Labyrinth of Stars (A Hunter Kiss Novel)

by Marjorie M. Liu

I lost time. Sprawled on the ground, then suddenly I wasn’t—on my feet, sun blazing in my eyes—only, the light no longer blinded. Darkness surrounded my vision, a blur of shadows as I stared at the two pale figures standing tall, still, close. Details escaped me. Faces didn’t matter. One of them, a woman, was holding pieces of a broken sword, and that was all I saw. All I cared about.

  I didn’t think. I didn’t even feel my body move, but my hand was suddenly wrapped around her collared throat and I could see her eyes, her eyes and nothing else, bulging and staring in confusion. Her voice rattled. I heard another voice, a singing voice, filled with familiar power—but darkness rolled through me like a kiss, the sweetest kiss, pouring power into my muscles and bones, my bones and cells, through every inch of me like fire—and the woman’s throat exploded into ash beneath my hand.

  Silver flashed. A whip, lashing around my waist. I felt the burn of it through the boys, but the sensation was far away, trapped beneath the power flowing through me. I turned, saw a bald man yanking on that whip with all his strength, muscles straining beneath the metal collar strapped to his neck. I just stood there, staring at him: my feet rooted as a mountain—my heart just as uncaring.

  Loose robes swung out from his body; a series of red lines had been painted on his brow. Young face, smooth skin, eyes that looked at me through a startled haze of confusion. His mouth moved—he was singing. I knew what he was, from that alone.

  A weapon.

  I was surprised that weapon hadn’t already been sent after my husband.

  I grabbed the whip, pulled hard with a strength not my own. The man staggered forward, eyes widening. He let go of the whip just before I would have been in arm’s reach, but I lunged forward and caught his wrist. A cry escaped his lips, deep and melodic—and his skin smoked beneath my grip.

  Mercy, part of me thought, but I felt an ache in my belly, and an image of my mother swept through me, eyes dark as death, face set in stone—beating a man to death for trying to hurt me. How many men had she killed for that reason alone? Had she ever regretted taking even one of their lives?

  “No,” I said out loud, and the man screamed, screamed and screamed as he watched his arm turn to ash, a wave of disintegration that flowed through his flesh: across his ribs and down his legs, through his chest and shoulders, claiming his throat and head. His eyes died last. His eyes, watching mine with horror. I never looked away, not once.

  Something hit me from behind. I felt the point of impact in the back of my neck—the edge of a blade. One blow, trying to cut my head off. I turned and found another man behind me, staring at the sword in his hands; the blade was dented.

  “You,” I whispered, and my voice was deeper, hollow—but it was my voice, and not the darkness, even though that power strained against my skin—strained and pushed, then melted—into my muscles and bones, simmering me in heat.

  “Kneel,” I said.

  His large, pale hands tightened around the deformed sword, and his narrowed gaze flicked down to my stomach. His mouth tightened, twisted, with disgust, and disdain. “Abomination,” he said, voice smooth and melodic. “Dark woman. Hunter. Your usefulness has ended. We, the Messengers, have come to carry out the beloved desires of our Divine Lords.”

  Ash flowed through my fingers, clinging to my jeans; what little touched my skin was immediately absorbed by the boys. I felt far away from them, far from my own body—drifting in warmth.

  “Kneel,” I said again in a soft voice.

  His gaze flicked down to the ash, then the crumpled body of the woman who lay beside his feet. “Surrender to your creator. Surrender to those who gave your ancestors life.”

  I glanced down the hill and saw the woman I’d come to find, half–sitting up, hands bound behind her back, a leather gag covering the lower half of her face. Her eyes were furious, glancing from me to the robed men standing on either side of her—their expressions like stone: cold, remote, certain.

  Nothing but masks. I’d seen how the others had died—astonished their entitlement to life had finally run out.

  Stop playing games, part of me thought, though it was difficult, through a haze. My brain was fogging up. I had come here to find the woman. I needed to speak with her. Games of power, forcing others to acknowledge power—that was a waste. I had no time to waste though I couldn’t remember why. I could barely remember the anger that had been so fresh only moments before.

  I turned from the man and walked down the hill. I barely felt the ground beneath me—floating inside my own skin, floating on the edges of another world. A hand grabbed the back of my neck, fisting my hair—a touch I barely felt. A man’s scream filled the air, abruptly lapsing into silence. Ash floated past me.

  I was facing the robed men when it happened, witnessed the widening of their eyes, the splash of color in their cheeks. One of them reached down for the woman on the ground—who rolled swiftly away to her feet. Chains dragged from her ankles; her attackers had not finished binding her.

  I started running. Faster than I’d ever run before, nearly flying with each step. The men froze, staring at me—careful masks finally breaking into fear.

  Just before I reached them, they disappeared. Blinked out. I was so close I felt the air suck inward to fill the space where they’d been standing. I should have been surprised, but I felt nothing at losing them. I kept moving toward the woman I’d come for and tore away the leather gag.

  She spat on the ground, eyes bloodshot. “Hunter.”

  Her name was on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t reach for it through the haze. It didn’t seem important, either.

  “Hunter,” said the woman again, but I ignored her. Something was still wrong.

  I looked down at my arms, saw movement across my skin; obsidian muscles slithering in tight coils, veins of quicksilver pulsing, threading beneath shifting claws and glinting eyes.

  My boys.

  My head cleared a little, but that only made the uneasiness deepen. My boys rarely moved during the day, and only out of necessity. This was . . . pained. As if they were writhing in their sleep.

  And as soon as I thought it, I felt it—that agonized pull against my body, the boys struggling against my skin. I stared at them, lost. My mind, still trapped in death, hunger, anger—part of me a million miles removed from my own body—as if I didn’t really exist. All of this, just a dream.

  It is a dream, whispered the darkness, so close inside my mind that for a moment I thought I’d spoken those words out loud.

  Whose dream? I asked, trying to remember why I was so angry, what had happened to bring me here to this moment. It shouldn’t have been difficult. I had to remember—

  —my daughter.

  Cold dread washed from my chest into my stomach, with such force my knees buckled. I didn’t fall down, but I might as well have; giant bears could have been kickboxing each other in the nuts, and I wouldn’t have noticed.

  My daughter.

  I yanked up my shirt, found my stomach covered in tattoos: a slow whirling churn of dark, gleaming bodies, spiraling around my navel like a demonic galaxy. I stared, running my hands over my stomach. My fingers lingered over my abdomen, a spot just to the left of my hip. I couldn’t see an injury beneath the boys—but I felt the tenderness of that spot, a soft deliberate ache.

  “Fuck,” I muttered, and then again, louder. “Fuck.”

  My back was still sore—and now that I was paying attention to my body, so was my neck from the sword attack. My waist, as well, from that damn whip. I wasn’t really injured, not that I was aware. But I could feel pain.

  Impossible.

  I wasn’t as invulnerable as I should have been. Something was wrong with the boys. The disease, perhaps. Zee had said they could heal me once they were on my skin. But if it made them sick, too . . . if it hurt them . . .

  I took a deep breath, but it didn’t calm the torment. Worse, the darkness was awake. The darkness had been awake for some time, but this was different: Its presence humme
d through me like a current of black lightning. It didn’t hurt, but it made me feel . . . altered.

  Alive, whispered the darkness. You are coming alive, Hunter.

  I was alive before, I replied, troubled and afraid at how easily I had reached for that power, how little remorse I felt using it. Not the first time that had happened, but never had it felt so seamless . . . as if I didn’t know where I began and the darkness ended. I couldn’t see the line. I couldn’t feel it.

  And if I couldn’t feel it, I couldn’t tear it apart.

  You would break yourself, came that soft hiss, coiling around my heart and squeezing, gently. For nothing more than a mask. You cling to masks of who you think you should be. Who you believe is safe. But that is not being alive.

  What is beneath the mask? continued the darkness, softly. Who is the Hunter and who is the Kiss? Who is the Queen and the mother, and the woman who bleeds?

  “Enough,” I said out loud, to the darkness or myself, I wasn’t certain.

  Movement, in the corner of my eye. I flinched, but it was only the woman—and her name, our history, flooded back into my mind.

  When she saw me looking at her, impatience slid across her face—mixing with anger, exhaustion—and she turned in silence, showing me her bound wrists. Chains dangled; silver manacles flashed in the sun. Her robes had been torn off one shoulder, with blood and dirt rubbed into her short hair and pale skin; and the scratches, bruises, were deep. She had been beaten for a long time.

  “Messenger,” I said in a hoarse voice. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here sooner.”

  “You could not know,” she replied, giving me a cold, repressive glare over her shoulder. “Free me.”

  I slid my left hand over the manacles, which were connected by a thin strip of metal, and started at that weakest point—digging in my blackened fingernails with a hard, sawing motion. My strength just wasn’t there, though—and neither were the boys. I was distracted by their slow, pained movement over my arm, and their slight shift in color; from obsidian to a dark charcoal gray. My nails were weak, too—weaker, anyway—and I felt pressure in them bordering on pain.

  I kept working, though, chipping and tearing away at the metal binding the manacles—until finally the Messenger jerked her arms apart with a grunt and separated her wrists. I flexed my hands, fatigue running deep into my muscles. My fingers throbbed. So did my head. I was suddenly so thirsty, I couldn’t separate my tongue from the roof of my mouth.

  I managed, though. “Are you okay?”

  The Messenger flashed me a hard, uneasy look; her gaze swept down my body, no doubt reading my aura just as Grant always did: like a book that could spell out in one glance all the secrets of my soul.

  “You are not the same,” she said.

  “No shit,” I replied. “What just happened here?”

  The Messenger walked toward the Mahati warrior sprawled face-first in the dirt. Chains dragged, from her feet and wrists. “You know what happened. I never returned to my masters—and now, after all this time, my old gods have decided to learn what happened to me. And why, as I am still alive, I failed to follow their commands.”

  Years ago, she’d come to us as the enemy, sent to investigate the deaths of two Aetar on earth. We’d fought, again and again, until my husband had snapped the conditioning that made her unquestioningly obedient to her gods. Sometimes, I suspected he’d done a little more than that. I couldn’t really imagine anyone’s switching sides so easily, not after a lifetime of brainwashing.

  “They sent a small army after you.”

  “It takes a small army to capture my kind. Not that it is often required.” The Messenger crouched beside the Mahati, and for the first time her expression fractured, and deep sadness flickered in her eyes. There, and gone, all in a moment. The hardness returned, the glint and cold.

  “They killed him,” I said, not seeing any movement, not even the faintest rise and fall of breath.

  “He lives still,” she replied, surprising me. “But they hurt him when they severed our bond.” And then she fixed that narrow gaze on me, searching, focusing, seeing the invisible. “Did they do the same to you and the Lightbringer?”

  A dull ache hit my chest. I reached for my bond with Grant, but the hole was still there, as gaping and horrible as ever. “No. Something else did that.”

  “And he has not reasserted the connection?” A frown touched her mouth. “Is he dead?”

  “Not yet. But that’s why I came to find you. He’s been poisoned with a disease. All of us have, including the demons.”

  She did not look surprised. “Illness is a weapon that has been used before, on worlds that found disfavor with the Divine Lords. It is simple and efficient. A population dies until it is small enough to be controlled or exterminated entirely, then time erases the rest.”

  “You’ve seen this with your own eyes.”

  She looked down at the Mahati. “I have killed the survivors.”

  Of course she had. And I’d just turned men and women into ash by touching them. No fucking stones were going to be cast by me. “Do they ever change their minds? Give these people a cure?”

  “It has happened,” she said, running a slow hand through the air over the Mahati’s back. The chain dangling from her manacle rolled against his side, and I saw his gray skin twitch. “Not often.”

  Flesh was cheap. Flesh was part of the game. It would, indeed, be more interesting—more fun—for an Aetar to create a new civilization, new life, from scratch. No matter the cost.

  And to them, there was no cost at all.

  It wouldn’t cost them anything to kill this world, its humans and demons—even Grant.

  Not true, part of me thought—a part that sounded too much like the darkness for comfort. Because you are in this world, and you are the creation that cannot be undone.

  I looked back up the hill, at the piles of ash blowing toward us. I could barely recall taking those lives. Just the rage and righteousness, followed by the numb distance of the haze. What few memories remained felt cold, crisp: those pale, bald figures lost in their robes, lost to me and the power I had called on.

  “They questioned me about your child,” said the Messenger suddenly, fixing me with that cold, piercing gaze. “Almost as much as they questioned me about my own corruption.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, then opened my mouth again, about to begin my own interrogation. But the woman beat me to it, with a sharpness in her voice that made me uneasy.

  “Do you know how my kind discovered she is a creation of the Lightbringer’s seed?”

  “I assumed they just . . . knew,” I said, lamely. “That there were spies.”

  “Spies,” she echoed, staring at me like I was a fool. “No spies, Hunter. Only betrayal. The Aetar were informed about your child.”

  Uneasiness became flat-out dread. “Who would do that?”

  Bitterness touched her mouth. “They told me it was the Wolf.”

  The Wolf.

  Jack.

  My grandfather.

  CHAPTER 20

  I suppose some people would have called the Messenger a liar, but she’d never given two shits about deceiving me. Threatening to kill me, yes—acting like an asshole, certainly—but lies? I wasn’t sure deception was even in her genes. Like, literally.

  But I still didn’t believe her. I couldn’t. She had to be wrong; it was an Aetar trap, a setup. Plant some bad information, then let it leak. Watch me lose my shit and make stupid choices. It happened in the movies, right? Not that I needed a distraction to make stupid choices; I did that spectacularly well when I was fully focused and present.

  “Jack wouldn’t,” I said, and inwardly cringed at the sound of my voice; like a plaintive five-year-old. My grandfather loved me. He could not have done this.

  “He is one of them,” replied the Messenger, with cold assurance. “The gods are bound together, Hunter, through time and spirit, and intent. How can mortal flesh compare to bonds that have lasted the age
of stars?”

  I shook my head, walking away from her—stopping after just a few feet and bouncing on my toes. I wanted to run. “No.”

  “As you wish,” she said, with only a hint of mockery, and crouched again over the Mahati. Her voice rose soft in song, barely audible, though I felt the chill touch of power shiver over me. It was all for the demon, though. I finally saw his back rise and fall. Still alive, just as she’d said.

  The wind shifted. A sour, piercing scent filled my nose. I turned, looking deeper into the rocks and scrub, and saw a pale, naked foot. A couple steps closer revealed an entire person.

  Several people, in fact, piled together and bleeding from their throats. Dressed in almost nothing, with hairless bodies and disconcertingly simple faces—as if a designer had been building androids that would only approximate human.

  “Mules,” said the Messenger behind me. “My demon killed them first. He was wise to do so.”

  Mules. Humans whose only function was to provide life energy. The engineered, enslaved Lightbringers would have brought them along as portable meals, necessary for their survival. Just as my energy, my life, had been necessary to keep Grant alive when he used his gift.

  The Mahati demon stirred, shifting restlessly against the ground. He only had one arm; the other ended at the elbow. Scars from stripped, cannibalized flesh covered his back and thighs; long silver braids flowed around him in thick ropes. His head turned slightly, and his eyes began fluttering open; not quite conscious, but close. The Messenger sat back, voice dropping to a hum, gaze serious and dark. Her entire focus, on him. I didn’t want to interrupt—but, whatever.

  “The Devourer,” I said. “Do you know that name?”

  Her entire body twitched, a convulsive, electrocuted shudder; I might as well have jolted her with a cattle prod. Her voice broke into silence, and she tore her gaze from the demon to stare at me. I had never seen her appear so startled. It made her seem . . . young and human.

  “Did the Wolf share that name with you?” she asked.

  I shook my head, gaze never leaving hers. “Tell me about the Devourer.”