Part 23 (2/2)

Grant took my hand. His skin was warm. Just warm. Not burning with fever. I reached for our bond-found only the hole-but I lingered in that empty s.p.a.ce, holding myself there, pretending there was something to wrap myself around, the memory of light.

A memory of light is the same as light, whispered the darkness.

I suppose you would know, I replied, trying to stay focused on my husband. You eat light.

And the light eats the darkness. Heat spread behind my mouth, like a smile-exactly what that sensation was. It is the eternal dance, Hunter.

It was almost sunset: light stretching, glowing, cooling. Usually the boys would have been tugging at me, itching to be free. Not today. So still, quiet, as if they were conserving their strength. Or maybe they just didn't have any.

”Jack,” I said. ”Who could impersonate you?”

”No one. It's impossible.”

”Then you were the one who orchestrated the attacks on us.”

He gave me a sharp look. ”Never.”

”Then how?”

”I don't know,” he snapped. ”It doesn't make sense.”

”No way he was lying?”

”He believed what he was saying.” My grandfather scrubbed at his face. ”Something else is happening.”

I swallowed. ”Could Zee and the boys have been deceived?”

Jack tensed. ”In what way?”

I knew right then. No matter what he said next. It was the way his shoulders hunched, and the instant wariness in his eyes. ”When Zee said he knew who had 'hammered the arrows' . . . to whom was he referring?”

He flexed his gnarled, brown hands. ”You already know that answer, my dear.”

I swallowed hard. ”And the arrows? What are they?”

My grandfather finally looked at me, and if not for a split-second slip of pain in his eyes, I would have thought he was empty on the inside, absolutely hollow.

”You know that, too,” he said.

I stared at him, stared and stared, and my heart died even more; just cracked and crumbled, and fell to ash. Finally, the boys stirred. But it was nothing more than their pain echoing mine.

”You made the disease,” I said, barely able to speak above a whisper. ”You designed the thing that's killing us.”

”That is the one thing I cannot deny,” Jack said.

I squeezed Grant's hand so hard, he stirred in his chair. ”The illness is efficient,” I recited, recalling with perfect clarity the affable voice I'd heard as I'd fought for my husband's life, deep within the cells of that poison. ”But it must be altered. It must not be allowed to affect our flesh. Only the demons.”

Jack paled, teetering so far sideways he had to lean against the rail. ”Where did you hear that?”

”It was you.” I stood, feeling the boys tug on my skin, harder now, on the edge of sunset. ”You, designing ways to kill, with the Devourer right there at your side.”

”You don't know anything,” he whispered.

”You lied to me. Your family.”

”I had to.”

”Bulls.h.i.+t! All this time, I've been searching for answers, and you stood there and said nothing!”

”I had to.” Jack's gaze burned wild. ”I don't care that you know I designed the poison. That was war, my dear. You watch world after world be ravaged and cannibalized, then tell me what you wouldn't do. You've had the privilege of control and peace. You've had the blessings of not seeing babies cooked.”

I leaned back from him, staring. Jack followed me, pressing his knuckles into the porch. I'd never seen him so angry. ”You're a fool, Maxine. You're going to kill us all.”

”Don't talk to her like that,” Grant warned.

”My apologies, lad, but even you're not worth the price. Anything would be better than the arrival of him.”

”You're sounding like an insane old man,” I said.

”If you think I'm insane, wait until you meet him. Dearest child, I'm keeping you, and your Grant, and billions of other fools, alive. Normally, I'm all for extinction events, but one must draw the line somewhere. That is why I lied to you. There is more at stake here than our cozy little family. More at stake than, say, Grant.”

”Jack,” I warned. ”It's not just Grant. Our daughter, too. Your great-granddaughter. What about her life?”

I had to give it to him-he actually looked ashamed. ”I haven't forgotten her.”

”Could have fooled me. You're the one who's going to kill us all-with that disease you designed.”

”A drop in the bucket,” he said, grim. ”I don't know who has cloned my life, but even that means nothing compared to the larger danger.”

The Devourer, I almost said, but the look on my grandfather's face made me swallow that name. He said, ”Something unexpected happened when I used the skull to spy on my kind. I had a vision-of the future.”

Fire flashed through my mind, the ominous heat and presence of that creature beyond the flames-staring at me, implacable and hungry. Full of menace, hate.

The darkness inside me was as hungry, and just as remorseless-but it felt different. Cleaner, somehow. Primal, a force of nature. Or maybe I was biased because the darkness was mine, on my side-my personal, inherited monster.

”We're waiting,” I said.

Jack held my gaze, clear and unwavering. ”I saw you undoing the chains that will release someone who would be best left chained.”

Grant stared at him. ”I'm dying, Jack. We're all sick. We don't have time for this c.r.a.p. Who is this you're so afraid of?”

Death, I wanted to say, still feeling the crackle of heat. Remembering, too, another vision: my body, dismembered by fire, torn apart like a doll.

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