Labyrinth of Stars (A Hunter Kiss Novel)

by Marjorie M. Liu

  “Grant,” I said.

  “Another hour won’t turn me into a zombie, Maxine. Let it go.”

  “This has to stop.”

  “How? I can’t cut the bonds. Even if I could, we need them now. We need these demons.”

  “We never needed them before.”

  “You’re being stubborn.” Grant leaned in, dropping his voice. “I know you. I know how afraid you are of losing me . . . losing all of this . . . but there has to be a better solution than just letting the ax fall. You know that.”

  “Whatever.” I poked his chest with my finger. “I know you, too, and you’re too smart to let yourself be . . . abused . . . like this. You’re not acting like yourself.”

  He closed his eyes, mouth tight—but it was all pain, and weariness. “Of course I’m not. The things I hear inside my head, what those demons make me feel—”

  Grant stopped and went very still. It wasn’t just physical. I felt him draw inward, shutter down, put up the walls: like a door slamming in my face. I couldn’t remember a single time he’d ever done that to me. Usually, it was the other way around. I was the one who hated being vulnerable. I was the one who was defensive with my heart.

  “Don’t think for a moment I won’t make the hard choice,” I whispered. “You might never forgive me, but our daughter will have a whole, healthy father. I can live with the rest.”

  He still wouldn’t look at me. “Murder is always your answer. Kill first, ask questions later. I don’t want to be like you, Maxine.”

  I stood back, stung.

  Grant limped to the six-wheeler. I watched him toss his cane into the passenger seat with such violence it almost careened out the other side. Mary was already there, helping the demon children into the back. They all stopped and stared at him. Mary, with disapproval. He didn’t look at her, either.

  She pushed his cane aside and climbed into the passenger seat. One hand on her machete. Guard duty, protecting Grant. Just as she had protected his mother and father—or tried to, on another world, in another age. The Labyrinth had torn her out of time—just as it had torn Grant’s mother, who had escaped the war, pregnant with her son. All of them hurtled millions of years into the future, until they’d fallen here, on earth.

  He drove away and didn’t look back. I kept hoping he would. As if it would be some kind of apology.

  Don’t let him go, I told myself, watching the Osul hiding in the grass rise up and run after the six-wheeler. It’s not safe.

  But I didn’t move.

  Jack shuffled close. I was so distracted, I barely noticed the smell. The sting I’d felt was only getting worse.

  “Grant didn’t mean it,” said my grandfather. “That man worships you. He’s simply afraid.”

  I thought about the demon he had just killed in Taiwan. How quickly and ruthlessly he had committed that execution. This man, who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Who had fought me for years, refusing to treat demons as I treated them. Grant was the one who had shown me they were more than parasites. He was the one who had made me realize I was more than just a killer—and that it was okay. It was okay that I had broken with precedent. It was okay I had stepped off the path the women before me had made.

  I had become my own person, with him.

  Not my mother. Not my grandmother. Just me.

  “He’s right,” I replied. “My first answer is usually violence.”

  “And? Is that so terrible?” Jack forced me to look at him. “You women were made in a different age, your bodies compelled to be the homes of the five most dangerous creatures my kind had ever encountered. Violence, survival, war . . . that is in your blood. But that is not who you are. You broke with that. You made something new.”

  It was as if he’d heard my thoughts. He stepped back, a grim smile touching his mouth. “My sweet girl . . . you would have destroyed the world by now if not for your good heart. It’s what has saved you, and us, again and again. Never doubt it.”

  I swallowed hard. “I don’t like fighting with him. It feels wrong.”

  My grandfather made a rude sound. “That’s because you’re both disgustingly in love. If you actually disagreed like normal people, you’d have kicked his arse and been done with it. And it does need kicking, my dear. Not just for what he said to you.”

  “Jack,” I said, but he waved me off.

  “Enough. You didn’t bring me here for this.” He scratched the bridge of his nose, and a black flake of crud fell off. “Although, do you think I have time for a bath before the invasion? I haven’t been this filthy since I was a gong farmer cleaning out cesspits in old London.”

  “Jack,” I said, again.

  “Every day,” he went on, scraping the inside of his ear with a long yellow fingernail, “buried to my chest in human excrement. I did not allow myself to be born again in Britain for another three hundred years after that experience.”

  “You’re sounding awfully peevish for a man who was in a coma,” I remarked, walking toward the farmhouse. “What were you doing, anyway?”

  Jack’s jaw tightened. “Meditation.”

  He was lying, of course. But there was nothing productive in berating an immortal for the truth. All I’d get in return would be more enigma, more confusing riddles, and that oh-so-wise-man secretive smile that always made me want to throw a magnificent tantrum.

  “It looked like torture,” I said, simply.

  There was no air conditioner in the old farmhouse, but inside felt cool, and smelled like chocolate. Mary had just been baking. It reminded me of my mother, and her face flashed in front of me, fresh and startling. Less than a day ago, I’d seen her alive in this kitchen.

  God, that hurt.

  I let the rest of the house soothe me. Shadows and pale edges, reflections of light from the windows, formed soft lines that relaxed my eyes. I heard a hum of music—just a radio set to a classical station—but it made me think of Grant.

  The television on the counter was turned to the news. And, of course, that video was playing. It was totally silent, volume turned down. But it wasn’t just the television that was muted. The kitchen, the house, the world. I could hear my heart beat.

  My grandfather stopped, staring. I turned my back to the television and walked to the kitchen sink. Got myself a glass of water.

  Jack made a disgusted sound. I didn’t turn around.

  “Congratulations,” he said. “The apocalypse has arrived.”

  “Which one?” I asked.

  “And millions are now convinced that demons are real,” he added, ignoring me. “Although . . . just as many might believe this is a hoax.”

  I finally looked at the television. It showed a still shot from the recorder, and though the image was somewhat blurry, it was clear enough: What had killed those frat boys and their girlfriends did not look human.

  I’d seen a lot of humans who didn’t look human. Disfigurement could do that. Women’s faces melted to the skull from acid burns, men caught in explosions that ripped their bodies to shreds. Too much plastic surgery had the same effect. To be human was one thing, but retaining the appearance of humanity—that required a superficial, very fragile, balance.

  This was different. What I saw in that still shot was tall, gray, and lean, with arms and legs that were little more than ropes of sinew and leather. Narrow faces, blade-sharp cheekbones, chins that narrowed to points that resembled spearheads. Chains and long braids of silver hair that looped around chests gaunt and hard with bone. And those hands: massive, striated with muscle, each fingertip as long and deadly as a pitchfork tine.

  But the eyes staring out of that photograph made everything else seem like a cheap trick; stare too long, and it felt the same as being shoved naked into a night blizzard: repulsed with bone-raw cold, a heart-flinching fuck you. And that was how I felt—knowing what I did—being who I was. I couldn’t imagine how the rest of the world was taking it. No one had been rioting in Taiwan, but that was halfway across the world. Here in Texas, in America? I was
too insulated on the farm, in this business of death. I didn’t know what people looked like anymore.

  “Folks see that and have to be shitting themselves,” I said.

  Jack raised his brow. “This is the age of the horror movie. Photoshop, computer hackers, makeup artists. Special effects. What is real, my dear? Absolutely nothing.”

  I did not relax. “They’ll run tests on those remains. Check for saliva, study the wounds—the fucking teeth marks on the bones. Someone is going to sit up and pay attention to the possibility, Jack. It doesn’t matter how many possessed people we use to run interference.”

  “Of course,” he said, and even beneath the grime his knuckles were white around the metal box he still held. “You should have killed the demons when you had the chance.”

  I expected bluntness, but hearing the words hurt. Because wasn’t I still thinking the same thing?

  “Even their children?” I stared out the kitchen window at the empty pasture, which ran up against a heavy line of trees. Something lean and silver flitted just beyond those pale trunks—a glimpse, a hint.

  Jack was silent a moment. “Yes.”

  I looked down at my stomach, at my hands touching my stomach. For a moment I felt very far away from that part of my body, as if there were a million miles between my head and the area below my waist, a million miles that I could not cross, a million miles that would never be mine, which already stretched in front of the life inside me and the life that would grow inside her, and again, and again, descending through blood and demon until we outlasted this world and others, until we outlasted life itself, until there was nothing but the road.

  Maybe that was what it felt like for all mothers. I didn’t know.

  I turned and looked Jack dead in the eyes. “Will you help or not? I can’t handle both the Aetar and this. It’s too much.”

  My grandfather leaned against the table, hugging the metal box against his stomach. He studied me, then the rest of the kitchen—slow, methodical, thoughtful. Until his gaze stopped on the old bloodstain in the cracked, linoleum floor. His fingers stopped moving. His expression never changed, but his eyes lost their focus. I didn’t worry it was another relapse. I knew what the bloodstain meant—to him, and me.

  “Jolene,” he murmured, then, after a long moment: “Why does it still hurt?”

  I swallowed hard. “She was your daughter. Maybe the body you made her with is dead, but she was yours.” My voice dropped to a whisper. “My mother was yours.”

  Jack drew in a deep, shuddering breath, and looked at the television. “The Aetar have not attempted to contact me.”

  “But they know how to find you?”

  “We have ways. The same way we know when one of us has died.” He sighed and glanced at me. “I always knew this day would come.”

  “They’ll try to kill Grant.”

  “No, my dear. They’ll want to study him. A far worse fate.”

  “They used a poison on him.”

  “Of course. I’m familiar with it.”

  “Of course,” I echoed. “Mary made Grant eat marijuana as an antidote.” I paused again. “You can’t imagine how that surprised me.”

  “I’m surprised anything still surprises you.” Jack ran his fingers over the table—an idle, thoughtful, gesture. “The cannabis was native to their world. As was the poison, made from another plant. A delicate little thing with a red blos- som. We learned those secrets from them, you know. They needed to protect themselves from the Lightbringers, in case any went rogue.”

  His fingers folded into a loose fist, and he rapped the table, lightly. “Some of us . . . seeded the antidote on as many worlds as we could manage. Call it a . . . protest, of sorts. For those who became disgusted with the direction of the war. We hoped that if any survivors found their way to those planets, they would have the comfort of knowing that . . . some protection was still theirs. That they weren’t entirely alone.”

  A number of sarcastic comments filled me, but I didn’t indulge. This was an old conversation, old and painful, and if I could forgive Zee and the boys for their interplanetary genocide, then I could forgive my grandfather and accept his attempts at redemption.

  The only difference, of course, was that the boys never tried to make excuses or paint their activities in a different light. They never pointed out the good they’d done, if any . . . because they accepted that no good outweighed the terror. No good deed lessened the bad. Making the attempt was a sign of weakness. It showed no honor.

  “I asked the Mahati to set aside the head of one of the creatures they sent. You’ll need to look at it.”

  “Of course,” Jack said, quietly.

  “Do you know how they’ll strike again?”

  “Just that they will. Two of our kind have died in the last five years, both on this world. That’s more than have perished in a million years, my dear. They sent a Messenger to question me, and she never returned, her connection to them severed. They’ll know that I couldn’t have done that.” Jack rubbed his face, shaking his head. “A Lightbringer. The only being in the universe who can kill us. Besides you. And I suspect they don’t realize what you’re capable of, my dear. Let us hope they don’t.”

  “They know our daughter is a threat.”

  “A worse threat than Grant. They can’t allow her to live. With the boys as her protectors, with your blood in her veins, they won’t be able to control her.”

  “When they realize they failed . . .”

  “They’ll try again. Throw you back in the Wasteland if they can. Attempt to separate you from the boys, then carve her out of you. She’s far more of a priority than Grant, trust me.”

  My knees almost buckled when he mentioned the Wasteland: a sliver on the edge of the Labyrinth. The endless oubliette where things were thrown to be forgotten. No light. Nothing at all. Almost as bad as the void. I still had nightmares from that place. I’d lost my mind there, lost my humanity. I’d only survived because the boys had nourished, even breathed for me. A baby would never last. The idea of it made me ill.

  I looked him dead in the eyes. “How did they do it, Jack? How did they hurt my daughter? All it took was a look.”

  “Wasn’t just a look,” he said, sounding disgusted. “It took power. Perhaps, if it had been daylight, and the boys were protecting you, it would have been more difficult. I just don’t know. But we made your bloodline, my dear. We might not be able to kill you—easily—but you are not entirely immune to us.” He gave me a curious look. “You’re lucky Grant was able to save your child. I would have thought your immunity to his power would have extended to her.”

  “Very lucky,” I said, deciding not to tell him about the bargain I’d made. “Is there any place that’s safe for us? If we leave this world?”

  “No.” Jack hesitated. “Run, if you like. But the Aetar will find you, and it will be war.”

  I stared at him, utterly deflated. “You should go take a bath. I’m getting cholera just from looking at you. And something’s living in your beard.”

  “I got lonely.” He glanced down at the metal box in his hands. “Is there a safe place to put this?”

  “Jack,” I began.

  “You called me Grandfather, earlier,” he reminded me, and there was something about him that suddenly seemed very old and frail, and not even remotely immortal.

  I tasted the word in my mouth. “Grandfather. Is there anything I should know?”

  “Nothing. And nothing that would harm you . . . or her.” His glaze flicked down to my stomach, then bounced away—to the television set, the window, anywhere but my eyes.

  My entire body prickled: pins and needles. The boys and their rough dreams, struggling to wake. Not a good sensation. A warning.

  But nothing happened. No explosions. No doorways opening to other worlds. My grandfather walked around me, and the putrid scent of him, that miasmic, fecal funk, made me swallow hard and lean against the table.

  “A bath sounds delightful,” he call
ed out over his shoulder. “I saw a hose by the barn. I think I’ll turn it on myself first, just to get the large chunks off. And the vermin.”

  I shook my head and turned off the kitchen television set. The front door opened and closed. I didn’t move from the table. I didn’t look at the bloodstain in the linoleum. Or out the window, where I’d probably glimpse one of the thousand demons hiding on this farmland.

  I stared at my stomach instead, at my hands resting on my stomach. Specifically, my left hand. My wedding ring.

  I’d never indulged in feelings of loneliness. Too dangerous. I’d learned that after my mother’s murder. Loneliness could swallow you up, like a disease. Make you vulnerable to anything, even a smile.

  But then I’d stopped being lonely. And what was more dangerous? Loneliness? Or having friends and family who could be taken from you?

  “Grant,” I murmured, reaching for him—which was as easy as opening myself to the love we shared. Always there, always burning. Heat speared through my chest, straight to my heart: golden light, hot as the sun, warming bone and blood. Our bond. In life, until death.

  My cell phone rang.

  I pulled it from my jeans, and smiled to myself when I saw the number. Like magic. I could cross vast distances in a heartbeat—travel through time—and at this very moment, five demons slept on my skin.

  But a telephone felt like the biggest miracle of all.

  “Hey,” I answered, hearing a static buzz across the connection.

  Grant said, “They’re dying.”

  CHAPTER 11

  I never had a dog when I was growing up.

  Once, when we passed through Miami, I made the mistake of warming up to a stray mutt that was rooting around the bench where my mother and I were having ice cream. She told me not to feed the dog my waffle cone—but, whatever. Dog was hungry. Dog had big eyes.

  Dog needed a home. I was twelve and needed a dog. He wasn’t very big, and he had a goofy grin and big, floppy ears. He stuck close to me like it was love. My heart wanted to put him inside me and never let go.