Goddess keep the two of them safe. I didn’t even have Marsum’s voice in my head to encourage me. Funny to think I missed it.
Vines snaked around me, but they slid off as Maks’s magic held tightly, keeping the suckers from staying on us.
Branches and leaves slapped at me as I reached for something to slow my fall, my claws slicing through the thin foliage until I dug into a tree trunk, sliding a bit but finally stopping. But that was only a brief second as the vines shot toward me.
“Fuckers,” I growled as I pushed away from the trunk toward another branch, found my footing and started running. Using the treetops, I raced away from the vines. “Maks, Lila!” I called out, knowing I would pinpoint myself for those I was running from, but needing Maks and Lila to be able to find me.
From my left came the flap of wings and Lila was there, racing along my side. “Where’s Maks?”
I slowed, turned, and looked back. The vines had stopped about thirty feet behind me, and in their grasp, they had Maks.
All wrapped up and struggling for his life.
A snarl ripped out of me as I raced back the way I’d come. I knew a trap when I saw one. I knew bait when I saw it.
It didn’t matter. This was Maks we were talking about, and I’d come too close to losing him too many times to just keep on running.
As I got closer to the vines, they came at me and I swatted at them, my tiny claws doing very little damage. But they pulled back as if I’d taken a machete to them. They reminded me of the vines the Emperor had used to absorb energy and that only spurred me on harder. If they were draining not only Maks’s life, but his life energy for themselves . . . I couldn’t let that happen.
I tore into the vines, and they fled from me. I didn’t understand it, and I didn’t care why it was happening. I only knew that my claws and teeth were as sharp and as deadly as they’d ever been.
For a house cat.
I snarled as I got closer to Maks, and he was released from the vines completely.
“A trap,” he gasped out. All over his body were marks where the vines had dug in and bled him. They hadn’t been strangling him, they’d been draining him.
“I know.” I pushed him toward the upper branches, even as I wove my magic around him, healing the hundreds of tiny wounds. Any one of them on their own would have been no big deal, but together . . . he groaned as I closed the last one. “Lila, take him up, circle around.”
“You can’t do this on your own,” Lila said. She looked around us. “This place is dangerous, Zam. And it’s not the desert. None of us know it.”
For the first time, I tried to take my jungle cat’s shape, opening myself to that larger feline and all it offered. There was a moment of hesitation in my body, as if it wasn’t sure, and then it flowed over me. “I think I have to do this on my own. Maks is hurt, keep him safe. I’ll come back here when I’ve got the stone.”
“And if you don’t?” Maks’s eyes fluttered. “What then?”
“Go find Balder,” I said. “And ride as far as you can ride to get away from all the madness.”
I butted my much larger head against his, letting my magic flow over him. It wouldn’t give him his energy back, but the tiny wounds were gone. “Go.” I could see that Lila wanted to argue with me. “If you could be made into a jungle cat, you could come with me.”
She grumbled. “I could rain acid down on them.”
“That won’t help us find the stone.” I grinned up at her, showing off my fangs. “Go. I’ll be okay.”
She launched into the air, swung down and grabbed a half-passed-out Maks and peeled away from the treetops.
I watched them go, watched as Lila shifted to her larger form. Just like my own bigger size, it had a place and time.
Turning back, I slunk into the jungle, the branches and shadows hiding me and my near pitch-black fur. The rosettes under the black helped me slide through as though I were a shadow and not a predator.
All the way to the ground I went, landing on the soft mulch of many leaves, small bodies of creatures long dead, and wet earth. The pungent smell rose up my nose and I blew it out, trying instead to find the scent of jungle cat.
I padded forward, using the shadows of the trees for cover, working my way carefully deeper into the jungle as I searched for what it was I was looking for. A stone I didn’t really want, a way to stop the monsters who threatened my family and my home, and maybe some understanding of my own past.
I wasn’t sure that any of it was possible.
Which was why I’d sent Maks and Lila up and away. If I didn’t come back, I knew they’d look for me.
But I had to try.
The snap of a twig behind me and I flattened myself to the ground and held my breath.
No more sound, but as I lay there, not breathing, I struggled not to jump up and run forward.
Because there was a jungle cat passing me by, a female who for all intents and purposes could be my sister.
Or my mother.
26
I couldn’t stop the trembling in my body as I stared at the jungle cat stalking past me. I couldn’t even tell why I thought she was my mother. If it was the way she moved, or the smell that rolled off her that was part desert, part jungle cat, I couldn’t be sure.
“Stop!” I all but fell out of my hiding spot. She spun around, teeth bared and a snarling growl rippling from her lips. “Stop, please!” I lay on my belly, being as submissive as I dared, all thoughts of the stone flying from my head. “Mom?”
I swallowed hard and let the shift take me from four legs to two. “It’s me, Zamira.”
The jungle cat stared at me, eyes as green as my own, her voice with the lilting accent that came from living in the desert. “I am not your mother.”
I closed my eyes, tears pooling in the corners of them, more disappointed than I could put into words that this jungle cat shifter was not my mother. And even though I’d seen my mother’s death in the dreamscape, even though I’d had to live through it, I couldn’t help but believe maybe it was a lie to keep her and me safe.
“Are you sure?” I mumbled into the dirt, breathing in the moist air of the jungle floor.
Okay, yes, it was a stupid question, a child’s question, but I couldn’t help it. I lifted my head so I could look the cat eye to eye, but it was no longer a cat but a woman.
A very old woman. Her hair was braided off to one side, jet black shot through with white strands that reached nearly to her waist; her skin was pale as if she hadn’t seen the sun in a long time. Or maybe she’d spent more time as a jungle cat than she spent on two legs. Green eyes stared down at me, fathomless as they swept over me. “I am quite sure.”
I didn’t know if I should push to my feet, or if I should just lay there and cry. Stupid, so fucking stupid when there was so much on the line, so much—
“Granddaughter,” she said. “You are my granddaughter.”
Slowly, ever so slowly, I raised my head. “Are you sure?”
Her lips curled up into a tight smile. “Quite. I pass on my stamp of coloring in both two and four legs. Come. I want to know how you broke the curse that was put on your mother.”
She turned and strode away from me. Old she might have been, but she was hardly frail. I scrambled to my feet and hurried after her. She was the same height as me with a similar lean build. Leaner though, as if she’d burned off all the excess fat on her body.
“Why are you here, granddaughter?” She didn’t turn to ask me the question. I made my way to her side as she pushed her way through the jungle.
I opened my mouth to answer her, to tell her the truth, but found myself pausing. “Can you tell me about my mother, first? It might answer the questions I have that brought me here.”
She slowed and looked at me. “Your mother was a wild one, the blend of my bloodlines and her father’s made her so strong, strong enough to rule in his place. That’s what he wanted, you know. He wanted a child that would be able to stand against his
bitch of a wife.” She sighed.
All thoughts of this woman being the changeling, of getting the stone from her if that was the case were gone. Gone with the need to understand my own past.
“But the curse on her, you knew about it?” Why, why would a mother not fight to keep a curse from her own child? I didn’t understand.
Those green eyes looked through me, and she lifted a hand almost as if she would touch me but dropped it before she made contact.
“Yes and no. I agreed to have her jungle cat kept from her to keep her from learning to fight—it was meant to be temporary. I thought to protect her. I pushed her toward the lion prides, thinking she would find humility there, and she found only death and a child that was born a runt.”
That was like a slap and I fought to keep my reaction from showing. She went on. “Ishtar cursed her with an early death. She cursed her that any child she had would carry the same troubles, that the curse would become a part of the bloodline. I didn’t think you’d survive, to be honest.”
Troubles? That’s what she wanted to call what I’d faced in my life?
She pushed aside a series of hanging vines and the view opened to a waterfall cascading down to a crystal-clear pool. The sounds of voices mingled with the calls of birds and animals. “What else do you want to know about your mother?”
“Did you love her?”
Those green eyes were sharp. “She was my child, and it was my duty to give birth to her, nothing more.”
Nothing about love there. I thought about the Emperor, and what he’d said. That he’d loved my mother the most.
She’d been the child he’d wanted.
Even if he was a crazy motherfucker, I could at least understand love. I couldn’t understand this disconnect.
“So, no love.”
“I gave her life,” she said. “What else should I have done?”
I didn’t even know my grandmother’s name and I realized I didn’t need to. She was not family.
“Well and good, at least I know where I stand with you,” I said, regretting deeply the tears she’d seen on my face only because she would equate them with weakness, which I was not. Love didn’t make you weak; it gave you the strength to dig deep.
“Would you like to meet—”
“No.” The word rippled out of me, harder than I wanted it to. “You are part Jinn?”
She stiffened. “I care not to think about it, but yes, I am. My mother escaped to the jungle during the purge, before the wall went up.”
I nodded and that piece of the puzzle clicked into place. “Then you know I carry the same power.”
“You cannot access it. I made sure of that. My daughter was too unpredictable, just like her father. Just like your grandfather, ruled by emotions and not reality. It was the one thing that Ishtar did that I was glad for.” She sniffed and waved toward the pool. “You have cousins.”
Two men and three women stood, similar build, similar coloring to me and my grandmother.
I was just one of many. Weird to think that I’d always wanted to be part of a pride, to fit in with all the golden-haired and -eyed lions, only to have it offered to me and feel nothing but wanting to be just me. Dark green eyes, black hair, skin the color of the desert sands.
Did they have the strength that I had in the magic of our bloodline? I was about to find out.
“Merlin asked you to hide a stone for him, one of Ishtar’s stones. It either holds the power of creation itself, or the ability to gift abilities to others.” I stood a few feet from her as I spoke, enough that I had room to shift if I needed to. “I need it now to keep our world alive.”
She snorted. “Just like your mother, so grandiose in your daydreams. You know, she once . . .”
Her words trailed off in my head, like a buzzing of gnats that I couldn’t get away from. She wasn’t going to give me the stone. She was going to act like she didn’t even have it.
The question was what would I do to save my family?
Anything. I started out across the small clearing, heading straight toward the others, the ones who were my cousins.
I didn’t need to know their names. As I approached, I saw the way they watched me. Curious, but not afraid.
That was a mistake.
“Which one of you is your grandmother’s favorite?” I smiled as I asked. They laughed and looked at each other, and they all pointed at what had to be the youngest girl. She was petite by the standards that our body type seemed stamped with. I motioned for her to come close to me.
And she did. Fool that she was.
She stepped close and I pulled her into a hug. “I’m sorry.”
“What?” She tipped her head up at me, confusion in every line of her face. I spun her around so her back was to my front, my one knife I still had on me pressed to her throat. I backed us up as she squawked and struggled against me. Not for long as I pressed the blade against her skin.
“The stone,” I said.
My grandmother had her hands up toward me, magic curling out. I flicked my fingers at her, brushing it away as if it were nothing. “The stone for her life.”
“You are mad!” she screeched. “Just like him, just like—”
“Shax,” I said. “And if I am mad like him, then I will be mad like him, but at least I know the importance of love. Of family.”
The girl in my arms stopped struggling. A dry laugh escaped me. “Do you understand that she does not love you enough to give me the stone?”
“Gram?” the girl whispered. “Please, she’s hurting me.”
The old woman stared me down and shook her head. “No. Love is not the answer.”
I tightened my hold on the girl and whispered in her ear, “Do you believe that?”
She whimpered. “No.”
With a quick shift of my hold on her, I pressed the blade against a different part of her throat. “You were to be the one to take over guarding the stone one day, weren’t you?”
Another whimper. “Will you leave if I give it to you?”
“NO!” The old woman launched at us, her knife thrown ahead of her. Not aimed for me, but for her granddaughter.
I yanked the girl out of the way so she fell without injury, and took the blow to my upper arm. The knife cut in deep, hard against the bone. I snarled and shoved my grandmother back.
Goddess of the desert, what was it with my asshole bloodline? Could I not have one grandparent that wasn’t homicidal?
“You would kill those you are bound to protect!” I circled her, switching my knife to the other hand, gripping the handle.
“To keep the world safe from the Emperor! To keep him imprisoned!” she roared back at me, fear in every line of her face, in every staccato move of her body.
I pointed the knife at her. “The Emperor is free, Ishtar is on the loose, and the falak is about to be reborn! I am fighting for my family. I am fighting for those I love more than anything in this world!” The words poured out of me. “You don’t even have that! You don’t fight for anything, you cower in this place, hiding!”
Her eyes widened and her face paled. “I am not a coward.”
I shook my head, and lowered the knife, seeing in her a path that could have been mine if I’d run from my destiny, if I’d let the hurt and broken heart Steve had handed out to me rule my life.
I would have ended up like this.
“I don’t want to fight you,” I said. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
Those green eyes that could have been my own narrowed. I held my hands out to my sides, not submissive, but not fighting. “I could have killed your granddaughter. You threw the knife to end her life.”
My grandmother’s lips tightened. “She was the wrong choice to protect the stone, that she would give it up so easily.”
“To protect her brothers?” I tipped my head but didn’t take my eyes off the old woman. Interesting that none of my cousins had come at me from behind. “There is no sin in that.”
A snarl rippled
past her lips, showing off her overly sharp canines. “There is sin in not doing your duty.”
For just a moment, I could feel my father’s presence as if he were standing right there with me. Duty was something he’d understood, something he’d lived day in and day out, and it had cost him his life, protecting those who could not protect themselves.
“I have a duty to those I am protecting, not just my own family but our world,” I said softly. “Do not make me kill you for that duty, old woman.”
Her other grandchildren were sliding away from my side, shifting to get behind her. Two of the boys motioned for me to hold my ground.
The girl was gone, disappeared.
My grandmother tensed, muscles quivering as she prepped for a shift. I shook my head. “Don’t. This is a bad idea all around.”
Her shift was fast, as fast as my own, and she was in the air, paws outstretched and mouth open wide. I ducked and rolled out from under her, came up with my knife and sliced her through her side. She hit the ground hard, stumbled, looked at her side as though she couldn’t believe I’d actually cut her.
I kept her circling with me, drawing her closer and closer to the grandchildren that were my cousins. Cousins who didn’t seem all that fussed about turning on their grandmother. It made me wonder where their parents were.
A snarl rippled out of her as she launched herself at me again. This time I caught both front legs, just above her paws, just held her there. “Don’t make me kill you.” I grimaced. “There has been enough death in my life, that I . . . for once, I don’t want to watch someone who is family—even asshole family—die.”
She shifted back to two legs, and I tightened my hold on her wrists to keep her in place. Her magic rose within her, along her skin, and mine rose to meet it. Like seeing two cats check each other out, to see who was stronger, the magics circled one another, testing, pulsing.
“You are not strong enough to beat me,” she growled. “Just like your aunties. They weren’t strong enough to beat me.”
My jaw dropped.
“You killed their parents? Your own children?” All I could do was stare at her, the horror of her words sinking into me. Under my skin, my magic flowed faster, spinning through me. Showing me how to take her.
Emperor’s Throne: Desert Cursed Series, Book 6 Page 19