Darkness Calls (10 page)

I found a number and hit the call button. Heard ringing, a click.

“Greetings, Franco,” said a smooth male voice. “Is it done?”

Fuck no, and fuck you,
I almost said, and hung up. Powered off the phone for good measure. And then smashed it into the floor, following up with my fist. Concrete cracked. So did the SIM card and the rest of the phone’s components.

I did not recognize the voice on the other end of the line, but even so, I knew who was responsible for sending the man beneath me. I could take a hint. Tattoos of crosses were not exactly subtle.

“Cribari,” I said slowly. “You were sent by Antony Cribari.”

The man, Franco, flinched—which was confirmation enough.
Cribari.
Cribari had been responsible for having me shot at—this morning. Two good attempts to kill me. Two attempts that should never have happened. No priest, no human, should have known I existed—let alone my weakness.

Nor did the priest’s involvement explain the inhuman eyes. Not in the slightest.

I shook Franco. “Why?”

Franco’s mouth tightened, and his body writhed upward, trying to buck me off. I held on, grabbing his ear, and yanked his head toward mine. He grunted in pain, red-faced, sweating.

“This world is no longer yours,” he hissed, silver lids briefly encapsulating his eyes. “I won’t let you take my soul.”

“Keep it,” I snarled. “Tell me what I want to know.”

He grimaced, slamming his fist into my gut. I did not budge. He wrapped his fingers around my throat, but strangling me was about as effective as tying a California red-wood into knots. He tried everything to make me let go, but I was patient. It was going to be sunset soon. I had all the time in the world.

“Why?” I asked him again, when he slumped against the floor, panting. “What
are
you?”

Franco’s gaze remained righteously defiant, feverishly bright. He looked at me like I was the biggest piece of shit-sin he had ever seen, and that if I did not burn straight out after dying, then at the very least I was going to be highly and hellishly uncomfortable for the rest of eternity.

He spat on me. My skin hissed. Acid in his saliva. I slapped his face so hard his lip bloodied. Behind us the door creaked open. Dim silver light poured through the room. I glanced over my shoulder, staring at the silhouettes of men, who grunted with surprise.

Franco choked out an unintelligible word, and the men rushed me. I was already low to the ground, and rammed my fist into the kneecap of the first man who came at me. Momentum did most of the work, but I also had brute strength on my side. I heard a snap, his leg bent backward, and the scream that filled the room as he went down was more animal than man.

Franco scrabbled backward. I hooked the front pocket of his jeans and used my full body weight to slam my knee into his groin. Bone crunched, and he arched upward, breath rattling in his throat.

Hands snatched at my hair. Someone kicked me in the face, striking my tattooed cheek. I felt no pain from the impact, but flew sideways, crunching into the coffin. Another boot tried to stomp on my throat. I grabbed that meaty ankle, and my attacker staggered, cursing.

I felt something hard beneath the leg of his jeans. A sheath, a knife. I yanked out the weapon and released the man. He danced away from me, eyes wary. All the men, staring, casting shadows in the dull light from the open door.

I barely saw them. I stood, swaying. All I could think of was Cribari. Alone with Grant.

Something in me broke. Inside my heart, beneath my ribs, a dark force fluttered. Familiar and cold, stirring into wakefulness; an alien entity separate from me, independent of the boys.

I had no name for it. I did not know what it was. I did not know where it had come from. But when it stirred, bad things always happened. Inside me. Around me.

No,
I thought.
No, don’t.

You need us,
whispered a sibilant voice, and the men in front of me suddenly seemed small in the shadows; like mice, eyes glittering. Made me smile. Hard, fierce, like there were daggers on my tongue, or death, and I fought myself. I fought so hard. Smiles did not belong here. No such thing as laughter in violence.

But I felt it. I drowned. All it took was a moment, but something rushed through me, and I knew the feeling— like the bloom of panic, or rage. Only, this was darkness. Darkness, swelling into euphoria, stretching within my chest like a long body rising from sleep.

Hunter,
whispered a sibilant, coiled voice.
We are one.

I shuddered, unable to control myself. It was almost sunset, and I pushed up my sleeve, revealing tattoos that glimmered in the air with strikes of silver light; scales, claws, red, glinting eyes shining like chips of rubies; and though the boys were not yet smoke, they were close, so close that when they surged upon my skin, I saw them ripple; and I knew the men saw, too. I slid a knife over my arm, sharpening the blade. Feeding steel to the boys. Sparks lit the dim air. The men flinched, and choking hunger bubbled up my throat, making my heart break open like the cloud of a burning storm.

“Tell me,” I whispered. “Tell me why Cribari wants me dead.”

The men said nothing at first—perhaps they did not even hear me. They were too busy staring at my arm, horrified, making the sign of the cross.

Franco stirred, though, coughing. I looked down and found his cheek pressed against the tile. Saliva ran from the corner of his mouth, but his inhuman eyes were open. Gazing at the finger armor on my right hand.

“You are an abomination,” he whispered, and the gloom of the basement was suddenly the dead of night, hollow and stale. “Dark Mother. Dark Lady of the Labyrinth. We are sworn against your promise.”

I held up my right hand. “And this?”

“A relic that does not belong to you,” he breathed, then snapped off a sharp word that sent the men moving. Guns flashed in the dull light. I felt sunset pushing—pushing close—

One of the men fired too early, the roar deafening, so much like a crash of thunder the floor trembled. The bullet bounced off my chest.

And that terrible hunger snapped.

I could not stop it. I bared my teeth, a wet rictus of a smile that tasted of blood, and that filled me with an exhilarated terror that was rapturous and horrifying, as though it were someone else smiling, stretching beneath my skin, stretching so much I imagined seams tearing around my joints—me, rag doll. My vision blurred. I went blind. But the men—the men began to scream—and my ears worked just fine.

My entire world became those screams. The sound of them tasted like wine on my tongue, cut with the nuance of each man’s voice, which broke in rising discordant rhythms that my body swallowed and swayed to, as though riding the strums of a macabre guitar. All my horror could not compensate for the delight of the creature inside me, but I fought—I fought myself as though my life depended on it—because I was going to die from those screams. Something of me was going to die when those screams
stopped
.

Please,
I begged.
Please.

The boys rumbled over my skin. My right hand burned. Light filled my vision. I could suddenly see again, but not the men. Just the finger armor: glowing, as though infused with moonlight and pearls, piercing the shadow writhing slow and easy around my heart. The light made me think of my mother—
take care, baby, take care—
and just like that, as though her memory was an antidote, the slow-coiled presence rising beneath my skin receded. Darkness, gone—but the absence felt like teeth had been pulled from my soul, leaving tender holes. My knees trembled. Chills wracked me. Going into shock.

I held my ground. Planted my feet and pretended I was stone. No more smiles. No more. I had always wondered what it would feel like to be possessed—and now, again, I had a taste.

I hated it. I hated that I could so easily be lost. Lost to nothing but myself, with no understanding, not a goddamn clue as to why, or what was inside me. My hand curled into a fist, and the light in the ring died. I finally saw the men.

They were still alive. Mostly. And I was touching them.

I had no recollection of approaching the men. No memory of laying a hand on them. Only, I stood before a pile of limbs, piles of parts still attached to bodies, and my hands were buried elbow deep into the tangled flesh. I stared, horrified. The men had collapsed together so tightly, so knotted, that for a moment it seemed as though the air had dismembered them where they stood and that they had merely dropped to the floor, as one.

But they were separate: hands twitching, heads nodding spastically. Full-bodied, strong men—still alive—but their faces were frozen in expressions of pure agony and horror, jaws open in silent screams.

I staggered, yanking free my hands. I still clutched the dagger, but the blade was turned inward, pressed flat against my forearm. No blood on the steel. I had not stabbed anyone. Just turned them into gibbering idiots with nothing but a touch.

I was going to be sick. I clutched my stomach, then my right hand—so tightly it felt like I was trying to pull free of something—maybe free of myself. The finger armor was warm through my tattoos, which were stirring, stirring. Sunset, swallowing me. Seconds, at most.

“Why?” I whispered to the men, who no longer seemed conscious of anything, save breathing, and who certainly, at this point, were beyond blame, or the ability to answer any inane question my brain vainly fixed on.

“Because you are you,” said an aged, deep voice, directly behind me. “And because you bear a key to the Labyrinth.”

I began to turn, but strong hands grabbed my shoulders, pulling me against a warm chest that smelled like leather and books; or the men who worked the ranches out in Montana: old cowboys, hard with dust and sunlight.

“Dear girl,” whispered Jack Meddle, my grandfather. “You are in a great deal of trouble.”

And then he pulled me out of the world, into the abyss.

CHAPTER 7

I
remembered, in the darkness, what it felt like to be lost.

I had tried to forget. I had fought to keep my dreams clean of the Wasteland, the endless night of the Labyrinth oubliette. And though I knew—
I knew
—this was not the same, something else in me died when Jack dragged me into the abyss. Consumed by the void, stripped of sight and sound and touch. Hovering like a long heartbeat, reduced to a thud of muscle and blood. Fighting not to scream.

Until the moment broke. I returned to the world, slipping from the dark into silver shadows, and found my body, and breath, and swallowed my voice before my pride broke, as well.

I fell. My knees hit snow-patched grass, packed hard and wet, crunching beneath me like a soft mash of bone. It was full night, with a hook of a moon in the sky. Hours ahead of schedule.

Sun down, sun gone. The boys woke up.

It hurt. My skin burned. My heart shimmered into fire. Like being swallowed naked down a throat full of barbs and acid. My gloves were lost, and all I could see as I bowed my head were my hands as tattoos dissolved into black smoke, sparking with glints of red lightning—flaying me from my toenails to the roots of my hair. I could not breathe. I could not make a sound.

The boys ripped free. No beginning, no end. Just a weight that gathered on my shoulders, a sliding heat from sinuous bodies unfolding as though they were petals dripping with lava. Claws scraped. Whispers pattered. In small pieces, the pain eased.

Hard not to shake. I remembered the first time the boys awakened from my body—the night after my mother’s murder, the night after my first inheritance—and it was always that night, again and again.

“Maxine,” whispered Zee. “Sweet Maxine.”

My mouth was too dry for words. Cold pinched through my thin sweater. I had not dressed for snow, had not anticipated such a quick fall into night, somewhere else, where the temperature felt like true winter. Snow stung my palms, and a stiff breeze yanked against me like a chain of ice. Had the sun been up, I would have felt nothing of the cold, but my skin was vulnerable now. I was human again. Until dawn.

“Maxine,” said Zee again, breath stirring hot against my cheek. I looked up. Met a solemn gaze, red as rubies buried in tumbled steel, steel that was skin the color of soot smeared with silver and veins of mercury.

Raw and Aaz appeared: twins, little hunters. Steam drifted from the rakish spines of their wild hair, razor-sharp as the rest of their skin. Less than a minute upon waking, and they had already been busy. Metal flashed between Aaz’s claws. He held up a brace of knives. Small daggers sheathed in a custom shoulder holster. My mother’s weapons of choice, stored in her oak trunk back in Seattle. I was stupid not to have worn them earlier, but carrying those blades against my body felt like trespassing, sometimes. Or like I was too much of a kid again. Not grown-up enough to handle the sharp stuff.

Raw slid around his brother, holding another of her belongings: a battered leather jacket and her gloves, the soft black leather laced with steel.

Seeing her things made the tight knot in my heart unwind, just a little. I needed my mother right now. I needed to feel her around me. I planted quick kisses on Raw and Aaz, while Zee pushed close for a hug. Dek and Mal hummed a Bon Jovi classic: “I’ll Be There for You.”

“My boys,” I whispered. “You wonderful boys.”

Zee looked past me, dragging his claws through the snow. “Meddling Man.”

I looked over my shoulder, but did not see Jack. There were no lights, except for the grace of the moon. I saw the bones of a broken, slumping Ferris wheel, and a battered merry-go-round that had been stripped of horses, leaving nothing but cracked mirrors and chipped wood. Collapsed tents had been abandoned in the dirt, and an iron cage stood with the door propped open. Nearby, torn apart, was half a crate with a clown’s face painted on the side, grinning from ear to ear. Felt like I was inside the corpse of a circus.