Labyrinth of Stars

by Marjorie M. Liu

  Jack stared. “What are you talking about?”

  Zee leaned forward on his claws. “You, Meddling Man. Monster is part of you. Broken away. Locked up. But you.”

  My grandfather looked at us like we were crazy—and I felt crazy for even considering it. But the truth had always been strange. And there was something about this, what had happened in that place, that made me wonder who was living the real lie. I couldn’t afford to discount anything.

  “He said he was you,” I told Jack. “The part you didn’t want.”

  He appeared genuinely affronted. “That’s ridiculous. What’s even more ridiculous is that you would believe him.”

  “Jack,” said my husband, in a deceptively calm voice, “your light is identical to his.”

  That surprised me. And terrified me at the same time. It was the confirmation I didn’t want to hear.

  My grandfather froze. “No.”

  “The energy patterns, the essence . . . it’s the same.” Grant leaned forward, Shurik tumbling from his chest into his lap. “I don’t know how, but you are part of each other.”

  I’d never seen Jack look so lost and confused—so utterly bewildered. It hurt; my first instinct was grief—for him, for me—except I didn’t know if I could trust what I felt.

  “You can,” Grant murmured to me, rubbing my hand. “He is confused. I don’t think he knew.”

  “Of course I didn’t!” Jack’s voice was hoarse, strangled. “How . . . how is this . . .” He turned, seeking out Sarai. “This can’t be possible.”

  If anything, she seemed to sink deeper into the shadows. Inhuman body, but so human in her posture, in the way she carried herself—as if secrets were a burden that had been freshly pressed on her shoulders.

  “Sarai,” Jack said again. “You have always been my friend.”

  And I am still your friend, she whispered, across all our minds. But you have not always been as you are now, Old Wolf. And I am sorry . . . I am so very sorry . . . that this is how you must learn the truth.

  My grandfather staggered. I saw movement behind him—Tracker. I hadn’t noticed him nestled in a knot of roots, but he glided free, jumping down to press his shoulder against Jack’s so that he wouldn’t fall. His eyes were hooded, dark, his mouth set in an impossibly grim line.

  Jack sank to his knees. “No.”

  You do not remember. Sarai moved closer, bowing her head. We all changed after we found flesh. You changed most of all, my friend. As if two different beings inhabited your skin. It happened slowly, over time. You were always good. But the shadow in you lengthened. And it became a force that was just as strong, and terrible.

  He could not have looked more lost, or devastated. “But I remember what he did. I remember what he did to me. We couldn’t have inhabited the same body.”

  Same body, different mind. The tortures he inflicted on you were very real. He was very real. Someone wholly different from you. Of course it felt as if another entity was torturing you. Because that was the truth. One truth, anyway.

  “He had a split personality,” I said, haunted by the memory of my grandfather’s face, my grandfather himself, eating what I now knew was Grant’s heart. “That’s what you’re telling us.”

  We made the split permanent, whispered Sarai, pressing her delicate white snout against Jack’s brow. We loved you, brother. We could not abandon you to the sins of your shadow. So we pulled you both apart and cast him away. And you did not remember. No one remembered, save us. We have many secrets, but that is our greatest. We wanted to protect you from it.

  Jack shuddered, bowing his head into his hands. I struggled to rise, which hurt so badly I almost went unconscious. Raw and Aaz pressed me down, and instead it was Zee who went to my grandfather. The little demon crouched and pressed a gentle claw against his cheek.

  “Meddling Man,” he whispered. “All have shadows.”

  “The things he did,” Jack breathed. “What I did.”

  “No,” I croaked, wishing I could cry, wishing I could stand and go to him, whole. “It wasn’t you.”

  But that only made him curl harder into himself. Zee sighed, letting his little hand drop.

  Grant turned his head to cough. Blood flecked his mouth. I’d almost forgotten he was sick, and I watched that, and forgot my own ravaged flesh. I would heal. He would not.

  Somehow, I found the strength to touch his back. Inside my mind, he whispered, I should have accepted my own death. I should have known this would never work. But I wanted to see our daughter, and so I got selfish. And I dragged you into it.

  I was already selfish enough for both of us. If you hadn’t gone first, it would have been me. And I’m the one who’s pregnant.

  So we’re both idiots, he said. Great.

  All I wanted to do was cry. I love you.

  I love you more, he replied, and glanced down at my stomach. I wrote her letters, before all this happened. Just in case. I stored them in your mother’s chest, in Seattle.

  I was dying on the inside. I couldn’t imagine life without him. I couldn’t even think past this moment we were in—which was already so full of grief.

  But you will, he said. For her.

  I hadn’t seen Oturu this entire time, but from the shadows, deep beyond the trees, I heard him whisper, “Hunter.”

  All the little demons sat up, alert. Even the Shurik went still. I listened, breathless, but there was nothing to hear. Except, after a brief moment, I saw a faint glow against the trees: a blush of fire.

  “Hurry,” Jack choked out, but it was too late.

  I heard a low, moaning wail, and a tendril of fire snaked around one of the massive Labyrinth trees. Heat rolled over me. I wanted to gag on the terror I felt, a sudden dread of losing even more than an arm.

  Grant stood, fierce, but I rallied all my strength and pushed him out of the way as the tentacle snapped down. It caught us both, and we were snatched up like pieces of straw, hauled up through the trees. Zee and the boys clung to us, while Shurik were scattered, flung away. Higher, toward a wall of flame. I was blind with fear and pain, but I still felt a tingle—a brief warning—just as we were thrown through a Labyrinth door.

  It was another nightmare of a world. My throat burned on the fumes of sulfur and blood. Red clouds scarred my eyes, red smoke drifting over red water running into a horizon full of spitting shadows that boiled and hissed like volcanic spit. The air tasted rank. I could hardly breathe, and the pain was so wild inside me, it was all I could do just to stay conscious.

  The red sky disappeared behind writhing limbs of fire, rough and hoary. My skin crawled—heart pounding, light-headed. Grant began to sing, but the tentacles wrapped tighter around his body, burning him, squeezing his voice to silence. Squeezing even more, until a muffled cry escaped him, like he was screaming in his throat. The sound cut right through me. Our bond flickered, weakened.

  And in its place, I felt the darkness rise. I felt the heat of the wyrm encircle my heart, and it felt so good and safe—for once, for the first time, it felt like me.

  I’m yours, I said to the darkness, and I meant it, with all my soul.

  I grabbed that fire with my good hand, and the flames burned, lit me up like an oiled match. I heard the whumpf as my body ignited, felt my hair rise, smelled my flesh cooking. I felt the pain, but I didn’t care.

  I was too hungry.

  The fire was food, and so was the light. Power roared through me, over my skin. Fire flickered out, turned to ash. More tendrils swept down to grab me, but I soaked them into my body.

  Still, the Aetar did not die.

  A stout figure appeared at the corner of my eye. Jack. He ran toward us, holding the crystal skull. Shouting at the top of his lungs. I felt the entire weight of that flaming monster shift and turn.

  “Wolf,” whispered the Devourer, and the hunger in that one word almost rivaled mine. Grant and I were tossed down. Small hands wrapped around my arm as I flailed through the sky.

  Zee, hugging m
e so tight I could hardly breathe.

  We hit sand. Grant lay on his back, chest heaving. Zee was small and strong, bracing me against his shoulder. I followed his gaze, watching the fire hover over Jack, its writhing body sprawled across the red sky like a thundercloud, as far as the eye could see. An enormous face made of fire pushed free: cold, expressionless eyes staring down at my grandfather.

  I heard nothing but my heartbeat in that roaring silence—and my heart pounded and my blood roared, and I sensed a great weight bear down upon my soul, as though I were the door holding back a heavy storm that railed against me, howling in my ear.

  “Wolf,” whispered the monster again. “How I’ve waited for you. I have such pleasures planned. A just gift for the one you gave me.”

  Jack didn’t seem to be listening. He looked across the distance at me, holding my gaze, pouring into it grief and love.

  “My dear girl,” he whispered. “Follow me.”

  And on those words, he raised the crystal skull, and light poured from it, cutting through the other Aetar. I heard no cries of pain, but I imagined a cutting sound, like a saw. Light, slicing through the shell.

  I tried to stand and almost blacked out.

  Grant began dragging himself toward Jack, half on his hands and knees, pulling his bad leg behind him. I tried again to stand, half shut my eyes against the blinding pain, and breathed through my mouth. I stumbled toward my grandfather.

  A tentacle batted at my grandfather, sending him flying. The crystal skull tumbled from his grip. The creature struck at it.

  Raw reached the skull first, wrapping his body around it and rolling. The beast hit him, so hard his little body cracked the earth. I heard him cry out.

  I started running. I forgot my wounds. I didn’t feel them. All I could see was Raw and his body—so small, like a child.

  My child. My boys.

  The fire towered and smashed toward Raw, fighting for the skull. Zee and the others dove through flames, protecting their brother. I was right behind them. I forgot that my right arm was gone, but it didn’t matter. Shadows gathered where it had been; a darkening pulse throbbed through my absent limb: a ghost.

  Black light flickered in my eyes. The wyrm uncoiled in my chest, but when it began to rise through my throat, I stopped it.

  Not like that, I said, and wrapped my heart around the presence, opened my heart, opened it so wide that I swallowed the darkness into my soul. Accepting it, taking it, possessing it in every way it had tried to possess me over the long years. I overwhelmed it with my embrace, and the darkness yielded.

  I am yours, part of me whispered. You are mine.

  We have waited so long, it replied, softly. Only light can hold the darkness. And we have been hungry for a home.

  My heart was big enough. My heart, with room for demons and daughters, and old men who were crafty and silly—and even younger men who loved me—and my mother, and my father, and all who were yet to come. My heart was big enough for them all.

  And ready to kill for them as well.

  We will devastate stars for what is ours, said the darkness.

  Yes, I replied. But let’s start with fire.

  I walked into the blaze and swallowed the heat into my skin. It was as natural as breathing. I dissolved the architecture of the flame, and this time, the Aetar could not escape.

  Not until the last moment, when all that was left was a frail wisp of flesh, barely recognizable as human—the core of the flame, where the monster had stored its soul.

  “Grant,” I said. “He’s weak now. Take what you need. Pull the cure from his mind.”

  And my husband cleared his throat and did just that.

  Afterward, I killed the beast.

  I ate his light.

  CHAPTER 31

  I was no longer human.

  I’d never been human, not really, but at least I could pass. No more of that. My skin had burned black as obsidian, from head to toe. My eyes were dark as night, and so was my tongue.

  I still had no arm, but sometimes a shadow gathered in its place. I could pretend. I could pretend that my body did not swallow light, or that I no longer hungered for food—only the sun, only stars, only everything that lived.

  At least I had the boys. I had my daughter growing inside me. I could learn the rest as I went along.

  But there was still a price.

  GRANT was good with formulations of light. All the monster told him, he applied. The disease was a living thing, as much an extension of its creator as it was just a virus. By the time we arrived home, some of the demons had already begun to recover on their own—and for those who were still too sick, too close to death, the configuration of light, the pattern that could rearrange those cells to health—it worked.

  But I didn’t go home.

  “I have new sympathy for you,” said Jack, less than a week after we returned to earth. It was the right time, right place—our world had not changed too much. As far as everyone was concerned, we’d been gone less than a day.

  “Your life, always being taken out of your hands. Terrible secrets inhabiting your past. Those who think they know better, keeping you in the dark.” A weak smile touched his mouth. “I’m very sorry, my dear. For everything.”

  “Don’t be,” I said, which was sort of a lie, but I didn’t know in what way. Just that a part of me still felt hurt, lost, though there was no point in dwelling on the matter. I had bigger problems. “Are you well? It didn’t occur to me until afterward that killing him might take your life, too.”

  “It would have been a just sacrifice.” Jack looked away, picking at the grass. We were back in Mongolia, where I’d found him; the sun was bright and shining, and the boys were sleeping. Fitful dreams. Nightmares, maybe. We had so much to explore together, to understand what we had become. I could still see them, even though my skin had turned black. Their scales were silver on me, gleaming in the sun.

  “Perhaps it would be easier to be dead,” he went on.

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Don’t I? But I suppose I must honor those I harmed in another life by bearing the truth as best I can.” He started to reach for my hand but caught himself before he could clasp nothing but air. Pain lanced his features, remorse. “I did betray you.”

  “Oh, shut up,” I said, giving him a faint smile to take away the sting. “Go get reincarnated for a thousand years. It’ll make you feel better.”

  He almost smiled, for real. “And you? You’re immortal now, I suspect.”

  “Yes,” I said, touching my stomach. “Great.”

  Jack’s smile faded. “That is the problem, isn’t it? The boys are yours, my dear. They cannot be hers unless you die. And no matter what you are now, she might be just as mortal as any human.”

  You are the last. Wasn’t that what I’d always been told? But I refused to believe that. Maybe I was the last of something. But not everything.

  I stood. “Good-bye, Grandfather.”

  He gave me a startled, vulnerable look. “Ah.”

  “Yes.” I bent and kissed the top of his head—but even that felt dangerous. I didn’t trust myself, even with him.

  A shudder passed through him—maybe he felt the danger.

  “My dear girl,” he whispered. “Remember your heart.”

  “It’s here,” I said, pressing my left hand above my breast, memorizing his face, his spirit. I could see him now. I’d never been able to, before. But my eyes were different now, and he was a storm of northern nights: dark green fighting with shimmers of blue, and around it all a white halo, a tremendous fire.

  My grandfather. Made of light.

  I turned my vision inward and focused on my husband. Our bond burned through the darkness. I clung to it.

  And went to him.

  WE stood on the hill overlooking the farmhouse, beside my mother’s grave. Shurik surrounded us, grazing through the grass. The Yorana were still bonded to Grant, but in the Labyrinth he had allowed them to go their own wa
y, without his interference. Live or die, it was up to them. Good luck with that. Maybe we’d cross paths one day, but I sure as hell didn’t miss them.

  Grant, on the other hand, looked healthy, strong. Tearing down the walls between him and the demons had not destroyed his spirit. Just made him stronger. Perhaps even immortal. Just like me. Just like the other demon lords.

  We held hands. Sunset had already come and gone, but the last light was beautiful. Zee and the boys huddled close to us. Dek and Mal were stretched across both our shoulders, binding us close.

  “Are you sure about this?” I asked him, watching as the Mahati climbed the hill. All that was left of a demon army, marching toward us, carrying their few belongings. Another exodus. I didn’t give a shit if any human saw. We were past that. The Osul were with them, their cubs pouncing through the grass. The adults were more solemn. I saw Mary amongst them, and the Messenger.

  “Yes,” he said, and the look in his eye was not entirely human, either. “I made arrangements with Rex and Byron, and some of our other friends. The ones we can trust. Blood Mama, even. You know she’s not leaving. They’ll take care of everything. And they’ll be here when we get back.”

  The funny thing was, they would be here. All of them, immortal in their own way.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, unable to help myself.

  Grant studied me. “I still love you. No matter what.”

  “I know.” I kissed his mouth, gently. “But I don’t know what I am anymore. Maybe I’m a monster, maybe I’m . . . something more . . . but the answers won’t be here. There’s no truth in standing still, and the demons can’t stay here, either. They need a new home.” Where that might lead us, I could not begin to imagine. Who I might become, out there, as much a mystery.

  I hesitated. “You don’t have to come.”

  “Oh, be quiet, wretch.” He flashed me his old smile, and it took my breath away, even while making me laugh. “Remember when we first met?”

  “I loved you from the moment I saw you,” I said, close to tears. “And I’ve loved you more every day since then. You are my light, Grant.”