Inked

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