left on a different flight. I was glad Grant wouldn’t have to sit next to the creep, but that was cold comfort.

It was raining again when I left the airport. Low clouds, gray as old socks. I kept the window down. Tina Turner burned through the radio. I jacked up the volume as she wailed about not needing another hero
. Mad Max,
I thought. Loner, man with no mission but survival. Still managing to be a cop and do-gooder, even in the apocalypse. My mother had made me watch those movies. She said he was a good role model. I honestly could not disagree.

I did not drive back to the Coop. I needed to think, but we had left Mary in the apartment, and I had nowhere else to go. The Mustang was as much my home as any other: shelter, mobility, music—better than four walls, any day. And yet, for one moment I felt as lonely as I had in years; home-sick, for something I could not name. In some ways, it had been easier without people in my life. I had gotten used to it after my mother’s death. I’d had no expectations. I had forgotten the difference.

I thought of Grant sitting alone in the airport, traveling to help a man who had betrayed him—and squeezed the steering wheel until Raw and Aaz seemed ready to pop from my knuckles. I had to strip off my gloves. The leather felt too tight, as though I were suffocating through my hands.

Tattoos glittered in the dull morning light. I flexed my fingers, and suffered the rubbing heat of the iron armor covering my ring finger. The metal had chameleon qualities; earlier, before dawn, its surface had been bright as a mirror; silver, sharp, and keen. Now, though, it had faded dark and soft as my skin, and was etched with scales and roses, resembling the boys, or the lines of a labyrinth. The armor seemed to draw in light, blending with my tattoos until it was difficult to see where one began and the other left off. I could almost pretend the armor did not exist, so sweetly did it rest around my finger—like a cocoon, seeping through the boys as though the metal had settled roots made of silk and fire into my bones.

Sometimes, like now, I wondered if the armor
was
my finger, if it had evolved so without me realizing it, and that perhaps I was becoming some archaic medieval cyborg. I had used everything short of a chain saw to remove the damn thing, and nothing had worked. I had been told it would come off only at my death—and I believed it now. Yet another legacy. Another mystery. An object that fulfilled the desires of its bearer, but with a price.

The armor had once been much smaller, little more than a ring.

It had stopped raining. The streets were slick. I drove into downtown Seattle and ended up at Pike Place Market. It was not entirely a conscious choice. I was attracted to areas where the prison veil was thin, and the market—caught between land and sea—was thinnest of them all. Things got loose on a regular basis, though only from the first level of the veil, which housed the rats and cockroaches of the demonic race—those zombie-makers, which had crawled to the top of the food chain in the absence of their stronger brothers and sisters. When the prison failed, when their powerful brethren locked in the outer rings were let loose, those parasite bastards were going to suffer as much as humans. Not that I felt sorry for them.

I parked the Mustang on the north side of Pike Place Market and took a long walk. Just one of the crowd. I searched for dark auras, but found nothing on the crowded cobble-stone street except humans dressed for a Northwest winter: fleece, jeans, those damn ugly sandals and wool socks, with umbrellas and hoods and baseballs caps to ward off the intermittent rain. Expressions grim and tired as the storm clouds hovering overhead. No one looked happy. But then, this was Seattle. Putting on a dour face was practically part of the wardrobe.

Mr. King filled my mind. I remembered his voice, wet and smacking with half-chewed food, and Byron was suddenly in my thoughts, as well.

I had been shot at, and nearly killed. Grant was heading for what most certainly felt like a trap, and the priest who had invited him had called me a singularly unique name. And then, that piggish little man. Coming to pay a call. To see how things stood.

All of those disparate pieces belonged together—I could feel it in my gut—but it was like having a box full of fingers, and not knowing which part of the hand I should attach them to.

I was on the south side of the market, near the big pig statue whose name I had forgotten—except for the fact that Zee and the others always wanted to eat the damn thing. Tourists all around me; and some locals. Everyone minding their own business. Cars, shops, chatter. I watched it all and suddenly felt like the only normal person in a surrealist landscape; as though the world were wavering into something peculiar and alien, while I stayed the same: outsider, unchanging, caught in time. Little more than a constant stranger.