Labyrinth of Stars

by Marjorie M. Liu

  But finally I talked. Everything that happened after I left him, even the conversation with the possessed waitress. Each word hurt.

  “The Mahati was dead, and the Aetar still possessed her body. When the attack came . . .” I stopped, and his arms tightened. “I didn’t even know until it was too late. The boys and I . . . we couldn’t do anything to stop it.”

  “I should have been there with you.”

  “Don’t. That’s an impossible regret.”

  He tapped my head with his hand. “Don’t tell me what I should regret. I’ve got enough emotions inside me that aren’t mine. What I feel . . . what matters to me . . . it’s the only way I’m holding on to my identity.”

  That was a new revelation. A hundred different responses pushed through me, most of them involving death to demons. I closed my eyes and swallowed them all. “The thing inside me . . .”

  “Yes,” he said heavily. “I know.”

  He didn’t ask what the price would be for saving our daughter. No use, no need to complicate that one simple acknowledgment. I’d made the bargain and sealed it on our baby’s life. What needed paying would be paid, with no regrets, no negotiation.

  “We’re sitting ducks,” he went on. “We have to fight, Maxine. Any minute, we could be attacked, from any direction, any thing.”

  “So we find the Aetar, and what then? There are too many, and they’re scattered across the universe. We kill the one who’s bothering us now, and another will come. And they’ll keep coming, and we’ll be in this same situation again and again.”

  “And if we run?”

  “Maybe,” I muttered. “But then we’ll always run. And even that might not save us.”

  Grant sighed. “Those six humans killed on our land were poisoned. Dead too long for me to get a strong read off them. I can’t tell you how they were altered, except the Mahati and Osul who ate parts of them died. Looked like something out of The Exorcist. But you know that.”

  I pulled at the collar of his shirt, examining his chest for any stowaway slugs. “I’m surprised the Shurik and Yorana didn’t take bites out of those humans.”

  “The Shurik burrow into the living. Corpses aren’t their thing. And the Yorana . . . prefer seduction before the hunt.” His jaw tightened; so did his hand on my back, fingers digging into my shoulder. “Zee was right. We need to leave, Maxine. We’ve known from the beginning. We waited too long to face it.”

  It was hard, hearing him say those words. Made it too real—and that choice was full of unknowns. It didn’t feel safe.

  But it could be safer, I thought. Zee and the boys had never steered me wrong. They were family. All of us, together.

  Grant squeezed my hand. “Maxine.”

  “I’m scared,” I said, thinking about my mother.

  “Me, too.” He kissed the top of my head. “We’ll figure it out.”

  I placed his hand on my stomach and held it there. “We need help. We need it now.”

  No response. Grant was a former priest, and far too polite to say, “No fucking way.” But I could practically hear it in my head.

  “I need to find my grandfather,” I said.

  MEN have never existed in my family. No records of their names. No mention of fathers. You’d think we could clone ourselves—and given how closely all the women of my line resemble one another, that might be the case.

  At any rate, my ancestors, those who could read and write, kept journals—and while not many of those survived (most of them stored in a lockbox in New York City), what did keep always made it clear: The Kiss women stand alone.

  No family but mother and daughter, and the boys. No friends, no allies, no connection. No talk of love. My mother certainly drilled that into me, again and again.

  But it was a lie. Maybe the biggest of all the lies she ever told me.

  I could not be the only one who had rebelled against that family law. Surely some of us had tried—tried to have a normal life. It would have been difficult, yes, but not impossible. Even my mother had fallen in love—loved deeply—although the circumstances of that union were so strange and tragic, I refused to let myself dwell on it. I couldn’t think about my father.

  My grandfather was another matter entirely.

  Old Wolf. Meddling Man. With eons of blood on his hands.

  And yet I loved him. Maybe from the very beginning, when I’d first seen his photograph with my grandmother, and all the vast possibilities of what he and I could mean to each other were still fresh in my head. Before I’d learned the truth of what he was. Before a lot of things. I was so young, then. Desperate to have some part of my mother returned to me. My grandfather was the perfect surrogate.

  But that’s what happens with family. Sometimes you love what you should hate. Sometimes you trust when you should suspect. My mother probably would have been smarter, more careful with her heart—she was the true warrior. Always perfect, always strong. I was nothing but a pale imitation.

  But that’s the way it is with mothers and daughters.

  Someone is always being left behind.

  IT was lunchtime in Texas, the sun blazing hot. The void spat us out into a world that was sweaty, blinking with electricity, and smelled like the seat of a dirty toilet. It was also night—and the boys woke right the fuck up.

  It was like being drowned in a vat full of acid and fire. No beginning, no end, just the slow peel of my skin from my body, every inch from my fingernails to between my legs. I staggered, already disoriented from the void. Hitting night like this was the worst. At least with sunset, I had some warning. I could prepare myself.

  Tattoos dissolved into black smoke, flaying me from my toenails to the roots of my hair. I could not breathe. I could not make a sound. My mother had never made a sound. Just smiled, and laughed, so that I never knew the truth until it was my turn. I realized now the strength of her sacrifice—how she’d saved me a lifetime of fear and dread by making me think this shit would be easy.

  Don’t ever let anyone tell you that immortality—even the half-ass kind—doesn’t come without a price.

  The boys ripped free, a sliding, terrible heat that felt as though their sinuous bodies were petals hot with lava. Claws scraped. Whispers pattered. In small pieces, the pain eased. But I still shook, and when my vision cleared, I was on my knees. Dek and Mal clung to my shoulders, humming Sting’s “Every Breath You Take.”

  “Maxine,” whispered Zee. “Sweet Maxine.”

  “Hey,” I said, mouth so dry I could barely form the word. I glimpsed movement at the corner of my eye: Grant’s feet, and the bottom of his cane. His hand came down, and I grabbed it, hard.

  He pulled me up into his arms. His breath was warm on my neck, and I kissed his throat. His skin tasted hot, feverish.

  “We’re in Taiwan,” he said, pulling away. “Taipei. Been here before when I was young.”

  I looked around. We were standing inside an unlit street so narrow I could have stretched out my arms and laid my palms flat against each opposing wall. Electric wires and other thick cables hung above our heads, along with laundry and birdcages. Raw and Aaz clung to the walls, claws dug in and hanging upside down. Both of them reached into the shadows and pulled out hand grenades. They yanked out the pins, and shoved the live explosives into their mouths.

  Grant blew out his breath and looked away. “We better get moving.”

  I touched Zee’s head. “We need Jack.”

  But the little demon didn’t move, except to lean in and press his ear against my stomach. A tremor passed through him, and in moments Raw and Aaz gathered close, also leaning in for a hard, close embrace. I wrapped my arms around them, sharing their weak relief, and reverence. My heart, thick in my throat. Dek and Mal licked my ears, and Grant slid his hands against them into my hair. His brow pressed to mine.

  “We’re okay,” I whispered.

  “Yes,” Zee murmured, against my belly. “Her dreams still sing.”

  Grant pulled me closer. I leaned against h
im, vision swelling in a slow burn that blurred the shadows with tears. Zee reached out and covered our joined hands, those claws soft as silk. Small sighs filled my hair.

  “Family,” Zee rasped. “Strong as, deep as.”

  “Family,” Grant echoed softly.

  “Mine,” I said, but it didn’t make me feel better.

  CHAPTER 9

  IT was a bad night to be out. Hot, wet, with mountain-kissed thunderclouds and humid winds gathered thick over a red-light market slum in the heart of Taipei. We were far from home.

  Tourists spilled into the narrow road. Grant and I skirted the crowd, listening to gasps and camera clicks, and uneasy laughter. My heart tightened into a painful knot when I peered around them and saw a little girl, no older than eight or nine, grab a cobra from its tank and slip a wire noose over its head.

  No fear on her face. Just focus: cold, unrelenting. Little hands pulled hard on the cobra’s writhing tail—straightening that long, muscular body with an ease that would have been only slightly less disturbing if she hadn’t been dressed like a ballerina, wrapped in a ratty pink tutu with bows in her braided hair.

  A middle-aged man stood beside her. He held a curved blade, fake rubies glittering up and down the hilt. No costume. Just bloodstains on his pants and a smile on his face as he gazed at the gathered crowd.

  Demon. Possessed by one, at any rate. I saw the shadow thick as ash above his head, flecks of darkness snowing down upon his shoulders.

  His gaze found mine. His smile slipped. I made a gun sign with my hand and pointed it at his face. Grant shook his head, and the demon took a step back, placing himself behind the child.

  Grant and I shared a quick look but kept walking. We weren’t here for him, or any girls who weren’t our own.

  We moved fast. Grant’s breathing became labored though his pace didn’t slow. His color wasn’t good—too pale, but with a flush high in his cheeks that looked like a fever. I wasn’t feeling well, either. Sweat poured down my back, between my breasts. So humid it was difficult to breathe though I’d never had a problem before with heat. My body felt hollow, weak, heart pounding so hard. I blamed it on the near miscarriage, but there was a part of me—very small—that kept seeing that Mahati demon vomiting to death: blood and bile staining the snow. I couldn’t shake the dread.

  I touched the sinuous bodies coiled tight around my throat. Scales soft, warm. Dek and Mal loosened their holds on me, making it easier to breathe. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t worried about anyone seeing them on my shoulders. We were past that now. It was all too late.

  Zee slid through the shadows beside me, nothing but a sliver, a glimpse, a glint of red eyes. Raw and Aaz glided above the street, leaping between the neon lights that covered storefront windows and the signs hanging vertically from cracked, aging buildings. I felt them, close as my skin, close as my heart, racing quick. Little kings. Little family.

  Tourists thinned. So did the light. More locals now, men dressed in house slippers and limp white tanks and slacks; several teen girls in miniskirts, smoking cigarettes and drinking bubble tea, giving us bored glances. Just more foreigners, overdressed for the heat.

  Two old women stepped into our path: short, compact, hard lines etched into their sharp chins and cheeks. Small feral eyes, glittering. Hands flashed; for a moment I thought they held knives or balls of light. Their auras were full of demonic shadows. More of the possessed.

  My first instinct was to kill them. Not the human hosts but the demons inside. My entire body tensed with the need—and I had to tell myself, had to remember, that things were different now. We were all on the same side. More or less.

  The demons gave us wary looks and waved the flashlights they held, pointing the beams at a narrow metal door squeezed inside an alcove barely wide enough for my shoulders.

  “He’s on the top floor,” one of them said with distaste, as though the words were shit in her mouth. Or maybe being forced to help us made her ill. I didn’t like it, either. Seemed against the natural order of things.

  “You’ve been watching him?” Grant asked.

  “Blood Mama made us, all these months,” replied the possessed woman, while her friend looked past us and gave some tourists a toothless grin. “The Wolf can’t be trusted.”

  I started to walk past her, and she stopped me. “Our mother says you didn’t listen.”

  “Listen?” I thought of that waitress in Texas. “I listened fine. The message just wasn’t worth shit.”

  The old woman stepped forward, deliberately ignoring Grant. “You should have let your baby die and made another, with a different father. That was what you should have heard in her message. Your attachment to the one in your belly will fuck us all.”

  I grabbed her throat, and the woman squawked like a flattened chicken. The tourists who were passing us—a slight, elderly white woman, and her equally elderly black husband—gave us startled looks and kept on walking, fast. The demon’s friend also backed away—right into Raw, who appeared from the shadows with a snarl.

  “I’m going to kill you,” I told her.

  “Let me do it,” Grant said.

  I glanced at him, an unpleasant thrill in my gut. His eyes were so cold, so grim, I didn’t recognize him. Truly, for a moment, it was as if another man had stepped into my husband’s place. Even his face looked different: thinner, longer, lost in so many shadows he seemed to exist between here and there.

  He looks like a demon, I thought.

  Until, suddenly, he was my husband again. But that was almost as frightening.

  The possessed woman’s eyes bulged; she clawed at my hand. Zee flowed from the darkness and grabbed her leg. She went totally, completely still.

  “Little light is our light,” he whispered. “Cut her, we cut you. Cut you all dead.”

  “Traitors,” she rasped. “False Kings. You reaped worlds and would lose this one to a child and a Lightbringer.”

  Grant made a sharp, slicing sound with his tongue—I felt it scrape against my skin like a razor blade. Both the possessed women stiffened, dark auras tearing straight up—invisible hands ripping them from their stolen bodies. I imagined a tearing sound—but that was just the women sucking in their breath through their teeth, inhaling and inhaling, standing on their toes, rising as high as their stout, stolen bodies would take them. Backs arched. Bones cracked.

  My husband spoke again, and those demon auras snapped free of their hosts. Zee leapt up, grabbing one of them. Raw took the other, holding that struggling wisp in his fist. He grinned, sharp teeth absolutely hideous—and stuffed the demon in his mouth. Zee did the same, swallowing with grim pleasure.

  I had already released the human woman’s throat, but I touched her again, this time to hold her up as her knees buckled. Grant grabbed her companion, but he only had one hand free and she half fell to the sidewalk with a grunt. Zee and Raw were already gone, lost into the shadows.

  Demons, parasites. For years, I’d called the hosts of these things zombies. Humans with weak minds, possessed by demons who fed on their pain and the pain they caused others. An old demon could possess absolutely. A weak demon was just a hitchhiker, influencing from the shadows of the unconscious. But either way, the host was always screwed. I’d known men and women forced to commit terrible crimes against their wills—and after an exorcism have no memory of it. No memory, but forced to live with the consequences, forever.

  Both women were touching their heads, babbling to each other in Chinese. I didn’t understand a word, but Grant began humming, a soft melody that skimmed across my skin like a feather. The women calmed, staring blankly at each other.

  I pulled Grant toward the apartment-building door. His hand was clammy. I said, “That wasn’t like you.”

  “Does it matter?” he asked tightly.

  I forced him to look at me. “You’re not a killer.”

  He paled but stayed silent. I didn’t know what else to say except take his hand. I kissed the back of it, briefly pr
essing his palm against my cheek. Willing him to feel my concern.

  I’m changing, whispered his voice inside my mind.

  I caressed our bond, savoring the light and heat of it. You’re a father whose daughter is being threatened.

  Grant drew in a sharp, pained breath. It’s more than that.

  And then, carefully, gently, he pulled his hand from mine.

  We went inside, blinking at the dim, buzzing fluorescent lights, which cast the world in a sick greenish gray. I heard televisions, shouts in Chinese, but tuned it all out, listening to my heart pound as I ran up the stairs two steps at a time.

  Grant couldn’t keep up, but said, “Go on.”

  So I did. Zee uncoiled from the shadows, dropping on all fours to race ahead of me. His claws left deep gouge marks in the stairs. He looked over his shoulder, hair spikes flexing with agitation.

  “Maxine,” he rasped.

  “Find Jack,” I said. “I’ve got Dek and Mal.”

  But Zee did not leave me. Instead, he moved closer, so close I could reach out and touch him as I ran up the stairs; and I did, my palm skimming his sharp hair and the tips of the spikes jutting from his back. Comforting, having him near. I needed the reminder I was not alone. Even having Grant with me wasn’t reassurance enough.

  We reached the top floor. No one was in the hall. I heard men speaking Chinese behind closed doors, a dog whining. My boots scuffed the stained tiles. I smelled hot oil, garlic, and something rotten, like the lingering vapor from a dirty toilet.

  We stopped at the second-to-last apartment. Door was already cracked open, Aaz just on the other side, peering out at us. His eyes were huge, sharp ears pressed flat against his skull. He clutched a half-eaten teddy bear. Not a good sign. My heart dropped, and I pushed inside.

  It was night; I expected darkness. But the apartment I found myself in felt worse than dark. I could taste the desolation, sickly sweet: plates of rotting food on the table, the buzz of flies, the oppressive ovenlike air so thick I could have been pushing through solid matter. I waded into that apartment, stomach churning, letting my eyes adjust to the shadows and faint neon light streaming through slivers in the blinds.