Labyrinth of Stars(9)

The third time, though . . . that’s where it blew the fuck up.

Frat boys and their girlfriends out for a weekend of crazy partying. A cabin in the woods. No one around for miles. Like, the worst cliché ever. Right down to the massacre—and the bodies eaten to the bone.

Some kids were still missing. I knew they wouldn’t be found.

In the first twenty-four hours, commentators speculated it was the work of a religious (cue: Satanic) cult. Or someone gone high and crazy. Maybe a drug cartel (one of the dead students was from Spain, the TV announcers repeated endlessly—as if there were any cartels in Barcelona). Terrorists were on the list, some new order of Cannibal Jihadists, by way of crazy and oh, fuck.

And there it might have ended. If the tape recorder hadn’t been found.

Someone had set it up in one of the bedrooms, probably to record the girls getting naked.

Instead, it captured a lot more than that.



BLOOD. I could smell it, thick and bitter behind the smoke from burning fires: pitching red light, hot light, across the encampment.

I could have used another hour without that death scent. Hell, I could have used a whole lifetime. I didn’t need any of this right now. I had enough problems.

My land had become a refugee camp, split into four quadrants, one for each of the clans. Right now I was in Mahati territory, and all around us were small structures built from canvas and wood, bits of scrap: tents, in the roughest form, with small sleeping pads and fires burning. Little of anything except the living. Little of that, as well.

Every demon in front of me was broken, physically. I’d never seen the ravages of starvation before the Mahati. Never faced it, with all its terrible desperation and consequences. No adult had all his limbs. Elderly Mahati showed the most damage: missing arms, legs, long chunks of flesh cut from chests and backs. Prison food. Feeding the young from their own bodies. Cannibalized so others could survive.

But here, tonight, cows had been slaughtered. Cows—and the giants that I was going to let the demon clans carve up for supper. Something I wasn’t going to think about. Ever.

Right now, though, I was only looking at cattle. Mahati children eagerly crouched over bulging bovine bellies that had been split from throat to tail—each of them bouncing with excitement as they removed intestines with their long, delicate fingers, while others collected blood. Adults squatted on the other sides of the huge beasts, skinning them with razor-sharp fingernails and serrated blades—a careful process that wasted nothing.

I imagined human bodies sprawled in place of the cows.

“Fuck,” I said. “No humans. That was all I asked.”

I heard a slow exhalation—a little too controlled, a bit too careful. I knew that sound. I breathed like that when I was angry. I breathed like that when I needed to calm the fuck down. Which was all the time, lately.

Lord Ha’an shot me a hard look. “I believe the temptation for a taste was too great.”

I met his gaze with more calm than I felt. “Every single Mahati is bonded to you. Guided by your heart. Maybe you hunger too much for humans.”

His fingers stilled, his stare faltered.

I walked away, furious—and panicked out of my mind. I hoped I was hiding it, but cold sweat trickled down my back, and my legs were unsteady. My hands, curled into fists, felt weak as water. I’d fought demon armies, traveled through time, gotten the shit beat out of me more often than I could count—but this was the first moment in my life I felt close to losing my nerve.

I didn’t know what to do. Bad enough the Aetar had sent constructs to attack us, armed with drugs that would specifically neutralize Grant. Now I had to deal with public exposure of the worst kind.

Enter Labyrinth, Zee had said. Find new world.

And leave this one forever. Yes, in a simpler time, maybe I could have dropped the demons off on some random planet, given them a push, and said good-bye—but even so, chances of finding my earth again would be slim to none. And if I was so lucky, it might be earth a million years from now. The Labyrinth was a maze of time and space, an endless road between countless worlds. Never straight, never predictable. Even with a guide.

Movement caught my eye. Far to my right, in the camp. A Mahati child, darting around the trees, light on his feet—barely a wisp of skin and bone. Chest heaving, smiling with excitement, so much like a human boy I almost forgot he was a demon. His long fingers were wet, smeared red; he held the entire heart of a cow, dripping with blood.

The child collapsed in front of an old wrinkled male with no legs and only one arm. Even from a distance, I could hear the quick murmur of a soft young voice and watched him offer the heart to the elder Mahati. The old demon didn’t say a word, but a grim, satisfied smile touched his mouth.