That, and this woman’s entire right arm was made of silver.
My ancestor.
Five thousand years in the past. Might as well have been another world. Me, a ghost in time.
She screamed again, her voice breaking into a sob so torn, so cut with grief, I wanted to sink to my knees and hold my heart. Something in that sound was too familiar, too close for comfort. I forced myself to study the person she wept over, the person she touched with hesitant hands that clutched and fluttered, and curled into fists that she pressed against her heaving chest.
A woman. I couldn’t see her face, but I saw the long dark hair, and the shape of the still body—and I knew. I just knew.
Mother. Her mother.
Red eyes glinted in the shadows near both women. Blinking, staring up the hill at me and my boys. She hadn’t noticed us, and I wanted to keep it that way. I backed up, slowly, listening to her sob. Struggling not to weep with her. My mother’s body had fallen on the kitchen floor just like that. I had crouched over her, screaming—also, just like that. I could still feel those screams in my throat.
So could the boys. Raw and Aaz shuddered against my legs. Zee stumbled through the grass, while Dek raised a mournful cry. My boys. Monsters. Kings of an army that destroyed worlds.
Like fucking hell.
I turned and came face-to-face with a dark cloak, and tangled hair that moved through the air around me like some aura of night. I suffered a jolt, but only because I couldn’t remember Oturu after seeing my ancestor, and her mother. The world could have dropped away, and I would have seen nothing else.
“Lady Hunter,” he said. “You should not be here, in this moment. It is not your time.”
I closed my eyes, swaying, and the tendrils of his hair reached around my body, holding me up, holding me to him. “Who killed her mother?”
Zee made a small wailing sound, deep in his throat. Oturu hesitated.
“She did,” he said.
I flinched, shaking my head. “No.”
“It was fast,” he went on. “An accident. A rush of temper. Her mother—”
“Stop.” I pushed against him, but my hands sank into his cloak, sank deep without touching anything except unimaginable cold. Raw and Aaz grabbed my waist and pulled me away, quick. My hands felt burned when they left his body, but only with ice. I could barely bend my fingers. Zee gripped them in his claws, blowing gently. His warm breath soothed over my skin.
“She lost her mind,” I whispered. I could still hear her sobs, drifting over the hill. Gut-wrenching. So alone.
Horrified me. Not just for my ancestor, but myself. If she could do this, no matter the reason . . . if she could just snap . . .
It was not us,
said the darkness.
Not us.
But you cut her mind with power. You made her insane.
She was damaged,
it murmured.
Already damaged.
I tugged on Zee’s hand, needing to hold something, anything, to anchor me away from that voice inside my head. I spoke aloud, determined to drown out the voice. To find answers to the unanswerable. “Her mother should have died long before this. You were already bonded to her daughter’s skin when she was thrown into the Wasteland. But down there, she has the armor, she’s
pregnant
. Must have been years. And her mother was alive all that time? How? Demons should have killed her.”
Killed her, like my mother was killed. Like my grandmother. Like all the others before us.
“Different, then,” Zee rasped, so softly I could barely hear him. “Wardens around, mothers lasted longer. No bad bargains.”
I heard growls, behind me. Zee stiffened. I turned to look, but Oturu touched me again, held me still.
“Do not,” he said. “Your wards are not the wards of the past.”
“No Zee would ever hurt me.”
His mouth tightened. “You must go, young Queen.”
I wished I could see his eyes. “How do you know me? We won’t meet for another five thousand years.”
“Time,” he breathed. “Time means nothing, between us.”
His hair wrapped around my right hand.
“Go,” he said. “Remember us, as we remember you.”
Behind me, Zee snarled. Raw and Aaz leaned against my legs, claws out, teeth bared. Dek hissed into my ear. On the other side of the hill, my ancestor wailed like she was dying.
I shut my eyes, focused on Grant—
—on my mother—
—Grant—
—home—
Take me away,
I thought.
Take me.
The armor tingled against my skin. I slipped into the void.
But I could still hear her screams.
CHAPTER 19
I walked from the past into a quiet apartment. So quiet, so hushed, I knew without looking around that I was the only one there. Zee confirmed it for me, moments later. Raw and Aaz prowled. I didn’t let myself panic. There were no signs of violence. No blood.
I found a note on the kitchen counter.
Jack’s place. Love, Grant.
I frowned, glad that Mal had stayed with him. I almost left then, but took a moment to check out the room, drinking in the familiarity of it, the warmth. Not as warm without Grant, but I felt the good echoes.
And the bad, when I glanced down at the floor and saw bloodstains.
Dek hummed “Let’s Stay Together.” I scratched his head and walked to the piano bench, where the shoulder rig filled with my mother’s knives was still draped. Since seeing Jack’s body, I hadn’t wanted to even think about the blades, but I reached out to stroke the steel—
—and got a good look at my right hand.
My palm was still flesh, but that was all. That fluid, organic metal covered everything else: my fingers, the back of my hand. Couple more jumps, and all of it would be gone. For my ancestor to have lost her entire arm and shoulder meant that she had been even busier.
I shut out my thoughts of her. Pushed them away, down where I put all the distasteful things in my life. I wasn’t sure I sympathized with, or hated, that woman. Maybe both. Maybe I felt the same way about myself.
No,
murmured that deep voice in my mind.
Your hearts are not the same.
But you still want to manipulate me,
I told it.
There are things you want me to do.
I received no response to that.
I grabbed the shoulder rig and shrugged it on. The sheathed knives fit snugly against my ribs. I slid into my mother’s leather coat. It still smelled like her, after all these years. Made me feel as though I wore another kind of armor.
Outside the apartment, on the stairs, I heard footsteps, humming. Mary. It made sense they hadn’t taken her along, especially if the Messenger was with them. Fire and oil. Explosive.
The doorknob rattled.
I had thought about driving to Jack’s apartment, just to save me some skin. The idea lasted for all of two seconds.
Five more after that, I stood in a dark alley.
I was disoriented at first, until I realized I was behind Jack’s building. It was drizzling, and the air was cold against my head. Dek hugged my scalp. Red eyes blinked in the shadows.
A low voice said, “Dear girl.”
I turned. Saw a slender figure leaning on the wall beside a propped-open door. Dark hair, pale skin, those familiar eyes that were too old. I half expected him to be smoking a cigarette.
“Old Wolf,” I said. “I was worried when I got back to the apartment.”
“I couldn’t concentrate there. I still can’t. I needed air.” He pushed off the wall, studying my face. “What happened with the Mahati?”
“I played tough.” I joined him, not minding the rain as I stood and watched my grandfather just as intently as he did me. I soaked him in. “Bunch of pussycats when you get right down to it.”
“That so?” Jack’s brow lifted. “I can think of several other words to describe them.”
I shrugged. “So, no progress?”
He gave me a tired smile. “My kind are made of infinitely complex threads of energy. Brains without flesh, you might say. It’s the reason we’re capable of understanding—and actualizing—certain . . . elusive concepts.”
I smiled back. “Like building an interdimensional prison out of a rift in space-time that’s capable of housing a demonic army.”
My grandfather inclined his head. “Something like that.”
“So we’re not smart enough to close the veil? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I’m saying that
no one
has the wiring necessary to understand what we did. Even I have trouble with it, and I was one of the designers.”
“Right,” I said slowly, filled with a hundred different things I wanted to say to him, and ask—nothing that couldn’t keep, a little while longer. “How are you teaching them?”
Jack tapped his head. “We’ve been on the surface of each other’s thoughts. If I were even a little bit nosy, I’d be having a field day.”
“Groovy.” I leaned against the wall, turning my face up to the rain. “I’ll stick with intimidating the Mahati.”
He sighed, maybe with laughter, or sadness. “Maxine—”
“She killed her own mother,” I said. “My ancestor.”
I hadn’t known I was going to say that until the words were done, gone. Speaking them felt wrong—not the act, but the words themselves, the meaning of them, the truth. I felt ugly for giving them up.
Jack’s mouth clicked shut.
“You said you wanted to do things differently this time. You just ignored her before, is that it? Let her run wild until it was too late?” I met his gaze, unable to stop talking. “Did you know that some of the Wardens threw her into the Wasteland?”
Zee had said that Jack didn’t know. I needed to see it for myself. I wasn’t disappointed. Shock moved through my grandfather’s face, a trembling disbelief that made him shake his head and back up a step.
“Never,” he said.
“I saw it,” I told him. “Straight from memories she gave Oturu. One of them was a woman with wings, and there were twins with rubies in their foreheads—”
Jack’s breath caught.
“—and a giant with one eye, a cyclops. He was against the others. Too slow to stop it, though.”
“No,” he murmured, but his gaze was distant, like he was talking to himself. “Oh, oh, no.”
“The Wasteland fucked her up, Old Wolf. The Wasteland ripped open the hole to that sleeping shit inside her. But it started with
them
.”
Jack sagged against the wall, shutting his eyes. Even in the body of a teen, I could see the old man. He looked frail, and I felt bad for telling him. I could have made it easier. Tried to, anyway.
I heard heavy footsteps on the other side of the door. A cane. I straightened and touched Jack’s bony shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go in.”
But he shook his head and gave me a look so pained, so miserable, I stopped breathing.
“I didn’t know,” he whispered.
“I know that,” I said. “I know, Jack.”
“She was so angry,” he went on, as the door beside us pushed open. “The things she did to them, I never understood.”
Grant peered out, Mal draped over his shoulders. He looked at me with relief, and a deep warmth that was all in his eyes and not the grim line of his mouth. I had a feeling he had been listening a long time. Our voices would have drifted easily through that open door.
I shook my head at him, just as Jack shuddered violently and rubbed his chest, like it hurt.
“I will make this right,” he said, closing his eyes. “I was a coward then, but not now. I will fix this.”
I frowned. “Jack?”
He looked me dead in the eyes. “I love you, my dear. I love you, always.”
“No,” Grant said, alarmed. He lunged forward. “Jack—”
My grandfather’s eyes rolled back, his mouth going slack. He collapsed, boneless, but I caught him before he hit the ground. All the boys bounded from the shadows, red eyes glowing.
I gritted my teeth. “Jack.”
“That’s Byron again,” Grant said, grim. “Jack’s not inside him anymore.”
I touched the boy’s face. His skin was warm, but not feverish. Pale, though, and hollow. His mouth began moving, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying.
I picked him up in my arms. Staggered a little, but managed his weight. Grant stayed close, his hand lightly gripping Byron’s ankle. His gaze was distant. I heard him humming.
I carried Byron inside and skirted boxes and old dusty furniture, searching out the stairs. Up and up, until we reached Jack’s apartment. The door stood open.
No lights burned inside, but I heard shuffling sounds and a lamp switched on. Dek’s tongue was hot on my ear, and both he and Mal sang a brief snatch of Gladys Knight’s “Walk Softly.”
Grant said, “There’s a rip inside him. It’s bleeding.”
I gave him a sharp look. He added, “In his spirit, not his body.”
I hefted Byron higher in my arms and tried to navigate the narrow maze of books. I knocked quite a few down, Grant faltered behind me, trying to walk over them. I apologized silently but didn’t stop or look at the Messenger, who sat at the kitchen table and watched me pass with a growing expression of alarm.
“The Maker,” she said.
I shook my head at her and carried the boy to the bedroom. It was a small, closed space—bed unmade, clothes on the floor, along with more books. I didn’t get the feeling that Jack had spent much time in here. Even for an immortal, too much to see and do. He gave lectures on archaeology, sometimes. I wished, now, that I had attended more of them.
Byron stirred when I set him down. He was still mumbling. I leaned close, letting my ear hover over his mouth.
“Knock,” he said, so softly I could barely understand him. And even so, I thought I misheard everything.
“Knock once for light, knock twice for death, knock three times to find the world all dead . . . and four, always, to
raise
the dead.” Byron twisted, lines of pain and fear etched in his brow. “No, don’t touch me. Please. Please, don’t . . .”