Labyrinth of Stars (A Hunter Kiss Novel)

by Marjorie M. Liu

  Until I saw his eyes, then it was no joke. I knew those eyes. I knew the hunger behind that glittering black stare, and it was old and bottomless, and utterly implacable.

  “Greetings, my dear,” said the old man, with a faint smile. “So delightful finally meeting you. Imagine my surprise when I learned that I had family.”

  “You’re not my grandfather,” I said, feeling the boys spreading out around me. “You’re just wearing his old face.”

  That faint smile widened, and it was so much like Jack—so much, yet not—I felt off-balance, dizzy. I’d passed through the mirror into another universe, and here was my grandfather, as he might have been. Cool and bland, and polished like a stone. He scared me, and it wasn’t just because of his eyes. He terrified me, even—and I was grateful for Dek and Mal, coiled tight around my throat.

  “He has kept you quite in the dark, hasn’t he?” His hands smoothed out the blanket in his lap, and he turned his gaze on Zee and the boys. “Reaper Kings. We meet again. You’re weakened this time, which fills me with no small amount of pleasure.”

  “Don’t remember you,” Zee rasped.

  Delight touched his mouth but not his eyes. “I was there the entire time, hiding in plain sight. Reduced, ignored, betrayed . . . but ever present. You knew me, little Reaper King. Yes, you did. I was the architect of your prison.”

  “You’re not Jack,” I said, unnerved. Even more so, when he looked at me, and I saw a flash of anger so profound it verged on insanity.

  “Actually,” he said softly, “I am.”

  I stepped back as the old man rose gracefully from his chair, his blanket slipping away to the floor. The butler moved in, stooping to pick up the blanket, but froze when the other man touched his back, ever so slightly. The butler’s face went carefully blank, but that was enough. He was, I suspected, one of those fools who had fallen through the gate into this prison. And fuck only knew what he’d been put through for however long he’d attended this old Aetar, who my grandfather said was in love with pain.

  I glanced at Zee, who watched him with careful, narrowed eyes. “He’s lying.”

  But the demon gave me a brief look that chilled me to the bone. “He is not. He believes.”

  The old man laughed, ever so softly—standing behind the butler, who had finished picking up the blanket and stood there, holding it to his chest.

  “Of course I believe,” he said, holding my gaze, all while he ran a thick, strong hand down the back of the butler’s neck. “I was Jack, I am Jack, I am what he threw away, all those years ago.”

  I swallowed hard. Raw and Aaz were prowling around the room, sniffing at the walls. No sign of Grant or the Shurik, which frightened me. I fought to keep my mask on, though, to be strong, unbreakable. “I don’t understand. You’re the Devourer. You’re not him. You can’t be.”

  The old man’s smile deepened—God, he looked like my grandfather, even his eyes—and I watched in horror as he reached around the butler and sank his hand into the man’s chest. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing at first, it didn’t make sense, but I stared at his hand, slipping through flesh like it was water, pushing in deep until even his forearm was embedded. The butler turned ice white, bottom lip trembling, but he did not make a sound.

  I lurched forward, intent only to make it stop—but the old man yanked his arm out with a flourish, and blood sprayed across my face. The butler collapsed, blood pooling around him. In the old man’s hand was a human heart. Which he offered to me.

  When I just stared at him, unmoving, he shrugged and took a deep, wrenching bite from it. Blood ran down his chin. Blood dripped on the white floor. Blood stank up the air and made me sick.

  “My kind go crazy sometimes,” he said, after a hard, slow swallow. “We’re made of little more than light and energy, so to say we lose our minds is a bit inaccurate. And yet, more accurate than anything else. We lose our minds, young Hunter. Or we become more of ourselves in ways we never dreamed.”

  “My husband came here,” I said.

  “Your husband is still here,” he said, crouching over the butler, “and you can kill me, but you won’t. Not until you’re sure I can’t help you. Such a sorry predicament you’ve put yourself in.”

  The butler’s limbs twitched, as if waking from a nightmare. I wasn’t surprised he was still alive. I said, “You orchestrated this.”

  “I was awakened,” replied the Aetar, looking up from the butler to study Raw and Aaz with the calculated eye of a butcher measuring meat. “When my lesser half used our crystal skull to spy . . . he found me instead. That brief moment of shared essence not only allowed me to see inside his life, but it established a link that I used to slip outside my bonds. It was not easy, I admit. I could not often take advantage of it. But it was rather useful, for a time. Long enough to set things in motion.”

  He met my gaze. “You, for instance.”

  “You’re not Jack,” I whispered.

  “I am,” he whispered back. “Just not the part he wanted.”

  The old man lunged at me. I was expecting an attack, but nothing so fast. I couldn’t see him move, just a blur, then impact. He was faster than the boys, even.

  I slammed into the floor, breath knocked out. Dek and Mal reared, breathing fire, snapping at the old man. Raw and Aaz clung to him, tearing at his limbs, ripping him to pieces like he was made of tissue paper while Zee stood over me, spiky hair bristling, snarling with rage. And all I heard was laughter, his cold, delighted laughter, filling the air. The more they hurt him, the more amused he seemed—and I realized that all the boys were doing was giving him pleasure.

  My right hand glimmered, power surging through the armor. But before it could transform into a weapon that I could use, the world around us broke. Those white walls, that perfect marble—all of it cracked. No earthquake, no shaking—just a fracture that grew with each heartbeat, splitting apart the room. Heat burst against my skin, crackling over me like I’d just been shoved into an oven. Smoke filled the air.

  Zee snapped out a single sharp word. Raw and Aaz leapt away from the old man, skidding across the floor to me. I saw the butler climbing to his feet, but he looked different than I remembered—thinner, taller. Younger.

  And he favored his right leg.

  “Fuck,” I said, just as fury passed through his face, and he opened his mouth to sing. It was a sound made from thunder, raw and glorious—and the Aetar, in his shredded, old-man body, choked a little.

  Just as we fell into hell.

  It was a true fall, a descent that scrambled everything inside me. I couldn’t see or move—I just had to trust that I wouldn’t die when I landed.

  But there was no landing. When I could see again, I realized we hadn’t moved at all. It was the world that had changed.

  Fire, everywhere, dotting a swift-moving lava field that churned in a blast furnace of awesome, terrible heat. But beyond that, towering over us, was a pillar of flame—a warped, raging mass that writhed and twisted like a snake. I couldn’t see the top of it. I could barely encompass its width with my gaze. I was an ant in comparison, and all I could remember was that terrible vision: the implacable hunger, and those eyes, those eyes that I felt even now, focusing on me.

  Zee and the boys huddled at my side, shielding me against the sparks that lit upward and might have caught on my clothes. It was hard to breathe the air. I felt like Frodo sitting on a rocky outcropping at the edge of Mount Doom, trapped and waiting to be cooked alive. All I needed was my Samwise.

  And I found him, twenty feet away, on another outcropping that rose above the fire.

  Grant, kneeling, surrounded by Shurik—who clung to him with stubborn ferocity. I didn’t know where they’d been before, but I could barely see my husband beneath their squirming white bodies. I thought, Thank God.

  My husband was singing, but it wasn’t music—just a powerful, throbbing om that filled the air with such weight and heft and presence that I felt as though I were breathing his voice, wea
ring it on my skin. I clenched my right hand in a fist. I had killed Aetar with the armor I wore. Grant had killed them with his voice. But we needed something from this creature.

  Fuck it. I slammed my right hand against my thigh, and we fell backward into the void. Just for a moment. Blissful disembodiment, safe from the inferno.

  We were spit out just behind Grant’s back, clinging to stone. I dug my hands between Shurik, wrapping my arms around my husband. Holding him close, letting him know I was there. His voice altered its tone, growing deeper. His hands found mine. Up close, I could see the sweat pouring down his face, and the glow of the flames couldn’t mask the gray poison in his skin. He was tired, sick, not at his full strength.

  “Reaper Kings,” whispered a voice from the fire. It came from all around us, and was surprisingly quiet—though it still managed to cut through Grant’s song. “Kings and their maiden. Kings, a maiden, and a dying Lightbringer who is bonded to demons from the old army.” Soft laughter, chilling in its menace. “So many surprises and delights.”

  Arms of fire reached out. Zee and the boys clung to us. I felt them all around me. I felt the hardness of my pregnant belly. Grant was shaking with effort, but those arms still moved toward us—as if all his powers had no effect. I didn’t understand how that was possible, but I stood—demons clinging to me—and stepped around my husband. I stood, facing the Aetar, and my right hand shimmered, warped, transformed—into a shield, light as a feather, round as the moon.

  Behind me, Grant placed his hand against the small of my back. Gentle, so gentle, but heat bloomed inside my chest—a wild burst of golden light filled with so much power I could see the glow from behind my eyes. I felt that light burn my tongue, tingle against my lips. All of me, burning.

  And it felt so good. Like home.

  Maxine, I heard inside my mind. It wasn’t just Grant’s voice, but all of him—inside me, shining and warm, filling that hole that had drowned my heart. Our bond, resurrected.

  Don’t be stupid again, I thought at him. It’s us or nothing.

  That’s a lie, too, he replied, but there was only love in his voice—because he was right about that, too. There was another life that mattered, and if push came to shove, we both knew whom I would choose.

  But in the meantime, I wasn’t going to give up without a fight.

  Except, I was surprised again. Fire moves fast. Fire controlled by an Aetar, even faster. Those arms turned into whips, lashing out to hit the shield. They sizzled on impact, dissolving, but the fire kept coming—again and again. I’d killed Aetar with nothing less than a touch of the armor. I couldn’t understand how it was surviving this contact.

  My confusion distracted me. One tendril snaked around my shield. It happened so fast, I didn’t see until it was too late. Even the boys were too slow though Raw was the closest and tried to block the blow.

  The blade sheared through my right arm as though my flesh were made of silk.

  I didn’t feel anything at first, but I watched my arm fall away with distant, numb surprise. My arm, I thought. My arm is gone. How strange that looks. My arm, all the way down there.

  I staggered, watching the Aetar’s flaming hand cover the armor that still clung to my dismembered arm. A terrible hiss filled the air when it made contact—the creature flinched—but it did not pull away. It sank my entire limb down its massive throat, and as my flesh disappeared I glimpsed the armor shrinking, shrinking, and I remembered how I’d first found it—as nothing but a ring.

  “Maxine.” Grant dragged me away. I didn’t resist, but I barely felt him. I couldn’t stop staring at the fire, searching it for that piece of myself—or even a glitter of quicksilver.

  And then the pain really hit. I tried to fight through it, but dark spots filled my vision, swallowing up the fire, the heat—even the agony eating up my right side. Grant cried out, but not in pain. It was a command, and in his voice, a click. Like a door opening.

  I slipped in and out of consciousness, aware of a shadow that loomed over my body, tendrils of hair that touched my face. I was carried and dragged, past the fire to twilight, as cool air washed over me—which did nothing to dull the bombs exploding inside my body.

  “You morons,” I heard Jack shout, shoving everyone aside and falling to his knees beside me. He pressed a cool hand to my brow, and his voice was thick with fear. I didn’t want him touching me, but couldn’t make my throat work. “The wound’s been cauterized,” he said. “You, pick her up.”

  Strong arms slipped beneath me. Tracker. I screamed when he lifted me. Dek and Mal, who were coiled around my neck, howled in shared agony. Raw and Aaz gripped their own right arms, and Zee raked his claws through the dirt, eyes narrowed with pain and rage.

  “He has a fragment of the labyrinth,” Jack said, somewhere to my right. “We must leave here, now. He’ll free himself, for sure.”

  More voices, but they were fuzzy. I tried so hard not to cry out. I told myself it wasn’t worse than the boys waking up, but that wasn’t true.

  My arm was gone. My arm. Swallowed up, burned to ash—except I could still feel it there, as if it were attached. My brain, playing tricks. Had any of that been real? The white room, the fire—that old man’s familiar face, and what he’d said about my grandfather?

  I lost track of time. Once, I heard Jack say, “I don’t know how, lad. He was the best at building bodies that were stronger than anything the rest of us could imagine. They had to be strong, to last longer for his torture.”

  Your torture? I wanted to ask him. Are you the Devourer?

  I didn’t hear Grant’s response. I was already gone.

  CHAPTER 30

  THERE was no pain inside that darkness, just the drift. And I kept drifting, right into a field of stars.

  I wasn’t alone. I saw a man made of silver, radiating a cool, clean light. He stood on my left, but no matter how hard I stared, I couldn’t see his face.

  I didn’t need to. I knew what my father looked like.

  On my right was a creature made of obsidian—not a dragon, but close enough—a wyrm, sleek and lean, and coiled with power. It writhed and twisted, and ate the light of the other man. But it was a fair trade. His silver skin absorbed the shadows that flowed from the wyrm. Both of them, consuming the other.

  You are safe, whispered my father, his skin shining with starlight. Let go of the fear. Let go.

  Let go, murmured the darkness. Embrace the hunt and the hunger. Be the vessel that is needed.

  Why? I asked them both, so weary. Why does there need to be a vessel? Why did you go to so much trouble to engineer this?

  I woke up before I could get an answer. Not that I expected one.

  But that didn’t matter, either. Because we were no longer in the Labyrinth. I saw stars above, and in the distance, city lights. I wasn’t sure what city, but it looked familiar, and very much of earth. A dream, though. It was just a dream. I couldn’t feel my body. I floated like a ghost.

  My relief, though, was short-lived. Because the sky opened up, and fire burned away the stars.

  Fire, in every direction, rippling outward. I kept expecting to see the edges, but the flames never stopped, spreading over my head, raining down an inferno.

  I looked back at the city, but it was already burning. Millions of voices, crying out, and none of them would have a quick death. An entire world would die slowly, just for the pleasure of the beast—who would devour their pain.

  And it was my fault.

  No, I said, and—

  —opened my eyes, again.

  I stared, breathing hard. Nothing but the forest around me: gnarled roots and trees as big as skyscrapers, and a soft twilight that clung to the air and seemed part of its scent; sweet, light, with a hint of rose. I was surrounded by demons: scales and spikes, sharp elbows, and even sharper claws. Red eyes gleamed. Purrs rattled.

  Still, just a dream. Or a vision of the future. I couldn’t take the risk, though.

  For a moment, I dared to imag
ine that losing my arm was part of that bad dream—but no, I turned my head, and all I saw was shoulder and air.

  Grant whispered, “Maxine.”

  I was in so much pain I could barely see his face. I looked harder, and found him pressed against my left side, surrounded by a teeming pile of Shurik, who had spread out over the small clearing, rolling in the ferns.

  His cheeks were gaunt, eyes reserved and weary—but still alive. He even managed a small smile, but it was filled with pain and regret.

  I tried to reach for him, but it hurt too much to move. Grant placed his hand over mine. Between us, light flared: heart to heart. I closed my eyes, savoring the glow that spread within me.

  “He tortured you,” I whispered, unable to speak louder past the pain. “You were the butler, and I never realized. Neither did the boys.”

  “I didn’t know who I was anymore,” Grant said, hoarse. “It was as if he expected me. I never had a chance to even open my mouth. He . . . altered me . . . immediately. Even when I saw you . . . when I saw you in that place . . . I didn’t know you. I still remember how I didn’t know you.” He swallowed hard, closing his eyes. “I can recall . . . all the things he did to me. When he was finished, when I should have been dead, he would bring me back to life. Heal my wounds until he could start again.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

  “It was my fault. I was cocky.” He kissed my brow, then my mouth, lingering there. “I don’t know what comes next, but we’re going home.”

  Fire burned inside my mind. “We can’t. We have to stop this thing here, or else it’ll destroy earth. I’m sure of it.”

  I heard a small sound of discontent. “I wish you had thought of that before, my dear.”

  Jack paced into view, arms folded over his stomach as though he was holding himself. For a moment, I was frightened—I couldn’t separate my memories from the present moment, and all I could see was that doppelganger with his smile and those deadly eyes. Behind him, I glimpsed Sarai. But she was lingering in the shadows, and there was a hesitance in the way she stood—even in that nonhuman body—that struck me as odd.