Running Wild

by Lucinda Betts

  She needed to warn them, tell them to leave before the shitani poured down the hall and swarmed them like evil locusts. What if they flooded the married women’s chambers? The children would be slaughtered.

  “You’ll tell me exactly which cell she was locked in, you puss-ridden camel cunt,” one of the Warqueens was saying to the Sultan’s soldier.

  “Don’t make me go in there!” the soldier pleaded. “The shitani! The shitani!”

  “It’s by order of Prince Tahir, you blubbering anus.” Neither Warqueen Abbess seemed perturbed by the idea of meeting a demon, although the sound of the demons’ claws clattering over the flagstone rang in both her head and her equine ears.

  Hating the loss of time, she stopped and rubbed off her bridle. “Warqueens, run!” she told the soldiers even before the transformation was complete. “It is I, Princess Shahrazad, and I am safe, but shitani—thousands of them—are coming this way.”

  “If that’s true, if you are safe, where are you?” one of the Warqueens asked.

  “I’m invisible, as are some of the demons. Their spit smells like gardenias and it renders invisibility. Now run!”

  “I’m not running until I see you.”

  Shahrazad ran toward the tenacious woman and grabbed her shoulders. “I am here. Here! Now go! Lock the married women’s gate and protect it. All the children are inside those chambers.”

  “I think we should listen to her,” said the Warqueen in her grasp.

  “Good idea,” said the Sultan’s man. “Let’s all flee.”

  “Not so quickly, vermin,” the Warqueen said. “You’ll show me the gate for the children’s area.”

  “Where is Prince Tahir?” Shahrazad asked. “Is he safe? Did he rally the troops against the demons?”

  “He’s working with both the Sultan and the Raj, and each has his army,” the second Warqueen said. “He was concerned for your well being, though. The commander wanted you on the battlefield to tell us where the demons were, but the Sultan wouldn’t have anything to do with it.”

  Because he was too interested in chopping off my head, Shahrazad thought. But she only said, “Very well. Leave now. I will find him.”

  “As an invisible, flying horse, I imagine everyone will want you out there,” the first Warqueen said. “May God hold you in his eyes.”

  Beneath him, Kateb skittered left as a demon leaped toward them, its angry hiss filling the air despite the overwhelming noise, the cries of pain and the clanging of swords. The shitani missed Tahir’s shoulder, landing on a Warqueen’s horse instead. Her chestnut horse broke formation, and her sisters attacked the creature before it could enthrall the rider.

  The fighting techniques of the Sultan’s men didn’t help them. Three strides in front of him, he watched a demon leap from a rock and land on a soldier’s back. His horse bolted and bucked, but no one noticed, not even as the demon sank its brass hooks into a soldier’s lip and kick him forward, jabbing vicious spurs into the man’s sides. Within heartbeats, the soldier was the demon’s creature—the soldier had his sword drawn and was poised to slice a comrade.

  Tahir rushed forward, still trying to part the crowd to stop the man. He was too late, but it didn’t matter. Black fletching shining in the setting sun, a Warqueen’s arrow found the demon first. Blood pumped from the creature’s neck to the sand. The shitani screamed like a jackal, and the man it’d been riding slid to the ground like someone had pulled out his spine.

  Tahir would have gone to retrieve the man if he could have—perhaps save him—but two demons swarmed the soldier next to him. Tahir lashed out, lopping two demon heads off before the man could fend for himself.

  “Thank you,” the Sultan’s man said. “I have your back if you have mine.”

  “Very well.”

  Beneath him, Kateb snaked his head out and grabbed a demon from the ground. As Tahir slashed another demon off a foot-soldier’s neck, his stallion crushed a shitani skull with his massive teeth.

  Even as the melee enveloped him, Tahir cursed. If the Sultan and the Raj had listened to him, they could have cut the demons off at the pass, before they swarmed this area surrounding the palace and the palace courtyard itself. So many more men would die this way.

  Slash. Another demon head rolled away. Crunch. Kateb killed another. Pffft. A Warqueen’s arrow penetrated another shitani’s chest. Slash. His sword flew and hot blood splattered him. Dear God, hold me in your eyes, he thought. Would this never end? Crunch. Kateb smashed something beneath his oversized hooves.

  Two demons landed on the man next to Tahir, plucking out the eyes of the man’s horse before the man could even raise his weapon. Slash. Tahir’s sword separated the demon’s head from its body. Slash. The second demon fell. A third shitani landed on Kateb himself, who jumped and twisted until the thing flew through the air. The wise old horse caught the creature and crushed it just as Tahir’s sword flew from his sweat-slicked hand.

  Tahir drew his second sword, and none too soon. Next to him a demon jerked the brass hooks it had sunk in a soldier’s nostrils, and the soldier was drawing his weapon on him. Tahir cut off the shitani’s head, and the soldier collapsed to the ground.

  Was it his imagination, or were the demons getting thicker? No one individual was hard to kill, but the sun was setting and there seemed to be no end in sight. Slash. Crunch. And where were the Warqueens? Slash. Blood squirted into his face, and when he wiped it away he found a demon sitting on his lap, reaching for his face, its orange eyes locked on his.

  Love me, he heard.

  Kateb would have none of it. He bucked and twisted like a colt and the creature went flying. This time, Tahir managed to keep hold of his weapon, but Kateb landed on something—a corpse most likely, but perhaps a demon’s head. For a heartbeat, the noble horse was on his knees. When he regained his feet, Tahir could tell immediately that something was wrong. The best horse ever born had hurt his foreleg.

  For the first time, he wondered if he shouldn’t have traded places with the magician.

  Carried on huge invisible wings, Shahrazad flew over the bloody mess that had replaced the dunes around her palace. Everywhere she looked, she saw weapons and bodies and death. The coppery scent of blood filled her nostrils.

  You could have stopped this, a voice in her head told her. It didn’t belong to the demons; it belonged to her conscience.

  The Warqueens were the exception to the decimation; their arrows stopped the demons before the demons touched them. The soldiers near the Warqueens fared well too. Sadly, none of them were positioned near the main palace gate, and demons poured into her courtyard. Toward the children.

  She winged over the Warqueens one more time. Where was Tahir? He could stop this.

  As she flew around the palace’s perimeter looking for him, she saw something that made her heart freeze. Shitani were streaming into the back entry. If they made it past the few remaining guards, they’d penetrate the women’s quarters.

  For a moment an image of women and children filled with brass hooks and ridden by green monsters filled her mind. If she had taken the magician’s place…No, she told herself. Manipulating people to peace wasn’t the answer. She’d stop these demons by honest means. And she’d stop them now.

  She swooped down on her invisible wings toward the nearest Warqueen and snatched a rein from the Warqueen’s hand. Without remorse she dragged the warrior’s reluctant horse away from its herd, toward the breach in their line. If the Warqueens knew about the breach, they’d stop the shitani.

  But the warrior’s horse refused to budge, not for some invisible monster, and the Warqueen agreed with her steed. She slashed blindly at Shahrazad. And with an equine cry of dismay Shahrazad released the horse.

  She circled the battle below, looking for anyone to help. And found Tahir! He commanded the Sultan’s men in their assault against the shitani. As he called to a soldier, she caught a glance of his face and he looked mighty. The striking snake on his face looked like it belonged there,
like it’d been there his entire life. His coppery torc gleamed.

  She swooped down toward his horse and grabbed the rein. For a moment, Kateb snorted, and Shahrazad could almost hear him thinking. And then he shook his head free and began to follow her, muscling his way through the demon-ridden crowd, snatching shitani skulls where he could as Tahir cut them down with his sword.

  “Shahrazad!” he called. “Is that you?”

  She could only neigh in response.

  Within moments, they reached the breach in the wall. Hundreds of shitani were trying to funnel through it now, but Tahir and his horse seemed undaunted. Blood splattered his face so that it looked like it dripped from his snake’s fangs. “Warqueens!” he shouted, his mightiness making her heart ache in pride. “To me!”

  Shahrazad didn’t think he could be heard over the death cries, the grunts, and the clanking weapons. She didn’t think he could be heard over the gnashing of demon teeth. But the lead Warqueen heard, and she rallied to his side, easily falling in under his command. Others followed.

  Soaked in the light of the setting sun, the Warqueens, Tahir, Kateb, and Shahrazad became a shitani-killing machine. Shahrazad landed and followed Kateb’s example, smashing with hooves and crushing with teeth, dealing death to the forsaken demons in a way not remotely possible in woman form, not even with her wicked dagger.

  Demon blood coated her legs and face, her chest and withers. Blood coated her tongue, but she didn’t care. She’d killed tens of demons, perhaps even hundreds. She smashed yet another beneath her hooves and pulled one from Tahir’s shoulder with her teeth. A Warqueen’s arrow pierced it before she could toss it down. When she looked up for the next shitani, she saw…no more.

  She whirled around, seeking the next demon, hungry for its skull. Her hooves longed to smash and pummel. But all she saw was Tahir’s blood-splattered face looking at her across the sea of dead demons. Two Warqueens lay in the dust at their feet, and Kateb was holding a demon, its dead corpse dangling from his teeth.

  Suddenly a new wave of shitani was upon them, pouring in from the dunes toward the passage leading to the women and their children.

  Shahrazad didn’t stop to think. She pulled demons from the back of Kateb and from the Warqueens’ mounts. She crushed them underfoot and crunched them between her teeth. Once she glanced up to see Tahir slicing off three demon heads with one swoop just as another landed on his back. She tried to lurch to his rescue, but a shitani landed on her head, right between her ears.

  Unnerved, she shook her head. The demon clung tenaciously, wrapping its long fingers around her ears and its long toes around her headstall. She lowered her head and shook again.

  My queen! she heard. Her head had been free of their voices for so much of the battle that this call brought her up short. We will have you, my queen, whether you desire it or not.

  You won’t! she cried, tossing her head and bucking like a wild-caught horse.

  We will, it said, wrapping its fingers around the headstall next to its toes. We will, and we’ll do it now.

  With those words, it yanked the headstall from her head, and within moments, she’d regained her human form—her helpless, soft human form.

  “Help!” she cried as the shitani scurried up her leg. She grabbed her dagger and slashed. The demon fell to the sand writhing, but another took its place, scurrying up her leg like a rat. “Tahir, help me!” The sound of war buried her cry.

  You need no help, the demon cackled. You have us!

  She sliced at the shitani, but it ducked out of the way and scuttled to her shoulder. “Help me!”

  Just look at me, my queen, the thing crooned. It ran a loving tongue over her cheek. And love me as I love you.

  I won’t, she said, but its orange eyes burned into hers, and its long fingers pulled her violet riding pants from her hips. All around her Warqueens fought other demons, and no one noticed her. “Tahir!” she called. “Tahir!”

  Lay here, my queen. Forget your Prince Tahir. He is occupied. Let me be your prince. Let me be your Impregnator.

  And God help her, she obeyed. Ignoring the thrashing, she lay in the sand. A Warqueen’s horse nearly stepped on her head, but a demon appeared just in time. It lost its head to a sword, but the demon wrapped around her neck cackled in deep satisfaction.

  No time for niceties now, my queen. Just spread your legs. Let me have you.

  And she did. She had no choice.

  Just one taste before I plant my seed, it said. It scuttled back down her and extended its vile red tongue. The hot length of it traveled up her thigh, toward that most sacred spot.

  And then the demon’s head exploded from its body.

  “My apologies, Princess,” Tahir said with a small bow. At least she assumed it was Tahir from his voice. “I tried to arrive more quickly.” His face was so painted with blood that he could have been anybody, but the tenderness in his hand as he reached for hers and pulled her to his feet was uniquely his.

  “Thank you,” she said, feeling naked and vulnerable in this unclothed female form. Quickly, she retrieved her riding pants, refusing to acknowledge her embarrassment of losing them to the demons. “May I have your dagger? I seem to have lost mine.”

  He laughed. It was a ragged sound, but it was a laugh. “You’ve no need,” he said. “They’re all dead.”

  “Who’s dead?” He couldn’t mean the demons.

  But he did. With exhaustion etched in his movement, he waved a tired arm around the dunes. Shahrazad looked around the area in amazement. Tahir was right. The only shitani she saw were corpses.

  The Warqueens and soldiers seemed equally at a loss. “We did it,” one of the women said, disbelief in her voice. “I thought—” She took off her gray helmet and ran her hand through her short-cropped hair, which was soaked with sweat and blood. “I mean, I didn’t think—”

  “I thought you were amazing,” one of the Sultan’s soldiers said to her, his voice husky with fatigue—or perhaps emotion. “I’ve never seen such fighting as your regiment showed. Without you, we would have lost the day.”

  The commander of the Warqueen Abbesses nodded regally, the bone-white moonlight gleaming off her dark features. “Thank you. Your men fought valiantly as well.”

  “Is it over?” one of the Raj’s men asked. “Are they gone forever?”

  No one answered, and a strange silence filled the courtyard. “I believe they are gone,” Shahrazad finally said. “I hear no more of their voices in my head.”

  Suddenly, a huge dust devil rode over the dunes, stirring plumes of dust and throwing shitani corpses like they were made of parchment.

  “God’s eyes,” a soldier swore. “What is that?”

  “Badra,” Tahir said, pulling Shahrazad next to him. His arms felt strong, but she knew—they weren’t strong enough to protect her from the magician.

  She’d thought the magician would vanish as the united armies slaughtered the last demon, but it wasn’t so. Badra had come to collect her dark payment.

  17

  “Who among you bears my tattoo?” the blond woman asked, shaking sand from her luxurious red cape.

  Nothing but silence met her, a silence made more eerie by the fact that battle cries still rang through Tahir’s head.

  “Come now,” she chided, striding directly toward him—and Shahrazad. “You cannot hide from me. I know whom I’ve touched. Speak up, if you please. And even if you don’t.”

  “Badra,” he said, “I know what you want, but you won’t find it here. No one will help you.”

  She shook her head so that the full moon rising behind her cast strange shadows on the dunes before her. “Prince Tahir, in due time you will thank me for all I’ve done for you. But mankind requires a magician, and I am finished with the task.”

  “I don’t trust you, Lady Casmiri, Badra, Badr—whatever you’re calling yourself in this moment.”

  “I don’t ask for trust. I ask for help. I’ve managed the shitani for twenty generations, a
nd I want to stop. This duty belongs to someone else. I can no longer control these demons.”

  “Your control of them is no longer needed,” Tahir said, his words filling the night. “We’ve killed them. Together, we’ve slaughtered every last one.”

  “And perhaps we have enough resources to slaughter one more,” the Sultan added, walking toward her as he pulled his sword from its bloodied sheath. “You.”

  Silence filled the dunes as the exhausted fighters waited for a reaction.

  And then the magician laughed. She laughed like she’d lost her mind, like no shred of humanity remained in her heart. “Oh, my naïve innocents,” she said, “the shitani are not dead. They’re not vanquished.”

  “Then what lies before you?” Tahir demanded. “Figments of our collective minds?”

  “Oh, no,” Badra said, her blond hair gleaming in the moonlight. “These corpses are as real as you are, my handsome prince. But they are but the merest fraction of the number rushing toward you.”

  “I do not believe your lies,” the Sultan said. “You weave them like a spider weaves it webs.”

  “Then listen, dearest Sultan,” the magician demanded. “All of you who bear evidence of my touch, listen. Not with your ears but with your minds. Do you hear them calling? Do the voices of the shitani not grow louder in your thick skulls even as we stand here?”

  “I hear them,” Shahrazad said quietly to him. And a lance of fear stabbed his gut. The princess always showed the most sensitivity to their calls, and these human warriors were nearly spent. They couldn’t battle the demons again, not without rest and food.

  “I do not believe you,” the Sultan said again, but his words quavered this time, and Tahir knew he’d heard the demons.

  “You,” the magician said, pointing at the Raj ir Adham.

  “Me?” To Tahir, the man looked terrified by her attention.

  Badra swung the tip of her cape, and the Raj ir Adham flew through the air, landing on the sand between Shahrazad and Tahir. “It’s your turn to manipulate,” the magician said. “You wear my tattoo, and you’ve proven yourself capable.”