“Liar.”
“The other demon lords manage. Those bonds make them stronger.”
“You’re not a demon.”
“If I can’t do this,” he said quietly, then stopped, flexing his big hands: all of him, big, warm, hurting. “Breaking the bonds will kill them. I can’t do that. I can’t sacrifice all those lives just to save mine.”
“I can,” I muttered. “You’re not healthy, Grant. You’re barely eating. You aren’t sleeping. And when you do, you have nightmares. You’re going to be a father, for fuck’s sake. If we could talk to my grandfather—”
“Leave him out of it.” Grant gave me an unexpectedly hard look, which only made the circles under his bloodshot eyes stand out like bruises. The effect was worse at night: his face hollow. “I’m done talking about this, Maxine.”
He was being so stupid. Stupid and honorable, and courageous, and stupid. My irritation had irritation. Zee raised his head, giving Grant a cool look—even as Raw and Aaz jerked to attention, staring. Dek and Mal muttered something musical, and no doubt, vile—drew in deep breaths, rattled their little tails—and spat fire at him.
Grant yelped, rolling away. I laughed.
“Thanks,” he said, from the shadows. But he was laughing, too.
I’VE always had a good appetite, but being pregnant meant now I ate more like the boys—minus the barbed wire, engine oil, and occasional bomb.
Raw reached into the shadows, all the way down to his shoulder—fished around for a second—and then pulled out a small white cardboard box filled with two hamburgers smothered in cheese, what appeared to be a pound of fries, and a container of frozen custard that had the name of a famous New York burger joint written on the side.
I don’t ask where, or how, they get these things. Not anymore.
I held the box in one hand—propped against the small, barely noticeable bulge of my stomach—and started in on the hamburgers. Grant gave me an amused smile.
“You should eat one of these,” I said, and I thought he would refuse. But then, slowly, he reached over and took the second hamburger from the box.
We were walking down the hill, back to the farmhouse. Going slow, because it didn’t matter that Grant was sort-of-a-demon-lord (and even without that title, still one of the most dangerous men on earth), he had a crushed kneecap that had never healed right, and he needed a cane to walk.
The music hadn’t stopped. I kept checking the sky for helicopters, or police lights swerving up the long driveway.
“The odds are against us, no matter what we do,” I said, around a mouthful of burger. “We’ve gotten lucky so far, and that’s with mistakes. Nothing this weird is going to stay hidden forever, Grant.”
Nothing this dangerous, either. For ten thousand years, an army of demons had been locked inside a prison just beyond our world. Until, three months ago, the walls had fallen, releasing the horde upon this earth. An army accustomed to hunting humans. An army that was starving. Starving to death.
Now those four demon clans were living on my dead mother’s farm. Packed in like refugees. Eating cows, pigs, anything . . . meaty . . . our money could buy. And not particularly enjoying the taste, either.
“Alaska.” Grant’s hamburger was already gone: eaten in three bites. “We could buy land there. Or somewhere else even more remote, where no one goes. Parts of Canada. Detroit.”
I finished the hamburger and handed him the fries. Again, he hesitated. I waved them under his nose, making “choo-choo” sounds. He snorted, still holding off, and Dek began humming “Sing for Your Supper,” an old film song recorded by the Mamas and the Papas.
Grant narrowed his eyes at the little demon but gave in. After the first several bites, I thought he would puke—that had been happening more and more—but he swallowed hard, waited a moment, and reached for another.
Zee was prowling in the shadows beside us. “Need territory. Migration. Someplace wild. Far.”
I tried imagining such a place. Maybe an island in the Pacific. Deserted. But even that wouldn’t be entirely safe. Humans were everywhere. And there would never be enough food to sustain the demons.
“No such thing on earth,” I said, finally.
Zee glanced at his brothers. “Then leave earth.”
Raw and Aaz stopped tumbling through the grass. Dek’s and Mal’s purrs broke. Grant and I stopped walking and stared at Zee.
“Better to leave,” he rasped, meeting our gazes. “Enter Labyrinth. Find new world. Safe world.”
“Safe,” I echoed, and a primal urge to dig, dig and hide, hit me—with dread. Because I knew instantly what he was saying, and it was the one thing I hadn’t wanted to face. The very thing Grant and I had been skirting around for months.