Labyrinth of Stars (A Hunter Kiss Novel) Read online

  Doesn’t take much to look normal. Acting normal can be a little more problematic.

  The police were already parked and walking around when we reached the farmhouse. Two men, both white, swinging their flashlights across the barn and inside the window of the old parked station wagon. I knew some of the demon children liked to visit sometimes—I hoped they weren’t around or had the good sense to hide.

  The third cop was different, and that was because he was possessed by a demon. I could see it, plain as day—and that thunderous black aura was so violent, so encompassing as it roiled around his uniformed body, I couldn’t imagine how other humans didn’t sense it. But that was the danger of those demonic parasites: They were good at hiding, good at slipping under the skin and feeding off a person’s pain. Or worse, forcing that person to make others feel pain.

  For years, those were all I hunted—parasites, possessing humans—exorcising them, feeding their spirit bodies to the boys. They’d been the only demons haunting earth until the prison had split open. Easier times, now that I thought about it. More straightforward.

  The demon in front of us, though, wasn’t like the rest of her kind. Only one parasite had that aura.

  The possessed cop was waiting for us beside his SUV. The others began approaching but were still too far away to hear us.

  “Blood Mama,” I said. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  Blood Mama, the lady lord of the parasites, and the oldest, slyest nemesis of my bloodline. She’d ordered my mother’s murder and the murder of so many of my ancestors; and yet, we had a truce. For now.

  “I heard there was a disturbance in the Force,” he replied, but in a particularly sultry, feminine voice that totally did not match the gray stubble, beer belly, or the tattoo of Bugs Bunny on his forearm. He might have been in his fifties, and I sort of recognized his face from trips into town. Definitely the sheriff. Blood Mama didn’t slip into the skins of anyone who didn’t have beauty, wealth, or power.

  “You,” he said to Grant. “I hoped you might be dead.”

  “Ha,” replied my husband, dryly. “That never gets old.”

  He scowled, but the two other officers were finally near enough to hear us. Up close, they weren’t just white—they were pale as ghosts and looked shaken, scared. Maybe even traumatized. I didn’t think it was anything they’d seen here, or else they’d be talking—but something bad had happened. It made me even more nervous.

  But no one mentioned anything. Blood Mama—or whoever she had possessed—proceeded with the official questioning. In front of the others, his voice didn’t hold a trace of her charm: It was gruff, deep, masculine. The neighbors reported strange sounds. The neighbors heard screams, even though they lived miles away. What were you doing tonight? Could the men look around?

  I kept quiet for the most part. Grant spoke, using his voice—his real voice—and I felt the shimmer of his power on my skin as he soothed the other two police officers, twisting their minds, making them believe we were harmless, taking away their fear. I saw it happen in their faces—a slow relaxation of their jaws and shoulders, a better light in their eyes.

  Dangerous, manipulative—and necessary. If Grant hadn’t been such a good man, if I didn’t have such faith in him, I would have been forced to take his life years ago.

  My mother wouldn’t have waited at all. Keeping a man alive who could alter the fabric of any living creature’s soul was not what she would have considered wise. Maybe the fact that the boys and I were immune gave me the distance to have a different perspective.

  “I think we’re done here,” said the sheriff. “You boys go home. I’ll finish up.”

  No argument. In less than a minute, the other patrol car was ripping down our long driveway. And Blood Mama was back, smiling at us through her stolen lips.

  He ran his hands down his body, a caricature of seductiveness, and gave me a slow wink. “Do you want me like this?”

  “I’ve had enough trauma for the night,” I replied. “I suppose you heard?”

  “Of course.” Blood Mama leaned against the SUV, examining the thick, rough hands of the body she’d stolen. Raw crept out from beneath the vehicle. Aaz was already perched on the hood, carving something into the metal. The sound his claws made was hideous, but no one said a word.

  “You’re both fucked,” added Blood Mama, and smiled. “This should be fun to watch.”

  “You don’t think you’ll be affected?” Grant asked, in a cold voice.

  “Pfft. Spare me my life.” Blood Mama glanced down at Zee, who crouched beside me. “My old wretched King. You don’t have the army to fight the Aetar. We didn’t have the army before, and we were a million strong. Even the Lightbringers could not save themselves. You think this will be any different?”

  Zee gave the other demon a long, steady look. Blood Mama, after a moment, flinched—and glanced away. “Fine. As you wish. I have nothing more to add except that my children do not know where the Aetar are hiding on this world—if they’re here at all. These creatures they sent through the Labyrinth to attack you and Grant . . . it might have just been the first poke, to see what would happen, and test you.” Blood Mama’s gaze found mine, then dropped to my belly. “They’ll poke again, Hunter.”

  My jaw tightened. Blood Mama opened the SUV door and climbed in. Before pulling away, though, the window rolled down, and that thunderous aura spilled out around the sheriff. “Have you decided what to do with those dead constructs on your hill?”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Will you let your army eat them?”

  “No. That’s disgusting.”

  Blood Mama looked at me like I was a fool. “You refuse to let the demons eat the flesh of humans because it is ‘wrong’ . . . but these creatures, and any the Aetar send, are your enemies. If you wish your demons to think of them as such, as prey, then you must give them that flesh to feed on. Give them that pain. Give them the hunt. There must always be a hunt. If you want any chance of surviving, you must remember that.” The demon’s smile was cold, mirthless. “You, who are the Hunter, with the old wyrm inside your heart.”

  I didn’t say anything, and that smile widened into something close to a silent laugh.

  “What is so funny?” Grant asked. “You’re dying to tell us something.”

  “You can see that, but you cannot read my mind. How delightful.” Blood Mama blew him a kiss. “Your night is far from over. I would conserve your strength if I were you.”

  And before any of us could say another word—or, more importantly, before Grant could, and compel her to stay and talk—that SUV roared away in a cloud of dust and fumes. Aaz, still clinging to the hood, leapt off and landed on top of Raw. Dek and Mal, who had been hiding in the shadows of my hair, poked their heads free and started humming Bon Jovi’s “Runaway.”

  I took Grant’s hand. “Tell me everything is going to be okay.”

  “Everything is going to be okay,” he said, and drew me close for a long tight hug. “Breathe,” he whispered. “We’re still here.”

  I exhaled, slowly, and it almost hurt. I looked down at Zee, trailing my fingers through his spiked hair. The little demon leaned against me.

  “How about you?” I said to him. “What do you think about all this?”

  He hesitated. But before he could say anything—if he was going to say anything—my cell phone rang.

  “Don’t answer that,” Grant said.

  “I don’t want to.” I reached into my back pocket for my phone, not taking my gaze off him. “Hello?”

  “Find a television,” said a quiet, male voice on the other end of the line. Byron, the most serious, grown-up teenager I’d ever met. “You need to see something.”

  Dread spread through me. Zee sighed, and once again pressed his ear to my stomach.

  “Ash,” he murmured. “Fire, for dreams.”

  CHAPTER 4

  PEOPLE had to die, of course. I always knew that was how it would start. I only hoped we
would have more time.

  The first murder—we got lucky. Single male, no family, driving a pickup truck that police later found in a ditch at the side of the road. The demons were so hungry for human flesh they didn’t leave a speck of blood. The man might as well have walked away from his life. Which is what the authorities finally concluded.

  The second time made us sweat. A grandfather, fishing along a secluded riverbed. Four days after he was supposed to come home, a park ranger found a fishing rod—and four wrinkled fingers.

  That caused a stir. But the investigation didn’t go anywhere. Bodies couldn’t be found, and no one was arrested.

  The third time, though . . . that’s where it blew the fuck up.

  Frat boys and their girlfriends out for a weekend of crazy partying. A cabin in the woods. No one around for miles. Like, the worst cliché ever. Right down to the massacre—and the bodies eaten to the bone.

  Some kids were still missing. I knew they wouldn’t be found.

  In the first twenty-four hours, commentators speculated it was the work of a religious (cue: Satanic) cult. Or someone gone high and crazy. Maybe a drug cartel (one of the dead students was from Spain, the TV announcers repeated endlessly—as if there were any cartels in Barcelona). Terrorists were on the list, some new order of Cannibal Jihadists, by way of crazy and oh, fuck.

  And there it might have ended. If the tape recorder hadn’t been found.

  Someone had set it up in one of the bedrooms, probably to record the girls getting naked.

  Instead, it captured a lot more than that.

  BLOOD. I could smell it, thick and bitter behind the smoke from burning fires: pitching red light, hot light, across the encampment.

  I could have used another hour without that death scent. Hell, I could have used a whole lifetime. I didn’t need any of this right now. I had enough problems.

  My land had become a refugee camp, split into four quadrants, one for each of the clans. Right now I was in Mahati territory, and all around us were small structures built from canvas and wood, bits of scrap: tents, in the roughest form, with small sleeping pads and fires burning. Little of anything except the living. Little of that, as well.

  Every demon in front of me was broken, physically. I’d never seen the ravages of starvation before the Mahati. Never faced it, with all its terrible desperation and consequences. No adult had all his limbs. Elderly Mahati showed the most damage: missing arms, legs, long chunks of flesh cut from chests and backs. Prison food. Feeding the young from their own bodies. Cannibalized so others could survive.

  But here, tonight, cows had been slaughtered. Cows—and the giants that I was going to let the demon clans carve up for supper. Something I wasn’t going to think about. Ever.

  Right now, though, I was only looking at cattle. Mahati children eagerly crouched over bulging bovine bellies that had been split from throat to tail—each of them bouncing with excitement as they removed intestines with their long, delicate fingers, while others collected blood. Adults squatted on the other sides of the huge beasts, skinning them with razor-sharp fingernails and serrated blades—a careful process that wasted nothing.

  I imagined human bodies sprawled in place of the cows.

  “Fuck,” I said. “No humans. That was all I asked.”

  I heard a slow exhalation—a little too controlled, a bit too careful. I knew that sound. I breathed like that when I was angry. I breathed like that when I needed to calm the fuck down. Which was all the time, lately.

  Lord Ha’an shot me a hard look. “I believe the temptation for a taste was too great.”

  I met his gaze with more calm than I felt. “Every single Mahati is bonded to you. Guided by your heart. Maybe you hunger too much for humans.”

  His fingers stilled, his stare faltered.

  I walked away, furious—and panicked out of my mind. I hoped I was hiding it, but cold sweat trickled down my back, and my legs were unsteady. My hands, curled into fists, felt weak as water. I’d fought demon armies, traveled through time, gotten the shit beat out of me more often than I could count—but this was the first moment in my life I felt close to losing my nerve.

  I didn’t know what to do. Bad enough the Aetar had sent constructs to attack us, armed with drugs that would specifically neutralize Grant. Now I had to deal with public exposure of the worst kind.

  Enter Labyrinth, Zee had said. Find new world.

  And leave this one forever. Yes, in a simpler time, maybe I could have dropped the demons off on some random planet, given them a push, and said good-bye—but even so, chances of finding my earth again would be slim to none. And if I was so lucky, it might be earth a million years from now. The Labyrinth was a maze of time and space, an endless road between countless worlds. Never straight, never predictable. Even with a guide.

  Movement caught my eye. Far to my right, in the camp. A Mahati child, darting around the trees, light on his feet—barely a wisp of skin and bone. Chest heaving, smiling with excitement, so much like a human boy I almost forgot he was a demon. His long fingers were wet, smeared red; he held the entire heart of a cow, dripping with blood.

  The child collapsed in front of an old wrinkled male with no legs and only one arm. Even from a distance, I could hear the quick murmur of a soft young voice and watched him offer the heart to the elder Mahati. The old demon didn’t say a word, but a grim, satisfied smile touched his mouth.

  I glanced away, but not before Lord Ha’an saw what had caught my attention.

  “A’loua,” he murmured. “The child is alive because his forebear fed him his own flesh. And now the child repays him.”

  “I know,” I whispered.

  Lord Ha’an gave me a long, piercing look. “Our Kings who are bonded to you, young Queen . . . all the blood they have spilled while bound to your heart? What does that say about your hunger?”

  “It says I’m a monster.” I stopped walking and pointed. “Are those cats drunk?”

  I was staring at an area outside the encampment, thick with shadows that gathered beyond the ring of campfires. Mahati warriors crouched in the thick grass, long fingers sunk into the dirt: anchoring themselves into preternatural stillness, every inch of them tense, taut, starving.

  And then there were the demons from the Osul clan.

  As a kid on the road with my mom, we’d stay in strange hotels in strange cities, and the only constant I clung to (besides Zee and the boys, and my mother’s sharp smiles and guns) were the Saturday morning cartoons. Those were my religion—and each series was a different god.

  Voltron, Transformers, even the fucking Smurfs. But nothing, I mean nothing, was better than She-Ra. And after She-Ra, there was He-Man. Along with his trusty sidekick, Battle Cat. Who wouldn’t want to ride a giant green tiger into battle against the Forces of Evil?

  No one would be riding the Osul—not unless they wanted to be eaten—but those demons certainly made me feel like a kid again every time I looked at them.

  They were sprawled on their backs, in the most undignified poses imaginable. Muscular legs stuck lazily up in the air. Serrated claws jutted from flexing paws, and scales glistened beneath ragged silver pelts. Long tails rose and fell against the grass, a slow, thudding rhythm that was way too relaxed to make me comfortable. One of them yawned, revealing fangs almost a foot long, curved like scythes.

  “I do not know the meaning of ‘drunk,’” Lord Ha’an replied, somewhat dryly. “But if you intend to say that battling Aetar constructs, tasting their blood, and smelling their agonized deaths makes them want to contemplate breeding, then yes, they are drunk.”

  I gave him a long look. “Why are they here?”

  “They are acting as . . . guards,” he replied carefully, and I choked down a terrible, inappropriate laugh. “There was a rush on the flesh when these human bodies were first discovered. Some of it was distributed before I became aware of the deaths.”

  A rush on the flesh. Something the size of a golf ball threatened to rush up my thro
at. Nausea from the pregnancy or total disgust, it didn’t matter. This was my fault. Humans were dead because I’d gone against my upbringing—and chosen compassion instead of genocide.

  I could still make it right. Lord Ha’an stood beside me: flesh and blood. Kill him, and his people would die. All their lives, bound together. It would be easy.

  But the demon child and his cannibalized elder were right behind me; and they weren’t alone. Death and murder, compassion and love. Right here. Right here, amongst these demons.

  Kill that.

  “Fuck,” I muttered again.

  I could almost see the dead humans in the grass. They couldn’t have been here long. I’d learned about the cabin massacre less than an hour before, but according to the reports, those murders had taken place a full night before. Somehow, the authorities had managed to keep it quiet until now. FBI were involved, God only knew who else. The two survivors, boys who had been having sex in the locked basement, had called 911 once the screaming started. Otherwise, it would have taken days for the bodies to be found.

  I was certain, as well, that the tape of the Mahati had not been intended for public release. Something that big, that powerful . . . it was too much. Someone had leaked it. If I had to take bets, that someone had been possessed by a demon. Probably Blood Mama. Just to fuck with me.

  The Mahati warriors didn’t so much as twitch as I approached the second killing ground, but the Osul stiffened and rolled onto their stomachs. No longer relaxed. Not even a little. Shoulders hulked forward, muscles and bone shifting until the demons appeared, from my vantage, to be little more than big toothy heads attached to a solid, impressively rippling wall of scales, fur, and claws.

  Growls rumbled in their chests. Lord Ha’an moved between us, making a guttural warning sound, but the Osul ignored him. He wasn’t their lord. And I didn’t have time for this shit.

  “Zee,” I said. The little demon had been drifting in and out of the shadows but reappeared at my side, coalescing from between blades of grass. His ears pressed flat against his skull, and his gaze, as he looked at the Osul, was cold, narrow, and disgusted. Which should have been enough to shut them up. Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to notice—which meant they were blind, or just very stupid.