Labyrinth of Stars(4)

I’d forgotten about the demons and their music, but the drums stopped as soon as that scream hit the air. The silence was abrupt, complete. My heartbeat, Grant’s ragged breathing—a faint hiss in my ear—were suddenly all that existed, more real, more substantial than flesh.

But not as substantial as the severed head that rolled past me down the hill.

It was the width of a tire, and I glimpsed a contorted open mouth, huge white eyes, and sloped skull that all together resembled the misshapen face of giant-sized clay Gumby doll. Even the skin looked green, but in this darkness I couldn’t tell for certain. If my vision hadn’t been as good at night as it was in the day, I would never have seen it at all.

A bone-chilling howl rose from across my land—a cacophonic shriek of enraged demonic voices so discordant I wanted to cover my ears. But even that didn’t matter because I finally saw what was attacking us, and it was as terrible as I’d thought it would be.

Barrel-chested, bullish. All around us, shaking the earth—hulking, towering shapes more than five times our height, whose feet slammed into the trembling earth like pistons. Only at the last second did I catch impressions of details: naked, bloated, torsos; thick legs jiggling with fat and muscle, those startling white frog-eyes missing lids. I couldn’t count them all, but their bodies blocked out the night, and their mouths were slick, wet pits. Big enough to chew on me.

No chance of that. Raw and Aaz tore through them like their flesh was made of butter, plunging headfirst into pale chests that cracked open and poured out blood. Zee darted among them, flying from shadow to shadow, and each second he appeared it was to slash his claws across a throat, with such violence and strength their heads tore off, sometimes hanging from a ribbon of flesh as their bodies crashed.

Grant shouted a single word. It sounded slightly slurred, but the power should have still been there. All the power he needed to possess these creatures and end this.

Only, it didn’t work. The creatures, those giants, kept coming.

Mal nipped my ear. I whipped around, heart pounding, and swung my right arm. A blaze of light burned back the night. The creature nearest us bellowed, shielding his eyes. I didn’t look at what my hand had become—I already knew. The armor had transformed into a sword: silver, serrated, growing out of my forearm with smooth perfection.

I could feel my hand, somewhere beneath the armor—but the armor was alive, the armor was part of me, and in that moment I was furious, desperate. I’d never been much of a fighter. Left that to the boys. But what I lacked in martial arts skills, I made up for in sheer dumb luck—a little bit of courage—and a whole lot of stubbornness.

I darted forward, dodging the whistling arc of a falling ax, then sidestepped again as the ax almost swung, blade first, onto my head. The creature was moving too fast to predict his movements—and while distance would have been safer, Grant was behind me, on the ground and still struggling to rise.

Fast, but not strategic. Not even a little. The next time the ax came down, I lopped off the hand that held it. His wrist was thick as a tree trunk, but I felt no resistance in flesh or bone: I could have been tearing silk with my bare hands. The creature reared back, roaring in pain, and I slashed my sword across the only other parts of him I could reach: his knees.

His lower legs toppled sideways from his body, and he toppled with them—Zee appearing at the last moment to knock him backward, so he didn’t fall on me and Grant. His screams were cut off seconds later.

We were no longer alone. Mahati warriors swarmed the remaining three giants, slashing flesh with their razor-sharp fingers—and accompanying them were the Osul, who climbed those swinging bloated limbs like big cats wrestling with writhing trees. Some of the crimson-skinned Yorana had come, but they hung back like it was a spectator event, watching and smiling—smiling even more when they saw Grant still struggling to sit up. I wanted to kill them.

Instead, I fell on my knees beside Grant. Sitting still made me dizzy, and my heart pounded too fast. I hadn’t fought anything in months, and battling the unfamiliar—being ambushed—was even worse. Although nothing was as bad as seeing my husband on the ground, grimacing in pain—his lower leg covered in blood.

He had his hand up, trying weakly to fend off Mal, who was licking his face. An old human woman crouched over him, too: Mary, her white hair thick, wild, sticking out at electrocuted angles like some Einstein wig. No fat on her body, just leathery brown skin that covered more hard muscle than a starved wolf. She gripped a machete in her wrinkled, leathery right hand. In the other she held three darts, blood on their tips.