Labyrinth of Stars(57)

Mary stood in the middle of the front yard, holding her machete. I didn’t see Zee. No sign of Jack, either.

He was gone. He’d run. All because of a name.





CHAPTER 18




THERE are plenty of things in this life that really piss me off, and that’s fine. I’m a grumpy person. I don’t like steaks that are too tough to chew, or the condensation that gathers on a cold glass in summer. Something about that wet feeling on my fingers. I hate dirty public restrooms. Passive-aggressive behavior makes me crazy. I don’t like crowds, I can’t stand guns, and I not so secretly want to bury anyone who remakes my favorite action movies of the eighties.

Also, demons. Demons piss me off.

And my grandfather.

The first time I ever met him, he was full of secrets and half-truths—riddles, mysteries. Annoying, but also cute. I trusted him more, then. But after all these years, I’d come to the reluctant conclusion that it wasn’t just benevolence that made him so damn secretive. It was self-preservation. Not of his life, but his identity. A man unwilling to face his own demons was a man who could go on wearing a mask, able to justify, rationalize, moralize—all the bad decisions, the trauma, every bit of fucked-up-ness.

I sometimes also suspected that Jack still thought of himself as a god.

And gods don’t have to answer for shit.

Not even to family.



I dribbled water into Grant’s mouth from a soaked, ice-chilled, washrag—and said to Zee, “Ask the Shurik what it feels through its link with him.”

The Shurik started hissing as soon as I asked the question, and Zee leaned in close, eyes narrowed. Aaz and Raw were sprawled on the back of the couch above my husband, little legs dangling, teddy bears and bars of soap speared on their claws. The little demons were chewing on them with the sort of contagious mindless anxiety that made me want to rock into the fetal position alongside them.

Dek and Mal’s soft-throated singing didn’t help, either. It was an eerie, mournful version of “Against All Odds”—the one breakup song I really didn’t need to hear right now. I patted their heads, but that only made them sing louder.

The Shurik snapped its teeth. Zee grunted, ears flattening against his skull. I said, “What?”

“Shurik trying to heal him,” he rasped, dragging his claws around his feet, so hard and deep he almost cut the floorboard in half. “If cannot heal, then slow down sickness. But, resistance.”

“Resistance,” I muttered. “From what?”

Zee’s gaze flicked to Grant. “Him.”

I sat back, surprised—reaching instinctively for our link. Old habit. More of a habit than I had realized, before now. Of course, our connection was still missing, but I was taken off guard again by the hole left behind, the emptiness. Cut off my leg, arm, and it would have felt the same. Phantoms, echoes of memory, taking the place of what had been real, vibrant, and alive.

I laid my fingertips against Grant’s feverish brow, wishing he would wake up. “That doesn’t make sense. I thought he was moving past that. Why would he resist being healed now?”

The Shurik wriggled free of his shirt: a pasty, wrinkled worm with sharp teeth. It stretched across my husband’s chest, writhing toward my hand. I forced myself not to pull away, holding my breath as it nudged my fingertips. Low hisses exploded from its mouth. I felt the heat of its breath.

Zee cocked his head. “Says he always resisted. Before this. Since first bonded. Resisted link. Created wall.”

“But he feels the Shurik and Yorana in his head.”

“Feels, but not accepts. Same as resistance. Part of him . . . is afraid. Yorana sense that fear, makes them disdain. Shurik sense . . . and understand.”

The last creatures I would have expected to understand the fear of becoming one with demons would be the Shurik. Maybe that disbelief showed on my face, maybe it was in my scent or in my silence, because the little, wormlike creature flopped itself heavily across my husband’s neck and let out a hissy little sigh.

Raw and Aaz stilled. Zee flinched. Even Dek and Mal finally fell silent.

Zee murmured, “Shurik remember old days, before we bonded to them. Old days, on old world, when nothing mattered but sun, nothing but water, nothing but peace. Ate plants. Explored sea. Got fat on light.” He fell silent for a moment, staring at his claws. “Then we brought darkness.”

We brought darkness. My boys, who were the last survivors of their world, who had prayed to their gods for help in fighting an enemy they still would not name but that had swept across planets, civilizations, and destroyed them.

Maybe there were no gods, but something had answered my boys. Answered, and invaded them, giving them power and the strength to gather together the last surviving clans of the last surviving worlds, to form an army that would push back the force that had come to destroy them.