by Aja James
Besides the two giant eagles who now sat watching them with their intense yellow eyes from their perches on a couple of rock overhangs, at least two dozen of the most ferocious predators on earth were closing in on them on paws and scales.
One more giant eagle landed on a jutting boulder nearby, making Ariel dig her heels in to avoid getting knocked over by the hurricane-force gales from its flapping wings.
Amid the hisses and growls, bared fangs and clenching talons, Maximus didn’t know where to look first.
There were tigers, lions, jaguars, panthers and leopards; eagles and snakes. The giant birds and serpents were few in number compared to the cats, but even one was more than enough by Maximus’s count.
Especially since a king cobra whose circumference was as thick as Maximus’s neck, over ten meters in length, and whose radiated flattened head was wider than his shoulders was coiling up to strike, its monstrous jaw opening, forked tongue unfurling with a growling hiss.
It wasn’t a question of survival if he engaged these beasts, Maximus knew without a doubt. It was a matter of how many he’d be able to take down before one of them tore him apart.
His only prayer was that they’d start fighting each other for two morsels of humanoid flesh and save him some trouble.
And that was when a thunderous roar echoed across the plateau, reverberating against the rocky cliffs.
All fell silent as the roar faded to a vibrating growl. The animals even seemed to dip their heads in respect.
Maximus straightened as every molecule in his body tingled with awareness.
He knew that roar.
He’d heard it before.
He looked directly at a rocky plank that jutted from the northern cliffs.
Where the great white tiger from his dreams stared down at him with those unforgettable icy blue eyes.
*** *** *** ***
Given that she was created in a lab and witnessed other successes and failures of experiments like her, many more of the latter than the former, Ariel wasn’t particularly shocked to find herself surrounded by a throng of gigantic beasts.
The size of them made her more curious than anything else.
The lab experiments had been human-sized, like herself. Even when there were genetic crosses with large animals, like bears, the results weren’t bigger than the biggest bear.
But these creatures were massive!
At least three times the size of normal animals. That, in of itself, told her that these beasts had not been manufactured. Or more accurately, could not be manufactured.
They were magical.
And when someone like her, a lab rat with a programmed brain, described something as magical, that was really saying something.
They were also beautiful.
Lethally, hypnotically so.
There was a raw power and purity about them that harkened to a time before time. She wondered whether these were the last of them on earth.
She couldn’t imagine there were more out there. She could hardly believe they were here.
Ever in tune with Maximus, she stilled as well when the great white tiger presided from his cliff, like the fearsome king of a long-lost world.
As it stepped down from the ledge and moved slowly toward them, its muscles shifting with mesmerizing grace beneath its shiny striped coat, the other animals shifted and shrank as it passed, finally stopping when they reached normal size.
The tiger slid its eyes meaningfully toward the eagle that had carried Ariel as well as the king cobra that had given Maximus an up close and personal view of its venom-tipped fangs.
The two beasts immediately retreated into darkened caves that were carved into the mountainside.
And then, the tiger stopped within five feet of Maximus, sitting upright on its haunches, still in its giant form. It peered at the warrior with intense scrutiny, and Ariel hoped that it wasn’t trying to decide where to chomp down first.
The two males held their unblinking staring match for long minutes before a shimmering glow danced above the tiger’s coat. It, too, began to shrink in size, until it looked like a “normal” Siberian tiger.
Albeit still the largest one Ariel had ever seen.
Entranced by the beautiful tiger, Ariel hardly noticed the two figures that approached from the caves.
A man and a woman.
At least, that’s what they appeared to be on the surface.
When they stood on either side of the white tiger, Ariel realized with a start that they were in fact the eagle and the snake.
Despite the human threads they wore—unassuming sweaters and fur vests and even jeans and boots—they still retained an otherness about them, and she could see the resemblance to their animal forms.
The male was tall and angular, with long, strong legs and extremely wide shoulders. His hair was a gorgeous tousled mix of gold and brown, almost feathery looking, cut close to his head in choppy layers. His beak, or rather, nose, was straight, not hooked or overlarge, fit for his face. His eyes were a deeper yellow than the eagle’s eyes, almost amber in color, but just as sharp.
Something shifted behind him, and his shoulders rippled in a connected response.
Wings!
Somehow, he’d retained the eagle’s wings. Which were now folded against him the way an ancient warrior carried a shield and sword upon his back.
They were deadly weapons, those wings, Ariel realized. As deadly as the eagle’s beak and talons had been.
She shifted her gaze to the female next.
Ariel didn’t particularly care for snakes, but at least they were less repulsive than the insects the head researcher from GTI experimented with.
This humanoid version of the deadly king cobra, however, was ridiculously beautiful. She wore similarly ordinary clothing as the eagle-man, but there was absolutely nothing ordinary about her.
Long, wavy black hair cascaded down her back almost to her ankles. Her complexion was a golden-caramel color, smooth and glowing. Sleek black brows arched over delicate features, the most entrancing of which were her sooty-lashed, large black eyes and pink pillowy mouth, with a central groove that carved the lower lip in luscious halves.
The eagle-man held out a long, sleeveless wool coat lined with fur, and in the blink of an eye—literally just a blink—everything changed.
Because one moment Ariel was looking at the white tiger sitting between the two humanoids, and the next it had turned into a man who had shrugged into the coat with a few buttons to keep it closed down the middle, leaving a good deal of his chest, his arms and his legs beneath the knees bare.
A man who looked enough like Maximus that no one could doubt they were somehow related.
“So…” Ariel couldn’t help herself, even though she knew that it might not be the thing to do to break silence before Tiger King did.
She blamed it on the panther inside her. It made her do daring (stupid—er—illogical) things.
“Do any of you speak human language? French, Russian, Spanish or English? I can make do with Portuguese and Italian also, but…”
She trailed off when Tiger King speared her with blazing blue fire. Even the animal within her felt chastised.
“Yes, human,” the eagle-man said with a hint of amusement, in impeccable English, and his voice sounded not at all like she would have imagined, given the shrill shriek she’d heard when he had carried her in eagle form.
His voice was smooth and soft, as if he never had occasion to raise it unless he was a bird screaming at his companion to change direction.
“We speak your language very well.”
“So tell us then,” she plowed on, despite the continuing glare she was getting from the Tiger King, or perhaps he didn’t know how to look at anything differently.
“What do you plan to do with us now that you’ve brought us here?”
“We are not the ones who planned to encounter you,” the snake-woman said in a low, silky voice, quite complementary to her exquisite looks.
Her accent was foreign, though Ariel couldn’t place it. Somewhere from Asia perhaps.
“You are the ones who encroached upon our territory, invaded our domain. What do you want? Why are you here?”
Ariel involuntarily looked at Maximus, who had not taken his eyes off of the Tiger King.
As if he hadn’t heard any of the exchange or noticed the eagle-man and the snake-woman, Maximus stared unblinkingly at the male before him and whispered, “You…”
Seemingly unconscious of his actions, he lifted a hand toward the Tiger King.
A deep-throated, threatening growl shook the ground they stood on as the Tiger King curled back his upper lip in reaction.
“Do not touch him,” the snake-woman warned sharply.
Maximus immediately dropped his hand as if burned.
“He smells her stench on you, vampire. The one who held him captive.”
Maximus jerked his head toward her, his eyes going wide.
“How do you know this?” Ariel asked, since her partner seemed too shocked to speak for himself.
“I am an interpreter, you might say,” the snake-woman explained. “I can understand the language of all animals, even those who cannot speak. I can see their innermost thoughts.”
“The Tiger King—I mean—the white tiger can’t speak?”
Ariel was puzzled. Were his vocal cords injured somehow?
The woman inclined her head slightly in deference.
“He is our King. He rules this enclave. We call him Goya, and you may do the same. You may call me Leti.”
“And I am Rhys,” the eagle-man volunteered.
He seemed to be the most easy-going amongst the three of them. The tips of his lips curled as if ever ready to smile, though his eyes were shrewd and intimidating.
“To your question, human,” Leti continued, “Goya is mostly animal, so he does not speak our language. He understands and intuits. He is only taking this form because…”
She shifted her glittering dark gaze to Maximus.
“Because of him.”
Breaking their unblinking staring match, the Tiger King turned to leave, his gait loose and graceful, reminding Ariel of his animal form.
“Come,” Rhys invited with a crook of his hand. “We will talk more inside. It is obvious why you are here, at least to me.”
He slanted a look at Leti, who—amazingly—rolled her eyes back, like siblings or close comrades would do when one-upping each other.
“It is long overdue for father and son to get reacquainted, aye?”
*** *** *** ***
It had been quite a while since the Creature visited its Mistress, Anunit Salamu, the Dark Star.
Better known as Medusa to her modern day enemies and fleeting allies, most of whom weren’t even aware they were in league with the devil herself.
Since she’d hidden away to plot and scheme from the lightless recesses of her penthouse cave, she’d not admitted anyone inside her private quarters except for the Pure female, the researcher-healer and spy who had insinuated herself amongst the Pure Ones. The Pure female the Creature had always assumed to be one of Medusa’s many pawns.
Now it was not so sure.
There was something about the Pure female that was off.
She didn’t behave like a mindless pawn. She obviously had thoughts and plans of her own, rather like the Creature in this sense.
A chess player—perhaps even chess master—rather than a piece on the board to be moved to someone else’s will.
“Why have you come?” Medusa’s voice hissed from the darkness.
Truly hissing.
There was no other way to describe the vibrating tension in her low, raspy voice. This was the first point of difference about the Mistress that the Creature took note.
The second difference was that Medusa had always been a vain female, and with good reason.
She had been and still was (after getting new eyeballs implanted and some artful surgery by a human doctor who knew how to work with the rapid healing abilities of vampires) one of the most beautiful females in creation.
The edge of danger, sex and sadistic glee she carried off like a figure hugging ensemble and killer high-heels only made her more attractive.
But instead of displaying her gorgeousness to her minions to be worshipped like she used to do, the Creature had not caught the slightest glimpse of her since entering her domain.
It only heard the eerie echo of her raspy voice in the room, like a disembodied ghost floating through the air.
“The vampire-killers are in full production. We should be able to supply an entire army for a drawn-out war in no time at all,” it said, foregoing niceties.
There was a shaking noise, like the kind maracas made.
If the Creature didn’t know any better, it would have expected to see a giant rattle snake lounging on the Mistress’s couch.
“You came here to waste my time with progress reports?” she queried dangerously soft. “Surely I raised you to be more intelligent than that.”
She didn’t “raise” him at all, the Creature bit back the ready retort.
She’d brought it into her fold at the lowest, bleakest, cruelest point in its life, when it had been stripped of all dignity, hope, and perhaps sanity as well. Since then, she’d continued its “education” with negligent, yet evilly sadistic flair.
Until there was nothing left but a hollowed-out version of herself.
She enjoyed inflicting pain and chaos upon the world, after all. It’s what she lived for. But the Creature didn’t even have that twisted pleasure to look forward to.
It simply didn’t care.
It wished it didn’t care enough to die of boredom, but alas, it also didn’t care enough to seek its own death.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Not anymore.
It might just care enough to start its own chess game, rather than simply playing the Mistress’s.
“What are your plans for your dearly beloved sister and your ex-prisoner, Tal-Telal?” it ventured in a casual tone. “Did you obtain everything you wanted from them, or should I be organizing new schemes?”
“If I wanted you involved, I would have told you,” she said silkily. “Why the sudden interest?”
“I have insinuated myself into their home, Dark Dreams,” it answered with a touch of ennui, contradicting the interest she mentioned. “If you desire anything further from that quarter, I can easily make it happen.”
“I find it odd,” she returned, “that you don’t ask me about my plans for Lord Wind. Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you failed to mention his whereabouts in your last report.”
“Oh,” it said with innocent surprise, “were you curious about your ex-Blooded-Mate? I thought you’ve washed your hands of him after he gutted your bond from his heart?”
The rattling started again with a more furious cadence.
Belatedly, the Creature realized it might have chosen words that didn’t rub salt in the Mistress’s wounds. Better yet, it might have not said the last sentence at all.
But it was feeling contrary this night. It had the irresistible urge to poke at the Mistress like a naughty boy would poke at a beehive because it’s odd looking and it’s there.
The Mistress simply begged to be poked.
“I am not done with him,” Medusa hissed. “Not by a long shot. No one betrays me and gets away with it. But I am a patient female. The best revenge is served cold.”
Yes, she seemed to have an infinite store of that brand of patience.
She’d waited millennia to lure Ishtar Anshar, her fraternal twin sister, back into her clutches, only to lose her again at the crucial moment. She'd’ tortured Tal-Telal, Ishtar’s love, over thousands of years just to get her twisted revenge.
The Creature had heard and seen enough when he’d spied the whole showdown about two years ago, that even it had been grotesquely and horrifically impressed by the depth of the Mistress’s depravity and sadism.
“Well, don’t hesitate to let me know if you need anything,” the Creature said solicitously. “I am keeping tabs on him as well.”
“I am well aware of your movements, Creature,” she said flatly, betraying her annoyance. “Just because I have lost my old Gifts does not mean I have not been acquiring new ones.”
“Many felicitations,” it congratulated. “I do hope to witness the awesomeness of your new Gifts in the near future.”
A low, malevolent laughter shook the stale air of the room.
“Patience, darling,” she said almost sweetly.
“Be careful what you ask for.”
Chapter Eight
“You must not take offense at Goya’s reaction just now,” Leti said softly beside Maximus as they made their way to the caves, walking more slowly so that they lagged behind the others.
“I do not take offense,” Maximus assured her.
He only felt…a pang of rejection.
She put a hand on his forearm to stop him, pulling him to one side.
“You must know this already, warrior. You must know that you are hers, and you are his. You look so much like Goya that there cannot be doubt. But your scent is all wrong. You are almost entirely vampire. You must have buried the animal side so deep it cannot be detected. Everything about you, apart from your looks, reminds Goya of her. It hurts him deeply to this day. I want you to understand.”
Maximus bowed his head as he listened. He felt the vicarious pain of the white tiger. Even as a boy who understood nothing, he had felt it.
“I understand,” he murmured low, clenching his jaw.
He looked into Leti’s eyes and asked, “Are you his Mate? Is that why you…”
Know so much? Care so much?
He left the words unsaid, but she comprehended him perfectly.
She smiled slightly, rendering her beauty radiant.
“No. I do not have that honor. I love Goya like a brother, and so does Rhys. He has never taken a Mate. I fear his spirit and heart have not healed enough for that purpose. He is a dedicated and fearsome leader, however. All of us here owe our lives to him in one way or another.”
Maximus looked down, his head still bowed, his mind swirling with thoughts, his heart throbbing with an indefinable ache.