Labyrinth of Stars

by Marjorie M. Liu

  I needed that silence. Little jackhammers were assaulting my joints and muscles—my skin burned, I burned—and my head hurt so badly, I closed my eyes and breathed through my mouth, afraid to move. Even a purr would have been too loud. The more I hurt, the more I retreated inside myself, moving deeper, downward, part of me hoping to get so lost I didn’t feel any of the pain.

  The fear, I couldn’t help. I was so afraid, afraid of everything, afraid for our child, afraid Grant would feel my distress through our bond and try to reach me—afraid that everyone I loved was going to be hurt, and lost.

  Fight. Stay alive.

  I vomited again, utterly helpless as that bitter burning wash of heat pushed up my throat. I tasted blood in my mouth and coughed, spitting out what I could—but it exhausted me so much, I had trouble rolling over to my back. I had to stay where I was for several long minutes, face pressed to cool stone, eyes wet with tears.

  Fight. Stay alive.

  I fell deeper into myself, awareness shrinking to breath, heartbeat, the stone against my back. I fell even deeper, aware of my mother’s bones beneath me, and my grandmother to my left. Dead and alive, both at the same time. Dead here, alive in the past, and the walls were so thin between us. How often had I breached that wall, how often had I stepped through to another world? They were both so close: just on the other side of a thought, a wish, a dream.

  I wanted them with me, so badly.

  Zee ran his claws through my hair and pressed that wet rag on my brow. It was deliciously cool, but I wanted more. I wanted to be buried in snow and ice, and I doubted even that would be enough to dim the heat. I thought of Grant, suffering through this, and my heart reached out to him. I couldn’t help it.

  Our bond. Our light. No Lightbringer could use his powers alone. If he tried, it would eventually kill him. A bond was needed, a person who could anchor and share the power of life.

  I was that power. I was that life. And in so many ways, he was mine.

  Golden light rushed through me, shining behind my closed eyes—brilliant and spirited, with its own clear tone that rang in my ears like some faraway song. I let it carry and caress me from the fever and pain; and with it memories, moments, shimmering in a haze through my mind—all of them, with Grant.

  You’re going to live, I told him, pouring my own heart and life into our bond. You’re going to live such a long time.

  Maxine, you’re sick, I heard him say, but his voice in my mind sounded very distant, lost in the fog of infection burning once again through the light.

  I love you, I told him, ready to push him away, close up our bond—lock it tight so he wouldn’t feel any more of what I was going through.

  Only, he wouldn’t let me.

  It was like slamming open a door in a hurricane. Light battered me, and no matter how hard I struggled, that storm held me in place. My chest tugged, a lure that hooked into my blood, pulling hard. Again and again, until it reminded me of a mouth on some open wound, drawing out poison. I could suddenly feel the disease inside me, feel it as if it were a rotting brown corpse, and inside my head, I saw it being broken apart and enticed down our bond.

  Impossible. Grant couldn’t heal me. The boys and I were immune to his voice.

  But he wasn’t using his voice, I realized. This was something else, something deeper, the part that made us one person.

  “No!” I said out loud, struggling to rise. Zee and Raw held me down. Aaz gave me a frightened look and sat on my legs.

  No, I screamed at Grant. No.

  He said nothing, but the light of our bond dimmed. Pain built inside my sternum, like a knife being pushed, inch by slow inch, into my chest. I writhed, crying out, looking for anything, anything I could do to make it stop.

  But I couldn’t, and a vision slashed through my mind—of Grant, on the couch, his fingers digging into his chest and his face deformed with pain. His breath, ragged and gasping, blood foaming around his mouth. Mary standing over him, calling his name. No one else there. Not Jack. Not me.

  I was killing him. He was killing himself, trying to save me.

  “Fuck!” I gasped, slamming my right hand into the stone. Sparks danced and the metal chimed. But nothing happened. I couldn’t go to him.

  Grant, I begged. Grant.

  I fought harder, and the world beyond my body disappeared—all that existed, all that mattered, was the nightmare unfolding inside me. My human mind wasn’t made for the abstract: Disease resembled a rotting corpse, my bond with Grant a shaft of golden light. The darkness inside me: a serpent wound deep around my heart. It didn’t matter that appearances weren’t real—what mattered was the reality behind the appearances and what it let me perceive.

  And what I perceived was that my husband was going to die in the next minute if I didn’t do something to save him.

  No thought, just instinct. I threw myself down that bond into Grant’s soul.

  It was like diving headfirst into a hole the size of a rabbit, and the sensation was physical and mental, and overwhelmingly uncomfortable. It wasn’t my body being compressed, just my mind—but the two felt so much the same that I was sure I was going to die, right there, from the attempt.

  Instead, I dissolved. I broke apart.

  And fell into my husband, just as his heart stopped beating.

  CHAPTER 17

  I felt his heart stop.

  It was just one of a million different sensations that assaulted me at that moment—a cascade of thoughts, memories, desire, and fear—ramming into my consciousness with all the pulverizing force of a bullet train. I flew, plummeted, crashed.

  But I felt his heart stop.

  I felt the absence all around me, the silence, the drift—and the light between us, the light that had brought me to him, began to dissipate. Everything else was a blur—threads and shimmers, voices crying out in pain—but it was the light I clung to, the fading light that I held, and I let it pull me into his heart, to the spirit of his heart.

  There was nothing, then everything: a great floating mass in front of me, an island in a dark sky, but it was made of knots that were gnarled as roots, twisted and thick, and flush with veins, threads that shot in every direction, each one stretched to the point of snapping—just beginning to go dark.

  Grant, I called, but there was no answer—perhaps, just the hint of a touch, the ghost of a man. His heart was in front of me: massive and quiet. No song. No drum. No beat.

  And all over, slick and filthy, was that brown ooze of rot and disease. It was a wall between us, a wall between life and death—and a terrible fury filled me, an ache of revulsion so deep and profound, I felt the dying world around us tremble.

  I reached out, hands tearing through the rot—

  —and the world became fire.

  It was a chthonic blast, straight out of hell: an inferno that ripped through me like I was rice paper fluttering instantly to ash. I had no defense against it. It pushed me out, and I found myself back where I started, on the edge of the rot, with lost time and a husband who was getting deader by the second.

  For a moment, I remembered the vision in that crystal skull—my body, torn apart in fire.

  Fuck that, I thought, throwing myself back into the rot: burning, again. I might as well have been flesh and bone—I could feel the crackling sizzle of my skin, the small internal explosions of my organs pop pop popping—the blistering of my life as it was scorched away.

  I couldn’t hold on. I slipped a second time and fell from the rot. Barred from my husband’s still, quiet, heart. It stunned me. It was as if the disease were alive, something more than just a virus. Alive, with a purpose. Alive, with dreams.

  I pushed my hands into the rot, threw myself into hell, again. I felt no fear. No space for it, past the fury, and the love. I focused on the love and pushed the rest aside. And when I stopped feeling love, I clung to Grant’s face. And when his face burned away, I thought of our daughter, our daughter who needed a father. And when even that was not enough, I fell
back on my mother, my mother and the boys, then just the boys, until there was nothing left but something deeper than even them, something that swam on the other side of the fire, already inside me, safe and cool in its untouched darkness.

  But I didn’t stop at the darkness, even though it reached for me, expectant. I moved past its grasp, past it to the other side, into another world.

  I was weightless, without flesh, without anchor—less than a spirit, floating. Only this was not the void. Here, there was light: starlight, pricks of light, far away and scattered in a million billion gestures of burning life that I knew, I knew, would never sustain me. I could not eat light. It could not make me whole.

  You are wrong, whispered a familiar masculine voice. Light is filled with many wonders.

  A lean shimmer of silver flickered at the corner of my vision, but I could not turn to look at my father. “Right now I care about only one light. I want my husband,” I said, voice breaking. “I want Grant.”

  A soft sigh rippled through me, filled with longing, sadness. The sound took away the pain from the burns and healed the fractures caused by those screams. It was cool and gentle, a balm to my soul. But it also made me afraid, in ways the fire had not.

  I wanted your mother, came that whisper. But even I could not keep her.

  I refused to hear that. I refused to think even a moment about what those words meant, but the meaning still sank into me, transforming into dread. I couldn’t stand it, not even a little. I pushed it away. I pushed away from it all and fell back into the fire. Hell was safer than a broken heart. Hell was gentler.

  Heat seared through my cells, and so did those screams—but it was different this time. Maybe because I welcomed the pain. I embraced it, falling deep, deeper, burning to ash, with nothing left inside me but heartbreak.

  Until I heard a voice.

  It wasn’t a voice I knew—not Grant or the boys, not the darkness or that figure of light who had loved my mother, loved her so much she’d become pregnant with me. But it was a voice, and it was filled with power.

  We are Gods, it whispered. What is flesh, is ours.

  A shadow gathered in the fire, indistinct and immense. I pushed toward it, overwhelmed with the need to see its face. The fires parted. But instead of a man, all I saw was death.

  Bodies, millions of them, as far as the eye could see—as if I stood on the edge of a great cliff, looking down. Except I wasn’t far away—I was right there, nearly on top of them, and the rot covered their flesh, the rot was eating away at them: brown and filthy, and ripe with poison.

  You have done well, murmured that deep, resonant voice. The quiet, assured malevolence of it was as dangerous, and threatening, as any rot or bullet, or knife. More so, because that was a voice that sounded as if it took pleasure in its power, and I knew that type too well. Pleasure and pain and death, part of the same delight.

  The illness is efficient, replied another: a much lighter voice, with a certain affable tone that might have belonged to a cheerful Nazi. But it must be altered. It must not be allowed to affect our flesh. Only the demons.

  Kill all the humans on that world, and you will starve the demons out, replied that other. But, as you wish. Alter the disease. And I will fashion its cure. Just in case.

  You are the Devourer, came the almost-cheerful reply. And ever wise.

  Fires crisped my back. I tried to hold on to the vision before me, but the bodies shrank and slid away, leaving me with nothing but my heart.

  And my heart pulled me forward. The fires pushed. In front of me, where the bodies had been, I saw a mountain appear, except it was not rock, just flesh. Not a mountain, but a heart.

  Grant’s heart.

  The rot was still all around us, but here—a patch. Here, a place where I could reach my husband. How long had I been lost? I still saw traces of light in those muscles, veins that held an echo of life.

  Grant, I called, but there was no answer—perhaps, just the hint of a touch, the ghost of a man.

  I touched one of those veins of fading light, and my hands sank deep inside. Everything in me that was alive, I poured into him. It wasn’t mouth-to-mouth—just soul-to-soul, my soul searching desperately for his soul, my soul plunging deep and far away into my husband. The rot tried to surround me, but I burned it away, burned and clawed and beat it back.

  Wake up, I begged his heart. Wake up.

  Maxine, I heard, but that wasn’t Grant’s voice. It was Zee. I ignored him, falling deeper. Claws brushed my arms, scales soft as silk around my throat. Darkness engulfed me, but it only made the light shine brighter, hotter, until everything disappeared, everything. Except a pale hand that pushed free of the light.

  I grabbed, pulled.

  My husband’s heart began to beat.

  I almost didn’t believe it, but I felt that solid, thumping rhythm, rich and deep as a drum made from a mountain thundering. I felt the boys with us, too, their spirits just as strong as their flesh. I pulled again on Grant’s hand, hauling him toward me, tugging and yanking with every ounce of my strength. I didn’t think I had anything left to give, but I found more—I found enough.

  All around us, the rot began moving in. I reached out, laid my hand upon it—

  —and the world shifted again.

  I opened my eyes and saw nothing but stars.

  Stars, blurred, because there were tears in my eyes. I couldn’t think—no memory, no sense of place—just a scrambling, wild pulse of anxiety that hit my chest, making it hard to breathe. Or maybe that was the demon sitting on me.

  “Maxine,” Zee rasped, sliding his cool claws down my cheek. I stared at him, struggling not to panic. Certain that something terrible had happened, right beyond my reach. I craned my neck, taking in my grandmother’s grave, the old oak, and several pairs of red eyes blinking with uncertainty. All normal. All fine. But something was missing, something—

  It all came back.

  Panic exploded into outright terror. I shoved at Zee, trying to sit up. He scrambled off me, and I rolled off the rock—right onto my face. None of my limbs worked, and now that I was moving, I could barely see straight; dizziness made me cling to the grass. I took a deep breath, steeled myself—and stood just long enough to launch myself into a shambling run.

  I was headed downhill, which gave me momentum. Nothing seemed to work right—my legs kept threatening to collapse, each step random, flinging, wild—and my spine seemed incapable of straightening beyond a hunched c shape. My right arm swung in the air, and the other clutched hard against my stomach. I might have been drooling, but I didn’t give a shit. I was upright. I was moving. And I had the farmhouse fixed in my sights.

  Raw and Aaz loped past me. I tried to tell them to go to Grant, but my voice wouldn’t form the words—just a low, unintelligible growl that only confirmed I was drooling like a motherfucker. Zee, somewhere on my left, snapped out a sharp, guttural command—Aaz disappeared instantly into the shadows. I was only dimly aware of Dek and Mal on my shoulders; wrapped tight, warm and silent.

  One foot in front of the other. One foot. One step. My life, reduced to nothing more basic. I didn’t think. I couldn’t. Only once did I try to find my husband’s spirit through our link, but even reaching for the link almost knocked me out. It should have been easy as breathing, but that brief effort made me feel like I was at twenty thousand feet, out of oxygen, and still trying to climb a mountain.

  I was mostly upright by the time I reached the farmhouse: breathing hard, dizzy, my skin flushed with fever. Zee caught me before I fell on the porch stairs, half-dragging me up to the door, which Raw opened with such force it broke right off the hinges. I was dimly aware of movement all around me: hundreds of Shurik, clinging to the porch boards and rails, curled up on the wicker chairs like amputated, hairless cats.

  I staggered inside. Lights were on. Mary knelt by the couch, blocking my view of Grant. I wanted to knock her aside, and half a second later Aaz did just that. I barely noticed. I could finally see my hu
sband. He was so still, a corpse shade of white that was almost gray: and the rest of him, hollow, covered in a blanket half-tossed aside.

  I collapsed beside the couch, touching his face. Warm. Warm skin. His chest rose and fell, and my entire spirit rose and fell with that solid, living movement. I tried again to reach for our link, closing my eyes, trying to force myself to relax, breathe, sink deep. All that meditative shit I’d never needed to find my husband’s soul.

  Nothing. I found nothing. Just a gaping hole inside my heart, so real I could feel it—as if the void had settled part of itself inside me. And I realized that it wasn’t my fault that I couldn’t find the link.

  The link was gone.

  “Grant,” I said, frightened.

  I spoke his name again, louder, but he didn’t open his eyes. He was breathing, alive, but not feeling him inside me—that golden, shining tether—made it seem like he was gone. The emptiness was devastating. I felt as though the light had gone out inside me, and all that was left was . . . the void.

  I looked at Zee, so shaken I could barely speak. “What can you tell me? Is this a coma?”

  The little demon gave me a helpless shrug. “Do not know. Scent sick. Yours, too. But less. Dying still . . . but less.”

  Which was a nice way of saying we were still fucked.

  Grant’s shirt moved; a small, pale nub poked free, glinting with jagged teeth that were barely tucked inside that wormlike mouth. Even that tiny movement seemed tired; the Shurik looked thinner than I remembered, pale flesh tinted gray.

  I peered at the Shurik, more frustrated than relieved. If it was alive, then the link between Grant and his demons was still active; and if the link was active, then why the hell wasn’t my husband reaping the benefits of being a demon lord? Even if the rest of his demons suffered the illness, that link alone should have protected him—long before he’d even felt sick. I didn’t understand.