Hunter Kiss: Labyrinth Of Stars Part 9

My grandfather stopped, staring. I turned my back to the television and walked to the kitchen sink. Got myself a gla.s.s of water.

Jack made a disgusted sound. I didn't turn around.

"Congratulations," he said. "The apocalypse has arrived."

"Which one?" I asked.

"And millions are now convinced that demons are real," he added, ignoring me. "Although . . . just as many might believe this is a hoax."

I finally looked at the television. It showed a still shot from the recorder, and though the image was somewhat blurry, it was clear enough: What had killed those frat boys and their girlfriends did not look human.

I'd seen a lot of humans who didn't look human. Disfigurement could do that. Women's faces melted to the skull from acid burns, men caught in explosions that ripped their bodies to shreds. Too much plastic surgery had the same effect. To be human was one thing, but retaining the appearance of humanity-that required a superficial, very fragile, balance.

This was different. What I saw in that still shot was tall, gray, and lean, with arms and legs that were little more than ropes of sinew and leather. Narrow faces, blade-sharp cheekbones, chins that narrowed to points that resembled spearheads. Chains and long braids of silver hair that looped around chests gaunt and hard with bone. And those hands: ma.s.sive, striated with muscle, each fingertip as long and deadly as a pitchfork tine.

But the eyes staring out of that photograph made everything else seem like a cheap trick; stare too long, and it felt the same as being shoved naked into a night blizzard: repulsed with bone-raw cold, a heart-flinching f.u.c.k you. And that was how I felt-knowing what I did-being who I was. I couldn't imagine how the rest of the world was taking it. No one had been rioting in Taiwan, but that was halfway across the world. Here in Texas, in America? I was too insulated on the farm, in this business of death. I didn't know what people looked like anymore.

"Folks see that and have to be s.h.i.tting themselves," I said.

Jack raised his brow. "This is the age of the horror movie. Photoshop, computer hackers, makeup artists. Special effects. What is real, my dear? Absolutely nothing."

I did not relax. "They'll run tests on those remains. Check for saliva, study the wounds-the f.u.c.king teeth marks on the bones. Someone is going to sit up and pay attention to the possibility, Jack. It doesn't matter how many possessed people we use to run interference."

"Of course," he said, and even beneath the grime his knuckles were white around the metal box he still held. "You should have killed the demons when you had the chance."

I expected bluntness, but hearing the words hurt. Because wasn't I still thinking the same thing?

"Even their children?" I stared out the kitchen window at the empty pasture, which ran up against a heavy line of trees. Something lean and silver flitted just beyond those pale trunks-a glimpse, a hint.

Jack was silent a moment. "Yes."

I looked down at my stomach, at my hands touching my stomach. For a moment I felt very far away from that part of my body, as if there were a million miles between my head and the area below my waist, a million miles that I could not cross, a million miles that would never be mine, which already stretched in front of the life inside me and the life that would grow inside her, and again, and again, descending through blood and demon until we outlasted this world and others, until we outlasted life itself, until there was nothing but the road.

Maybe that was what it felt like for all mothers. I didn't know.

I turned and looked Jack dead in the eyes. "Will you help or not? I can't handle both the Aetar and this. It's too much."

My grandfather leaned against the table, hugging the metal box against his stomach. He studied me, then the rest of the kitchen-slow, methodical, thoughtful. Until his gaze stopped on the old bloodstain in the cracked, linoleum floor. His fingers stopped moving. His expression never changed, but his eyes lost their focus. I didn't worry it was another relapse. I knew what the bloodstain meant-to him, and me.

"Jolene," he murmured, then, after a long moment: "Why does it still hurt?"

I swallowed hard. "She was your daughter. Maybe the body you made her with is dead, but she was yours." My voice dropped to a whisper. "My mother was yours."

Jack drew in a deep, shuddering breath, and looked at the television. "The Aetar have not attempted to contact me."

"But they know how to find you?"

"We have ways. The same way we know when one of us has died." He sighed and glanced at me. "I always knew this day would come."

"They'll try to kill Grant."

"No, my dear. They'll want to study him. A far worse fate."

"They used a poison on him."

"Of course. I'm familiar with it."

"Of course," I echoed. "Mary made Grant eat marijuana as an antidote." I paused again. "You can't imagine how that surprised me."

"I'm surprised anything still surprises you." Jack ran his fingers over the table-an idle, thoughtful, gesture. "The cannabis was native to their world. As was the poison, made from another plant. A delicate little thing with a red blos- som. We learned those secrets from them, you know. They needed to protect themselves from the Lightbringers, in case any went rogue."

His fingers folded into a loose fist, and he rapped the table, lightly. "Some of us . . . seeded the antidote on as many worlds as we could manage. Call it a . . . protest, of sorts. For those who became disgusted with the direction of the war. We hoped that if any survivors found their way to those planets, they would have the comfort of knowing that . . . some protection was still theirs. That they weren't entirely alone."

A number of sarcastic comments filled me, but I didn't indulge. This was an old conversation, old and painful, and if I could forgive Zee and the boys for their interplanetary genocide, then I could forgive my grandfather and accept his attempts at redemption.

The only difference, of course, was that the boys never tried to make excuses or paint their activities in a different light. They never pointed out the good they'd done, if any . . . because they accepted that no good outweighed the terror. No good deed lessened the bad. Making the attempt was a sign of weakness. It showed no honor.

"I asked the Mahati to set aside the head of one of the creatures they sent. You'll need to look at it."

"Of course," Jack said, quietly.

"Do you know how they'll strike again?"

"Just that they will. Two of our kind have died in the last five years, both on this world. That's more than have perished in a million years, my dear. They sent a Messenger to question me, and she never returned, her connection to them severed. They'll know that I couldn't have done that." Jack rubbed his face, shaking his head. "A Lightbringer. The only being in the universe who can kill us. Besides you. And I suspect they don't realize what you're capable of, my dear. Let us hope they don't."

"They know our daughter is a threat."

"A worse threat than Grant. They can't allow her to live. With the boys as her protectors, with your blood in her veins, they won't be able to control her."

"When they realize they failed . . ."

"They'll try again. Throw you back in the Wasteland if they can. Attempt to separate you from the boys, then carve her out of you. She's far more of a priority than Grant, trust me."

My knees almost buckled when he mentioned the Wasteland: a sliver on the edge of the Labyrinth. The endless...o...b..iette where things were thrown to be forgotten. No light. Nothing at all. Almost as bad as the void. I still had nightmares from that place. I'd lost my mind there, lost my humanity. I'd only survived because the boys had nourished, even breathed for me. A baby would never last. The idea of it made me ill.

I looked him dead in the eyes. "How did they do it, Jack? How did they hurt my daughter? All it took was a look."

"Wasn't just a look," he said, sounding disgusted. "It took power. Perhaps, if it had been daylight, and the boys were protecting you, it would have been more difficult. I just don't know. But we made your bloodline, my dear. We might not be able to kill you-easily-but you are not entirely immune to us." He gave me a curious look. "You're lucky Grant was able to save your child. I would have thought your immunity to his power would have extended to her."

"Very lucky," I said, deciding not to tell him about the bargain I'd made. "Is there any place that's safe for us? If we leave this world?"

"No." Jack hesitated. "Run, if you like. But the Aetar will find you, and it will be war."

I stared at him, utterly deflated. "You should go take a bath. I'm getting cholera just from looking at you. And something's living in your beard."

"I got lonely." He glanced down at the metal box in his hands. "Is there a safe place to put this?"

"Jack," I began.

"You called me Grandfather, earlier," he reminded me, and there was something about him that suddenly seemed very old and frail, and not even remotely immortal.

I tasted the word in my mouth. "Grandfather. Is there anything I should know?"

"Nothing. And nothing that would harm you . . . or her." His glaze flicked down to my stomach, then bounced away-to the television set, the window, anywhere but my eyes.

My entire body p.r.i.c.kled: pins and needles. The boys and their rough dreams, struggling to wake. Not a good sensation. A warning.

But nothing happened. No explosions. No doorways opening to other worlds. My grandfather walked around me, and the putrid scent of him, that miasmic, fecal funk, made me swallow hard and lean against the table.

"A bath sounds delightful," he called out over his shoulder. "I saw a hose by the barn. I think I'll turn it on myself first, just to get the large chunks off. And the vermin."

I shook my head and turned off the kitchen television set. The front door opened and closed. I didn't move from the table. I didn't look at the bloodstain in the linoleum. Or out the window, where I'd probably glimpse one of the thousand demons hiding on this farmland.

I stared at my stomach instead, at my hands resting on my stomach. Specifically, my left hand. My wedding ring.

I'd never indulged in feelings of loneliness. Too dangerous. I'd learned that after my mother's murder. Loneliness could swallow you up, like a disease. Make you vulnerable to anything, even a smile.

But then I'd stopped being lonely. And what was more dangerous? Loneliness? Or having friends and family who could be taken from you?

"Grant," I murmured, reaching for him-which was as easy as opening myself to the love we shared. Always there, always burning. Heat speared through my chest, straight to my heart: golden light, hot as the sun, warming bone and blood. Our bond. In life, until death.

My cell phone rang.

I pulled it from my jeans, and smiled to myself when I saw the number. Like magic. I could cross vast distances in a heartbeat-travel through time-and at this very moment, five demons slept on my skin.

But a telephone felt like the biggest miracle of all.

"Hey," I answered, hearing a static buzz across the connection.

Grant said, "They're dying."

CHAPTER 11.

I never had a dog when I was growing up.

Once, when we pa.s.sed through Miami, I made the mistake of warming up to a stray mutt that was rooting around the bench where my mother and I were having ice cream. She told me not to feed the dog my waffle cone-but, whatever. Dog was hungry. Dog had big eyes.

Dog needed a home. I was twelve and needed a dog. He wasn't very big, and he had a goofy grin and big, floppy ears. He stuck close to me like it was love. My heart wanted to put him inside me and never let go.

I didn't let go. I convinced my mother to let us take him. The dog was overjoyed. We put him in the station wagon and drove out of Miami.

Then, that night, the boys woke up.

And the dog, terrified by them, ran away.

I cried so hard. I looked for him like crazy. My heart broke over that dog. I worried about him for years. Sometimes I still worry, even though I know he must be dead. All I hope is that he found someone who loved him, that he didn't go hungry. I hope soft hands touched him and made him a home.

Peace. For the dog.

And very little peace for me.

IT was hot under the trees, and the flies that grazed my tattooed arms stuttered as though electrocuted and dropped dead into the gra.s.s.

There were a lot of flies. No discrimination when it came to dead bodies. Demons, humans, were all the same. Meat. Blood. Bone. I stood beside a dead Mahati-old, wrinkled, wrapped in the braids of his hair. b.l.o.o.d.y vomit covered his lower chin and chest, and his one remaining hand was caked in a viscous red slime that still glistened in the afternoon light. The stench was vile.

Four feet away lay another Mahati, this one still alive. A child, with whole limbs and smooth silver skin pulled taut over jutting ribs. Vomiting had already begun, splashed over the gra.s.s: a color of red that was sharp as a p.r.i.c.k in my eyes.

His mother crouched beside him. She didn't look well, either. Patches of skin around her throat and chest had darkened to the color of tarnished silver, and there was an unfocused roving quality to her gaze that couldn't settle on her child-or Grant, who stood over the young demon, singing: a low reverberating om sound that slithered over my tattooed skin like a million little snakes.

I'd found him like this. No attempt at conversation, not even on my part, but I'd placed a bottle of water in his hands, along with a bag of pretzels; and he'd stopped just long enough to eat a bite, drink the bottle, then carry on. All the while, watching me with those dark eyes. I wanted to reach inside his brain and give it a good shake.

"It is not working," said Lord Ha'an.

"Grant can manipulate energy on a cellular level to induce healing. Broken bones, cancer, gunshot wounds. But this is different."

"Poison," he murmured with disgust.

I wasn't so sure we were still dealing with a poison; and that terrified me. Ha'an didn't seem to be picking up on the same clues-maybe, because his people had never fallen ill before. "You're sure none of them munched on those dead humans?"

"I am certain. They cannot lie to me."

"And you? You ate the hearts of the Mahati who consumed them. How do you feel?"

He hesitated. "No different."

I held his gaze. "Really."

"I am not deceiving you," he muttered. "But there is a . . . darkness . . . dimming the energy I share with my people. My strength comes from them. If this continues, it will affect me."

I looked back at Grant. Deep shadows surrounded his eyes, and his tight white knuckles had cracked, bleeding. Other parts of him were cracking, too: I saw a blister forming on his lip, and parts of his arms and face were mottled red, as if capillaries were bursting beneath his skin.

You are being cannibalized.

A child in the womb is the ultimate cannibal. As a mother, I was more than happy to be consumed. But the demons were not unborn children-and Grant was being deconstructed before my very eyes.

He needed help. More than I could give him. It hit me, suddenly, who I could ask. But the fact that it had taken me this long to realize that possibility said everything about my reluctance to engage her.

First things first. I backed away, gesturing for Lord Ha'an to follow. "We need to see what Jack can tell us."

"The murderer." The demon lord's voice dripped with disgust, and his long fingers made a violent, striking gesture that could have easily taken out my eyes if he'd been aiming his hands at me.