Labyrinth of Stars (A Hunter Kiss Novel) (11 page)

I was ready to stop. That was all I needed—for him to relent just enough to listen to me.

But when I tried to let go, my hand wouldn’t obey.

He must be taught,
whispered a sinuous voice.

Not me, not my voice, nothing that belonged to my imagination. My trespasser, that very real and separate entity—existing, perhaps, in that seam between flesh and spirit, where just beyond the border of skin and bone, the soul was vast.

Shut up,
I told that presence.
Go back to sleep.

You made a promise,
it murmured, and pushed right the fuck back.

Took me by surprise. I didn’t even have a heartbeat’s warning. I lost myself. I lost, and all I could do was stand there like a fool.

My vision flickered: static, a channel fading in and out. A smile touched my mouth, one that wasn’t mine, a smile that was wide and fat, and hungry. I would have bashed my face against a rock if I could have, cracked my head like an egg to make it stop. I fought, I fought—and the smile on my face only got wider.

Lord Ha’an’s growl of pain choked into silence. I was present enough in my own skin to see recognition flow into his eyes, and fear.

“See me,”
I said, but those were not my words, not my voice, born instead from the oozing crawl of some thick, serpentine body uncoiling from my chest into my mouth. Nothing there, nothing physical, but the presence had weight, a spirit flesh just as real, and it filled me, and I could not stop it. I could not stop the hunger.

No matter how much I raged, I could not resist the biting jolt of pleasure and power.

“Now see your Queen,”
I whispered.

Lord Ha’an shuddered, dropping his shoulders. I wanted to tell him to stop, to stand straight—he was too proud, too proud for this—but there were no words. I was as lost as he was.

“You are nothing,”
murmured that voice, heavy on my tongue.
“You will not even live in our dreams.”

The demon lord’s knees buckled. Veins bulged in his head and throat, and his green eyes protruded in one massive, repugnant, disfiguring pulse. He sounded like he was choking on his own tongue.

“You forgot your God,”
I said, and the ground beneath me dropped away, and a great expanse yawned—soft with night, throbbing with stars—the darkness coiled and cool, and sweet. Above me, the sun, trees, a blue sky shining, vibrating with life. It all ran down my throat like water, and I tilted back my head, swallowing the light, feeling it pass through me into the dark.

“Maxine,” said a quiet voice, and heat blazed: golden, like sunlight breaking.

Just like that, the ground was solid beneath my feet, and in my throat there was only saliva, and a bitter taste, like blood. The presence, the thing inside me, smiled against my mouth. Close to laughter.

Soon,
it whispered.
Soon, we hunt.

Fuck you,
I told it, as ineffectual as a mouse shaking its fist at a lion. Warm satisfaction—not mine—gathered around my heart, but that was just part of the slow retreat, the even slower relinquishment of my mouth, which felt like a bubble contracting in my throat; until, suddenly, I could breathe again.

But breathing wasn’t enough. My legs felt strangely unattached to my body, and my skin tingled, burned. My jaw ached like I’d been chewing rock.

It took all my strength not to shudder, and I turned—very carefully. It was that, or fall.

“Maxine,” Grant said again. And finally, I saw what I’d done.

The earth had disappeared around me. No grass, barely even soil—nothing but black sand, smooth as the surface of still water. Trees were gone, erased from existence—not a branch or leaf, not a piece of bark. If there had been rocks, I couldn’t see them. If there were insects, they were gone. For twenty feet in every direction, a perfect circle of destruction.

Only Lord Ha’an had been left untouched. Mostly. His forehead had been burned with a single mark, a small hollow circle the size of my thumb—as though someone had taken a cigarette lighter to him. Except no one had. He was trembling, sweating, his eyes shut in pain or fear, or prayer—I didn’t know. I was afraid to know.

I heard movement: Grant.

“Don’t,” I choked out, afraid for him to touch that sand. But he didn’t hesitate, and nothing burned him.

He closed the distance between us, sliding his hand through mine. No trace of his earlier anger. Just that solid strength I knew so well.

“I felt you pull away from me,” he whispered. “I felt the darkness.”

I leaned against him, and it helped bring me back to myself. My body, my life, my soul. I did not belong to the thing inside me. I did not belong to anyone but me.

But that wasn’t the bargain I’d made, was it?

“I’m okay,” I said, trying to smile for him. I couldn’t do it. It felt crooked, grotesque. Reminded me too much of the darkness that had possessed me. Physical echoes, making me sick with myself.

Grant touched my face, brushed his thumb over my lips. Such shadows in his eyes, more than I’d ever seen before. I squeezed his hand. “How’s the baby?”

He glanced down at my stomach. “Unaffected. Her light’s still strong.”

I nodded, one of those automatic movements that meant nothing. I was too rattled to hold still, but pretending I was engaged made it easier to hide how upset I was.

Lord Ha’an was on his knees. I bent to help him, and he flinched from me. “My Queen.”

“Don’t. It’s me again. It’s me, Maxine.”

“No,” he murmured, with heartbreaking loss in his voice. “It was never so. But for a time, we could pretend.”

I kept my hand extended, and finally, carefully, he brushed his palm against mine. He did not take my help, though. After that brief contact, he stood on his own, swaying ever so slightly, touching the mark on his forehead.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“Do not be,” he replied. “Do not, young Queen. You were as helpless as I. A good lesson for us both, I think.” And then he lifted his head, but it wasn’t to look at me. He stared at Jack, and his eyes were rimmed in blood and hate, his face stone cold, stone hard.

“All we suffered,” he said softly. “And yet, there will never be peace for us.”

Jack didn’t seem to hear him. He was staring at me with both horrified dismay—and unabashed, unconcealed, fascination. It made me afraid all over again.

I tried to find my voice. Grant squeezed my hand. “Jack.”

My grandfather blinked, tearing his gaze from me just long enough to take in the black sand. “Yes.”

Grant glanced at Lord Ha’an. “What about a cure for this disease?”

Jack crouched, running his hands over the sand. “There won’t be one.”

Mary gave him a disgusted look. I felt my own dismay—partially at his answer, but also with the distracted way he said it. This was life or death, and he didn’t seem to care.

“Jack,” I snapped, and finally he looked up, alert and fully present. “You’re certain there’s no cure?”

“We don’t
make
cures. When we decide to take a life, we take it. And then we replace it with something else.”

“Of course you do,” Grant muttered. “But
you
must still be able to make a cure.”

Jack gave him an incredulous look. “
You’d
have more luck, lad. Killing is easier than curing, I promise you that. And creating viruses is
not
the same as modifying flesh. That’s not my strength.”

I thought about the Mahati who had vomited herself to death and the others lying sick not far from here. “Then whose is it? We have to do something.”

Jack said nothing. Lord Ha’an walked from the sand, but it was without his usual grace.

“He will not lift a hand,” said the demon. “He would rather see us die.”

Without another word, he strode away into the woods.

“Well,” Jack murmured. “Temper, temper.”

I briefly closed my eyes. “We don’t have time for you to find a new body, or else I would have let him kill you.”

Silence. I finally looked at him, and his expression was surprisingly serious. “I am sorry, my dear.”

I’m not the one you should be apologizing to,
I almost told him, but there was no point. Damage was done. Now, at the very moment when we all needed to be strong.

Grant gave him a scathing look and squeezed my hand. “More are falling ill.”

Jack exhaled slowly. “It’s begun, then.”

“Does it
only
affect demons?” My voice sounded flat, dead. I wanted to hear his voice tell me the truth.

“Yes.

“You’re sure.”

“I am
sure
,” he replied. “Only demons will be hurt by this disease, poison . . . whatever you want to call it. Those six humans who died here were living bombs.”

Boom,
I thought. We were all going to hell.

I
N
hindsight, we were more than stupid: We were pretty much a lethal combination of dumb and dumber. But that’s what happens when you get used to thinking you’re invincible. You become careless. You don’t think about consequences. By the time you do, it’s always too late.

Regret doesn’t have the power of the resurrection,
wrote my grandmother in her journal.
Someone dies because of you, they stay dead.

And the part of you that killed them stays dead, too.

WE
buried those human bodies.

It was Mary and I. Grant went back to tend the sick with his voice. I wanted him to take a nap and eat, but that was a lost battle before I even opened my mouth.

I got shovels from the barn, and we spent two hours digging a hole. Fire would have been better, but I didn’t want to attract anyone with the smoke. Folks in this area took wildfires seriously. It would bring a cop or a neighbor out here faster than if I had a gun battle on the front porch of the old house.

It was quiet. No demons around. When I wasn’t looking at corpses I could focus on other things—genocide, murder, baby names, what I wanted for dinner.

Visions of fire and death. Circles of ash. Not necessarily in that order.

Most of the time, though, I thought about these ravaged dead and the people they had been—who was mourning them, or sick out of their minds with fear because these loved ones couldn’t be found. So much grief, so much terror. And for what? Because someone wanted to commit an act of genocide?

Turn it around. Innocents were murdered to feed the Mahati on their killing sprees. Dead is dead. Intent is just the window dressing.

But it still wasn’t right. Life couldn’t be that cheap.

Even if it was.

“I need to find the Aetar who made this virus,” I said, after we’d nudged, pushed, and kicked the corpses into the makeshift grave.

My grandfather sat nearby with the decapitated head of the giant who had attacked us. It smelled. It looked absolutely hideous. I’d kept my back turned the entire time but glanced over just long enough to see Jack give me a sour look. “And then what, my dear? The chances are slim to none that its maker is even here on earth.”

“Better than none,” Mary chimed in, packing down the earth with a tennis-worthy grunt. “Aetar pride is bright. Maker will want to be close to see the cutters die.”

That made total sense to me. “Jack. Why didn’t the Aetar release a virus during the first war?”

He wiped sweat off his nose. “The bonds with the Reaper Kings made the demons immune to everything. But those bonds are gone. The army stands alone.”

“And if they bonded to me?”

“Pfft,” he muttered. “You
are
powerful, my dear. But don’t make the same mistake Grant did. You’re no demon.”

You are a god,
whispered that sinuous voice, deep within. I ignored it. But Mary gave me a queer, sidelong look—and even Jack stared at me.

“What?” I asked.

“Your eyes,” said my grandfather, frowning. “They . . . changed color for a moment. Even the whites disappeared.”

I blinked. Mary grabbed my chin, peering at my face. “Wasteland. Nothing but night.”

I knocked her hand away. “You’re both crazy. And don’t change the subject. Who amongst your kind could have made this virus, Jack?”

“I don’t know,” he said with exasperation. “You forget, it’s been a long time.”

“You’re millions of years old,” I shot back. “A long time? Ten thousand years is a blink of the eye.”

“And this moment is barely a molecule.” Jack slammed his fist into his thigh. “Enough, Maxine. Let me think. I need time. This thing here”—he gestured at the head beside him—“might have some answers. We all leave a signature on our creations, you know. A mark of the maker.”

“No time, Wolf.” Mary took my shovel from me. “Death time.”

It was late afternoon, cusp of evening. The boys would be waking soon. I looked down at my tattoos, taking in their silver veins flowing through muscular knots, winding through scales and flattened claws, and around glinting red eyes staring up at me from my palm and forearm. A tug, a tingle, a shimmer of heat between them and me, sinking into my bones like some radiant fire. My boys, always dreaming.

“Will Zee and the others be safe?”

Jack hesitated. “I don’t know.”

That wasn’t good enough.

I
sent Jack and Mary back to the house. No need for them to be here, especially my grandfather. The less contact he had with the demons, the better.

I stayed behind to find my husband.

No walls between the four different demon camps. No obvious divide in territory. It was just air, grass, sunlight, and trees. And some unseen line that demons did not cross without invitation unless they wanted to get beaten—or eaten.

Other than that, I didn’t know much. Even though it was my land, it didn’t feel like home anymore.
I
was the trespasser, uncomfortable in my own skin—not sure where I fit in.

Then again, I’d
always
felt lost. Never allowed to be part of the world, except for the world my mother and the boys inhabited—and the loneliness of that life, the isolation I had begun to shed with Grant, always surged back with overwhelming force when I was around the demons.

My childhood, catcalling from the shadows. With it, a perverse need to defend everything that had once been wrong. Death and violence—balanced with equal amounts of love. Impossible to have one without the other. I didn’t want my daughter to have that same life.

Although, given that her father was currently half-lost under a pile of sweaty maggots—all of whom
possibly
looked like they were trying to mate with him, or each other—I suspected she was going to have a totally
different
set of problems than I.

Love in my family takes us to weird places.

“Bonding ritual,” growled the demon lord crouched beside me. “Shurik, tactile. Burrower in them.”

Oanu, demon lord of the Osul: Battle Cat of all Battle Cats. I glanced sideways, and up—skimming over his silver pelt, tufted ears, and iridescent blue eyes. “Uh-huh. It’s gross.”

“Shed my fur when I see them,” he rumbled, which seemed very much like an agreement.

I almost smiled, glancing at him again. It was hard not to look. Six feet tall at the shoulder, more than sixteen feet long from nose to tail. Tiny hooked claws covered his legs, jutting from beneath steel gray fur. His tail had spikes growing from the tip, and massive pads of metallic armor clung to his muscular back. A helmet covered part of his face, revealing leonine features and ice blue eyes. Like Lord Ha’an, he was bigger than his own people, stronger, and more beautiful. Deadlier, too.

“Sorry about . . . the other night,” I said.

“A King beating a scrapper?” Oanu’s tail lashed the air. “Disrespectful cub. Would have done the same.” He hesitated. “Well . . . might have killed him, eaten his brains.”

“The boys get hungry for brains,” I said. “Generally speaking, it’s been a life of deprivation with me.”

Oanu glanced at my tattoos and gave me a toothy grin. “Life isn’t worth living without eating your enemies.”

“Glad we’re not enemies.”

“But to fight a true Queen,” he murmured, looking at me like I was delicious, “that would be
glorious
.”

My smile warmed—but that lasted only as long as it took me to look past Oanu at the Yorana who had gathered beneath the trees.

They watched my husband with thinly veiled disgust. Tall, lean, humanoid, with skin the color of cherries: a dark, bleeding red. Long black hair swooped high off their scalps in tumbling Mohawks; and small jewels were embedded in their concave chests. Their demon lord had been seductive, magnetic. His people shared the same dark charm.

I glanced back at Grant, his body still teeming with Shurik—undulating over him with a distinctly ecstatic energy, like he was some kind of drug. I’d never seen them so worked up. I’d deliberately stayed away from most bonding sessions, but the few I’d witnessed—early on—had been as energetic as dirt. Things had changed since then.

A low hum rolled from Grant’s throat, more vibration than melody. A shimmering wave of energy passed over my skin, making the boys tug on me, restless.

The Yorana flinched, as though hit. Oanu shivered.

“Lightbringer,” he rumbled in his deep voice. “Never thought to see one again.”

“You’re familiar with his kind?”

“Collected history when I was not killing. Soothed me. But then, later, Aetar used enslaved Lightbringers as weapons.” The demon lord slapped a huge paw against the ground. “Strong then, protected by the bonds of our Kings. We ate them.” He gave me a sidelong look. “Not protected now.”

No, none of them were protected. And this demon lord might be dead by the end of the week if Jack was to be believed.

Grant’s voice trailed away into silence. The woods were so quiet, except for soft, Shurik hissing sounds and my own heartbeat. I wouldn’t have known that Oanu was beside me if I hadn’t been looking at him.

“Power,” said Oanu, with admiration in his soft, rasping voice. “Stole the bonds that kept the Shurik and Yorana alive. Bound them to his heart. Did this with his voice, killed with a word.”

“He’s just a man,” I said. “A man with a particular skill.”

“Just as you are skilled?” Oanu’s toothy grin seemed a little more challenging this time. “Power accepted means power controlled. Worry me more, you deny yourself. Makes you . . . unpredictable.”

Given the bargain I’d made, I didn’t think denial was going to be a problem for much longer. I gestured toward my husband. “He’s getting sick because of what he did.”

“Yorana,” Osul murmured, glancing at them with disdain. “Selfish Yorana. Hate that he is human. Taking power, returning nothing.”

Which echoed Jack’s assessment of the problem. “Can they be forced to change?”

“Must fear him or love him. Shurik love him. Yorana do not fear him.” Oanu tilted up his massive shoulder in a shrug. “I think there is more to fear than love, but the Yorana . . . maybe they are not wise.”

I would have been happy if the problem rested with the ugly little slugs. But no, the big handsome red demons were the assholes. Of course.

“Grant,” I called. My husband twisted to look at me, and his mouth softened into the faintest of smiles. He looked a little less tired, his skin not as pale.

He didn’t manage to disentangle himself from the Shurik. Quite a few came along with him, clinging to his body and draped over his shoulders. Some had burrowed beneath his flannel shirt. I swallowed hard. Oanu made a small, grunting sound like he was gagging deep in his throat.

“You told the Shurik about the illness?” I asked Grant, trying to ignore one of the little demons wriggling happily on his shoulder. I couldn’t imagine what he’d done to make it react that way, but it was making a hissing sound that could have been a good stand-in for a girlish giggle.

“Everything.” Grant raked his gaze over the Yorana with a cold scrutiny that was another sign of changing times. He had been a priest, once—his kindness radiant. But now he was growing harder. Sometimes I thought I was getting softer. It wasn’t, I thought, supposed to be that way.