The Iron Hunt (32 page)

Mary
appeared in the doorway. White hair blazing, sticking out like a helmet full of
static electricity. She wore a shift covered in flying pink dragons, and an old
navy cardigan, dotted with tattered little holes, some of which had been mended
with red yarn.

Her
eyes were wild, her hands full of Grant’s mail; one of the little jobs he had
given her, which she took very seriously. She stared at him, chest heaving. Her
gaze slid sideways, to Jack.

And everything
changed.

The
mail slid from her hands. A hard, sharp fury pricked her face.

“Wolf,”
she said.

WOLF.

Tracker
appeared behind Mary. Bent slightly over his stomach. Hard for me to imagine
one old woman being able to hurt him—when I had hardly made a dent— but there
was a look on his face that made me think she had done just that.

Mary
glided into the room with surprising grace and speed, staring at Jack as though
he were nothing but a piece of bad news. Mail lay scattered on the floor, but
in her right hand she held a tinfoil block that smelled suspiciously like
brownies. Zee and the others sat beside me on the bed, very still—dolls with
razor blades for skin. Mary studied them, too, but only for a moment. Her focus
was Jack.

“Wolf,”
she whispered again, withered lips hardly moving. “Sinner.”

She
might have been a bullet instead of a woman. Jack stared, muscles ticking
spasmodically in his cheek.

“Marritine,”
he finally choked out. “Such a surprise to see you.”

Oh.
God.
I stared at the old man,
incredulous. Grant made a small, choked sound. We shared a quick glance. He
looked just as confused—and concerned.

Mary
began to shudder. Slowly at first, hardly a tremor, but the shakes got worse
until her teeth began to chatter. It was eerie, watching the old woman’s body
fall apart while her unblinking eyes, hollow and cold, stared holes into Jack’s
head.

Grant
struggled to stand from the bed. I fumbled for his cane, and he took it in grim
silence, heaving himself up on his feet. He shot Jack another quick look, then
limped swiftly across the room until he stood between Mary and the old man. He
did not say a word. Just bundled her up with his free arm, cradling her against
his chest. Mary buried her face against his sweatshirt.

I
grabbed Jack’s shoulder. He blinked, tearing his gaze from Mary to stare at me,
past me, far away.

“It
makes no sense,” he murmured. “Fate does
not
conspire. ”

I
squeezed his bony shoulder. “Jack. What is going on?”

“Marritine,”
he said again, vision clearing. “Oh, dear.”

Grant
made a low, rumbling sound that could have been a growl. “She’s scared of you.”

Jack
shook himself, regaining some semblance of composure. “Nonsense. Bad memories,
yes… but if Marritine is scared, it is because of where I found her. That
woman… she was not born on earth.”

I
gave up. I buried my head in my hands. Tracker stepped into the room. He had
been standing so still, I had almost forgotten him. Shadows from the lamp made
his face appear even more menacing. Hard man to read, but he was looking at
Jack with brutal intensity. Like something needed to be done. And he wanted to
be the one who did it.

Grant’s
eyes narrowed. “Mary is human.”

“I
don’t disagree,” muttered the old man, giving Tracker a fleeting look. “But
she’s not from this world.”

“What?”
I snapped. “She got here on a spaceship?”

Jack
shot me a scathing look. “The Labyrinth, Hunter. Lost in the quantum rose.”

Mary
clutched Grant’s sweatshirt, face buried, peering at the old man with one
blazing eye. I leaned close, also trying to divine the emotions passing across
his aged handsome face. “What did you do to Mary?”

He
rubbed his face, cheeks blazing red. “I found her in the Labyrinth. Years ago.
She could not tell me how long she had been wandering, but it was clear she had
gone insane. I brought her to this world.”

“You
put her on the street,” Grant said, his voice hard. “I found her in an alley,
freezing, almost dead from a drug overdose.”

“I
left her in the care of someone I trusted,” Jack replied mildly. “In Hawaii.”

Grant
still looked angry. He ran a soothing hand down Mary’s back. “How did she even
end up in this… Labyrinth? ”

“In
fairy tales,” Jack said, “men and women are always falling through holes into
other worlds.”

“A
lot of things happen in those stories. Doesn’t mean they’re real.”

“Aren’t
they?” Tracker said—his voice low, strong. “Hunter. Just as the prison veil has
cracks, so does the Labyrinth. People can step wrong, anywhere, and… lose
themselves.”

“And
there are… humans, elsewhere?” Grant’s voice was strained.

“Everywhere,”
Jack said. “The Labyrinth is a place of infinite doorways.”

“Wolf,”
Mary muttered again. “Offender.”

“Marritine,”
he said, and she hurled her foil-wrapped brownies at his head. Jack ducked.

“Stay
away from Grant,” she said, bristling. “Lighteater. ”

Jack
flinched. Tracker tensed. Grant hugged Mary tighter and turned her so that she
did not have to look at Jack. I stood before it occurred to me that I might
still be weak.

My
legs held. My head felt fine. My heart did not pound. Not from overexertion,
anyway.

Grant
had that farseeing manner about him; a preternatural unrelenting awareness:
truth seeker, music man, my dangerous Pied Piper. His voice was soft as
thunder, his tone lyrical, rolling with power. “You’re wrong, Jack. Mary isn’t
just
scared of the Labyrinth.”

His
words echoed inside my head, relentless. My heart sank.
Of course,
I
thought, staring at that old baffling man.

“Meddling
man,” I whispered. “Jack.”

Maybe
it showed on my face. The old man paled and started shaking his head. I held up
my hand, a sharp gesture that made his mouth clamp shut.

“I
keep forgetting the way it is,” I said to him, softly. “I push it away, because
I like you so much. But your kind… they treat humans like cattle, same as the
demons, same as any zombie. You just… dress it up nicer. No teeth.” I closed my
eyes, steadying myself. “So why
did
the demons chase your kind, Jack?
Was it because they didn’t like you? Or were you… competing
…
for the
same resources?”

He
looked stricken. “My dear girl. No.”

“No?”
I held his gaze. “Really, Jack?”

He
said nothing, the flush in his cheeks spreading down his throat. My skin felt
hot, too. I was burning up. Burning. Tracker took a step toward me. Grant gave
him a sharp look, and the men stared at each other—wolves, both, a hunt in
their dark gazes.

Tiny
hands grabbed mine. Zee. Raw. Aaz. Dek and Mal quiet on my shoulders.

I
turned and left the bedroom.

MY
mother once asked me to choose truth over lies.

An
iron room, she described, with no windows or doors. A room I could not leave.
People sound asleep, inside. All of us, suffocating. All of
them
,
falling into an easy, painless death.

Would
you wake them?
she had asked.
Would
you prefer they go to death fully conscious? Would you be that cruel?

Lu
Xun. My mother loved his writing. And I was a punk at the time, told her that
yes, I would be that cruel. Because truth was better than ignorance, and people
should have the choice to reconcile their end. Make those last moments mean
something. Or try to find a way out.

I was
not so certain of myself anymore.

The
television was flickering in the living room, sound turned down. News on. Still
talking about the earthquake in Iran. Thousands dead, thousands more thought to
be under the rubble. Concerns growing elsewhere: Volcanic activity in Hawaii,
snow and ice storms all across the Midwest and upper East Coast. A school
shooting in Maryland. More gunfire in an office building in Vegas. Serial
rapists in Florida, missing girls in Idaho. Might not be demonically
related—any of it—but it hardly mattered. This was the iron room, the iron
house. An iron world, suffocating, dying in its sleep. Me, one of a handful who
knew the truth.

And
even that was nothing. I knew nothing.

I
left the bedroom. I was almost halfway across the living room before I realized
I was wearing a tank top and sweatpants, and that if anyone saw me without my
tattoos, I would have some explaining to do. Careless. Or maybe living for
months and years in the Wasteland darkness had cured me of caring how others
saw my body, or whether anyone questioned the peculiarities of my skin.

I
kept walking. I could not go back into the bedroom and face Jack again. Or even
Tracker. Conflict made me feel like a kid again, and not in a good way.

Zee
and the others loped into the shadows, swallowed up like wraiths, or drops of
water, soft and quiet. The door to the guest room was closed. I hoped Byron was
asleep and not listening to us.

I
walked upstairs to the roof garden. I needed air. The wind smelled wet and was
cold enough to make me shiver. I stuck with it, though. Stood against the baby
gale, matted hair bobbing like a soft helmet from my face. The sky was
lightening. Purple velvet clouds streaked the sky east, humming with a wink of
gold. Dawn soon, punched by the sun. Singeing my skin with demons.

Oturu’s
mark tingled. Heat washed over my skin, as though I stood within the bubble of
a sauna.

I did
not look. I did not turn. Not even when Dek hissed softly, or when I felt a
delicate scrape against my elbow, a probing, ethereal touch.

“We
heard your heart,” Oturu whispered. “Between the eternities. But we could not
reach you, not for all our fury.”

I
looked back. All I saw was a writhing cloak, dancing against the wind. He stood
so near he could have swallowed me into the abyss of his body. Simply leaned
forward, just a fraction, and taken me.

Zee,
Raw, and Aaz blinked from the shadows around my legs, pressing close. I
scratched behind their ears, and their purrs cracked and popped like ice. I
sensed Oturu gazing at each of them, a surprising softness to his mouth that
might have been affection. It made my heart feel odd. His cloak brushed against
my arms, soft and cold as frozen silk.

“Friend,”
Oturu breathed. “We feared for you. We fear still.”

“No,”
I said. “Not you.”

He
leaned in, so close we could have kissed, and still I could not see his eyes.
But I felt him, the weight of the abyss, the touch of his hair as it wound
through my own. I should have been disgusted, but I searched my heart and found
nothing but a déjà vu that bordered on memory.

“The
first time we met,” he murmured, “you let us live in return for a favor. And
that would have been the end, except you did more, beyond our bargain, beyond
promises. We were alone, Hunter. You became our friend. You… were kind.”

“I
was not,” I told him. “That was not me.”

“Even
so,” he breathed. “It is life.”

“You
tried to kill me when we first met.”

His
mouth curled into a smile. “To prove ourselves. We choose to keep you safe,
Hunter—but it is in our power to take your life.
She
gave us that right.
She
trusted us not to abuse her faith. A trust no other has shown us, or
will again.”

I
could not believe such a bargain. I could not fathom it. I stared, helpless.
“Did my mother know?”

At my
side, Zee tensed. Oturu said, “She also had a need, once.”

I
turned from him. I remembered my vision under the bus—Oturu with a woman who
looked like me, standing beneath an alien sky full of moons—and for a moment
was not certain if it was fantasy or reality, past or future. The sky was
getting lighter, a golden shade of pale, chasing violets and cumulous roses
made of fleeing night. I walked to the edge of the roof, staring at the city.
Oturu joined me.

“You
have the seed ring,” I said.

Oturu
remained silent, but his cloak opened, and his hair dipped into the writhing
abyss. Faces pressed against the darkness, the outline of cheeks and hollow
eyes, then the demon turned, just slightly, and his hair pulled free of his
cloak, coiled around a bundle.

My
mother’s jacket. Her gloves. Her knives. And on top, the seed ring, gleaming
like a dark pearl.

“You
saved it all,” I said quietly.

“You
shed your belongings like a wraith,” he murmured. “Ahsen could not grasp them
fast enough.”

I ran
my hand over the soft leather of my mother’s jacket. My eyes burned, my throat
thick. I nodded once, trying to speak, but all I could whisper was, “Thank
you.”

“Your
heart lives in them,” he said softly. “A danger, Hunter, to care so much for
small things.”