Grant’s hands tightened. “How is that even possible? I know you did it, because Maxine is the evidence, but
how
?”
Jack shook his head. “I can’t explain it. You have to
be
us to understand. What we did that day . . . it wouldn’t be possible to repeat. It was . . . luck and power. More power than any of us imagined we’d have to use. Many died making that prison. Even I almost lost my life. And even so, we always . . . we always knew it wouldn’t last.”
“Jack,” I breathed.
“There were two prisons,” he went on, blinking tears from his eyes. “The first is the prison you saw today. A place beyond this world that holds an army. But that wasn’t the prison the Wardens were guarding, all those millennia ago. Not the prison that will destroy the world when it falls.” He shuddered, looking down at his hands, those black-painted fingernails bitten to the quick. “
You
are the second prison, Maxine. Your body, your soul. Your bloodline. And you are the
only
prison that matters. Because the demons you’re holding . . .”
“The Reaper Kings,” I whispered, and the boys stirred. I rested my hand over the spot where Zee slept. I felt sick, dizzy, very small. A cat could have picked me up in its mouth, I felt so small.
I wanted my mother, but she was in the grave.
“My boys,” I said hoarsely. “My boys aren’t like that, Jack.”
“They’ve changed,” he admitted. “But I don’t know if that’s because they’ve been separated from the power that made them . . . or whether it’s possible they’ve truly . . . become something different. Ten thousand years is not a long time, my dear.”
“It is if you’re mortal,” Grant rumbled, wrapping himself around me so tightly I could barely breathe. It still wasn’t tight enough. I laced my fingers through his, and his rough, bristled jaw rested against my ear.
Again, I suffered déjà vu, a surge of
knowing
that was accompanied by flashes of memory, one in particular: us sitting like this, in bed, his large hand splayed over my stomach; and his whisper,
One of these days I want to be a father.
I sucked in a sharp breath. Grant’s arms tightened, and in a cold voice, he said, “Jack. Maxine isn’t going to destroy anything.”
“Destruction and rebirth go hand in hand,” murmured my grandfather, looking back at my mother’s grave. “The two are the same. Everything breaks. When broken, born again.”
“I’m not evil,” I said.
Jack gave me a sharp look. “I know. You’re a good person. That’s the reason I came to you last night. I wanted you to know. I wanted to do things differently, this time. Your ancestor lost her mind, and in her madness . . . her rage . . . she nearly destroyed the world. The veil was strong then, not like it is now, but even so, she seemed able to . . . access . . . the controlled energy of the Reaper Kings. Sometimes I think that if I had just told her, helped her understand . . .” He stopped, rubbing his face. “I was too tied up in secrets. And I was afraid of her. Shamefully afraid.”
She feared herself,
said the darkness, its voice drifting through me.
But she still hunted.
I held my breath. Grant said, “You immortals. Afraid of so much. I’ve known children with more guts.”
“So have I,” Jack said, touching my mother’s headstone with heartbreaking reverence. “I’ve learned a great deal from them.”
Too much. All of it, too much. I struggled out of Grant’s arms. “What do I do?”
“Nothing. Except be
you
.”
“Me,” I echoed. “I wasn’t
me
just now when I fought those demons. I let that thing inside me take over, Jack. And it felt . . . too good.”
“Maxine,” Grant said roughly, touching my hand. I looked at him, and was surprised—not just by the warning in his eyes, but that I understood what he was trying to tell me. It had been a long time since I’d known anyone that well.
And then, suddenly, it didn’t feel like such a long time. I remembered him. I remembered the sensation of meeting his gaze in a crowd, and knowing everything about him based on the tick of his smile, the glint of his eye. That small, precious kernel of a memory settled warm in my chest.
Later,
he said now with his eyes.
We’ll talk later.
When we were alone. Away from Jack.
I glanced at my grandfather, and found him watching us with a great deal of uncertainty. Except for his eyes, it could have been Byron sitting there, and I wanted to press my head into the grass, be a little girl again, and cry. Just cry my heart out, for everything.
But that wasn’t going to keep anyone safe.
I stood on unsteady legs and gazed down the hill at the farmhouse. The Messenger stood on the porch, watching us.
“What about her?” I asked.
Grant followed my gaze and was silent a long time.
“I opened her eyes,” he said quietly.
“What does that mean?”
“He broke her conditioning.” Jack openly studied Grant. “No one has ever done that.”
“No one tried.”
“Some tried, long ago, with other Messengers, other descendents of those stolen Lightbringers.” He smiled bitterly. “But I don’t think that’s a story you want to hear right now.”
Grant frowned, as though he disagreed. “I know when you’re lying, old man. I can see right through you. How come she doesn’t?”
“She can’t read my kind. We’re blank slates to her and those bred like her. That was the first thing we modified. Truth is poison, lad.”
I looked at my grandfather, sitting so small and alone by his daughter’s grave. I could see the old man in his eyes, those stolen eyes, in that stolen skin, and it hurt. I walked to him, and laid my hand on his shoulder, and kissed the top of his head. Jack stilled, holding his breath.
“That’s not the reaction I had last night, is it?” I said grimly.
“I don’t want to remember your reaction,” Jack murmured. “In hindsight, it’s probably best that you don’t, either.”
I could live with that. I glanced at Grant. “Is she a threat?”
“Not to me,” he said quietly. “I’ll watch her.”
I nodded, and kissed him, too, on the mouth.
“I love you,” I whispered, for his ears only.
I walked away and didn’t look back.
CHAPTER 13
M
Y mother had owned many homes, and a great deal of land—across the world, inherited from our ancestors. I had never set foot in most of them. Never lived longer than a year in those I had. All of it, mine now. I had never thought much about it.
But I walked until sunset and didn’t see a fence, or another human being.
I was in the old pine forest when the sun went down, seated on a soft patch of ground. I felt the tingle, the weight of night bearing down on my skin. I knew the exact moment when the horizon swallowed the sun.
The boys woke up.
Happened fast. I fell backward, suffering the sensation of hot razor blades skinning me alive: between my legs, under my fingernails, against my breasts and arms. Everywhere the boys slept, every part of me they peeled away from.
Razed with pain. I gritted my teeth and bore it, watching as smoke flowed from beneath my clothing, smoke that trembled with red lightning. No different from any other waking that I had watched since childhood—first on my mother, then on me.
But it felt different. I saw it with different eyes.
Two long bodies settled around my neck, hot tongues caressing the backs of my ears and naked scalp. I closed my eyes and listened to sweet high voices hum, “I Just Called to Say I Love You.”
I love you, I love you,
I thought back, heart breaking. I had never considered myself particularly innocent, but I felt as though a knife had jabbed into a part of me still wholesome and young—and killed it.
Small clawed hands wrapped tightly around mine. So familiar and warm.
“You heard,” I said. “You heard it all.”
“Heard,” Zee rasped, so softly, his voice thick with grief.
I rolled over, shivering. Raw and Aaz burrowed against my back, their bodies warm as fire. Dek and Mal wrapped more tightly around my neck. Zee’s shoulders were hunched, knuckles dragging. His spikes drooped.
“You knew,” I said.
“Like a bad dream,” he said softly. “Faraway dream, strong as clouds breaking.”
I stared, helpless and horrified. “But none of you are . . .”
I didn’t know how to finish. What was I going to say? That none of them were evil? That Reaper Kings didn’t clutch teddy bears or read
Playboy
? That the very worst and most dangerous of the demons didn’t . . . love? Or need love?
Because I knew they did. My boys loved. I had always known it. Alongside my mother they had practically raised me: changed my diapers, held my bottle, put me to sleep. Sung me nursery rhymes and helped teach me to read. I had even been granted a vision of them in the past, raising an orphaned Hunter—a newborn infant. I could still see them singing the funeral dirge of that baby’s mother—and then taking the child, protecting her, holding her with such care. And not just because their survival depended on it . . . but because they loved her.
That couldn’t be faked. Not with my boys.
“Maxine,” whispered Zee. “We fear.”
I feared, too. Raw wrapped his arms around me, pressing his face against my back. Aaz shuffled a couple steps sideways, and returned moments later to push a paper cup into my hands. Starbucks. I smelled hot chocolate.
Yes. We were definitely agents of the apocalypse.
I sat up, Raw still clinging to me, and sipped the drink. It made me feel better. Rooted me closer to earth. I held Zee’s gaze, and thought of all the strange things I’d heard over the years—from Ahsen, the Erl- King, even Blood Mama. I thought about my mother, and Jack. Snatches of memories, things that had never made sense. Pieces, falling into place.
But it was still too much. I was going to drown. I grabbed Zee’s arm, but all he did was rock on his heels and shudder. He looked so small.
“Why are you afraid? If you’ve always known, what could you possibly fear? You, Reaper Kings.” I wanted to cringe when I said that name. It sounded ridiculous to even think about Zee that way.
But he closed his eyes, as though the weight of hearing it spoken out loud was almost too much to bear.
“Hush the name,” he said.
“But it’s what you are, right?”
The little demon snarled—all the boys did—but not at me. It was as though the name—that awful name, the very
thought
—caused them pain.
Zee pulled free. “Not us. Old days gone. Not us, Maxine.”
I sat back, staring at him. Raw’s arms tightened around my waist, while Dek and Mal were a solid, comfortable weight. Aaz picked his nose—ate the black steaming slime on the tip of his claw—and gave me a weak, toothy smile.
I could not smile back. Zee wasn’t looking at me. Just down, down, like he was afraid to see my eyes. Afraid of me.
There were many things I could take, but not that. Not in this lifetime. It didn’t matter what the truth was. Truth was shit. Truth wasn’t always real.
Real was what you felt. Real was what you knew, in your heart.
“Hey,” I said softly. “Look at me.”
Zee did, reluctantly. I grabbed his arm again, but this time it was to pull him close. “Who are those bozo Reaper Kings, anyway? Fuck them. They’ve got nothing to do with my boys. My brave, dangerous boys.”
Zee bowed his head. “Maxine.”
“Are we, or are we not, family?” I ran my hand up his sharp face, burying it in his spiked hair—and tugged back his head until he looked me in the eyes.
“Are we family?” I asked him again.
“In our blood, beyond death,” he rasped.
“Then don’t be afraid,” I told him, grim. “And I won’t be, either.”
Zee stared at me—all the boys, so still—and I saw something in his eyes that made me glad to be alive, to be here, to be who I was with all my burdens, and all the danger. I couldn’t name it, I didn’t want to, but I felt it strong as life. And I knew the boys felt it, too.
“Hard road,” Zee whispered.
“Always,” I replied. “But we’ve got hard heads.”
Zee squeezed shut his eyes—exhaled sharply—and then bared his teeth in a toothy, breathless grin.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what I mean.”
I let him go. Zee sidled backward, but not far. He kept one clawed hand on my knee. Dek and Mal were purring so loudly my eardrums rattled. Raw and Aaz tumbled into my lap. Somewhere from the shadows they had pulled out baseball hats—Yankees tonight—and jammed them on their heads. I tugged the brims low.
“Mom knew,” I said. “Didn’t she?”
“Truth given.” Zee hunched down until he resembled a mushroom in the shadows. “All kinds of truths.”
“Jack told her.”
“No.” The little demon traced a claw through fallen pine needles, making a circle of tangled lines that formed a knot. A maze.
“The Labyrinth.” I touched the circle’s edge. “She was in the Labyrinth. Before she had me.”
“Slipped sideways. Accident.” Zee hesitated. “Followed strange paths.”
“Strange enough that she found out about you there? Strange enough that she found someone in the Labyrinth who knew the truth?”
Zee shifted uncomfortably. All the boys did. I wanted to ask more, but I knew that look: no answers tonight, not about that.
I lay down, and all the boys drew close, pushing against me, wrapping their arms around my body. I hugged them. We stared up through the swaying pines at the first stars of evening.
“What,” I asked quietly, “do you remember? Before . . . this?”
“Hunger,” Zee said. “Darkness and hunger.”
I touched my chest. “That’s what’s inside me. This thing . . . it’s part of you.”
Zee stayed silent. Raw and Aaz shivered, while Dek and Mal hummed “Ask the Lonely” from Journey. I closed my eyes. “You should have told me years ago. I would have preferred hearing it from you. Not from those demons. Not Jack.”