I blinked, and looked again at the shredded faces of the dead. No real identifying features, but they all had hair. One in particular: long and smoky white, even with blood soaking the ends.
White hair. A wedding ring.
“These people aren’t teenagers,” I said, and wanted to be sick all over again. “They aren’t from the cabin the Mahati massacred.”
“No,” Grant replied, finally looking at me. “I don’t know where they came from. But it’s worse, Maxine. They’ve been tampered with.”
“Tampered,” I repeated.
“They were human once,” he said softly. “Just not when they died.”
CHAPTER 5
PRIORITIES. There was still a lone Mahati on the loose, and I needed to find her before someone else did. Like a cop, or some upstanding citizen armed with a shotgun and supernatural aim. Which pretty much described the entire population of Texas.
I also needed to stop the Aetar from attacking us again. Which seemed pretty much impossible. Not that I hadn’t seen something like this coming. I’d just wanted to pretend we’d have more time. A chance to breathe.
Stupid me.
“Find out what you can,” I said to Grant. If the dead weren’t human, we needed to know in what way because the parts the Mahati hadn’t eaten seemed pretty damn normal to me.
As for who was responsible for transforming a human into something else . . . that was no mystery at all. It made me feel surrounded, hunted—watched.
“I will,” he said, and finally looked at me; but his gaze was tired and drifted down. I found myself touching my stomach and stopped—slowly, as if I might be burned. I’d always been so reckless, but it wasn’t just me now. I had a light to carry. Another light to protect.
“Be careful. You don’t have much time until dawn.” He grazed his fingertips across my cheek. I didn’t know why he hadn’t wanted me to touch him before, but right now I was hungry to close the distance between us. I needed not to feel so alone.
Lord Ha’an knelt to sniff the remains. His long-fingered hands hovered in the air above those decapitated heads, and his nostrils trembled. “I can scent it now, the bitterness in their blood. If I had not been looking for it . . .” He stopped, shook himself, and rose to his full height. The top of his head brushed a tree branch.
“A trap,” he murmured.
I thought so, too, but didn’t want to say it out loud.
I touched Zee’s head, my other hand already closing into a fist, armor oozing white-hot. Raw and Aaz bounded close, hugging my legs. Dek and Mal curled tight around my throat, burying their heads in my hair. My boys, warm around me: family, protectors, friends. Five hearts, connected to mine, bound to each of my ancestors: a line of women who had borne the burden of being hunter and hunted, mother and daughter—lives lost, to time. Just as I would be lost, one day. Lost, except in the memories of the demons at my side.
I looked at Grant one last time, and dread rippled through me. It was just an illusion, it had to be . . . but for a moment his gaze seemed flat, empty as death.
And then the link between us—the very real bond that kept him alive—flared golden hot. Grant flinched, blinking hard—swaying a little. Like watching a man come awake; I could almost see his heart rising to the surface of his eyes, with sadness, and too much pain.
I slammed my armored right hand against my thigh and fell backward into the void.
From Texas into oblivion. Dropping, like Alice into her rabbit hole. Only, there was no Wonderland at the bottom, no bottom at all, just an endless darkness where nothing existed. Not even my own body. Barely my mind. Reduced to some fluttering, desperate flicker. If there was any place that could eat a soul, it was the void between.
Mahati, I thought hard. Now.
The void spit me out.
I staggered, drawing in a deep, wheezing breath. After the void, the sensation of air on my skin felt too raw; the hard surface beneath my feet as solid as mountain rock. I could have been standing on a mountain at the top of the world; the feeling of weightlessness, of just touching down, was the same.
No real mountain. Just a hard, flat sidewalk. It was still night, but barely; in my bones, I could feel the sun, and the horizon held the pale wash of a dangerous light. Too much light: that dim city glow, rising from streetlamps; falling from the electric, rising rush of distant skyscrapers.
Less than thirty minutes until dawn, and I stood on a long street that looked like strip-mall hell. Nothing but parking lots and battered signs, and miles of concrete cut into blocks separated by roads and scrawny bushes. Some cars in the road, but not many. Skyscrapers glittered in the distance, but what caught my eye was a familiar-looking diner just down the road, windows lit.