The bonds of love…The bonds of matrimony…The bonds between husband and wife…

Some bonds are made to be broken.

Here, for the first time ever, are four stories based on the classic idea of the “faerie tale wedding”—except this time, the damsels aren’t the ones in distress.

New York Times bestselling author Laurell K. Hamilton spins a story of a princess who decides to take her own destiny in hand and rescue a pampered Prince Charming from an evil sorceress in “Can He Bake a Cherry Pie?”

A selkie on the run from a century-old broken marriage arrangement has finally found true love—only to have the darkness from her past return to threaten both her and her dearly beloved in USA Today bestselling author Yasmine Galenorn’s “The Shadow of Mist.”

New York Times bestselling author Marjorie M. Liu tells the tale of a young princess who escapes betrothal to a warlord by entering a magical forest. But when an evil queen sends her on a quest to “The Tangleroot Palace” she faces dangers more perilous than marriage.

When a princess refuses her boring betrothed, the king holds a competition to see who will win his daughter’s hand. But in matters of the heart, is a winner truly worthy—or can a loser offer even more in national bestselling author Sharon Shinn’s “The Wrong Bridegroom.”

Excerpt

Weeks later, when she had a chance to put up her feet and savor a good hot cup of tea, Sally remembered something the gardener said, right before the old king told her that she had been sold in marriage.

“Only the right kind of fool is ever going to want you.”

Sally, who was elbow deep in horse manure, blew a strand of red hair out of her eyes. “And?”

“Well,” began the elderly woman, frowning—and then seemed to think better of what she was going to say, and crouched down beside her in the grass. “Here. Better let me.”

They were both wearing leather gloves that were stiff as rawhide, sewn in tight patches to reach up past their elbows. Simple to clean if you let them sit in the sun until manure turned to dry flakes, easy to beat off with a stick. Sally, who did not particularly enjoy rooting through muck, was nonetheless pleased that the tannery had provided her with yet a new tool for her work in the garden.

“You know,” Sally said, “when I told the stableboy to take care of my new roses, this is not what I meant.”

The gardener made a noncommittal sound. “There were ravens in my dreams last night.”

Sally finally felt something hard and stubbly beneath her fingers, and began clawing manure carefully away. “I thought we were talking about how only a fool would ever want me.”

“All men are fools,” replied the old woman absently, and then her frown deepened. “They were guarding a queen who wore a crown of horns.”

It took Sally a moment to realize that she was speaking of the ravens in her dream again. “How odd.”

“Not so odd if you know the right stories.” The gardener shivered, and glanced over her shoulder—but not before her gaze lingered on Sally’s hair. “Sabius is coming. Your father must want you.”

Sally craned around, but the sun was in her eyes. All she could see was the blurry outline of a bowlegged man, stomping across the grass with his meaty fists swinging. She glanced down at herself, and then with a rueful little smile continued clearing debris away from her roses.

“Princess,” said Sabius, well before his shadow fell over her. “Your father requests your . . . Oh, dear God.”

The gardener bit her bottom lip and kept her head down, long silver braids swinging from beneath her straw hat. Sally, gazing with regret at the one little leaf she’d managed to expose, leaned backward and tugged until her arms slid free of the rawhide gloves—left sticking from the manure like two hollow branches. Her skin was pink and sweaty, her work apron brown with stains.

“Oh, dear God,” said her father’s manservant again; and turned his head, covering his mouth with a hairy, bare-knuckled hand better suited to brawling than to the delicately scripted letters he often sat composing for the king. He made a gagging sound, and squeezed shut his eyes.

“Er,” said Sally, quite certain she didn’t smell that bad. “What does my father want?”

Sabius, still indisposed, pointed toward the south tower. Sally considered arguing, but it was hardly worth the effort.

She shrugged off her apron and dropped it on the ground. Smoothing out her skirts—also rather stained, and patched with a quilt work of silk scrap from the seamstress’s bin—she raised her brow at the gardener, who shook her head and returned to digging free the roses.

The king’s study was on the southern side of the castle, directly below his bedchamber, which was accessible only through a hidden wall behind his desk that concealed a narrow stone staircase. Not that it was a secret. Everyone knew of its existence, what with the maids scurrying up and down in the mornings and evenings: cleaning, folding, dressing, doing all manner of maid, and maidenly, things that Sally did not want to know about.

Her father was just coming down the stairs when she entered his study; even more slowly than she had intended, having been stopped outside the kitchen by two of the cook’s young apprentices from the village; who, in different ways, could not help but try to clean her up. First with scalding hot water and crushed lavender scrubbed into her face, loose hair tugged into a respectable braid; while the other girl fetched a fresh apron from the kitchen, which was not fine, and certainly not royal, but was clean and starched, and certainly in line with Sally’s usual apparel. No use wasting fine gowns on long walks, or earth work, or even just reading in the library.

Her one concession to vanity was the amethyst pendant she wore against her skin; a teardrop long as her thumb, and held in a golden claw upon which half of a small wooden heart hung, broken jaggedly down the middle. Her mother’s jewelry, and precious only for that reason.

“Salinda,” said her father, and stopped, sniffing the air. “You smell as though you’ve been sleeping beneath a horse’s ass.”

“Do I?” she replied airily. “I hadn’t noticed.”

The old king frowned, looking over her clothing with a great deal more scrutiny than was usual. He was a barrel-chested man, tall and lean in most places, except for his gut and the wattle beneath his chin, which he tried vainly to hide with a coarse beard that was fading quickly from black to silver. He moved with a limp, due to an arrow shot recently into his hip.

Sally had been frightened for him—for as long as it had taken the old king to wake from the draught the doctor had poured down his throat in order to remove the bolt. His temper had been foul ever since. Everyone was avoiding him.

“Don’t you have anything nicer to wear?” he asked, a peculiar tenseness in the way he studied her that made Sally instantly uneasy. “I pay for seamstresses.”

“And I have fine clothing,” she replied cautiously, as her father had never commented on her appearance, not once in seventeen years. “These are for everyday.”

The old king made a small, dissatisfied sound, and limped past her to his desk. “I suppose you heard about the skirmish at old Bog Hill? Men died. More good men every day. Little weasel bastard Fartin throwing gold at mercenaries to test our borders. But”—and he smiled grimly—“I have a solution.”

“Really,” Sally said, suffering the most curious urge to run.

“Your darling mother, before we married, had a very dear friend who was given to one of those southern tribal types as part of a lucrative alliance. She bore a son. Who just so happens to be a very powerful man in need of a wife.”

“Oh,” Sally said.

Her father gave her a stern look. “And I suppose he’s found one.”

“Oh,” Sally said again. “Oh, no.”

“Fine man,” replied the old king, but with a glittering unease in his eyes. “That Warlord fellow. You know. Him.”

Sally stared, quite certain that bumblebees had just committed suicide in her ears. “Him. The Warlord. Who commands all the land south of the mountains to the sea; who leads a barbarian horde of nomadic horsemen so fierce, so vicious, so perverse in their torments, that grown men piddle themselves at the thought of even breathing the same air? That Warlord?”

“He does sound rather intimidating,” said her father.

“Indeed,” Sally replied sharply. “Have you lost your mind?”

“Amazingly, no.” The old king rubbed his hip, and winced. “I haven’t felt this proud of myself in years.”

Sally closed her eyes, grabbing fistfuls of her skirt and squeezing. “I think I’m losing my mind.” She had heard about the man for as long as she could remember. Warlord of this and that: colorfully descriptive names that were usually associated with pain, death, and destruction. Sally had vague memories of her mother speaking of him, as well, but only in association with his mother. He would have been a small child at the time, she thought. Nice and innocent; probably skinning dogs and plucking the wings off butterflies while suckling milk from his mother’s teat.

“What in the world,” she said slowly, fighting to control her temper, and rising horror, “could a man like that possibly want from a woman like me? He could have anyone. He probably has had everyone, given his reputation.” Sally leaned forward, poking her father in the chest. “I will not do it. Absolutely not. You are sending me to a short, hard, miserable life. I’m ashamed of you.”

Her father folded his arms over his chest. “Your mother’s best friend was sent to that short, hard, miserable life—and she thrived. Your dear, late, lovely mother would not have lied about that.” He turned and fumbled through the papers on his desk. “Now, here. The Warlord sent a likeness of himself.”

Sally frowned, but leaned in for a good long stare. “He looks like a dirty fingerprint.”

“Of course he doesn’t,” replied her father, squinting at the portrait. “You can see his eyes, right there.”

“I thought those were his nostrils.”

“Well, you’re not going to be picky, are you? At least he has a face.”

“Yes,” Sally replied dryly. “What a miracle.”

The king scowled. “Spoiled. I let you run wild, allow you teachers, books, a lifestyle unsuitable for any princess, and this is how you repay me. With sarcasm.”

“You taught me how to think for myself. Which never seemed to bother you until now.”

He slammed his fists onto the desk. “We are being overrun!”

His roar made her eardrums thrum. Sally shut her mouth, and fell backward into the soft cushions of a velvet armchair. Her knees were too weak to keep her upright. Terrible loneliness filled her heart, and sorrow—which she bottled up tight, refusing to let her father see.

The old king, as she stared at him, slumped with his arms braced against his desk. Staring at maps, and embroidered family crests that had been torn off the clothing of the fallen soldiers; and that now were scattered before him, some crusty with dried blood.

“We are being overrun,” he said again, more softly. “I know how it starts. First with border incursions, and petty theft of livestock. Then villages ransacked, roads blocked. Blamed on vandals and simple thieves. Until one day you hear the thunder of footfall beyond the walls of your keep, and all that you were born to matters not at all.”
He fixed her with a steely look. “I will not have that happen. Not for me, not for you. Not for any of the people who depend on us.”

Sally swallowed hard. Perhaps she had been spoiled. Duty could not be denied. But when she looked at the small portrait of the man her father wanted her to marry, terrible, unbending disgust filled her—disgust and terror, and a gut-wrenching grief that made her want to howl with misery.

Married to that. Sent away from all she knew. Forced to give up her freedom. No matter how fondly her mother had spoken of her friend, that woman’s son had a reputation that no sweet talk could alter. He was a monster.

The old king saw her looking at the Warlord’s likeness, and held it out to her with grim determination. She did not take it, but continued to stare, feeling as though she were going to jump out of her skin.

“I can’t tell anything from that,” she said faintly. “His artist did a terrible job.”

“Probably because he never sits still,” replied her father sarcastically. “Or so I was told. I assume it’s because he prefers to be out killing things.”
Sally grimaced. “You’re not seriously considering this?”

“Darling, sweet child; you golden lamb of my heart; my little chocolate knucklehead: I did consider, I have considered, and the deed is done. His envoy should be arriving within the week to inspect you for marriage, and sign the contracts.”

“Oh, dear.” Sally stared at her father, feeling as though she hardly knew him—quite certain that she did not.

And, since he was suddenly a stranger to her, she had no qualms in grabbing a nearby candle, and jamming it flame first into the tiny portrait he held in his hand. Hot wax sprayed. She nearly set his sleeve on fire. He howled in shock, dancing backward, and slammed his injured hip into the desk. He yelled even louder.

“And that,” Sally said, shaken, “is how I feel about the matter.”

Excerpt

PROLOGUE
The humans allowed Karr to wake up, which was their first mistake.

He opened his eyes inside a small, tight space where the walls were made of a heavy billowing cloth that flapped against a sharp wind. A tent. Except, the tent was rocking and bouncing like a wagon in motion, and the human men he glimpsed were seated around him on short benches. Eastern-bred, he thought. Dark hair, golden skin. Holding oddly shaped black sticks in their laps.

Weapons, whispered his instincts, reading danger in all the little details that had nothing do with the objects the men held. It was their cold, bored gazes, the uniformity of their youth, and their odd clothing. Karr knew soldiers when he saw them.

It took only seconds for him to make his evaluation, and less than that to realize he was strapped to a hard wooden plank too small for his body. The backs of his shoulders rubbed against a cold floor that felt like stone or metal, and thin leather restraints bound his chest, arms, and legs. He was nearly naked, and smelled like urine and dry bones. None of which was as disturbing to Karr as the fact that he was still alive. He had been quite clear about the matter. His friends had promised to murder him.

And so they had. He remembered.

Yet, here he was, breathing and conscious. Karr snarled, golden light swallowing his vision, burning him up from the inside until he felt as though the sun were exploding inside his chest. He heard shouts, but they sounded very far away, and he snarled as scales burst from his skin, his bones shifting, melting, his chest and limbs expanding painfully against their restraints. His fingers lengthened into long serrated claws.

The men hit him with the blunt ends of their black weapons. Karr ignored the pain. He twisted violently, throwing himself upward, and the plank he lay on crashed down hard against the floor. He did it again, and the wood splintered as his body continued to shift. He cut himself on the leather restraints. Blood trickled down his chest and arms. He howled with rage, and hearing his own voice again was a terrible, sickening thing.

The plank broke. Karr’s arms swung free. A small blunt object slammed into the side of his head, but he had already begun to turn, and in that small space his long reach and claws arced across soft, startled faces and throats. Blood sprayed. Men screamed, falling backward against the wagon’s cloth walls. Karr glimpsed sunlight.

He leaped wildly against the wagon walls, tearing at the heavy cloth with his claws. Hands tried to pull him back, but he could taste the heat of the wind and desert, and the need to feel the sun on his skin was so powerful, so terrible, he thought he might choke on his own heart if he did not break free.

He managed to burst through, and was momentarily blinded by the sun and a sky so blue his throat ached with nameless longing. He glimpsed large moving objects, glittering and shining, and then jumped away from the wagon with one powerful lunge.

Karr hit the ground hard and rolled. Loud bleating sounds filled his ears, and he sensed something large roaring toward him. He threw himself sideways again, and great dark wheels passed him in a blur, moving faster than anything he had ever witnessed. Everything was fast, he realized, struggling to stand, dazed by the assault on his eyes as he stared at squat square wagons, fully enclosed, moving without the aid of horses or men. Inside, faces. Men and women, staring out at him, wide-eyed and startled. He stared back, just as surprised. Beyond, as far as the eye could see, rose a metropolis, golden brown and white, shimmering in the sun. It stunned him breathless.

And then the wind shifted and he smelled her: a shape-shifter, pure-blooded and wild.

Too late. Pain exploded against his shoulder, and he turned, staggering, reaching back to find a long smooth object jutting from his body. Not a knife. More slender, rounded.

Karr’s vision blurred. He saw the shape-shifter, but not her face—just a glimpse of short blonde hair as she darted around him. He tried to follow but his knees buckled. Darkness fluttered. Voices shouted, but he understood nothing that was said.  He tried to fight. He tried with all his power, staring down at his clawed hands, skin rippling with golden scales.

The shape-shifter’s scent made him sick. She said something to him, but it was nothing but a buzz in his ears. Karr collapsed on his side and closed his eyes, hoping for just a moment that he would not open them again.

CHAPTER ONE

It had been a long time since Soria had found herself in a crowd, and so she supposed she could be forgiven for having a case of the jitters, even when something as harmless as a staring child proved enough to make her hand shake.

She was in the Minneapolis airport, leaning against the counter of a small island Starbucks. It was early, not quite seven in the morning. She had paid for orange juice and happened to glance sideways, to her right, just as the cashier was carefully placing change into her palm. A child was tugging on his mother’s hand. Staring at Soria. A tousled, sweet-looking boy, maybe four or five. Nothing wrong with what he was doing. Kids were always curious.

But it took her off guard, and her hand trembled—so much so that the change slid and clattered to the counter, bouncing down on the floor around her feet. It should have been a small thing—it was a small thing—but it was also loud and awkward, and drew unwanted attention. Soria was very much tempted to grab her drink, leave the scattered nickels and dimes, and run.

She bent, her face hot, and glimpsed from the corner of her eye the long line of men and women fidgeting impatiently behind her. For one moment as her purse swung awkwardly from her left shoulder to hit the floor, she felt herself trying to reach out with her missing right arm to pick the change off the tile. All she got for her trouble was excruciating pain, a phantom echo where her limb should be, and another dose of humiliation. Bitter loneliness smashed through her heart like a fist. Her ghost fist, maybe, as stubborn about dying as she had been.

Beside her, someone knelt. Large, sinewy fingers enclosed her hand, and loose change was carefully deposited into her palm. The contact was brief but fiercely warm, and it sent a tingle through her. She had not been touched by anyone in a long time.

Soria poured the change into her purse, grabbed the juice from the cashier, and stepped away from the counter to make room for the next woman in line. Flustered, sweating, she finally gazed into the face of the man who had helped her. He was handsome, which was just her luck. His face was paler than his hands, but just as sinewy and spare. Light green eyes glinted with sharp intelligence, and his neatly trimmed dark red hair appeared skimmed with golden threads under the overhead lights. He was tall, with broad shoulders straining against a forest green cashmere sweater that hugged the lean muscles of his chest. A silver chain glinted around his neck, disappearing beneath his clothing.

“Thanks,” Soria said, feeling rather numb and scatterbrained.

“You’re welcome,” replied the man smoothly, and held out a thin folded airline envelope. “This dropped out of your purse when you bent down.”
It was her plane ticket. Soria wanted to kick herself. Again, she felt her brain tell her missing right arm to reach out—such a hateful sensation—and the pain that echoed through her head was nauseating and dull.

Soria awkwardly dumped her juice bottle into her purse and took the ticket from his outstretched hand. “Good thing you saw that.”

“Yes,” he agreed, not letting go of the ticket.

Soria hesitated, staring into his eyes, and all his attractive features faded into a blur. Uneasiness rolled through her stomach, into her lungs, into the lurch of her heart. Not simply because of his reluctance to release the ticket, and not just because the glint in his gaze suddenly seemed irredeemably cold. The man had switched languages on her. English to Welsh, she realized. And not just any Welsh, but an old dialect, practically medieval, and most certainly dead. And she—like an idiot—had responded without thinking. In the same tongue.

The man stepped back, still holding her plane ticket. Soria licked her lips, and in very careful modern English said, “Who are you?”

“Roland sent me,” he replied, still speaking ancient Welsh. “He needs you to come home, Soria.”

Home. Not just a place.  Home was people. Home was old dreams.

Soria turned and walked in the opposite direction. Never mind her plane ticket; she could buy another. Never mind the job interview in New York with the U.N. If she missed that, there would be others.

She felt the ghost of her missing arm swinging from her body, that phantom limb, replete with an itch where her wrist should have been. She ignored the discomfort, wished she had some chewing gum to take the bad taste out of her mouth. Airport crowds passed in a blur, but she felt gazes flicker to her empty sleeve and then dart away. She did not know what was worse: those brief embarrassed glances or the people who pretended her disfigurement did not exist. That she did not exist.

You exist for someone now, she thought grimly, quickening her pace. Goddamn it, Roland.

Ahead, an impossibly slender girl stepped into her path, facing her. She was Asian, clad in a pink plaid miniskirt so short that if she had not been wearing cropped gray tights underneath, she might very well have been arrested for indecent exposure. A pink hooded sweatshirt clung to her torso, and her glossy black hair, streaked pink, was pulled up in pigtails decorated with plastic Hello Kitty beads that clacked when her head tilted. She wore a mockery of tennis shoes: hot pink and silver, raised up on an inch-thick sole. A messenger bag covered in yet more Hello Kitties slung loose over her flat chest.

Men stared. Women looked away. Soria stopped walking, light-headed. The girl’s age was impossible to determine—anywhere from thirteen to twenty, though her dark eyes were old as dirt and the set of her mouth was lethal. Soria herself was thirty years old, but she felt ancient and used when she looked at the girl, old eyes or not. She was no better than some grizzled gunslinger, too long alive in the world.

Heat settled in her chest, old instincts, raw and battered. She was not ready. She had retired. Everyone had agreed.

Soria turned her head, slightly. The red-haired man was behind her, close enough to touch. His gaze was assessing and cold. Like ice.

“We should talk,” he said, in perfect Gaelic; and then, in a Persian dialect that was just as old as his Welsh, he added: “If you please.”

Fear tingled through her. Intrigue, as well. Curiosity, she admitted, was what had gotten her into trouble in the first place, and here it was again, that same intellectual itch that was dangerous as a gun to her head. A puzzle. A linguistic riddle.

“What,” she asked slowly, “does Roland want?”

“Your time,” the man replied in English, as a sea of travelers passed around them. The terminal was a long, winding hall of upscale shops surrounded by golden wood and the occasional elaborate sculpture—no doubt meant to imitate the warmth of some lodge, easy and comfortable. A good scream would draw hundreds of eyes.

But that old curiosity kept her silent, as well as nostalgia … and loneliness. She sensed that slip of a teen girl swaying closer, and stepped sideways so that she could keep both her and the man in sight. Cold amusement flickered through his eyes.

“My name is Robert,” he said. “My associate is Ku-Ku.”

“Bitter,” Soria replied, translating the girl’s name from Mandarin. “Appropriate, I assume.”
“In so many ways,” replied the man.

Soria did not want to know. “How can I be certain Roland sent you?”

Robert reached into his pocket and pulled out a battered silver bracelet: thick, scarred, and tarnished with age. A chunk of turquoise, like an eye, had been embedded in the cuff. Soria’s breath caught when she saw it.

He held out the bracelet. “He thought you would stay long enough for him to return this. Or at least, that’s what he told me.”

It was not proof, exactly, but Soria had no doubt that the piece of antique jewelry had come from her former boss. She took it from Robert, half expecting him to pull back at the last moment. The bracelet was cool in her left palm, and the old habit of slipping it over her right wrist was so strong that for a moment she felt the echo of silver sliding over her ghost skin.

“Roland can have my time,” Soria said hoarsely. “But he better make it good.”

“That’s up to you,” Robert replied, tearing her plane ticket in half. “But you know it will be interesting.”

Indeed, thought Soria, ignoring the phantom ache of her missing arm. With Roland and the other agents of Dirk & Steele, life was always a bit too interesting.

Written by MARJORIE LIU
Penciled by KALMAN ANDRASOFSZKY
Covers by ALINA URUSOV

There’s no place like home—just ask young mutant KIDEN NIXON. She’s survived the hard streets of Manhattan, and she’s built a home—and a family—for herself, with her friends TATIANA, BOBBY SOUL and his LI’L BRO. But with fewer than 200 mutants left on the planet, Kiden’s become a target—and when somebody strikes at one of her friends, Kiden’s going to find out just how much farther she can fall! By NEW YORK TIMES best-selling writer MARJORIE LIU (the DIRK & STEELE SERIES) with stunning art by KALMAN ANDRASOFSZKY! Collecting NYX: NO WAY HOME #1-6.

184 PGS./Parental Advisory …$24.99
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3995-9
Trim size: standard

NYX: NO WAY HOME PREMIERE HC (DM ONLY)
184 PGS./Parental Advisory …$24.99
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3996-6

Excerpt

Zombies had a bad habit of shooting me in the head. Most of them knew better, but there was always that one who wanted to get lucky.

It was a wet Monday morning. Almost dawn. Broken streetlights and glass in the road; and the hulking shadows of abandoned warehouses towering above me. Dead city, dead hour. Seattle was a dark place, even with the sun. Some days felt like living in the aftermath of a nuclear winter; as though a mushroom cloud had blown over and never left.

Quiet, too. Nothing to hear except harsh breathing, a soft whine; my cowboy boots scuffing concrete and the sharpening of claws; and the rumble of the freight trains at the rail yard across from the docks, mingling with the growls vibrating softly in my ears: baby symphonies of thunder. Good music. Made me feel safe.

I rubbed wet hair out of my eyes. “Zee. Hold him tighter.”

Him. Archie Limbaud. Scrawny man, sinewy as a garter snake, saddled with a crown of short brown hair plastered to his soaked skin and flecked with enormous flakes of dandruff. He was a fortysomething man who smelled like the private bathroom of a teenage boy: unwashed and vaguely fecal.

He was also a zombie. Not the brain-eating, shambling kind, either. Not a corpse. Just a man, possessed by a demon—who was using his body like a puppet. Practically the same as being dead, if you asked me.

I did not want to touch him. He sprawled on the edge of an empty parking lot, crammed against the bottom of a chain-link fence, the contents of his wallet scattered on the ground in front of me. More condoms than cash, along with one credit card, and an expired driver’s license. Minutes ago, there had been a gun—a .40-caliber pistol, pointed at my head—but that was gone now. Eaten.

I hated guns. I hated zombies. Put those together with what I knew about the possessed man at my feet, and I didn’t know whether to cry, scream, or kick the fuck out of his testes.

I eased off my gloves, shoved them in my back pocket, and extended my palm. A sharp little hand passed me a switchblade. Pretty thing, with a mother-of-pearl handle and silver accents. Razor edge, still wet with blood. Engraved with the initials A.L. I waved it in front of Archie’s ruddy face, and his dark aura fluttered wildly around the crown of his head.

“Some night,” I said quietly. “I found the body.”

Archie said nothing. Part of that might have been the aluminum baseball bat pressed down on his throat. Stolen from the Seattle Mariners, if I had to guess. I could see the stadium walls of Safeco Field from where I crouched, and Zee and the others were going through a baseball phase. Babe Ruth was in, Bill Russell was out. Which pained me. At least my boys were still obsessed with Bon Jovi. I couldn’t have handled that much change.

Zee, Raw, and Aaz were down on the ground, pinning Archie to the pavement. Little demons, little hounds. Rain sizzled, trickling down bony backs the color of soot smeared with silver, skin shimmering with a muscular fluidity that resembled water more than flesh. Razor-sharp spines of hair flexed against chiseled skulls while silver veins pulsed with slow beats that, if I had pressed my ear close, would have sounded like the steady thrums of bass guitars.

Red eyes glinted. I used the switchblade to tap Aaz on the back of the head, and his hair cut through the steel like it was butter. Raw caught the bits of blade before they hit the pavement and stuffed them in his mouth, chewing loudly.

“Ease up on the windpipe,” I said to Aaz. “I don’t want the host harmed.”

Aaz blew a kiss at the zombie and removed the baseball bat from his soft, bruised throat. Archie started coughing, fighting to move his legs. No luck. Raw was sitting on his ankles, and Zee had his wrists pinned to the pavement. Not quite crushing bone, but close. My boys were strong.

“Please,” Archie whispered hoarsely. “I want to convert.”

“Liar,” rasped Zee, before I had a chance to tell the zombie to go fuck himself. The little demon leaned close to lick the air above Archie’s brow. “Cutter lies, Maxine. He still hungers.”
“He murders,” I said, gripping the remains of the switchblade in my fist as a young face flashed through my mind, bloody and sliced, long brown limbs naked, splayed. Torn doll. Torn in places I did not want to remember. “She was just a kid.”

“She was a prostitute,” Archie said. “She was already prey.”

Dek and Mal, coiled heavy on my shoulders, peered from beneath my hair and hissed at the zombie. Unlike the others, they were built like snakes, with two vestigial limbs good only for clutching my ears. Heads shaped like hyenas. Sharp smiles. Fire in their breath. Archie stared at them, and trembled.

I reached through his thunderous aura to place my hand on his clammy brow. He shied away, but the boys held tight, and in that last moment before I touched him, his eyes rolled back, staring at the delicate armor surrounding the entire ring finger of my right hand: a slender sheath of quicksilver, replete with a delicate joint at the knuckle, which allowed my finger to bend. Fit like a skin. Sometimes I forgot it was there.

“Prey,” I murmured. “And what does that make you?”

“One of a million,” he whispered, shaking; staring at me with hate in his eyes. “You can’t kill us all. When the prison walls fail—”

“You’ll be rat meat to the rest of the demons,” I interrupted, still thinking of the girl I had found in an alley only blocks from here, summoned to her still-warm body by Zee and the others, who had roused me from bed to hunt her killer. “Your kind will be slaughtered, just like the humans. You’re nothing to the others. Even your Queen has said so.”

“Hunter—” Archie began, but I didn’t let him finish. I knew everything he was going to say. I had heard it thousands of times since my mother’s murder, and thousands of times before that, as well.
I was going to die. I was never going to reach old age. The world was going to end.

All of which was true. But, whatever. His voice hurt my head. His sour scent, hot and prickly, made me want to vomit. I was tired, and cold all the way through to my soul, and there was a girl who had lost her life tonight for no good reason. She had suffered a bad death—and only because the parasite possessing this man had wanted to feed on her pain. I did not even know her name. No ID, no nothing. Lost forever.

Not the only one, either. The world was a big place. Too many predators: human, zombie, or otherwise. And just one of me. Nomad, born and bred, who had settled in this city longer than any other. Abandoning all others, so I could have some semblance of a normal life.

Right. Normal.

I ground my palm even harder against Archie’s brow, and exhaled a soft hiss of words; sibilant and ancient, a focused tongue that made my skin tingle, and my hand burn. Archie’s breath rattled, and he strained upward as his aura swelled, trying to escape me.

No such luck. The demon was young. Easy to exorcise. I drew it out, watching the passage of its wraithlike body churn through the human’s open mouth like poisoned smoke. Archie went limp. Raw and Aaz released his legs, while Dek and Mal slithered off my shoulders, winding down my arms to be near my hands. Their tiny claws pricked my skin like kneading cats, and their soft, high-pitched hum of Bon Jovi’s “Social Disease” filled the air.

When the last trail of the parasite’s writhing body was free of the human man, I held it in my hand with that soft, shrieking darkness spilling through my fingers, and felt a cold bite in my skin, like a glove of frozen nettles. Zee stepped over Archie’s still body, and the others extended their razor-tipped claws.

I gave them the demon. I did not watch them eat it.

I knelt by Archie and checked his pulse. Strong, steady. His eyelids fluttered, but he stayed unconscious, and I backed away quick, rubbing my sweaty palms on my jeans. I had no way of knowing what this man had been like before being possessed, though I guessed he hadn’t been the happy type. Stable, mentally robust people did not get possessed by demons. Too much work. No cracks to exploit.
But this man, Archie Limbaud, would wake up a murderer—and never know it. Demons left no memories in human minds. Just chaos, ruined lives. Friends and family who would never look at you the same way.

“Maxine,” Zee rasped, rubbing his mouth with the back of his sharp hand. “Sun coming.”

I knew. I could feel the sun, somewhere beyond the black skies and rain, slowly creeping upon the cloud-hidden horizon. I had minutes at most
.
“Pay phone,” I said to Zee, and he snapped his claws at Raw and Aaz, who were prowling the edges of the dark lot, slipping in and out of shadows. Both of them loped close, graceful as wolves, and whispered in Zee’s ears. Zee cocked his head, listening; and after a moment, pointed.

I said nothing. Just walked away from Archie. I did not rush. I did not look back. I held the handle of the switchblade and slid it into my hair. Listened to metal crunch as Mal chewed and swallowed. I could have left it. Evidence.

But I wanted the man to have a second chance. I wanted him to wake up, confused and amnesiac, but without the burden of murder. No one deserved that—even though there was a small part of me that felt like his hands were dirty. Dirty as mine. I could not stop rubbing my palms against my wet jeans. Felt as though Archie Limbaud’s stink was all over me.

Early morning continued to be quiet, the drizzling mist softening the streets and rough broken edges, and I drank in the cold air, savoring the chill of wet hair curled against my flushed cheeks. The boys moved through the shadows, invisible except for brief glimpses of their red eyes. I kept wiping my hands and thinking about the dead girl. And my mother. She had warned me before she died. She had warned me it would be like this. Always, victims. Victims, everywhere. And me, never fast enough. Always playing catch-up.

I found a pay phone two blocks away. Battered relic, covered in graffiti. I dialed 911 and left a brief message with the operator—teenager dead, murdered, several blocks south of Safeco Field—and hung up. Wiped off my prints, then remembered I could have worn my gloves. I was still rattled, not thinking straight. I wanted to go back to the dead girl and wait with her body—as if that would make a difference. Ease, somehow, the pain and loneliness of her murder.

Instead, I kept walking, taking a westerly route away from the rail yards, toward Chinatown. I saw no one but caught glimpses of headlights crossing distant intersections. The rumble of the trains seemed louder. The air tasted sharper, and suddenly electric, as though a city full of alarms had just gone off, and I was feeling the pulse of thousands of eyes opening at once. In my ear, Dek and Mal began humming more Bon Jovi. “Have a Nice Day.”

“You, too,” I said hoarsely, reaching into my hair to scratch their necks. “See you tonight.”

I stopped in the shadows, well off the street, and the rest of the boys slipped free of the darkness to gather close, hugging my legs, running their cheeks against my knees. The boys liked to be tucked in. I slid my knuckles against their warm jaws and savored the rumble of purrs. Their skin steamed in the rain.

Zee peered up at me and tugged on my hand until I knelt before him. Very carefully, he cradled my face between his claws, searching my eyes with a sad compassion that made my throat burn.
“Maxine,” he rasped gently. “Sweet Maxine. Be your heart at ease.”

We had seconds, nothing more. I kissed my fingers and pressed them against his bony brow. I thought of my mother again and caught myself in heartache. She had said good night to the boys like this, for all the years they were hers. I could not stop thinking of her tonight.

“Dream,” I whispered. “Sleep tigh—”

I never finished. I got shot in the head.

Just like that. Right temple. Not much sound. The impact shuddered through my entire body, every sensation magnified with excruciating clarity as the bullet drilled into my skull—the inexorable pressure of a small round object, crushing my life. I could feel it. I could feel it. My brain was going to explode like a watermelon. I had no time to be afraid.

But in that moment—that split second between life and death, the sun touched the horizon somewhere beyond the clouds—– and the boys disappeared into my skin.

The bullet ricocheted, the impact spinning me like a rag doll. I fell on my hands and knees, and stayed there, stunned and frozen. I could still feel the punch of the shot—the sensation so visceral I would not have been surprised to reach up and find the bullet grinding a path into my skull.

I touched my head, just to be sure. Found hair and unbroken skin. No blood. My entire right arm trembled, and a dull throbbing ache spread from my sinuses to my temple, all the way through to the base of my skull. My heart pounded so hard I could barely breathe. All I could see was pavement and my hands.

My transformed hands. My skin had been pale and smooth only moments before, but tattoos now covered every inch: obsidian roping shadows, scales and silver muscle shining with subtle veins of organic metal. My fingernails shimmered like black pearls, hard enough to dig a hole through solid rock. Red eyes stared from the backs of my wrists. Raw and Aaz. I closed my eyes, trying to steady my breathing, and felt five corresponding tugs against my skin. Demons, inhabiting my flesh. Minds and hearts and dreams, bound to my life until I died.
My friends, my family. My dangerous boys.

Somewhere distant I heard police sirens wailing. My 911 call, coming this way. I had to get up. I tried, and fell. Gritted my teeth and dug my nails into the concrete. Tried again.
This time I managed to stand. I started walking, stumbling, but did not go down. My head pounded. I bent over once, still moving—afraid to stop—gagging uncontrollably. Felt like my stomach was going to peel right up through my throat, but instead of making my head hurt worse, the pain eased.

I touched my right temple with a trembling hand, savoring the smooth, unbroken skin. Momentarily in awe that I still lived.

I had been shot before. Frequently. All over. Never felt a thing. Bullets bounced off me during the day. A nuclear bomb could hit me in daylight, and I would survive—without a scratch. Might be a different story at night, when the boys peeled off my body, but I never underestimated their ability to keep me alive.

But no one—no one—had ever had the foresight—or the balls—to try killing me in that moment between night and day, caught in transition between mortal and immortal.
Near-perfect timing. Any earlier, and the boys would have killed the shooter before the bullet could be fired. Any later, and I would have been invulnerable. Which was exactly the case. Saved by a fraction of a second.

Too damn close. I scanned the shadows but saw nothing except for warehouses and dark windows, and the glitter of downtown Seattle to the north, all the lights of the city frozen like the unwavering pose of fireflies. Nothing unordinary. No shooter, waving a flag. But I felt watched. Someone, somewhere, out there in the darkness. Long range, or else the boys would have felt their presence well before the attack.

Zombie, I thought. Had to be. No one else who knew what I was would try to hurt me.

“You almost died,” I said out loud, needing to hear the words, to hear myself—as though I required some proof of life. Maxine Kiss. Almost taken out, just like my mother—with a bullet through the brain.
A zombie had killed her. But that was different.

It had been her time to die.

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CHRISTINE WARREN
“Devil’s Bargain”
Supernatural bounty hunter Lilli Corbin made a pact with the Prince of Hell: She agreed to recover a book of prophecies. When she learns it could trigger the apocalypse, Lilli is forced to make the ultimate choice: save her soul, or the man she loves?

MARJORIE M. LIU
“The Robber Bride”
Welcome to a post-apocalyptic world where where humans are fed on for their life forces. Now it’s up to Maggie, one of the last survivors, to hunt down and destroy an army of darkness…

CAITLIN KITTREDGE
“Down in the Ground Where the Dead Men Go”
Ava is a demon slayer who needs help from mage Jack Winter to reach the demon underworld—a place of dark seduction…and, maybe, one of no return.

JENNA MACLAINE
“Sin Slayer”
London 1889. Jack the Ripper is killing off the city’s vampire population, and now it’s up to Cin Craven to hunt him down—and save the infected Michael, the love of her undead life.

Excerpt

Maggie was too young to remember life before the Big Death, but she had a brain for books, access to books, a great deal of uninterrupted time on her hands with which to enjoy those books – and so had, over the years, pieced together a history of the world that she knew was, in part, fiction – but that, like most good lies – rang true.  Not that anyone else was privy to her secret history:  Maggie knew better than to draw attention to her eccentricities.  It was enough that she ran the junkyard for Olo Enclave, and lived alone, and was twenty years old without a husband or prospect. 

She had been on her own for years.  Her junkyard lay on the outskirts of Olo, which bordered what had been, and still was, the Ohio river.  It was settlement number six in the government grid – six out of several thousand, scattered across the former United States – located smack dab in the new territory of Inohkyten, an abbreviation for all the states thrown together after the Big Death:  Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee.  Other territories had their own odd collective names, but when folks in Olo talked about the rest of the country, they just called those places as they had become:  the South, North, East, or West, with the Rockies, Dakotas, and Alaska thrown in, all on their own. 

It was spring when the motorcycle man came looking for Maggie.  Blue sky morning with the dew glittering like diamond drops on the tips of the green grass, and the cardinals and magpies lilting full-throated on the naked branches of the oaks and maples—which threatened any day now to burst bud-first with leaves.  Maggie, in the old barn workshop, had a clear view of the meadow.  Junkyard business stayed on the other side of the building, but when Maggie worked the foundry and tinkered with her machines, she liked a bit of the world in front of her: the old world, the world she figured had almost reclaimed itself less than two decades past; a world that undoubtedly would swallow humanity, again.

That very morning Maggie was experimenting with old clay flowerpots, which she had found years ago while scavenging for scrap in the burned out garage of a home not ten miles south.  Up until now she had used the pots – in vain – to grow miniature roses and small pepper plants.  But as no seed she touched ever seemed to reach the sprout stage, there was no loss in finding other ways to take advantage of the unique shape and material of a flowerpot – such as turning it into a furnace for smelting brass. 

So far, success.  Just some brick to stand the pot upon, a hole drilled into the base and fitted with a long copper pipe – at the end of which Maggie had tied the balloon of an old turkey baster to make the draught – and voilà (a word she had appropriated from the tattered pages of her dictionary, and that seemed to fit her mood, most days).  Charcoal was burning, the heat was intense, and the scrap of brass pipe she had tossed inside was quite obviously melting.

I am, she thought cheerfully, a clever girl.

Outside, the gate bell jingled.  Maggie thought about not answering – brass was much more interesting than flesh and blood—but out here, folks would come inside anyway and start poking around until they found her.  She never liked that much.  Her grandfather hadn’t, either.  Territory was a precious thing.  Especially now.  Word of mouth carried far.  You had to keep reminding people of what was yours, until the knowing went so deep it twined and twisted into the fabric of a place.  Until it became part of your identity.  Something no person could ever steal. 

The bell rang again.  Maggie maneuvered an old steel lid on top of the flowerpot foundry – caging the raging heat – and walked quickly through the barn.  She shed gloves, goggles, and her heavy leather apron along the way, running fingers through her short-cropped hair, and picked up one of the old sledgehammers hanging neatly against the wall.  She slung the tool over her shoulder, and ambled out of the barn into the yard. 

A man stood just inside the gate, fingering the string of steel bells hanging from the barbed wire wound around the old wooden rails.  Maggie stopped in her tracks when she saw him, and not simply because he was a stranger.  He was big and lean, dressed in black dusty leather that matched the color of his long hair and eyes.  He wore no shirt beneath his open jacket, and his skin was impossibly pale.  Colder than ice, she thought.  Cold as winter sun, or the river at dawn.  His presence cut, and for one moment Maggie knew him, in the same way she had known her grandfather was dead before ever seeing his body:  with certainty, and dread, and vast terrible loneliness.

The man looked at her sideways, tilting his head just so, away from the bells: an odd, graceful movement that affected only his head, so that the rest of him remained perfectly still.  He had a piercing gaze, sharper than anyone Maggie had ever met; sharp as a hook in her gut, drawing her toward him.  She wanted to take a step, worse than anything—almost as bad as breathing – but she was good at holding her breath, and did so now, forcing herself to stay rooted in one spot as sweat trickled between her shoulder blades and down her breasts.  Her eyes burned from holding his gaze.  She felt naked.  But after a moment, the strange compulsion to walk toward the stranger eased, and she allowed herself to breathe again. 

The man frowned.  “You are the fixer.”

“You have something broken?” Maggie asked, surprised at how calm her voice sounded.  Her hand felt broken – aching fierce from squeezing the handle of the sledgehammer. 

His frown deepened.  “On the road, yes.”

Maggie hesitated.  “Show me.”

He had to think about it, which only made her more uncomfortable.  She imagined her sledgehammer swinging toward his perfect face: heels dug in and ready, ready, ready for anything.  Maggie had not yet found cause to kill a man, but she had scared several since her grandfather’s death.  She had a feeling this one would not take a fright all that easily. 

But work was work, and when strangers showed up on her doorstep needing a fixing, it never seemed right to tell them to go away.  Nearest Enclave was over a day to the south, across the river – and the Eclaves in the north were a bit farther out than that.  This was the only junkyard in the region to service all those folks looking for spare and rare parts – and she could not in good conscience tell anyone desperate enough to make the journey to mosey the hell off her spread. 

So Maggie waited, clear-eyed and tense until the man finally backed away, around the gate.  She followed at a safe distance, walking down the short overgrown drive toward the cracked paved road.  Watching him carefully.  Finding it hard to determine his age.  He had flawless skin, as though he had never spent a day beneath the sun – and was effortlessly graceful, footsteps light as air.  He did not move like the men from Olo or other Enclaves, whose feet seemed part of the earth; and as solid.  Watching him made her afraid – but she spied a glint of silver through the young oaks, and then passed around the bend and saw the machine the man had brought to be fixed. 

It was a motorcycle.  Maggie had never seen one in real life; only in bits and pieces, wreckage, bent scrap; and in pictures from magazines.  Like comparing fossils to paintings.  But this was real.  Onyx, obsidian, made of night; metal polished and shining like some reckless mirage of the past.  For the second time in as many minutes, Maggie stopped breathing.  She would never breathe again, if it would keep the machine genuine, and whole. 

“Oh, my,” she said, unable to look away – knees locked, heart racing.  Aware, dimly, that she deserved what she got if the stranger decided to take advantage of her distraction with a good wallop over her head. 

He remained near the motorcycle, though, regarding her with a thoughtfulness that continued to unnerve.  Sunlight splashed against his hair and clothing, but only served to make him seem more like a shadow. 

“It is a small problem,” he said, his voice a slow rumble; a rubbing purr against the air.  “A torn tire, and nothing more.  But I am…far from my tools.”
Far from home, she imagined he would say instead. Far from everything known. 

“You need a replacement,” she replied, finally looking past the dazzle of chrome to find the ripped tread, so badly torn there was little doubt he had lost the most of the tire while moving at some considerable speed.  “I have something.”

“And is it right?” asked the man.  “Will you serve me well?”

An odd question – or perhaps just odd phrasing – but it irritated Maggie, and before she could stop herself, she replied tartly, “If you plan on paying.”
A cold smile touched his mouth, and though the road was bright and the sky blue, and the morning sun shining, the light seemed to dim around him for just a moment; and the spring chill worsened with a snarl of wind. 

He reached inside his jacket, and then held out his hand.  Small flecks of color sparkled against his gloved palm: rubies, emeralds, diamonds.  Gemstones.  Or plastic.  No way to know for certain, though Maggie couldn’t imagine anyone parting with the real thing.  Not for a tire. 

Maggie did not touch the jewels – afraid that doing so would constitute a bargain sealed.  She studied them from a distance, marveling at their glitter, but finally shook her head.

“I have no use for them,” she told the man. 

“Then, what?” he asked dangerously.  “What do you want?”

“My life,” she said, without thinking – and froze in embarrassment, and fear.  But the words sat on her tongue, and could not be shook loose, and part of her wanted to say them again, louder.  My life.  Do not take my life.

Because she thought he might.  Maggie thought he would be able to, if he wanted, no matter how fast she moved, or how hard she fought.  He had a way about him. 
A cold gleam filled his eyes.  “I heard of you.  Miles away, I heard of you.  The woman who fixes machines.  But you are more than that, I think.”

“Am I?” asked Maggie carefully.  “Where did you come from, that you heard such things?”

But the man did not answer her.  He hid away the gems inside his leather coat, and inclined his head so that his long hair fell around his pale face, sharpening and hiding his features until he resembled a fox more than a man – nothing but a pointed chin and high cheekbones, and eyes that glinted golden.  Maggie found herself unable to look away from his eyes, and though he studied nothing but her face, she felt him as though he was all over her, touching her body in places she did not want to be touched. 

“Your life,” he said.  “I believe that will be an interesting trade.”

And then he moved – blindingly quick – and kissed her mouth.  Maggie could not fight him.  He was too strong.  His lips were cold as ice --so cold, dunking her face into a raging winter river might have felt warmer – and in one dizzying moment it seemed that all the air in her lungs was sucked away, drowning her.  She screamed, but heard her voice only in her head.  She tasted blood.

Excerpt

It was an accident that the Foreign Minister’s wife was found – her body had been hidden quite carefully, in several different locations – but the fortuitous combination of the harsh Beijing winter and several hungry dogs made her discovery quite immediate, without time for decay, and once the forensic team had finished analyzing the woman’s remains it was only a matter of time before the military became involved.

Which explained how, on the eve of Spring Festival, with the thunder of fireworks shaking the streets, Six found herself in a murky massage parlor in the heart of Shanghai, her hands covered in oil as she pounded the brown filthy feet of a man in a wrinkled black suit.

The air reeked.  Cigarette smoke, cheap cologne, a multitude of unwashed bodies that had circulated through the room for hours upon hours, for days on end.  The scents made Six’s nose run, her eyes itch, and though she had held her job for only three hundred sixty minutes – by her watch, anyway, which was atomic in nature and government issued – her brief tenure here was more than enough.  As far as she was concerned, the other girls who worked in this place – legitimately, without pretense – deserved medals.

Not that Six had met any of them.  As per the agreement with the massage parlor’s owner – who, according to his file, had long ago given up his Chinese name for the ridiculous foreign moniker of ‘Lucky John’ – Six had remained virtually locked inside this small room, forced to massage the feet and bodies of one man after another.  If any of those paying guests asked for a different girl, Lucky John was to insist all the others were busy.  And if he did not do exactly that – or if any one of the men discovered Six’s true identity – the repercussions had been made quite clear.

Police clear.  Prison clear.  End of life, clear. 

Six rolled her shoulders, glancing at the man reclining in front of her on the wide red chair.  His eyes were closed, his breathing deep and even. Not asleep, but certainly relaxed. His face was broad and flat; a large mole, replete with long black hair, made a target of his chin.  A toothpick jutted from between his lips.

Six slid her thumbs along the arch of his foot, pushing between his toes.  She pinched hard on the bone.  He jerked, grunting, and she applied more pressure.  The man opened his eyes and kicked at her.  Six allowed his big toe to connect with her chin, though she angled her head just enough to make it a glancing blow.

“Bitch,” he growled, slapping the padded arm of his chair with one hard palm.  “Careful.”

As Six was supposed to be deaf – like all the other girls of Lucky John’s massage parlor – she did not respond.  Merely ducked her head, allowing her straight black hair to fall loose past her face, hiding the grim flat smile that passed fleetingly across her mouth.

Just outside the room’s painted bamboo door, Six heard footsteps.  Quick, then slow, accompanied by Lucky John’s shrill voice.  The man beneath her hands tensed.  So did Six.

The door opened.  Six glimpsed Lucky John’s distraught expression, his eyes large and focused entirely on her – stupid of him, a sure giveaway if these men were in any way observant and paranoid – but her view of the old pimp’s quick retreat was obscured by a broad chest and skinny tie, and then there was another man in the room and the door closed with a quiet click.

Six glanced up and met a flat gaze, cold as the thick black ice covering the old concrete of her first training installation; a gymnasium near the People’s Hall in Beijing, where she had studied alongside the country’s Olympic hopefuls before being culled young, no older than five.  She still remembered.  She remembered training on that ice, out in the blast of arctic wind.  Toughening herself.  Knowing she had to be stronger than the others, and for a different reason entirely.

The newcomer stared at her.  Six dropped her gaze, but not before observing other oddities, such as the man’s utter foreignness, a purely physical difference that nonetheless revealed some kind of Asian ancestor through nothing more than the turn of his dark eyes and the prominence of his cheekbones.  There was a hint of red in his hair, though; white man enough, running through his veins.  Six could still feel him watching her when he shifted slightly, turned to the man reclining on the chair, and said, “I told you not to call me, Chenglei.”

His Mandarin was spoken perfectly, without accent.  Smooth tones, full of the North and its soft curves; an elegant voice.  More cultured than criminal; certainly educated.

Six continued massaging the foot in her hands.  It jerked once, then stilled.  “But you came.”

“I came because you’re trouble,” said the foreigner.  “I came because I keep my eyes on trouble.”

“Trouble.” Chenglei’s foot twitched again.  “Look to yourself, then.  Look, and regret.”

“I have no regrets.”
“All you had to do—”

“I told you no.”

“You did,” Chenglei said.  “But we found another.  And he did not say no.”

The menace in those words was unmistakable, though Six did not understand their meaning.  Nor did she need to.  She was not an interpreter.  Just muscle, a soldier, though at the moment even that did not give her pride.  Too much distraction.  She could feel the listening wire taped between her breasts.  It had been warm, part of her, but now the thin casing was cold – she was cold – the whole room like ice, all the heat sucked away in one breathtaking punch that made her shudder with more than a chill.

Excerpt

The Man was around, which meant that Keeli had to slip out of Butchies through the back, leaving Shelly in the weeds with five tables, one of which had been screaming for their fries just before that familiar starched white shirt ghosted through the front doors. 

“H.I. Bob is here,” Shelly whispered, and just like that, Keeli had to drop everything and dodge.  Health Inspector Bob, aka The Man.

A man who had a distinct disliking for werewolves.  He had already fined Jim Butchie three hundred dollars for keeping Keeli on as a waitress.  Not that werewolves were the reason cited, but it didn’t have to be.  The Man had a reputation, and every other restaurant in the city – the ones that didn’t discriminate – had suffered from his twitchy fingers and high fines.

Blame it on a new law from the Feds, which now required the Food and Health industry to screen all its prospective employees for lycanthropy and other “aggressive” diseases.  Employers weren’t supposed to discriminate based on blood-test results – that, at least, was still illegal – but enforcement was a joke. Humans were running scared nowadays.  Or at least, a little nervous.

Keeli was lucky – she still had a job.  Even the most progressive restaurants fired their non-humans servers after a run-in with the Man.  Of course, most restaurants weren’t owned and run by Jim Butchie, an ex-trucker who embodied the two most sacred words in Keeli’s vocabulary: fuck you.

Butchies was a greasy hole situated in the armpit of east downtown, the round and smelly fringe of the city.  Good cheap food, and open twenty-four hours a day.  Jim lived above his restaurant and could always be counted on to poke his nose into everyone’s business, at every hour of the day.  Jim didn’t seem to need much sleep.  One of the busboys had probably gone up to his apartment by now and told him about H.I. Bob.

Keeli crouched beside the dumpster on the other side of Butchies’s back door.  The smell was overwhelming, but she didn’t move.  She listened to the dishwashers in the pit.  Young men, new to the country, chattering in a patois of Spanish, Chinese, and English that had become common in the lower classes.  Keeli spoke it fluently.

She cleaned her fingernails to kill time, scraping out bits of food from beneath her long nails.  She hated the feel of grease on her skin, her odor after a night on the job.  The scent of wolf, drowned out by the scent of fries and hamburgers.

It could be worse.  At least you have a job.  You work in a place where the people like you.

Yes.  She had nothing to complain about.  Not like the rest of her clan, especially the men, many of whom were finding it difficult to land even grunt work.  Everyone in this part of town knew each other’s business – especially if you were fang or fur.  And no one was hiring fur.

Stupid vampires.  Word gets out on the street that they’re lined up for shit, and suddenly life becomes difficult for all of us.

And it was only going to get worse.  Everyone in the underground knew about the human attack on the vampires.  Rumor called it a rogue element, but that was shit, just some lame excuse.  Keeli didn’t imagine for one instant the humans would stop at just the vampires.  The only surprise was that the werewolves hadn’t been targeted first.  When it came to pure visceral reaction, wolves usually got the boot up the ass before the fangs.

We just aren’t sexy enough.  Keeli glanced down at her striped stockings, her scuffed Doc Martins.  Her torn black T-shirt barely covered her lean midriff, and her spiked hair had been dyed a fresh shade of pink just that morning.  Yeah, she radiated sex appeal.

Not.  Of course, that was the way she wanted it.  She was sick of expectations.

She heard Jim’s voice over the clanging pots and running water.  Good, he was up.  A moment later, H.I. Bob said something nasal, irritating.  Hackles raised, Keeli edged deeper into the shadow cast by the dumpster.  The alley was poorly lit, but she always had trouble judging what humans could see or hear, and she never underestimated others.

A dangerous thing, her grandmother had taught her.  Arrogance leaves you vulnerable.

Vulnerable.  Something Keeli had vowed to never let herself be.

She shifted, stretching cramped muscles.  She did not like sitting still for long periods of time – it was the wolf in her, the need to run, to feel the ground beneath her feet, the rush of air in her hair, against her skin, drawing out each breath like it was her last living moment in the world –

Keeli sagged against the wall, savoring the cool damp brick.  Her fingernails felt too sharp.  The wolf rolled within her chest, close to the surface.  Too close.

Jim’s voice got loud and then receded, followed quickly by H.I. Bob.  Kitchen inspection was over, which meant Keeli’s retreat was near an end.  She’d have to go back in soon.  She had responsibilities, tables waiting.  Shelly needed help.

Keeli swallowed hard.  It would be so easy to walk away from all this.  But if she did, all her work – the slow process of proving her self-control to the clan and her grandmother – would be worth nothing.  She could not allow that.  She was finally making her own way, defying expectation.  Nothing was worth losing that independence.

At the end of the alley, she heard a sudden burst of laughter.  Men, drunk.  Keeli’s lip curled.  There were a lot of bars in east downtown, with patrons of the human and werewolf variety.  The only difference was that werewolves rarely drank enough to become intoxicated.  Too much risk.  Control over the wolf could be a tenuous thing – for some wolves more than others.

And let’s face it – no one likes a drunk, wolf or not.

Especially when they sounded like these guys.  Keeli edged around the dumpster, peering at the alley mouth.  Butchies’s back door was close to the main drag, so Keeli had a fine view of the sidewalk.  She heard the men coming, sounding four strong.  A stumbling walk, alternating pace from fast to slow.  A pause; the sound of a zipper.  Piss.  More laughter.

I’ll have to remind myself not to walk that way after my shift.  I have to deal with enough awful smells.

From the other direction, a new sound.  Soft soles.  A light quick tread.  Woman.

What shitty timing.  Keeli’s stomach tightened as the woman drew near.  She would have seen the men by now, who were still motionless, loudly comparing the size of their dicks.

“Turn around,” Keeli breathed.  “Come on, lady.  Common sense.”

Keeli listened hard, heard a shift in the woman’s gait.  It faded slightly, but not enough. Not enough.

She crossed the street.

The laughter stopped.

“Shit,” Keeli muttered.  She glimpsed the woman on the other side of the street, walking quickly, almost stumbling over her feet.  A short bulky figure wrapped in a long coat.  Curls, blond and bouncing.

Still, silence.  Keeli held her breath.  Maybe these guys weren’t shit, maybe they would let her go.  Maybe –

The whistles began.  Even as Keeli stepped away from the shadows, moving toward the alley mouth, she heard more laughter, low and hard.  A growl rose up in her throat.

“Sweet,” said one man, and another murmured, “Come on.”

Keeli burst from the alley just in time to see the men take off after the woman.  Drunk, but quick: they crossed the street in seconds and ran down the woman.  A circle of arms, rough hands; she screamed.

And then Keeli was there and the wolf was high in her throat, clawing at her skin, roping muscle, bone; a terrible strength, and the fury was worse, rage seething under the shadow of righteousness, hunger.  She burst into the circle of men, breaking them apart with sharp kicks, biting nails into flesh.  Close up, they smelled like the docks; fish and machine grease, mixed with alcohol.  Big men, taller than her by a foot, with shoulders thick and broad.

Keeli slammed her foot into a kneecap – savored the sharp crack, the scream torn from the man’s throat.  Hands wrapped around her waist.  Keeli grabbed meaty fingers and yanked back; they snapped and she tightened her grip, twisting, grinding broken bone.  Her assailant’s screams made her eardrums vibrate.  He tried to wrench free, hauling Keeli off her feet.  She tucked her knees to her chest and refused to let go.  When he whirled near one of his wide-eyed friends, she kicked out, landing a boot heel into the man’s chin.

Fur pressed though her skin, sleek as her rage, consuming her body as she sank deeper into fire.  Yes, she thought.  Yes.  This is what I have been pushing away.

The man trapped against her screamed even louder.  Keeli released him and fell to her feet.  Her claws scraped concrete.  The men ran – this time, away – but in two quick steps Keeli captured a straggler.  Strong – the wolf in her was strong – and she slammed him into the ground, wrenching his left arm behind his back.  Canines slid gentle against her lip, jaw narrowing, jutting sharp.  Keeli lowered her head.

She felt a presence, then, at her side. Strong hands grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked hard.  Keeli did not think; she whirled, snarling, and sank her teeth into flesh.

Blood filled her mouth, hot and bitter. It tasted good.

And then – oh, oh, fucking shit what have I done – the blood turned sour and she ripped her head away, gasping.

Gone too far, too far.  She had bitten a human – and oh, if not one then how about another, because she had wanted it – in that moment she had wanted blood – and there was still a man beneath her, the man she had been going to kill – and the old rage felt so damn good –

Keeli leaned over and vomited.  Again, she felt hands in her hair, gentler this time.

“It’s all right,” whispered a man, in a voice so dark, Keeli shuddered.  Her gaze slid sideways and slowly, slowly, up.

Sagging leather boots filled her vision, and then black silk robes – reminiscent of old Asia – belted tight around a narrow waist, hugging a lean chest and bony shoulders.  A pale striking face, with more bone than flesh, framed by loose black hair threaded with braids.  His right cheek glittered.

And his eyes…

Keeli stared for one precious moment, lost in the velvet underground of that deep-set gaze.  And then a click – the recognition of Something Not Quite Right, and she realized what he was, and what she had bitten.  Relief made her weak, as did humiliation, but she fought for composure, stamping down another fresh swell of inexplicable rage.

“Vampire,” she growled, embarrassed at how her voice broke on that one word.  “Get the hell away from me.”

“No,” he said, so calm, quiet.  As though the warmth dripping on her hand, the blood from his torn arm, meant nothing.  Her bite, meaningless.  “Not until you release the human.”

The man beneath her trembled.  She smelled piss, sour sweat.  His friends were long gone.  He was all she had left, and the wolf still wanted him dead.  One bite, a break in his neck.  He would never hurt anyone again.

Never again.  No one’s ever going to get hurt again.

“You must calm yourself,” whispered the vampire, as though he could read her thoughts.  He bent so close they brushed noses.  Keeli froze.  “Please.  Control the wolf.  You have witnesses.”

It was the ‘please’ that finally dulled her anger – that, and the urgency in his voice.  Her gaze darted sideways.

Jim, Shelly, and a handful of strangers stood a short distance away.  Everyone but Jim stared at her with eyes that seemed too full of shock, numb horror, to ever fade away into a forgivable memory.  Shelly had her arms wrapped around the victim of the attempted rape, her straight red bob pressed against blond curls.  Jim stood over them both.  He looked worried.

Shame burned away the rest of Keeli’s rage, sending the wolf on swift retreat.  Everything she had worked for – trying so hard to fit in – to be, for once, more woman than wolf --

“This is not how you wish humans to remember your kind,” whispered the vampire, still close. His cheek shimmered; round lines, etched in gold. For the first time, Keeli noticed his scent.  Dry, with a hint of wild grass, horse hair.  The taint of age. “This is not how you wish them to remember you.”

Keeli looked at her hands, still holding down the shivering man.  She was fully human again.  Pink skin, clear nails.  She let go of her captive and slid off his back.  He continued to lie there, his eyes squeezed shut.  She almost touched him – to comfort, reassure – and then memory resurfaced.

“He deserved it,” she said.  “Deserved to be scared, for what he was going to do to that woman.”

“Maybe,” said the vampire.  “But you would have given up your own life to do it.  He’s not worth that.”

Keeli looked at the vampire; really looked, hard, and saw nothing but calm acceptance.  No anger.  She glanced down at his arm.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and it was one more shock to add to her collection: apologizing to a vampire.  “Will you be all right?”

His mouth twitched.  “I’ve had worse.” He stood and held out his hand.  Keeli refused to touch him.

Awful, disgusting.  Vampires are monsters.

Monsters beneath a veneer of refinement, big money.  Hypocrites and fakes.  Pretending to be better, more human than everyone else.

Maybe this one is different.

Yeah, and maybe she hadn’t just lost herself to the wolf.

Keeli pushed away from him, scrambling to her feet.  She heard sirens and found herself saying, “You should go.  The cops will be here soon. They might have a mech with them.”

The vampire hesitated.  He glanced at Jim and the others, still hanging back, watching.  “What of you?  I can carry the both of us.”

Keeli shook her head.  “I don’t run.  Ever.”

The vampire’s eyes narrowed.  “And will you think I’m a coward if I leave you?”

Why the hell am I having this conversation?

“You’re a vampire,” Keeli said.  “I already think you’re a coward.  Amongst other things.”

Again, that odd twitch around the vampire’s mouth.  “Good-bye, wolf.”

“The name is Keeli, fang-boy.”

“Michael.  And I’m not the only one with fangs.” He reached out, a blur, and brushed Keeli’s lips with cool fingertips.  She was too surprised to say a word – surprised at the gentleness of his touch, surprised at her reaction to it.  She saw blood on his fingers; he had wiped her mouth. 

“When they ask, you did not bite anyone,” he said quietly, and then leapt into the air – up and up – a shadow passing into shadow, into the night, until he was gone.  Not even an outline against the dim stars.

“Thanks for helping me,” she murmured.  The sirens were loud now, eardrum-shattering.  She looked at Jim and Shelly; the weeping woman, her weeping attacker.

Keeli squared her shoulders and prepared herself for a long and difficult night.

Dirk & Steele

This scene was in the original draft of SHADOW TOUCH, back when I considered having Dirk & Steele play more of a role within the story.

Eventually, though, I decided that the boys (as much as I love them) simply cut into the flow of the novel far too much, taking the focus away from Artur and Elena. SHADOW TOUCH, after all, is their story.  And besides, everyone else will get their own turn on the page. Eventually.

This deleted scene takes place near the beginning of the novel, some time after Chapter One. 

The Red Heart of Jade

The Red Heart of Jade went through many incarnations, and one of the first versions of the novel involved a group of shadowy creatures, a race of beings haunting Dean, chasing Miri—all for some unknown, nefarious purpose.

The scene you’ll read comes from that alternate version of the novel, which was ultimately abandoned.

I hope you enjoy this snippet of what once was, and could have been, The Red Heart of Jade.

Soul Song

When I first conceived of Soul Song, it was meant to be a direct sequel to my novella, A Dream of Stone and Shadows.  Gargoyles, witches – you name it.  Obviously, that changed along the way, but here’s a taste of what might have been – a glimpse into the lives of the gargoyle brothers as they attempt to help M’cal and Kitala – the hero and heroine of Soul Song – fight the dark forces that seek the enslavement of magical beings.

I hope very much that you enjoy this deleted scene.

Excerpt

Death was an inconvenience that Blue could have done without, and if it hadn’t been for the two highly moral individuals breathing down his neck, he probably would have pretended amnesia and simply ignored the news.  After all, he was practically an invalid, newly awakened from a coma.  Barely out of the bomb-blasted woods. He had an excuse.  And for Christ’s sake, if his father was dead, there really wasn’t much that Blue could do about it now.

No such luck, though.  Three days later, Blue found himself bundled onto a commercial airliner, flying solo to San Francisco.  He was the only person seated in the First Class Cabin—not a surprise, knowing Dela and her freewheeling credit card—but Blue did find it rather disconcerting to discover that the flight crew had been given…instructions…on how to handle him.

As in, with kid gloves.  Which meant that for fourteen hours straight, Blue found himself under the carefully pressed and brightly smiling care of three women, who—though he objected strenuously—showered him with books, magazines, hot towels, a private DVD player—and one very large box of chocolate chip cookies that resembled, in the most vague way possible, large and bloated zoo animals.  Blue felt like a stinking rich twelve year old being sent on his first airplane ride.  Only thing missing was a tour of the cockpit and a pair of those little plastic wings.  If kids even got those anymore.  Airlines were turning into cheap bastards.

More unfortunate than all of the unwanted attention, however, was the fact that the flight gave Blue a lot of time to think.  As in, about all the different ways he was fucked till Sunday.  Going home to his father’s funeral was just the icing on the cake.  And so very convenient.

Convenient enough that he briefly considered the possibility of a conspiracy between his mother and Roland.  Something—anything—to keep Blue from running away to continue his—now fruitless—hunt for Santoso and the core leaders of his organization.  His mother, God bless her, was capable of such deception, and Roland—well, he was a master at games of manipulation, especially for good causes.

Like keeping his people alive.

Because Dirk & Steele is a family, Blue thought, hearing the echo of Dela’s voice inside his head.  All we have are each other.

Misfits, outcasts—even some pillars of the community—hiding in plain sight, brought together by an uncommon bond formed by nothing more than the odd genetic quirk—and an unbending devotion to helping others.  Living lives less ordinary—off the beaten path inside another world where telepaths and telekinetics and honest-to-God shape-shifters rubbed elbows with the mundane.  Secret lives standing in line at the grocery store, at the gas station, sitting on the toilet in the stall next door, flying in an airplane—this freaking airplane—concentrating the entire time to prevent an accident, a short in the system, one tiny glitch that might send everyone down in a massive ball of flames --

Breathe, Blue told himself, gripping the arms of his seat.  Breathe in, breathe out.  Relax.  Just…relax.  Your mind knows what to do.  This is nothing.  Nothing.

Yeah, and there was nothing like thinking about nothing to make a person fixate utterly and completely on something.

He was so screwed.

And yet, halfway into the flight, with the lights turned down low, he finally began to relax.  His shields felt strong, solid and tight, and though he could feel the hum of power surrounding him like a cocoon, it did not rattle his bones or buzz his tongue.  Everything was quiet inside his head.  Safe and very still.

And feeling very safe, and very still, he began to think, again, of Santoso Rahardjo.  As well as the woman who worked for him.

Blue’s gut ached, as did his ribs and right leg.  His knee popped when he straightened it.  His left hand was weak.  The backs of his eyes felt odd, which coincided with the occasional bout of stars bursting in his vision.  No complaints, though.  He was still walking, talking, and if he had his way, he would be doing more than that in no time.  Because even though Dela and Roland had assured him that someone was going to take over his investigation—that all his work ferreting out the hierarchy of body parts and money would not go to waste—Blue was not going to be satisfied until he was back in the game, danger or no danger.

You’re a control freak.  A micro-manager.  Trust your friends.  They know how to do their jobs.

And if they got hurt?  Better him than them.  Besides, it seemed to Blue that despite his miraculous survival, there was still a big fat target painted on his head.  And sooner or later, someone—probably that blonde—would come and finish the job.

Stop it, he told himself, digging into the box beside him for a cookie.  Focus on now.  What you have to do when you get home.

Which was all very simple.  Heal up, take care of his mother—if she would let him—and attend a funeral where no one would know his name.

Easy as pie.

Or not.  Because soon after landing in San Francisco and hobbling through customs, Blue encountered a long row of mounted television monitors, all of them tuned to CNN, and it was like watching—in awful visual stereo—one long eulogy.  He did not notice at first—was too busy trying to act like he wasn’t in pain—but through the chatter and crush of the airport crowd, the background noise crept in.  A woman, with a deep pleasant voice.  Blue heard her say the words “tragic loss,” and “a great man,” and then, quite suddenly, there was a name to go with those adjectives, a memorable name, a name Blue knew as well as his own, because it was his own.

Felix Perrineau.  Dead at the age of seventy.  Heart attack in his sleep.

The lights in the terminal flickered. Blue clamped down hard on his emotions, fighting himself, but it was too late: sparks shot from the ceiling fixtures, the electrical sockets, raining down as people ducked and shouted.  Static leapt like baby lightening bolts from the carpet. 

Blue said nothing.  His hands curled into fists.  He closed his eyes.

The lights did not go out.

But a moment later, his cell phone began to ring.

***

The call was from a stranger, a man who knew his real name.  Blue did not like that, but he agreed to meet the fellow because he also knew his mother’s name—and he had a message from her In her native language.

The stranger’s Farsi was bad, or maybe that was the cell phone connection, but Blue caught enough and all the worry he felt for his friends transferred in one gut-wrenching second to his mother.

“Sleep,” said the man, his voice cracking, his accent poor.  “Sleep, my son.  I wish that sleep come to your eyes and you’ll sleep like a stone in the water.”

Words from an ancient lullaby, one that Blue had not heard for years on end.  His mother did not sing anymore.  She did not speak her language.  She did not do anything that reminded her of Kandahar, of Afghanistan.  Too much pain.  Her sisters had died there.

But if his mother had shared that lullaby with a stranger—a song he knew meant a great deal to her --

Something’s wrong, Blue thought, dialing her home number.  And it sure as hell isn’t grief.

She was not at the house.  She was not at the law office, either, and her secretary was no help, confessing only that Mahasti had been gone for the past several days, away on a family emergency.

Some emergency.  Blue tried her cell phone.  No luck there, either.

Limited options.  No time to call in the agency.  Damn.  What a time for an ambush.

And if it is Santoso involved?  If this really was a ruse?

Time for a fight, then.  No holds barred.  No misguided ethics or hesitation.  No tricks or subterfuge, either.  Blue gathered up his strength and walked through the airport terminal.  He did not try to slip away without being see—or better, wait out the man and follow him.  Instead, he marched straight into baggage claim, searching for an older gentleman wearing a blue suit and purple tie.

Blue found him easily, the man standing out like a diamond in the rough of straggling airport humanity.  Tall, elegant, and lean—waiting quietly beside carousel one.  All easy strength, easy class, good breeding melting from his pores.  The man’s silver hair was thick and full, his jaw set, his keen eyes a very bright shade of silver.  He looked remarkably like Blue’s father.

“You’re family,” Blue said to him, when he was close enough to say anything at all.  Introductions on his part, he thought, were completely unnecessary—and somewhat of a relief.  Because maybe Santoso wasn’t involved, after all, and this was just what it seemed to be—a family matter, overdue and difficult.  Nothing Blue needed to kill over.  Not yet, anyway.

The man did not smile.  “My name is Brandon.  I’m here to take you home, Mr. Perrineau.”

Mr. Perrineau.  Blue could not remember the last time he had been addressed by his given name.  He thought, perhaps, never.

“You can call me Blue,” he said cautiously. “That’s good enough.”

“Good enough,” Brandon echoed, mouth crooking upward.  “If you like.  Though I can assure you there’s no need to hide from the other.  It is your legal name.”

“Really.” Blue tried not to laugh.  “If you spent any time around my father, Brandon, I think you would understand why it would be totally…inappropriate…for me to take his name.”

“Bygones,” murmured the man, and pointed toward the double doors leading out of the airport.  “If you don’t have any bags...”

Blue did not.  What he did have was a burning desire to go home to his apartment and get his gun.

“Where are we going?” he asked, unmoving.  “And why would my mother pass on a message to you, instead of calling me herself?  Where is she?”

“At your father’s house.” Brandon walked slowly backwards, towards the exit behind him.  “She is safe, she is healthy, and the only reason she did not call you herself is that she wanted to make a point.  Something that would make you…sit up and listen.”

“My mother doesn’t need messengers to make me sit up and listen,” Blue replied sharply.  “Something else is going on here.”

“Of course,” Brandon said.  He turned around and walked through the exit.  This time, Blue followed.

***

It took them two hours to drive to his father’s estate.  A rambling drive, over winding roads that curled and curled into the mountains.  Blue occasionally caught wild glimpses of the sea, heard the cries of gulls mixing with the rasp of ravens.  The air was sweet.  Beyond the confines of the Audi, his mind encountered only silence.

Brandon did not talk, nor did Blue encourage him.  No energy to waste.  His body hurt.  He could not stop thinking about his mother.  Santoso was there, too, but more distant.  For the first time since waking up in Malaysia, Blue was ready to hand the case off to his friends.

“We’re close,” Brandon finally said.  His posture was relaxed, voice easy and deep.  The road ahead of them cut through deep forest, shrouded from the sun.

“Are you his brother?” Blue asked, because sitting beside Brandon was like being next to his father, and that was more disconcerting than he wanted to admit.  Even more so than the sudden spike of electricity buzzing his brain.  Close, yes.  Damn close.

“Does it matter?” Brandon replied.  “I thought you wanted nothing to do with the family.”

Blue pushed his nails into his palms.  “I don’t believe I ever had a choice.  I know my mother didn’t.”

Brandon said nothing.  Merely tapped on the brakes, slowing the car to a crawl until he pulled onto a narrow turn-off that appeared, quite suddenly, on the far side of a massive cedar.  Blue glimpsed a blinking red light—some laser sensor set in the ground—and knew that ahead of them, someone had been alerted to their presence.

“This is your first time here,” Brandon said.

“Yes,” Blue lied.

Brandon glanced at him, and for a moment Blue wondered if he knew the truth.  But all he said was, “Your mother arrived several days ago.  I promise you, she’s safe.”

“Safe’s not enough,” Blue said, unclenching his hands.  “She better be healthy, happy, ready to dance the tango—because if she’s not any of those things, if my father has hurt her, all of you are fucked and good.”

“So little trust?”

“No trust.  At all.”

Brandon’s only response was a grim smile—which Blue did not find comforting in the slightest.

The house looked the same as he remembered; a mansion made of logs, some California dream of rustic wonder that had always caused Blue to speculate how a man like his father—who had a heart as small and hard as a hollow walnut casing—could possibly appreciate, or even want to live, in a place of such wild beauty.  The mind boggled.

Men in dark clothing moved along the periphery of the house, deep in the woods.  Blue saw some of them with his own eyes, but there were others waiting out of sight.  They carried radios, earpieces, tazers; Blue could feel the electrical currents in his head.  He thought about shorting them out, but held back. Later, maybe.

Brandon parked the car in front of the house.  Blue glimpsed movement behind the windows.  He began to open his door, but Brandon caught his arm and said, “Careful now.”

Blue stared at his hand.  “I thought this was supposed to be safe.”

Brandon released him, but his eyes were hard.  “For your mother,” he said, and Blue could not read the terrible emotion that swept through his face.  “But for you?  Be careful.”

Blue heard the crunch of gravel; Brandon looked away and quickly got out of the car.  Blue stared at his back for one brief moment, gave up the question on his lips—and, gritting his teeth, opened up his own door to follow.  His knee popped; the entire right side of his body felt stiff.  His confinement to the plane—and the car—had not done him any favors.  He tried not to hobble.

A security guard stood nearby, rifle in hand, a pistol strapped to his side.  Blue thought about shattering the man’s eardrum—one high voltage shock from the radio device in his ear would do it—but again, control won out.  Caution, being prudent.  Timing was everything.

Brandon gestured to Blue, and together, the two of them walked up to the house.  The front doors—carved and embedded with stained glass—opened wide as they neared.  Inside, shadows, the outline of hard wood furniture.  No lights.  The curtains were drawn.  Blue caught the edge of movement, and a woman stepped into the light.

“Mom,” Blue said, and his relief was nothing less than a sucker punch.  He forced himself to breathe.

“Felix,” she said.  Her voice was soft but firm, no sign of fear or weakness.  She wore a dark gray gabardine suit, closely tailored to her full figure.  Her thick black hair—courtesy of a good dye job—curled in smooth waves to her shoulders, framing a round face that might have been sweet if her eyes had been as soft as her body.  Instead, here gaze was black, sharp, narrow—closer to an eagle than a dove—and Blue did not miss the shadows in her gaze, the appearance of a new wrinkle in her forehead.

Mahasti glanced at Brandon.  “Did you explain anything to him?”

“Of course not,” he replied.  “It wasn’t my place.”

“Not your place,” she echoed sarcastically, and shook her head.  She held out her hand to Blue.  “Come here.  Let me look at you.  Your employer said there was an accident.”

“Mom,” he said firmly, ignoring her scrutiny. “What’s going on?”

“Your father,” she said, and the disgust in her voice was profound.  “Your father and his tricks.”

“He’s dead,” Blue said, searching her face.  “Tricks are for the living.”

Brandon stepped past them and entered the house.  The moment he disappeared around the door, Blue moved in close and grabbed his mother’s shoulders.  She was a short woman; he had to bend over to peer into her eyes.

“We can leave right now,” he told her quietly.  “Say the word and we’re out of here.  No one will be able to stop us.”

“Ever the optimist,” she murmured, looking away.  “I am so sorry, Felix.  So very sorry.  If it was just myself involved, I would never have allowed this to go so far.  Would never have agreed to anything.  But it is not just me, and I cannot…I cannot find a way out.  Not this time.”

“Mom.”

“No.” She pulled away from him.  “I am a poor mother.  I am a terrible mother, for this.  A mother who cannot protect her child --” Her mouth tightened, and the fear that Blue had pushed away returned again, hard and strong.  Stars danced in his vision; he tried not to sway.

They entered the house.  It was not the first time Blue had been inside his father’s mountain estate, but the previous occasion had been uninvited, of the breaking and entering kind.  Under the cover of darkness—a teenage exercise—creeping through the woods, disabling security measures with nothing but a thought.  Shutting down the grid for a mile around.  A reckless act, but one that Blue knew could never be traced back to him.  No fingerprints, no tools, no explanation.  Just a faulty system.  A glitch.

Nothing had changed.  Blue felt the security cameras tracking their movements as they walked through the main living area—an open space divided by pieces of expensive furniture and sculpture—vases and statues that were distinctly Asian in origin.  They looked very old.  Illegal acquisitions, probably.  Blue had learned more about that sort of thing over the past three months than he had any interest in knowing, but a man had to be polite—and his best friend was newly married to an archaeologist who had strong opinions on the theft and sale of ancient artifacts on the black market.

Better rocks and glass than flesh and blood, Blue thought.  Better those things, any day.

Their footsteps echoed; the house appeared empty, but Blue felt security lingering just out of sight.  An odd feeling began rumbling through his gut; a terrible suspicion.  He said nothing, though—simply watched his mother walk with a straight spine, watched as she turned her head to stare at Brandon, watched as Brandon slowed to look back at her with an expression that could only be called unhappy.  It was a look of familiarity, as though Brandon had known his mother much longer than a simple handful of days.

And it made Blue nauseas all over again.  A sensation that worsened as he pushed his mind ahead and found a fat wad of electricity—a collection of circuits and power so concentrated, so tangled and twisted, his teeth buzzed on the energy.  Close, so close—they rounded a corner in the hall, a hall with only one door, and Blue thought, You’re there.  Goddammit, but you’re there.

Brandon did not hesitate when he reached the door.  He opened it, and there on the other side was an electronic fortress, a web of wires and monitors and flashing screens, which provided the only light in the room; a blue glow, shimmering.  The monitors surrounded, covered, and were suspended over a giant bed dressed in creamy satin sheets and overstuffed pillows.

And on that bed, snug within the cocoon, lay a familiar man who was, unfortunately, very much alive.

“Huh,” Blue grunted, staring at his father.  He looked the same as his pictures, and almost the same as the last time Blue had seen him.  Only thinner, with more hollows in his face.  A fine resemblance to Brandon’s aged elegance.

The old man did not look at them.  His fingers skimmed the keyboard in his lap, his gaze flickering over the screens in front and above him.  His mouth moved; he spoke silently to himself.  Off to the side, a flat-paneled television broadcasted a muted CNN.  Blue saw his father’s picture flash briefly, followed by overhead shots of a funeral in progress.  Men in dark suits were carrying a casket.  Blue recognized the faces of several heads of state.

“I’m being buried in France,” his father suddenly said, voice low and sardonic, still with that elegant soft edge he remembered so well.  His fingers never stopped moving, and his eyes remained trained on his computer screen, which cast a blue glow on his face.  “Nice little show, isn’t it?”

“Only if you’re psychotic,” Blue replied.  “But oh, wait.  You are.”

“I prefer being referred to as complex,” said Perrineau.  “Besides, a diagnosis of actual psychosis is dependent on the perceived normalcy of the rest of society.  And to everyone outside this house?  I am—or rather, was—as sane as apple pie.”

And richer than God.  Which, in Blue’s opinion, mattered more to most people than morals or loose marbles.

“Felix,” Mahasti said, stepping toward the bed. “Don’t play word games with your son.  I want this over and done with.”

“My son,” murmured the old man, finally looking at Blue.  His eyes were small and hard; the dim lights of the room only accentuated the shadows on his pale skin.  His fingers stopped moving.  “I don’t believe he ever wanted to be my son.”

“I had a good reason,” Blue replied, refusing to look at his mother.  “And even if I didn’t, I don’t believe you ever wanted to be my father.  I wasn’t…white enough for you.”
Perrineau narrowed his eyes.  “God doesn’t love whiners, boy.  I love them even less.”

“Felix,” Brandon murmured.

“Felix,” Perrineau mimicked.  He tossed aside his keyboard, but it did not land far.  Not for any lack of effort, either.  Blue was surprised at the show of weakness, but before he could comment, the old man said, “Wipe that look off your face, boy.  I didn’t bring you here to gawk.”

“Could have fooled me.  But since we’re on the subject, why did you go to all the trouble?  Because pretending to be dead?  That’s rather…extreme.”

“Maybe I want to reconcile,” Perrineau said, but there was a sly glint in his eye, and Blue shook his head, folding his arms over his chest.  His ribs ached.  His heart ached, too, and that was unexpected.

You should have been cold to this.  Should have expected it.  You can’t let it bother you anymore.  Not after all these years.

Years spent telling himself he did not need a father, that his mother was enough, that his friends were family and that nothing else mattered.  But here, now, a mouthful of words—and the old storm was back, with all the same disappointment.  It made Blue sick with anger.

“Forget this.” He reached for his mother’s hand.  “We’re out of here.”

“You leave, you pay,” Perrineau said immediately, voice hard.  “Trust me when I say the price will be steep.”
“You better not be threatening my life.”
Perrineau smiled.  “And your mother?”

Brandon made a small sound.  Mahasti pulled her hand away.  Her eyes were hooded, dark.

“Do not use me against him,” she said to Perrineau.  “Felix.  I thought we had an understanding.”

“You’re a lawyer, my dear.  And I fucked you.  Surely you know me better than that.”

Blue’s hands spasmed into fists.  “Don’t talk to her like that.”

“Or what?  You’ll kill me?” Perrineau bared his teeth.  “Good, boy.  You be good and do that.  See what it gets you.”
A one way ticket to hell and back, Blue thought, forcing himself to breathe.  His uncurled his fists, but that was all; the knot in his chest simply got tighter and harder, like some bitter plug pushing up against his heart.  Blue tasted his shields; they were still strong, but much more of this, and that could change.  And if it did, with his temper running so strong…

He felt his mother watching him, her careful mask fracturing; the cool woman gone into fear.  She knew.  He could see it in her eyes.  Blue wondered if she still remembered the feeling of the shovel in her hands, digging those graves.

“Boy,” Perrineau said, drawing out the word, saying it like a slow hammer fall.  One word, one statement, one question—all of which demanded a response.

“Yes,” Blue said, swallowing his pride.

His father relaxed against his pillows.  “Better.  No room for indulgence, here.  No room for anything of the sort.  You come here, you listen, you do as you are told.  If you don’t, I have a remedy.  I have an answer.  Might be I’m dead to the world, but that doesn’t mean no one will hear me.  I’m a Perrineau, boy.  I’m the goddamn Good Samaritan.  People think angels kiss my ass.”

Blue said nothing.  His mother did not move. Brandon stood near, a shadow at her shoulder.

Perrineau looked him dead in the eye.  “I have another son.  Did you know that?  He is twenty-seven years old.  His mother was a waitress in one of my New York restaurants.  She was beautiful and stupid and I married her because she looked like she would be a good mother.  And she was.  Very good.  My son?  His name is Daniel.  Thanks to you, Felix was already taken.  So, there.  Thanks to your mother, you have another piece of me.  Blood and a name.  Felix, Jr.” He shook his head, smiling.  “Your brother, though, is legitimate, legal, and my heir.  The only problem is that he doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

“Smart,” Blue said, fighting his emotions, schooling his face—trying not to reveal how shaken he was that he had a brother.  He glanced at his mother, but her mask was back in place: cool, quiet.  And, he thought, unapologetic.  She did not look at him, which was a clue—but Blue was in no position to pin her down.  He could feel his father watching, resting still as a corpse, and it almost seemed as though his pale skin glittered beneath the light of his electronics, sharp as diamond.  Cold and perfect.

“Daniel is smart enough,” Perrineau finally replied, quiet, his gaze unflinching.  “Smart enough to evade me for the past six months.  I kept his existence a secret, you know.  Until now.  I worried about enemies, kidnappers, bounties.  A rich man’s son is never safe.  Never really himself until it is time to take his father’s place.”

So what does that say about me, you son of a bitch?  What does that say about how you feel toward me?

A whole damn lot.

“So you lost him,” Blue said.  “Another son went bye-bye.  So fucking what?”

“I need to find him,” Perrineau said.  “Right fucking now.  I’ve certainly poured in enough money.  Hired all manner of discreet professionals.  A wasted effort.  Daniel is…slippery.”

Slippery enough to make his father desperate.  Very truly desperate.  Reckless, even.  For a moment, all Blue could do was stare, wondering if the sudden chill on his skin was a sign of Hell freezing over.

“You staged your own death draw him home,” he murmured.  “All of this…just to lure him out into the open.  Goddamn.  You are crazy.”

“Maybe,” Perrineau said, just as softly.  “But it hasn’t worked.  Which implies that my son either hates me more than I thought, or he isn’t in any position to return.”

“If he’s dead, you mean.”

The old man narrowed his eyes.  “I’ll be dead soon enough and that’s no lie.  So if Daniel is gone from this world, and I join him…”

“Brandon will be a very rich man.”

His father laughed.  “Clever.  You don’t even act tempted.”

“Because I’m not.” Not tempted in the slightest.  Blue did not want his father’s money.  He did not want the power or the name. All his life, struggling to be his own man—I don’t want your place, never, not ever—and he was not about to turn and tuck tail now.

Blue glanced at his mother.  She had been quiet, which was unusual. Mahasti was not a timid woman.  She was not shy or easily cowed, and even now, when she returned his gaze, he saw that the fire, the sharpness, had not dulled in the slightest.  Yet still, silence—and he could not imagine it, even if Felix had threatened her.

We could leave here, he thought again, ready to tear down his shields.  Disable the network, the grid, and if anyone tried to hurt them --

No.  Blue clenched his jaw.  No, not that.

But still, escape.  The problem was what to do afterwards.  His mother had a life.  She had a career, friends, a home she had paid for after years of hard work.  Her freedom meant everything to her; a testament to everything that had been denied the family left behind in Afghanistan. Live life on the run?  Never.

Blue looked at Perrineau.  “What do you want?”

His father briefly shut his eyes.  “Isn’t it obvious?  I want you to find him.  I want you to ferret out your brother and bring him home.”

“And you think I can do it?”

Perrineau laughed.  It was a weak laugh—a choke, a gasp—and the slight undertone of a wheeze sounded sick, tired, like there was not enough breath left in his lungs for anything so strenuous.

“What is wrong with you?” Blue asked softly.

“Age,” Perrineau replied flatly.

“No,” Blue said.  “No, it’s more than that.”

“More is not your concern,” the old man snapped, spittle flecking the sides of his mouth.  “I want you to find your brother.”

“You think I can do it?”

“I know you can.  I know you can and I know you will, no questions asked.” Perrineau shoved his hand beneath his pillow and pulled out a thick brown file.  He tossed the paperwork to Blue, who caught it against his chest and flinched.  More cold swept over his skin.

He opened the file.  Read the first line, “REGARDING THE OPERATION OF DIRK & STEELE,” and stopped cold.

His father began to laugh.  Mahasti stepped in front of Blue and pulled the file from his numb fingers.  She flipped through the pages and returned it to his hands, pointing.  Blue saw his name and a candid shot of his face.  Below the picture was his military history, age, and address—as well as speculation, but no conclusions, about his ‘extrasensory ability.’

“He knows almost everything,” his mother murmured.  “There are dossiers on your friends.  Pictures, too.  The proof is all there.  I examined it myself.”

“Impossible,” Blue hissed.  “Most of what we do isn’t visible to the naked eye.”

His mother stared.  “There is photographic evidence of a man turning into a crow.  And another, of a cheetah.”

Blue tasted blood; the inside of his cheek.  He looked over his mother at Perrineau.  “No one will believe this.  No one.  They’ll accuse you of falsifying the pictures.”

“Certainly,” said his father.  “If I intended to disseminate them to the general public.  Fortunately, I have better contacts than that.”

Blue’s vision blurred; he could barely see past the stars, the spinning.  He bit down on his tongue, hard, and tasted more blood.  The pain helped.  “And if I find your son—my brother?  What then?  You won’t share the pictures?  Right.  Forgive me if I don’t trust you.”

His father’s smile widened.  “I must admit, the temptation is considerable.  I have never, in my life, considered the possibility of such…wondrous things.  The military applications alone…” He stopped, sly.  “Well, it makes me wonder about what you can do.”

“Stop this,” Mahasti said.  “Stop.”

“I can make it stop,” Blue said, and he meant it.  He would do it, if he had to.  For his friends, for his mother.  For himself.

Perrineau’s smile turned brittle.  “I have copies of everything.  And if I do not call my agent within the next thirty minutes, I can promise you that everything in that file will be released to the proper authorities.  And by authorities, I mean my contacts at the Pentagon.  Which, I confess, has its own ailing program of psychic warriors.  Pitiful creatures. Barely able to bend spoons.  Nothing at all like my own flesh and blood.  Or his friends.”

Breathe, Blue told himself.  Calm down. You have options.  You’re not alone.  You are not alone.

“Time frame?” he asked.  He could do this.  He could say yes, which would give him time to stall, to call Roland, to get a fix on this thing.  He could eat his pride and anger a little longer.  Anything for the people he loved.  Anything.

“Quick.  No more than a week.”

“Be realistic.  It’s taken you at least six months.”

“And I don’t have that long.  Not anymore.”

Good.  “A month, then.”
“Two weeks, and that is generous on my part.”

Blue hesitated.  “Why do you want him?”

“A father can’t say goodbye to his son before dying?” Perrineau smiled and closed his eyes.  “No, you don’t think well enough of me for that.”

“You’re going to hurt him,” Blue said quietly.  “I’ll bring him here and you’ll hurt the hell out of him.”

“Just bring me my son,” said the old man, voice dropping to a whisper.  “Let me worry about the rest.”

Eye of Heaven - Book 5 in the Dirk & Steele series

Excerpt

When Miss Lindsay finally departed for the world beyond the wood, it meant that Lucy and Barnabus were the only people left to care for her house and land, as well as the fine cemetery she had kept for nearly twenty years outside the little town of Cuzco, Indiana.  It was an important job, not just for Lucy and Barnabus, but for others, as well, who for years after would come and go; for rest or sanctuary.  Bodies needed homes, after all – whether dead or living.

Lucy was only seventeen, and had come to the cemetery in the spring, not one month before Miss Lindsay went away.  The girl’s father was a cutter at the limestone quarry.  Her brothers drove the team that hauled the stones to the masons.  The men had no use for a sister, or any reminder of the fairer sex; their mother had run away that previous summer with a gypsy fortuneteller, though Lucy’s father insisted his absent wife was off visiting relatives and would return.  Eventually.

When word reached the old cutter that a woman named Miss Lindsay needed a girl to tend house, he made his daughter pack a bag with lunch, her comb, and one good dress from her mother’s closet – then set her on the first wagon heading toward Cuzco.  No goodbyes, no messages sent ahead.  Just chancing on fate that the old woman would want his daughter.

Lucy remembered that wagon ride.  Mister Wiseman, the driver, had been hauling turnips that day, the bulbous roots covered beneath a burlap sheet to keep off the light drizzle: a cool morning, with a sweet breeze.  No one on the road except them, and later, one other: an old man who stood at the side of the dirt track outside Cuzco; dressed in threadbare brown clothes, with a thin coat and his white hair slicked down from the rain.  Pale eyes.  Lost eyes, staring at the green budding hills like the woods were where his heart lived.

In his right hand, he held a round silver mirror.  A discordant sight, flashing and bright; Lucy thought she heard voices in her head when she saw the reflecting glass: whispers like bird-song, teasing and sweet.

Mister Wiseman did not wave at the man, but Lucy did, out of politeness and concern.  She received no response; as though she was some invisible spirit, or the breeze.

“Is he sick?” Lucy whispered to Mister Wiseman.

“Sick and married,” said the spindly man, in a voice so loud she winced.  He tugged his hat a bit farther over his eyes.  “Married, with no idea how to let go of the dead.”

“His wife is gone?” Lucy thought of her mother.

“Gone, dead.  That was Henry Lindsay you saw.  Man’s been like that for almost twenty years.  Might as well be dead himself.”

Which answered almost nothing, in Lucy’s mind.

Excerpt

The woman smelled smoke in her dreams.

She smelled it still, when she opened her eyes. A bad way to wake. She lay motionless, stunned and disoriented, lost in a dark room, stretched on a bed. Shouts filled her ears, footsteps pounding. Sirens wailed. The woman flexed her hands and gripped rumpled covers. She wiggled her toes. Her feet were bare, though she wore other clothing.

Her head hurt. So did her heart, like she had been crying. Or maybe that was her lungs. Smoke was in the air, faintly illuminated by some ambient light far on her left. Her eyes stung. Her mind tried to catch up with what she was breathing and seeing.

“Shit,” she muttered hoarsely, and the sound of her voice—rough, awful, hardly discernable beneath the cascading sirens—felt like a baseball bat against her back. One good swing. Move it or lose it. Live or die.

The woman scrambled off the bed, landing hard on the floor, keeping below the thickening smoke. The carpet felt odd. Wet and sticky. She could not immediately see why, but when she moved a fraction to the left, her hand hit something solid and warm. She ignored it and started crawling until she bumped into another, similar obstacle. Only this time, something inside her screamed, choking on more than smoke. She reached out blindly, jaw clenched.

Her hand landed on a face. Rough with stubble, a sticky nose, broad forehead. The woman froze, horrified—then shoved the man, hard.

“Hello,” she whispered.

He did not move. She fumbled for his neck, searching for a pulse. Instead of finding a heartbeat, her fingers dipped into a wet ragged hole.

The woman gasped, scrabbling backward. Terrified. She tried to remember what had happened. She tried to remember how she had gotten here.

Nothing. She had no idea where she was. Not one clue. No memory of where she had been before this room.

No time, whispered a small voice inside her head. Go. Get out of here.

But she did not. Coughing, eyes burning, she spun around on her knees, fumbling her way back up the length of the bed. She found a nightstand and grappled for a light. Switched it on. Wished immediately she had not.

At first it was like being blind. Blinded by tears and light, startling splashes of color. Bodies. Three men in dark clothing, sprawled dead. The carpet beneath them— beneath her—saturated dark with blood. Her mind could not adjust, could only soak up in numb horror a sight that could not be real.

The woman slapped a hand over her mouth, trying not to scream. A sharp metallic scent instantly invaded her nose. Her fingers were wet. She remembered touching the man and recoiled from herself, choking, staring down at her hands. Her palms were covered in blood.

The knees of her jeans were soaked with it, too, the denim hot and wet against her skin. Something was pinned to her blood-spattered jacket. A piece of paper. The woman touched it, hand shaking, leaving red fingerprints. She stared at the word written in big black letters.

RUN, she read.

The woman felt faint, and she shut her eyes, breathing deep—which made her choke immediately. Smoke curled along the entire ceiling now, wafting down, thick and heavy. She looked once again at the bodies, those faces: three men in their thirties, big and strong, dark hair cut short against their scalps. One of them, she saw, held a gun in his hand.

The light by her head flickered out for a brief moment. The woman looked around, quick. She was in a hotel room. The door was behind her. The light flickered again and she hoisted herself onto the bed, scrabbling over it toward the exit. She saw nothing worth taking—no purse, no personal items of any kind. No shoes.

The lights went out just as the woman reached the door. She heard screams outside in the hall and pressed the back of her hand against the wood and the metal knob. Both were cool. She opened the door and crawled out of the room. It was pitch dark in the hall, but she heard and felt people running, saw a flashlight beam bouncing far on her right and took off after it. She kept low, pulling the collar of her T-shirt over her nose and mouth. She smelled blood. Tried not to think of the dead men in the room behind her. Or why she could not remember how she had gotten there.

Keep it simple, she thought, heart pounding. Get out, then freak.

The woman got jostled, slammed by running bodies, her ears ringing with sirens and screams and hacking coughs, but she kept going, fast, nearly blind, keeping one hand on the wall to guide her. No emergency lights, nothing to see by. The flashlight was gone. Glass shattered inside a room she passed. Ahead, the timbre of voices changed, became echoey, hollow and bouncy. Cool air brushed against her face. The exit.

She fumbled ahead, found a door swinging shut and forced her way into a metal and concrete stairwell that was relatively smoke free and blissfully cold. She almost fell down the stairs—her knees ready to buckle out from under her—but she saw more flashlights winking up through the darkness, accompanied by shouts. She felt her way down, bumped and pushed by other people trying to evacuate the building. Her hand kept grazing her jacket where the note was pinned. She ripped the thing off and stuffed it into her pocket.

The woman did not think she would ever forget the expression of the first firefighter who shone a beam into her face. He was a young kid, hauling gear up the stairs, oxygen mask hanging around his neck and a brilliant light blazing from his helmet. His eyes widened. He reached for her and she evaded him by moving deeper into the throng of other evacuees, afraid on a gut level of the questions he would ask, moving by instinct.

Run.

A small army of uniformed men and women waited for the evacuees at the bottom of the stairwell. Cold air rushed over her face, and an oxygen mask was held up. She used it. Hands touched her shoulders, guiding her away from the building. She looked back once, and saw that it was a fancy piece of architecture, tall and made of steel and glass and stone. Fire and smoke poured from one of the upper floors. Her floor, she suspected. She started to rub her eyes, and remembered her bloody hands, drying now, but still sticky. The woman wanted to vomit.

“Sit down,” said a low male voice. She tried to resist, but the guiding hand tightened around her arm, and she did not want to make a scene. She pretended obedience, sat at the back of an ambulance, her coughs easing as she breathed deep from the oxygen mask. So many lights and people. Hard to look at all of them. All she wanted to do was run.

An older man in a blue jacket and pants peered down at her face, then at the rest of her body. “Ma’am, you’re covered in blood. Are you injured?”

The woman said nothing and stared past his shoulder, affecting a glassy stare. A small part of her wanted to break loose, start screaming—about the men, the blood—but again, her instincts prevailed.

Subterfuge, whispered a voice. Illusion.

And, Get away. Run like hell.

The man frowned, but behind him a shout went up and he turned briefly, walking only a few steps away. The woman did not hesitate, hardly felt as though she owned her body. She slipped off the back of the ambulance and strode quickly around the vehicle.

It was easy to get lost in the crowd. So many emergency vehicles and workers, curious onlookers. The woman was almost stopped by a concerned police officer, but she croaked, “Water,” and when he turned to look for some, she slid behind a fire truck and found herself beside a dim long stretch of alley.

The woman was barefoot, the concrete wet and slick. She got lucky. Nothing cut her feet as she ran through the shadows, away from the chaos of lights and uniforms, all of which felt as threatening as the fire and the terrible room she had left behind, the contents of which still covered her body. More or less.

She did not go far. The base of her skull began to throb again. Her side hurt. She stepped deeper into shadows, coughing, fighting for breath. Knees weak. She bent over, trying to control the aching fear in her chest, struggling not to be sick. She could still see those men. There was no escaping the scent of blood. Not when the front of her jeans was still damp and her hands sticky. She felt something heavy against her back and tentatively reached under her jacket . . . touching leather, then cold hard steel.

A gun.

The woman slowly drew the weapon. The weight felt good in her hand. She forced herself to look down, taking in the long, sleek form.

Semiautomatic rimfire pistol with suppressor, rattled the voice in her mind. Ruger, .22 caliber.

Before she could stop herself, she checked the clip. Found it empty, no more ammunition. Her hands moved without pause, without thought.

She almost dropped the gun, but her fingers tightened and she slid the weapon back into the waist of her jeans. Shaken. Dazed. Three armed men, shot to death… and she, at the scene, covered in blood. Carry ing a gun.

A gun she did not remember. A gun her hands knew how to use, even if her conscious mind did not.

No, thought the woman, even as she realized something else in that moment, something far more horrifying. She did not remember anything of her life before opening her eyes in the hotel room. The thought cascaded into other realizations, equally terrifying:

The woman did not know her name.

She did not remember herself.

She had no memories.

It took a moment to digest this, a long moment. She did not want to believe. Here she was, walking around, alert, proactive. Not entirely insane. She had to remember something. Anything. She patted down her pockets for ID, a card, some hint. She found nothing.

The woman closed her eyes, battling herself—but it was like being caught on the other side of a dark wall. There, but not. She could almost taste some shadow of knowledge just out of reach, maddeningly beyond her, and she pressed grimy knuckles to her forehead, digging in until her brow hurt. Sirens filled the background, the hiss of tires on the road, the distant groans of some drunk.

She did not even know what she looked like. Just that she was covered in blood. A gun with a silencer was tucked into the back of her jeans. She was barefoot, nothing in her pockets except a crumpled note that said to run.

Bad clues. No clues.

I might be a killer, she thought, frightened; and then, I need to get the hell out of here.

And the woman, discovering that she was an efficient individual, set about doing just that.

Excerpt

When I was eight, my mother lost me to zombies in a one card draw. 

It was not her fault.  There was a blizzard.  Six hours until sunset, lost on a twisting county road.  Bad map.  No visibility.  Black ice, winds howling down.

I still remember.  Slammed against my seatbelt.  Station wagon plowing into a drift, snow riding high as my window.  Metal crunching:  the edge of the bumper, the front tire, my door.  Beneath us, a terrible reverberating crack.

Lodged.  Busted.  Dead on our wheels.  More than dead.  My mother showed me spikes packed into the snow and ice.  Tiny metal stars, so sharp the points pricked my palm when I bent to touch one.  She pointed out the tires, torn into scrap, ribbons of rubber.  Told me not to worry.  Called it a game.

My mother cleared the road behind us.  I watched from the car.  Face pressed against the cold window, fogging glass.  She juggled stars and spikes for me, and did not wince when the sharp points bounced off her tattooed hands.  She danced in the falling snow, eyes shining, cheeks flushed with the blood of roses, and when I could no longer bear to sit still I joined her and she held my wrists and swung me in great circles until we fell down. 

I remembered her laughter.  I remembered.

I remembered that I did not want to go with her.  I wanted to stay with the car.  I wanted to stay home with the wreck.  Listen to the radio.  Play with my dolls.  My mother would not let me.  Too dangerous.  Too many weirdoes. I was too little to handle the twelve-gauge stashed beneath the passenger seat, or even the pistol in the glove compartment; and the boys were still asleep.  Anything could happen.

So we bundled up.  Slogged backward in the dull silence of snow and the endless winter bones of the white forked trees.  My mother carried me on her back.  I can still see:  silver clouds of my breath engulfing the tattoos on her neck; that lazy red eye, Zee, tracking my face in his dreams.  I can still feel the bulge of knives beneath her black wool coat, too light and short for a blizzard, for anyone but a woman who did not feel the cold.  I can hear, always hear, the song she sang over the crunching beat of her boots on the empty road.  Folsom Prison Blues. Voice like sunshine and the rumble of a slow train.

A mile behind us, some local bar.  Lonely way station.  Out in the middle of nowhere, just a shed, neon lights shaped like a naked woman flickering on and off through the dirty tinted glass.  Nipples winking.  Pick-up trucks in the narrow shoveled salted lot.  Scents of fried food and burned engine oil in my nostrils.

My mother hesitated when she saw the place, just as she had hesitated earlier when we passed it in the car.  Wavered, shoulders hitching.  Both of us covered in snow.  I could not see her face, but I felt her tension.  Breathed it.  Looked down and saw Zee struggling sleepily against her skin.  Tattoos begging to peel.

We entered the bar.  My mother let the door slam shut behind us.  I could not see:  too dark, too smoky, loud with laughter and rocky music.  Warm as an oven compared to the blizzard chill.  I clung, face pressed to my mother’s neck.  She did not move.  She did not speak.  She stood with her back to the door, so very still I could not feel her breathe, and all around us those voices faded dead within a hush, and the music, the low rolling wail of electric guitar, snapped, stopped.  Silence descended.  Slow, cold, heavy as snow.  Pregnant – a word I would use now.  Expectant, full, with something living and turning, gestating, in that dark smoky womb.

“Hunter Kiss,” said a deep low voice.  “Lady Hunter.”

I peered over my mother’s shoulder, past the loose black curls of her snow-riddled hair.  She squeezed my leg.  I did not listen.  I could not help myself.  It was still difficult to see.  Just one lamp on the bar, casting a glow, a ring of fire that did not touch the handful of men and women scattered like fleas in the smoky shadows.  Still. Poised.  Coiled.  Dressed in flannel, jeans, weighed down with thick overcoats dull and torn.  Hats pulled low.  Eyes like old wells – dark, hollow, with only a glint of reflected light at the very bottom of their gazes.  Auras black as pitch.  Anchored and straining.  As though crowns of ghosts rested upon their heads.

Only one man stood before my mother.  He wore a blue suit and a striped tie that shimmered like the steel in his shadowed eyes.  Wavy blond hair.  Square jaw.  Handsome, maybe. Handsome devil.  Zombie.

All of them, zombies.  Human shells.  Living. Breathing.  Possessed. 

My mother made me slide to the floor.  I clutched the hem of her coat.  I tried to be small.  I knew danger.  I knew threats.  I knew a demon when I saw one.

My mother raised her hand.  Metal sparked between her tattooed fingers.  A star from the road.  Bristling with spikes.  The zombie smiled.  He also raised his hand.  In his palm, a deck of cards.

“All we want is a look,” he said.  “Just one.  You know how it is.”

“I know enough.” Her voice was so cold.  She could not be the same woman, not mine, not my mother.  Her hand tightened around the spikes, which dug into her skin but did not puncture, no matter how hard she squeezed.  I watched her hand, the straining tendons.  I heard metal groan.

The zombie’s smile widened.  “One card draw.  Highest wins.”

“If I refuse?”

“Now or later.  You know the rules.”

“You pervert them,” said my mother.  “You pervert this world.”

“We are demon,” said the zombie simply, and stepped sideways to the battered bar, its surface scarred and mauled by years of hard elbows and broken glass.  Ashtrays overflowed.  Bottles clustered.  Everything, sticky with fingerprints; even the air, marked, cut with smoke and sweat.

My mother watched the zombie.  She watched them all and shrugged her shoulders.  Her jacket slid slowly off, falling on the floor beside me.  She wore little.  A tight white tank top, a harness for her knives.  Silver tattoos roped down her arms, glinting red.  Eyes.  Open and staring.

No one moved.  Even the zombie in the suit went still.  I watched their auras tighten, pulsing faster, harder.  My mother’s mouth curled.  She took my hand. Squeezed once.  Led me to the bar where the zombie waited, leaning on a stool. His smile was gone.  He looked at her tattoos.  His eyelid twitched.

My mother tapped the bar.  “Last time it was chess.”

“You were ten,” he replied, tearing his gaze from her arms.  “And that was your mother’s game.  You’re not her.”

Her mouth tightened.  “Show me the deck.”

The zombie placed it between them and stepped back.  My mother fanned the cards.  Her gaze roved, flicking once to me.

She shuffled.  So did the zombie.  Three times each.  The slap of the cards sounded like gunfire.  My mouth dried.  My heart thundered.  I clutched her leg and her fingers buried deep into my hair.  She held me close.  The zombie tapped the deck and slid one card to the side.  My mother did the same.

“Two of diamonds,” she said.  Voice hard, like she wanted to kill. The zombie remained silent.  He flipped his card and pushed it to her.  My mother stared.  Her hand tightened in my hair.  Her jaw flexed. 

“You run,” said the zombie softly, “and it will be worse next time.  I think you remember.”

“I think you ask too much.”

“We ask for so little, considering. Just one glimpse.  Painless.” The zombie leaned in.  “Do not be your mother.”

She shot him a cold look.  He slid from the stool and the rest of the room shifted, shadows crawling like worms – zombies scuffling from their chairs to cross the floor.  Closing in.  Eyes black.  Auras writhing.  My mother faced them.  I did not see her hand move, but her fingers flexed and a knife suddenly glinted, held loose.  No hilt.  Just blade.  Razor sharp.  In her other hand, that barbed star.

The zombie loosened his tie.  “You can’t kill us all.  Not without injuring out hosts.  Innocents, all of them.”

My mother said nothing.  So still.  Hardly breathing.  Her fingers squeezed the blade and she turned, blocking the entire room from my view.  She looked down at me and her gaze was hollow, impossibly grim.  Her eyes, black as a demon’s tongue, and just as cold.

“Do not be afraid,” she whispered.

I tried to hold her to me but she slipped away and zombies took her place.  So many.  Shoulders broad as mountains.  Packed tight.  Breath hot.  Stinking with sweat and winter wool.  I could not see faces for shadows, but the zombie in the suit leaned close.  Crooked his finger like a hook.  I remember.  Cold shock.  Hammers in my heart.  I had thought they wanted my mother, but it was me.  They wanted me. 

“Frogs and snails and puppy-dog tails,” murmured the zombie, his eyes glinting silver.  “Sugar and spice, all that’s nice.”

He grabbed my jaw with one hand.  Squeezed.  Pushed down until I was forced to kneel.  I could not breathe.  I felt my thoughts bleed – for sunset and the boys, my mother.  I wanted her to save me. I wanted it so badly, so hard, wished so much to understand. 

I still wanted to understand. 

I could not forget.  Consumed and hunted – I know what it is to be hunted – feeding those creatures my fear and pain, dispensed like so much sour candy.  Demons in their stolen human skins staring with darkling eyes, searching for weakness, a way into my mind.  Wanting to make me one of them. Zombie.  Infected with a parasite. 

I fought.  I must have.  I remembered voices in my head.  Whispers and howls.  Zee and the boys, raging in their dreams.  I remembered my heart.  My heart, opening like a bloody mouth, tasting my terror. 

And then biting it out of me.  I remembered the sensation.  My heart, shedding the fear and tossing it away.  Letting something else slip into its place. 

Something from me.  Of me.  Born in the roots of me.  A darkness deep and vast, forever dead, forever cold – and in my soul a slow shuffling resurrection, a terrible yawning hunger, rising through blood and bone as though every cell of my body had been born empty and frozen and now – here – nectar and milk and honey. 
Mine to take.  Mine to steal.  Mine to kill. 

I had never felt so clear-headed as I did then.  Never so strong.  I could have killed those zombies.  I could have killed them all.  Eight years old.  Ready to murder.  Starving for it.  Skin, pulling.  Muscles stretching from my bones.  All of me, reaching with my soul.  Grasping at demons.

The zombie let go of my face.  He let go and I grabbed his hands.  I held him to me, and a gray pallor spread – like stone cracking beneath his skin, cold and dead – and I stole him, I stole him away and felt the taste of demon in my blood, rich and sour, like bitter bilious honey. 

And the darkness grew, and I could see it – I closed my eyes to bear witness – and saw it was not a mere void, but a body, turning and turning beneath my skin – glinting like obsidian touched by moonlight, shiny and slick and sharp. 

The zombie’s eyes rolled back.  His friends grabbed him, hands appearing under his arms, across his chest, in his hair – pulling him, hauling hard.  My fingers could not hold his wrists.  He slipped free.  Everyone stumbled back and I followed.  Something inside me wanted to follow. 

My mother slipped between them, catching me.  Holding tight as I struggled, still trying to chase the hot stink of those zombies – those scared little demons – burning me blind and hungry.  My mother said my name, my name – Maxine, Maxine – and placed her hands on my face, forcing me to look at her.  The boys, those tattoos sleeping on her palms, kissed my flushed cheeks. 

They swallowed the darkness.  Wrapped themselves with treacherous tenderness around my soul and knitted shut my heart like a door – a door never opened, never seen. They ate the needle and thread, consumed the key.  Murder and hunger and death – obsidian and moonlight – nothing more than a bad dream.
Still a bad dream.  Less and more than dream, after all these years.  I remembered my mother in that moment – her breathlessness, the softness of her face – and behind her, that zombie in his suit, stretched on the ground, his skin gray and his eyes open and staring.  His whisper, the slow churning hiss of his breath as he said, “She passed.  She’s strong enough to kill the others.  She’s strong enough for them.”

My mother said nothing.  She held me closer.  I felt her heart pound.  The other zombies backed away, lost in shadow – less flesh than shadow – and only that zombie with his shining hair and cracked skin tried to stay near, rising slowly to his feet, lurching one step closer.  He watched me, and behind my heart, something rattled, wanting out.  My mother’s arms tightened.  She backed away, toward the door, carrying me.  The zombie followed, bent over, holding out his hand.  My mother shook her head.  “I played your game.  You had your test.”

“This was not part of the test,” he whispered, pointing at himself.  “This was not part of anything that should be.”

My mother turned and he grabbed her shoulder.  She let him.  She stood still as ice as he pressed his mouth against her ear and whispered words I could not understand, whispered long and low and hard.  I watched my mother’s face change.

The zombie pulled away.  Skin peeled from his face in strips.  Fresh blood dotted the corners of his eyes.  He swayed, like he was weak.  Dying.  “Do it, Hunter.  It’s not worth the risk.  Kill her.  Have another child. You’re still young.”

My mother’s mouth tightened.  She set me down and rubbed my head.  Gentle, reassuring.  At odds with the death in her eyes. 

A knife appeared in her hand.

She moved fast.  Opened the door of the bar and shoved me outside, into the snow.  I fell on my knees.  The door slammed shut behind me.  I tried to go back inside but the knob would not turn.  Locked.  I banged on the wood with my fists, screaming for her.  Screaming and screaming.

Men screamed back.  Women howled.  I heard pain in those voices, terror, and now – now I realize – death.  I listened to my mother murder.  I stumbled back, breathless. 

Silence was worse.  I did not know who would come through that door.  And when it opened and I saw my mother, I still did not know who had come through.  Her hair was wild.  Her face spattered red.  Eyes dark and burning.

I did not know what I said.  I did not remember.  I was sure I stared.  That much, I stared.  I tried not to flinch when she knelt and looked into my face.  She held up her hands for me to see.  Blood glistened on her fingers.  Blood that slowly disappeared into her tattooed skin.  Boys, drinking up. Feeding. 

“I don’t want you to remember this,” she whispered, touching my forehead. “Baby.  My baby.”

She stole from me.  Memories, hidden behind dreams.  I do not know how I lost so much – how she did it – but I blame my youth.  I was so young.  I forgot it all – even later, when I saw more.  So much more.  Even then I did not remember those zombies, that bar – my mother and the darkness, caged.

So naïve.  I thought I was wise.  I thought I knew everything.  But thirteen years after that moment in the snow I watched my mother get shot in the head.  And I finally understood.  I remembered.  I got it.

I got it all.

Excerpt

The monkeys began dying at dawn. Only the children noticed. They were playing a game of soccer, just within sight of the refugee camp. The river was nearby, the jungle wall thick and hoarse with crying shadows. Birds jammed the air.

The soccer ball was made of cowhide, rough-stitched and brown and stuffed with grass and dried elephant dung. No proper bounce, but it was good enough to kick. The children had been playing since the first hint of light in the sky—at least an hour—and they were hungry and sweaty. So hungry, for such a long time, they hardly noticed anymore.

The children were playing on the road. It was flat and dusty. No traffic, though the boys took turns standing on a rock to keep watch. Not for other refugees, but for men carrying guns, or trucks with an unfamiliar shape or growl. Between the five of them, they owned a whistle, a gift from one of the doctors in the camp. The boy on the rock had it now, held tight in his fist. He was ready to blow the whistle, just in case.

The soccer game got rough. One hard kick, and the ball flew into the jungle. The boys threw up their hands, shouting, pointing fingers. The littlest one was responsible; he was shoved, unwilling, toward the thick brush and towering trees. He protested loudly, tripping over knotted vines, falling on his knees. Smaller than the ferns, or the twisting roots angling out of the ground; swallowed by shadows that radiated a thick wet heat that buzzed with stinging mosquitoes.

You are easy food for a snake, laughed his friends. Watch out.

The child watched. He glanced over his shoulder as the leaves closed behind him, shutting out the dawn light. It would be hours before the sun rose high enough to pierce the upper canopy. Until then, a constant twilight, fit only for leopards and spirits; cries of birds, echoing.

He heard a thud, off to his left. Heavy, like a melon falling. Or a body. He turned to run and his bare foot touched something hard and leathery. The ball. He had been standing beside it the entire time. He scooped it up, still ready to flee, but before he could take a step something fell from the trees in front of him. He screamed.

The other boys crashed through the bush, calling his name. He did not answer them. His attention was on the ground. He pointed as his friends arrived, and all of them fell silent, staring at the twisted body of a monkey sprawled in the dried leaves. A white stripe cut across its brindled forehead, and its tufted ears were yellow. Blood dotted its nose and the corners of its eyes.

The monkey was not alone. Other bodies lay on the ground; little lumps of dark fur that blended well with the shadows. The eldest boy whistled, rubbing his palms against his stomach as he stepped close and touched a limp haunch with his bare toe.

“Still warm,” he whispered.

“This one fell,” said the smallest, still clutching the ball. Another crashing thud, out of sight on their left, made them jump; they looked up and saw shadows swaying unsteadily in the branches, eyes blinking in the forest twilight.

“They are so quiet,” someone said.

“We should go,” murmured another, backing away.

The eldest stooped and picked up the dead monkey by its tail. The boys hissed at him, but he straightened his shoulders and flashed his teeth. “Aren’t you hungry?”

The smallest shook his head. “We are not allowed to take bush meat.”

“It was already dead.” The boy started walking, slinging the monkey over his shoulder. “Come on. If the mondele give us trouble, we will show them this place and prove we are innocent.” His grin widened, and he patted his flat stomach. “We will do that anyway, I think.”

The other boys looked at each other. Another monkey swayed and fell from the tree. It almost landed on top of them. Dead, with blood in its eyes. Like it was weeping.

The children ran from the jungle, calling after their friend who was already racing down the road toward the white tents of the refugee camp. The monkey bounced against his back. Blood dripped from its eyes into the dust, against his calves.

The boy was fast and his legs were long. He had a strong heart, the promise of meat in his belly; the sweet anticipation of seeing his mother smile. For that, anything.

He was dead by sunset.

Excerpt

She said her name was Elsie, and that she had a gun in her car.

A foolish confession, spoken without promise or bravado. Just the truth, from a woman too frightened for artifice. M’cal tasted her fear in every word, in the brief negotiation of price and time. He knew, without a doubt, that this was her first encounter with the kind of man she believed him to be – a prostitute, a stranger from the street – and though she wanted his services more than she wanted to be safe, M’cal was big and strong, could hurt her with his hands.

M’cal did not care, either way. Taking the human weapon would be easy, if it came to that. He did not think it would. He sat stiffly in the narrow passenger seat of Elsie’s little red Jetta, his legs cramped, one shoulder pressed against the cool rain-spattered window. He was too big for her car. He had to twist so that he would not brush against her body, even by accident. M’cal did not want to touch her. Not ever. Not until he had to.

He expected Elsie to speak to him. Most women did, in her situation. He had become accustomed to the attention, to his position as an object of desire. Had learned to accept it as one more punishment to endure. But Elsie stayed quiet, and her silence made M’cal more curious than was healthy; he glanced sideways, taking in her soft face and full mouth, unevenly lit by passing streetlights.

Pretty, solid, pale. Not a woman who should need to pay for sex. Not the kind of woman who would want to.

And not a woman who should die young.

M’cal’s wrist hurt. He rubbed the silver cuff chafing his skin. The metal was warm; a low tingling shock radiated up his fingers into his bones, worsening as he stroked the rough engravings.

Elsie made a small noise; more breathless than a hiccup, but just as involuntary. She covered her mouth, glanced at M’cal, and said, “I never asked for your name.”

“No,” he said quietly. “Most don’t.”

Her gaze flitted away, back to the road. “What do you call yourself?”

M’cal hesitated. “ Michael.”

“ Michael,” she echoed, voice still tumbling with fear. “How long have you been doing this?”

Long enough, he thought. Elsie drove down Georgia Street toward Stanley Park. Coal Harbor was on their right, the shoreline crowded with apartment high rises. M’cal peered between the buildings, glimpsing slivers of the opposing shore; the Vancouver city skyline, glittering against the choppy water. A wet night, windy. Poor visibility.

“A little over a year,” he lied, staring at the sea.

Elsie’s knuckles turned white around the steering wheel. “You’re older than the other guys. That’s why I chose you.”

M’cal still watched the water. “Most of the boys on that block are still in their teens. The youngest is thirteen.”

Elsie said nothing. The car did not slow. Georgia Street curved right, swinging into Stanley Park. They passed the long dock and Tudor office of the Vancouver Rowing Club, and between the road and rough stone seawall, M’cal observed late night joggers and bicyclers braving the rain on the paved pedestrian trail. Beyond them, across the harbor, the full expanse of the downtown core perched like a neon gem on the water’s edge, trailing light against the waves.

Elsie drove past the first parking lot, but edged into the second. Eight totem poles filled the border of a landscaped garden, which was nothing but shadows in the evening dark. Ten o’clock at night, and the parking lot was mostly empty; M’cal saw a few steamy windows.

Elsie parked the car in the most isolated spot, near the totems. He sat quietly, waiting, staring at the sea. The engine ticked. Rain pattered against the windshield.

“I don’t know if I can go through with this,” Elsie said.

“All right,” M’cal replied, though her feelings changed nothing. Elsie let go of the steering wheel and stared at him. He stared back. She could not hold his gaze for long, and ducked her chin, brushing long hair out of her face.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, and then, softer, “Why do you…do this?”

Why did you? M’cal wondered, but stayed silent. He did not want to know this woman. He did not want to be her friend. He did not want to understand what kind of pain would drive someone like her to risk life and limb to pick a stranger off the street and pay for sex. A death wish, a kind of suicide watch; only slower, harsher.

“Michael?” Elsie whispered, hesitantly. M’cal closed his eyes. The bracelet burned against his wrist and the sensation clawed up his arm into his throat, stirring the old monster to life. M’cal felt a surge of hate so profound he almost choked on it, struggling against himself, trying to center his heart with memories of his old life, fighting with all his strength to swallow the compulsion rising hard and terrible inside his mouth. He heard a woman laugh, somewhere distant in his mind – a fine high tinkle of joviality – and he bit back a scream.

Run, he thought at Elsie, pressing his head against the cold window. Run now. Please.

But she was no mind reader. He heard her body shift, listened to cloth rub. Held his breath. A moment later, Elsie touched his shoulder. Light, the faintest brush of her fingertips, though to M’cal it felt like a gun blast inside his heart, the crash of some clumsy human fist. Pain. A lot of it. Followed by that terrible compulsion which forced open his jaw, breath pushing hard and ragged from his lungs.

Elsie gasped. M’cal grabbed her wrist. His hand burned, but he did not let go—could not—though he tried. He stared into her startled eyes, her dark and frightened eyes, and leaned so close he could taste the faint edge of her soul on the brim of her lips.

And then he took that soul, with nothing but a song.

***

Afterward, if he had been close to a knife, he would have tried to cut off his hand. Again. A hard slash to the wrist, right above the bracelet. Futile, a poor man’s defiance, but all he had.

Instead, M’cal sat and held Elsie in his arms, suffering through the pain of her touch, because he understood now, though he wished otherwise. He saw, inside her head, years of abuse. A life wasted. Unfulfilled. No muse to build a dream upon, and now, after a short existence, a desire to be more, to feel again. To be a woman, wild and winsome and free. Free to hate herself. Free to build upon extremes. All or nothing. Death or life.

So, the street. A slick rainy corner full of men and boys. One choice, the start of a new self, running from the path of caution into devil-may-care. Wasting freedom on humiliation.

M’cal wished very much that Elsie had chosen differently.

She did not speak. She sat against him in the car, very still, staring out the windshield at the harbor. Her face was slack, her eyes dark, empty. All her vitality gone, drained away into a wisp, a shell not long for the world. Her worst nightmare, come to pass.

“Go home,” M’cal murmured, gently pushing her away. “Go home and forget about me. Forget tonight.”

Elsie turned the key in the ignition. M’cal got out of her car. The cool air and drizzling rain felt good on his face. He walked away, across the parking lot, toward the sea. He did not look back, though he was briefly bathed in headlights, in the sound of the Jetta’s engine as it hummed away down the curving road.

Inside his head, Elsie wept.

M’cal crossed the wet grass, the pedestrian trail, and stepped onto the seawall ledge. He glanced around, found himself alone. Below, high tide had drawn water over the shore, and the sound of it lapping against the wall was a lullaby of whispers, old riddles, dreams. His dreams, distant as they had become. M’cal could taste stones hidden beneath the shallow waves, sharp and dangerous. He kicked off his shoes. Stood for a moment, toes digging into the stone, staring at the city painted on the sea.

M’cal jumped. Headfirst, a giant arcing leap that left him, for a moment, almost parallel to the choppy water. He shot beneath the waves, slithering into a soft cool spot just above the jagged rocks. A breathless impact, followed by a quick hard stab of joy. For one brief moment, M’cal could pretend things were as they had been, long ago. He could imagine.

But then the bracelet burned and with it the sea, and he stopped pretending to be something he was not and propelled himself with long easy strokes into deeper waters. Tore away his silk shirt, pushed off his jeans. Sank unencumbered like an arrow, toes pointed, arms crossed over his chest. Allowed his body to finally, desperately, change.

M’cal lost his legs. His thighs fused, then his knees and calves and ankles, feet spreading into a thin fan of metallic flesh, long and flat and scaled. Fine ribbons of silver scales rippled from hip to fin; and against his neck, another change: skin splitting into deep slits, the floating edges tearing into narrow drifting fronds that wove inside his hair.

M’cal stopped holding his breath. Bubbles fled his throat. He tasted metal, chemicals, the etchings of humanity imprinted upon the sea. The scents on his tongue made him cringe, but he inhaled anyway, swallowing long and deep, both savoring and regretting the coarse liquid that spread into his body. The sea burned. Brine in his lungs like fire, in his eyes and nostrils, needling the webs between his fingers, his groin, the scales of his tail. The bracelet burned worst of all. Not that M’cal needed any reminders.

He fought his instinct to surface, and instead pushed deeper into the harbor; enduring, taking small pleasure in one of the few acts of free will left to him. Cleansing his soul with ocean fire, skirting the edges of home to rattle the bars of his prison. Being himself, if only for a short time.

Voices eddied, low murmurs of fish and storm. Distant, a golden hum carried by the current, a thread that M’cal reached for with his mind. The music disappeared, replaced by a slight vibration that scurried over his skin, mixing with the burn of the sea. He sensed movement, on his left; a sleek body. M’cal followed, heart pounding, and met a starry gaze, dark and sad. Brother seal, little spy. The creature melted swiftly into deepwater shadow. M’cal tried to call it back, but his throat choked.

Look, but do not touch, he remembered. See, but do not speak.

The bracelet throbbed. He had ventured too far. He tried to resist, but after a brief struggle his muscles twisted, turning him away from the heart of the harbor toward the city shore. Puppet man, pulled by invisible strings.

M’cal swam fast. He had no choice. As he neared shore, he heard the low boom of the city against the water: the speech of concrete shuddering through rock and earth, the groan of steel and glass and thousands of bodies tossing and turning and roaming. A maze of sound – and above him another labyrinth as he swam beneath the boats moored to the crisscrossing docks.

His body knew the way, pulled by the compulsion in the bracelet. M’cal did not recognize the path; the boat had been moved since morning. A frequent occurrence of late; shedding old habits, never staying in the same place twice. M’cal might have called such actions evidence of paranoia, but he was not optimistic enough for that. Still, curious.

M’cal found the boat eventually – or rather, it found him – and he poked his head above water, staring at the long white motor yacht floating like a sleek castle made of pearl. No lights burned. The boat was quiet, with an air of emptiness. M’cal was not fooled.

He drifted close, and only at the last moment did he shift shape, reluctantly giving himself up to humanity. His tail split, his fin receded, toes twitching as his gills faded into flesh – but the sea still burned and Elsie still wept, and he had nothing, nothing to show for himself except that he was still alive, and inside his heart, still fighting.

M’cal heaved himself out of the water, naked and dripping and strong. He climbed the short ladder attached to the stern, but when he reached the deck his legs gave out, knocked from under him by command. He fell hard on his knees. Tried to stand, but could not. He was forced to remain on all fours, head bowed, muscles trembling. He heard the click of high heels, smelled perfume: white lily, white rose, white lilac. The scent burned his nostrils.

“Oh,” purred a low voice. “Oh, the fallen mighty. Merman, mine.”

M’cal stayed silent. Ivory stilettos clicked into view. Slender, creamy ankles, smooth and soft. He closed his eyes and a cool hand slipped through his hair, nails biting deep into his scalp as the seawater dripping from his body continued to burn.

And then there was nothing but air beneath him – nothing to hold on to – and he flipped sideways, slamming hard on his back. The night sky spun, rain drizzling against his body, but above him stood a woman clad in white silk, long hair straight and shimmering like liquid silver, and he could look at nothing else.

The witch planted her feet on either side of his chest. Her skirt was very short, revealing long legs, no underwear. M’cal wanted to vomit.

“You have something for me,” she murmured, and sank slowly to her knees. Her thighs squeezed his ribs, the touch of her skin taking away the pain left by the drying seawater. M’cal wished it would not. He preferred discomfort to the alternative. He tried to move, to kick her off. His body refused him. As usual.

The witch smiled, long fingers dancing against his chest and throat. She bent to kiss the corner of his mouth, and he felt the draw of her power tug on Elsie’s soul.

“My prince,” whispered the witch. “Give me your voice.”

M’cal did not speak. The witch reached between their bodies and touched his stomach, lower still, caressing him with deft long strokes. M’cal willed himself not to respond, but there was magic in her fingers – literally – and his control meant nothing. He grew hard in moments, his human body a betrayal, and the witch slid herself onto him with a sigh.

“Your voice,” she said, swaying against him. “Your voice, and I will stop.” A sly smile touched her mouth. “Unless you want me to finish you. Unless you want me.”

M’cal tried to look away, but the witch held his gaze and rocked harder, forcing terrible pleasure through his body. The sensation tore at him. Disgusting, thrilling; his defiance the same as defeat, which was the custom of their dance. Killing him softly. Breaking him, one impossible choice at a time, when all she had to do was command by force what she wanted.

But the witch surprised him. She stopped her movements. Gave up her pleasure, his humiliation, for a long quiet stare that was far more thoughtful than anything she had thus far allowed him to see. It made him uneasy; a feat, given his already desperate circumstances.

M’cal returned her gaze, studying her flawless face, the crystalline perfection of her eyes, cold as some blue belly of arctic ice. He tried to remember why he had loved her, so long ago, and thought it must have been for beauty, alone. He could not remember for certain. He did not want to.

From behind the witch, a shadow lumbered close; a slow gray hulk with a fat pasty face and red spots the size of nickels on his cheeks; silver eyes the size of shark teeth, and a mouth just as sharp. He watched M’cal just as carefully as the witch. Licked his lips, once.

The witch leaned forward, silver hair spilling over M’cal’s face. He tried to move his head. No luck. All he could do was watch. He did not close his eyes.

The witch kissed him. Inside his head, Elsie screamed. M’cal almost cried out with her, but he swallowed his voice and held on to the woman’s stolen soul with all his strength, fighting and fighting. His fault – his fault – but this time would be different, he would make it different –

The witch inhaled and it was like being kissed by a hurricane. For one brief moment, everything inside M’cal felt loosened from its anchor: heart, bones, lungs. Essentials, floating in blood. Drifting. Elsie, drifting, torn away from his grasp. Until she was gone. Stolen, again. Just like all the others. So easy. The witch always made it look easy. And him, useless, unable to redeem himself. Nothing but a tool.

The witch leaned back, breathing hard. Shuddering. Her eyes were closed and she touched her mouth, dragging her fingertips over her lips.

“Ivan,” she murmured, and the hulking man behind her shuffled close. He held out a soft silver robe, which he helped drape over her narrow shoulders. His hand, a palm the size of a football, came down to rest heavy against the curve of her long pale neck. M’cal glimpsed a silver band glinting against his thick wrist; smooth and seamless. Not quite a twin to his own, but close enough.

The witch rose slowly off M’cal’s body. Power leaked through her skin; he felt scratchy with it, as though barnacles or steel wool rubbed against him. . The sensation did not fade when she stopped touching him. Distance was the only cure, as with most things in his life.

The witch stared down her nose at M’cal. “Up, prince. Up, now.”

No compulsion. Not yet. And with Elsie gone – gone, gone – there was no more need to stay silent. Not that the witch needed his voice to take what she wanted from him.

“No,” M’cal said. His throat hurt.

“No,” mocked the witch. “No, evermore, with you. No and no. I grow tired of that word.”

“I do not care,” M’cal replied. “You know that.”

“And I know that you are mine.” The witch snapped her fingers. The bracelet burned. M’cal fought the compulsion, but his muscles twisted; he pushed himself off the deck and stood. Exposed. Helpless. Raging. The hulk, Ivan, studied him with a narrow gaze. The line of his mouth tilted, just slightly.

“I have another task for you,” said the witch, softly. “A specific target, this time. You will take this woman’s spirit and bring it to me. You will do this now, tonight. I must have her tonight. ”

M’cal listened to her voice. “Something has frightened you.”

The witch tilted her head and Ivan moved. Fast for a man of his size; almost too fast to see. His fist rocked M’cal off his feet, sending him sliding across the deck. He tasted blood; a tooth jiggled.

“Get dressed,” snapped the witch, turning quickly with a flourish of silk and silver hair. “Ivan? Give him the name.”

Ivan knelt and smiled. His teeth were sharp as knives. He tried to touch M’cal’s bloody lip, but the compulsion was gone and M’cal grabbed the big man’s meaty index finger. Yanked backward until bone cracked, then twisted so hard it lay perpendicular to the rest of his fingers. His strength was terrible; he began to crush the bone.

Ivan never flinched. Just shrugged, tossing a slip of paper on the deck beside M’cal – then stood, slowly, jamming his heel against M’cal’s shoulder, forcing the merman to release him with nothing more than a push and tug. M’cal grit his teeth, wary, but Ivan did not retaliate. His expression never changed at all, not even when he grabbed his broken finger and reset it with a sickening crunch.

Ivan turned and lumbered away, following the witch. M’cal watched him go, licking his lip, again tasting blood. A weak breeze brushed his throbbing face; beside him, the paper rustled. He thought about not picking it up, but refusal would only delay the inevitable. The witch would force him, just as she had for years. M’cal preferred to move on his own, even if it was just an illusion.

There was a hotel address on the paper, as well as the whereabouts of the victim, at least for the next several hours. There was also a name. M’cal spoke it out loud, enjoying the rolling delicacy of its sound. A short-lived pleasure – he found himself racked by guilt, hatred; a rage so terrible he shuddered with it, fingers digging into his thigh, against the hard deck. The silver cuff glinted against his wrist, the skin just above the metal covered in thin white scars. Again, he thought about a knife, a gun – something, anything – to stop himself. Or the witch.

But there was nothing. Nothing he could do. Nothing he had not already tried.

“Kitala Bell,” he murmured, gazing once again at the paper in his hands. “Forgive me.”

Wild Thing (anthology) Excerpt

My mother used to say that the tale of the world is drawn in blood, blood in flesh, veins forking into destiny like the branches of the tree from which the apple hung and the serpent danced, trading whispers for the corruption of innocents. Good and evil, knowledge and choice. And there, at the root of history, the world tumbled down.

History is legend. Legend is blood. And I am totally fucked.

***

My mother was murdered on the day I turned twenty-one.

It was at night. She served me cake. When I blew out the candles, she died. Shotgun blast to the head, aimed right through the kitchen window. I walked away without a scratch. I suppose I killed her, just as much as the zombie who pulled the trigger did. I try not to think about it.

Since then, though, I’ve kept to the road. No home, no roots. Just me and the boys. I suppose they deserve some of the blame, too. All of it, really. But hating them is the same as hating myself, and my mother would not want that.

So, like I said, I try not to think about it.

It is a rainy evening in Seattle. Beyond the drizzle, sunset is coming. Best time of day, or the worst—depending on where I am. Right now, it is pretty bad. I know the sun is setting because my tattoos are ready to peel. Puts me in a bind because I’ve got no place to go and nowhere to hide. I am standing beneath the arcade on the crowded upper level of Pike Place Market, only a step away from the wet cobblestones and idling traffic of First Street. There is an echo beneath my feet; the lower levels of the Market, sinking into the hill, resonating with the footsteps of tourists and locals; voices chattering around the antique dealers, the comic book sellers, the head shops and farmers and crafts and kitsch. A combination meant to evoke nostalgia, perhaps. An emotion lost on me, at this particular moment.

I blame the zombies. I am surrounded by them. They are breathing down my neck. And they are not happy to see me.

Excerpt

Charlie’s brothers were made of stone, so the conversation was rather limited within the confines of his prison.  Still, he tried, because he remembered the life of before, the life of midnight runs and wild scents, the life of a bright moon floating halo-like in the sky, full and pregnant on the heavens.  A good life, even if much of it had been hidden.

Good, however, was not the word Charlie would use to describe his current circumstances, though in all honesty, he thought it possible to feel a small amount of pride that he had done as well as he had.  After all, he was not stone.  The curse that had taken his siblings had not reached as far as his flesh – an accident of fate, as far as he was concerned – and though the witch had a taste for his flesh – in all manner and form – he had managed to plead some favors with the hag, as a matter of courtesy.  The witch had some manners left to her.  Not many, but enough.

For example, she cut out his heart whenever he asked her to.  Which in recent days, was quite often.  He did not think she minded; hearts were her favorite to consume: roasted with peppers, diced and fried with ginger, stewed with carrots and onions.  All manner of preparation. Charlie could smell himself now, filling the air with a rich scent that did nothing for his appetite, but which most certainly had the witch’s stomach keening high for a tasting, perhaps with a dollop of rice.

There was nothing better than a gargoyle, when hungering for flesh.  Or that’s what the witch liked to tell him.  Charlie could not, in principle, agree – though he did acknowledge that as far as an endless food supply went, his kind were good to go.  Gargoyles were not so very easy to kill.

And destroying their natures?  Even more difficult.

It was the reason Charlie’s brothers were still cast in stone.  If they ever, in their hearts, agreed to the witch’s demands of obedience and degradation, the granite would flake away into flesh, crack and turn to dust upon their bodies.  All it took was one word: Yes.

But, obviously, all three of them were too stubborn for that, and had been for quite some time.  Charlie was glad of it.  As lonely as he was for their company, he really could not recommend joining the living again, especially with the witch as a mistress.  She had, to use the modern colloquial, issues.

Of course, so did Charlie.  And one of those issues was a little girl named Sarah.

“She’s alone,” he said to his brothers, who crouched around him in a semi-circle, frozen in varying poses of shock and horror.  “And they’re hurting her for money and pleasure.”

It was a hard thing to hear himself say.  Charlie hated it.  Hated Kreer and her son with a passion second only to his rage at the witch.  Perhaps he had grown accustomed to the hag and her whims, but that did not mean he understood them, or that he felt any compassion for her motives.  She had stolen his entire family from their lives – good, modern, integrated lives that had taken years to cultivate – and made his brothers nothing more than stone dolls, ornaments who could still think and feel, forced to mark the passing of time as a kind of stupefying torture, while he – he lived.  Lived, and tried to make the best of it, because some day he would ferret out a way to break the curse – or maybe she would just grow tired of the exercise – and then, freedom.  Sweet and happy freedom.

You are living in a dream world.

Yes, well.  Everyone needed goals.

Like helping children escape their own prisons, those human captors who in their own ways gave the witch a run for her money.  She was sick, but at least she never targeted children.  Not to Charlie’s knowledge, anyway.

But there were others who did, and Sarah – poor little Sarah, with her dreams so full of heartfelt distress – was the last and final straw.  Charlie, during one of his excursions, had felt her from the other end of the world – a small voice, crying out – and he, dead and dreaming, with his soul separated from his body while his heart and lungs and various other organs grew back from the witch’s cuts, had broken a cardinal rule of his kind and stepped from the shadows to help her.

He could not stop himself.  Gargoyles aided, they protected, and though times had changed and forced his kind to adopt different lives – more human, less circumspect – he could not turn away from his nature, or the child.

And really, what was the danger?  No one believed in magic anymore.  No one, that is, except those already capable of it—and Charlie didn’t think any of them were going to rat him out, assuming of course that those particular elements even paid attention to the life of one insignificant gargoyle.  And if they did, then shame on them for letting the witch go on as she had.

He said as much to his brothers, and he pretended they agreed.  He also pretended they approved of him summoning in the witch with her long shining knife.
“I was just about to eat,” said the hag.  Her blonde hair bounced in a high ponytail, the ends of which skimmed her pale delicate shoulders.  She wore an off-the-shoulder number, white and glittery. Charlie noted a flush to her cheeks.  She looked very girlish.

“Are you also expecting company?” he asked, tracing the sand beneath him with one long silver finger.

“I am,” she said. “How do I look?”

“I prefer you as a brunette,” Charlie said.  “You don’t look as dangerous.”

“Liar.” She smiled and her teeth were sharp and white.  “Besides, I don’t need to worry about looking dangerous.  My guest tonight knows exactly what I am.”

“A cannibal?”

“Silly.  An asset.”

That was disturbing.  “I thought you preferred working alone.”

“What I prefer is that you not ask so many questions.  Don’t worry,” and here she smiled, once again, “I’ll take care of you, no matter what.”

“How very thoughtful,” he said.  “Really.”

The witch stepped through the circle drawn in the sand.  His prison, a mere line of light.  She held up the knife and waited.

“My heart, please,” he said.

“It is always the quick deaths with you,” she said. “And I suppose you want me to remove everything else, after that?”

“Yes,” he said.

“You really are peculiar,” said the witch.  “I can’t imagine why you think death is preferable to the company of your brothers.”

The witch was not quite as all-knowing as she imagined herself to be.  Charlie imagined punching his thumbs through her bright glittering eyes and then eating them like sugarplums.  He said, “It’s not the company of my brothers I’m trying to get away from.”

“Clever,” said the witch, and shoved the knife into his bone-plated chest.  She missed his heart on purpose, which required hacking at him for some time before she got it right.  Blood spattered her face and dress.  His brothers watched.

Charlie, dying, hoped the witch’s guest arrived before she had time to change.

* * *

The line between life and death was a thin one for a gargoyle, and Charlie, though he had never found much occasion before his captivity to walk it, found that he had some talent navigating the world beyond his body. He could see things about people – private, unconscious, things.  As a dream, a disembodied soul, almost nothing was hidden to him.  He could peer into hearts and heads, and while he was not so nosy as to pry deep into places he did not belong, being able to explore the world as a ghost did alleviate the suffering he left behind.  If only for a little while.

And the witch was totally clueless, which made the experience all the sweeter – and more – because Death was also a good opportunity to explore possible avenues of escape for himself and his brothers. Charlie did not know what kind of spell the witch had put them under, only that someone must be familiar with it, or know what could be done.  Haunting the witch for that information was impossible, even dangerous.  The shields around her thoughts were simply too tight, and Charlie feared pushing – that somehow she would sense him – recognize him, even, and the game would be up.  No more death.  No more escape into the world.

Sarah changed everything.  Not, perhaps, Charlie’s approach to the witch, but his approach to everything else in his life, which suddenly seemed burdened down with unnecessary secrets, the hands of the past reaching out to hold him down.  He was not human, and though he had masqueraded as one for years and years, to help this child, even as a ghost, demanded that he give up some of that hard earned anonymity, the illusion of separation between himself and others, the world and his personal, singular, I.  Never mind that Charlie was a prisoner, that he had lost the right to solitude.  Reaching out was far more intimate, because it was his choice, his connection to make, and the consequences would be greater still than any the witch could impart upon him. 

But it was worth it when Sarah, trapped in darkness, turned to the sound of his voice, and though she was afraid did not lose herself, and though she had been abused so horribly by men, thought hero when she listened to him speak.

Words were not enough to express what that did to him, and it was not pride that made him warm, but something deeper – genetic, maybe, a biological imperative that had been suppressed in his psyche until that moment, that bloom of recognition when he thought, My kind have given up our souls for safety.  We murdered ourselves the moment we forgot what we could do for others. What we should do, no matter what.  No matter the risk.  It is not us or them, but all of us, together.

And he carried that with him the first time he followed Sarah from her basement prison into the well-lit living room of an old farmhouse, and found a startling array of equipment: cameras, televisions, sound machines.  Thousands and thousands of dollars worth, and farther beyond, in other rooms, he sensed more: offices, computers, editing equipment; an infrastructure dedicated to the subjugation of innocence.

And subjugate it they had, Mrs. Kreer and her son, Andrew.  Both their minds were tight, as were their hearts – as difficult to read as the witch – but he did not need to push deep to know what they were about.  All he had to do was watch, ghostly arms wrapped tight around Sarah as her captor prepped the child for his show of horrors.  Sarah hated Andrew – feared him, too – but she thought, I am not alone and I am warm – and Charlie kept his word.  He did not leave her.  Not until he felt the tug, the inexorable rush, and he was forced, unwilling, back into his healed body.  The living could not exist without the soul – to resist would be committing to a true death, and Charlie was not ready for that.

But he did ask for the knife again.  And again.  As many murders as he could squeeze into the witch’s schedule.  He needed to die, and stay dead, for as long as possible.  The pain was momentary, easily endured, nothing at all compared to what Sarah suffered.  What she would continue suffering, unless he helped her.

Charlie’s options, though, were rather limited.  As a ghost, he had a form, but no real ability to affect his physical surroundings.  The best he could do was scare Mrs. Kreer and her son – which he tried, on his second visit.  The old woman did not give any indication of noticing him – and her son was much the same, except for one violent shiver which was just as likely due to a bad meal, rather than Charlie’s presence.  It was a piss poor reaction and Charlie had no explanation for it.  Sarah most certainly could see him when he chose to materialize – though admittedly, he did so with a very toned down version of his face and body.  The girl was traumatized enough without seeing what he really looked like.

So.  If he could not help Sarah himself, he needed to find someone who could.  Tricky.  The world was a big place.  He had almost six billion candidates to choose from.  Kind of, anyway.  He liked to keep his options open.

He narrowed his search based on location; Sarah was being kept in Washington State, in a little town in the mountains northeast of Seattle called Darrington.  It took him far too long to discover her location – a weakness on his part, because every time he died he went straight to the child.  A compulsion.  He needed to know she was all right.  Still alive.  And then, of course, he would say a word or two, and before long his time would run out and back under the knife he would go again.

But Sarah was being held on the west coast of the United States, and that seemed as good a place as any to start his search, beginning first with her mother.  He knew where she lived; the address was easy to take from Sarah’s mind.  She came from a house in the Cascade Mountains, only several hours away.  Charlie went there.  Just one thought and poof.  Faster than light, a speeding bullet.

Charlie did not tell Sarah he was going to her mother, and was glad for it.  He did not tell her what he found.  He did not tell her that no one had found the body, and therefore, no one had reported the girl as missing.  Sarah and her mother had lived a very isolated life.  Perfect targets, well chosen.

And there were other complications, too.  The Kreers. Their reputation in the community they lived in.  People…liked them.  Which was vomit-inducing, but unchangeable.

It all made his burden heavier, though, and suddenly the candidates he found – good men and women, professionals, even – were not good enough.  Honesty and integrity was not an adequate standard by itself, nor was a desire to do good.

Charlie wanted more out of the person who helped Sarah.  He wanted someone who would throw his or her life into the effort with as much intensity as a parent for a child, with all the dedication and commitment that such devotion required.  He wanted someone who would not give up.  He wanted someone who would fight to the bitter end to see Sarah safe.

He wanted someone who would love the girl as much as he did.

So he drifted – pressured by time and patience, because every day was a day that Sarah got hurt—listening to thoughts and hearts, looking and looking for that one bright song.  He was relentless, could not remember a time in his life when he had felt such implacable drive, and he wondered at himself, at the way he had spent his life before now; drifting around the world, moving from city to city, immersing himself in books and learning, walking streets only to pretend to be something he was not, because it was easier and safer than wearing his true inhuman face.  Casting illusion through shifting shape.

Gargoyles were not the only kind with such gifts. Charlie knew those others by their eyes.  Golden and bright, like twins suns.  Animals.  Pure shape-shifters, in the truest sense of the word.  A long time since Charlie had seen one of them.  Almost twenty years, at least.  He wondered how many were still left in the world; if they outnumbered the gargoyles and other creatures of the arcane and uncanny.  In these modern days, what was considered normal vastly outweighed its opposite, though pockets remained, often hiding in plain sight.  Clinging desperately to secrets, because the truth was unthinkable.  Charlie could not imagine what the media would make of someone like him, what governments and scientists would do to a person so radically different from human.  The heart might be the same – all the emotion and passion – but the body – the flesh –

Flesh meant nothing.  Flesh was nothing but a vehicle, a means to an end that Charlie desperately missed as he searched for help.  In his body, he could have stormed the farmhouse, taken Sarah away – but he was trapped across the ocean, in a city near the sea, and he had nothing to give the little girl but a promise.

I will help you.

Charlie gave up on Washington state and moved to Oregon.  Passed over that state in a day.  California was his last hope; after that, he would begin moving farther inland.  Three days searching, and time was running out; he needed to find someone fast.  All those high expectations – his convictions—just might have to fade to the side in order to get the job done.

And he was ready – he was ready to do it, come what may – when he felt a tug on the edge of his spirit.  A call.

He followed it.  He had no choice; he felt like he was listening to Sarah for that first time, only the mind and heart behind this voice was stronger, older, wiser.  No pain, but determination – a resolve so stubborn and powerful, Charlie felt it strike his own heart in a perfect sympathetic echo.

He focused in on that call, binding himself to the imprint of the mind attached to it, and went, dropping his spirit into the middle of a storm, a tumult, spinning wild against thoughts of pain and anger, and there, at the center –

A woman.

She was very tall, with skin the color of deep bronze; a woman easy to hold on to, with shapely legs and a small waist; broad shoulders and strong arms.  Nothing girlish about her; just solid strength, easy confidence.  And her mind –

Charlie lost himself inside her head, rolling through her thoughts, which were impossible and unending and fast – so fast – quicksilver and mercury and lightening rolling into one flashing vision of cars and bullets and dying men and he heard – I have to stop this – I can’t let him go – and – Quinn, be careful –

He pressed for her name and found – Agatha – and there was another man beside her – Quinn – but his thoughts were quiet in the shadow of her mind, and Charlie watched, appalled and fascinated and terrified, as Agatha threw herself against death, fearless, all to stop –

A man who hurt children.

Charlie pressed himself deep inside Agatha, burying his soul against her own, sharing her life as she fought with all her strength to take down the man she hunted.  When she breathed it was for him, and he breathed for her, curling around her lungs, beating her heart until it was his heart, until he could not tell where he ended and she began, and it was wrong – wrong to be so close to someone without permission, but he could not help himself because to be in a mind so strong, so wild and chaotic and perfect, was a drug.

He had his champion.  Right here.  His huntress.  The perfect woman for Sarah.

The perfect woman for you, a voice whispered.

Charlie pushed that thought away.  He had not come looking for himself.  His heart did not matter.  He had a mission, a little girl to save.  She was the only one he had time for.

And besides, humans and gargoyles did not mix.  Not ever, and not unless deception was involved.  The physical differences were just too great.

Yet he wondered, as he finally untangled himself from her soul, what it would be like.  He wondered, because it came to him in increments, bits of stunning truth, that the woman was even more extraordinary than he had first imagined, and he saw things inside her head – impossible things – that made him question once again the world around him, turn the paradigm upside down. 

Excerpt

In the moments before Dean Campbell opened his eyes to the fire burning him alive, he found himself lost within a dream of stone and light, where bones crunched underfoot and a chain pressed hard around his ankle, binding him tight within the center of a raggedy sand circle. A deep dream, an old dream, the kind he rarely had anymore, and it was only the scent of roasting meat that pulled him from the mystery of shadows inside him mind. Pulled him free and floating, consciousness returning with a hard peeling light that became, after a moment’s confusion, an inferno, a sheet of pure heat washing over his naked body
.
Fire. He was on fire.

Dean screamed. He screamed until his eyes bulged, but he made no sound. His throat was hostage. And like his voice, his body refused him. He could not move. Paralyzed, or maybe he was already dead and this was hell: forced to watch himself burn to ash, his life given up like a paper doll to a matchstick, some human sacrifice to the white-hot beast licking his eyes, melting his mouth, pushing deep inside his ears to roar like thunder; a sound to ride his terror upon as he silently screamed, screamed and screamed until something broke inside his head and shattered.

He felt hands on his body. Real hands, the kind he had not felt in years. Small and female, delicate. Moving against his chest, sinking into his splitting flesh. Scratching. Cutting. Carving an incision above his heart. He felt no pain, no—nerve endings melting, sloughing away like old skin—but he sensed those fingers—oh God, oh God—slide into his body past bone to wrap tight around his hammering heart, and he thought, This is it, I’m gonna die, I’m already dead, what a loser, what a goddamn way to end it. But as the hand squeezed inside his chest, fingers unforgiving, another voice intruded on Dean’s mind, a voice loud and clear and unfamiliar, and he heard a man say, No, not yet, not again.

And just like that, the fire boomed, puffed, the pressure eased. The world collapsed into darkness.

Screams. Dean heard terrible screams. He thought someone else must be hurt, dying—get up, get up, get your gun and fight—but after a moment of dazed horrified wonder he realized that it was him—his voice, finally working—and what a beautiful awful sound. He could not shut his mouth. He could not stop his body from writhing as the paralysis eased. Yet still, blindness; a darkness absolute…until Dean raised a shaking hand and touched his face

He opened his eyes. The world came into soft-lit focus: a white ceiling, creamy walls, a darkened window covered in ivory sheers. Hotel finery at its best. Clean and perfect and not on fire.

Not on fire.

He sucked in his breath and closed his eyes. Gripped the rumpled sheets between his fists to steady himself before slowly, carefully, touching his body. He was naked, covered in sweat, but his skin was smooth and he felt no pain. He was whole. Intact. Still had a penis and all the other bits that went with it. No bad smells, like meat or smoke. Just the light sweet scent of orchids.

So. Just a dream, then. A goddamn dream.

Dean sat up. Cold metal spilled from the hollow of his throat; a woman’s locket, hanging from a thin chain around his neck. He gripped the necklace hard, savoring the rounded edge that cut into his palm. Gulped down long cold breaths that did nothing to slow his heart. He felt woozy, nauseated. Tried to imagine the fire as a dream and could not. The heat was still too real.

His knuckles brushed against his chest, the skin above his heart. He felt a scar, but that was familiar, old news. Except, just below it he touched something else, a ridge that should not be, and Dean opened his eyes.

There was a mark. A red curving line, like a welt or bloody tattoo, the afterthought of a sharp knife. Dean pressed his fingers against it, tracing the edges. He felt pain. The first pain since opening his eyes to the fire, the dream.

Or maybe not a dream at all. Dean remembered those small hands, the sensation of fingers pushing, pushing so damn hard into his chest, wrapping around his heart. Squeezing. He remembered that voice in his head. He remembered fire.

All of it, so real. Real enough to kill. Real enough to almost make sense, considering what he had been chasing for the past three days. Which, given his luck, meant one thing only.

He was in some very deep shit.

Excerpt

Shortly before being shot in the back with a tranquilizer dart and dumped half-dazed on a stretcher, right before being stolen from the hospital by silent men in white coats, Elena Baxter stood at the end of a dying child’s bed, her hand on a small bare foot, and attempted to perform a miracle.

She was good at miracles. She had been practicing them for her entire life, and at twenty-eight years of age, had become quite proficient at the art of doing Strange and Wonderful Things.

The child’s name was Olivia McCoy. Eight years old, with a large brain tumor swelling against her skull. Conventional treatments had only delayed the inevitable and likely worsened the quality of Olivia’s end, and yet, unable to let go, Mr. and Mrs. McCoy had brought their daughter to the Milwaukee Children’s Hospital for one last stand. The hospital had a good reputation for healing childhood cancer, and while the doctors frequently patted themselves on the back for their successes, their triumph was tainted by uneasiness. They did not know why all the children in their ward inevitably recovered. The statistics simply did not allow for such a confluence of miracle.

Elena, a simple unpaid volunteer inside the hospital, was not so surprised.

Today she was delivering stool samples and plasma, running from one department to the next, taking the calls of the nurses who needed charts delivered, patients transferred, messes cleaned. Flowers had to be delivered from the gift shop, cards signed by forgetful and not-so-loved-ones. Kind words needed to be said to the dying, hands held for just moments, to give comfort. The patients, young and old, liked Elena. She made people feel good, even if they did not know why.

The nurses and doctors knew this, and as Elena had anticipated, allowed her some freedom of movement. She could go into patient rooms and sit for a while, unattended. The children liked to be read to, especially when their parents had to leave for work or run errands or sleep. Olivia, for example, enjoyed hearing about the old woman who named things, or the story about a kitten with a big meow. Elena thought she was a very sweet girl.

Which was why, with the books piled on the bed stand and Olivia fast asleep, Elena decided it was time for a little miracle. It was clear to her, based on experience, careful eavesdropping, and sneak peaks at Olivia’s charts, that the treatments were not working and the girl would be dead in a week. With children, unlike adults, Elena could not bring herself to perform triage. Every life needed to be saved.

Olivia’s foot was cold. Poor wasted body. She slept uncomfortably, with the pale exhaustion of the dying: a shallow rest, as though in her mind she knew the end was near, and was afraid of never waking up again. Cancer always put a bad taste in Elena’s mouth; like an unripe persimmon, shriveling the insides of her cheeks. No other disease caused quite the same reaction. Elena held on to the little girl’s foot, and through that contact entered her dying body. Olivia’s spirit felt older than her years: like a mummy, dry and brittle.

Elena, drifting like a ghost inside Olivia, played her game of possession. Breathed for the girl an image of health, coaxing and prodding, a gentle heal yourself, bury it down, because Olivia already had everything she needed: protective mechanisms that made it possible for any human to spontaneously regress even the most malignant of tumors. Natural human capabilities were a wondrous thing, but only if the body woke long enough to use them. Elena was very good at waking people up.

It took some time. Olivia’s body was stubborn. Eventually, though, Elena felt the response: a subtle twist, a gathering of strength around the cancer in the child’s brain. Little teeth, gnawing away at the tumor. No more swelling, after today. The girl would live longer than a week, longer than two, and in three, after exceeding everyone’s expectations, after the death watch had grown tiresome, the doctors would perform another scan and discover the dying tumor, the healing brain, the happy child.

Elena fled back to her body. Sounds returned: the nurses, chattering softly in the hall outside Olivia’s room, the click and beep of essential instruments, the squeal of stretcher wheels. She imagined the girl looked better already. There was pink in her cheeks.

Elena never heard the men enter the room. She felt pain between her shoulder blades, had a moment to think that was strange because she was always careful on the farm and rarely pulled a muscle, and then she started falling and it was impossible to stop, to hold on, to keep upright.

Hands caught her. Rough hands, strong, lifting her off the ground. Her throat felt paralyzed. She saw white coats, hard eyes.

Oh, no, she thought, lucid enough to feel fear. They finally found me.

Elena was carried away.

Excerpt

In her first moment of consciousness, before opening her eyes to the world and discovering such things as floors and walls and straitjackets, Jean Grey imagined she had died; that for all she had suffered in her life, all her terrible sacrifices, the final end would offer nothing but an eternity of suffocation, an unending crushing darkness spent in utter isolation.

Her mind was blind. She felt nothing. Heard nothing. Not even Scott. Cut off, like a blade had been dropped on her neck, separating life from thought, life from sensation, life from—Scott?—life.

The remembrance of flesh came to her slowly. She became aware of her legs, curled on a flat hard surface; her hands, tucked close and warm against a hard body. Her body, though it felt odd, unfamiliar. Not right.

Jean opened her eyes. She saw a cracked white wall decorated by the shadows of chicken wire. She smelled bleach, and beneath that scent, urine. She felt something sticky beneath her cheek. Her head was strange—not just her mind, but her actual head—and her hair rasped against her cheek. No silken strands, but rough, like stubble. Her mouth felt different, too; her teeth grated unevenly. Her jaw popped.

Jean could not move her arms. This concerned her until she realized she was not paralyzed. Her arms were simply restrained against her chest, bound tight within white sleeves that crisscrossed her body like an arcane corset. Again, she tried to reach out with her mind beyond the isolation of silent mental darkness—Scott, where are you, what has happened—to find some trace of that living golden thread that was a thought, a presence, a—I am not alone --

As a child, alone was all Jean wanted to be. Alone in her head, alone in her heart, alone with no voices whispering incessantly of their fears and dreams and sins. Funny, how things could change. Her wishes had grown up.

Jean tried to roll into a sitting position. Slow, so slow—her head throbbed, a wicked pain like she had been struck—and she fought down nausea, swallowing hard. She had to get her feet back, get free and away, away to find the others. It did not matter where she was or who had done this—results, results are all that matter—only that it could not be allowed to continue.

Scott will be looking for me.

Yes, if he could. Jean’s last memory of her husband was his strong profile as he gazed up at the dilapidated brick façade of an old mental hospital, sagging on its foundations in a quiet neighborhood located beside the industrial hinterland between Tacoma and Seattle. Disturbing reports of rising mutant and human tensions had trickled in from the Northwest for weeks, but without anything specific enough to warrant a full investigation—or interference—from the X-Men.

Until two days ago. Logan had learned through an old contact that mutants were being arrested on false charges and incarcerated in state mental hospitals. Serious accusations, with no real hard evidence—except a name.

Belldonne. An institute for the mentally ill, and a place—according to Logan’s contact—where the X-Men would find incontrovertible evidence that mutants were being held against their will.

“And if it’s true, then it ain’t no holiday they’re having,” Logan had said. Because prison was bad enough—but add doctors, the ominous specter of science, experimentation, and the scenario became much worse. Mutants, despite the law protecting them, were still easy fodder for overeager scientists who wanted nothing more than to see, in the flesh, the why and how of extreme mutation. Jean understood the fascination. She simply did not think it was an excuse for unscrupulous behavior.

The room was small. One window, covered in fine mesh. No furniture or cameras or anything at all that revealed the identity of her captors. The door had a small glass observation window set too high for Jean to see much but a snatch of ceiling.

She heard voices in the hall, soft, and then footsteps. Closer and closer until the doorknob rattled. Jean closed her eyes. She heard someone enter.

“He still out?” said a man. He had a rough voice, gritty like a hard smoker.

“Probably pretending,” said another. Jean heard shoes scuff the floor. She peered through her lashes and saw black shoes and dark blue pants. Cologne tickled her nostrils.

“Hey,” said the first man, nudging her ribs with his toe. “Hey, Jeff. You out?”

Quiet laughter. “Idiot. You actually expect him to say yes?”

The two men stood close together, relaxed and unafraid. Perfect. Jean shot out her legs and slammed her socked heels into a knee. She heard a very satisfying crunch, a sharp howl, and then she rolled left as the second man tried to subdue her. He was slow—but then, so was Jean. Her body felt clumsy, unfamiliar; she barely managed to gather enough momentum to stand, and by that point, the man—large, muscular, with a flat square face—was too close for her to maneuver. She saw his fist speed toward her face—was able to turn just slightly—and got clipped hard enough to slam her into the wall. A low whuff of air escaped her throat, and the sound of that partial cry made her forget pain, capture—everything but her voice.

A man’s voice, slipped free from her throat. Deep, hoarse, and horrifying. It had to be wrong, her imagination: The man with the broken kneecap howled, screaming so loud her own voice must have been drowned out, swallowed up, and yes, that was right, that had to be it --

A strong hand grabbed her hair and crashed her forehead against the wall. Her skull rattled; sound passed her lips, and still it was the same, an impossible rumbling baritone that was not her voice, not feminine in the slightest.

“Hold still,” muttered the man, pinning her against the wall. “Jesus, Jeff.”

“Who are you?” she asked, listening to herself speak. Chills rushed through her arms and she glanced down, seeing what she had taken for granted upon waking, never noticing, never paying any serious attention to the changes she felt in her body.

Not my body. Not my body.

No breasts, a thick waist, strong broad legs. The ends of black dreadlocks, hanging over her left shoulder.

Her captor did not answer. He was breathing too hard. His companion lay on the floor, muffled screams puffing from between his clenched teeth. Jean heard footsteps outside the room: people running, drawn by the sounds of violence.

“Please,” Jean said, listening to herself speak in a stranger’s voice. She wanted to vomit. “Where am I?”

The man shook his head. “I thought you were getting better. No wonder Maguire wanted you restrained.”

The door banged open. Three men entered; one of them held a nightstick, another had a syringe. She recognized their uniforms.

“Don’t,” Jean said, staring at the syringe. “I’m calm now. I’m better.”

“Sorry.” The man pushed her harder against the wall. “No one’s going to take a risk on you now.”

Jean struggled. Without her powers, she lived in a state of semi-unconsciousness. To take that one step further—again—without knowing where the others were—Scott—or what had happened to put her in another person’s body, was more than she could bear.

She was outnumbered and in a straitjacket. Perhaps the men showed surprise that the person they were accustomed to dealing with displayed sophisticated tricks in fighting them off, but they were tough and used to unruly patients. They subdued Jean. They subdued the man they called Jeff. And as Jean felt the sharp prick of the syringe in the side of her neck, she silently called out to her husband, to her friends, to anyone who might be listening, and then, still fighting, felt herself borne down to the hard floor like a slippery fish, slipping swiftly through the curtain of darkness into a deeper unconscious.

Excerpt

Dela had mysterious dreams the night before she bought the riddle box.  A portent, maybe.  She did not think much of it.  She was used to strange dreams, only a few of which had ever come true.

Still, she was alert when she left the hotel the next morning, stepping into the dry furnace of a rare clear Beijing day.  Winds had swept through the night, sloughing away the smog and scent of exhaust and decay.  Blue sky, everywhere.  Sun glinted off the glass of skyscrapers, cars, diamonds ­­ the aluminum spines of umbrellas shading dark-eyed women ­­ casting sparks in Dela’s unprotected eyes.  The world trickled light.

The city had changed.  Ten years of capitalist influence, spinning a web of glass and advertisements; a modern infrastructure sweeping over the land as surely as the fine Gobi dust imported by the northern winds.  A new cultural revolution, here in the city, across China.  It mattered to Dela, the form and result.  She could hear Beijing’s growing song, the soul of the city ­­ the collective soul of its thirteen million inhabitants ­­ etched into the steel.

Dangerous, alluring ­­ she did not like to listen long.  There was too much hunger in that voice, overwhelming promise and hope, twisted with despair.  A double-edged blade, forged from the dreams of the people living their lives around her.

Just like any other big city, she reminded herself, pouring strength into her mental shields.  Devils and angels, the lost and found.

Cabs swarmed the hotel drive ­­ like fire-ants, fast and red ­­ and Dela jumped into the first one that squealed to a stop.  Directions, spoken in perfect Mandarin, slipped off her tongue.  One week in China, and her old language lessons had returned with a fury.  True, she sometimes practiced with her assistant, Adam ­­ a former resident of Nanjing ­­ but regular life had settled its wings on her shoulders, years without stretching herself, dredging up the studies that had once taken her around the world.  Dela thought she might have forgotten all those parts that were not metal, of the forge, and was glad she had not.

The cab wrenched from one clogged lane to another ­­ a hair-raising mish-mash of roaring engines and squealing tires ­­curving down a tree-lined street where colorful exercise bars lined a scrap of shaded park.  Elderly men and women pushed and pulled their way through rotating stress exercises, children screaming on seesaws.  Bicycles overburdened with cargo, both human and vegetable, trundled down the crowded street, cars swerving to avoid the monstrously wide loads, as well as the packs of ragged young men darting across the road.

Dela saw a familiar low wall, cracked with age, its carved flowers and barbed wire still unchanged.  She tapped the plastic barrier and the driver let her out before the wide entrance, scratched blue doors flung open to admit both foreigners and locals, making their way through a treacherous maze of parked bicycles.  Dela saw faces bright with curiosity and greed.

Entering Pan Jia-Yuan.  The Dirt Market.  Tourist trap, hive of antique rip-offs and bald-faced lies ­­ a treasure hunter’s paradise.  And Dela was in the mood to hunt.

Dust swirled around her feet as she slipped past crooked old men and women hawking nylon shopping bags to beleaguered early birds, hands already full of purchases.  Stepping onto the concrete platform shaded by a voluminous tin roof, she listened to cheap jade jingle: bracelets, statues, necklaces. Pretty enough, and quite popular, if the gathered crowds were any indication. Nothing caught her eye.  Potential gifts, perhaps, for acquaintances who would appreciate the gesture.  Not good enough for actual friends, few and far between ­­ deserving of special care, something beyond trinkets.

But later.  Dela had something else to find.

She combed the shadowed interiors of the open-air stalls, searching until she heard a familiar call inside her mind. Weapons. She followed the whispers to their source.

Scimitars and short swords; Tibetan daggers, hilts engraved with piled grinning skulls.  Mongol bows, rough with use and age, quivers flimsy with faded embroidery, metal trimmings.  Everywhere, dusty tinted steel ­­ but all of it disappointing.  The metalwork was poor ­­ cheap imitations for not-so-cheap prices.

Dela stared at the eager merchants, who smiled at her blond hair, pale skin, and electric eyes.  Easy mark.  She could see it written on their faces, and their judgment made her feel lonely; a foreign emotion, and unpleasant.

Bad enough they probably think I’m dumb, she thought sourly.  Solitude was a gift, but only when paired with anonymity ­­ the disinterested observer.

Dela frowned at herself.  You shouldn’t have returned to China if you didn’t want to stand out.  Buck up, girl.

She left the weapons stalls, ignoring protests ­­ some of which bordered on desperate ­­ with a polite shake of her head.  Those weapons offered her nothing.  She knew quality when she saw it, age and history when she felt it.  A simple thing, when one worked with steel as much as she did.  When it sang its secrets inside her head.

Still looking for treasures, Dela simply wandered for a time, soaking in the heat, the scents of incense and musty artifacts kept too long in shadow.  She watched children sell boxed breakfasts of fried noodles and onion pancakes, crying out prices in high voices.  She listened to an old man play a lilting melody on a stone flute, and bought one of his small instruments.  He laughed when she tried stringing notes together, the hollow stone wheezing miserably.  Dela grinned, shrugging.

After nearly an hour of browsing, Dela found something perfect for her mother.  Generous rectangles of linen, dyed a vibrant navy, embroidered with delicate stylized flowers ­­ a bouquet of colors, random and perfect.  She bargained like a fiend, dredging up every scrap of charm and language she possessed, and by the end of the transaction, both she and the seller were grinning foolishly.

“Aiii yo,” sighed the older woman, as she smoothed glossy silver hair away from an oval face that looked at least twenty years younger than her body.  Gold-flecked eyes glittered, but not unkindly.  “It has been a long time since I met a foreigner who made me work for a sale.”

Dela laughed.  “It’s been a long time since I met anyone I enjoyed arguing with.”

The woman quirked her lips, and for a moment, her gaze changed, becoming older, darker, wiser.  “I have something else you might want.”

“Ah, no.  I think I have enough.”

The old woman ignored her, already digging through the tapestries and knickknacks piled at her feet.  Dela watched, helpless.  She did not have the heart to simply walk away.  A good haggle created a bond ­­ certain unspoken etiquette.  The “last chance” possibility of a final transaction.

The late summer heat was growing oppressive; air moved sluggishly between the stalls, thick with wares and milling bodies. The scents of dust and grease tickled Dela’s nose.  Sweat ran down her back.  Slightly bored and uncomfortable, she turned full circle, gazing at the throng of shoppers.

A man at the end of the aisle caught her eye.  He was of an indeterminate race, darkly handsome, wearing sandals and loose black slacks, as well as a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up.  Crisp, clean, and somehow out of place, although Dela could not determine exactly why.

At first she thought he was staring at her ­­ and perhaps he had been ­­ but now he studied the old woman digging through her wares, and Dela felt inexplicably uneasy for her.  His eyes were cold, measuring, haunted by a simmering intensity that would have been overwhelming if not matched to such an attractive face and body.

When the old woman popped up with a triumphant sigh, Dela stepped close.

“Behind me,” she whispered, not caring if the woman thought her strange, “there is a man watching you.”

Her gold-flecked gaze flickered; something hard rippled through her face.  “I am used to him.  He seems to think I have something he wants.”

“I don’t like him,” Dela said.

The old woman smiled.  For a moment, her teeth looked sharp, predatory.  “Which is why I am going to do you a favor.  For one yuan, you may have this riddle box.”

Dela stared.  One yuan was an incredibly low price for the Dirt Market, where everything was inflated to exorbitant amounts, especially for foreigners.  She gazed at the object in the old woman’s hands.  Loosely wrapped in linen, she saw soft lines, rounded edges.  Wood, perhaps, although she imagined the hint of something harder beneath the cloth.  No metal.  Nothing called to her.

“What is the riddle?” Dela asked.

The old woman bared her teeth.  “Choice.”

Dela looked at her sharply and reached for the box.  The woman pulled away, shaking her head.

“Bought and sold,” she whispered, and Dela was struck by the intensity of her stare, more powerful than the gaze of the strange man still observing them.  “It must be bought and sold.  One yuan, please.”

Dela could not bring herself to argue, to refuse.  Despite the odd air surrounding the transaction, the vague uneasiness pricking her spine, she fished a bill from her purse and handed it to the old woman.

Another sigh, and the old woman looked deep into Dela’s eyes.  “A good choice,” she said, and Dela sensed some deeper, inexplicable meaning.  She carefully slid the wrapped box into Dela’s purse ­­ a swift act, as though to conceal.  Dela felt uneasy.

You know better, she chided herself.  This ‘box’ could be full of drugs, and you’re the stupid American courier, traipsing around until you get pulled over by the cops, and thrown into a sweaty prison.

Or not, she thought, staring into the old woman’s mysterious face.  Dreams and portents, she reminded herself, fighting down a shudder.  The stifling air was suddenly not warm enough.  Her bones felt cold.

The old woman stepped back, smiling, and suddenly she was just like any other Dirt Market hawker.  Eyes sharp, but somewhat glassy.  Easy mark eyes.

“Bye-bye,” she said, and turned her back on Dela.

The sudden reversal in attitude, from intimate to dismissive, took Dela off guard.  She almost protested, but from the corner of her eye, felt the strange man’s attention suddenly weigh upon her.  An odd sensation; tangible, like sticky fingers on the back of her neck.  Impossible to ignore.

Go, whispered her instincts.

Without another look at the old woman, Dela walked down the aisle, away from the strange man and his searching eyes.  She did not look back; she moved gracefully through the thickening crowds, slipping between stalls and merchants, ragged men and women rising from their haunches to shove vases in front of her flushed face.  Her chill vanished; the heat suddenly felt overwhelming, the press of bodies too much, the sensation of being hunted tightening her gut.  Premonition haunted her.

When Dela finally broke free of her winding path, she found herself near the front gates.  Heart pounding, she jogged to the street and hailed a cab.  A breath of cool air brushed against her sweaty neck.

“My,” drawled a smooth masculine voice.  “You are in a hurry.  What a shame.”

Dela was used to unpleasant surprises, but it was still difficult not to flinch.  The strange man stood beside her, intimately close.  Perfectly coifed, breathtakingly handsome.

She disliked him immediately.  He was too perfect, fake and unreal.  Even his voice sounded over-cultured, as though he was trying to affect an unfamiliar accent.  There was nothing kind about his smile, which skirted the edge of hunger, conceit.  He made Dela’s skin crawl, and she stepped out of his shadow, frowning.

A cab stopped in front of her; Dela opened the door to slide in.  The stranger caught her hand.  His touch burned, and she barely kept from gasping at the strange sensation.  His skin felt thin as parchment, ancient, but with such heat ­­ actual fire, to her ice.

Shock turned to anger.

“Get your hand off me,” she said, low and hard.

He smiled.  “It has been a long time since I had a conversation with a beautiful woman.  Perhaps I could share your cab?  I know a lovely courtyard restaurant.”

Conversation?  Beautiful woman?  Dela would have laughed, except he clearly expected her to say yes; he even nudged her toward the cab, maintaining his iron grip on her hand, his smile as white and plastic as a cheap doll.

“I don’t think so,” Dela snapped, surprised and pleased to see his dark eyes shutter, his smile falter.  Did he really think she would be so easily cowed, so stupid and desperate?  “And if you don’t let go of me this instant, I am going to start screaming.”

Perhaps it was the cold promise in Dela’s voice; all charm fled the stranger’s face.  The transformation was stunning.  He leaned close, his breath hot, smelling faintly of garlic, pepper.  His gaze, dark and oppressive, lifted the hairs on the back of Dela’s neck.

Something fluttered against her mind, then, bitter and sharp.

Dela clenched her jaw so tight her teeth ached, and the stranger smiled.  A real smile, bright and blistering and sharp.

“How interesting,” he said, squeezing her hand until her bones creaked. The pain sparked rage, striking Dela’s fear to dust.  No one hurt her. Ever.  Not while there was still breath in her body.

Loosening her jaw, Dela smiled ­­ and screamed.

It was a marvelous scream, and Dela took an unholy amount of glee in the look of pain that crossed over the stranger’s face. Bikes crashed into cars; passersby stopped dead in their tracks to stare.  Dela pulled against his hand.

“Help me!” she screeched in both Chinese and English.  “Please!  This man is trying to rob me!  He’s going to rape me!  Please, please…someone!”

Dela did not think she had ever sounded so frightened or pathetic in her entire life, but the horrible part was that while she had started out acting, the growing fury in the man’s face suddenly did scare her.  He looked like he wanted to kill her with his bare hands ­­ as though he would, right there with everyone watching.  Her entire arm screamed with pain as his fingers crushed bone.

Soldiers, common enough on Beijing’s streets, ran from the gathered crowd of onlookers.  Strong young men, they latched onto Dela’s assailant, wrenching him away from her.  It was quite a struggle; he was very strong and refused to let go of her hand.  When he did, a cry escaped his throat; a bark of frustration, anger.

Dela slipped backwards into the cab, fumbling for the door, eyes wide upon the hate distorting that handsome face.  The urge to run overwhelmed and she rapped her knuckles on the plastic barrier.  The startled cab driver did not wait for her destination.  He swerved into traffic, car brakes squealing all around them, horns blaring.  Within seconds, the Dirt Market ­­ and the ongoing struggle outside its gate ­­ was left behind.

Dela rubbed her arms, shuddering.  Her face felt hot to the touch, but the rest of her burned cold.  She bowed her head between her knees, taking deep measured breaths.  The breathing helped her sudden nausea, but her heart continued to thud painfully against her ribs.  She managed to tell the driver the name of the hotel, and then held her aching hand, trying to forget the feel of the man’s fingers squeezing flesh and bone.  The hot ash of his skin.  The cool tremble against her mind.

A great stillness stole over Dela as she rode the memory of that sensation.  She could count on one hand the number of times a stranger had purposely pressed his mind to her own, and while her shields were strong ­­ her brother had made sure of that ­­ Dela was in no mood to test herself against anyone who really wished her harm.

But he didn’t know I was different until the end.  Which meant the stranger had followed her out of the Dirt Market for another reason, one that had nothing to do with her psi-abilities.  Dela remembered his cold dark eyes, how he had watched the old woman long before paying attention to her.  What was his need, his purpose?

Through her purse, Dela felt a hard lump.  The riddle box.  Clarity spilled over her, and she almost examined her tiny purchase then and there.  She caught the driver watching her through his rear view mirror, and hesitated.  If she really had just purchased something awful like drugs or God-knows-what, she did not want any witnesses when she began poking her nose into Trouble.  If that was what the riddle box represented.

He can’t find me, Dela reminded herself.  That creep has no idea who I am, and this is a big city.  It was a small comfort.

When Dela arrived at the hotel, she stumbled up to her room, ignoring the strange looks people cast in her direction.  She caught a glimpse of herself in the elevator’s polished steel doors, and winced.  Her blouse had popped open, her face was beet red, and her hair looked…well, just plain bad.

“Round one goes to the Evil Minion of Satan,” she muttered, holding shut the front of her blouse.  A nearby businessman gave her a strange look, and Dela laughed weakly ­­ which didn’t seem to comfort him at all.

Once inside her room, Dela turned all the locks on the door, and threw her purse on the bed.  The linen-wrapped box spilled out onto the burgundy covers, and she stared at it for one long minute.  Stared, and then retreated into the bathroom for a shower.  Dela couldn’t take any more bad news ­­ not just then.  She desperately wanted to scrub away the morning, the lingering miasma of the stranger’s presence.

Dela remained under the hot water for an indecent amount of time, until at last she stopped shivering.  Infinitely calmer, she wrapped thick towels around her body and hair, and returned to the main room.  She flopped on the bed with a sigh and picked up the wrapped box.  Such a small, innocuous object.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.  The box may have nothing to do with that guy crawling all over you.  He could have just pegged you as a victim.

True, but what had the old woman said?

He seems to think I have something he wants.

Frowning, Dela carefully unwrapped the layers of fine linen ­­ surprising, to find such quality on an object from the Dirt Market ­­ and caught her breath as the riddle box was finally revealed.

It was exquisite, with the breathless quality of some exotic myth.  Round, no larger than the palm of herhand.  Rosewood, polished to a deep red that was almost black, inlaid with silver and gold, onyx and lapis.  The lid was etched with some foreign, incomprehensible script that looked more like musical notations than words, and the curved sides displayed an elaborate series of images, a story:  a magnificent tiger inside a thick forest; the beast suddenly a man, fighting, raging ­­ and then the tiger once again, prone, locked inside a cage.

The detail was incredible, impossibly precise and subtle.  Dela had never seen such clarity of pinpoint and line ­­ not even in her own art, and her methods were unorthodox, to say the least.  Dela ran her fingers over the carvings, the bright inlays.  She felt the tiger’s gold-lined fur beneath her fingers, sensing his capture.  The sensation of imprisonment made Dela inexplicably unhappy.

She pressed the riddle box against her cheek and closed her eyes.  She could finally taste the trace of metal inside her head, but it was faint, faint, an ancient whisper like the brush of a brittle leaf.

Its age startled her, sent a rush of pressure into her gut.  Dela rolled the metal inside her mind, listening to its sleepy secrets.  Millennia old.  Two millennia, maybe more.  She felt breathless with awe.

What was that old woman thinking when she sold this to me?  It’s priceless.

But Dela thought of the strange man, the old woman’s cryptic remarks ­­ and his behavior suddenly made sense.  She cradled the small treasure in her palms, turning it over in her fingers as surely as her thoughts were turning, twisting.  Yes, someone might very well kill for this ­­ or kidnap, assault.  But why had the man waited until he thought Dela possessed the box?  Why not go after the old woman if he suspected she had it?  Surely she would be an easier target.

Dela sighed.  She could understand the old woman wanting to rid herself of the box if she thought it would cost her life, but the black market would have offered her more money than one yuan!  It didn’t make sense.

Dela tried opening the lid, but it was stuck fast.  She studied the box, and smiled.  A true riddle.  It took her fifteen minutes of careful fiddling, using her instincts more than her eyes, but she finally found the two releases, set in an onyx claw and a silver leaf.  Pressing them simultaneously with one hand, she unscrewed the box lid ­­

­­ and the earth moved.

Violent vertigo sent Dela reeling into the pillows, clutching her head.  Scents overwhelmed: rich loam, sap, wood smoke.  Some essence of a verdant forest, come alive inside her room.  Darkness, everywhere, but her eyes were clenched shut; Dela was afraid to open them, scared she would no longer be in the hotel.  Dorothy, transported to Oz.  Her displacement felt that complete.

Dela slowly became aware of the bedspread beneath her bare legs.  The pillows, soft against her face.  Silly imagination, she chided herself, and turned to look at the box.

It was no longer on the bed beside her.

Something in her stomach lurched, another premonition.  She felt a ghost of movement, behind her, and she twisted ­­

­­ only to watch, dumbfounded, as sheer golden light spiraled through her room, shimmering in steep waves, a sunset palette of colors stroking air.

The light slowly took form, a gathering pressure of intense pinpricks.  Dela blinked, and in that moment, the light coalesced.  She felt thunder without sound, an impact to the air that lifted everything in the room, including herself.

The light disappeared, and in its place:

A man.