by Marjorie Liu
But he took everything from her, ignoring her brief look of surprise as he tucked the bundle under his arm. He grabbed the remains of the goat—reduced to several legs and hide—and dragged it behind him. There was no use leaving more proof of their presence; the goat did not look as though it had been torn apart by an animal.
They walked along the water’s edge, and over another ridge. Karr did not rush. Soria was much smaller than he, requiring two steps for every one of his. He stole glances at her face, and found her eyes hollow with exhaustion.
“The humans come often to this place,” he told her. “Same path I took to find them. I could smell it on my way to their settlement. We are far less likely to encounter anyone on this side of the water. We will have some warning, if nothing else.”
She nodded. “How do you know where you are going?”
“The stars have not changed,” Karr said. “How far are we from where I was buried?”
“You were found southwest of here. Less than a thousand miles, I would guess. Does that make sense?”
He nodded, tight-lipped. “Those of us who could fly were returning from a trading mission. We had found a human settlement that was willing to deal with my kind.”
“So what happened?”
Death. Insanity. “My life ended.”
“Before, you used the word ‘murdered.’ ”
Murdered. He remembered telling her that—even thinking it—but it was the wrong thing to say. He had committed suicide, and used his friends to take his life.
“It is complicated,” he told her, far more sharply than he intended.
She gave him a hard look. “Death is never complicated. Just the how and why. Especially so in your case, Mr. Dead Man Walking.”
Her phrasing was unfamiliar—one of the words foreign—but her meaning was perfectly clear. He looked around them, and found they had crossed the ridge. The lake was out of sight.
Karr tossed down the goat and the cloth bundle. “This is far enough.”
Soria stood still, watching him. “The people who killed you. Were they capable of doing this? Bringing you back to life?”
“No.”
“Someone is responsible. Unless your kind can—”
“No,” he said again, interrupting her. “No.”
“Fine,” she said coldly. “But who, then?”
“One of you?” He stepped too close, deliberately using his height against her. She craned her neck but did not move. Her gaze was stubborn, defiant. “Are there any among your kind who could resurrect the dead?”
She hesitated. “I do not know.”
That was not the answer he expected. “Really.”
“I have heard stories, and seen strange things,” she told him. “Stranger than you. But that does not explain motive. Who are you, Karr? Who were you?”
“And if I tell you?” he asked harshly, leaning over her. “What will you do with that information?”
She looked at him like he was an idiot. “I am in the middle of the fucking Gobi Desert. What do you think I am going to do? Run screaming for the first phone I can find?”
Not all of that was perfectly comprehensible, but her tone was. Karr forced himself to take a deep, careful breath. “Despite your … acts of kindness, we are on opposite sides. I forget that when I am around you, but your connection to the shape-shifters—”
A frustrated growl boiled out of her. “You are so one-track-minded.”
“I am … not,” he said, not quite sure what he was denying, but rather certain she had insulted him. “I am protecting myself.”
Soria sat down on the ground, and then flopped backward, staring at the starlit sky. Her arm crossed over her stomach. She looked cold. Karr, after a moment, sat beside her.
“I am—was—a warlord,” he told her quietly. “Though that is a human term, and does not describe the whole of it. I led my people. I protected them. It was my duty and honor to do so, because I was the strongest, in both heart and body.”
“Were you born to the role?”
“Chosen.” Karr lay down, watching the stars. “The elders appointed me.”
“And was someone jealous of you? Is that why you were killed?”
He closed his eyes. “You ask too many questions.”
“I think I have a right.”
“I suppose, then, I have a right to know how you lost your arm.”
Her answering silence was long and painful. Finally, she said, “I apologize.”
“Do not,” he whispered. “You have a reason for asking.”
Soria sighed, holding the wrist of her empty sleeve. He thought, perhaps, that she was done with words; but then she said, “Thank you, for earlier. What you said about my arm. It helped.”
“Are you in pain now?”
“A little.” Soria spoke as though pain was something to be ashamed of. “Comes and goes. The more active I am, the more chances there are for my body to … imagine my arm is still there. When that happens … it hurts.” She glanced sideways at him. “Your scar? More blood going to come gushing out of you?”
“I cannot say.” He fingered the spot, trying not to think of the events that had preceded his death. “We should sleep.”
“Sure,” Soria muttered, still clutching her sleeve. “Easy.”
“Are you cold?”
She gave him a long, steady look. “Yes.”
Dangerous, whispered his mind. You fool. But that did not stop him from saying, “Roll over on your side.”
Soria chewed the inside of her cheek, still staring at him, her expression utterly inscrutable. Finally, though, she sat up and grabbed the loose, soft pants she had brought with her. She threw them in his lap. “Put those on.”
“I would rather—”
“Put. Them. On.” Firm voice, unflinching stare. Cold as ice. Karr considered arguing. His skin crawled at the idea of cloth rubbing his skin, confining him to one body. But he thought about every other human he had seen, even the leopardess shape-shifter, and all of them had been clothed.
I would not expect you to go naked simply to conform to my standards, he told Soria silently. But it was an image that was far more intriguing than it should have been.
Gritting his teeth, he jammed his legs into the soft pants and pulled them up over his hips. They were too small. He hated the sensation. Soria, however, nodded at him with all the imperiousness of a queen, and rolled over. Karr briefly considered letting her freeze.
Instead, he curled close against her back, tucking her deep within the curve of his body. A perfect fit. He slid his arm under her head, draped his other arm over her waist, noticing that it was her empty sleeve that he touched. She stiffened but said nothing. He almost wished she would.
She smelled warm and sweet, and felt too good in his arms; small, astonishingly delicate. He had never noticed whether females were fine-boned or even feminine; the only qualities that ever mattered were integrity and strength. Nothing else could be counted on in battle, or in life. But he noticed now.
“Does that help?” he asked quietly, tasting tendrils of her hair against his lips.
She cleared her throat. “Yes.”
“And this?” A golden glow spread over his skin, leaving a thick coat of fur in its place. He pulled her even closer, splaying his hand over her stomach. Her heart rate jumped. He could hear it, mirroring his own, though he wondered if she suffered the same powerful ache of loneliness that crawled from his heart into his throat, making it difficult to breathe.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Karr swallowed hard, and closed his eyes. “Rest, then. Be at ease.”
She made a barely audible sound of assent, but remained stiff in his arms. Karr calmed far more quickly. His stomach was full and his eyelids heavy. It seemed unfair to him that after being dead for thousands of years, he should still need slumber.
Just before he drifted off, Soria let out a quiet sigh and softened against him, finally relaxing. He was glad. He did not want her to be
afraid of him.
She should be. You know what the risks are.
Yet he could not let go. He told himself it was because she was cold, but the truth was that he was just as cold—freezing and empty inside, and alone. The vastness of the sky frightened him. It was the same sky, and the same stars, just as he was the same man; but everything else had changed. He had nothing to hold on to anymore.
So he held on to Soria, and finally went to sleep.
Chapter Ten
Kisses were unique as snowflakes, and so were a man’s arms. No man had ever held Soria in the same way as another. Her boyfriend in high school had been too nervous to do more than pat her on the shoulder like one of the guys, while there had been a fellow in college who never held her at all, not unless he wanted something. Some men enjoyed groping when they got close, while others embraced like a cage.
Roland, who had been her last close relationship, had been tender and gruff, but even so—in something as simple as a hug—she had always felt the thinnest of walls between them. As though he was trying too hard; as though her presence, at times, made him uncomfortable.
The language of touch was just as sensitive and varied as words, full of nuance, personality, history. Soria had never been able to stop calculating the different sensations and what they meant. Always searching for the message. But she stopped thinking when Karr curled around her, his arm draped over her empty sleeve and waist, his body warm against her back. She quit analyzing, stopped conjugating every moment. She listened to other things, like her thunderous heart, and the tease of his deep, slow breathing, hot on her neck.
She got lost. Forgot why she was supposed to be afraid. In his arms, there was no fear; just warmth and safety, and comfort. Not that she could appreciate it at first. It was too new, too unexpected. She was not supposed to feel this way about him. Or anyone.
Half a woman. Half a good hump.
No. She did not believe that. Not really.
But it had been a long time since anyone had looked past the missing arm. Too long since she had been around anyone who could make her forget what she had lost. Who could just make her feel, utterly and completely, like herself.
Don’t think about it. Don’t you dare. Not the time, not the place, not the right man.
Yeah, well. It was kind of hard to ignore him.
Soria sank back against Karr’s chest, pretending it was harmless to do so, that there would be no consequences. Just her and him. Drifting to sleep.
Which she did, finally. Blissfully. She was swallowed into darkness, where her aching stump could not follow, and where in dreams she had her arm again.
Near dawn she woke. Perhaps less than an hour asleep. Her eyes fluttered open just enough to reveal a faint light in the eastern horizon, and above it, a distant golden spark in the sky. A falling star, she thought sleepily. A floating, falling star.
Karr stirred restlessly, his arm tightening around her waist. She thought he might be awake, but he made a small sound that was both muffled and pained. Dreaming, she thought. Nightmares.
Soria rolled over, which was way more uncomfortable than she expected it to be. Rocks dug into her side, and her hip and neck ached. There was no way to prop herself up, either. She did not like lying down on her right side. Too much pressure on her stump.
She forgot her discomfort, however, when she saw Karr’s face: contorted, bones shifting in random rippling waves, his features melting into a patchwork of scales and fur and human flesh. Golden light trickled from behind his closed eyes, his mouth hanging open in silent anguish.
Looking at him made her afraid. She knew what violence there could be in waking someone from a bad dream. She had hurt people in the beginning, those who got too close to her in sleep—her friends, parents. She had made Eddie’s lip bleed during those first days in the hospital. But Karr’s embrace was too tight to escape. Her hand hovered over his shifting face.
“Hey,” she whispered, and grazed the tips of her fingers against his brow.
Pain pulsed through her head, followed by a shock of light as though thunderbolts were shooting from the sky into her skull. She glimpsed a battlefield littered with corpses, some of them animal, and standing among the bleeding dead was a small group of men and women who were animals themselves: Karr, larger than any of them, was wearing the form of a golden dragon. He was covered in blood, his claws gripping a sword. His eyes were profoundly grim. A wolf stood beside him, hand buried in the long hair of a golden-eyed man whose head he was yanking back—exposing his throat. The man was dying, not a threat, but the wolf’s claws were raised for a kill, and there was no mercy in his eyes.
No, Karr whispered to him, reaching for his wrist—and then the vision dissolved into children—children screaming in the night, tumbling from humans into animals as they ran through a cool stone temple. Karr was behind them, eyes glowing, scooping up every one in his path, his arms full as small, clawed hands dug into his shoulders and neck, making him bleed. Other adults were with him, doing the same, but Soria could not see them well. Just Karr. Racing from the temple onto a narrow trail that led up a rocky cliff, shouts behind him, whistles and grunts. A blur, then a cave—a cave with a rough-hewn statue in front—darkness full of weeping faces and Karr, shoving children inside, whispering, Do not be afraid. Stay here. Be silent. I will protect you.
But screams followed him as the night bled again, filled with the desperate high cries of those children, their faces lit by fire. Fire thrown at them. Fire blocking them. Fire destroying them.
It was the most horrible thing Soria had ever witnessed, and she battled to be free of it, fought with all her strength as Karr’s mind boiled and burned through her, roiled with grief and rage and thunder.
At the last moment—on the very tip of escape—she felt a sword run through her body. Her hands touched the blade, and another dizzying light filled her mind, swallowed up by the image of the same weapon, but blackened with age, the metal corroded. It was displayed in a glass case, inside a room filled with armor, and books.
There, whispered a voice inside her. Go there. A map flashed before her, a red dot with pulsing red lines that spiraled away across a golden plain, trailing into the gut of a rough cloth doll shaped like a man, golden eyes sewn into its head. Follow the threads.
Soria tore herself loose, and opened her eyes. She was blind at first, mind still lost in screams, and fire, and the image of a sword, but she blinked hard, fighting to be free, and when her vision cleared she found herself in the same position, as if no time had passed at all. Her hand was still pressed lightly on Karr’s face, his arm snug around her waist. At some point, his features had stopped shifting; he looked like a man again.
But his eyes were open, and he was staring at her. His intensity was breathtaking, threatening. Soria felt an unaccountable stab of guilt, as though she had willfully pried open some secret diary and aired its pages to the world.
“You saw,” he whispered. “I felt you in my head.”
Her hand jerked away. “I was trying to wake you. You were having a nightmare.”
Karr grabbed her wrist, pinning it behind her back as he dragged her under him, holding down her body with his hips and arms. Fury filled his glowing eyes. “Was that all you were trying to do?”
Soria lay very still, fighting back burning tears. “It was an accident.”
“What kind of accident?” he snapped, grief replacing fury. “Are you pleased with what you accidentally saw? Will you report back to you masters, your allies, with tales of children burning alive? I am certain they will be completely satisfied.”
“Get off me,” Soria growled, still lost in the memories of those small, frightened faces staring at Karr with trust. Tears slid free, rolling down her temples into her hair. “Get the fuck away.”
“Not until you tell me what you were trying to discover.”
“Nothing.”
He shook her. “Do not lie.”
“I am not!” she screamed at him, her th
roat aching, unable to stop her tears. “I would never want to see that.”
Karr stared at her. His red-rimmed eyes were too bright—not with light, but with tears of his own. “Then why?”
All the fight went out of her, a vast and terrible weariness swallowing her aching heart. “I told you.”
“An accident,” he repeated, studying her face like it was an awful puzzle, with all the pieces scattered.
He released her, and threw himself sideways, flopping on his back. Digging his palms into his eyes. Soria lay very still, trying to catch her breath and not sob outright. It was impossible. She could not stop crying.
“You were dreaming,” she said brokenly.
“Sometimes,” he murmured hoarsely, “I feel as though I am always dreaming.”
“Who—” She stopped, forced to take a deep, shuddering breath. “Who attacked?”
He grimaced. “You know the answer. I believe I have made it plain.”
Shape-shifters. Burning children alive. A shudder raced through her. “Why? Why do such a terrible thing? You told me before that your kind were their mistakes, but I still do not—”
Karr help up his hand. “Stop.”
Yes, stop. You should have stopped long ago, never come here, never left the airport, never left home, never stopped your goddamn car on that road. Maybe you should stop breathing while you’re at it, too.
“No,” Soria whispered. “No.”
Karr tilted his head, staring at her. “We are the chimera. We are the broken breed.”
She stared, uncomprehending. His jaw tightened, tears still rimming his hollow eyes. “My mother was a pure-blooded shape-shifter. As was my father. But they wore different skins. She was a dragon. He, a lion. They loved each other. They had me. It was forbidden.”
“I still do not—”
“Our natures make us unstable,” Karr said through gritted teeth. “We are constantly torn between three bodies, and the split can extend to our minds as well. We can … lose ourselves. When that happens, the results are often violent.”
Soria closed her eyes, trying to make sense of what he was telling her, but all she could see were those small faces, those tiny hands clinging to Karr. “No one kills children because of that.”