Labyrinth of Stars(15)

I crouched. “You didn’t come out here to chat. What message did Blood Mama pass on to you? I’ve already seen her once tonight, but I thought she was holding back.”

The demon’s aura, wispy and black as smoke, shrank from me and Zee until it was nothing but a dense, tight ball. “She was only aware of the massacre at the cabin. She didn’t know about the humans who died on your land. Our sentinels didn’t see them until it was too late.”

“I don’t care. And I’m sure that’s not all she wanted you to tell me.”

Tears leaked from the demon’s eyes. “You’re the last, Hunter. You are the last of your line. That’s what she wanted me to tell you.”

Cold splintered down my spine. Dek and Mal jerked from my hair, snapping their jaws at the possessed human’s face. She couldn’t even flinch—Zee’s grip was too tight.

“Is that so?” I whispered.

“The Aetar will never allow the child of a Lightbringer to live. Not a child who also holds your power. They’ll destroy this world first before that happens.”

Zee and I shared a quick look. It was true. I knew it. The Aetar were made entirely of sentient energy, capable of possessing and manipulating human flesh with the ease of a thought. They could be anywhere. And yes, it was easy to kill their mortal shell. But it was impossible to kill them.

Unless you were Grant. Or me. Which meant we had targets that could probably be seen from the moon painted on our backs.

But our daughter would have the boys as her protectors and guardians. An entire Reaper Army at her feet. The same army that for millions of years had razed and destroyed Aetar-controlled worlds.

And she would have the power of her father. A Lightbringer. The last of his kind. Born with the ability to heal, to harm, to twist and alter the very fabric of a soul, with nothing but his voice. His voice, which could manipulate the deepest, smallest, bonds of all the energy that consumed, and created, life. The same energy that gave the Aetar life.

Our daughter. One strong girl. And very dangerous.

But still . . . we had pretended that our secret was safe.

In the distance, I heard police sirens. Zee tilted his head, listening to something else.

“Cutter,” he said. “Mahati.”

I let out my breath and stood. Zee released the possessed waitress, and she slumped into the concrete, breathing hard.

“Thank you,” I said. “Save me some pie.”

“Go fuck yourself,” she whispered. “All of you are going to die. The humans will find your . . . army. And if by some miracle they don’t . . . you know that the Aetar already have.”

I needed a ginger ale, bad. My mouth tasted like shit. My heart felt worse.

I didn’t look back as I walked across the parking lot, taking no precaution to hide in the shadows. I breathed in the grease-bitter exhaust pumping from the diner’s kitchen, along with the lingering scent of strong perfume—probably from one of the teenage girls eating pie. I wanted to go inside and sit down. Order some pecan, or lemon meringue. Maybe peach, which my mother loved. It was so normal in there. Another world.

Behind the diner were two Dumpsters and a parked van with HOUSE OF PIES emblazoned on the side. No perfume here. Only the scent of rot. Dek licked the back of my ear. Mal slithered down my arm, winding around it like armor. I crossed between dried-out brown bushes, into the parking lot of a strip mall that looked like a bomb had hit it sometime back in the seventies. The police sirens got louder.

I heard another noise, too: a low, chopping motor, coming from the sky. Helicopter.

I walked faster.

Raw and Aaz peered over the edge of the strip mall’s roof, waved their half-eaten bears, and gave me little thumbs-up signs. Seeing that didn’t cheer me up in the slightest. The sky above them was giving way to light, and the heavy, unrelenting pound of the helicopter rotor shook the air. I could see it coming, half a mile away and closing. Whoever was in there probably had binoculars with a long-range camera.

The sirens were equally grinding. Maybe the possessed waitress had called the cops, but it seemed more likely that some human with sharp eyes had seen something. Right now, people were probably paranoid enough to take potshots at their own shadows.

I glimpsed a flash of red and blue at the intersection, heard the squeal of tires as a squad car turned hard, speeding toward the strip mall. Maybe it had nothing to do with us—and maybe there weren’t two demons hanging off my neck, humming “Jive Talkin’” at the tops of their lungs.

“You love this,” I muttered to Dek and Mal, and tapped Zee’s bony shoulder. “Are we being watched?”

He was silent a moment, head tilted. “Only eyes us. But quick.”