“Telly needs to return you now,” said Katli. “Take his hand. I will give you a small thing, and when you go back, you will know what to do with it.” She waited. Emma reached for Telly, felt him grasp her outstretched hand with the velvety leather of his, but her vision was full of Katli’s face and the turquoise light radiating from her endless black eyes. “Now,” said Katli, tilting her head. “Just a small thing. Just,” she leaned down, and her breath smelled of cloves. “A kiss.”
Her lips brushed Emma’s and something passed between them. Out of Katli. Into Emma. And Emma knew what to do with it.
25
Seshua stalked like a caged thing, and Alexi watched. “There’s nothing we can do and well you know it,” he told the king. “They’ll return when their time is up, and it won’t be long. You know that.” Alexi frowned, then flicked his gaze towards the giant tarantula who moved like some restless nightmare made solid, sidling with a rustling sound over stone. Alexi motioned some of the guards to take up position where they could better defend against the tarantula. He couldn’t hear Fern’s thoughts while the Aranan wore the form of his beast, but his body language was plain enough; he didn’t know what to do now, with his mental connection to Emma temporarily severed. But Fern wasn’t likely to cause them trouble. Alexi had been able to hear Emma’s blindly projected thoughts earlier, knew she’d commanded the tarantula to behave. Which made absolutely no sense, given she had tried to kill Fern mere moments before. The human female was unhinged. For more reasons than Alexi cared to dwell on, she disturbed him.
Seshua’s snarl interrupted the serpent priest’s thoughts. “Of course I know it. He can’t hold her there for long, she’s human. But it’s long enough.” He made a dismissive gesture and turned on his heel to pace away. The circle of guards widened with every step the king took in their direction.
Marco stepped forward, steeling himself. “My lord, long enough for what?” He kept his gaze lowered in deference to the king; as leader of the guard he was entitled to question the king if it was a matter of security, but Seshua was angry and unpredictable.
Seshua stopped pacing. When he spoke, his voice had dropped an octave. “Long enough for whatever the trickster has in mind. He is the walking god, do you understand?” Marco nodded, but his eyes were uncertain. Of course he knew about Telly, everybody did. But it had been five hundred years since the alliance between the jaguar kingdom and the trickster was broken — well before Marco’s time, by almost two centuries — and nobody spoke of it.
“The walking god is trouble,” Seshua said darkly. “And he is undoubtedly causing me more of it even as we speak. Gods be fucking damned — curse my dead father for his ambition, a god as an ally! Would that he never laid eyes on the bastard.” He swore emphatically in several more languages, turned to pace in the other direction — and froze when he heard guards from outside approaching. Then he stalked towards the entranceway to the chamber, maidens and guards parting for him like water.
Two guards came through the doorway at a sprint and almost collided with the king. They recovered themselves and stood to attention. “My lord,” they both said in unison.
“You two.” Seshua narrowed his eyes in recognition. “You were posted in the antechamber, were you not?” His voice was harsh with the knowledge they could bear nothing but bad news.
“Yes my lord,” said the shorter guard, his brown eyes huge and glassy. “We’ve come to alert you and the leader of our guard that security of the underground sanctuary may be breached, my lord.”
Marco started forward. “Breached? Does Donnie know this?”
The dark-eyed guard nodded. “He says he’s monitoring things up top from behind the bar, but he doesn’t want to move without your assessment. They haven’t attacked yet.”
“Who?” Seshua stepped up to the guards and towered above them.
“Surveillance from up top reports two groups moving into the Roadhouse, my lord,” said the taller guard. “Donnie doesn’t think they’re acting together. What we know from up top confirms that one group is fronted by Selena, but the others are unidentified as yet. My lord.”
Seshua scowled. Violence in the Roadhouse was nothing new. “So Selena has come for her people. Does it appear she comes ready for battle?”
“Ready for it my lord, but not ready to instigate it. Donnie thinks she’s come with enough firepower to defend herself, but she intends to bargain for her people. But her people, my lord…”
“Yes?” Seshua prompted.
“Selena’s people have escaped.” He swallowed. “They were set free.”
Silence descended upon the chamber. Finally, Seshua’s slow, vibrating growl broke it. The jaguar king turned, sweeping the maidens and the guards and the rest of the onlookers with a searing gaze that came to rest upon Anton and Ricky.
“You,” he growled, and it almost wasn’t a word, his voice was so thick.
Anton answered him with a defiant stare, his eyes like sharp, sparkling emeralds. He shook his head, black curls falling into his eyes. “Telly freed them, and they were prisoners of war. You have no right to them and no recourse. They’re not like Emma, they belong to somebody. To Selena. You can’t hang us for this.” Anton clenched his fists and stood his ground, his shoulders bunched and ready to fight. Ricky stood by him, his amber eyes wide, but he stood as Anton did — defiant.
Seshua came towards them and stopped mere feet away, his face dark, eyes electric. “Telly might have freed them, but it was not Telly who found Emma in the first place, was it?”
Anton said nothing in reply, but his eyes were alight, and it was answer enough.
“No,” said Seshua. “I will not forget that. You were lucky we seized her anyway, as soon as we did. If you had caused me any more grief, you would be dead.”
“You like to threaten death a lot, don’t you, king?” Anton’s lips turned up in a sneer as he said it.
Seshua smiled with cold, expansive charm. “Only one who has killed as callously as I have can talk about it without needing to demonstrate it, Anton. Remember that.”
Anton might have said something in return, but suddenly the air pressure in the chamber changed, accompanied by the strong scent of ozone, and all hell broke loose.
Telly rematerialized with Emma in his arms and Bruce at his feet in the exact same spot from which they had disappeared, and the backdraft of displaced space and time flattened the guards who remained, toppling them with a great howling wind. Emma blinked, stumbled, regained her footing. Her right hand burned. The room swam as her vision fought to stabilize, but she never stopped moving; she twisted out of Telly’s grasp and he let her go. He never could have held her. One thought drowned out everything else like a compulsion.
“Felani!” Emma screamed the maiden’s name and tasted magic on her tongue like the hum of a battery, like electrified spice. The mark on her right hand throbbed to the frantic beat of her heart. She bolted across the chamber, guards grabbing for her, but she flew, slipped through their fingers, the magic of the goddess making her impossible to catch. From her left came Alexi, glowing white with power and fury; from her right Seshua advanced in a storm of his own anger, hot and terrible. She ran faster.
Felani barely had time to turn before Emma tackled her, rode her small golden body to the ground and ignored the pain as her knees smashed into the stone floor. They skidded together and crashed into the rest of the maidens. Maidens sprang away, snarling and trilling, and Felani lashed out, raked claws through the air, aiming for Emma’s face and closing on nothing when Emma jerked away.
Felani tensed to throw her off, and then their eyes met.
The maidens froze. Her nostrils flared, scenting magic and power, something rich and tropical and not of this world.
“You smell like home,” she said, voice deep with wonder.
Emma said nothing, no time; instead she leaned down and pressed her mouth to Felani’s and breathed borrowed magic into the maiden. She felt the mark on her hand flare, pu
lse with heat, and then suddenly something clicked inside of her, falling together like the pins of a lock.
In a voice that didn’t belong to her, she said against the maiden’s lips, “Felani, open the call.”
Felani did.
Their mouths pressing together became less a kiss and more a frantic crush as Felani felt the impossible: she opened the call, and something in Emma called to her, her beast. Magic like a shining invisible flood reached out, leaping from Emma to Felani. For the first time in almost two thousand years, Felani’s beast leapt to life and thrummed against her skin. Not the controlled, restricted sensation she’d lived with for longer than she could remember, but a screaming, rushing, electric pulse that crawled over her and out of her and burned to be released. And Emma could do it. Felani shouted against Emma’s lips and locked her arms around her. There was no way on earth Felani was letting her go.
Emma wrenched her mouth free, tasted blood, and stared into Felani’s frantic eyes. “The others, Felani, the others!” She could still feel magic like she was drowning in it, like she’d eaten enough to choke on it, and it had to go somewhere, she knew it did.
Felani never said a word, but every maiden ran for them. The guards didn’t know what to do — the maidens slapped their spears and guns and swords out of the way as though they were toys, and the guards were unwilling to attack the king’s own maidens.
Emma had time to gulp a breath and then they were on her, grabbing for her, almost two dozen ocelot maidens piling on top of one another just to touch her flesh. The magic and the call leapt and spread — a crushing, crawling, incredible weight, like drowning beneath ice, heavy and freezing. One maiden screamed as her beast roared to life, and then the rest followed; Emma felt the near-physical tug of the energy of every one of their beasts, tangibly connected to her through the call, pushing at their skin like it was her own. Every nerve ending blazed raw and shrieking and it didn’t matter that it wasn’t her insides wanting to tear themselves apart, she could feel them, feel them all, and what should have felt merely cold and electric and strange was amplified to an agonizing, paralyzing seizure.
She couldn’t take it, she would die, she would. It had to stop. They had to change, damn it, they had to change .
She thought it, and it happened. Metamorphic magic burst forth and exploded, a bomb with Emma at its epicenter. Blinding light flashed like a strobe in front of her eyes and Felani went fluid beneath her, an impossible conformation of flesh and fur, writhing and white-hot. Emma pitched sideways as the thing that used to be the maiden twisted free and more of them spilled over her, paws pummeling her body. She shut her eyes and threw her hands over her head and prayed not to be torn to shreds.
She needn’t have worried. They flowed around her, parting like water, scattering between the guards who could only stand and stare. Emma barely got a good look at the tawny cats, all small fine faces and huge, black-rimmed eyes. As one, they bolted from the chamber, their golden, black-dappled bodies disappearing between the guards until the scrabbling sound of their claws died to echoes, and was lost.
They had run, all of them.
The guards all wore various expressions of confusion and dawning fear. They had stood and let the king’s maidens — who were not supposed to be capable of changing — run out the door without lifting a hand against them.
Emma looked around, blinking, shaking off the surreal cobwebs of magic like a fading trance. She felt drunk and raw. She spotted Fern and her heart gave a small leap; he stood human, gaunt and naked, blinking, almost as dazed as she was. His mind touched hers tentatively, but she was too numb to respond.
And then she looked up. At Seshua.
The jaguar king flexed his fists, knuckles cracking. His eyes were almost black with rage, and the look in them was all for her.
26
Seshua captured Emma’s arm with one big hand and yanked her to her feet. “That is quite enough excitement for one night, don’t you think?” His voice was hard and brittle with the effort of not shouting. Emma figured it was probably a rhetorical question and didn’t bother answering him. Besides, she agreed. She was all for cutting out the excitement. Not that getting dragged off by an angry jaguar king would really bring the tone of the evening down any.
“Guards!” Seshua jerked his chin in Telly’s direction. “Watch him.” Telly — normal looking again, no fur, jeans instead of leathers — started forward with one hand on Bruce’s head, but a very serious guard drew a very serious length of steel and barred his way. Bruce, shaggy and brown once more, growled and laid his ears flat, but stayed by Telly’s side.
Seshua turned a look on Telly that could have singed the trickster’s hair. “You go nowhere. I have had enough. Move another step forward and my guards will do their best to bring you down, make no mistake.” Seshua’s chest heaved as though he’d been running, and his cheeks were dark. “I will sacrifice them all to bring order to my sanctuary,” he growled. “The guards, your friends. All of them.”
Emma reappraised: not just angry, but totally fucking furious.
Telly knew it. He held his hands up in front of him, one eyebrow quirked, mocking the king’s rage. Emma got the impression he didn’t feel much like pushing the jaguar king anyway — he’d already accomplished what he set out to do, the scorch mark on her right hand was evidence of that. And Seshua hadn’t noticed it yet.
Probably because he was too busy manhandling her. He pulled her up against him with one hand and wrapped another behind her legs, lifting her roughly into his arms.
She stifled a squeal. “Put me down! I can walk on my own.” Emma twisted against his broad chest but he just squeezed until she couldn’t move.
“Marco,” he barked at the leader of the guard. “Send a few of your men to search for the maidens. I doubt you’ll find them, but search anyway. Send backup to search for the harpies. And gods help you, make the entrance secure. Alexi will go with you. Donnie can handle security above ground until we know more, but I do not want anybody breaching the sanctuary. Understood?”
“Yes my lord, but you should —”
“I should do as I wish, Marco, is what you were about to say.” Seshua’s voice dropped to a menacing rumble. “You handle our security. Alert me only if it is necessary.”
“Put me the fuck down!” Emma swatted at Seshua’s face and he captured her wrists together in one fist.
Marco politely ignored her struggles. “Of course,” he said with a deferential nod. “But my lord, what would you have me do with the Aranan?”
Fern was surrounded by four guards. Their swords and guns looked like overkill against Fern’s naked body, but Fern was breathing hard and looking ready to fight, his gaze fixed on Emma. His body was wiry and gaunt from the change, every muscle standing out in ropy definition, but Emma caught his thought that he would change again to get her away from Seshua. She knew instinctively it wasn’t a good idea.
She looked away from Fern, up into Seshua’s face. “He’ll do something stupid if you try to lock him up.”
Seshua’s gaze was unforgiving. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again with a growl. He bent his mouth to Emma’s ear, eyes blazing blue, breath searing her cheek with its heat.
“Then call him off,” he said roughly. “Calm him, or my guards will have no choice but to make a scene of this. Your pet cannot follow you everywhere.” His fingers tightened on Emma’s skin, as if he wanted to crush her and barely held himself in check.
She looked at Fern. His black eyes held hers with such intensity, she wanted to crawl into a hole somewhere and never face such total, blind devotion again. Worse, was the way she felt when she looked at him; utterly compelled. It was unnatural and disturbing and she couldn’t think about it now.
She shoved the thought aside. I told you to stay safe for me, remember?
Fern blinked, his face anguished, mind torn. Yes.
So do it. Back down and let me go. If you change again, you’ll hurt yourself. She didn’
t know where the knowledge came from; probably from Fern himself. She knew, though, that if he changed again so soon after using so much energy the first time to heal, he would be drained, and his body would eat itself to find the energy to sustain its form.
You’ll be weak if you change again, and I need you strong. We can talk this way even when I’m not here, right?
Yes , Fern sent again, like that one word was all he could manage. Like his heart was breaking.
Then you’ll know I’m okay. Please do what they tell you to. Emma turned again to stare at Seshua, his face so close to hers, eyes watching her. She felt like he’d been eavesdropping, even though she knew he couldn’t hear the mental communication.
“Don’t lock him up,” she told the jaguar king. “Don’t hurt him. I’ll know if you do, and then all bets are off, you hear me?” She gave the king as stern a look as she could manage; it was hard without her feet planted firmly on the ground.
Seshua narrowed his eyes at her as if to say, We’ll argue about this later. But then he looked at Marco. “Fern is free to return to the communal chambers. So long as he stays out of trouble, leave him alone. I will figure out what to do with him later.” He shot Fern an unfriendly look. “Go to your quarters and stay there, Aranan. You are not the only one with a claim to our lady here.” Fern’s cheeks flushed with angry color and Emma shot him a pleading look.
He’s only trying to bait you so he can hurt you, Fern. Please be good for me.
I will . Fern hung his head as if he had to look away from her, black hair falling into his eyes.
“And the prisoners, my lord?” Marco gestured towards Anton and Ricky.
Seshua looked to the two brothers. Emma did the same, and her heart twisted horribly. “It doesn’t matter,” said Seshua. Surprising her. “Let them roam loose in my stronghold. See if I give a damn.” He looked for a moment like he gave a hell of a damn, but his priorities clearly lay elsewhere.
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