Labyrinth of Stars (A Hunter Kiss Novel) (28 page)

I found Tracker moving toward me through a clutch of large ferns, each frond nearly as large as his body. He rubbed his chest like it hurt—which was odd enough to make me stare. Tracker did not show pain. I had stabbed him in the foot once, and he’d practically asked for more.

“What is it?” I asked him.

Tracker faltered. “Nothing.”

“I’ll take that as a
something
.”

He balled his hand into a fist. I picked up my pace, passing a mossy knoll covered in small purple flowers, like bluebells, only tinier. “This isn’t what I expected.”

“I’m surprised you had any expectations.”

I hesitated. “I was in the Wasteland, remember?”

A place where souls were thrown to be forgotten. I had walked the dark side of the Labyrinth, buried alive. Nothing but a heartbeat in the endless dark.

I was the only person to ever escape the Wasteland. And though I knew that the Labyrinth was much more than that dark, endless hole, I could not help but associate one with the other. The Wasteland was the nightmare that never died.

Tracker was silent a moment. “I’m sorry for that.”

I shrugged, watching Zee prowl ahead of us, slinking over roots and through the ferns with a hushed, preternatural grace. Raw and Aaz were still in the trees, leaping from trunk to trunk, absolutely silent. I could only see them because of the little teddy bears dangling from their backs.

“You’ve been here before?” I asked him.

“No.” Pain flickered through his eyes as he looked through the trees, but when he turned his gaze on me it was flat, empty. “Oturu didn’t free me, then. But I felt this place around us.”

“What is it like when you’re not free?” I asked him, impulsively. “When he has you . . . inside him?”

“What do you think?”

“I think it’s hell,” I told him. “I’m sorry.”

Tracker pulled ahead. “You brought me here to help you, not be friends.”

“Wait—”

“I track,” he interrupted. “That’s what I am. When the Aetar made me, I got a skill. I can find anything.”

“Yes,” I said, wishing I could take back my question.

His jaw tightened. “Your husband is somewhere ahead of us, but I can’t tell you anything else except that he’s far away and alive.”

I said nothing. Tracker ran ahead, little more than a lean shadow darting along wide root structures that tumbled and twisted between the massive trees. He looked as small as I felt, but far more graceful. I hurried to catch up, falling into a careless run that made me feel as though I were flying; helped by the boys, who fell down from the trees and raced alongside me—my wolves.

A tingling sensation arced across my back, raising goose pimples. I thought I was just cold. But the sensation intensified until it felt like a live wire was being threaded from the base of my neck, down between my shoulders. Dek and Mal made an alarmed trilling noise, tightening their hold on my neck.

Zee skidded to a stop, looking back at me with his eyes wide, alarmed. From above, Oturu called out. I could barely hear him. I was still running, but my body felt strange, like it was being sucked sideways into a massive vacuum cleaner.

Oh, shit,
I thought, right before I went completely blind.

I tumbled, upside down—jerked to the side—shaken like I was in some giant’s fist. I couldn’t see. My teeth rattled. Hot air washed over me with such violence and intensity, my skin felt singed. I reached for my first source of relief—the darkness inside me—but all it whispered was,
Open your eyes.

But I’d already started coughing. The air was bitter, searing my nostrils and eyes. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I glimpsed a dry, cracked plain in every direction, straight to the horizon. Nothing else. No life. Del and Mal clutched my ears with their little claws. Looming above us, blocking out a dark purple sky, were two huge moons. Pale and white as ice, and creased with gas clouds.

I tried to take a breath, but the air couldn’t seem to reach my lungs; and it burned, it burned.

But I almost forgot that because when I looked down, covering my mouth, I glimpsed a splash of red at the corner of my eyes.

Bodies. Ten feet away on my left, skin crimson and peeling.

Yorana. Demons.

I
tried calling out Grant’s name, but the air was killing me. I grabbed my right hand, feeling the armor flow beneath my grip. Dek and Mal were keening in my ear.

Help,
I thought, choking. It must have been night on this planet. No tattoos on my skin, no boys—who could have breathed for me.

A dark blur slammed into the dirt, cracking the earth. I stumbled backward from the shock wave of the impact, which sounded like a tree breaking. Glimpsed bladed feet, long and straight, just before a sheet of darkness billowed and heaved in the still air, whipping about with such violence it could have been hit with the winds of a hurricane. Shadows filled those folds, bottomless, endless. Reaching for me.

I fell forward into that embrace, and was swallowed.

It wasn’t the void, and it wasn’t a dream, but what surrounded me for those brief moments was alive, crawling over me, into me, through my mouth and ears, pressing against my eyes. Hands grabbed my wrists, then let go, only to be replaced by grasping fingers tugging my hair, and the scrape of something sharp, like teeth, against my leg. I couldn’t see what was touching me. I couldn’t fight.

Below my heart, the darkness tightened its coils, rising to look through my eyes.

You dare,
came its slow whisper, and the crawling sensation stopped: Those hands and teeth fled from my skin. Strength flooded my limbs, washing through me like a cleansing, dark fire.

And then I was free, on my knees, vomiting into a fern. Cool air surrounded me, but the slow burn remained beneath my skin—power, skimming through me, making the hairs on my arms stand straight up. I closed my eyes, listening to that night fire, listening to its absence of light, which felt like another kind of star—falling, falling, inside me.

This is what waits,
whispered the darkness.
It is freedom.

And the hunger?
I asked.
Your hunger destroys.

Hunter. That is beautiful, too.

Dek and Mal chirped. I opened my eyes, vision blurred with tears. Zee knelt in front of me, so close his nose rubbed mine. Raw and Aaz were pressed on either side of him.

“Maxine,” he rasped.

“What happened?” I croaked.

“Fell through a door.” Tracker knelt, tilting back my head and peering into my eyes. “You hit another world.”

“Dead world.” I pushed his hands away but started coughing. “Dead Yorana were there.”

“But not your man. He’s not there.”

Zee rammed his claws through a fern, agitated. “But came this way.”

Yes, and some of his demons had fallen through that door, just like I had. And died there. I didn’t want to think about the same thing happening to Grant. But maybe his ability to see fields of energy would save him. I’d felt a tingle, right before the fall—that had to be something that would alert him as well.

Oturu loomed. I turned, peering up at him. His mouth was set in a hard line, and the shadows beneath the brim of his hat were especially dark.

“Thank you,” I said.

Tendrils of his hair reached for my hands. But before Oturu could touch me, Tracker placed himself between us—grabbing my waist and helping me rise.

“Be more careful,” he said in a gruff voice, steering me away from the tall demon. “You might not survive the next drop.”

I stared at him, remembering the assault of hands and teeth inside Oturu’s cloak, wondering if that was what Tracker had to endure—and if so, how he could survive that impossible prison.

I looked back at Oturu, who stood perfectly still in the twilight shadows of the Labyrinth forest, watching us. Even his cloak did not move.

Raw tugged on my hand and pulled a bottle of water from his teddy-bear backpack—along with a small packet of M&M’s. I took both, grateful. My throat still hurt from breathing the air on that planet. Aaz was hugging his own teddy bear, giving me a mournful look. I stopped, dropped into a crouch, and hugged him as tight as I could. I needed to, more badly than I could admit.

“It’s okay,” I said, feeling those mountain-crushing arms hug me back, very gently. Raw pushed close, as well. Zee leaned against us, ears pressed flat against his head, eyes squeezed shut. Dek and Mal licked his brow.

I glanced up, found Tracker watching with all the sharp scrutiny of a hawk.

“Excuse me,” I said. “But we’re having a moment.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. He stepped onto a gnarled, massive tree root, balancing there on the balls of his feet, and looked back down at us.

“It’s good to have moments,” he said, with what could have been menace—or wistfulness. “Life is nothing without them.”

I
don’t know how long we walked, but the light never changed, and neither did the forest. And even though I was here, with the ground solid beneath my feet—even though I had fallen through another door—it was still difficult to imagine that this was the maze. A forest as the crossroad between here and there: a place of possibilities that was a world unto itself.

“The Labyrinth reflects the heart of its god,” said Oturu, floating past me, tendrils of his hair stroking the deep, cavernous creases of tree bark, so large my hand could fit inside. I heard the high trill of a bird, but nothing answered that lonely call. “The god who is your father, Hunter.”

I felt uneasy hearing him say that. My father was something I still hadn’t dealt with. I didn’t know how. But that hadn’t stopped me from sending out a silent call to him from the first second I’d fallen into the Labyrinth. He hadn’t answered. But then, I almost didn’t expect him to. It was easier on me that way. Less disappointing.

“Did you ever meet him?” I asked.

Oturu tilted his chin toward me. His silence was long.

“We do not know,” he said; and then, very softly, “Our embrace made you afraid.”

I was wondering when he’d bring that up. “Who are they, inside you?”

His mouth tightened into a hard line. “We told you once, Hunter. We are the last of our kind.”

“Yes,” I said, gently. “I’m sorry. But what does that have to do with those creatures?”

“We are the last,” he repeated, and I realized he wasn’t just talking about himself. I stared, trying to make sense of it—but all I could think about were those hands and teeth on my skin. Lives, lost in darkness. Lives, hidden away. Who were they, and what? And how long had they been trapped inside the demon who floated beside me?

“But why are you . . . containing them?” I asked, confused—but also a little horrified.

“So they might live.” Oturu’s cloak flared, and I saw those faces and hands surging against the wall of darkness; fleeting glimpses, pressing out and receding. A gruesome dance. “Their worlds are gone. No others will sustain them. And so we are together, and together we hunt, and we are not alone.”

Not alone.
My heart broke for him. For all of us.
Not alone.

How fundamental that was beginning to seem. From Aetar to demon, to human—all of us suffered from being alone. Solitude was different. Meditative, even. But loneliness . . . that was the curse and killer.

Zee made a low, growling sound. He was perched on the side of a tree, claws digging in like hooks. Moments later, Tracker appeared.

“Come on,” he said. “There are dead demons up ahead.”

More Yorana, but this time they hadn’t died on another world. Their bodies had been tucked within the roots of a tree, half-covered in ferns. A quick burial, it seemed.

“Don’t go near them,” I told Tracker and Oturu. “They were sick.”

“Clearly.” Tracker kept a wide berth. “It’s been years since I’ve seen their kind. I’d almost forgotten what they looked like.”

“You fought them?”

“Briefly. The Wardens were created prior to the Reaper Kings being imprisoned on your ancestor. The Yorana were difficult because they could charm, make you feel relaxed, sluggish, with just a look. It was easier to kill them from a distance.”

“Does this mean Grant is close?” I asked Zee.

Raw crept near the bodies, and his lips peeled back with disgust. Aaz prowled on the other side, head tilted, ears slick against his head. He made a chittering sound. Zee glanced at him and shook his head. “Old dead, not new. We came fast, but time already stretched. Week, maybe two, for Grant.”

“A week ahead of us? Or
two
?” What a horrifying thought. I stared out at the forest, which was not a forest—hoping by some miracle I’d catch a glimpse of him.

And I did. Only it wasn’t him. I saw movement far from us, between the trees. Only for a split second, but it was human-shaped, and that was alarming. Especially because it wasn’t shaped like my husband. I’d know his shoulders anywhere.

“Zee,” I said, noticing him looking at the same spot. For a moment I wasn’t sure he would acknowledge me.

“Safe,” he rasped, finally meeting my gaze. Oturu drifted in that direction, then went perfectly still.

“Yes,” he said, then, “We should continue, Hunter.”

Tracker barely glanced in that direction. “Like I said, life comes through those doors, sometimes by design, mostly by accident. But just in case it’s an Aetar, I also don’t think we should investigate.”

I was sure it wasn’t an Aetar. Not with the way Zee and Oturu had reacted. But I didn’t have time to indulge my curiosity. I already attracted enough trouble without looking for more.

We kept on. Avoiding doors, listening to the sounds of the Labyrinth and its lost life. Lost ourselves, in the twilight. I entered a strange mental state—one part of my brain acutely aware of our surroundings—while the other half drifted. I thought about my mother so often that sometimes I felt as though she were at my side—and I’d look, half-expecting to see her, only to find a tree, or one of the boys giving me a curious look.

More dead Yorana appeared. Bodies, like breadcrumbs. No Shurik corpses, which puzzled me. But again, it began to feel like a routine. The monotony never changed. I felt no hunger, no real thirst. I forced myself to eat what Raw would put into my hands: little bits of trail bar and fruit, stored in his bulging backpack. But I ate because I thought I should, not because I felt any hollowness. I didn’t see Tracker eat, either, even though I’d offer him food. He’d shake his head and glide into the shadows between the trees.

Grant occupied my thoughts, but after a time, I felt the distance grow too vast, and I had to pull away from thinking of him. I missed our bond, and it was easy to feel resentful that it was gone. That link between us, in this place, would have made all the difference.

I thought mostly, though, about being a mother. A mother like my mother. Or a mother that was wholly me, with all my terrible mistakes. Like deliberately bringing my unborn child into a dangerous place, risking her life and mine on a dream, a possibility—on love.

I finally understood why relationships couldn’t last in my family—why no one married, no one stayed tied down—why strangers were better, cold and quick, and anonymous.

Love was too great a risk. Love was the destroyer. Love might kill us faster than any demon.

Or save us.

Zee held up his clawed hand—a sharp, urgent gesture—and muttered: “Listen.”

I didn’t hear anything, but I trusted Zee. I stood there, head tilted, relaxing into the silence. Sometimes it’s easier to see a star when you’re not looking directly at it. Stare just to the left, and the light will shine brighter.

It was the same here. I didn’t focus, just stayed relaxed . . . and after a long minute of hushed waiting, I heard a high, sweet sound. A flute.

A very familiar flute. I knew that tone.

“Grant,” I said, and took off running.