ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Every book I write is a journey, and Id like to thank the following people who have traveled this novels path alongside me:
My wonderful editor, Kate Seaverand my equally fantastic agent, Lucienne Diver. All the good people at Berkley who have made this series possible, especially Leslie Gelbman and Susan Allison. My copy editors, Bob and Sara Schwager. My friends and family, who still giggle at this job I haveand my lovely readers, who support me in countless kind ways.
Id like to thank Adam Minter, as well, for being a wealth of information about St. Ignatius Cathedral in Shanghai, Chinaand for always taking the time to answer my questions.
To learn more about the Hunter Kiss series, please visit my website at www.marjoriemliu.com.
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Demon hunter Maxine Kiss wears her armor as tattoos, which unwind from her body to take on forms of their own at night. They stand between her and her enemies, just as Maxine stands between humanity and the demons breaking out from behind the prison veil. It is a life lacking in love, reveling in death, until one momentand one man-changes everything.
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CHAPTER 1
ZOMBIES had a bad habit of shooting me in the head. Most of them knew better, but there was always that one who wanted to get lucky.
It was a wet Monday morning. Almost dawn. Broken streetlights and glass in the road; and the hulking shadows of abandoned warehouses towering above me. Dead city, dead hour. Seattle was a dark place, even with the sun. Some days felt like living in the aftermath of a nuclear winter; as though a mushroom cloud had blown over and never left.
Quiet, too. Nothing to hear except harsh breathing, a soft whine; my cowboy boots scuffing concrete and the sharpening of claws; and the rumble of the freight trains at the rail yard across from the docks, mingling with the growls vibrating softly in my ears: baby symphonies of thunder. Good music. Made me feel safe.
I rubbed wet hair out of my eyes. Zee. Hold him tighter.
Him. Archie Limbaud. Scrawny man, sinewy as a garter snake, saddled with a crown of short brown hair plastered to his soaked skin and flecked with enormous flakes of dandruff. He was a fortysomething man who smelled like the private bathroom of a teenage boy: unwashed and vaguely fecal.
He was also a zombie. Not the brain-eating, shambling kind, either. Not a corpse. Just a man, possessed by a demonwho was using his body like a puppet. Practically the same as being dead, if you asked me.
I did not want to touch him. He sprawled on the edge of an empty parking lot, crammed against the bottom of a chain-link fence, the contents of his wallet scattered on the ground in front of me. More condoms than cash, along with one credit card, and an expired drivers license. Minutes ago, there had been a guna .40-caliber pistol, pointed at my headbut that was gone now. Eaten.
I hated guns. I hated zombies. Put those together with what I knew about the possessed man at my feet, and I didnt know whether to cry, scream, or kick the fuck out of his testes.
I eased off my gloves, shoved them in my back pocket, and extended my palm. A sharp little hand passed me a switchblade. Pretty thing, with a mother-of-pearl handle and silver accents. Razor edge, still wet with blood. Engraved with the initials A.L. I waved it in front of Archies ruddy face, and his dark aura fluttered wildly around the crown of his head.
Some night, I said quietly. I found the body.
Archie said nothing. Part of that might have been the aluminum baseball bat pressed down on his throat. Stolen from the Seattle Mariners, if I had to guess. I could see the stadium walls of Safeco Field from where I crouched, and Zee and the others were going through a baseball phase. Babe Ruth was in; Bill Russell was out. Which pained me. At least my boys were still obsessed with Bon Jovi. I couldnt have handled that much change.
Zee, Raw, and Aaz were down on the ground, pinning Archie to the pavement. Little demons, little hounds. Rain sizzled, trickling down bony backs the color of soot smeared with silver, skin shimmering with a muscular fluidity that resembled water more than flesh. Razor-sharp spines of hair flexed against chiseled skulls while silver veins pulsed with slow beats that, if I had pressed my ear close, would have sounded like the steady thrums of bass guitars.
Red eyes glinted. I used the switchblade to tap Aaz on the back of the head, and his hair cut through the steel as if it were butter. Raw caught the bits of blade before they hit the pavement and stuffed them in his mouth, chewing loudly.
Ease up on the windpipe, I said to Aaz. I dont want the host harmed.
Aaz blew a kiss at the zombie and removed the baseball bat from his soft, bruised throat. Archie started coughing, fighting to move his legs. No luck. Raw was sitting on his ankles, and Zee had his wrists pinned to the pavement. Not quite crushing bone, but close. My boys were strong.
Please, Archie whispered hoarsely. I want to convert.
Liar, rasped Zee, before I had a chance to tell the zombie to go fuck himself. The little demon leaned close to lick the air above Archies brow. Cutter lies, Maxine. He still hungers.
He murders, I said, gripping the remains of the switchblade in my fist as a young face flashed through my mind, bloody and sliced, long brown limbs naked, splayed. Torn doll. Torn in places I did not want to remember. She was just a kid.
She was a prostitute, Archie said. She was already prey.
Dek and Mal, coiled heavy on my shoulders, peered from beneath my hair and hissed at the zombie. Unlike the others, they were built like snakes, with two vestigial limbs good only for clutching my ears. Heads shaped like hyenas. Sharp smiles. Fire in their breath. Archie stared at them, and trembled.
I reached through his thunderous aura to place my hand on his clammy brow. He shied away, but the boys held tight, and in that last moment before I touched him, his eyes rolled back, staring at the delicate armor surrounding the entire ring finger of my right hand: a slender sheath of quicksilver, replete with a delicate joint at the knuckle, which allowed my finger to bend. Fit like a skin. Sometimes I forgot it was there.
Prey, I murmured. And what does that make you?
One of a million, he whispered, shaking; staring at me with hate in his eyes. You cant kill us all. When the prison walls fail
Youll be rat meat to the rest of the demons, I interrupted, still thinking of the girl I had found in an alley only blocks from here, summoned to her still-warm body by Zee and the others, who had roused me from bed to hunt her killer. Your kind will be slaughtered, just like the humans. Youre nothing to the others. Even your Queen has said so.
Hunter Archie began, but I didnt let him finish. I knew everything he was going to say. I had heard it thousands of times since my mothers murder, and thousands of times before that, as well.
