A Wild Light (11 page)

I glanced at Grant and found him watching the girl, too. He looked sad.

“She’s thinking about killing herself,” he said, twisting in his seat, watching as she climbed into a beat- up rusted sedan. “She won’t, but the germ is in her.”

I believed him. I couldn’t help it. I almost wanted to run after the girl, shake her up, and didn’t know why. Not my problem. I had enough on my plate. “Are you like Killy?”

“No,” he said. “I’m something else.”

The girl drove away. I felt cold when she did, a little empty, like I had done someone wrong.

I dumped the rest of the hamburgers from the plastic bag but left the ice cream inside. I wrapped it up until it resembled a brick, then pressed it, lightly, against Grant’s swelling head. He held still. I did not meet his gaze. “Let’s say you’re telling the truth.”

“Generous of you.”

“Yes,” I said. “Blood Mama should have killed you by now. Or tried to take over your body.”

“She made that attempt, a little over a year ago.” Grant placed his bandaged hand over mine. “That’s how we met. You saved my life. At Pike Place Market.”

I withdrew my hand, letting him hold the softening cold pack against his head. “And I never left.”

“I think you decided you liked me. Just a little.”

More than a little, if we were sharing a bed. I was beginning to feel too curious for my own good about how all that had come about. “What
are
you?”

“Human,” he said, and his tone was serious, dark, that one word hanging heavy in the air, like it meant more than what I knew. Or maybe I did know, in a different way than I could remember. I was human, and not. Human and demon, and other parts thrown together, in ways I could not comprehend.

Human. I was human. And a little bit not.

“When I was a kid, I was diagnosed with synesthesia,” Grant said. “You know what that is, right? A neurological condition where the different senses—auditory, visual—get mixed up. For some people it’s letters or numbers that evoke smells, even personalities. For me, when I hear sounds . . . I see color.”

I knew about the condition. I liked music. Years ago I’d read about Duke Ellington, Jean Sibelius, seeing colors in notes, melodies. “So when I crumple this foil—”

“I see flashes of bright orange. The sound of the rain looks like dark silver pearls. When the car engine runs, I see a deep gravel gray that resembles teeth, and when I hear ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’ I’m surrounded by a rainbow of purples and reds that . . . spike . . . then melt together like hot wax.”

“And when I talk?”

“I see light,” he said, and it surprised me to see his eyes grow a little too bright, red-rimmed, hot. “I see light, Maxine.”

I forced myself to breathe. “And?”

“I don’t just see sound. I see energy. Auras. Around people.” Grant looked away from me, and stared at the half-eaten ice-cream bar in his other hand. “I can change those auras. I can . . . manipulate them.”

The hamburgers felt heavy in my stomach. “What does that mean?”

Grant stopped holding the plastic bag to his head and tossed the remains of his ice cream inside. “I can change people. Alter who they are, down to the soul. Not just people.”

“Demons.”

“Anything that lives.”

“Me?”

“You’re immune. God knows, I think you might be the only one who is. And even if you weren’t . . .” Grant stopped, and the silence was long and deep, and I was grateful for the boys, then, on my skin, with their heartbeats pulsing in time to mine.

“I wouldn’t hurt you,” he whispered, “but there are lines, Maxine, that I could cross. And sometimes I think I have.”

I picked up the trash around me. Grant handed over the plastic bag. I got out, threw everything away. Breathed long and deep, though the air tasted like exhaust. I heard sirens in the distance. Zee tugged, once—

—and the armor twisted on my skin. A very physical jerk, as though it were trying to pull away from me. I clutched my hand to my stomach, breathing through clenched teeth.

It happened again. I ripped off my glove. The armor’s surface was moving, shimmering, those engraved knots and roses oozing across the organic metal like petals and threads cast on water. I stopped breathing. And didn’t start again until, abruptly, the armor stilled.

I slid back into the car. Grant’s frown deepened. “What’s wrong?”

“Mind reader, too?”

“I know you.”

“Guess you do,” I said quietly, and gripped the wheel with trembling hands. “Buckle up. We’ve got trouble.”

GRANT and I drove back to the Coop. We heard the sirens before we saw them. I told myself it had nothing to do with the corpse in the apartment, but I was already thinking about new aliases for Grant and Byron. Mary, too. We’d go to Texas, I thought. Back to the old farm where my mother was buried. Or maybe drive to Chicago or New York. I had inherited homes there, filled with cash, weapons, papers. Everything a girl needed to start over.

I didn’t question why I included Grant. I told myself it was because I wasn’t done yet with his mystery, our mystery—the who and what and why of him. I guess that was true.

It was raining hard, skies dark, which was why we didn’t see the smoke sooner.

Not that we needed to. An ambulance sped through the intersection ahead of us, followed by two fire trucks. Grant leaned forward until his nose bumped the dashboard, staring intently through the windshield. Zee wrestled even more violently against my skin, and the armor felt hot, then ice-cold; and then it pulsed like a heartbeat, making my right hand twitch uncontrollably. It felt like an electrical current was jamming up my muscles. I peeled my fingers off the wheel and stuck my hand beneath me, holding it still as best I could. Grant watched but said nothing.

I turned the corner and saw the Coop. Fire trucks and ambulances surrounded the homeless shelter, which took up an entire city block in the warehouse district. The place was immense.

And it was on fire. Just the second wing. The floor with the apartments. Where Byron was.

I slammed on the brakes. Grant jerked against his seat belt, bracing himself against the dashboard. Maybe I put the car in park. Didn’t know, didn’t care. I was out on the road, running.

A crowd had gathered on the sidewalk and in the garden, volunteers and homeless trying to calm each other. Firemen were cordoning off the area. I slammed through them all, ignoring shouts, screams. I glanced up just before I entered the building, and looked at the smoke billowing black through the windows—one of which had already exploded outward. Looked like someone had set off a bomb.

Then I was inside. The downstairs hall was smoky, but mostly clear. I passed firemen wearing masks. Several tried to grab me, but I wrenched free and punched one man who was too persistent. I cracked his mask, and he slammed hard against the wall. I didn’t stop. I flew up the stairs, and it was like entering another world, hot and thick with smoke and ash. My eyes and lungs burned.

Not for long. The boys slipped over my face and mouth, and then my nostrils. Strange sensation. Felt like I was drowning. I tripped on the stairs, panicked, and touched my mouth. I found only smooth skin. Touched my nostrils and found them gone. When I blinked, my eyes felt thicker, heavier; and the world darkened, veiled in silver and pearl.

When I breathed, air filled my lungs. It tasted warm, like sulfur. The boys, breathing for me. They had saved me from drowning before, just like this. They had probably saved my grandmother like this, as well. She had been in Hiroshima when the bomb was dropped. Lost, in the inferno, watching bodies blast into ash.

I did not feel the heat. I reached the second floor in moments and saw flames climbing the walls and ceiling, sweeping across the carpet in waves of light. I ran through the fire, and my clothing burned. My hair burned. I felt it sizzle away as I passed through solid walls of flame.

I watched for breaks in the floor as I raced toward Byron’s room. The smoke was thick, blinding, but the boys were wild and tugged me forward with their own unerring instincts. Below my heart, the darkness stirred—the creature, reaching upward—but I slammed it down, ruthless. I listened for screams, cries for help from the adjoining rooms, and heard none.

I found a dead body in front of Byron’s room.

The man was one of the few things not entirely on fire; in fact, it looked as though he had simply dropped dead from smoke inhalation. I didn’t recognize his face. He was pale, well built, and the remains of his clothing looked like linen, the kind those Seattle Earth Father types liked to wear when they were pretending to be yogis. Parts of it were burning, but slowly, as though something in the material retarded the flames.

He looked peaceful, and that frightened me.

Byron’s door stood ajar. I stepped over the body, pushed it all the way open. All I saw was fire and smoke. If he was here, if he had not been spirited out—

But his bed was empty. On fire and empty. I turned a quick circle, making certain he was gone.

And found someone else entirely.

A woman. She came out of the bathroom, moving through the smoke like a pale ghost, unbothered by the fire. I thought she was naked, but her clothes were merely the same color as her skin and clung to her in wispy waves, like silk. Flames touched her, but nothing burned. She had a very long neck, and around her throat sat an iron collar. Her hair was short and red.

Trouble. I knew that. This was big damn trouble.

I stood my ground, waiting. She did the same. The building was burning down around us, and we had all the time in the world.

Until she moved. And, abruptly, she was no longer a woman, but a man. The transformation was complete, startling, and when I looked closer she—he—was still the same person. Just caught at a different angle.

“You are a Guardian,” she said, tilting her head, just so, becoming a woman again, the firelight hot on her sharp cheekbones. “Warden. Made woman.”

I could not speak. I had no mouth. I stepped closer, and that woman’s gaze dropped, studying my burning clothes, which were falling away to reveal my naked tattooed skin. She looked at my breasts, my stomach, lower and lower, her gaze lingering on the armor covering my right hand. Her eyes fluttered closed. She tilted back her head as though in pleasure, or pain.

“I feel him,” she whispered, swaying.

And she vanished. Gone, into thin air. Gone as though she had never existed. Like magic.

Except it wasn’t magic. I had seen it done before. By Jack, by others. Even I could slide through space using the armor on my hand. But there was a price to that travel, for me. There was always a price.

I heard shouts, distant and tinny. I tore my gaze from where the woman had been standing, thinking of Byron, Jack—
I feel him, I feel him
—and ran to the doorway. I looked down the hall and saw a hulking figure beyond the wall of flames.

One of the firemen. Coming to look for the stupid woman who had run into the building and punched one of their own. The fires raged around him, thick and hot, snaking up the walls and licking the ceiling above his head. I stared, torn. I wasn’t certain he had seen me. I couldn’t let him see me.

But my feet vibrated, then my legs, and a groan rolled through my ears into my muscles and bones. This floor was going down.

I ran toward the fireman. He was already backing away toward the stairs, but he was too slow, too late. He noticed me coming at the last moment, and I don’t know what he saw, but his eyes widened behind his mask and his scream was louder than the crack of the beams above our heads. I slammed into him just as the ceiling collapsed.

I had been hit by a bus once before, and this felt the same. I didn’t feel pain, but the weight dragged me down on top of the man, and for a moment I saw my face reflected in his mask.

Except I had no face. No mouth. No nose. Even my eyes were lost in black scales and mercury knots, every inch of my skin covered in demonic bodies. Scariest thing I had ever seen. And I was bald.

I looked past my reflection into the fireman’s eyes. He was still staring, screaming, and his fear had nothing to do with the ceiling crushing us, or the fire. I rolled my right hand into a fist, and the armor tingled.

A moment later, we slipped into darkness.

Lasted only a heartbeat, a heartbeat a thousand years long, but in that place
between
I felt smashed with the old horror; lost, forever, in darkness: no body, no heart, no ground beneath my feet; feeling nothing but the boys on my skin, the boys who were the shell around my emptiness, and my mind, screaming.

We were spat out into another part of the Coop, a hall near the lobby, where children had painted the walls with rainbows and castles. We slid across the floor, and I rolled off the man. Naked, except for the remains of my cowboy boots. The leather was still on fire. His yellow suit smoked. He scrabbled backward, staring at me with such horror.