A Wild Light (5 page)

“You really don’t remember me,” he breathed, all kinds of pain wrapped up in that low, deep voice.

I shook my head. “Not even a little.”

He sucked in his breath like I punched him. “You love me.”

You’re crazy,
I almost said.

But I didn’t. I kept my mouth shut.

Because all it took was the look in his eyes, and the way the boys had behaved around him, to know that he was telling the truth.

I had loved this man.

Just not anymore.

I
backed away from him, feeling cornered in that expansive room. My heel stepped in blood.

“Don’t run from me,” he said. “I’m the last person you should be afraid of.”

“I’m not afraid.”

He smiled, but it was tense and sad, and faintly bitter. “Liar.”

I turned from him. Faced Jack’s corpse. Took a moment, pretending to look at the body, when all I was doing was stitching my nerves back together.
Liar, liar, pants on fire.

I didn’t remember this man, no matter how tightly the boys hugged his legs. I didn’t know him, no matter how he stared at me: like I was his. His, in that way that had to do with secrets and holding hands, breathing the same air. Naked skin.

I sucked in my breath and focused on Jack. Worse than a roller coaster. My head was going to turn inside out, and my stomach punched upward into my throat like some ham-fisted drunk. I swallowed hard—pretended that I wasn’t vomiting a little inside my mouth—and pushed past heartsickness and revulsion to look at his waxen face.

Throat cut. I had already seen that. I prowled the edges of his body, searching for anything else. Not much of a detective. I usually relied on the boys for small details, but that would have to wait until tonight.

Maybe they already had. Maybe there weren’t any. Just ours. Maybe something had gone wrong. Wrong with
me
.

“You’re being self-indulgent,” said the man, behind me. “When you blame yourself. When you even
think
about it.”

I froze, then turned my head, slowly. “What did you say?”

“You heard me.” The man limped toward me, his expression so hard and cold I wondered what the hell I had been doing with him. “You always blame yourself first. You think the worst of who you are.”

“I’m a killer,” I found myself saying, even though I’d had no intention of speaking. “If you know me—”

“I know you,” he rasped. “I know you, Maxine.”

As he loomed over me, I held my ground and suffered a wash of heat from his body to mine. Smelled cinnamon, and other warm things. Made me think of sunlight, and fire.

He got close and stopped, studying me. I didn’t know why it felt so unnerving. Other eyes from other men flashed through my memories—crazed, murderous, sly, cold—but none burned me like this man.

He was right: I was a liar. He scared me. I was an unbreakable woman, unless you started from the inside out.

“You going to talk, or look?” I asked, unable to speak above a whisper. “My grandfather is dead. You’re standing in his blood.”

“Jack’s not dead. And you didn’t murder his body. I’d bet my life on it.” He searched my face. “How much
do
you remember? You know, don’t you, that Jack isn’t exactly . . .”

“Human. Yes.”

“And you know where you are?”

“The Coop,” I answered, more slowly, having a sense of where this was going and dreading it.

The man leaned back, frowning. “Why are you living here?
Who
are you living with?”

I swallowed hard and pointed at Jack’s corpse. “Don’t change the subject.”

“Your memory
is
the subject.”

“I would never love you,” I said.

He leaned over his cane, not breathing. I bit my tongue, hating myself a little, and turned back to Jack. There was little to see that I hadn’t already noted: cut throat, clothes in order. Men who fought for their lives usually tore something, or looked scuffed up. Not Jack. I crouched in his blood and picked up his hand. His skin was cooling. He was looking more like a shell to me, a wax figure. Unreal.

There was blood under his nails, but it all seemed to be his. Not that I had any way to know for certain. I picked up the knife, finally. The boys sucked the blood from the blade, leaving the metal gleaming in the lamplight.

“Was he lying like this when you found him?” asked the man, voice low, rough, a little too calm.

I hesitated. “He was on his side.”

“No furniture has been knocked over. He doesn’t look like he fought.”

“Or had time to fight.”

“Maybe you found him dead. Your memories could have been . . . stolen . . . after that. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

I stood, avoiding the man’s penetrating gaze. Wondering how much to say, when it seemed he already knew everything. I thought of the boys again, Raw and Aaz hugging the man’s legs, burying their faces in his knees—and forced myself to look at him. Really look.

He had been wild-eyed when I first saw him, and that wildness was still there, but tempered now with a dull hurt that burned shadows into the angles of his face. Not a pretty man, but handsome. He looked capable. Nothing sly about him. Just . . . straightforward. Uncompromisingly so, if the relentlessness of his gaze was any indication.

“You’re right,” I said. “My mother stole my memories once, when I was eight. I got them back, later. I know Zee is capable of the same thing. He did it to my grandmother.”

“Yes,” replied the man, carefully. “You told me. You . . . traveled back in time to help her. Using that.” He gestured toward the armor on my hand. “He stole the memory of you from her, afterward.”

I exhaled, slowly. “If I hadn’t seen the way the boys act around you—”

“You don’t scare me,” he interrupted. “If the boys hadn’t remembered me—”

“You’d be missing that hand. Or worse.” I walked toward the bedroom. My feet were sticky. I was tracking blood on the floor. I passed through the open doorway, switched on the light—stumbled, a little, at the sight of rumpled covers and clothes on the floor, mine, and a man’s—and then kept walking toward the bathroom. There was a first-aid kit under the sink. I didn’t question how I knew it was there. It just was, and I remembered that.

I set the knife aside. Washed my hands, even though I didn’t need to. I saw a razor, a can of shaving cream; a black bra hanging from the door handle. I saw two sets of towels, and a man’s dirty socks on the floor outside the hamper; two toothbrushes leaning together inside an ugly-ass mug shaped like the Statue of Liberty’s head—
you flew to New York City on a plane, your first, to help an old woman, an old man—and you bought that at the airport because, why, why, someone said you should, because it was a joke and you laughed, but you didn’t laugh alone, you weren’t alone, and every time you look at that thing you remember laughing, and you smile again
—and I was smiling now, I realized, and scrubbed at my mouth with the back of my hand.

I was in another world, I thought. Twilight Zone. Losing my mind, my bearings. Other dimensions existed. Maybe I had slipped into one. I could blame interdimensional travel on all my problems, starting with my first ancestor, and the creatures that had made her and come to earth millennia ago.

My reflection offered no help. I looked like shit: black hair snarled, skin pasty, shadows under my eyes. I pulled back my hair and looked at the scar under my ear. Or tried to. It was hidden by one of the boys, a tattooed tail snaking out from beneath my hairline to hide a twist of lines engraved into my skin: a mark, lashed into me by a demon.

A distinctive mark, one that had frightened Jack, and others. An ancestor had carried this scar: a gift from the same demon who had given it to me.

Oturu. A being made of night, and knives, and nightmares. I dreamed of him, sometimes, but in those dreams I was always someone else—another woman—and there was blood, and death, and long hunts that seemed to span the distances between starlight.

Oturu had marked me because he said I reminded him of my ancestor: the woman in my dreams. Not exactly a compliment. According to my grandfather, the nicest thing anyone could say about her was that she had almost destroyed the world.

I clutched the first-aid kit to my chest and left the bathroom. The man leaned inside the bedroom door, waiting for me. Posture loose, at ease—except for those eyes. Like a wolf, I decided. Another kind of hunter.

“Your hand,” I said.

“Jack,” he replied.

“He can wait. Like you said, he’s not dead.” I almost couldn’t say the words. I had to force them out until it sounded like I had a speech impediment. “Maybe he’s looking for another body.”

“Hopefully one outside the womb. I’d rather not wait for him to grow up and find us before we get some explanations.”

I grunted, and gestured for him to back out of the room. But he gave me a look and limped to the bed. Sat down on the edge of it. And waited.

I wanted to kick his bad leg. The bed—and him sitting on it—reminded me of a bear trap. I had gotten caught in one of those in Alaska, during daylight hours. The teeth had broken off against my leg, but it had still been a bitch to open the jaws to free myself.

Hadn’t smelled like sex, though.

I didn’t sit beside him. I fumbled open the first-aid kit, laid it on the edge of the mattress, and found bandages, ointment. The man stared the entire time, which I hated. I didn’t even know why I was doing this except I felt like I should.

“Give me your hand,” I muttered.

“Take it,” he replied, still holding his fist against his stomach. The front of his shirt was bloody.

“Don’t play games with me.”

He shook his head, his gaze never leaving mine. “This isn’t a game.”

“Touching you won’t make my memories come back.”

The corner of his mouth tilted up in that bitter smile. “Take my hand, Maxine. Or walk out of here.”

Or punch you,
I thought.

I grabbed his wrist. My tattooed fingers were slender and small compared to the rawboned muscle of his forearm, feminine, even, which wasn’t a description I usually applied to myself. I was surprised, too, at the heat I felt from his skin. The boys normally left me desensitized during the day, unable to feel heat or cold unless it was on my face, or breathed in.

I didn’t remember this man. I didn’t remember ever
touching
a man, except in an exorcism. I didn’t know how to be gentle.

But he winced, and I found myself trying. I loosened my grip, carefully drawing his hand away from his stomach. His fingers remained curled against his bleeding palm, and I slipped mine underneath—small, my hand small in comparison—carefully straightening them.

He could have done it on his own. He had offered to help me stand, earlier. But this was a test. He watched my face, wincing only one other time, when I said, “You’re a manipulator.”

“Maybe,” he agreed, after a moment.

He said nothing more as I bandaged his cut hand. The blood made it seem worse than the actual damage, just surface lacerations that would hurt like hell. I didn’t have much experience with fixing people, but I thought I did a passable job.

“I can’t feel my fingers,” he said. “I hope I still have them.”

“Whiner,” I muttered, watching him try to flex his hand. He didn’t have much luck. I had that gauze coiled around him tighter than a diamondback.

I shoved all the paper wrappers on the floor. Boys would eat them later—a thought that came so easily to me, I almost missed how strange it was to think it. Disturbing, even. It hit me again that this was home. Even the boys treated it like that. I could see their toys on the floor: half- eaten teddy bears, razor blades,
Playboy
magazines. A life-sized cardboard cutout of Bon Jovi stood in the corner, complete with big hair.

I pointed. “That’s new.”

“Zee used your credit card,” replied the man. “Remember?”

“Yes,” I said slowly, thinking about it. “Now I do. It arrived yesterday morning. I wasn’t expecting it.” I glanced at him, holding his gaze. “You thought I was lying about remembering?”

“No. I’m just puzzled why you remember
that
and not me.”

“He has better hair,” I said, walking from the bedroom. “Or maybe it’s the leather.”

He snorted, and called out, “What’s my name, Maxine?”

I froze in midstep, then kept walking. “Zee called you Grant.”

“Good,” he replied, with bitter amusement. “Don’t forget it.”

G
ROWING up, I had one friend, not including the boys.

My mother. The only person I could count on.

Larger than life, mean as hell in a fight, ruthless, cunning—and the best baker, ever. Her oatmeal cookies could raise the dead. Or make a little girl feel loved after a hard day of demons, and the endless road, and the knowledge that it would never end, that the days would only stretch out longer, and with sharper teeth.

And then she died. And for five years it was just the boys and me. Living in hotels and my car, traveling the country. Hunting demons.

But something had changed inside me, I thought, approaching the kitchen of the homeless shelter. After years of living the straight and narrow—living alone—something had changed, and I couldn’t remember what. I couldn’t remember why I had settled down in this place, when everything about the way I had been raised screamed that I shouldn’t.

Which made me think it had something—everything—to do with the man limping along behind me, grim-faced and silent.

Grant. I had told him not to come. I didn’t want company. Especially his. Too much, too soon.