Labyrinth of Stars(89)

Oh, shit, 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 scrape 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.

You dare, came its slow whisper, and the crawling sensation stopped: Those hands and teeth fled from my skin. Strength flooded my limbs, washing through me like a cleansing, dark fire.

And then I was free, on my knees, vomiting into a fern. Cool air surrounded me, but the slow burn remained beneath my skin—power, skimming through me, making the hairs on my arms stand straight up. I closed my eyes, listening to that night fire, listening to its absence of light, which felt like another kind of star—falling, falling, inside me.

This is what waits, whispered the darkness. It is freedom.

And the hunger? I asked. Your hunger destroys.

Hunter. That is beautiful, too.

Dek and Mal chirped. I opened my eyes, vision blurred with tears. Zee knelt in front of me, so close his nose rubbed mine. Raw and Aaz were pressed on either side of him.

“Maxine,” he rasped.

“What happened?” I croaked.

“Fell through a door.” Tracker knelt, tilting back my head and peering into my eyes. “You hit another world.”

“Dead world.” I pushed his hands away but started coughing. “Dead Yorana were there.”

“But not your man. He’s not there.”

Zee rammed his claws through a fern, agitated. “But came this way.”

Yes, and some of his demons had fallen through that door, just like I had. And died there. I didn’t want to think about the same thing happening to Grant. But maybe his ability to see fields of energy would save him. I’d felt a tingle, right before the fall—that had to be something that would alert him as well.

Oturu loomed. I turned, peering up at him. His mouth was set in a hard line, and the shadows beneath the brim of his hat were especially dark.

“Thank you,” I said.

Tendrils of his hair reached for my hands. But before Oturu could touch me, Tracker placed himself between us—grabbing my waist and helping me rise.

“Be more careful,” he said in a gruff voice, steering me away from the tall demon. “You might not survive the next drop.”

I stared at him, remembering the assault of hands and teeth inside Oturu’s cloak, wondering if that was what Tracker had to endure—and if so, how he could survive that impossible prison.

I looked back at Oturu, who stood perfectly still in the twilight shadows of the Labyrinth forest, watching us. Even his cloak did not move.

Raw tugged on my hand and pulled a bottle of water from his teddy-bear backpack—along with a small packet of M&M’s. I took both, grateful. My throat still hurt from breathing the air on that planet. Aaz was hugging his own teddy bear, giving me a mournful look. I stopped, dropped into a crouch, and hugged him as tight as I could. I needed to, more badly than I could admit.