Labyrinth of Stars (A Hunter Kiss Novel) (13 page)

The sun set, and the boys woke up.

G
ROWING
up, the plan was always this: I’d get pregnant one day, with a stranger. And then I’d die. Young.

As far as I knew, that was how it had worked for most of my ancestors. No one ever lived to see old age. No one ever got married. Maybe there was love, but no happily ever after. Just mothers and daughters, and demons. Wandering together, alone, down a road as old and dark as blood.

But I was married. I was in love. Which, when you think about it, is almost as rare as carrying five demons on your skin.

And much more precious.

FIFTEEN
minutes later, the only light in the farmhouse living room came from the television, and it cast a flickering blue glow on razor-sharp spines of flexing hair and scaled, muscular chests. Raw and Aaz lounged on the floor in front of me, chewing on coils of barbed wire. The spikes jutting from their backs quivered with each breath.

Aaz reached over his shoulder, yanked one free with a wet crunch, and used it to pick between his jagged teeth. Bits of barbed wire hit the rug. Dek—coiled against his leg, gnawing a teddy bear—gave him a disapproving look and licked up the scraps with his long black tongue.

Grant lay on the couch, a cool wet rag on his forehead. A bucket was on the floor beside him. He hadn’t puked again, but he had this sour, grim twist to his mouth that made me think he was fighting hard not to hurl. Zee crouched on the back of the couch, leaning down to sniff at him.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Grant muttered between clenched teeth.

“I feel fine,” I said, even though I didn’t, really. I’d never been sick a day in my life, but something in my body felt . . . off. The skin along my legs hurt, like the fibers of my jeans had suddenly contracted some spiky substance that was pricking me. My muscles ached. I felt warm.

Zee gave me a quick, concerned look when I told Grant I was fine—but he didn’t blow my cover. Instead, he leapt over us to the floor, prowling around Jack and Mary. The old woman was pacing. My grandfather stood against the wall, arms folded over his chest. He was wearing Grant’s clothes, and they looked odd on him. Grant dressed like one of the models from an Eddie Bauer catalogue: rough-hewn, an upscale lumberjack. Jack still looked like he’d be more comfortable in his old dirty sweatpants and T-shirt filled with holes.

He wasn’t even looking at us. Instead, he seemed engrossed in a rerun of
Magnum P.I.
that Raw and Aaz were watching, sound on mute. The little demons had been skipping off to Hawaii some nights, bringing home tropical shirts and surfboards, and fragrant leis that they always dropped over my head.

My husband was dying while Tom Selleck flirted with a girl in a string bikini. Life could be horrible sometimes.

Zee pointed his long black claw at Mary. “Sick.”

She didn’t stop pacing. Zee looked at Jack. “You sick, too.”

He didn’t look away from the show. “I know. I felt the virus begin to work on me before I entered my bath.”

“You sure were quiet about that,” I snapped.

My grandfather finally tore his gaze from the television. “And what would I have accomplished with hysterics, or even a warning?” Fury blasted through his expression, a terrible desperate rage that made me feel, for a moment, afraid. I’d never seen him so angry, and it reminded me again that he was not human, no matter what he looked like—because no human, nothing mortal, was capable of the luminous, godlike savagery that lit his eyes.

“You said humans wouldn’t be affected. You were
sure
.”

“I was wrong.” Jack closed his eyes. “The virus had been modified. I didn’t see it.”

“You see everything else.”

“I made a mistake.”

“You won’t die from that mistake,” I said simply. “But we will.”

“Not you,” Grant said, so quietly I barely heard him. But that had to be wishful thinking on his part. I hadn’t said a word about not feeling well, but Grant had to know, just from looking at me. Jack, too. When he turned away from me, jaw tense, I had no doubt at all.

I’m sick,
I thought, filled with dread. All I could think about was that Mahati who had died in the snow; and Grant, puking in the sink.
I’m sick, too.

But for how long, really? Had the thing that lived inside me saved my daughter just to let me die, too? That wasn’t part of the bargain.

I could make other bargains.

You have nothing left,
whispered that sibilant voice, floating through me like a flake of drifting ash.
And a Queen does not beggar herself for nothing.

I closed my eyes. Grant’s hand found mine and squeezed.

“How long do I have?” he asked Jack.

My grandfather tugged hard on his beard; I heard a muffled squeak from inside that tangle of hair. “I don’t know, lad. It works fast on demons, we’ve seen that. But you’re still alive. Mary is still strong. Maybe it will burn itself out.”

“I infected a demon-possessed waitress in Texas,” I told them, glancing at my phone, which was on the couch beside me. “Another of her possessed friends texted me five minutes ago. Her host was just taken to the hospital. The parasite itself already fled.”

I hadn’t wanted to share that information. The room got very quiet. Grant said, “It doesn’t benefit the Aetar to make something that destroys humans. You need their bodies, too.”

Jack shook his head, all that rage leaving him, deflating his entire body until he sagged like a sock puppet against the wall. “We have billions of humans on other worlds. Worlds upon worlds upon worlds that we control. Earth is nothing to us but a historical footnote in an otherwise tedious existence. And it is easy to quarantine a world. They have no fear that this will spread.”

“And if it did, they would be highly motivated to develop a cure,” I said. “The Aetar don’t want to lose their toys.”

He gave me a sharp look. “My dear girl—”

“It was bad enough when it was the demons,” I interrupted him. “But I can’t take the risk that it’ll wipe out humans, too. Even if it just kills a fraction of the population, that’s too many.”

Grant jerked and fumbled for the garbage bin. He barely reached it before he started vomiting. The little Shurik who had been hiding under his shirt—so quiet I had almost forgotten it was there—made a small, hissing sound. So did Dek and Mal, hugging my throat and quivering. Or maybe I was the one who was shaking.

Raw and Aaz scrambled to Grant and the garbage bin. I was already leaning over him. Not touching but close enough to give what comfort I could.

And that wasn’t much at all. I felt so helpless. There was nothing to fight here. Nothing I could threaten or destroy. Disease had no voice, except for the voice of the man I loved. Disease was the ultimate possessor. A demon, all its own.

But I was good at fighting demons. Somehow, I’d fight this one. My daughter was going to have her father. I was going to have my husband. If I accomplished nothing else, it would be those two things.

I stood up. Grant tensed, trying to sit up with me. Raw and Aaz made annoyed, clicking sounds with their tongues, and pushed him back down. Dek bit into the remains of his teddy bear and slithered into my husband’s lap with it.

“Can
you
make a cure?” I asked Grant.

He swallowed hard. Aaz dragged a bottle of Gatorade from beneath the couch and pushed it into his hand. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

I tried to smile. “Then try to rest. I won’t be far.”

Grant gave me a wary look. “Whenever you say that . . . all hell breaks loose.”

“I say a lot of things that precede bloodshed.” I bent to kiss him gently on the mouth. “But I always come home to you.”

He caught the back of my head and held me close, turning so that his face was buried in my neck. His skin was hot—but then, so was I. Standing wasn’t as easy as it should have been.

“Love you,” he whispered. “Sorry I haven’t been myself.”

I ran my fingers through his hair. “I’ll beat you up when you’re better.”

He snorted and fell back against the couch, too exhausted to touch me for even another moment. I pulled back his shirt and looked at the pale little Shurik clinging to his chest.

“You,” I said, in a cold voice. “If you and your kind value this man, then you will get those Yorana in fucking line, do you hear me? Because if he dies, you die. They
all
die.”

The Shurik bared its sharp little mouth and gurgled at me. Zee muttered, “It understands.”

“Good.” I leaned close, battling a clammy surge of squeamish disgust. “Grant believes in you. I think he might even love you little turds. So you goddamn better deserve it. Protect him. Give him your strength. Give him what he needs. Or else
I’ll
kill you.”

This time the Shurik reared up and hissed at me. Zee snapped his teeth, and it shrank back just a little—but there was still something defiant in the twist of its flesh.

Zee snorted. “Tells you that honor and loyalty is Shurik heart.”

I narrowed my eyes. “I don’t think that’s all it said.”

“Also called you stupid.”

“That’s better.” I looked at Grant, who laid a calming hand inside his shirt. The Shurik snuggled against his palm like a cat. Either I was getting brainwashed, or maybe I just didn’t give a shit anymore, but seeing that didn’t immediately make me want to vomit in my mouth. Probably a bad sign. “Did
you
understand what it was saying?”

“Not the specifics,” said Grant, with the faintest of amused smiles. “But I could feel its intent. That was enough.”

I kissed him again and backed away. “Jack, I need a word with you.”

My grandfather looked at me like I was going to punch him in the nuts. But he followed me out of the farmhouse without a word, and the boys came with us, prowling the length of the porch and perching on the rail. Night hadn’t completely fallen. The horizon held the faintest light of dusk, bleeding into the dark sky, washing out the stars just now gracing the night.

“What did you learn from that giant’s head? Who made it?”

“The answer doesn’t do us any good. The creature was designed by the Erl-King. You and I both know he’s dead.”

Dead years ago, by my hand—and Grant’s. What a bastard. “How’s that possible?”

“We’ve been engineering life for millions of years, my dear. The Erl-King had plenty of time to make those creatures before his imprisonment. No doubt they’ve been breeding on some Aetar-controlled planet and thought they were doing the work of their Gods by coming here to attack you and Grant.”

I still didn’t like the coincidence. “How many Aetar are there?”

“Now?” Jack thought a moment. “Before the war with the Lightbringers, we were a tribe that was one hundred and ninety-three strong. Now, our numbers have dwindled to a mere eighty-four.”

It surprised me, hearing such an exact count. And how it seemed to be a number at odds with itself—large enough to feel dangerous to me, given what the Aetar were capable of—but small, too, when I thought that this was all that was left, forever. No ability to breed. No possibilities. Nothing but eternity.

No wonder Jack’s kind clung so violently to mortal flesh—it kept them sane, gave them the illusion of life, death, evolution. They could have children—even if those children would never truly outlive them. They could pretend to have lives. Live the fantasy. Be the fantasy.

“Do you feel when they’re close?” I asked him. “I know you feel their deaths.”

Jack looked uncomfortable. “Yes. I can feel when my kind are near.”

I stared at him. “And?”

“There is an Aetar on this world,” he said, with some exasperation. “I can’t tell you who or where.”

“Can the others kill you?”

The question seemed to surprise him. “No.”

“But they can imprison you. They’ve done it to others.”

“Yes, and yes.” Jack gripped the porch rail. “You want me to go to them?”

“Do you have any allies? Like Sarai?”

A rueful, bitter smile touched his mouth. “Of course. I suppose you’re asking me to foment a rebellion? For what? Our greatest enemies?”

“For what’s right,” I told him. “And if that’s not enough, then do it for me. And for your great-granddaughter.”