The Iron Hunt (4 page)

EVERY
now and then while I was growing up, my mother would turn down the radio, and
say, “There’s one thing you need to know about demons, baby. It may keep you
alive.”

I
would listen, even though I knew what was coming. I loved listening to my
mother. She tried hard, even though our lives were frightening, to control the
horror. To feed it to me in bits and pieces so that I could sleep at night and
not dread the next forty-odd years of my life. And though she left some things
out, she managed to tell me enough, in her own way, to keep me going.

My
mother was a lady. And while she almost never used foul language, when she shut
off the music, that was the one time she always broke her rule.

“Demons
are bad motherfuckers,” my mother would say. “And as such, must be handled with
care. Ourselves included.”

I
drove the Mustang in the rain. It was only late afternoon, but the clouds were
so thick and dark with storm, the headlights from opposing traffic burned like
lighthouse beacons in my newly sensitive eyes. I rubbed them, remembering pain.
I could still taste my blood.

Seattle
in winter was an awful place to be. Always wet, hardly a glimpse of the sun
except on rare days when it burned briefly free and rained down rays of precious
ghostly light; or at night, when clouds slivered and stars glittered, and the
moon, when it rose, glowed.

The
only good thing about the weather was that it suited my wardrobe: long sleeves,
high necks, jeans, and gloves. I never showed skin. Nothing but my face, and
even that was a concession to vanity. My face, from the top of my neck to my
hairline: the only part of my body not covered in tattoos. Part of my deal with
the boys, the same deal generations of my ancestors had made. Our way of blending
in with society. An illusion of normality.

I
stayed under the speed limit. The Mustang was a target for traffic cops: red
and gleaming like Snow White’s poison apple. Classic sixties fastback, with a
backseat custom-designed to be more comfortable for the boys. Leather buckets,
retrofitted stereo, chrome detailing. An engine with thunder in its veins. Very
sharp. I loved my car.

Teddy
bears filled the back, most of them dismembered. Empty bags from various
fast-food joints covered the floor, along with a sack of nails, bolts, and
screws. Snack food. Tasty, I had been told, with jalapeño sauce and fries.

Steve
Perry wailed on the radio. I turned down the volume, and the rhythmic beat of
the windshield wipers took over. I was still in the warehouse district, a
crumbling neighborhood of pale concrete, shattered sidewalks, and broken
windows. Too much chain link. I had lived here almost two months and seen
businesses come and go— artsy types, mostly. Cheap rent. Bare-bones revival and
decay. The Coop, Grant’s homeless shelter, was one of the few living fixtures
in this fringe area of Seattle’s downtown.

Zee
tugged on my skin as I drove. All the boys did. Felt like bits of my body
trying to peel away. Not a good sign. Like I needed another. I touched my nose,
rubbing the outer edge of my left eye. My heart beat faster. I saw words in my
head, my mother’s neat script. She had kept journals. Big ones, leather-bound,
with thick heavy paper that still smelled like incense and rosewater. I hauled
them around in the Mustang for five years after she died. Now they sat in a
carved wooden chest on the wooden floor of a warehouse apartment.

I
knew every word. Every syllable and curve. I could still feel the imprint of
her fingers through the indents of ink on the stiff pages, and the
grooves—sometimes, when I was very nostalgic—felt sacred. As though her soul
resided in paper.

I
recalled that my mother wrote about pain. Odd, unordinary aches. She kept
copious notes. It was probably time I did the same. Not for posterity, but survival.
One day someone else would need to learn from my experiences. Written words
would be my only voice after I was murdered. The only thing I could pass on,
besides the boys.

Such
as this fact: My mother suffered only one bloody nose in her entire life.
Accompanied by temporary blindness, sharp pain in her eyes.

She
wrote that down, made a point of it. A separate chapter. Because afterward, a
lot of people died. Afterward, she almost died.

Unfortunately,
except for those small tidbits, the rest of the story was lost. She had gotten
rid of it, ripped the pages out. Before I was born, I suppose.

But
not everything. One line, just before the break in her discourse. Like a
ticking bomb found under an airplane seat, or cold laughter when you thought
you were alone.

The
veil opened,
wrote my mother.
The
veil opened, and something slipped through.

SOMETHING
always slipped through.

No
good explanation. Just that long ago, demons lived upon the earth. Many demons.
They killed and consumed, and there was a war. People fought back. Humans.
Others who were not human. They built a prison out of air, a prison made of
layers and rings and boundaries, and they placed the demons inside, separating
them by strength and viciousness and intelligence.

And
then they sealed the demons up. Forever.

Except,
nothing lasted forever. Not even the boys, though they had spent the past ten
thousand years giving it their best shot.

Someone
must have figured as much. Someone who could make a difference. Someone who
created the Wardens, men and women with the speed and power to guard this world
against a break in the prison veil. Humans, constructed to fight demons.

Humans,
destined to save the world.

But
the Wardens had not survived, either. They did not have the boys.

Leaving
me. The last.

The
women in my family had always been the last.

And
the veil had opened.

Again.

HERE
was another truth: I had spent my entire life on the road. I never went to
school. My mother taught me, and based on some things I had seen over the
years, I would say she did a pretty good job. We always hit the bookstores and
libraries in every city and small town, and I learned to tell a lot about a
place by the kinds of books that were carried, or the attention given a
library. The best I had ever seen was in New York City. The worst in Paoli,
Indiana.

Seattle
was not so bad. But the bookstores downtown cared more about literary fiction
than commercial reads, and that was indicative, I thought, of the social
atmosphere. Yuppie, a little too preoccupied with what other people thought,
and only superficially friendly.

The
number of homeless kids was another strike against the city. University Avenue
was the worst. Maybe not as bad as Rio de Janeiro, but for the United States,
it was up there. And two hours after leaving the Coop—two hours spent walking
the streets in the rain, trying to uncover answers—I found myself in a dark
alley off the Ave, near the sprawling Gothic splendor of the University of
Washington, a child huddled near my feet.

A lot
of children. Rain had driven them into doorways, under tattered awnings, or
here, in alleys, under cardboard and garbage bags. I smelled dog, and saw a
ruffed brown tail sticking out from under a slicker, alongside gangling limbs
and pierced noses and glittering eyes. Tattoos rocked the shadows. Not mine. My
clothes still covered me from neck to toe, my fingers snug in my gloves.

I had
ten minutes left. Sunset was coming. I could feel it on my skin. Streetlights
were already on, sour fluorescent lines seeping into the alley. Storm clouds
had not abated, and were so low and thick with shadow and rain and fog, it
could have already been night.

I
blinked rain from my eyelashes and crouched. Peered into a box shoved tight
against the Dumpster, and found a pair of eyes like snow and stone: white and
gray, framed in black eyeliner. Boy. Hardly fourteen. Not old enough to grow
more than a weak black fuzz on the tip of his chin. He wore a thick coat and
jeans with holes in the knees.

His
aura was clean. No demon inside his soul. Not a zombie. Just messed up, all
regular.

“Hey,”
I said gently, wishing I had a photo of Badelt. One taken while he was alive.
“I’d like to ask some questions, if that’s all right.”

The
boy had sharp eyes. Old as dirt. He studied me, and I held still, unblinking,
counting seconds as my skin tingled and tugged. Sun going down. Somewhere,
beyond the dark clouds.

“You’re
not a cop,” said the boy quietly.

“Kid,”
I replied carefully, “the last thing I am is a cop. But I
do
need
information. A man was murdered around here last night. His name was Brian
Badelt. White hair, long face.”

Just
five blocks away. Yellow police tape still in place, and a cruiser parked at
the entrance. Forensics team not done yet, apparently. I had walked past,
collar pulled up, and gotten a quick look—just as any curious passerby might.
Seen nothing except slick concrete and shadows, and the memory of a dead man’s
face. No answers in that. Nothing that could help me understand why he had my
name, or whether he was looking for me. And if so, why that search had brought
him here.

I
wanted to know if he died because of that search. Because of me.

Maybe
the crime-scene investigators already had the answers. Or not. Over the past
two hours, I had learned that police had already approached most of the
transients living on this street. Based on the almost nonexistent levels of
cooperation I had received, I doubted Suwanai, McCowan, or their crew had
discovered much. Not unless they played dirty, something I was unprepared to
do. Adults and kids had enough problems, homeless or not.

But I
saw something in the boy’s eyes. Gave me a feeling the others had not. He had a
softer gaze. Like the streets had not quite driven the sweetness from him. Made
my heart hurt. Made me want to do something I should not.

“I
saw him,” whispered the boy, and all around us, eyes slit open, glints of cold
steel in wet shadow. His admission surprised me more than it should have. So
much that I had to take a moment and replay those words in my head, testing them
for what I thought he had said.
I saw him. I saw, I saw.

My
skin prickled. My skin moved. I rocked back on my heels and wanted to close my
eyes and hug the boy, hold my breath in case he turned to smoke and
disappeared. “What did you see?”

He
hesitated, and though tucked at the back of the box, I was certain he felt the
other children staring. All of them, listening.

Plastic
rattled. Feet shuffled. His gaze flicked past my shoulder. I glanced behind and
found a young woman. She had skin the color of a ghost, pale and flawless, with
studs running the rims of her ears, in her nose, inside her tongue. Black eyes,
black spiked hair dripping with rain. Canvas fatigues hugged her body. Brass
knuckles flashed. So did the edge of a blade. Tough chick. Nice style.

I
turned my back and peered into the box. I had minutes at most. No time for a
pissing contest. Not with a kid.

“Help
me, and I’ll help you,” I told the boy. Rain seeped down my collar, against my
skin. I did not feel it. The water absorbed too quickly into my tattoos. Faster
now. Heat spread beneath my turtleneck and jacket, down my stomach across my
legs. My fingers burned.

The
boy stared, gaze torn, cheeks hollow. Like a ghost, biting the edge of living;
unseen, unknown, unsure. Something hard tapped my skull. Brass knuckles. I
ignored the girl and continued watching the boy in the box. He knew something
more than just the murder. I could see it in his eyes. He knew.

The
girl hit me again. I felt no pain, just the impact against my shoulder, which
sent me down, gloved palms slamming into wet cement. If I were only human, she
might have broken something with that blow. Rain ran into my mouth and eyes. I
licked my lips.

“Stop
asking questions,” hissed the girl, leaning near. “Or you’ll stop breathing.”

I
turned my head and looked into her eyes. Beyond the girl, at the alley mouth,
cars passed in the pounding rain, headlights shining. Men and women appeared
fleetingly, walking fast with hands full of backpacks and umbrellas, heads
bowed.
See no evil. Suffer none at all.
Such a thin veneer, between
there and here. So easy to cast illusions. Especially when people were afraid
to see the truth.

I
could see the truth in the girl’s eyes. She was scared, but serious. She would
hurt me if I did not walk away. She would make life difficult. Made me wonder
if something similar had happened to Badelt. I wondered, too, what she would do
to the boy for talking. What someone
else
would do.

I
blinked, and the girl flashed her teeth. Then her knife. It was very small, not
much longer than her palm. Hardly a toothpick. She saw me studying the weapon
and smiled, like she had won.

Inside
me, the sun. Going, almost gone. No time. Not for niceties. No time to be kind.

I
grabbed the knife. Snatched a fistful of blade and it punctured my leather
glove. Steel scraped my tattooed palm and made a terrible sound. The knife
snapped. Hit the cement between us, but the rain drowned the clatter, and the
alley was dark.