One of the few Russians left standing barreled toward her. I reached him first, taking us both into a heavy pile of camera equipment. Glass shattered. I found myself pinned by two hundred pounds of red-faced man. He grabbed my hair with fists the size of hams, trying to pound my skull into the floor. All I felt was a tickle. I let him work out his frustration, and was just about to use my demon-hardened nails to puncture his femoral artery when small arms reached around his neck, and hauled backward.
Or tried to. I spied a thatch of dark hair and determined eyes. Ernie.
The Russian let go of my head, reaching back. I surged upward, slamming my forehead into his jaw. I felt all the bone in the lower half of his face implode, and when I leaned away, the dent I left behind made his face resemble a crushed soda can. He swayed, staring dumbly at me, and then toppled sideways. Ernie did not let go quickly enough, and fell with him.
I reached for the kid. His eyes were squeezed shut, and he cried out when I tried to pry his arms loose. I whispered his name, trying to calm him, but when he looked at me, a shudder raced through him that was so violent I almost wished he had kept his eyes closed.
“Your face,” he breathed.
“Pretend it’s magic,” I replied, and dragged the boy close—stuffing him into the small spot between the back of a chair and the wall.
“Stay there,” I told him, and then, because he looked so scared, planted a rough kiss on his forehead. He tried to grab my hand when I turned away, but I ignored him, looking again for Jean.
She had been busy. Blood trickled from the Black Cat’s mouth, and she lay pinned to the bed with a knife pressed into her throat. Jean straddled her, appearing every inch the lethal woman I remembered. Cold, hard, and mean as hell. But the Black Cat did not look frightened. She was laughing.
“Be quiet,” Jean said through gritted teeth. I realized her hand was shaking, the knife dangerously close to slipping off the zombie’s neck—a good or bad thing, I did not know.
“You understand now?” replied the Black Cat, arching sinuously beneath Jean. “You can’t touch me.”
I strode to the bed. “What the fuck is going on? Exorcise the bitch.”
“I tried,” Jean snapped, pressing the knife more tightly against the zombie’s throat. “The boys…The boys didn’t do anything.”
The boys ate parasites. That was how it worked. We exorcised, while Zee and the others sucked the bastards in. Usually. I looked from the exposed tattoos on Jean’s chest—red eyes glittering—and met the Black Cat’s amused golden stare. “You cut a deal.”
“I didn’t,” replied the demon inhabiting the woman, aura thundering silently around her head. “But it was made of blood, nonetheless, and binding. I cannot be killed by you. Or them.”
I wanted to scream with frustration. This was not the first time I had been denied justice because of deals made between my ancestors and other demons. Promises that had to be honored, forever. Demons might be savage, but they always kept their word. As did the boys.
“And your host?” Jean raised the knife and plunged it into the zombie’s shoulder. Somewhere, out in the yard, a woman screamed. My grandmother stilled for one horrified moment—and then quickly yanked out the knife. The Black Cat began laughing again.
“Be quiet,” Jean cried hoarsely. I stepped to the bed, and the Black Cat tore her gaze from my grandmother to look at me. Finally, something more than amusement flitted across her mouth, and that light burned again in her eyes: golden, tinged with red, something deeper that was older than the night.
The zombie murmured, “Hunter. Hunter of the Kiss. The old King’s Kiss. What will you do with me now? Kill my magnificent host, and you will condemn those children. Kill my host, and I will find another, and another.” She looked at Jean. “I will feed every man you ever helped to that Nazi Neumann, for his experiments; and send the women to the comfort houses to be whores for the Japanese. And I will take those sweet children you love,” she added, in a whisper, “and take them, and take them, until they are nothing but rags on the screen.”
Zee pulsed between my breasts. I drew in a deep breath, fighting the tremor that started in my gut—rising up and up into my throat. A zombie was in front of me—nothing but a parasite—but there was demon in the blood of her host, and people’s lives at stake. Jean made a small, frustrated sound—the tattoos on her face seeming to pulse in fury. A cruel smile touched the Black Cat’s mouth. She was goading my grandmother. Pushing her. But all Jean did was quiver. That was all.
Because I took one look at her face, and I knew—I knew. She had never killed anyone. Zombie parasites, maybe, but those hardly counted. She had never, with her own two hands, taken a human life. Not even a host.
She could not do it now, either—and not simply because of the price that would be exacted on the children. I could see it in her eyes. I could feel it in my own gut. It was one thing to let the boys do the dirty work, but making the cut took a whole other kind of nerve. A nerve I didn’t have, either. The only times I had taken human life was in the heat of battle, or by accident.
This was neither. This was cold blood.
I stripped off my glove, revealing the armor, and climbed on top of the bed. I showed the Black Cat my hand. She must have known it was there—she had intimated as much—and yet she still flinched when she saw it. Flinched, as though I had struck her. She stared at the dull metal and her smile slipped away. So did her contempt. Her aura shrank.
“You know this,” I said quietly, and then pulled back one of my braids to reveal the side of my face. “And this.”
I felt the boys shift position, revealing a patch of pale human skin—and the twisting scar that was just below my ear: a brand, a symbol of a birthright that I did not understand; only that it was power. The kind of power that terrified even the most dangerous of demons—and their enemies. I was different from the others of my bloodline in more ways than one.
“No,” whispered the zombie. “No, it can’t be.”
“Look closer,” I snapped. “And tell me what you think it means.”
Because I sure as hell had no clue.
The zombie, however, stared at me like I was going to open my jaws wide and swallow her whole. She bucked against Jean, her aura shrinking even more—hugging the host’s skin so tightly it looked as though the demon was trying to hide. Jean gave me a startled look, but I ignored her, riding a dangerous edge; slipping past fury into something wild and hungry.
“Don’t you fuck with us,” I whispered, bending close, holding that zombie gaze, which was dark with terror. “Bargain or no bargain, I will make you pay. I will make you scream. You know I can. So you will let these people go. And you will leave this host and never return. And you will forget those threats you made.”
The Black Cat closed her golden eyes, but when she opened them again they were brown and human. All the fight had gone out of her. Every ounce of defiance and arrogance. All that power, pissing away. I could taste it, and there was a quiet presence inside me that felt nothing but disdain for how quickly that demonic parasite had folded against nothing but armor and a scar.
She is ours, whispered that darkness inside of me. All of them belong to us.
Heat poured from the zombie, shimmering over her stolen skin. I grabbed Jean’s shoulder, and hauled her away. The Black Cat remained on her back, chest heaving, her mockery of our tattoos suddenly resembling little more than a child’s drawing. As if I were watching ink fade, only deeper: power, heartbeat, breath—breaking loose, leaving the zombie.
Those tattoos had been alive, I realized. Each one a life.
“I could have used them against you,” whispered the Black Cat. “I could have spoken one word and forced those children to stand still while my men shot them. Or made them attack you. Or attack their own parents. They were mine, in every way.”