Labyrinth of Stars (A Hunter Kiss Novel) (23 page)

Jack said nothing. Zee held still, but I felt his tension; a mirror of my own. He rasped, “Not telling whole truth, Meddling Man.”

Even I could see that. My grandfather was distracted again, as if what he was saying wasn’t
that
important. He was telling me because he
had
to, not because it mattered.

Jack gave the demon a dirty look. I said, “All this time, you could have warned us. Why didn’t you say anything, right when I found you?”

“I told you, I thought the Aetar were merely planning an attack. I was as surprised as you to learn they’d already come after your child and Grant. What else was there to warn you about, after that?” He looked away, and muttered, “There are more important concerns.”

“More important than our lives?” I stood, and swayed, hit with dizziness. Zee pressed his claws against my leg, steadying me. My mouth was dry, my skin hot. A remnant of the fever, still in my bones. “Get up. I’m taking you home. We’ll sort it out there.”

I reached out to the old man, but Zee grazed his claws across my hand—a gesture of caution. I glanced down at him, but he was staring at Jack. All the boys were, even Dek and Mal, who slithered from the fire, smoke drifting off their scales.

“Lies,” he rasped again, so softly I could barely hear him; but Jack stared at the demon, stared and stared, and his jaw tightened.

“Lies are lives.” Zee’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Can smell it now. Drank poison to taste the trail, and the trail is strong inside us. Know where it leads. Know who hammered the arrows.”

A profound stillness fell over my grandfather. I studied him, feeling the last of my hope crumble. All that flippancy, that distance, had disappeared from his eyes. And it was chilling.

I tore my gaze from him to look at Zee—at all the boys, who had gathered around me. My wolves, watching the oldest wolf of all.

He is the hunter who slaughters worlds,
the Messenger had said.

I couldn’t bear to hear what else Zee had to say. I was afraid I already knew what it would be. I grabbed my grandfather’s shoulder, and with my other hand reached for the demon. Raw and Aaz wrapped their arms around my knees. Dek and Mal had already begun slithering up my legs. I felt none of their usual strength—weak grips, no grace. But I didn’t give a shit. They were the family I could trust. That mattered more than anything.

“Maxine,” said Jack, but I closed my eyes against him.

Home,
I thought, pouring my heart into the armor—pulling myself toward Grant.
Home, before something terrible happens.

The void opened: a massive jaw unhinging, taking us into its mouth. I fell into the darkness, but it was the darkness inside me I felt, catching me softly.

Soon, everything will change,
it whispered.
You, most of all.

I was alone. I could not feel the boys or my grandfather, not my own body, not the child inside me.

No,
I said.

It is already done,
murmured the darkness, and found myself released into light, right where I’d left: the farmhouse living room, with its air smelling faintly of chocolate and marijuana.

But it wasn’t entirely the same. Because the floor was covered in blood.

And a man was being eaten alive.

I
heard the screams before I was fully free of the void. I was still listening to them when I snapped into the light, and the boys pressed hard against my skin—so hard my breath left in a gasp. It didn’t feel right. But not much did, anymore.

I saw Grant first. His eyes were still closed, that long, lean body sunk deep into the old couch cushions. Shurik covered him: like legless, hairless, cats. All of them, hissing. Past him, the Messenger—standing beside Mary, who was sitting up from her nest of blankets, machete in hand. The Mahati warrior crouched nearby, very still and sharp, as if his entire body were a knife about to fall into flesh.

I followed their gazes. I’d already seen what was in front of them, but avoiding it for as long as possible seemed like a good idea. Pregnant woman, psychic trauma, all that shit.

One of the robed men from the desert was sprawled on his back,
mostly
dead. I knew he was mostly dead because he was surrounded by a teeming, writhing mass of Shurik, all fighting for the chance to burrow into his pale skin. Invasion had already occurred; long bodies rippled beneath his flesh, sliding up his neck. His eyes were open, staring, leaking tears. His mouth still moved, but all I heard was a faint, hoarse gasp.

Beside him was the second man—but he was very much alive. Kneeling, covered in hissing Shurik that clung to his shoulders and wriggled over his waist. His pale, bony face was taut with barely controlled terror.

“They came for the Lightbringer,” said the Messenger quietly, her gaze lingering on Jack. “But the Shurik were fast.”

I felt a terrible burst of love for those little fuckers. “And they left this one alive?”

“For questioning, I presume.”

Good call,
I thought. A better one than I might have made. I glanced back at my grandfather, who was staring at the carnage: flat eyes, mouth set in a grim line. “You have anything to say about this?”

He said nothing. Just looked away, first at Grant—and then the crystal skull. I found it on the floor, but the blanket I’d tossed over it had been pulled off. Its surface gleamed; so did its eyes. I looked away, unnerved. Nauseous, too. But I blamed that on being pregnant and smelling so much blood.

“Cover the skull,” I told the Messenger. “Make sure my grandfather doesn’t go near it.”

Jack gave me a sharp look, as did the Messenger. I didn’t wait to see if she did as I asked—instead, I began to wade through the heaving, writhing mass of hissing Shurik that covered the living-room floor. It wasn’t easy—but that had everything to do with me. My entire body balked, joints so stiff I had to use real muscle to unlock them. Tin woman, rusting to a full stop. No pain, though. No fever. This was something else.

The boys.

I knelt, with difficulty, staring at the trembling man who had come to kidnap my husband. We looked at each other too long. Anger and revulsion flicked into his face, replacing the fear. Which was what I wanted.

“Hello,” I said. “My name is Maxine Kiss.”

“Abomination,” he spat.

“That, too.” I smiled, and it felt so cold, cold as my heart when I thought about what these people would do to my husband and daughter if they had the chance.

I reached down—slow, unable to force my joints to relax—and picked up a Shurik. That hard, turgid body twisted in my hand: a seething worm, sharp teeth snapping, grinding, like a fistful of razor blades rubbing together. I gritted my own teeth, revolted, and held the little demon up to the man’s eyes.

He shied away—or tried. Mary appeared behind him. Her face was flush with fever, but she held the man’s shoulder in a sinewy grip that looked strong enough to break bone.

“You are going to talk to me,” I said.

“No.” He stared at the Shurik in my hand, twitching, as other demons began massing in his lap, wriggling beneath his robes. His gaze slid down to his companion: the dead man’s body deflating like a balloon as his bones and muscles were liquefied and consumed. The Shurik were hungry.

“You
are
going to talk,” I said again. “I want to know the name of the Aetar who sent you. I want to know what they have planned.”

His gaze snapped to mine, defiance trickling past the fear. “You cannot stop us.”

“I turned your friends into ash with just one touch.” I leaned forward, holding his gaze. “I can do whatever the fuck I want.”

I saw him remembering what I’d done, and his physical reaction made me queasy: His lips trembled, as did the delicate skin beneath his eyes—fluttering with his pulse.

“It does not matter,” he said, hoarse. “If we cannot take the Lightbringer or kill your child, we will destroy this world. Even you cannot stop that.”

Behind me, Jack spoke a ringing, melodic word. The man took a sharp, startled breath—flinching so hard he almost toppled sideways. All that defiance vanished, replaced with almost-childlike timidity. The transformation was disturbing.

“Please forgive me,” he whispered, so softly I could barely hear him above the hisses of the Shurik. “I am worthless for not feeling your presence.”

“He is no God,” said the Messenger, almost as quietly. The man didn’t seem to hear her. His head was bowed, shoulders hunched. He might have prostrated himself if I hadn’t been in the way.

“You
are
worthless,” Jack said, in a dry, professorial voice. “Answer her questions.”

The man shuddered. “The Divine Lord who sent for us had no name. We never were in his presence. We spoke only to his companion, who told us he had made arrangements with our master for our services.”

It was careful wording. “Who was the companion?”

The man finally looked up—at me, then Jack. In his eyes, confusion, uncertainty—like this was some terrible trick, and he was being forced to play the fool.

“It was him,” he said, looking at my grandfather. “It was the Wolf.”

DON’T
believe everything you see or hear,
my mother once told me.
And don’t believe everything you feel, either. Our hearts are the best liars, baby. We know our weaknesses. We know what we want to hear. And those lies are the sweetest of all.

But they’ll kill you, in the end. All those deadly pretty lies.

But not everything could be a lie. I told myself that as I looked at my grandfather, cold on the inside, cold as death, studying his eyes as I’d never studied anyone before.

The expression on his face was dazed—filled with shock, bewilderment. It was difficult for me to imagine it was fake. His eyes were so naked.

“No,” he said, tearing his gaze from the man to look at me. “No, my dear. That is not possible.”

I said nothing. I looked at the Messenger, who was also watching my grandfather. “He believes what he said,” she told me, finally, which was no guarantee at all that any kind of truth had just been told.

“Did you tell this man to attack us?” I asked Jack directly.

“No,” he replied, shaken. “I have never seen him before this moment.”

I looked back at the man, who had bowed his head again. “You’re sure it was the Wolf?”

“Yes,” he whispered, trembling. “The souls of the Divine Lords cannot be confused. Their light is unique, even if their flesh changes.”

“He
also
speaks the truth,” said the Messenger, unease in her voice.

Someone is playing us,
I thought. “After you captured the Lightbringer, what then? Where were you supposed to take him?”

His trembling worsened. “Back into the Labyrinth.”

“Where?” Jack took a step toward him, his expression frightening. “Which gate?”

The man said something in a language I didn’t understand. Jack paled, rocking back on his heels. I stared at him, but instead of seeing my grandfather, that vision of fire flashed through my mind—and with it, a terrible foreboding.

“What is it?” I asked my grandfather, but he wouldn’t look at me. So I turned to the man, and said, “What is that place you would take my husband?”

“A world,” he said, looking at Jack with confused alarm.

“You are young and stupid,” added the Messenger in a tight voice. “That is not just any world. We are not permitted there. No one is. Not even other Aetar.”

I recognized that look in her eye. I’d seen it once before, not so long ago. My feeling of dread worsened. “Let me guess. This has something to do with the Devourer.”

The man’s reaction was almost comical in its violence. I could have stabbed him in the chest with gentler results—and the look he shot me was as if I’d become one part Satan, one part Satan’s clown, with a couple extra horns growing out of my forehead. Like he couldn’t imagine
anyone’s
being so stupid to even
think
that name, let alone
say
it.

Behind me, the Messenger made a disgusted sound. But I also heard a quiet sigh, and it wasn’t from Jack or Mary. I turned, slightly, and looked at my husband.

His eyes were open.

If a bomb had dropped, I wouldn’t have been able to move. All the Shurik stilled, even those burrowing into the dead man. The demon in my hand went limp, exhaling a little hiss.

Grant’s cheeks were hollow, his skin gray and flaking. But his posture was as relaxed as a crouched lion, and his eyes told no lies. His eyes were as cold as ice, so unlike him, so alien to his face, that for a moment I was afraid I was not looking at my husband at all.

But then his gaze met mine, and I saw the hint of a smile. And that smile warmed his eyes, and it was my man again. My man.

Grant’s gaze lingered on me—and then the kneeling man, the Shurik, all that blood and death, a pile of robes on the ground, covering the wriggling mush that was all that remained of a man.

“Well,” he said, hoarse, “this is interesting.”

The man took a breath—sharp, purposeful.

I swung my fist and slammed him in the chest. It took all my strength to move that fast, and he still managed to gasp out a single note—a sharp cut in the air that sliced through every living thing in his presence. But it was a broken sound, distorted from my blow—and Grant snapped out a word so raw with power I swayed, and the Shurik flattened to the floor.

The man gasped, clawing at his throat, fingers digging into the iron collar he wore—pulling until I thought he might break his own neck to get it off.

Grant lounged on the couch like he was watching some college football game. “I don’t want to kill you, but I will if I have to. Calm down.”

He didn’t answer. His voice broke through, another attempt at making power. I didn’t have to punch him down. Grant said another word, and the man shut his mouth, shuddering, staring at him with horror and revulsion. Even the Messenger gave him a sidelong, uneasy look. It wasn’t just words he spoke—it was all power, power that rolled through the room, over my shivering skin—as if the boys were trembling with fever.

My grandfather had remarked, more than once, that Grant had the most raw, wild talent of any Lightbringer he’d ever encountered—and given all of them he’d killed, I guessed he might know.

The man beside me had no chance. It wasn’t his fault. Any chance had been bred out of him.

“The Devourer,” I said, forcing myself to focus, to look away from Grant at the Messenger and Jack. “Have you
both
known all along where he is?”

Of course they had. I could see it on their faces. But before I could press them, a loud crack filled the air, with such violence I felt the wave of that sound push against my back.

I twisted, ready to fight—but there was no enemy. The floorboards had split, was all. The floor, right below the crystal skull. The old dark boards had broken apart only a few inches, but it looked like someone had powered a fist through that spot. The skull was still there, sunken slightly—and once again, the blanket had slid off. Carved eyes, watching us.

“No,” whispered Jack. “Maxine, what have you
done
?”

From the corner of my eye, I saw the man reach beneath his robes. His hand was a shining blur; the gleam of a bright edge flying toward my face as he threw himself at me.

Shurik burrowed into him, but he had momentum. Even when Grant’s voice rang out, it wasn’t enough—the man’s body was committed to the blow. I flung myself sideways, feeling the boys charge up my face. That sensation, their urgency, gave me new strength—I turned my head at the last second so that the knife skittered across my cheek instead of plunging into my forehead.