Hunter Kiss: Labyrinth Of Stars Part 26

I sensed movement behind me. Tracker eased into my line of sight. His sweater was torn, and blood dotted his throat. But his eyes were sharp as ever, raking me up and down.

"You look terrible." He glanced at the boys, frowning. "So do they. That's . . . not possible."

"Will survive," Zee rasped, prowling close. "Others may not."

"Are you hurt?" I asked Tracker.

"It was nothing. A human matter, and not Aetar."

"He forgets himself," murmured Oturu, "and hunts for those who are not his Lady."

"You were a hero," I said.

A disdainful smile touched Tracker's mouth. "Someone has to be."

I didn't ask what he'd done, whom he had saved. I felt wistful, though. Had that been me, once upon a time? Had I ever really helped people? I liked to think I had, but I wondered sometimes. All those years, alone on the road, keeping to myself-the stranger, always pa.s.sing through.

"No sign of the Aetar," he said. "Found none of their creatures. It didn't feel right, though. There was something in the air, everywhere we went. I haven't felt that weight in a long time."

"What did it mean before?"

His jaw tensed. "During the war. Before battle. We knew the demons were coming, and there was nothing we could do to stop them. We just had to be strong enough to stay alive."

"Great," I said. "It's not going to get easier. We're going into the Labyrinth. You've been there. You and Oturu, and the boys. I need all your help."

Aaz hugged my legs, while Raw handed me a cold ginger ale. I took a sip and extended it to Tracker. After a brief moment, he took it from me-or tried. I held on, for a second longer than necessary.

"I don't know how to do this," I said. "How to enter the Labyrinth. I can't afford to get lost. I don't have time."

Oturu loomed, his cloak writhing open, blotting out the stars as he surrounded us. Tracker shuddered and pulled away from me. I felt cold, but safe. It hadn't always been that way-once, I would have been terrified, skin crawling. But hearts change. Monsters become beautiful.

"We would hear your heart across the universe," Oturu said, in a voice as soft as death. "You will not be alone. But we might still lose our way."

"The Labyrinth has a mind of its own," Tracker added, rubbing his hand against his thigh. "We could wander for a thousand years and come back to this planet and find nothing the same. Or arrive just at the moment we left."

"My husband is there. I have to find him." The cure might be a fool's errand-but Grant was flesh and blood, and mine. My man. My heart.

Shadows moved through Tracker's eyes. I didn't understand that look, or his silence. But Oturu murmured, "As the Labyrinth wills it, so we shall be," then: "The hunt will be sweet."

It'll be terrible, I thought. This won't end well.

If I'd ever been certain of anything, it was that. My sense of foreboding had only gotten worse-a darkening dread that felt the same as memory, as if I'd already seen something terrible, and it was lodged inside me. I'd never felt that way before. Maybe it was just nerves, but I was afraid it was something else.

I was afraid Zee was right. We wouldn't be back here. Not like this. Not ever again.

I looked at my mother's grave, at my grandmother buried beside her. I stared and stared, wis.h.i.+ng I could have stayed a child forever, that I could be a child again-a do-over, only this time I wouldn't take for granted what I had. I'd appreciate my mother and her sacrifices. I'd throw away all the resentment that had plagued me as a teen.

I'd be a better daughter.

"Just bones," Zee rasped, threading his claws through my fingers, holding my hand. Raw and Aaz leaned against me, dragging teddy bears from the shadows. Dek and Mal made a mournful sound, and began singing a very sad version of "On the Road Again."

"Just bones," I agreed quietly. "But you know it's more than that."

Zee rubbed his sharp little cheek against my hand. "Still have us."

I swallowed hard. "Always."

Tracker made a rude sound. "I have no idea what we're supposed to be killing, but if I have to watch one more second of this s.h.i.+t, I'll murder myself."

Oturu yanked so hard on the man's collar, he fell to his knees. For once, I didn't protest. "Besides Grant, we're also hunting an Aetar. A powerful one. Goes by the name of the Devourer."

Tracker started. "Are you out of your mind?"

I ignored him. "Please," I said to Oturu, holding up my right hand, with its armor gleaming.

Tendrils of his hair slid around my forearm, caressing that rippling, silver artifact. "You are a daughter of the Labyrinth," he replied, softly, as the bottom half of his face began to glow, as though bathed in moonlight. "You have your birthrights."

I stared at him. "I don't know what that means."

Tracker grunted, grim and mocking amus.e.m.e.nt in his eyes. Zee rasped, "Means you want it, and door will open."

What I wanted was Grant, safe. I closed my eyes, focusing on him, on my need. It wasn't like opening the void to hop from place to place-another mystery, as yet unexplainable. This, instead, felt bigger. A wider leap. I could feel a wall just beyond my thoughts, a barrier that I pushed against, and kept pus.h.i.+ng.

I thought of my mother-then Grant-and imagined a door.

A door that opened.

WHEN I could see again, I found myself in a forest.

I was sprawled on my stomach. Moss cradled my body, and a snail oozed past my nose, less than an inch away. I glimpsed a ma.s.sive fallen log, bursting with ferns and twisted saplings, and when I turned my head, just slightly, I was confronted with the base of a tree trunk so immense I could not see the end of it from where I lay. I was lost in roots the size of minivans, and the canopy was a distant cloud of green, far above my head.

There are mysteries, and there are mysteries, and it's all a bit like p.o.r.n-you know it when you see it, and your mileage may vary.

For me, there was no confusion about the Labyrinth. I didn't know what the h.e.l.l it was. I'd been in it before but never by intent-and then, only for such brief moments, I still wasn't sure what I'd seen or done. If, even, it had all been just a dream.

This felt like a dream.

It was not dark-not exactly-but there was no bright sun to be glimpsed, either. An odd twilight, caught in shades of silver and heather. The boys were scattered around me, despite the light. I kissed Dek's little cheek, then Mal, hugging them close. Their purrs were quiet, a bit broken and uncertain. Zee perched on a root, staring into the distance-while Raw and Aaz climbed the tree beside me. Teddy-bear backpacks, the kind small children wore, were strapped to their backs.

I tried to stand. Took several attempts-my legs were weak-but I managed to grab hold of a ma.s.sive root structure and haul myself up. I glimpsed more trees-scattered and impossibly ma.s.sive-an endless number of them disappearing into the shadows. I craned my neck and still couldn't see the top.

I tried to find Tracker. Glimpsed movement, but when I looked up again, all I saw were dark birds, winging silently above my head. Ravens, perhaps. A soft breeze lifted my hair.

"The Labyrinth has no wind," said Tracker, just behind me.

I managed not to flinch. "Then what did I just feel?"

"Wind from another world." He scrabbled on top of the root and perched there like a hawk. "Stolen through open doors. Same with the birds, or any life you find here. None of it is native."

"And the forest?"

Tracker hesitated, rubbing his chest like it hurt. "I don't know. I've never . . . been here before."

"So who taught you those other things?"

A faint furrow gathered in his brow-rare sign of confusion-but he did not answer me. Just slid down the other side of the root and disappeared. I searched for Oturu and felt a tingle at the back of my neck. I looked up again, just in time to glimpse a shadow floating amongst the trees.

I scrabbled down from my mossy nest, using the fat, coiled roots around me as a highway system, a forest sidewalk. I felt small as an ant compared to the trees, each of which seemed fat as an entire city block. Skysc.r.a.pers had never made me feel so insignificant-nor any man-made structure, mountain, or canyon. But this was different.

This was breathless wonder. First twilight, first hush, a silence so expectant and pure that to make a sound, to even breathe, felt as though I was intruding upon the gestation of miracles. Ancient did not belong in this place, ancient was too young a word, but for every step I traveled, I felt more certain that I walked amongst immense and dreaming souls and that I was nothing but a dream, a fragment, an echo lost in the heart of eternity. I wondered if mankind had been born from trees, or if trees walked amongst men as their own dreams, born and born again.

We are home, whispered a small voice inside my head. We are home in the heart of the endless wood.

And the darkness, which had been silent all this time, murmured: It is in the blood.

I found Tracker moving toward me through a clutch of large ferns, each frond nearly as large as his body. He rubbed his chest like it hurt-which was odd enough to make me stare. Tracker did not show pain. I had stabbed him in the foot once, and he'd practically asked for more.

"What is it?" I asked him.

Tracker faltered. "Nothing."

"I'll take that as a something."

He balled his hand into a fist. I picked up my pace, pa.s.sing a mossy knoll covered in small purple flowers, like bluebells, only tinier. "This isn't what I expected."

"I'm surprised you had any expectations."

I hesitated. "I was in the Wasteland, remember?"

A place where souls were thrown to be forgotten. I had walked the dark side of the Labyrinth, buried alive. Nothing but a heartbeat in the endless dark.

I was the only person to ever escape the Wasteland. And though I knew that the Labyrinth was much more than that dark, endless hole, I could not help but a.s.sociate one with the other. The Wasteland was the nightmare that never died.

Tracker was silent a moment. "I'm sorry for that."

I shrugged, watching Zee prowl ahead of us, slinking over roots and through the ferns with a hushed, preternatural grace. Raw and Aaz were still in the trees, leaping from trunk to trunk, absolutely silent. I could only see them because of the little teddy bears dangling from their backs.

"You've been here before?" I asked him.

"No." Pain flickered through his eyes as he looked through the trees, but when he turned his gaze on me it was flat, empty. "Oturu didn't free me, then. But I felt this place around us."

"What is it like when you're not free?" I asked him, impulsively. "When he has you . . . inside him?"

"What do you think?"

"I think it's h.e.l.l," I told him. "I'm sorry."

Tracker pulled ahead. "You brought me here to help you, not be friends."

"Wait-"

"I track," he interrupted. "That's what I am. When the Aetar made me, I got a skill. I can find anything."

"Yes," I said, wis.h.i.+ng I could take back my question.

His jaw tightened. "Your husband is somewhere ahead of us, but I can't tell you anything else except that he's far away and alive."

I said nothing. Tracker ran ahead, little more than a lean shadow darting along wide root structures that tumbled and twisted between the ma.s.sive trees. He looked as small as I felt, but far more graceful. I hurried to catch up, falling into a careless run that made me feel as though I were flying; helped by the boys, who fell down from the trees and raced alongside me-my wolves.

A tingling sensation arced across my back, raising goose pimples. I thought I was just cold. But the sensation intensified until it felt like a live wire was being threaded from the base of my neck, down between my shoulders. Dek and Mal made an alarmed trilling noise, tightening their hold on my neck.

Zee skidded to a stop, looking back at me with his eyes wide, alarmed. From above, Oturu called out. I could barely hear him. I was still running, but my body felt strange, like it was being sucked sideways into a ma.s.sive vacuum cleaner.

Oh, s.h.i.+t, I thought, right before I went completely blind.

I tumbled, upside down-jerked to the side-shaken like I was in some giant's fist. I couldn't see. My teeth rattled. Hot air washed over me with such violence and intensity, my skin felt singed. I reached for my first source of relief-the darkness inside me-but all it whispered was, Open your eyes.

But I'd already started coughing. The air was bitter, searing my nostrils and eyes. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I glimpsed a dry, cracked plain in every direction, straight to the horizon. Nothing else. No life. Del and Mal clutched my ears with their little claws. Looming above us, blocking out a dark purple sky, were two huge moons. Pale and white as ice, and creased with gas clouds.

I tried to take a breath, but the air couldn't seem to reach my lungs; and it burned, it burned.

But I almost forgot that because when I looked down, covering my mouth, I glimpsed a splash of red at the corner of my eyes.

Bodies. Ten feet away on my left, skin crimson and peeling.

Yorana. Demons.

CHAPTER 27.

I tried calling out Grant's name, but the air was killing me. I grabbed my right hand, feeling the armor flow beneath my grip. Dek and Mal were keening in my ear.

Help, I thought, choking. It must have been night on this planet. No tattoos on my skin, no boys-who could have breathed for me.

A dark blur slammed into the dirt, cracking the earth. I stumbled backward from the shock wave of the impact, which sounded like a tree breaking. Glimpsed bladed feet, long and straight, just before a sheet of darkness billowed and heaved in the still air, whipping about with such violence it could have been hit with the winds of a hurricane. Shadows filled those folds, bottomless, endless. Reaching for me.

I fell forward into that embrace, and was swallowed.

It wasn't the void, and it wasn't a dream, but what surrounded me for those brief moments was alive, crawling over me, into me, through my mouth and ears, pressing against my eyes. Hands grabbed my wrists, then let go, only to be replaced by grasping fingers tugging my hair, and the sc.r.a.pe of something sharp, like teeth, against my leg. I couldn't see what was touching me. I couldn't fight.

Below my heart, the darkness tightened its coils, rising to look through my eyes.