The Iron Hunt (2 page)

And
the darkness grew, and I could see it—I closed my eyes to bear witness—and saw
it was not a mere void, but a body, turning and turning beneath my
skin—glinting like obsidian touched by moonlight, shiny and slick and sharp.

The
zombie’s eyes rolled back. His friends grabbed him, hands appearing under his
arms, across his chest, in his hair—pulling him, hauling hard. My fingers could
not hold his wrists. He slipped free. Everyone stumbled back, and I followed.
Something inside me wanted to follow.

My
mother slipped between them, catching me. Holding tight as I struggled, still
trying to chase the hot stink of those zombies—those scared little
demons—burning me blind and hungry. My mother said my name, my name—
Maxine,
Maxine
—and placed her hands on my face, forcing me to look at her. The boys,
those tattoos sleeping on her palms, kissed my flushed cheeks.

They
swallowed the darkness. Wrapped themselves with treacherous tenderness around
my soul and knitted shut my heart like a door—a door never opened, never seen.
They ate the needle and thread, consumed the key. Murder and hunger and
death—obsidian and moonlight— nothing more than a bad dream.

A bad
dream. Less and more than dream, after all these years. I remembered my mother
in that moment—her breathlessness, the softness of her face—and behind her,
that zombie in his suit, stretched on the ground, his skin gray and his eyes
open and staring. His whisper, the slow, churning hiss of his breath as he
said, “She passed. She’s strong enough to kill the others. She’s strong enough
for
them
.”

My mother
said nothing. She held me closer. I felt her heart pound. The other zombies
backed away, lost in shadow—less flesh than shadow—and only that zombie with
his shining hair and cracked skin tried to stay near, rising slowly to his
feet, lurching one step closer. He watched me, and behind my heart, something
rattled, wanting out. My mother’s arms tightened. She backed away, toward the
door, carrying me. The zombie followed, bent over, holding out his hand. My
mother shook her head. “I played your game. You had your test.”

“This
was not part of the test,” he whispered, pointing at himself. “This was not
part of anything that should
be
.”

My
mother turned, and he grabbed her shoulder. She let him. She stood still as ice
as he pressed his mouth against her ear and whispered words I could not
understand, whispered long and low and hard. I watched my mother’s face change.

The
zombie pulled away. Skin peeled from his face in strips. Fresh blood dotted the
corners of his eyes. He swayed, like he was weak. Dying. “Do it, Hunter. It’s
not worth the risk.
Kill her.
Have another child. You’re still young.”

My
mother’s mouth tightened. She set me down and rubbed my head. Gentle,
reassuring. At odds with the death in her eyes.

A
knife appeared in her hand.

She
moved fast. Opened the door of the bar and shoved me outside, into the snow. I
fell on my knees. The door slammed shut behind me. I tried to go back inside,
but the knob would not turn. Locked. I banged on the wood with my fists,
screaming for her. Screaming and screaming.

Men
screamed back. Women howled. I heard pain in those voices, terror, and now—now
I realize—death. I listened to my mother murder. I stumbled back, breathless.

Silence
was worse. I did not know who would come through that door. And when it opened
and I saw my mother, I still did not know who had come through. Her hair was
wild. Her face spattered red. Eyes dark and burning.

I did
not know what I said. I did not remember. I was sure I stared. That much, I
stared. I tried not to flinch when she knelt and looked into my face. She held
up her hands for me to see. Blood glistened on her fingers. Blood that slowly
disappeared into her tattooed skin. Boys, drinking up. Feeding.

“I
don’t want you to remember this,” she whispered, touching my forehead. “Baby. My
baby.”

She
stole from me. Memories, hidden behind dreams. I did not know how I lost so
much—how she did it—but I blame my youth. I was so young. I forgot it all—even
later, when I saw more. So much more. Even then I did not remember those
zombies, that bar—my mother and the darkness, caged.

So
naïve. I thought I was wise. I thought I knew everything. But thirteen years
after that moment in the snow I watched my mother get shot in the head. And I
finally understood. I remembered. I got it.

I got
it all.

I was
standing beside a former priest in the small second-ary kitchen of a homeless
shelter, trying to convince an old woman that marijuana was not a substitute
for sugar, when a zombie pushed open the stainless-steel doors and announced
that two detectives from the Seattle Police Department had arrived.

I
listened. Heard pans banging, shouts from the other kitchen; the low, rumbling
roar of voices in the dining hall, accompanied by classical music piped in for
the lunch hour. Tchaikovsky’s
Sleeping Beauty
. My choice for the day.
Sounded pleasant with the rain pounding on the tin eaves, or the wind sighing
against the cloudy window glass.

I
heard no sirens. No dull echoes from police radios. No officious voices
grumbling orders and questions. Some comfort. But on my skin, beneath the long
sleeves of my leather jacket and turtleneck, the boys tossed in their sleep, restless
and dreaming. Today, especially restless. Tingling since dawn. Not a good sign.
When Zee and the others slept poorly, it usually meant someone needed to run.
Someone, being me.

“Impossible,”
Grant muttered. “Did they say why they’re here?”

“Not
yet. Someone could have called.”

“Any
idea who?”

“Take
your pick,” Rex said, the demon in his aura fluttering wildly. “You attract
busybodies like gravity and a 34DD.”

The
old woman was still ignoring us, and had begun humming a complicated melody of
show tunes from
South Pacific
. A tiny person, skinny as a scrap of
leather, with a nose that had been broken so many times it looked like a
rock-slide. Pale, wrinkled skin, long hair white as snow. Wiry arms scarred
with old needle tracks and covered in thick plastic bangles.

Mary,
one of the shelter’s permanent residents. A former heroin addict Grant had
found living in a gutter more than a year ago. His special project. An
experiment in progress.

I
watched her lean over a red plastic bowl, filled to the brim with brownie mix
and chocolate chips. Her right hand stirred the batter, a pair of long, wooden
chopsticks sunk ineffectively into the mix, while her other hand held a glass
jar packed with enough finely crushed weed to make an entire city block high
for a week.

She
peered through her eyelashes to see if Grant was looking—which he was, even
though his back was slightly turned—and we both flinched as she dumped in
another lump of the green leaves and started stirring faster.

“You
need to get rid of that stuff,” I said. “Split it between the garbage and the
toilet.”

Grant’s
knuckles turned white around his cane. “It could be a coincidence the police
are here. Some of them stop to chat sometimes.”

“You
willing to take that risk?”

“Flushing
evidence won’t take care of the basement.”

I
looked down at the old leather of my cowboy boots, pretending to see past them
into the cavernous underbelly of the warehouse shelter. Furniture used to be
manufactured in this place. Some of the big sewing machines and leatherworks
still gathered dust in those dim, dark spaces. Lots of places to hide down
there. Rooms undiscovered.

One
in particular, hidden behind some broken stairs. Found by accident, just this
morning. Filled with heat lamps. Packed wall to wall with a jungle of carefully
cultivated, highly illegal plants. A makeshift operation. And one old lady hip
deep in the middle of it, singing to her green babies. Knitting little booties
for real babies.

Crazy,
charming, sweet old Mary. I had no idea how she had managed to pull off an
underground farm. She might have had help. Or been manipulated. Maybe she was
just resourceful, highly motivated. Either way, there was a mess to clean
up—and not just for Grant’s sake, because he owned this shelter.

He
liked Mary. He liked her enough to bend his moral backbone and risk his
reputation—hold her hand and try to make things better. I felt the same. The
old woman needed someone to make things better. No way she would survive jail.
I knew it. He knew it. Not even handcuffs. Not a glint of them. Mary was like a
butterfly wing. Rubbed the wrong way, and it would be scarred from flying.

“Sin
is in the basement,” she warbled sweetly, oblivious. “Turn on the light, Jesus.
Shine, Lord, shine.”

The
zombie laughed. It was an ugly, mocking sound, and I stared at Rex until he
stopped. He tried to hold my gaze, but we had played this game for two months.
Two months, circling each other. Fighting our instincts.

Rex
looked away, leathery hands fidgeting as he adjusted the frayed red knit cap
pulled low over his grizzled head. The high collar of his thick flannel coat
hugged his coarse jaw. His host’s skin was brown from a lifetime spent working
under the sun. Palms callused, covered in fresh nicks and white scars. He wore
his stolen body with ease, but the old ones, the deep possessors, always did.
Wholly demon, in human flesh.

He
was afraid of me. He hid it well, his human mask calm, but I could see it in
the little things. I could taste it. Made the boys even more restless on my
skin, but in a good way. We liked our zombies scared. We liked them better
dead.

Grant
gave the zombie a stern look and swayed close to my elbow, leaning hard on his
carved wooden cane. Tall man, broad, his face too angular to be called pretty.
Brown hair tumbled past the collar of his flannel shirt and thermal. His jeans
were old, his eyes intense, brown as an old forest in the rain. He could be a
wolf, another kind of hunter, but not like me. Grant was nicer than me.

“Maxine,”
he rumbled. “Think you can handle Mary?”

Sunset
was still two hours away, which meant I could handle a nuclear blast, the
bogeyman, and a vanful of clowns—all at once—but I hesitated anyway, studying
the old woman. I grabbed the front of Grant’s shirt, stood on my toes, and
pressed my mouth against his ear. “She likes you better.”

“She
adores me,” he agreed, “but I can deal with the police.”

I
blew out my breath. “What do I do with her?”

His
hand crept up my waist, squeezing gently. “Be kind.”

I
pulled away, just enough to see his mouth soften into a rueful smile, and
muttered, “You trust me too much.”

“I
trust you because I know you,” he whispered in my ear. “And I love you, Maxine
Kiss.”

Grant
Cooperon. My magic bullet.

And
it was going to kill me one day.

“Okay,”
I told him weakly. “Mary and I will be fine.”

He
smiled and kissed my brow. Mary’s singing voice cracked, and when I glanced
around Grant’s broad shoulder, I found the old woman glaring at me. She was not
the only one. The zombie looked like he wanted to puke.

Whatever.
My cheeks were hot. I cleared my throat and glanced at the flute case dangling
over Grant’s shoulder. “You going to use your voodoo-hoodoo?”

“Just
charm,” he said wryly, kissing me again on the cheek before limping from the
small kitchen, his bad leg nearly twisting out from under him with every step.
Rex gave me a quick look, like he wanted to say something, then shook his head
and followed Grant past the swinging doors.

Faithful
zombie, tracking the heels of his Pied Piper. My mother would turn in her grave
if she had one. All my ancestors would. They would kill Grant. No second
thoughts. Cold-blooded murder.

Stamping
him out like any other threat to this world.

I
glanced at Mary. She was licking brownie mix off her chopsticks—watching me
warily. I tried to smile, but I had never been good at holding a smile, not
when it mattered, not even for pictures, and all I managed was a slight twitch
at the corner of my mouth. I gestured at the jar in her hand. “Probably ought
to put that away.”

Mary
continued to stare. Zee stirred against the back of my neck—a clutching
sensation, as though his tiny clawed heels were digging into my spine. It sent
a chill through me; or maybe that was Mary, who suddenly stared with more
clarity in her eyes, more uncertainty. As though she realized we were alone and
that I might be dangerous.

She
had good instincts. It made me wish I was better with words. Or that I knew how
to be alone with one old woman and not feel homesick for something I could not
name, but that made my throat ache as though I had been chewing bitterness so
long, a lump the size of my heart was lodged like a rock behind my tongue.

“Mary,”
I said again gently, and edged closer, wondering how I could get the jar out of
her hand. I did not want to scare her, but I had to hurry. No matter what Grant
said, I did not believe in coincidence. Odds were never that good. Not when it
mattered.