Page 84 of Edge of Stars

I shift in place and even glance down to make sure that I’ve still got Kara securely held. Such simple words from my uncle are suddenly weaving such complicated meaning on the air, but I can’t discern any of it. The book he’s talking about…there are no pages inside. No meaning to be grasped. And yet I’m still searching for it. Jumping my scrutiny back up to his whole face, examining all his rugged ugliness for it.

I don’t see a damn thing.

Until—holy shit—I do.

Kara gasps, sharp and scared, as she beholds the change in his eyes as well. It starts out like the photoreal blazes that often claim her own stare, with heftier kindling that fans his own version of molten flames. But it swiftly turns into more: a power that even my uncle doesn’t seem to expect at first. As it crackles and glistens, inciting an intensity that rivals the center of the sun, he blinks to accommodate the formidable new load.

But he also smiles.

Wider. Crueler.

Another crackle. Another sizzle.

It takes over the air around him now, expanding with licks of fire and white-core heat, until I’m stumbling back by a couple of steps just to reclaim some air. Kara’s breathing hard too, using her free hand to shield her stomach. The protective move clutches at my gut, but it’s what she has to add to it that makes me wonder if I’m capable of self-combustion. The soft, fast murmurings that in a normal world would make her look like a kooky rich girl reciting self-affirmations before a jog around Hollywood Reservoir with her bodyguards.

But I know the reality. She’s frantically battling to reassure our baby, maybe even trying to explain that the goddess of magic and the king of hell won’t actually harm Mommy, Daddy, or her…

Promises she can’t completely guarantee.

A realization that really combusts me.

Enough to enrage my veins, clench my every muscle, and make me relate more to the video game ogre than I ever thought possible—including the words that scorch their way past my lips.

“All right, asshole. Let’s talk some relevance.”

I pivot, ready to release my self-inflicted handcuffs and enjoy the pleasure of going for every hit point I can get to on the preening asshole, but Kara’s urgent tug sets me back. I turn back, confronting the raw conflict across her whole face, as if she’s reached inside me and taken it all as her own burden. But that’s not all. There’s an even deeper conflict for her, beyond the love for Niki and me. I know it as if it’s my own, as well. I feel it into my marrow—and it hurts.

I shake my head at her, conflicted and confused—but now terrified too, as the tears threatening to well from her eyes are suddenly just dry salt against her wider gape. The stare she’s no longer focusing on me.

I spin around, following the arrow of her stare past my shoulder. It’s a willing choice anyway. Anything to set me back on the drive toward fulfilling a dark dream since the afternoon Hades sidled up next to me at Honey Bacchus’s bar. The goal of physically tearing the bastard’s head off his shoulders.

The second I take in the haughty cant of his nose and the unctuous smirk across his mouth, I’m ready to go. Ripping off the cuffs. Snapping the damn bit in half.

One tromp ahead. Savoring the scent of his blood already.

Two. And now wondering if it’ll taste as disgusting. And not caring.

I never take the third.

I’m a human retreat bugle, nearly tripping over myself to halt. Only after the siren dies in my head do I realize part of the wail was my wife’s doing. The terror of her outcry lingers in the stilted whines of her panicked breaths. I wonder if my own respirations sound similar. They sure as fuck feel like it. I’m unable to fully tell, since a raging wind tunnel has started up again in my head. The mental thunderheads aren’t far behind.

Neither are the ones in the sky.

Though I hardly notice them, past their ominous silver streaks, as I fully focus on the actual importance here. The real priority that’s just tumbled at my feet—manifested from my uncle’s blazing aura.

The asshole wasn’t playing nuclear glowworm with us.

He’s brought some extra cocoons for his sadistic fun.

They’re like a pair of oversized chrysalises, still bound by strands like magma-dipped barbed wire. Whatever’s inside is twitching and shivering, as if battling to get their cremaster hook out and get to freedom, but they’re either too weak or terrified to do so. I don’t understand at first, because there’s no folded wings or spun silk to hold them back—

Until, like Kara, I do see it all.

“Mom?”

Now I do get tangled in my own feet, twisted until I’ve crashed to my knees in front of the wriggling pupa on the left. Just as quickly I slide over to check on the other mound, my nausea cutting off my air along with the rapid recognition of Veronica Valari’s scuffed and beaten face. Her lower lip is double its normal size, and only one of her eyes pries enough to return my shocked gaze.

But she’s looking at me.