Tendrils of his dark hair spiraled like corkscrews toward my face, floating close to the scar beneath my ear. I refused to move, but Dek hissed, and Mal slid across my cheek, rising like a cobra.
“So,” I said, proud that my voice was steady. “Here we are again.”
His mouth curved into a slow smile. “You, Mistress, with your hounds and the hunt at hand. You, Queen, standing ever closer to eternity.”
I was too tired to spar. “Where’s Tracker?”
Tracker. The man who was this creature’s slave, a man who had been betrayed by my ancestor, turned over to Oturu, forced to serve him.
He’d pushed me in front of a bus once. I didn’t blame him.
“Tracker is unneeded,” he said, and his hair lashed out again, all of his hair, reaching for me like a thousand graceful fingers. No time to blink before he surrounded me, his cloak flaring wide like wings. And though Dek and Mal snarled, they did not attack. Tendrils of hair slid up my neck, caressing my skull. I stared into the abyss of his cloak and body, faced with moving shadows that briefly looked like eyes, hands.
I heard nothing but my heartbeat. But deep inside, deep, that coiled presence stirred.
Oturu whispered, “From darkness we are born.”
And born again, forever,
murmured that soft voice inside my mind.
I closed my eyes, holding still, my fingers grazing spiked hair and pointed ears as Rex, Aaz, and Zee pushed near. “You knew, all along. What I am. Ever since we met.”
“Even you do not know what you are.” Oturu drew me closer, his hair tightening around my body as Dek and Mal growled. “And you will
not
know . . . none of us will . . . until your last breath. For we change, Hunter. We become. We transform. Every hunt, born again into something new. Until we can hunt no more.”
I looked up, trying to see his eyes. The brim of his hat was in the way, and the shadows beneath were deep. Nonetheless, I felt the weight of his gaze.
“Why
are
you here?” I asked him.
He released me, the tendrils of his hair lingering against my bald head, then the scar below my ear. Zee grabbed my hand, and tugged.
“Memories,” he rasped. “Truths you need.”
“Truths about our Lady,” Oturu said, with reverence, “whose path you follow.”
“My ancestor,” I said, with dread. “Am I so much like her?”
Oturu tilted his head, the brim of his hat so low it almost shadowed his mouth. Once again, his hair floated toward my face. Such delicate twisted fingers.
He stopped, just before he touched me. “We would know her heart. We would know her soul, no matter where it sung. Just as we knows yours. You are not her, Lady Hunter, except in all the ways that matter. Your heart. Your power.”
I listened for the darkness with that inner ear always tuned to my soul. Heard nothing. So quiet I might have imagined I’d never felt occupied, hijacked, possessed: something crawling through me, turning everything I touched to ash.
And me, enjoying it.
Me.
Not just that thing.
Power is its own pleasure,
murmured the voice.
But the power over life and death—
Stop,
I told it.
I’m not listening.
You could save so many. You could do so much. Protect earth from the Aetar. Stop wars. Make peace.
I didn’t know if those were my thoughts, or the force inhabiting me, but they hit too close to home.
I rubbed my mouth, wishing I had water to rinse, spit. I tasted the grit of ash between my teeth. “What truths?”
“You have been told that she, our Lady, merely lost her mind. But that is not the whole truth. She did not begin that way. Her intentions were good. As yours would be.”
My intentions terrified me. “How did it begin, then?”
“Betrayal,” Oturu said, and the boys closed their eyes, as one. “That is what you need to know. She was betrayed, for nothing more than living.”
“Because she was feared.”
“Because
they
tired of her. Tired of watching. Tired of the possibilities of danger.” Oturu twisted, arching backward, his swirling cloak rising until I saw the tips of his dagger feet, floating upon the leaves. “We will show you, Hunter. She would have wanted you to see.”
I heard the warning, I felt it, but I was too slow.
A coiled fist of hair snaked out, fast as a whip, and hit the scar below my ear. Pain flashed. White light. I heard thunder and screaming, and a howl like wolves wedded to wind. I fell backward, I fell and fell—
—and bled into an endless river into another world.
No transition. No explanation. I didn’t land, I didn’t hurt myself, but I felt the movement, and I felt the stillness when I stopped moving.
I opened my eyes. Found myself sprawled on wet grass, hands and feet bound. Mouth gagged.
It was so real. I could smell rain in the air, and smoke. I felt the boys on my skin, raging as I had never felt them rage—with a viciousness and wild hunger that poured through me like my guts were being soaked in bile and acid.
I was surrounded. Three men. One woman.
The woman had wings. She was tall and pale, and reminded me of the Messenger, with her red hair and long neck. A silver torc rested heavily on her jutting collarbone, the braided ends embedded with turquoise. Her wings were the color of pearls.
Beside her towered a man with one enormous eye in the center of his forehead, a man of monstrous height, with hands so large just one of them could have spanned my waist twice around. He crouched, staring at me, his rubbery mouth turned down in a frown. “This is not right.”
“This is survival,” said the winged woman. “We cannot take the risk.”
“The Hunter has done
nothing
. She is our ward. Some call her
friend
. If the others find out—”
“If you tell them, you may join her,” snapped the other two men, voices blending together in odd harmony. Twins. Long black beards, rubies embedded in their brows, and dressed in armor that shivered with plates of obsidian. “Or do you prefer to suffer this burden for the rest of our eternal lives?”
“We were given a task—”
“—and we are fulfilling it,” said the woman imperiously, her wings flaring. “While the demons cover her skin, she is ever immortal. She will never die in that place we send her. She will never be killed. The prison of her bloodline
will
hold.”
“What of us, then?” boomed the giant, forehead wrinkling around his unblinking eye. “What you suggest is not worthy of our hearts. Or our creation. We were not made for this task. Our gods would not permit it. This is damnation.”
“And so she is damned to the Wasteland,” said the twins, their voices hoarse. “And may we be as well, but it must be done.”
The giant turned away, the grind of his boots loud as thunder. “By condemning her, we condemn one of us.”
“There can be no comparison. None. You know that.”
“If we told the others—”
“No. The secret is ours. Our Aetar Masters put the burden on us to know the truth of what she is. What all those of her bloodline are.” The woman crouched, wings sweeping around her like a soft cloak.
I tasted tears, salty and hot, and suffered a sob not my own that rose with furious power. The boys raged.
“Hunter,” said the winged woman, her cold beauty like ice. “Hunter, this must be done. You are too dangerous. What you carry on your skin . . . too terrible a threat. If any of your bloodline were to die before bearing a child, if the veil should fall . . .”
The woman looked away, wings dragging through the wet grass. “I
am
sorry, sweetling. More than you know. You will
never
forgive us.”
“But at least we will never hear you scream,” said the twins; and I watched in horror as they kicked my body, so hard I rolled.
The giant cried out, lunging, but he could not reach me.
I fell. I fell. I fell, and darkness swallowed.
And no one heard me scream.
No one. No one heard me.
Until, abruptly, I felt hands stroking my hair.
I tasted pine needles on my tongue and closed my mouth.
I heard twin voices humming in my ears, and when I moved my legs, they were unbound, as were my hands.
“Betrayal,” Oturu said, again. I barely heard him.
Zee made a hissing sound. Dek and Mal trembled around my neck. I couldn’t see Raw or Aaz, but I felt them close, and heard cracking sounds, like, their knuckles flexing.
I rolled over and sat up, slowly. My head hurt. I was dizzy. The boys held me steady, and I swallowed hard to keep from vomiting.
“What was that?” I asked, hoarse.
“Memories,” said Oturu. “Memories our Lady gave us.”
“Felt so real.” I closed my eyes. “And those others. They were Wardens.”
“Created by the Aetar, the Avatars, to serve at their pleasure. And their pleasure was to watch our Lady. Our Lady, who trusted them.”
I shivered. “The place they threw her . . .”
I couldn’t finish. My skin crawled.
“You know it,” Oturu whispered. “You have been inside that winding maze, and walked the dark path. But only you emerged into the light, intact. When
she
stumbled free . . .”
He also stopped. I felt cold, and looked at Zee. “The Wardens threw my ancestor into the Wasteland.”
Zee bowed his head, shoulders sagging. “No one knows. Not the Wolf, not anyone. Not even all Wardens. Just some. Bad some.”
“And, what? They thought putting her there would . . . take care of the problem? Keep you five from ever breaking free?”
“It might have worked,” said Oturu. “She should not have freed herself. Just as you should not have.”
“I found a body in that place. I know it was hers.”
“That was later.” Oturu’s hair flared wildly around his body. “She chose her death. To protect her daughter from her madness.”
I lay back down, staring at the night sky. Zee crawled close and tucked himself under my arm. So did Raw and Aaz. They smelled like butter, and their claws were greasy.
“She lost parts of herself,” whispered Oturu. “Her time in the Wasteland brought her closer to what slept within. Too close, in the end.”
“She wanted revenge.”
“Justice.”
I took a deep breath and let it out, slowly. “She’s the reason all the Wardens disappeared. Why there’s no one left but our bloodline. She killed them all.”
No one denied it, but Raw and Aaz gave each other uncertain looks that made me wonder what else there was to know. I would have asked, but Zee gripped my hand, tugging. “Many feared old mother. But her heart . . . her heart was made of iron and honey.”
“She still went crazy. None of you deny that. She hurt people.”
“The power was too much. What began as righteousness became something else.” Oturu bowed his head, his hair and cloak going very still. “We remained with her, even when the hunt soured. We were her friend. All her secrets, she gave to us. Some will remain with us. But she was afraid that what destroyed her would arise again.”
“This thing inside me. She found it by accident. I was born already close to it.”
Oturu’s hair flared and twisted, writhing upward like black flames.
“As was your mother,” he said.
“My mother,” I replied, as Raw and Aaz made tiny choking sounds. Zee refused to look at me. Dek and Mal quit purring.
“She summoned us. She had questions about our Lady of the Hunt, about her madness, and those who betrayed her.”
I closed my eyes.
“Your mother had just come from the Labyrinth. She was heavy with you.”
The darkness stirred beneath my heart. A tremble, a faint heaving. I did not push it down. I floated around that force, cold and calm, observing it with a dispassionate inner eye that was removed from fear and pain, or any human emotion. I existed. So did it. We were together.
I was finally, irrevocably, numb.
Oturu towered over me, immense and stark, his cloak flaring wildly. “Hunter. There is something else.”
I did not move. I was going to rest here until I grew roots. Dek and Mal wrapped their tails, loose and warm, around my throat, and hummed a faint riot of Bon Jovi’s “Keep the Faith.” The other boys pressed against my legs and waist, holding my hands. Brave little soldiers.
I watched a long tendril of Oturu’s hair sink into the abyss of his billowing cloak, which was not mere cloth but made of shadows that seemed to be pockets of other spaces—perhaps the void I traveled through when traveling from here to there—or something different: energy and flesh and other dimensions colliding to create Oturu.
He had told me he was the last of his kind. I wanted to know why. Maybe I would have asked, except I looked closer at his cloak and saw faces skimming the surface, fleeting outlines of contorted heads pressing outward from the abyss, mouths open in silent screams.
I saw a face I recognized.
Tracker.
Looking at him reminded me of a horror movie—his face, the abyss molded to his features, slick as oil and crawling down his mouth. I didn’t know if he could see me. I reached out, ready to try and pull him free. Zee grabbed my arms, stopping me.
“Leave be,” he muttered.
I tried to shake him off, but he refused to let go. I attempted to speak, and my voice broke. On my second try I managed a hoarse, “What are you doing to him?”
Oturu tilted his head, contemplating me. “You feel pity.”
“He’s in agony. All those people are. You have no right.”
“We have every right. There are reasons.”
“Reasons—” I began, but Zee’s grip tightened, and he gave me a warning look.
“Justice,” he said. “Justice and promises.”
I shut my mouth.
Oturu’s hair slipped free of the churning shadows inside his cloak. Clutched within the dark tendrils was a small stone disc the size of my palm. Simple concentric lines had been etched into its surface, and even in the night, it glimmered with a translucence that burned from within. I stopped breathing when I saw it, my heart lurching like it wanted to tick-tock its way right out of chest, or into my stomach.