Are you stupid?
Now I remember. Yes.
My sword raised in my left hand, I catch the whip of flame with my right one and then send it back. Instead of letting go, I strike one, two, three times.
Otis screeches, red blossoming across his face, neck, and torso.
“Not much fun, is it?” I keep striking until his tunic hangs in shreds. The skin beneath is raw and blistered, oozing blood. When he attacks again, his fire doesn’t faze me. It only strengthens what I’ve already claimed.
I laugh at the flicker of fear in his eyes. Using the same magic never means doing it with equal power. Otis knows I can skin him alive.
“This is for me!” I slam the whip down on his head before redirecting it into a burning cage. I’ve never done it before, but I’ve watched Aetos turn his fire into a living sphere hundreds of times. At first, it wobbles and is more egg-shaped than round. Then it encases Otis as I gradually draw it down toward his feet. He shouldn’t be able to burst through. Only the creator of the sphere can break it. The magic originally came from him, though, so I’m not sure where that leaves us. In a gray area, to say the least.
I detach myself from the flames as soon as Otis is contained and look around. Kato is up again and still fighting, but his mobility is undermined by the serious injury to his leg. Carver is next to him, his blade moving so fast that no one can get too close. He’s intact, but tiring. Flynn is bloody, and his left arm is hanging uselessly at his side, but he’s still swinging with his right.
I don’t see Beta Sinta anywhere, and the way my stomach drops makes me ill.
Something crashes behind me, and I whirl. Beta Sinta is fighting like a madman and coming straight for me. Our eyes collide. He won’t reach me, not before the Fisans do. There are more than a dozen of them left, and there isn’t a spark of magic among them. Only swords, men, and muscle, and I don’t have enough fire whip to overcome more than a few. I have three minutes, maybe four, before they massacre the Sintans and are on top of me.
Someone darts around Flynn’s bad side and grabs my sword arm. I slam my other hand into his nose along with Otis’s magic. I let too much out at once, and the last of the fire whip leaves me. The Fisan’s face melts under my palm, leaving my hand hot with gore. I wipe the sludge on my pants and turn in uneasy circles, waiting for the next attack. My heart pounds as our situation sinks in. There are too many Fisans. The odds are impossible. The Sintans can’t win.
An idea takes hold. If Beta Sinta dies, I can go back to the circus. There will be no binding vow. No one who knows about me. I don’t have to fight. I could turn invisible. When it’s all over, I could slip away.
The thought presses on my chest like a lead weight. Not stopping to question why, I push it aside and fall to my knees, raising my hands to Olympus.
“Cat!” Beta Sinta roars.
I glance over my shoulder, my eyes narrowed.
“Get up! Fight!” His eyes are wild. His face is stark and splattered with blood.
I squeeze my eyes shut and turn back around. I block him out. I block it all out—clashing metal, roaring men, the stench of fear and blood, and the feel of dust turned to thick, reddish muck sucking at my knees.
“Help me,” I whisper, not knowing what will happen. If anything will happen. “Please.”
The world drops away. My stomach heaves as I tumble down a long tunnel and then land with an icy splash, sinking deep into black water. My ears hurt and my lungs burn by the time I figure out which way is up and start kicking.
I break the surface and gulp down air, slapping water out of my eyes. I’m adrift on a vast ocean. It’s a dusk of shadows and gloom. The water is gray and churning where a storm brews on the horizon. Waves roll in—powerful, angry, dark.
“Poseidon!” My God Father might not be listening. He might not care.
I swim, looking frantically around. The waves are monstrous, and there’s no land in sight. I rise up on a swell and then plunge back down on a stomach-churning ride, salt spray stinging my eyes and nose.
The rough surf suddenly splits, the slippery back of a giant sea serpent slicing the water only an arm’s length away. I gasp and flail back. Its tail thumps my leg, and I let out a shriek. I know exactly where I just landed, and Poseidon’s Ocean Oracle isn’t known for its tolerance. It’s either going to help me or eat me. Right now, that’s anyone’s guess.
The creature circles me, closing in. I spin in the water, its long, sinewy body creating an eddy that whips me around. Red, serpentine eyes with tall, narrow pupils study me, unblinking. There’s a nudge in my head, insistent. My instincts scream to shield myself, but I can’t. Not now. Gritting my teeth, I force myself open and bare my mind to the Oracle’s scrutiny. It filters through my thoughts and memories. My dark deeds. My sacrifices. My fears.
The long look it gives me reminds me of the Lake Oracle, taking its time to decide if I’m worthy. After what feels like an eternity, a forked tongue snakes out and licks my cheek. It’s smooth and icy and leaves a trail of numbness across my face. I shiver, hoping I taste like mercy instead of dinner.
Giant reptilian jaws unhinge and open wide, revealing two enormous fangs dripping seawater, saliva, and venom. The Oracle’s breath stinks like the bowels of the Underworld. My heart sinks, and I cringe. It’s going to swallow me whole. I squeeze my eyes shut and wait for the inevitable. It was arrogant and stupid to call on Poseidon like this. I’m surprised the Gods even let me live this long, knowing what I’m destined to destroy.
“Taaaakkkke,” the creature hisses.
My eyes fly open. I gape at the huge head swaying above me, razor-tipped fangs only a foot from my face, a pink, slippery gullet pulsing behind them.
Have I cheated death again? Hades must be allergic to me.
My heart hammering, dizzy from spiraling, I hesitate only a second before reaching up and grabbing a curved fang in each hand. They come loose with a soft, sucking pop.
Stunned by the magnitude of the gift, I start stammering my gratitude, but the Oracle whips the water into a frenzy, circling so fast that its huge body becomes a blur. The foaming ocean surges, roaring in my ears and pelting my skin. Water crashes over me, muffling my scream as the funnel drags me deeper into its narrow abyss. My stomach heaves again seconds before the world goes airless and black, and the whirlpool sucks me under.
I land hard on my hands and knees, hacking briny water out of the back of my throat. The ocean is gone. The storm raging in my ears is replaced by the jarring, metallic clang of battle. Soaked through, I stare at the venomous fangs heavy in each fist. I’m alive!
Adrenaline hits me like a lightning bolt and snaps me into action. I stand, face Otis’s cage, and then smash through the fiery prison with one punch. My skin blisters to the elbow in a flash of searing pain before healing as my body claims the magic again.
Otis stares at me, wide-eyed, his mouth gaping.
“And this is for Eleni!” I plunge a fang into Otis’s heart.
His face turns ashen. “You’re worse than the rest of us.” His voice is a death croak. “That makes two.”
My eyes narrow. Kill or be killed. Wouldn’t Mother be proud?
The light drains from his eyes. Green eyes. Fisan eyes.
I pull the fang from his chest. It comes free with another soft, sucking pop as he slumps to the ground.
I plunge into the battle, and a rhythm takes me, a rhythm driven by Poseidon, his Oracle, and the fangs. Strike, duck, whirl, kick, lunge, roll. Strike!
Beta Sinta and the others fight their way toward me. Sometimes, in the heat of battle, it’s hard to distinguish friend from foe. I have no trouble with that today. Beta Sinta reaches me, and the moment we end up back to back, I don’t worry about what’s coming from my blind side anymore.
I lunge forward, slicing a fang across a Fisan’s chest. Flynn’s ax whistles over my head w
hile I’m still ducked down, and there’s a spray of blood. I straighten and keep fighting, using the fangs like daggers. They’re sharp and poisonous, but I don’t have much reach, and both my enemies and their swords come alarmingly close.
Someone hammers a kick into the side of my knee, and I gasp, buckling. From the ground, I see Carver and Kato furiously working their way through a tangle of men. Beta Sinta snarls something and gets in front of an enormous Fisan who springs at me from the left. He blocks a bone-jarring hit that would have cleaved me in two, but the blow is hard enough to knock Beta Sinta’s sword from his hands.
His eyes widen. Mine do, too.
The Fisan’s face twists in triumph. I pivot on my hip and whip a fang up, throwing it like a knife. It sticks in his eye. Before the man falls, Beta Sinta grabs the fang from the Fisan’s face and then backhands it into the chest of an enemy I didn’t even see coming at me from behind.
He just saved me. Twice.
“Get up!” Beta Sinta snaps.
I lurch to my feet, my knee aching. Our backs touch again, and we circle, each with a fang gripped tightly in one fist. But it’s over. Flynn rips his ax from a crushed chest. Carver wipes his sword clean on someone’s blue tunic. There’s no one left to kill. Between Beta Sinta’s men and us, we’ve won. They’re all dead. Fisans lie at our feet, and I’m slippery with their blood.
I blink and recognize some of the dead.
I blink again and try to forget them.
Kill or be killed.
The fangs melt from our hands with a barely audible hiss, fading into nothingness. Poseidon’s power seeps from me as well, leaving me limp and drained. Panting, I double over, bracing my hands on my thighs.
Kato groans and slumps against Carver, his face turning pallid now that the blood rush of battle is draining from it. Flynn’s left arm is broken and needs to be set. Beta Sinta is dripping blood, but it’s not gushing from anywhere vital, and a lot of it isn’t even his.
I catch my breath, letting it sink in that I haven’t lost anyone. I’m amazed—and far too relieved for my own good.
I stagger upright. “That was fun.”
Sort of.
Not really.
They look at me like I’m a lunatic.
Maybe I am. “Days ago I said we should get out of here and hide!”
Flynn recovers first. “Who needs to run when you’ve got magic fangs? And fire cages.” He waves his good arm in circles, imitating me, I guess.
Beta Sinta grabs my shoulders and glares at me. He looks like he’s about to explode. He might want to shake me. Or kiss me again. I can’t tell. Given the choice, I’d rather a good shake. Definitely, a good shake.
“When I tell you to run, you run!”
I roll my eyes, and he shakes me so hard my teeth clack together.
“If I’d run, you’d all be dead.”
“That’s beside the point!” he bellows.
“That is the point!”
His fingers dig into my shoulders. Growling a curse, he lets go and drags his bloody hands through his hair, slicking it back. “How?”
“How what?”
His eyes flash. A muscle bulges in his jaw. “How in the name of the Gods did you get magic fangs?” He flings a hand toward the fallen. I refuse to look.
I think what he’s really asking is why I didn’t do this before, why I didn’t call on the Gods weeks ago and murder him and his men in their sleep. I suppose I could have, if the Gods were listening, and one in particular. But since Poseidon has taken Beta Sinta under his trident, I doubt he would give me the means to kill him. And I don’t take murder lightly. Kill or be killed, okay, but so far, the Sintans haven’t hurt me.
“Who cares?” I shrug. “The Kingmaker’s alive and bound by an unbreakable vow. Hooray for you. Congratulations to the lucky tyrant.”
“Cat. Be reasonable.”
Reasonable? Reasonable! “Don’t ask me about magic and Gods, and I won’t ask you about warlord stuff.” My tone lets him know just how insignificant “warlord stuff” is in comparison to magic and Gods.
Beta Sinta’s gray eyes flicker with irritation. Ha!
Sort of.
Annoying him wasn’t actually that satisfying.
His hard look turns even flatter than usual. “God Daughter? Or lover?”
I swallow. For a southern Sintan Hoi Polloi warlord who doesn’t know magic from a goat, he sure knows how to hit a Cyclops in the eye every now and then. “Why do you care?”
Something primal flares in his gaze. “Either way, you’re mine now.”
Nervous laughter bubbles out of me. “Your arrogance never ceases to amaze me. You would defy a God for a Kingmaker?”
“He gave you to me.”
My heart stops. He did, didn’t he?
“God Father,” I answer with a shrug. “No Olympian lovers for me.”
That primal look turns wholly possessive, doing unacceptable things to my insides. Before I can think about anything, and especially that quick, rough kiss, power bites the edges of my awareness. I turn toward the source and see a bowman nocking an arrow.
Fisans always have three bowmen. I can’t believe I forgot. He must have come up the back side of the rise, and he’s sighting the biggest target. Always take down the strongest first.
He lets fly, and the arrow zooms toward us with unnatural speed, glowing Chimera’s Fire in its wake. I reach, but the fight and the fangs have left me drained, and I can’t grab the magic.
“Griffin!” I twist and jump in front of him. Pain lances my back as the arrow slams me into Beta Sinta’s chest. I clamp down on a cry and push off as hard as I can before I burst into flames. He stubbornly holds on, his face blank with shock. I cuff him in the ear, startling him into letting me go seconds before the inferno engulfs me.
My scream splinters the air. Crimson heat swallows me whole. My back bows in agony. My skin blisters instantly. The blaze deafens me to my own howl as my world narrows to pain—intense, searing pain. Then the flames suddenly implode, sucked inside for later.
I stagger and draw in a shuddering breath. My whole body shakes. My clothes are mostly gone, and my skin is revolting—an angry, charred mix of red and black. A violent tremor runs through me, excruciating, and then the healing process takes hold.
The bowman is frantically chanting fire into another arrow. I can’t let him get away after what he just saw, or let him kill someone. Somehow, I force a thread of Chimera’s Fire from my depths and will it toward the Fisan.
The magic is fast, a bright smear in the air. The Fisan burns, but unlike me, he doesn’t rise from the ashes. And that’s all that’s left. His scream still rings in my ears, but I don’t even see a bone.
The tension keeping me upright disappears along with the bowman, and my knees turn to liquid. My breath comes in short, painful pants. My eyes are doing their best to roll back in my head.
I blink rapidly, halfway to the ground when Beta Sinta grabs my restored arms, stopping my fall. I swivel like a puppet, trying to regain my footing.
His eyes are huge. “Of all the stupid, idiotic, imbecilic, reckless—”
“I get it,” I moan.
“—things to do!” His fingers tighten painfully. “Don’t ever do something like that again!”
Anger makes me see red again. “Why not? If I want to save someone, I will! What good is the Kingmaker without a king!”
He stumbles back, clearly as shocked as I am. I hadn’t meant to, but I think I just pledged him my loyalty.
“I’m not Alpha,” he says roughly.
“You should be!” My yell is more of a gurgle. Frowning, I wipe the back of my hand across my mouth, and it comes away bloody. I’m suddenly aware of a hot pulse of pain in my back and remember the arrow. Is that why it’s so hard to breathe?
“Griffin?” I
sway forward, and he catches me against his chest. It’s like a rock. A bloody, sweaty, dirty rock. It feels good. I breathe shallowly, catching the faint scent of citrus through all the blood and dust before my legs give out.
“Cat?”
I grimace, my back throbbing. “Can’t… Can’t breathe right.”
He sits and drapes me across his lap, his powerful hands moving incredibly gently over my back.
“It must have pierced a lung,” Carver says, crouching next to us.
Beta Sinta curses, breaks the arrow shaft but doesn’t pull out the head, and then curses some more. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Chimera’s Fire,” I wheeze. “Kills. Really hurts.” Not to mention the arrow heading straight for his heart.
Beta Sinta turns me in his arms. My eyes flutter closed, but not before I glimpse the haunted look on his face.
I must have blacked out because he’s suddenly on his horse, and Carver is lifting me up to him. One of Beta Sinta’s tunics covers me from neck to knees. He must have sliced a hole in it for the broken arrow shaft because I don’t feel it pulling.
“Burn the Fisan leader,” I whisper. “Dilute my blood.”
He gives the order without questioning me, splashing water over my mouth, hands, and back while Carver and Flynn do as I said. Kato is slumped over his horse, barely holding on to consciousness.
“Griffin?”
He leans down, putting his ear close to my mouth.
“The circus. In Kaplos again.” We’re closer to Velos, but the two cities are neighbors, and Kaplos can’t be more than an hour from here. “Selena. Healer.”
“You’ll want to stay with them.” His bloodstained fingers curl into the material covering my hip. The look on his face makes my heart twist.
Actually, if I survive, I kind of want to stay with him. I really am an idiot. “No choice,” I rasp.
His mouth flattens. His eyes flick up as he spurs his horse, heading west. The shock of sudden movement sends a burst of pain through my back, and I moan. Beta Sinta’s arm tightens around my waist, and I burrow into his chest, holding on. Maybe I’ll trust him to fight my monsters while I sleep. Maybe I don’t have a choice.
A Promise of Fire Page 13