Maks still held Reyhan tucked under his arm. “You got a plan to get off the island?”
“Of course.” I most certainly did not, but he didn’t have to know that. “First we have to get the source of magic. We need that.”
He gave a quick nod. “That we can do. Come on.”
In a blink, he’d shifted to his caracal form and he and Reyhan padded along the stone floors, me following just above their heads.
Maks led us through the castle, heading further down. I didn’t think it was possible, but we were surely below the water level by the time he came to a stop.
“Here.” He pointed with his nose at a small circle of water that was glowing slightly. I didn’t like it, didn’t like the look of it at all, but before I could say anything Maks was speaking. “I’ll dive through and grab it; you guard the hole.”
He shifted back to two legs and then dove into the narrow circular bit of water, disappearing with barely a splash.
“Idiot!” I hissed at him as I flipped and rolled in the air, my guts twisted up. “Maks, you get back here right now!”
The thing was, I didn’t hear the door behind me, or smell them until it was much, much too late.
A band of magic wrapped around me, pinning my wings to my sides and dropping me to the ground. I twisted around to see a woman with long, wild dark hair and deep green eyes looking down at me. She also smelled like a Jinn.
“Run, Reyhan!” I yelled as I twisted around, trying to get close enough to spit acid on the Storm Queen’s feet.
Reyhan bolted from the room, but the Storm Queen never even looked at her. “You, you are the one I want. The prophecy has changed,” she purred. “And you will be my weapon to kill Asag.”
I roared at her and hoped to hell that Maks could hear me.
“Parting is such sweet sorrow!” I bellowed the words out, the quickest thing I could come up with.
The Storm Queen reached down and grabbed me by the tail, holding me up so she could inspect me. “I’ve never captured a dragon before.” Her smile was slow and spread wide across her face. “What a boon that you came to me. Mamitu was right. The time is now for me.”
25
Zam
“Listen, you can’t be serious about taking me to Asag!” I yelled at the giant scorpion man who had me clutched tightly. “You can’t tell me that you like Asag!” I was frantic. Trying to figure out just how the hell I was going to get away from the Aqrabuamelu—or scorpion man if you prefer. Huge didn’t even begin to cover it. He was as big as any giant I’d ever dealt with. Possibly bigger.
Let me help you.
I grimaced. “Come on, I really don’t want to kill you!”
That stopped him and he twisted around and under his belly to look at me. Even though his upper body was technically human, it was oversized. He looked like a giant had been cut in half and stuck on top of a giant scorpion.
“You can’t kill me.”
“Wanna bet?” I threw out. Because if Asag wanted me, I’d rather he took me in pieces if I had to choose a way to show up on his doorstep.
Lilith shivered against my back. She’d been a flail when I’d stuck her there, but she began to shift until she was far slimmer. A spear? She slid down into my hands, the metal rod the perfect width for my palm.
The scorpion man tipped his head sideways. “No one likes Asag, but he rules our world and does so with no mercy. So, I suggest you get used to the idea.”
“What if I told you I was going to kill him?” I offered. The hold on me tightened and I struggled to breathe. Spots danced in my vision and even though I could have spun Lilith and jabbed her into his back, I hesitated.
At the edge of the darkness, my hand tensed and the Aqrabuamelu loosened his hold on me. He didn’t let go, just . . . eased off. “You.”
I coughed. “Me.”
He drew me up until we were eye to eye. “How?”
In for a penny, in for all the pounds. “I am following the stupid rules, working on the second challenge, and I have Lilith. I have a black horse, a dragon, and I think all the other pieces that need to be in place. I’m close.”
Was I rambling? Yup, because his stinger was hovering just behind his head, ready to stab me. The drop of venom on the tip was more than freaking me out. He tore me away from his belly with his clawed hand and held me up so that I was right in his face. He didn’t smell bad, but this close to his mouth where he could stuff me in with one bite was far from comforting.
“You are not lying.” He seemed surprised, and he touched his face, rubbing at his chin.
“No. I’m not. You want me to?” I wasn’t sure where this was going. I was hoping he’d let me go. That’s all I had left.
Hope.
And a demon blade strapped to my back.
“I cannot turn away from the task handed to me,” he said, deep gray eyes narrowing in thought. “But I can offer you a . . . possibility. Since you obviously like to take chances.” He leaned down to the sand and shoved his hand into it, rooting around a moment, and came up with a handful of sand, as far as I could see.
He sprinkled it over my head; I closed my eyes as the sand trickled over me. Only the trickling sand turned to tickling feet. My eyes flew open as the deadly scorpion crawled over my shoulder and settled against my chest.
The Aqrabuamelu blew a lungful of air at me, and the scorpion cracked in half, twisting around until its body became the links of a necklace, its stinger the pendant in the middle.
“I don’t need—”
“You have until the sun touches the horizon. Whoever wears the necklace when the light leaves the sky, will be brought back here to me. Perhaps that will be you. Perhaps that will be someone you convince to take the necklace off, for you cannot.”
A chance. Not a great chance, but it was a chance I’d take. “Done.”
His smile seemed genuine, which bothered me. The monsters were not supposed to be . . . the nice ones.
“My name is—”
“Please don’t say Steve,” I said on nothing but instinct.
His eyebrows shot up and my guts clenched. I didn’t think I could handle another Steve in my life. “It is not Steve.”
I sighed.
“But you are close, it is Steven.” He gave a low sigh and if I could have groaned, I would have. “I am a fool for hoping you have a chance. But I am going to give it to you. I am a guardian of the desert, and I have been stymied by the demon. He has done much harm, and I do not know that it could ever be reversed.” His hold tightened on me until I could not take a breath. “I will let you go, because I hear the truth in you. But know this.”
I was pretty sure my ribs were cracking.
“If you think to try and fool me, and are not horribly destroyed by the demon, I will kill you.”
As quickly as he’d scooped me up, he dropped me into the sand. His massive body scuttled above me, and I lay there, just trying to catch my wind. “I hope he doesn’t kill you!” I mean, he wasn’t a Steve—not really.
“I will wait here until the night comes and you, or another, is brought back to me. I suggest you hurry yourself along,” Steven called to me over his back, his tail bobbing far above his head giving me the shivers. Then his words sunk in.
Fuck. I had to get to the Storm Queen still.
And I had to do it in a goddess-damned hurry.
I scrambled up, one hand still clutching Lilith in her new form. Spinning around, I ran back toward the beach. Fen had been hurt bad by the sting of Steven, and who knew what Vahab had done to help him. If anything.
The long spear that was now Lilith was light, at least—a boon in all her forms. There was not much weight to a magical weapon in my experience. Which was good. Because I was fucking done, exhausted and couldn’t take many more hits.
I was sliding down the last dune toward the water, heading straight toward the far too still form of Fen, before I saw that Vahab was nowhere to be seen.
“Fen, I’m coming!” I yelled. I ran past my sadd
lebags that had been trampled heavily, scooped them up and kept on running. I dropped to my knees next to Fen and dug around in the bags until I found the unicorn horn.
I put a hand to Fen’s head. “Fen, you have to wake up.” The poison was heavy in him, and his body was far too cool for anything good.
Nothing, no heartbeat.
I slid my hand down his neck, looking for a pulse, something to tell me I wasn’t too late. All I could think was that Lila would be devastated if . . . no. I couldn’t let it happen. I clutched the horn, thinking that it wasn’t supposed to be this way.
There, under my left hand was a flutter, just the smallest thump. Good enough. I pressed the tip of the horn to Fen’s side and breathed out as the horn lit up, glowing bright for a second before that glow slid from the base all the way to the tip and into Fen’s body.
The dragon gave a gasping lurch and rolled to his feet, albeit shaking and dripping with sweat.
Sweat? Dragons didn’t sweat.
“Fen?”
“Too much of the golems’ poison and the scorpion,” he said through chattering teeth, his body trembling top to bottom as the poison dripped out of him, sizzling as it hit the sand around him, turning it into bits of glass. All of it chased out by the magic of the horn. I looked at said horn in my hand and nearly dropped it.
No longer pristine white, half the horn was darkening to a charcoal gray right before my eyes, with only the top third still the original shimmering white. I tucked it into the saddlebags. There was nothing I could do for it now, and I wouldn’t regret saving a life when I could.
Fen slowly turned his head to me. “Vahab left me.”
“He thought you were dead.” I spun Lilith and strapped her to my back once more. She hadn’t even tried to get me to kill Fen. Interesting.
“No, I was still talking to him.” Fen frowned, and his lips pulled back from his teeth. “That prick left me to die alone. He’s swimming across to get to the Jinn woman.”
I lifted both hands, palms up. “He’s not a good guy. Are you just realizing this?”
Fen snapped his teeth once. “The bonds between us were broken, he freed me.”
“Is that good?”
He butted his head against me. “It means I can come with you and Lila, wherever you go until—”
I put a hand on his mane, digging my fingers into it. “No time for that now. You got it in you to fly?”
He lifted his head sharply and flipped me onto his back. “We going to the Storm Queen? That’s where Lila is.”
“You bet your sweet ass,” I said. “One needs a serious ass whooping and I am just the shifter to give it to her. The other needs you to love her with every beat of your heart. And we have to do it all before the sun is gone.” I looked to the sky. We didn’t have a lot of time. An hour if I was lucky.
He twisted around and looked at me. “And if she hates me?”
I winked at him. “She does not hate you. Trust me on this.”
He gave me a quick nod and then leapt into the sky, his body undulating as he picked up speed. I buried my hands in his mane and looked out across the water toward the Storm Queen’s keep.
The waves were thrashing and as we drew close, I could easily see the rhuk waiting, then rising into the sky as they took us in as a threat.
“Fen, we gotta take the small route. I’ll shift first, then you shift and grab me.” This was a moment of ultimate trust. Because if he didn’t grab me, I was hitting the water and had a hell of a long swim in waters that were likely less than friendly.
Even as I thought it a long tentacle reached for us, flopping back when it fell short. Fuck, that was not something I wanted to tangle with. Not one damn bit.
I breathed out and stepped between the doorway in my mind, shifting into a small house cat.
At the same time Fen shifted under me, and I fell holding my breath, legs wide to slow my descent until a set of talons dug into me, stopping my free fall.
“Got ya,” he grunted as we continued on toward the keep.
“Thanks. I did not want to go swimming.”
“Lila would kill me if I let you get hurt,” he said.
“She would. And then she might just bring you back to life, and kill you again to make sure.”
He laughed. “Somehow I don’t doubt it.”
I looked ahead to see the rhuk settling back down. The threat, aka the large green and white dragon, was gone in their eyes.
“What fools these mortals be,” I whispered. “Fen, head for the rooftop over there.”
Set on the southern side of the castle, it was flat and didn’t look to be guarded by anyone or anything—rhuk included.
Fen brought us down carefully and let me go so I could leap out of his hands. I shifted so that as I landed, I did so on two feet in a crouch. “Lilith, I’m going to pull you around. Do not fuck with me.”
I will be on my best behavior.
Call me crazy, but I doubted that. I crept forward, motioning for Fen to join me. He swept up to my shoulders and looped himself around my neck the way Lila did. “Will she be mad?”
“She’s going to be right pissed that we slipped in undetected,” I muttered as I made my way across the open space to the only door leading onto the upper rooftop.
“No, I meant Lila. That I’m in her spot.”
“Stop overthinking things, Fen,” I muttered as I put my hand to the door and let myself in.
Into the lion’s den.
Good thing I’d grown up in a pride of lions and knew just where to strike the underbelly.
26
Lila
Maks did not leap out of the water—I’d more than half expected him to come out and kick the Storm Queen’s ass. But who was I kidding? He’d had his powers stripped the same as me and Zam. If he could have done it, he would have already.
Speaking of . . . the Storm Queen spun me around, holding me by my tail. “Come now, you must have a name?”
I grimaced, debating if it mattered. “How about a whole sandbox of fuck off with you?”
She smiled. “I am Dani. And you will obey me.”
I did not like the sound of that. I liked it even less as the tendrils of her magic dug through my body, into my muscles and bones. I bared my teeth at her again.
“Oh, that is interesting. Asag has taken some abilities from you?” She sucked a breath in slowly. “Very interesting. You have abilities with weather?”
I did, because I’d taken them from another dragon, just like my father had the ability to do. I snapped my teeth at her, even though she was out of range. It was all I had left to me.
Her hand shot at my neck, and she snagged me tight, her magic digging in further. “Yes, very interesting. I see why he took all your abilities and power. You have much in you to frighten him.”
I wanted to growl, to bite her fingers off one at a time, to claw her eyes out. But I had nothing. Dani put me down and the hold on me was gone. Only I didn’t have any way to move on my own. She snapped her fingers and pointed to her shoulder.
My body was not my own.
I leapt up and flew to her shoulder, perching myself there. Wrapping my tail lightly around her neck for balance.
“There, that is better.”
“I hate the murdered, love him murdered,” I spit at her.
“Are you speaking in tongues now? Another gift?”
I couldn’t even dig my claws in more than she would allow. “A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
The slap came unexpected and rang my bell hard and left my ears ringing. I blinked away tears—not from the pain, it wasn’t bad—but the sheer suddenness of the blow.
“I am no fool, and you’d best remember that if you wish to keep your pretty indigo hide intact.”
I wasn’t sure she knew who she was dealing with. Strike that; she had no idea, and that made her a fool to not know her enemy.
“Zam is going to wipe the floor with you,” I growl
ed. “Like the dirty rag you are.”
The Storm Queen snapped her fingers and my mouth clamped shut, muscles spasming and grinding my teeth together until true tears did form.
She swept out of the tiny, cold dank room, and up the stairs. I glanced back once, but still didn’t see Maks.
He couldn’t have been under the water that long and survive, and I couldn’t even go after him. My heart cracked. We couldn’t lose Toad, not when we’d come so far. Not when we were so close. I closed my eyes and cried for him, just for a moment.
Because there was no time. Zam would still come for him, not knowing he was gone. She would come for me and Reyhan.
And I had to be ready to help her.
27
Zam
A deal with a scorpion hybrid was perhaps one of the best and worst ideas I’d ever had, and I couldn’t help but check the height of the sun at each window. The scorpion stinger that hung on a thread around my neck bumped me here and there, giving a tickle, reminding me that I had to hurry my ass up. And that I needed someone else to take it off me.
I could feel Lila, Maks and Reyhan, but none of them were in the same place. I let out a low growl just as my ears picked up footsteps.
Ducking into a side alcove, I pulled my cloak around me and Fen and shrunk back into the shadows as best I could. The fighting would come, I wasn’t worried about that. I just wanted to get to the Storm Queen before it happened.
But where was she? Did she have one of my friends? Fuck, she probably had Maks. Which made my blood boil. Lila was pissed, that much was coming through loud and clear; Reyhan was—shocker—sleeping.
From what I could tell, Maks was deep in the castle, far below me. At the rate I was running into guards and other people, I was going to run out of time. Which meant I would be yanked back to my new friend Steven.
Yeah, that was not the goal.
Time to get tiny. I shifted to my house cat form and scooted forward, still using the shadows but moving a hell of a lot quicker. The guards didn’t so much as blink as I ran between their legs, bounced off walls and raced downstairs. Following Maks’s threads, I leapt down a final set of stairs and landed in front of a door. A door and a very old lady.
Kingdom of Storms (The Desert Cursed Series Book 8) Page 16