“Sarai,” Jack said again. “You have always been my friend.”
And I am still your friend, she whispered, across all our minds. But you have not always been as you are now, Old Wolf. And I am sorry . . . I am so very sorry . . . that this is how you must learn the truth.
My grandfather staggered. I saw movement behind him—Tracker. I hadn’t noticed him nestled in a knot of roots, but he glided free, jumping down to press his shoulder against Jack’s so that he wouldn’t fall. His eyes were hooded, dark, his mouth set in an impossibly grim line.
Jack sank to his knees. “No.”
You do not remember. Sarai moved closer, bowing her head. We all changed after we found flesh. You changed most of all, my friend. As if two different beings inhabited your skin. It happened slowly, over time. You were always good. But the shadow in you lengthened. And it became a force that was just as strong, and terrible.
He could not have looked more lost, or devastated. “But I remember what he did. I remember what he did to me. We couldn’t have inhabited the same body.”
Same body, different mind. The tortures he inflicted on you were very real. He was very real. Someone wholly different from you. Of course it felt as if another entity was torturing you. Because that was the truth. One truth, anyway.
“He had a split personality,” I said, haunted by the memory of my grandfather’s face, my grandfather himself, eating what I now knew was Grant’s heart. “That’s what you’re telling us.”
We made the split permanent, whispered Sarai, pressing her delicate white snout against Jack’s brow. We loved you, brother. We could not abandon you to the sins of your shadow. So we pulled you both apart and cast him away. And you did not remember. No one remembered, save us. We have many secrets, but that is our greatest. We wanted to protect you from it.
Jack shuddered, bowing his head into his hands. I struggled to rise, which hurt so badly I almost went unconscious. Raw and Aaz pressed me down, and instead it was Zee who went to my grandfather. The little demon crouched and pressed a gentle claw against his cheek.
“Meddling Man,” he whispered. “All have shadows.”
“The things he did,” Jack breathed. “What I did.”
“No,” I croaked, wishing I could cry, wishing I could stand and go to him, whole. “It wasn’t you.”
But that only made him curl harder into himself. Zee sighed, letting his little hand drop.
Grant turned his head to cough. Blood flecked his mouth. I’d almost forgotten he was sick, and I watched that, and forgot my own ravaged flesh. I would heal. He would not.
Somehow, I found the strength to touch his back. Inside my mind, he whispered, I should have accepted my own death. I should have known this would never work. But I wanted to see our daughter, and so I got selfish. And I dragged you into it.
I was already selfish enough for both of us. If you hadn’t gone first, it would have been me. And I’m the one who’s pregnant.
So we’re both idiots, he said. Great.
All I wanted to do was cry. I love you.
I love you more, he replied, and glanced down at my stomach. I wrote her letters, before all this happened. Just in case. I stored them in your mother’s chest, in Seattle.
I was dying on the inside. I couldn’t imagine life without him. I couldn’t even think past this moment we were in—which was already so full of grief.
But you will, he said. For her.
I hadn’t seen Oturu this entire time, but from the shadows, deep beyond the trees, I heard him whisper, “Hunter.”
All the little demons sat up, alert. Even the Shurik went still. I listened, breathless, but there was nothing to hear. Except, after a brief moment, I saw a faint glow against the trees: a blush of fire.
“Hurry,” Jack choked out, but it was too late.
I heard a low, moaning wail, and a tendril of fire snaked around one of the massive Labyrinth trees. Heat rolled over me. I wanted to gag on the terror I felt, a sudden dread of losing even more than an arm.
Grant stood, fierce, but I rallied all my strength and pushed him out of the way as the tentacle snapped down. It caught us both, and we were snatched up like pieces of straw, hauled up through the trees. Zee and the boys clung to us, while Shurik were scattered, flung away. Higher, toward a wall of flame. I was blind with fear and pain, but I still felt a tingle—a brief warning—just as we were thrown through a Labyrinth door.
It was another nightmare of a world. My throat burned on the fumes of sulfur and blood. Red clouds scarred my eyes, red smoke drifting over red water running into a horizon full of spitting shadows that boiled and hissed like volcanic spit. The air tasted rank. I could hardly breathe, and the pain was so wild inside me, it was all I could do just to stay conscious.