Free Darkness Calls by Marjorie M. Liu Page A

just flesh and bone. Frankly, I’m more worried about you.”
    “I feel obligated to remind you that I am a grown man, and not without some ability to take care of myself.”
    “You’re very capable.”
    A bemused smile touched his mouth. “Say it like you mean it.”
    “I mean it,” I said. “Any of those priests even sniff at you wrong, you fuck them over until they see Jesus.”
    Grant laughed quietly. “Yes, ma’am.”
    Behind us, the bedroom door creaked open. Mary walked out, but her eyes were still closed. She moved upon her toes like a dancer, and the poodles of her shapeless dress swirled around her pale, hairy, sinewy legs. She never opened her eyes, but I thought she must be looking at us through her lashes, because she took an unerring path directly toward us, and stopped only an arm’s length away.
    She reached out. Grant took her hand. I hesitated, and then did the same, gingerly. Trying to be gentle. I was not good at healing. I had no gift for setting things right. Just tearing apart. Hunting for the good kill.
    She made a low, grunting noise, and her voice slurred from her chest, deep and slow as fat molasses.
    “Grant,” she murmured. “You’re going to die.”
    I froze. “Mary.”
    But the old woman said nothing else. We stared at her, and I felt sick to my stomach, sick to death. Proclamations of doom were nothing new, but there was something in the way Mary voiced the words that felt worse than a promise, as though there was truth in her insanity, a taste of some fate that had already come to pass—only, I had not yet realized it.
    “Well,” Grant muttered. “I feel good about this trip.”

    I drove him to the airport. SeaTac smelled like gas, stale air, and despair—all poured into a concrete bunker. Not much different from prison.
    I stayed long enough to see him through security. Cribari had already left on a different flight. I was glad Grant wouldn’t have to sit next to the creep, but that was cold comfort.
    It was raining again when I left the airport. Low clouds, gray as old socks. I kept the window down. Tina Turner burned through the radio. I jacked up the volume as she wailed about not needing another hero . Mad Max, I thought. Loner, man with no mission but survival. Still managing to be a cop and do-gooder, even in the apocalypse. My mother had made me watch those movies. She said he was a good role model. I honestly could not disagree.
    I did not drive back to the Coop. I needed to think, but we had left Mary in the apartment, and I had nowhere else to go. The Mustang was as much my home as any other: shelter, mobility, music—better than four walls, any day. And yet, for one moment I felt as lonely as I had in years; home-sick, for something I could not name. In some ways, it had been easier without people in my life. I had gotten used to it after my mother’s death. I’d had no expectations. I had forgotten the difference.
    I thought of Grant sitting alone in the airport, traveling to help a man who had betrayed him—and squeezed the steering wheel until Raw and Aaz seemed ready to pop from my knuckles. I had to strip off my gloves. The leather felt too tight, as though I were suffocating through my hands.
    Tattoos glittered in the dull morning light. I flexed my fingers, and suffered the rubbing heat of the iron armor covering my ring finger. The metal had chameleon qualities; earlier, before dawn, its surface had been bright as a mirror; silver, sharp, and keen. Now, though, it had faded dark and soft as my skin, and was etched with scales and roses, resembling the boys, or the lines of a labyrinth. The armor seemed to draw in light, blending with my tattoos until it was difficult to see where one began and the other left off. I could almost pretend the armor did not exist, so sweetly did it rest around my finger—like a cocoon, seeping through the boys as though the metal had settled roots made of silk and fire into my bones.
    Sometimes, like now, I wondered