Hunter Kiss: A Companion Novella (6 page)

There is barely enough space. I lay down on one side of the boy, while Grant crouches on the other, putting down his cane. The zom
bie child's eyes roll white in his head when he sees me, but when he looks at Grant a shudder races through his slender frame, a violent

shiver that makes his heels drum against the ground. He starts to fight. Aaz sits on his ankles.

"The boy knows you," I murmur, watching emotion flicker across Grant's face. "Why is that?"

Grant says nothing. Uneasy, I press my palm against the zombie child's forehead. I can feel the demon inside of him, curled like a fist around his soul, and I coax it up and up to the surface of his mind. I do not know exactly how; only, I feel a hook in my hands, a hook I send through flesh to snag and prick. A trick my mother taught me. I use it to snare the darkness and hold it in place.

But the boy still stares at Grant. I feel like a second fiddle-a real first for me-and I glance at Zee, who is also watching the man. His red eyes are thoughtful, which is dangerous for everyone. Grant merely looks upset. He reaches into the slender black case he looped over his shoulder and pulls out a slender wooden flute.

"What are you doing?" I ask him. Grant hesitates. Zee makes a low sound in his throat, while the zombie boy arches his back in a muffled scream, staring at that flute like it is a red-hot brand.

I do not have time for this. I mutter words my mother taught me-gibberish, strange, more music than speech-and the boy's eyes flutter shut into sleep. Just the boy, though, the host. The demon be
gins to fight like crazy beneath my hand, but with no body to con
trol, it is helpless. I drag my palm away from the child's forehead, like drawing out a rope of thick snot, and I grimace as I pull and pull, waiting for that
snap,
that break from the child's soul.

When it comes, Zee pounces. He stuffs the demon inside his mouth. I can hear it screaming.

"Come on," I mutter, breathless. "We're done here."

But Grant does not move. He keeps staring at the boy.

"His aura," he murmurs. "It's still dark, Maxine."

The boy, in my eyes, appears clean-but the only auras I can see are those that belong to demons.

"He is not a good child," I say to Grant. "There's nothing you can do about it."

But Grant lifts the flute to his lips, and before I can stop him, he breathes into the instrument. I hear a note. Just one, and it shoots through me like a blade of ice dropped from the top of my head to the soles of my feet. My fingers tingle. He plays another note, soft as a dream, and then more and more, the music whispering through the air as though poured from a fairy tale of moon dust and starlight. Zee and the others push against me, growling. The child, resting on the ground, stirs and mumbles.

Grant stops playing. He is breathing hard, his eyes wild, and I hear him murmur, "Better," just as the back door of the house slams open.

"Peter!" calls the child's mother, her voice tentative, hollow. "Pe
ter, it's time to come in."

I stop breathing. Grant clamps his mouth shut. The boys go still. The woman says the child's name again, her voice dropping almost to a whisper, and I cringe as I hear her move across the grass toward the tent. I wave at Grant and hold up one finger. At the same time, I tap Aaz on the shoulder. When he looks at me, I cover my eyes, then my mouth. The little demon nods and disappears into the shadows of the tent. Raw follows him.

A moment later I hear a muffled scream. I scrabble for the tent entrance, hauling Grant after me. Katherine Campbell is down face
first on the grass, squirming and fighting as Aaz sits on her back with his little hand clamped around her mouth. Raw holds down her legs, the long spikes of his spine raised in agitation.

Grant and I run. We run down the path, down the driveway, down the sidewalk to my car, arms pumping, cane tapping, breath rasping in the cool night air. I hear a distant scream just as I unlock our doors, and then we are in and all the boys are there, slip
ping from the shadows to crowd into the backseat. I start that en

gine and go.

No one talks. Not at first. Even the boys are quiet. I glance back and find them all staring at the Grant. And his flute.

"So," he finally says, clearing his throat. "That's an exorcism."

I want to kill him. I see a McDonalds and swerve into the park
ing lot, choosing a spot as far from all the other cars as possible. I slam on the brake, cut the engine, and turn. Grant stares at me. I point at the flute.

Zee, in the backseat, makes a sound and waves his claws over his mouth.

"Spit him out," I tell the demon, though my eyes never leave Grant's face. I hear a wet smack, the sound of drool being slurped back into a mouth. A very tiny snarl.

I look. Held in Zee's gray fist is a wisp of nothing; dark air, shad
ows congealing into a writhing smoke that pulses and pounds. The boys gather around like cats to a mouse. I reach beneath my seat, pull the lever, and slide back until I am practically in the back with them. Dek and Mal uncoil from around my neck for a better look, and I put my face right up to Zee's fist, keenly aware of Grant watching, his knuckles white around his cane and flute.

The demon stops struggling, its wispy body settling into still air, a hiss. "Hunter Kiss."

"Yes," I whisper. "If you know who I am, you know what this means."

A high fine snarl fills the car. "Talk or torture. No choice."

"No choice," I agree. "None at all."

The demon screams and screams, but I have been through this before, and I know eventually the screaming will stop. I think of my mother as it wails. I think of holding my mother's body, drenched in her blood, sitting in a wet hot pool with nothing and no one, feeling my own scream building, my own scream cutting, and I remember the boys snarling in the backyard, the boys hunting, the boys kill
ing. I remember them coming into the kitchen covered in a different person's blood. Zombie blood. Human blood. I remember them

weeping blood. Huddled against the body of the woman who car
ried them for almost thirty years.

My past, my future. The demon, the little zombie-maker, stops trying.

"Talk to me," I say. "Tell me how you know this man and why you want him dead." I point at Grant, who does not flinch, but looks at me with his jaw set, gaze heavy.

"Piper," rasps the demon. "Twister. Perverter." "Really." I look at Grant. "All those things?" "Maxine-"

I cut him off with a wave of my hand and look at the demon. "Give me more."

"He steals us." The smoky air clenched in Zee's fist wavers. "He corrupts us. Takes us from our mother."

"Your mother."

"The Dark Queen," whispers the demon. "Blood Mama."
Blood Mama. I
stop breathing. The boys mutter beneath their

breath. Grant looks at them, then me. "Who is that?" "Trouble," I mutter.

"Big bad cutter trouble," Zee adds.

Grant still looks confused. I do not feel sorry for him. "I've told you there are other dimensions, all of them prisons, all of them separated by barriers, veils. On the other side of us is a place called the Blood Sea, which is where
this"-I
jab my finger at the smoky demon-"crossed over from. And the Blood Sea, supposedly, is ruled by a queen. She is, as you can imagine, a demon." And not just any demon. Blood Mama is the most powerful voice of the dark spirits who cross the prison veil. But until tonight, I have never heard her name spoken out loud, only read of it in the diaries kept by my mother and her mother, and all those women before us.

Legend. Another kind of myth.

I look at Grant. "You know what this thing is talking about. Corruption, being stolen away." When he hesitates, I lean right up

into his face, searching his eyes. All I see is uncertainty, regret, and it makes my heart ache. Makes me wish, all over again, that this day had never happened.

"Tell me," I whisper. "No games."

"Tell her," rasps the demon softly. "Tell her what you do to us."

Grant sways away from me and takes a deep breath. Holds my gaze as he lifts up his flute, laid flat upon his palms like an offering.

"I make them good," he says in a low voice. "I make those demons very good."

Four

need to think, and the boys are hungry. I go into the McDonald's.
Grant follows. The lights are too bright, the interior looks like it has not been renovated since the early eighties, but the floors and tables are clean and mostly empty. That is all I need. Some quiet normalcy, even if it is nothing more than an illusion.

"I'm sorry," Grant says. I ignore him and wait for someone to come to the cash register.

"Maxine." He leans on the counter, forcing me to look at him. "It's not like you told me all your secrets."

"I asked if you knew why
demons
might want to kill you. And you said
no. You
lied."

"I evaded. There's a difference."

"Whatever. Man of God, my ass."

"Former,"
he snaps. "Give me a chance to explain."

Someone clears her throat, and I find a girl standing behind the register, staring at us like we are some kind of circus act. I wonder

what Grant and I look like together. The thought irritates me. I start tapping the plastic counter with my fingernail. Grant covers my hand and holds me there when I try to jerk away.

The girl frowns. "Um, are you guys going to order?"

"I'm buying," Grant says.

"Serves you right," I mutter, and ask the girl for twenty double cheeseburgers, twenty apple pies, twenty sets of fries, and four Sprites. I am not a complete bitch. I order off the dollar menu.

I keep expecting Grant to protest. He never does. The cheese
burgers make his mouth twitch, the pies make it curve, and the French fries tug a slow blooming smile from his lips that is just so damn beautiful I cannot look away.

When I order the drinks he laughs, a deep and masculine rumble, and by the time that sound travels down my spine into my stomach, I am not quite so angry anymore. A miracle. This man is no good for me.

"Is any of that for you?" Grant asks. I shake my head, and he sighs, pointing at the menu. "Anything you want?"

"Fudge sundae," I hear myself say.

"Make it two," Grant tells the girl, and glances at me as he takes out his debit card. "This, apparently, is how I'm going to celebrate the second nervous breakdown of my life."

"What was the first?" The order total is quite high. I watch him swipe his card. "I'll pay you back for this, by the way."

"No," he says firmly, then leans close and presses his mouth to my ear. "The first has to do with a certain change of profession I had some years back. I think you might know what I'm talking about."

The heat of his breath against my skin is electric, crazy, though I manage to scrape together enough brain cells to look him in the eye. Grant brushes a strand of hair away from my face. His fingers linger, trailing a path down my cheek.

"I'm sorry," he says again, so softly I can barely hear him. "I was not trying to play you for a fool. I was not trying to deceive you.

I wasn't even certain there was a connection, though I began to suspect."

"You could have told me."

"I didn't know you."

"You still don't," I whisper. The girl behind the counter clears her throat and slides the fudge sundaes toward us, giving notice that it will take about ten minutes for our order to be completed.

We pick up our sundaes and walk to a battered table next to the window. I look out at my car. Everything seems normal. Everything in the McDonald's appears normal, too. No dark auras. No zom
bies. Dek and Mal purr against my scalp.

The fudge sundae tastes good. It has been a long time since I have had one. A long time, too, since I sat with someone over a meal. I wish it could be under better circumstances. I study Grant, watching him concentrate on his food. I want to smooth away the furrow be
tween his eyes. "Tell me what you do. Tell me why those demons are upset enough to risk their hosts and kill you."

"It's complicated. I didn't know I was putting myself into dan
ger." Grant shoves a heavy spoonful of soft serve into his mouth anc swallows. "You remember what I said about music and color: Auras? Well, aura reflects personality, the core of who and what person is, and I learned early on how to look at someone and know their heart based on nothing more than energy. Helps in other ways too. If someone lies to me, for instance, I can tell."

"And the connection to the demons?"

"That's where it gets complicated. In my mid-twenties I discov
ered I could use music to ... change the colors I saw. Change the . . language ... of a person's personality."

I set down my spoon. "Mind control?"

Grant hesitates. "I don't know. Based on the people I've affected all I seem to do is give a shift in perspective. A new way of looking at things. A choice."