Labyrinth of Stars (A Hunter Kiss Novel) (29 page)

I
remember my mother once asking,
Is there anything in the world dumber than men?

I hadn’t answered. I was only a kid. But if she had said that today, I would have agreed with her.

Grant, you fool.

That’s what’s strange about loving men. Really loving them. You love them even when their stupidity is so profound it could put out the world.

Which is not to say you don’t have second thoughts.

I mean,
seriously
.

IT
wasn’t my husband. I found Jack instead.

He was nestled in the hollow of a massive root system, playing a golden flute. He sounded just like Grant, except the melody had the weight of age on it, a melancholy spirit. A song, I suspected, that had not been heard by anyone for a very long time.

He had company. But it wasn’t my husband who stood with him.

A unicorn rested at his feet.

It was smaller than a horse but no less shocking: pure white, the white of virgin snow, with a delicate back and trim muscles, and a long neck that supported an impossibly lovely, fine-boned head. A touch could have shattered that skull; it looked so delicate, even the weight of the horn spiraling from the center of its brow, gleaming like mother-of-pearl, seemed too much for it to bear.

Black eyes flicked from Jack to me. They were filled with so much naked intelligence, I immediately forgot the fantasy—and felt cold all over again.

“Sarai,” I said, taking a guess. Only one Aetar I knew of had ever assumed the identity of the creature in front of me—though the last time I’d seen her, she’d been a woman: the owner of an art gallery in Seattle, elegant and assured, who had spent just as many years as Jack on earth, being born again in different bodies. I’d liked her, then. Watched her human body die in my arms before I knew she was immortal. I was still troubled by that death, sometimes.

The unicorn inclined her head.
Hunter.

Her voice was soft inside my thoughts. I stared a moment longer, then pulled my gaze to Jack.

My grandfather hadn’t stopped playing when I ran into the clearing. His eyes met mine, briefly—before he closed them and turned his head. I bit my tongue. I bit it so hard I tasted blood and waited for the song to end. Around me, the boys gathered, crouched in the shadows, red eyes glittering.

The last note trailed away. In the silence, I said, “That’s Grant’s flute.”

“Yes.” Jack hefted the instrument in his hands, a bitter smile playing against his mouth. “He left it.”

“Bullshit,” I said. “For him, it’s a weapon.”

“He needs few weapons now,” replied my grandfather, unmoving from his perch. “I knew you would come, Maxine. But I wish you hadn’t.”

“No one gets what they want.” I stepped forward and felt a tingle run down my spine. I was better now at spotting the entrances to other worlds, and there was one in front of me—a haze that was stronger, heavier, than other doors I’d encountered, and one that carried a sparkle—dusting motes of light. It didn’t look or feel threatening—there was no warning sign. Just a tingle of cold dread, a strange and awful premonition.

Reconsider your actions,
said Sarai, and there was no longer anything soft about that voice pushing through my mind.
Jack has apprised me of what has happened on your world. This is not the answer.

“Then what is? Let everyone die?” I moved closer but stayed out of reach of her horn. “Why are you here, Sarai?”

A snort flared those delicate nostrils. Jack said, “She’s the only one brave enough to meet you in the flesh. Most of the other Aetar are convinced you’ll try to kill them.”

“You told them I was coming.”

We felt you inside the Labyrinth.
Sarai tilted her head, staring at me with those bottomless eyes.
We felt the Lightbringer and the demons. The Labyrinth is a tuning fork of energy, Hunter. One ripple, and it affects all who reside in the forest.

“I’m surprised you didn’t try to kill Grant.”

Jack looked down. “That is still the question, my dear. Your presence here just might trigger our own civil war. Long-brewing, I might add. Those who are done with the killing, who regret our brutality all those eons ago—”

—against those who would do it all again, and happily.
Sarai stood, an impossibly graceful unfolding that seemed to happen in the blink of an eye.
We cannot afford such a battle. We are too few. Too many innocents would be killed.

“Same tired argument,” Jack said in a sour voice. “It saves us the trouble of having to confront who we have become. Of course, once the others realize where you’ve come—what you intend to do—it will be a moot point. Even those who would let you and your family live would kill to stop this.”

I held up my hand. “Where is my husband?”

“Where do you think?” Jack rubbed his face, looking weary. “I couldn’t bring myself to go in after him. Which shows you the limits of my courage.”

“You hoped I would arrive to be brave for you?”

“I hoped you would never come at all. Sometimes bravery is doing nothing. Giving up the man you love for the greater good would have been such an act.”

Old Wolf,
Sarai admonished. But his words rolled right off me.

“The Devourer is in there, isn’t he?” I said. “On the other side of that door, in the world where you trapped him.”

“It’s not a world. More of a foyer, per se,” Jack replied. “But yes. And Grant went through with his demons.
And
his demons.”

I gave him a cold look. “Watch it, Grandpa.”

Jack grunted, glancing from me to Tracker—who appeared around a hairy, giant fern that could have sheltered a small family from the rain if there’d been any. Oturu, curiously, did not make an appearance. Now that I thought about it, he’d never shown himself to anyone but the boys and me. And Tracker.

“You,” said Jack.

“Apparently,” replied Tracker.

“You know what awaits her?”

“I do. Any last words before we all die horribly?”

“Shut up,” I said, and made toward the door.

I didn’t think Jack could move that fast. One moment he was seated on that root—and in the next he stood in front of me, grabbing my arm and trying to pull me away. Zee hissed. Dek and Mal puffed flame at his face, but that didn’t slow him down.

I tried to twist free without hurting him, but it was impossible; his grip was like steel. Tracker drew close, expression inscrutable, but the old man was not so composed; the strong lines of his face showed the ravages of terrible distress, and his cheeks were flushed.

“I must strongly advise against this course of action.”

“You think I’ll let this freak go. Is your prison really that shabbily constructed? I mean, it must be if Grant was able to waltz in.”

We made it impossible to leave,
Sarai said, voice cool and dry.
We were not worried about the fools who would fall in.

“You’re not a normal woman,” Jack said. “So no, I don’t know how you might break his shackles, just that I’ve seen the possibility.”

I’d seen the fire. Witnessed myself torn apart within it. And he was right, maybe being brave meant I should walk away and let my husband rot in that place. But I couldn’t even contemplate that. I couldn’t even face that option.

I stared him dead in the eye. “Tell me the truth, old Wolf. Can a Lightbringer of Grant’s strength control that Aetar?”

Jack hesitated. “I don’t know. Grant is not like any one of his kind who ever existed. But neither is the Devourer.”

“You still managed to imprison him.”

“Barely. Because we used the crystal skulls. It was our last act with them, after we broke the power of the Reaper Kings.” Jack glanced at Zee and the boys. “You destroyed the other skulls. If he goes free, we will have nothing to use. Nothing that is strong enough.”

Sarai had also positioned herself in front of the gate, her head lowered ever so slightly—just enough to make that horn seem like a weapon instead of a decorative piece of fantasy. Raw and Aaz gathered close to my sides, watching her with glittering crimson eyes. Claws flexed.

Tracker studied her, then my grandfather, his gaze inscrutable.

“The Wolf is right,” he said. “This is too incredibly dangerous.”

“Of course it is,” I said. “It may be suicidal. But what would you have given, Tracker, to have someone risk herself to keep you safe? What sacrifice would have been too much to keep that iron collar off your neck?”

“This one,” he said.

“Liar. Even the
attempt
 . . . someone
trying
for you . . . would have changed
everything
.”

I stepped away from the men—and the unicorn—clenching my right hand into a fist. Zee and the boys gathered close. “Get out of my way.”

Jack shook his head. Zee rasped, “Nothing lasts, Meddling Man.”

“Except foolishness,” he whispered. “You’re a mother now, Maxine. What do you owe your child?”

“Stay here,” I told Tracker, ignoring that dirty play. “Watch them.”

I didn’t wait for a response. I ran to that shimmering haze, demons at my side. Raw and Aaz slammed Sarai out of the way when she tried to charge me. I heard Jack’s choked, startled shout—but that was all. I hit that shimmering haze, passed through.

And got a surprise.

I found myself inside a white marble foyer. Wide and curved as two cupped hands—and gleaming, shining, with an unnatural brightness that permitted no blemishes. In fact, it was as though the stone and walls had been airbrushed to absolute perfection. No color, anywhere. Just a pure, alabaster white.

It was the visual equivalent of hearing a prim old woman speak in a man’s booming lumberjack voice. Unexpected, given certain expectations. I was anticipating hell, after all.

“Tell me,” I said to Zee, who prowled across the floor, looking like some obscene blemish against that pure, luminous marble. “This is kind of fucked up, right?”

Dek and Mal began humming the melody to “Strangeness,” while Raw and Aaz pressed against the walls, scratching them—leaving claw marks that oozed black tar, like blood.

“Excuse me,” said a quiet male voice.

I flinched, surprised. Zee also twitched—all the boys, jumping a little—their surprise even more visceral than mine. No one ever sneaked up on them.

I turned and found that an elderly man stood just behind me: stout, with spectacles hanging down his nose. He was dressed like a butler, all in black, his skin very pale and his eyes a watery blue. He held slippers in his left hand.

“Please announce yourself,” he said.

I stared, heart still pounding so hard I wanted to vomit. “Who are you?”

One stubby brow arched up. “I am the butler. And you are?”

He was polite, proper, the very epitome of
nonthreatening
—but the skin-crawling menace I felt at those simple, quiet words made me want to run screaming.

“My name is Maxine Kiss,” I said.

“Ah, very good.” He extended some slippers. “Please put these on. The master abhors noise.”

Zee sniffed at them. The slippers seemed to be slippers. Still, I felt very strange about it. I stared from them to the butler, who straightened and fixed me with a cold look.

“You
cannot
see him, otherwise,” he said in a crisp voice.

I frowned, slipped off my boots. Slippers went on. The butler took my shoes from me, holding them away from his body and between his fingers, as if they carried some disease.

“This way,” he said, and led me up the stairs.

I caught glimpses of halls, rooms, none furnished—doors that were closed that I wanted to open. But I kept my hands to myself and followed the old man to a set of double doors, also white marble, which he tugged open with the lightest of touches.

“Maxine Kiss to see you, sir.”

I heard no greeting, but the butler gestured for me to enter.

I did, and found my grandfather.

A
couple years back, I got a letter in the mail.

It was from the New York law firm that had handled the affairs of several generations of Kiss women, and which was doing the same for me, though I rarely checked in—except when I needed information on some random property I’d vaguely recall my mother saying we owned.

There was a note, brief: “For delivery on this date, at the request of Jolene Kiss.” It was clipped to another envelope, this one sealed, and slightly battered with age. I recognized my mother’s handwriting on the flap—no one else wrote my name with quite that flourish.

A single sheet of paper was tucked inside. More of my mother’s elegant writing. I was startled, a bit breathless with the discovery. I remember sitting down on Grant’s couch, bathed in sunlight, my tattooed hands shaking just a little. I had the armor by then—I’d traveled in time. But this was another kind of breach from the past.

I should just die and be done with it,
I read.
That’s the proper way, to let a daughter move on with her life, instead of coming back from the grave. But you’ve always been a bit different, and experience has taught me that you don’t mind conversing with the dead. And I find that I don’t mind sending letters to a daughter who in my life is still in diapers but who will one day bear all the burdens of being a woman.

You won’t have an easy life. You’ve had a taste of that by now, and more. You’ll discover things, if you haven’t already, that will make you question me and this life you’ve been born into. Feel free to be angry. I’m dead, after all. It won’t bother me.

But you did come to me once, by accident. You, as an adult, with that particular ability to cut through time. You were afraid, you were sick, and I couldn’t help you then. I hope I’ve judged the delivery of this letter so that I can help you now—which won’t be much help at all.

There are miracles, Maxine. Even in death, and betrayal, and grief—there are still miracles. Cling to that, cling to hope. No matter how terrible things get, or how helpless you feel. Hope is what will save you, again and again.

So get up. Get up off that floor where I found you.

Fight, Maxine. Fight for your life.

Fight for other lives that haven’t been born.

Fight for your hope. Fight for your heart.

You’ll find a miracle if you do.

I promise.

MY
grandfather.

My grandfather, as he had appeared when I first met him, years past. Trim, long legged, elegant. Dressed in sleek tan slacks and a cream-colored cable-knit sweater. Quite polished. Clean-shaven, his gray hair swept back. He was pale and sat in a soft chair with a brown blanket thrown over his legs.

Yes, the epitome of torture and evil.

Until I saw his eyes, then it was no joke. I knew those eyes. I knew the hunger behind that glittering black stare, and it was old and bottomless, and utterly implacable.

“Greetings, my dear,” said the old man, with a faint smile. “So delightful finally meeting you. Imagine my surprise when I learned that I had
family
.”

“You’re not my grandfather,” I said, feeling the boys spreading out around me. “You’re just wearing his old face.”

That faint smile widened, and it was so much like Jack—so much, yet not—I felt off-balance, dizzy. I’d passed through the mirror into another universe, and here was my grandfather, as he might have been. Cool and bland, and polished like a stone. He scared me, and it wasn’t just because of his eyes. He terrified me, even—and I was grateful for Dek and Mal, coiled tight around my throat.

“He
has
kept you quite in the dark, hasn’t he?” His hands smoothed out the blanket in his lap, and he turned his gaze on Zee and the boys. “Reaper Kings. We meet again. You’re weakened this time, which fills me with no small amount of pleasure.”

“Don’t remember you,” Zee rasped.

Delight touched his mouth but not his eyes. “I was there the entire time, hiding in plain sight. Reduced, ignored, betrayed . . . but ever present. You knew me, little Reaper King. Yes, you did. I was the architect of your prison.”

“You’re
not
Jack,” I said, unnerved. Even more so, when he looked at me, and I saw a flash of anger so profound it verged on insanity.

“Actually,” he said softly, “I am.”

I stepped back as the old man rose gracefully from his chair, his blanket slipping away to the floor. The butler moved in, stooping to pick up the blanket, but froze when the other man touched his back, ever so slightly. The butler’s face went carefully blank, but that was enough. He was, I suspected, one of those fools who had fallen through the gate into this prison. And fuck only knew what he’d been put through for however long he’d attended this old Aetar, who my grandfather said was in love with pain.

I glanced at Zee, who watched him with careful, narrowed eyes. “He’s lying.”

But the demon gave me a brief look that chilled me to the bone. “He is not. He believes.”

The old man laughed, ever so softly—standing behind the butler, who had finished picking up the blanket and stood there, holding it to his chest.

“Of course I believe,” he said, holding my gaze, all while he ran a thick, strong hand down the back of the butler’s neck. “I was Jack, I am Jack, I am what he threw away, all those years ago.”

I swallowed hard. Raw and Aaz were prowling around the room, sniffing at the walls. No sign of Grant or the Shurik, which frightened me. I fought to keep my mask on, though, to be strong, unbreakable. “I don’t understand. You’re the Devourer. You’re not him. You can’t be.”

The old man’s smile deepened—God, he looked like my grandfather, even his eyes—and I watched in horror as he reached around the butler and sank his hand into the man’s chest. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing at first, it didn’t make sense, but I stared at his hand, slipping through flesh like it was water, pushing in deep until even his forearm was embedded. The butler turned ice white, bottom lip trembling, but he did not make a sound.

I lurched forward, intent only to make it stop—but the old man yanked his arm out with a flourish, and blood sprayed across my face. The butler collapsed, blood pooling around him. In the old man’s hand was a human heart. Which he offered to me.

When I just stared at him, unmoving, he shrugged and took a deep, wrenching bite from it. Blood ran down his chin. Blood dripped on the white floor. Blood stank up the air and made me sick.

“My kind go crazy sometimes,” he said, after a hard, slow swallow. “We’re made of little more than light and energy, so to say we lose our minds is a bit inaccurate. And yet, more accurate than anything else. We lose our minds, young Hunter. Or we become more of ourselves in ways we never dreamed.”

“My husband came here,” I said.

“Your husband is still here,” he said, crouching over the butler, “and you can kill me, but you won’t. Not until you’re sure I can’t help you. Such a sorry predicament you’ve put yourself in.”

The butler’s limbs twitched, as if waking from a nightmare. I wasn’t surprised he was still alive. I said, “You orchestrated this.”

“I was awakened,” replied the Aetar, looking up from the butler to study Raw and Aaz with the calculated eye of a butcher measuring meat. “When my lesser half used our crystal skull to spy . . . he found me instead. That brief moment of shared essence not only allowed me to see inside his life, but it established a link that I used to slip outside my bonds. It was not easy, I admit. I could not often take advantage of it. But it was rather useful, for a time. Long enough to set things in motion.”

He met my gaze. “You, for instance.”

“You’re not Jack,” I whispered.

“I am,” he whispered back. “Just not the part he wanted.”

The old man lunged at me. I was expecting an attack, but nothing so fast. I couldn’t see him move, just a blur, then impact. He was faster than the boys, even.

I slammed into the floor, breath knocked out. Dek and Mal reared, breathing fire, snapping at the old man. Raw and Aaz clung to him, tearing at his limbs, ripping him to pieces like he was made of tissue paper while Zee stood over me, spiky hair bristling, snarling with rage. And all I heard was laughter, his cold, delighted laughter, filling the air. The more they hurt him, the more amused he seemed—and I realized that all the boys were doing was giving him pleasure.

My right hand glimmered, power surging through the armor. But before it could transform into a weapon that I could use, the world around us broke. Those white walls, that perfect marble—all of it cracked. No earthquake, no shaking—just a fracture that grew with each heartbeat, splitting apart the room. Heat burst against my skin, crackling over me like I’d just been shoved into an oven. Smoke filled the air.

Zee snapped out a single sharp word. Raw and Aaz leapt away from the old man, skidding across the floor to me. I saw the butler climbing to his feet, but he looked different than I remembered—thinner, taller. Younger.

And he favored his right leg.

“Fuck,” I said, just as fury passed through his face, and he opened his mouth to sing. It was a sound made from thunder, raw and glorious—and the Aetar, in his shredded, old-man body, choked a little.

Just as we fell into hell.

It was a true fall, a descent that scrambled everything inside me. I couldn’t see or move—I just had to trust that I wouldn’t die when I landed.

But there was no landing. When I could see again, I realized we hadn’t moved at all. It was the world that had changed.

Fire, everywhere, dotting a swift-moving lava field that churned in a blast furnace of awesome, terrible heat. But beyond that, towering over us, was a pillar of flame—a warped, raging mass that writhed and twisted like a snake. I couldn’t see the top of it. I could barely encompass its width with my gaze. I was an ant in comparison, and all I could remember was that terrible vision: the implacable hunger, and those eyes, those eyes that I felt even now, focusing on me.

Zee and the boys huddled at my side, shielding me against the sparks that lit upward and might have caught on my clothes. It was hard to breathe the air. I felt like Frodo sitting on a rocky outcropping at the edge of Mount Doom, trapped and waiting to be cooked alive. All I needed was my Samwise.

And I found him, twenty feet away, on another outcropping that rose above the fire.

Grant, kneeling, surrounded by Shurik—who clung to him with stubborn ferocity. I didn’t know where they’d been before, but I could barely see my husband beneath their squirming white bodies. I thought,
Thank God.

My husband was singing, but it wasn’t music—just a powerful, throbbing
om
that filled the air with such weight and heft and presence that I felt as though I were breathing his voice, wearing it on my skin. I clenched my right hand in a fist. I had killed Aetar with the armor I wore. Grant had killed them with his voice. But we needed something from this creature.

Fuck it. I slammed my right hand against my thigh, and we fell backward into the void. Just for a moment. Blissful disembodiment, safe from the inferno.

We were spit out just behind Grant’s back, clinging to stone. I dug my hands between Shurik, wrapping my arms around my husband. Holding him close, letting him know I was there. His voice altered its tone, growing deeper. His hands found mine. Up close, I could see the sweat pouring down his face, and the glow of the flames couldn’t mask the gray poison in his skin. He was tired, sick, not at his full strength.

“Reaper Kings,”
whispered a voice from the fire. It came from all around us, and was surprisingly quiet—though it still managed to cut through Grant’s song.
“Kings and their maiden. Kings, a maiden, and a dying Lightbringer who is bonded to demons from the old army.”
Soft laughter, chilling in its menace.
“So many surprises and delights.”

Arms of fire reached out. Zee and the boys clung to us. I felt them all around me. I felt the hardness of my pregnant belly. Grant was shaking with effort, but those arms still moved toward us—as if all his powers had no effect. I didn’t understand how that was possible, but I stood—demons clinging to me—and stepped around my husband. I stood, facing the Aetar, and my right hand shimmered, warped, transformed—into a shield, light as a feather, round as the moon.