The Iron Hunt (35 page)

“And
you play it so poorly,” she said. “Ahsen thinks she is coming here to murder
your soul, Old Wolf. Whether she does or not is hardly my concern. But you,
Hunter… do not let your opportunity go to waste. You have so few, and so many,
to kill.” She smiled and snapped her fingers. “Edik, my child. Come along.”

Edik
lurched to his feet, took a step—and without my leave or call, Raw fell on him,
tearing into his body. I did not expect it. Not the suddenness, not the
solitude. Zee and Aaz held back, leaving Raw to it. As if he deserved the kill.

The
old zombie screamed, trying to fend off the little demon, but the assault was
like setting fire to tissue paper— an effortless annihilation. Horrible to
witness. I tried to stop Raw, but he was fast, efficient, and by the time I
opened my mouth, it was too late. Most of Edik’s stomach was gone, his arms
ripped away and devoured in giant bites. Raw snarled, slamming his claws deep
into Edik’s skull—yanking the demon free of his possessed body. He tore into
the parasite, ripping the wraith to shreds. The old man’s blood was already
absorbing into his skin.

Jack
made a small sound, watching him. Tracker reappeared at my side, without Byron,
and gave me a swift nod. Someplace safe. That was all I could ask for. Cold air
washed over me, heavy with the scent of blood, a deep, arctic cold. A tendril
of hair caressed my shoulder. Oturu, looming. I looked for Blood Mama. She was
gone. Of course.

“It
begins,” Oturu whispered.

“Maxine,”
Jack rasped, “I—”

He
never finished. I wished he could have. In the center of the room, a tiny
figure coalesced. Dark hair, dark eyes, roses in her cheeks. Red cowboy boots
stood firm on the wood floor. My body. A living echo of my childhood.

“Hunter,”
Ahsen said. “How remarkable to see your face.”

I
felt the sun break over the horizon like a long, hot drink of water. Zee and
the others vanished, instantly reappearing on my skin, bound and hard. But
though the sun must have broken open, none of that dawn light entered through
the apartment windows. The lamps flickered.

Shadows
shifted, stretching like mouths across the room, spreading and rising from the
floor and walls in churning waves. Like oil running up walls, or the abyss of
Oturu’s cloak, full of pressed faces and twisted bodies. A breathing, aching
darkness; a tsunami of soul cages; demons hurled and writhing. The interior of
the apartment grew dark and closed, as suffocating as the Wasteland, and it was
the wall of demons who made it so; entombing, consuming us.

Ahsen
remained a small figure in the hovering darkness, shining like the morning
star. I walked across the room. I stopped less than ten feet from her, demons
spreading beneath my toes like spilled oil. Ahsen removed a narrow braid of hair
from her pocket and wound it slowly around her small wrist. She searched my
face, as I did hers, and glided forward, closing the distance between us—eyes
glittering, her body frayed at the edges, becoming smoke.

“You
didn’t make these,” I said, gesturing at the demons.

“No,”
she replied. “But I gathered them. They could smell the Labyrinth upon me, just
from that one touch of the seed ring, and it was enough. You cannot fathom the
allure of the crossroads, Hunter. But you would know, I suppose.”

“I
suppose,” I said dryly.

The
skin around her mouth became unnaturally taut. “How
ever
did you escape
the Wasteland?”

“I
just did.”

Her
eyelid fluttered. “Not even an Avatar could accomplish that.”

I
smiled, grim. “Perhaps that means I’m more powerful than you.”

“Doubtful.”

“Really.
We could go there now. Find out.”

Her
fingers stroked the braid. “You are trying to goad me.”

“I’m
trying to tell the truth. But that’s worse, isn’t it? Almost as bad as tossing
up someone’s reflection when you’re about to kill them?” I shook my head, still
smiling. “I think you’re afraid. I think you’ve been afraid for the past ten
thousand years. All alone. Little lamb amongst the wolves.”

Her
body flickered. Jack moved close to my side, brushing against my shoulder. Very
gently, he said, “I’m here. Let this end.”

Ahsen
closed her eyes, as though she could not bear to look at him. “You do not have
the luxury of making requests. You, who condemned me. You, who trapped me with
our enemy.”

“I
did what I had to.”

“No,”
she whispered. “There were alternatives. You must have known what would happen.
You must have. And even if you did not, you should have. Old Wolf, you cannot
imagine. I was their
whore
. For millennia, I serviced an army. Reduced
to filth.”

She
finally looked at him, and her eyes were black with loathing, coarse with
horror—horrific for me, to see those emotions painted on my own face, as though
it were my body subject to her memories, my flesh that bore the burden. She
held up the braid of pale, glossy hair, still wrapped around her wrist. “Do you
remember this, Old Wolf? This is all I have left of the body I wore the day you
imprisoned me. All I have left of the
humanity
I had cultivated.”

Jack
said nothing, but I felt a terrible strain pass through him. His hand quivered.

Ahsen
gazed around the room, studying the inky bodies of breathless, waiting demons.
“I was promised a boy,” she said.

“He’s
gone,” Jack told her. “Safe.”

“But
still yours.” Her lips thinned. “The eternal child. Your greatest mistake in
the divine organic. Doomed to live as a boy for eternity, forever forgetting,
forever wandering. You should have killed him, Jack. I would have. He is your
weakness. Your failed experiment, who carries part of you inside him. If I
murder the boy…”

I
glanced at Tracker, but his expression was closed, hard. “Byron is immortal?”

Jack
gave me a heavy look. “He is a special child. You were never supposed to meet.
Fate conspired.”

Ahsen
clicked her fingers. The old man staggered, falling to his knees. His breath
rattled in his throat. He clutched his chest.

I
spun around and slammed my fist into Ahsen’s face. My hand passed through her,
and she laughed, brief as a clap of thunder. Desperation made me sick. I tried
hitting her again, and each time I did, something inside me broke a little—that
shadow behind my ribs, fluttering wilder, harder. Jack groaned.

“You
will never hurt me,” Ahsen whispered. “And when I am done with Old Wolf’s human
shell, I will come for you, and I will come, and I will hunt you until you give
me what I want. And then I will kill you. Or remake you, Hunter. Perhaps you
will be my skin, and your boys my slaves.”

Anger
poured through me. The iron band around my finger tingled.

A
weapon,
I thought.
Give me a
weapon.

The
iron burned hotter. I remembered the river, the living tomb, fighting the
current and the sensation of the sword in my hand, cold and alive. The whispers
that had led me there. I remembered. I could taste it.

Ahsen
blinked, glancing down. I also looked.

My
hand was glowing. White hot. Until, suddenly, the light died.

And
in its place, I held a sword.

I
could not have imagined such a weapon. It seemed better suited to artistry than
warfare. A slender blade, polished and glittering as though fragments of
starlight had been scattered into the steel—serrated and etched with runes
shaped like roses. A thin chain ran from the hilt to my ring finger, which was
still bound in iron.

Behind
me, Jack started laughing. It was a coarse, ugly sound—and when he raised his
head, his eyes were bloodshot. Foam flecked the corners of his mouth.

“No,”
Ahsen whispered, and I could not tell if it was greed or horror that passed
through her eyes. Nor did I care. My hand felt as though it were encased in a
glove made of lightning—skin tingling, a cascading current surging from the
sword and ring into my bones.

I had
never wielded such a weapon—not unless fencing Zee with a stick counted—but I
swung the sword like I was in an old movie and sank the blade into my eight-year-old
body with a hoarse shout. The sword passed through Ahsen’s stomach like she was
made of air, but she cried out, twisting. For the first time, affected by a
weapon. And with her cry, the demons attacked.

It
was like being swallowed by the oubliette all over again. I struck blindly, the
sword glowing against demon flesh, but there were too many. Tracker shouted. I
tried to find Jack. Oturu’s feet clicked in my ears though I could not see him.

Something,
too. A flute.

Music
cut like a knife, swelling through me, coursing over my skin like a hundred
baby razors. The demons, the darkness, writhed and peeled, and I saw Grant—cane
abandoned—sitting on the floor against the wall, just inside the front door. He
held my gaze like a lifeline—my life, his life—roped together in his music.

Ahsen
made a low sound, looking from the sword to Grant, and though I had thought her
expression could not become more distraught, the stare she gave him went beyond
alarm: a distress that ripped her small frame with a bone-shattering shudder.

“Lightbringer,”
Ahsen whispered, her face screwed into an expression of such pure devastation
it was like being kicked in the teeth. She evaporated, but I heard Tracker’s
low warning and found the rebel Avatar poised above Jack’s prone body.

“You
knew!” Ahsen screamed at him. “If the others discover what this world is
harboring—”

Jack
snarled breathlessly, cutting her off. “They will
never
know. You will
not tell them.”

“I
must,” she hissed. “You stupid—”

I
plunged the sword between her shoulders, power surging between the ring and the
blade—and Ahsen arched her back, writhing.

Jack
grabbed at her ankle, his fingers passing through her flesh like smoke. “I
never
regretted what I did to you,” he growled. “I was
glad
to put you away.
Sarai was, too.”

Ahsen
screamed, wrenching herself off the sword. Tracker tried to punch her, but his
fist passed through her body exactly as mine had. Oturu did nothing. He watched
only me, and I felt a question building in that flat line of his mouth, the
quiet of his cloak.

Grant’s
melody changed. Ahsen cried out again, whipping around to stare at him—but not
before she slammed her foot into Jack’s head. The old man went still.

I
reeled, all the breath in me gone, but I had no time to check him. Ahsen winked
out of sight, then reappeared a heartbeat later, very nearly on top of Grant.
His eyes were closed, his fingers flying with lightning speed. His music swept
through the apartment, gathering the demons as though they were pieces of paper
caught in some terrible wind. Grant’s shoulders were hunched, spine curved,
skin pale.

He
was not alone. Rex stood in front of him, wielding a baseball bat. And behind
them both, at the top of the stairs, I saw Mary with a frying pan, hate in her
blistering eyes as she stared at Ahsen.

I
ran. I ran as fast as I could. Ahsen was going to kill Grant. I could feel it
in her. All the anger was gone from her body, and in its place was a terrible
desperation that was more frightening than rage.

My
skin tingled, stretching. Power swelled through my veins. An abyss opened in my
heart, deeper than any cloak or wasteland, and I sank deep as I stared at
Ahsen. I heard Tracker call my name, but I did not let go of the rage that
filled me. I could not. I had the taste of death in my mouth.

I did
not make a sound. I charged Ahsen, swinging the sword. She turned at the last
moment, eyes widening, and evaporated before I could touch her. I screamed her
name, then Oturu was there, his hair and cloak winding around my body—and
Tracker grabbed my hand.

We
passed into darkness, dancing between voids, skipping from light to dark. And
in my heart, something stirred. A cascade beneath my ribs, into my throat. A
twining body turning, writhing beneath my skin. Jaws rising behind my mouth,
the sensation so strong I fancied my own mouth might unhinge, stretching into a
yawn that could swallow a sun. Hunger, such hunger, burning. I remembered.
Obsidian and starlight.

In my
hand, the sword glowed. Inside my body, another glow, hot and pulsing.

Tracker
stole us out of the void. I did not know where we were. I saw water. I saw a
city stormy with lights. It was night here, and the air was cool in my lungs,
on my hot skin. I breathed deep. Tracker stood on my left. Zee and the boys
peeled off my body, but I felt no pain. Nothing but determination.

In
front of us, Ahsen. Tall now, as immense as Oturu, with hands like pitchfork
tines and that silver braid flowing over a bony shoulder. Built like a whip,
with slits for eyes and a small, sharp hole for a mouth. The illusion of a
Mahati, swaying into a crouch.

“Come,”
she whispered. “I will not run from you this time, Hunter. We will finish it.”