Hunter Kiss: Labyrinth Of Stars Part 25

The pain came in waves. The boys continued to pull against me. I rode with them, flowed into their fight, and that, too, was another kind of rhythm.

I dozed inside their agony. I fell asleep. I didn't mean to. It shouldn't have been possible. I didn't even realize what had happened until I opened my eyes and it was dark all around me. Night had fallen.

And I was completely alone.

CHAPTER 25.

ABOUT a year after we first met, Grant and I went to an upscale restaurant in Seattle where a party at the table next to us was eating an entire roast suckling pig: crispy and dark, a gnarled, juicy parenthesis. I'm not squeamish, but there was something horrible about it. I blamed my mother-all her stories about humans cooked just like that, by the demons in the prison veil.

I never got the nice fairy tales.

Grant had a different reaction to the roast pig. He told me a story.

When he was fifteen, his mother moved the entire family to Hawaii. His father didn't care. He had a young, exotic wife, he was in love, and his business let him live anywhere he liked. Specifically, a little town named Hawi, on the northern tip of the Big Island where the volcanic rock gives way to lush.

It should have been paradise, but Grant had the howli experience: a white boy in a public school full of native Hawaiians, Asians, and mixed-race Asians, where mainland English was a second language under the best of circ.u.mstances. He didn't have any real friends. Some of the kids were mean. One boy who sat behind him would ask every day: When are you leaving, white boy?

Grant was an outsider. And for a kid who was already different, more different than anyone else in the world, that was exactly what he didn't need.

He spent a lot of time by himself. It was safer that way. Safer for him, for other people around him. He didn't want to be tempted into doing something he shouldn't. Secrets, after all, could be dangerous. And unlike my mother, his never told him the truth about what, and who, he was. All he had to go on was instinct, and a good heart.

Thank G.o.d for good hearts.

Two months after moving to Hawi, four months before his mother would decide to return to the mainland-just in time to reveal she was dying of cancer-Grant heard some boys talking about a hidden beach, one of a hundred, or a thousand, that make up the coast of the Big Island. Only word of mouth will let you find them: on paths that cut across lava fields, state parks, front yards, descending along cliffs and through jungle.

He got it in his head to find that beach. Trail wasn't hard to locate. It started at a little compound that catered to white hippies from the mainland, who'd rent out cottages during the winter, and garden, and meditate, and practice weaving Zen mantras into their Rastafarian hairdos. Just beyond those gardens, on a dirt path that led to a wire fence with a broken gate, the trail zigzagged down a steep hill, into a valley, into a jungle.

It was beautiful. He was excited. The path was dark, narrow, walled in by thick-bladed gra.s.s as tall as a man. Hiding all kinds of things.

Such as the wild boar that trotted onto the path in front of him less than a minute into his hike.

A beast, he told me. Something out of the storybooks, as big as a Volkswagen. Stout, powerful chest, heaving sides: thick ropes of muscle sliding beneath its sleek black skin. Two long, sharp teeth jutting from its lower lip.

Howli or Hawaiian, anyone who lived in Hawi more than a month knew one thing: Boars kill people. They'll gore you to death. Slice open the arteries in your legs with six-inch tusks sharper than machetes, and your blood will drop out of you in seconds. And if that doesn't work, they'll just trample you right up.

Demons kill to eat you. Boar just kill because you're a threat, in their territory. I don't know which is better, but either way, you're dead.

"I was stunned, frozen," Grant told me, stretching out his bad leg, rubbing the part where the bone had never healed right. "And then all I felt was cold fear."

"Well, you survived the encounter," I said to him.

"I had power. I sang the boar away. Took me a long time to get the strength in my legs to walk back home. But on the way out of the bush, I ran into this kid from my cla.s.s. The one who was always asking me when I was going to leave, and you know what he had on him? A machete. He saw my fear, and he just laughed. Don't worry, white boy, he said. This is for a real pig."

"And then he asked me the one thing I'd been wanting someone to ask me the whole time I'd been in Hawaii. He asked me if I wanted to join him. You want to help? he said. I didn't say anything. I just kept walking."

Grant shook his head. "He was a nothing kid, skinny, but there he was with a little knife actually looking for a boar."

"You admired him."

"No, I hated him. But he had the courage. He had a need and determination, and nothing else. I had power inside me, but he was the one who went in. Me, I ran."

"Grant," I said.

"I'll never run again," he told me.

THEY were all gone-Grant, Jack. Even the Shurik. Mary alone slept on the couch, and seeing her was such a relief I could have wept. I almost woke her, but I couldn't imagine she'd let Grant out of her sight without putting up a fight.

It was hard to walk. I had to bend over from the pain, and even the air against my skin was agony. The boys were pulling, pulling, struggling to wake, and if I didn't fly apart into a million pieces, it would be a miracle.

I searched the house. I called Grant's cell phone. Calm, I told myself. It's nothing. He's close and safe. If there had been a struggle, you would have woken up.

But I had a bad feeling. From the moment I'd opened my eyes.

The house was so quiet, and in that silence it no longer felt like a home. I felt like a stranger trespa.s.sing on emptiness, invading all the hollow s.p.a.ces that should have comforted me, but now only looked alien and strange.

When I finally pa.s.sed through the open front door, back out to the porch, I found life: the Messenger, and at her side, Lord Ha'an. He looked thinner, and his silver braids lacked some of their usual l.u.s.ter. His eyes held the story, though: grim and tired, and full of barely contained grief, and rage. Looking at him, looking into his eyes, frightened me almost as much as my missing husband.

"Where is he?" I asked, noting with dread that the crystal skull was gone as well.

"He left," she said. "With the Wolf."

"He left," I echoed, voice breaking from pain-and fear.

But as soon as I said those words, I knew. I could see it all, the crazy obscene logic. I wanted to kill my grandfather. And kick my husband in the nuts.

The Messenger hesitated. Lord Ha'an glanced at her. "It is my understanding that your consort forced the Aetar to lead him to what will cure our people."

I stared at them. "You're f.u.c.king kidding me."

"He took the Yorana and Shurik with him," added Lord Ha'an, with an edge to his voice. "The bonds were heavy upon them all."

"He took down the wall," I said.

"He is their true lord now." But he sounded uneasy. I should have been relieved that Grant had finally accepted their strength, but all I felt was a sick foreboding.

I looked at the Messenger. "You didn't wake me."

"The beast cannot be freed," she said, without a hint of remorse. "And though he is no G.o.d, I believe in the visions and power of the Divine Lords. If the Wolf saw that you would release the beast, then you cannot be allowed to venture near his cage. The Lightbringer is the more prudent alternative."

"He's dying," I almost pleaded.

"And so he will fight before he dies," replied the Messenger. "As should we all."

I forced myself to take a breath, then another, slow and careful. It was hard to think, hard to feel anything but desperately overwhelmed and lost. But I closed my eyes and let my mind go blank.

You have two options, I told myself. Wait here.

Or not.

I looked at my hands. Silver on the right, demons on the left. "I can't not go after them."

"You are vulnerable," replied the Messenger. "I will make you stay."

I stared her dead in the eyes-and kept staring. Sometimes if you hold a silence long enough and fill it with your rage, even genetically modified warrior women get a clue. The Messenger blinked and looked away.

I settled my gaze on Lord Ha'an. "How are your people?"

"Unwell," he said. "I can feel their weakness in me now. It will not be long before I fall victim to the poison. The Osul have fared little better."

"You're going to help them," I told the Messenger. "And Mary. As much as you can, for as long as you can. Stall this thing."

Dismay flickered through her face. "I cannot."

"You'll try." I backed away from them, rubbing the armor with my left hand-which felt as though it might tear from my body. Lord Ha'an swayed toward me, long fingers twitching.

"My Queen," he said in a grave voice. "If you are hunting for what will save us, we should hunt alongside you."

It was so tempting. I was not at my strongest. One good blow would kill me now-if the pain didn't get me first.

But I had my own walls to bring down, on the inside. And it was time for me to start chipping at them.

My right hand squeezed into a fist. The Messenger took a step toward me, and, for the first time, I saw the fear and urgency in her eyes, and the doubt. "Time moves differently in the Labyrinth. If you return, this may not be the world you left. We may already be dead."

"Then you won't have to worry about the Devourer," I said, and fell into the void.

My body disappeared, and for those long seconds, the sudden absence of pain was so immediate and profound it was like having a second body-I could feel where my skin should be, the outlines of wild, miraculous relief-and I gloried in it.

WHEN I fell back into the world, it was still night, and the full heat and agony surrounded me again. I choked down a gasp, sprawled in the gra.s.s, my mind a total scramble of need and memory, and doubt. From where I lay, I could see the boulder that covered my mother's grave. I hadn't gone far. I hadn't wanted to. I had something to do here that I'd been putting off since the beginning of this nightmare.

I rolled on my back, stared up at the stars, and prayed for help.

I didn't keep track of the time, just the pulse and throb of the boys on my body, struggling harder now, with greater strength. The closer they came to freeing themselves, the more it hurt. I was nearly blind with it, crippled, when a tingle from the armor cut through the hurt-a cool interruption that I felt in the bones of my right hand.

"Father," I whispered. "Please hear me."

For a moment, I thought the stars began to move toward me, but that was just my vision blurring. So I listened instead, and heard the wind. And the wind deepened, and the wind grew strong, except the leaves of the oak were silent, and the gra.s.s was not moving around me.

Pray to the night instead, whispered the darkness. Pray to what holds your heart and lives in your blood. Pray to yourself, young Queen, young Hunter, young Mother. You are the last of all these things. You, who are both flesh and G.o.d.

I will never be a G.o.d, I said.

"Hunter," murmured a soft voice outside my mind: smooth and warm as fire. I opened my eyes and found Oturu looming over me.

I let out my breath, so relieved. I realized, in that moment, where my trust lived, and it was not with the Messenger or any demon lords-or even, anymore, old men who were my grandfather. It was with the boys, and Grant-and one other.

"Oturu," I whispered. "My friend. I need you."

"We are with you," he murmured. "We will always be with you."

I cracked open my eyes and glimpsed the shining daggers of his feet, spading into the gra.s.s. His cloak breathed against the direction of the wind, flaring like wings and swallowing light-and within its darkness, shades of movement: faces and hands, bodies roiling in the abyss.

Tears burned. I would have told anyone who asked that it was the pain-but it was the gentleness of his touch, the rea.s.surance it symbolized: that I was not alone.

"Young Queen," whispered Oturu.

"It's time to hunt," I told him, hoa.r.s.e.

And the boys finally woke up.

CHAPTER 26.

IT'S easy to forget pain. We do it all the time. All the discomforts of life fade away, and we forget-within minutes, hours, days, or weeks. Time heals.

Unless it doesn't. Because there is some suffering that cuts to the soul-and that cleaves deep and does not fade. It burns, almost eternal.

And you burn with it.

I was having trouble breathing, but only because I was so exhausted. Raw and Aaz crouched on either side of me, holding little electric fans that blew cool air on my face. They didn't look too strong themselves, but they were alive and had already eaten one chain saw between them, which was a pretty good sign.

Dek and Mal coiled around my shoulders, lapping up a pile of M&M's. Their purrs, hoa.r.s.e. Zee crouched a short distance away, on top of the boulder covering my mother's grave. He was very quiet and watched the old farmhouse, far away at the bottom of the hill-occasionally glancing to his left at the small fires burning in the wood. Signs of demon life.

"Won't be back," he rasped. "Won't be the same."

A chill settled over me. "You sure about that?"

Zee looked at me, his silence worth more than words. For once, I felt as though I could see in his face the weight of his life-thousands upon thousands of years, thousands since my first ancestor, thousands before. He seemed tired. Tired and old.

"Death before resurrection," murmured Oturu, "but what is resurrected is never the same."

I stared at his pointed chin, the long, masculine line of a hard mouth. Black hair curled past his jaw, the very tips twining and writhing like snakes. He had no hands. And though his eyes were hidden beneath the brim of his hat, I felt him looking at me. His stare, like a brand upon my face, the heat of his gaze pushing through me with unfathomable strength.

I tried to sit up. Raw and Aaz pushed against my back, little claws piercing my clothes and sc.r.a.ping cool against my skin. Tendrils from Oturu's flowing, floating cloak wrapped around my wrists-also cool, cool as death-and helped pull me to my feet.