Labyrinth of Stars (A Hunter Kiss Novel) (15 page)

“Yes,” I replied. “It happens.”

I told him about the attack, which also required informing him of the broken prison—the demon army, residing on earth. Tracker’s jaw tightened as he listened, his gaze growing dark, troubled. I kept expecting him to interrupt with disparaging comments, just out of principle—but whatever he saw in our faces, demon and human, must have told a story, because he rocked back on his heels and folded his arms over his chest.

“And who’s died?” he asked. “The Lightbringer?”

A chill hit me. “Not yet. But I’m afraid that’s coming next.”

Tracker’s gaze didn’t waver. “And you? What part of you is dying, Hunter?”

“All the parts that matter,” I told him.

D
ESPITE
all evidence to the contrary, I have a very forgiving nature.

I’ve been stabbed, cursed, kidnapped, called some profoundly unfortunate names—and in a few of those cases, I’ve managed to go on with my life without indulging the need to kill anyone.

Tracker, for example, had once thrown me under a bus. His way of saying “hello.” Fantastic start to what was, in hindsight, a very temporary alliance. I was totally over it.

“I should warn you,” I said. “You’re probably going to die.”

A bitter smile tugged at his mouth. “I hope that’s a promise.”

Raw and Aaz dangled from a tree branch above his head. Zee prowled close, staring up at the man. Tracker scratched his nose, his smile becoming grim. “You have something to add, Reaper King?”

“Vows,” rasped the little demon. “Remember them.”

Tracker stilled. “Long time ago. Wardens are dead and gone. Prison is open. All shot straight to hell. I don’t think there’s a point anymore to what we swore to do.”

“Honor, then.” Zee pressed forward, rising on his haunches. “The Hunter must live.”

“Listen—” I began, but the demon held up his clawed hand, still staring at Tracker. Both of them, locked together in a silent battle that was so heavy, I could barely breathe the air.

“The Hunter must live,” Zee said again, in a deadly soft voice. Hearing him say those words cut me to the core. I knew it wasn’t just for his benefit. Without me, he and his brothers would survive, free.

No, this was about family. Love.

Tracker drew in a short, sharp breath. I wondered if he realized, if he could understand how much the boys had changed in all these years he’d known them. Could anyone really understand, except them and me?

I said, “I want my daughter to survive and grow up in a world that isn’t populated by corpses. I want us all to have some fucking peace.”

“No such thing.” Tracker folded his arms over his chest, but he didn’t seem as sure of himself as he had before. “Even if you’d never had this—your man, this life—if you gave it all up—nothing would change. You weren’t made for peace, Hunter. None of you women were. And your daughter, whoever she is, will get used to the corpses. Just like you did.”

I stared at him. “You’re an asshole.”

“But you still need me.” Weariness flitted across his face, and resentment. “Nothing changes, even after ten thousand years.”

I held his gaze, forcing myself to stay hard. “Then you should know exactly what to do.”

Oturu drifted behind the man, those long, searching tendrils of hair caressing his back. Tracker stiffened, his face becoming a perfect, predatory mask. I half expected him to be punished for speaking his mind—Oturu had never before spared him—but instead, the demon glided around to me—reaching for me, surrounding me with his floating hair and the folds of his cloak, which unfurled and danced as though carried by a storm.

His hair traced a soft line against my shoulder. Dek and Mal purred beneath his touch. Raw and Aaz dropped from their tree branch, landing softly on either side of me.

“It is awake,” he murmured.

I didn’t look at him. “What is?”

“Your heart.” Oturu glided away, floating on the tips of his toes. “Come, Tracker. We hunt the soldiers of the Aetar.”

Wait,
I wanted to say to him.
What did you mean?

But the demon did not linger. His knifelike feet pushed off the ground, and he ascended through the tree branches like a ghost, making not a sound. Tracker forced a sardonic smile to his mouth, but not before I glimpsed a troubled look in his eye.

“Hunter,” he said, simply, and vanished from sight.

I stared at the spot, heart beating a little too fast. Zee rasped, “Could have done without Tracker.”

“No.” I leaned against a tree, exhausted. “We need all the help we can get. One more pair of hands could make a difference.”

Or get him killed, too.

Maybe. And there was still one more body I needed to recruit into this fight. Another set of eyes.

I pulled out my cell phone, could barely read the screen—vision blurry, head dizzy. It was hard to find the number I needed. My fingers felt fat, clumsy. My skin was hot.

Rex answered on the third ring. For once, I was happy to hear his voice.

He’d been the first of Grant’s converts. A parasite who sided with my husband against his own Queen. Which didn’t mean he was my friend. Just the opposite. But he was loyal to Grant, and that was all that mattered.

I heard laughter in the background, pots clanging—the distant melody of a show tune: something from
Phantom of the Opera
. Dinner was being made at the homeless shelter Grant had founded—and that he and I had lived above, in his nice little loft. I felt homesick for the place.

“What now?” Rex asked.

“I need you to tap your parasite network,” I told him. “Find out if anyone has seen Aetar on this world, and where. I’m going to assume Blood Mama already knows the answer to this question and is just holding out on us.”

Rex was silent a moment. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” I lied. “Find me some fucking Aetar, Rex.”

He grunted. “Bitch. I’ll call you back when I have something.”

“Thirty minutes. That’s all I’m giving you.”

He swore at me and ended the call. I tried to put the phone back in my pocket, but fumbled, clumsy. Zee caught it for me, but I didn’t try taking it back. I sat down hard on the ground, lying back and feeling my body ache. My hands settled on my stomach. I held them there, sending good thoughts to my daughter. Pretending she was surrounded in light. Anything that would protect her from the disease inside me.

“I need to find who did this,” I said to the boys. “Can you track? Is there a scent?”

They looked at each other. Raw had reached into the shadows for a figurine of Batman and was chewing on its head. Aaz also reached into the shadows, but he pulled out a footlong sandwich: thick crunchy bread spilling over with meatballs and melted cheese. He put it in my hands, and the bread was hot and the hunger that washed over me, hollow and immediate and dangerous. I hadn’t eaten anything for almost a day.

I tore into the sandwich, while Dek and Mal hummed with satisfaction. Zee rasped, “Felt a pull, in dreams. Old history. But not enough poison to make a path. Not enough to see behind the mask.”

I swallowed, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “So you needed to be
more
sick in order to track the source?”

Zee hesitated. “Like tracking a scent. Hunting memory. Some strong, some weak. Could eat poison, make sick, but won’t have same effect. Visions come from you. From healing
you
.”

I thought for a moment. “So . . . burning the poison out of my body . . . that connection between us is where you could track the disease’s origins?” I didn’t know how that worked, but I wasn’t going to argue with him. “What if I was . . . sicker?”

Dek and Mal squeaked. Raw’s jaws froze over Batman’s legs, which were sizzling and burning from the acid in his saliva. Aaz ripped a spike from his back and started stabbing himself in the eye with it.

“Okay, come on,” I said to him. “Now you’re just being dramatic.”

Zee was also staring at me. “Dangerous, Maxine. Risk much.”

I touched my stomach. If the Aetar won, what would the world look like? No demons, but no Grant, either. Maybe no humans, period. And Jack was right—they would never let our daughter live. Not with a Lightbringer’s powers.

They had almost killed her, still in the womb. After she was born, it would be even easier for the Aetar to take her life. Or just take her, period. There was only so much the boys and I could do to protect her.

Unless I took my own life. Gave her over to the boys as soon as she was born.

It had been done before. Still might not save her, but it was a better chance. Still meant, though, that someone would have to be around to take care of her during the day while the boys slept. Tracker had filled that role for one of my ancestors.

But I wanted my daughter to have her father.

Then what? No matter what you do, the Aetar will keep coming. They’ll send more soldiers, more sickness. Even if you save him now, Grant will never be safe. They’re too powerful, too elusive.

So, just give up, then? That couldn’t be the answer, either. Not with my daughter’s life on the line. Finding the one responsible for making the disease wouldn’t stop the Aetar, but it
might
lead to a cure. I had to start somewhere.

My appetite was gone, but I finished eating the sandwich. As soon as I took the last bite, Aaz placed another in my hands—only this one was stuffed with grilled salmon and avocado. I forced it down and drank the water the little demon gave me. Food helped. But I still had a fever, and my muscles ached.

My cell phone buzzed. Zee handed it back to me. “Hey.”

“Nothing,” Rex said immediately. “We haven’t seen anything.”

“Do you need more time?”

“No.” He sounded frustrated. “You’re right about us . . . we’re drawn to high-energy sources . . . and the Aetar are high-energy, even if we wouldn’t ever bother getting close to them. None of my kind has observed any Aetar.”

“That’s impossible. One of them possessed a dead Mahati and tried to kill my daughter.” Not to mention that Jack had told me he felt another on this world.

Rex went silent. I checked the phone to make sure he hadn’t hung up, and said, “Hello?”

“It’s started,” he said, in a dull voice. “We all knew it was just a matter of time. If the demon army didn’t kill this world, then it would be the Aetar.”

“Stop it,” I said. “Keep looking.”

“There’s
nothing
,” Rex snapped. “Not in Asia, not in South America, not in this country. I know, the world is a big place, but we would
feel
it. How do you think Blood Mama has kept tabs on your bloodline all these thousands of years? How come she always knows when shit’s about to hit the fan?”

I ignored that. “Have you tried Antarctica?”

“Fuck you,” he said. “I’ll call if anything changes.”

He hung up on me. I sagged against the tree and looked at Zee and the boys. I felt their dread—or maybe that was me.

“We can’t wait,” I said to them.

I struggled to my feet and walked through the woods to where the Mahati were being quarantined. No music, no soft chatter—a few small fires glowed in the camp, but I felt the absence of movement, a quiet that was heavy and full of dread.

I smelled the dying long before I saw them: a wet swamp of caustic, fetid blood that spread through the air in a deadly haze. The area had grown to accommodate more of the ill—at least another thirty adults and children—all sitting or lying still, curled up in balls with shallow wood pans by their heads to catch their vomit. Their sadness and fear was horrifying, heartbreaking.

Lord Ha’an stood amongst them, holding water to the mouth of a child who lay limp in his arms.

“I’m finding a cure,” I told him. “I don’t care what it takes.”

He didn’t even blink. “What do you need?”

I looked around, found Zee crouched by an adult who looked pretty damn dead—if the slack, open-eyed, too-still expression of frozen horror was any indication. The little demon gave me a reluctant nod.

“That body,” I said. “I need some of its blood.”

“Then take it,” he told me. “Now it is only flesh.”

I crouched beside Zee. Raw and Aaz hopped close, clutching their teddy bears. Dek and Mal were absolutely silent around my neck. All of them unhappy, looking at me with concern.

“Maxine,” Zee rasped. “Unwise act.”

“Do you know a better way? Anything faster?”

He hesitated. “No.”

“And you’re sure you can draw the disease from me? That it won’t kill my daughter?”

“Yes.” No hesitation, that time.

I pointed to the Mahati’s arm, and the little demon slashed it open with his claws. Dark blood oozed free. I took several deep breaths, trying to shut out the world and the other Mahati, who were suddenly watching. I tried not to look at the dead demon’s slack face and staring eyes. I tried not to be sick.

Do it fast,
I told myself.
Don’t think.

But I did. I looked down at my stomach, pressing out against my jeans. Little girl in there. My baby.

I was terrified of fucking her up. Our bloodline was like titanium when it came to having healthy babies, but the trauma of that almost miscarriage was still rich and alive in my mind. Probably it always would be. I could feel the tug in my gut, the heat of blood between my legs. The helplessness.

I still felt helpless. In a million different ways.

There was one option I hadn’t tried. I pressed my right hand into the blood. The armor tingled, a shimmer of light racing over the metal—and with it, roses, ghosting to the surface, then fading. Each time I used the armor it covered more of my skin. In a few months, my entire right arm might be gone. Eventually, I’d have to stop. If I could.

Find the one who made this,
I thought hard, closing my eyes. It might work. What the armor responded to had always been mysterious—and how it chose to fulfill my needs, even more so.