Labyrinth of Stars (A Hunter Kiss Novel)

by Marjorie M. Liu

  Jack said nothing. Lord Ha’an walked from the sand, but it was without his usual grace.

  “He will not lift a hand,” said the demon. “He would rather see us die.”

  Without another word, he strode away into the woods.

  “Well,” Jack murmured. “Temper, temper.”

  I briefly closed my eyes. “We don’t have time for you to find a new body, or else I would have let him kill you.”

  Silence. I finally looked at him, and his expression was surprisingly serious. “I am sorry, my dear.”

  I’m not the one you should be apologizing to, I almost told him, but there was no point. Damage was done. Now, at the very moment when we all needed to be strong.

  Grant gave him a scathing look and squeezed my hand. “More are falling ill.”

  Jack exhaled slowly. “It’s begun, then.”

  “Does it only affect demons?” My voice sounded flat, dead. I wanted to hear his voice tell me the truth.

  “Yes.

  “You’re sure.”

  “I am sure,” he replied. “Only demons will be hurt by this disease, poison . . . whatever you want to call it. Those six humans who died here were living bombs.”

  Boom, I thought. We were all going to hell.

  CHAPTER 12

  IN hindsight, we were more than stupid: We were pretty much a lethal combination of dumb and dumber. But that’s what happens when you get used to thinking you’re invincible. You become careless. You don’t think about consequences. By the time you do, it’s always too late.

  Regret doesn’t have the power of the resurrection, wrote my grandmother in her journal. Someone dies because of you, they stay dead.

  And the part of you that killed them stays dead, too.

  WE buried those human bodies.

  It was Mary and I. Grant went back to tend the sick with his voice. I wanted him to take a nap and eat, but that was a lost battle before I even opened my mouth.

  I got shovels from the barn, and we spent two hours digging a hole. Fire would have been better, but I didn’t want to attract anyone with the smoke. Folks in this area took wildfires seriously. It would bring a cop or a neighbor out here faster than if I had a gun battle on the front porch of the old house.

  It was quiet. No demons around. When I wasn’t looking at corpses I could focus on other things—genocide, murder, baby names, what I wanted for dinner.

  Visions of fire and death. Circles of ash. Not necessarily in that order.

  Most of the time, though, I thought about these ravaged dead and the people they had been—who was mourning them, or sick out of their minds with fear because these loved ones couldn’t be found. So much grief, so much terror. And for what? Because someone wanted to commit an act of genocide?

  Turn it around. Innocents were murdered to feed the Mahati on their killing sprees. Dead is dead. Intent is just the window dressing.

  But it still wasn’t right. Life couldn’t be that cheap.

  Even if it was.

  “I need to find the Aetar who made this virus,” I said, after we’d nudged, pushed, and kicked the corpses into the makeshift grave.

  My grandfather sat nearby with the decapitated head of the giant who had attacked us. It smelled. It looked absolutely hideous. I’d kept my back turned the entire time but glanced over just long enough to see Jack give me a sour look. “And then what, my dear? The chances are slim to none that its maker is even here on earth.”

  “Better than none,” Mary chimed in, packing down the earth with a tennis-worthy grunt. “Aetar pride is bright. Maker will want to be close to see the cutters die.”

  That made total sense to me. “Jack. Why didn’t the Aetar release a virus during the first war?”

  He wiped sweat off his nose. “The bonds with the Reaper Kings made the demons immune to everything. But those bonds are gone. The army stands alone.”

  “And if they bonded to me?”

  “Pfft,” he muttered. “You are powerful, my dear. But don’t make the same mistake Grant did. You’re no demon.”

  You are a god, whispered that sinuous voice, deep within. I ignored it. But Mary gave me a queer, sidelong look—and even Jack stared at me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Your eyes,” said my grandfather, frowning. “They . . . changed color for a moment. Even the whites disappeared.”

  I blinked. Mary grabbed my chin, peering at my face. “Wasteland. Nothing but night.”

  I knocked her hand away. “You’re both crazy. And don’t change the subject. Who amongst your kind could have made this virus, Jack?”

  “I don’t know,” he said with exasperation. “You forget, it’s been a long time.”

  “You’re millions of years old,” I shot back. “A long time? Ten thousand years is a blink of the eye.”

  “And this moment is barely a molecule.” Jack slammed his fist into his thigh. “Enough, Maxine. Let me think. I need time. This thing here”—he gestured at the head beside him—“might have some answers. We all leave a signature on our creations, you know. A mark of the maker.”

  “No time, Wolf.” Mary took my shovel from me. “Death time.”

  It was late afternoon, cusp of evening. The boys would be waking soon. I looked down at my tattoos, taking in their silver veins flowing through muscular knots, winding through scales and flattened claws, and around glinting red eyes staring up at me from my palm and forearm. A tug, a tingle, a shimmer of heat between them and me, sinking into my bones like some radiant fire. My boys, always dreaming.

  “Will Zee and the others be safe?”

  Jack hesitated. “I don’t know.”

  That wasn’t good enough.

  I sent Jack and Mary back to the house. No need for them to be here, especially my grandfather. The less contact he had with the demons, the better.

  I stayed behind to find my husband.

  No walls between the four different demon camps. No obvious divide in territory. It was just air, grass, sunlight, and trees. And some unseen line that demons did not cross without invitation unless they wanted to get beaten—or eaten.

  Other than that, I didn’t know much. Even though it was my land, it didn’t feel like home anymore. I was the trespasser, uncomfortable in my own skin—not sure where I fit in.

  Then again, I’d always felt lost. Never allowed to be part of the world, except for the world my mother and the boys inhabited—and the loneliness of that life, the isolation I had begun to shed with Grant, always surged back with overwhelming force when I was around the demons.

  My childhood, catcalling from the shadows. With it, a perverse need to defend everything that had once been wrong. Death and violence—balanced with equal amounts of love. Impossible to have one without the other. I didn’t want my daughter to have that same life.

  Although, given that her father was currently half-lost under a pile of sweaty maggots—all of whom possibly looked like they were trying to mate with him, or each other—I suspected she was going to have a totally different set of problems than I.

  Love in my family takes us to weird places.

  “Bonding ritual,” growled the demon lord crouched beside me. “Shurik, tactile. Burrower in them.”

  Oanu, demon lord of the Osul: Battle Cat of all Battle Cats. I glanced sideways, and up—skimming over his silver pelt, tufted ears, and iridescent blue eyes. “Uh-huh. It’s gross.”

  “Shed my fur when I see them,” he rumbled, which seemed very much like an agreement.

  I almost smiled, glancing at him again. It was hard not to look. Six feet tall at the shoulder, more than sixteen feet long from nose to tail. Tiny hooked claws covered his legs, jutting from beneath steel gray fur. His tail had spikes growing from the tip, and massive pads of metallic armor clung to his muscular back. A helmet covered part of his face, revealing leonine features and ice blue eyes. Like Lord Ha’an, he was bigger than his own people, stronger, and more beautiful. Deadlier, too.

  “Sorry about . . . the
other night,” I said.

  “A King beating a scrapper?” Oanu’s tail lashed the air. “Disrespectful cub. Would have done the same.” He hesitated. “Well . . . might have killed him, eaten his brains.”

  “The boys get hungry for brains,” I said. “Generally speaking, it’s been a life of deprivation with me.”

  Oanu glanced at my tattoos and gave me a toothy grin. “Life isn’t worth living without eating your enemies.”

  “Glad we’re not enemies.”

  “But to fight a true Queen,” he murmured, looking at me like I was delicious, “that would be glorious.”

  My smile warmed—but that lasted only as long as it took me to look past Oanu at the Yorana who had gathered beneath the trees.

  They watched my husband with thinly veiled disgust. Tall, lean, humanoid, with skin the color of cherries: a dark, bleeding red. Long black hair swooped high off their scalps in tumbling Mohawks; and small jewels were embedded in their concave chests. Their demon lord had been seductive, magnetic. His people shared the same dark charm.

  I glanced back at Grant, his body still teeming with Shurik—undulating over him with a distinctly ecstatic energy, like he was some kind of drug. I’d never seen them so worked up. I’d deliberately stayed away from most bonding sessions, but the few I’d witnessed—early on—had been as energetic as dirt. Things had changed since then.

  A low hum rolled from Grant’s throat, more vibration than melody. A shimmering wave of energy passed over my skin, making the boys tug on me, restless.

  The Yorana flinched, as though hit. Oanu shivered.

  “Lightbringer,” he rumbled in his deep voice. “Never thought to see one again.”

  “You’re familiar with his kind?”

  “Collected history when I was not killing. Soothed me. But then, later, Aetar used enslaved Lightbringers as weapons.” The demon lord slapped a huge paw against the ground. “Strong then, protected by the bonds of our Kings. We ate them.” He gave me a sidelong look. “Not protected now.”

  No, none of them were protected. And this demon lord might be dead by the end of the week if Jack was to be believed.

  Grant’s voice trailed away into silence. The woods were so quiet, except for soft, Shurik hissing sounds and my own heartbeat. I wouldn’t have known that Oanu was beside me if I hadn’t been looking at him.

  “Power,” said Oanu, with admiration in his soft, rasping voice. “Stole the bonds that kept the Shurik and Yorana alive. Bound them to his heart. Did this with his voice, killed with a word.”

  “He’s just a man,” I said. “A man with a particular skill.”

  “Just as you are skilled?” Oanu’s toothy grin seemed a little more challenging this time. “Power accepted means power controlled. Worry me more, you deny yourself. Makes you . . . unpredictable.”

  Given the bargain I’d made, I didn’t think denial was going to be a problem for much longer. I gestured toward my husband. “He’s getting sick because of what he did.”

  “Yorana,” Osul murmured, glancing at them with disdain. “Selfish Yorana. Hate that he is human. Taking power, returning nothing.”

  Which echoed Jack’s assessment of the problem. “Can they be forced to change?”

  “Must fear him or love him. Shurik love him. Yorana do not fear him.” Oanu tilted up his massive shoulder in a shrug. “I think there is more to fear than love, but the Yorana . . . maybe they are not wise.”

  I would have been happy if the problem rested with the ugly little slugs. But no, the big handsome red demons were the assholes. Of course.

  “Grant,” I called. My husband twisted to look at me, and his mouth softened into the faintest of smiles. He looked a little less tired, his skin not as pale.

  He didn’t manage to disentangle himself from the Shurik. Quite a few came along with him, clinging to his body and draped over his shoulders. Some had burrowed beneath his flannel shirt. I swallowed hard. Oanu made a small, grunting sound like he was gagging deep in his throat.

  “You told the Shurik about the illness?” I asked Grant, trying to ignore one of the little demons wriggling happily on his shoulder. I couldn’t imagine what he’d done to make it react that way, but it was making a hissing sound that could have been a good stand-in for a girlish giggle.

  “Everything.” Grant raked his gaze over the Yorana with a cold scrutiny that was another sign of changing times. He had been a priest, once—his kindness radiant. But now he was growing harder. Sometimes I thought I was getting softer. It wasn’t, I thought, supposed to be that way.

  “You look better,” I said.

  Grant hesitated. “It’s the Shurik. They’ve been wanting to . . . give back to me for some time. I refused before. I thought it was better that I try to influence them first, revert them to their original natures. It’s been a slow process.”

  “And today?”

  “Today I let them in. Just a little.” He spoke so quietly I barely heard him. “And yes, it helped.”

  I couldn’t imagine what it cost him to say that. I turned to Oanu. “Thank you for coming to speak with us. You understand the situation?”

  “Perfectly,” he said, with a low growl. “The Aetar attacked your consort, attempted to kill your child, then poisoned our army with disease. They are cowards, and we will murder them.”

  “That’s right,” I deadpanned. “Shit’s gonna get real.”

  A smile ghosted over Grant’s mouth. “We need to find a cure. And keep the rest of you healthy.”

  “I’m sure war and destruction will fall neatly into place along the way,” I added.

  Oanu’s claws flexed with pleasure. Behind him, one of the Yorana called out, with disdain, “We have heard from the Mahati that there is no cure.”

  I shot the red-skinned demon a hard look. “Then you’ll die. And if you don’t start giving your lord what he needs, you’ll die even sooner.”

  The Yorana stiffened. “He has promised us our freedom to choose.”

  Oanu’s ears twitched with surprise. I didn’t even blink. Grant leaned forward on his cane, fixing his hard gaze on the red-skinned demons. Shurik dripped from his shoulders; several opened their terrible mouths and hissed.

  “I’ll keep my word,” he said, with unexpected menace. “But if I die, so will you. And as I weaken, so will you.”

  The Yorana held very still, all that seduction and glamour sliding off their faces like water. I blinked, and suddenly their perfect skin had lost its luster, pocked with nicks and scars; and their hair was dull, limp, their bodies no longer radiating strength, health. A startling transformation: I could see their bones poking through lean, starved muscle. The jewels in their chests turned black.

  “We have nothing to give,” one of them said. “We eat, but it does not feed us. We need the hunt. We need the seduction.”

  They needed the energy, I realized. But that was impossible.

  “I can change that,” Grant said. “Let me help you.”

  The Yorana male spat on him.

  Oanu snarled, but I was faster. My fist slammed into the demon’s chest, cracking the embedded jewel. The demon dropped like a stone, limbs twitching, black foam at his lips. An instantaneous, violent reaction. I didn’t expect it. I almost wasn’t sorry, until I saw Grant’s face—and I remembered what he’d said, earlier.

  Shame flushed my cheeks, but regret warred with anger: at myself, at him—at the demon dying on the ground. Grant dropped his cane, awkwardly falling to his good knee, power already rising in his voice.

  Nothing to be done, though. Too far gone for saving.

  I held my ground. Oanu growled, low and deep in his throat. “Respect or death. You know better.”

  The surviving Yorana bowed their heads. Grant stopped singing, and closed his eyes. I didn’t want to look at him but steeled myself and held out my hand. Inside me, our bond was quiet.

  But he took my hand, and with that touch: light, be- tween us.

  You still have me, I heard inside
my head; his deep, soft voice. No matter what. And I have you.

  I drew in a deep, sharp breath—and pulled my husband to his feet. His gaze never left mine—those knowing eyes, that sadness that made me sad and aching with love for him.

  Grant looked at the other Yorana. “Decide what you want.”

  The red-skinned demons bowed their heads even more deeply—both to him and me. Then, without a word, they stooped and picked up their fallen companion, easily negotiating his twitching limbs. Blood ran freely from the cracked jewel.

  Oanu watched them go, tail lashing. “Needed that.”

  Grant said nothing. His silence, despite the light between us, made me tense. “I wish the lesson hadn’t been needed,” I said, and the demon lord glanced at me.

  “You are too gentle,” he rumbled; then, “Is it true there is no cure?”

  Grant’s expression became even grimmer. “That’s what we were told. I don’t believe it, though.”

  “Neither do I,” I said. “There will be a cure, Oanu.”

  There had to be. Maybe Jack was right, maybe no cure existed, but I didn’t believe that whoever had made this thing wouldn’t know how to fix it. The problem was finding its creator—and then making him help us. All without losing our lives, our freedom, and maybe this entire world.

  Rescuing demons is more difficult than murdering them, I thought.

  And definitely not as rewarding.

  SUNSET was on my heels. I told Grant that if he didn’t come back to the house for dinner, I would let the boys cook for him.

  He had some experience with that. The last time hadn’t sent him to the hospital, but he’d lived in the bathroom for an entire day, making sounds that made me wonder if a bobcat was coming out both ends.

  Grant sat beside me in the passenger seat. I didn’t say a word when the giggling Shurik came along for the ride. Some perched on his shoulders, while others were tucked inside his shirt, stuck to his ribs. I pretended not to notice, but it wasn’t easy. I remembered their former lord, who had taken near-sexual delight in inhabiting the bodies of humans, slowly eating them from the inside out until there was nothing left but loose skin, and viscous bone.