The television on the counter was turned to the news. And, of course, that video was playing. It was totally silent, volume turned down. But it wasn’t just the television that was muted. The kitchen, the house, the world. I could hear my heart beat.
My grandfather stopped, staring. I turned my back to the television and walked to the kitchen sink. Got myself a glass of water.
Jack made a disgusted sound. I didn’t turn around.
“Congratulations,” he said. “The apocalypse has arrived.”
“Which one?” I asked.
“And millions are now convinced that demons are real,” he added, ignoring me. “Although . . . just as many might believe this is a hoax.”
I finally looked at the television. It showed a still shot from the recorder, and though the image was somewhat blurry, it was clear enough: What had killed those frat boys and their girlfriends did not look human.
I’d seen a lot of humans who didn’t look human. Disfigurement could do that. Women’s faces melted to the skull from acid burns, men caught in explosions that ripped their bodies to shreds. Too much plastic surgery had the same effect. To be human was one thing, but retaining the appearance of humanity—that required a superficial, very fragile, balance.
This was different. What I saw in that still shot was tall, gray, and lean, with arms and legs that were little more than ropes of sinew and leather. Narrow faces, blade-sharp cheekbones, chins that narrowed to points that resembled spearheads. Chains and long braids of silver hair that looped around chests gaunt and hard with bone. And those hands: massive, striated with muscle, each fingertip as long and deadly as a pitchfork tine.
But the eyes staring out of that photograph made everything else seem like a cheap trick; stare too long, and it felt the same as being shoved naked into a night blizzard: repulsed with bone-raw cold, a heart-flinching fuck you. And that was how I felt—knowing what I did—being who I was. I couldn’t imagine how the rest of the world was taking it. No one had been rioting in Taiwan, but that was halfway across the world. Here in Texas, in America? I was too insulated on the farm, in this business of death. I didn’t know what people looked like anymore.
“Folks see that and have to be shitting themselves,” I said.
Jack raised his brow. “This is the age of the horror movie. Photoshop, computer hackers, makeup artists. Special effects. What is real, my dear? Absolutely nothing.”
I did not relax. “They’ll run tests on those remains. Check for saliva, study the wounds—the fucking teeth marks on the bones. Someone is going to sit up and pay attention to the possibility, Jack. It doesn’t matter how many possessed people we use to run interference.”
“Of course,” he said, and even beneath the grime his knuckles were white around the metal box he still held. “You should have killed the demons when you had the chance.”
I expected bluntness, but hearing the words hurt. Because wasn’t I still thinking the same thing?
“Even their children?” I stared out the kitchen window at the empty pasture, which ran up against a heavy line of trees. Something lean and silver flitted just beyond those pale trunks—a glimpse, a hint.
Jack was silent a moment. “Yes.”
I looked down at my stomach, at my hands touching my stomach. For a moment I felt very far away from that part of my body, as if there were a million miles between my head and the area below my waist, a million miles that I could not cross, a million miles that would never be mine, which already stretched in front of the life inside me and the life that would grow inside her, and again, and again, descending through blood and demon until we outlasted this world and others, until we outlasted life itself, until there was nothing but the road.
Maybe that was what it felt like for all mothers. I didn’t know.
I turned and looked Jack dead in the eyes. “Will you help or not? I can’t handle both the Aetar and this. It’s too much.”
My grandfather leaned against the table, hugging the metal box against his stomach. He studied me, then the rest of the kitchen—slow, methodical, thoughtful. Until his gaze stopped on the old bloodstain in the cracked, linoleum floor. His fingers stopped moving. His expression never changed, but his eyes lost their focus. I didn’t worry it was another relapse. I knew what the bloodstain meant—to him, and me.
“Jolene,” he murmured, then, after a long moment: “Why does it still hurt?”
I swallowed hard. “She was your daughter. Maybe the body you made her with is dead, but she was yours.” My voice dropped to a whisper. “My mother was yours.”
Jack drew in a deep, shuddering breath, and looked at the television. “The Aetar have not attempted to contact me.”