Together we are strong enough. Words, they were just words, and I knew that I should probably do something about how I was feeling, but the feeling of concern ticked away, drop by drop until all thoughts of caution, of fleeing were gone.
“Lila, we have to kill them!” I yelled as the rhuk came into view. They saw us at the same time and angled their big wings toward us. Beaks open. Talons spread wide.
“Are you insane?” Lila screeched right in my ear. “We can outrun them! Why are you slowing Balder down?”
My hands tightened on the reins, yanking Balder to a hard stop. I should have felt bad for it. Should have felt something.
We had to kill them. There was no other way.
Kill them all. We will kill them all.
“All of them,” I growled.
Reyhan whimpered and in a blink, she’d shifted into her four-legged shape of a jungle cat cub and leapt off Balder’s back.
Vahab hollered from behind me, but his words bounced off me. “Don’t let her have you, desert girl! Fight her!”
I lifted my eyes to look into the cloudless sky. The rhuk were growing larger by the second until their tawny, sand-colored feathers were visible.
I reached for the blade on my back as Balder danced sideways. He whinnied, and the sound was shrill as a trumpet.
He didn’t want to stand still. He wanted to run.
I yanked his reins again, trying to force him.
“What are you doing?” Lila flew in front of me, her purple eyes wide and scared. She was scared.
I felt . . . nothing.
“Out of my way!” I snarled. “I’ll kill them myself!”
She shook her head, eyes darting to the sword. “Oh, camel shit on my wings! You’re listening to that damn sword, aren’t you? Tap dancing goddess, you have to listen to me!”
Dancer slid to a stop next to us, Vahab grinning like a fool. “Ah, this is almost as good as riding a unicorn!”
I locked my eyes on him and my throat tightened. The two birds coming our way were forgotten.
Cheating filthy bastard.
I lunged out of my saddle, straight for Vahab. “Cheating bastard!”
Vahab’s mouth gaped open, and Dancer jigged sideways, so I missed them both and hit the sand face first.
“You have to snap out of it, Zam!”
Lila. Balder. My two friends.
No, I will rule you!
Sweat poured down my face and arms as I wrestled for control of my own body. The whoosh of wings, the scream of the horses, of Reyhan snarling and crying out. I had to pull it together.
I will save them. Stop fighting me! Obey me!
She could not have used a worse word. Steve had said that on too many occasions.
‘Why won’t you just obey me? Do as you’re told! You’re my wife, I will tell you who to be!’ Steve’s voice rolled into Lilith’s as she demanded my obedience to her.
“Fuck you!” I rolled to my back, caught a glimpse of feathers and threw the sword straight up and into the belly of the rhuk as it swept toward Balder. The blade stuck deep, burying up to the hilt straight through the ribcage. A lucky shot. A saving throw. A burst of feathers, the bird faltered and let out a gurgling screech.
My horse reared up and struck out with his hooves, knocking the now terribly wounded bird, driving it the rest of the way to the ground away from us.
The second rhuk pulled up and circled around us, its shiny black eyeball giving us some serious stink eye as it tipped its head this way and that. Considering us. Wondering how dangerous we were.
I was on my knees, fingers buried in the sand. A blur of black across the sand caught its stink eye and mine at the same time.
Reyhan. Running scared, because of me.
“No!” I stumbled forward and shifted to my four-legged jungle cat form even as the rhuk flew straight toward the cub.
No. No.
I tore across the sand, eating the distance between us. But I was too far behind. The rhuk dropped down and its massive talons closed around a screeching, spitting Reyhan. The bird was too big to pull straight up which bought me a little time.
Lila shot through the air beside me.
“Can you drive it toward the cliffs?” I yelled.
“Done!” Lila winged away. Where was Fen when we needed help?
The cliffs were to the east of us, bordering the desert. If I could get some height . . .
Maybe all was not lost. Maybe I could make it.
Seconds later I was at the base of the cliffs. Cliffs that no horse could have scaled. But a jungle cat, that was a whole different set of rules.
With a powerful push off my haunches, I leapt straight up a solid twelve feet, claws digging into the sandstone cliffs as I yanked myself up and up. There was no option of failure.
I couldn’t let the girl down.
It was my fault she’d been snatched.
I’d pulled Lilith free thinking I was strong enough to take her on, the same way I’d taken on the flail.
Wrong again.
The scrabble of rocks behind me told me I had company coming up fast, but I didn’t dare look back. My balance was precarious. Another leap and I was up on top of the lower cliffs.
There was no time for anything but as much speed as I could manage.
Reyhan was screeching and the big rhuk was slowly being directed toward me. Sort of. The bird was ahead of me, but parallel to the cliff. I just . . . had to catch up.
I dug deep and raced along the cliff top gaining inch by inch as Lila did her damndest to keep the rhuk close to the cliff.
The problem?
I was running out of runway.
6
I needed more cliffs; I needed more footing.
The rhuk was just ahead of me and off to my left. I was going to have to make a leap of faith and hope that I was not misjudging the distance.
With everything I had in me, I extended myself almost flat to the ground as I covered the last bit of the cliffs in three strides, pushing off and leaping to the left.
The big ass chicken ducked to the right as the cliffs disappeared, putting its body right under me. I landed square on its back and dug my claws in.
“Hang on, Reyhan!”
A screaming caterwaul was the only answer from her.
“I’ll try and get her loose!” Lila yelled. “You kill the bird!”
That was my goal. Only the rhuk had taken note of me as my claws dug in deep. It let out a scream, like the sound of a screeching clarinet being played with by a small child oblivious to the horrid noise it was making. Three bursts of a screech and then silence.
More like a call for help than anything else.
Fuck me.
The rhuk rolled suddenly to the left, tucking its wings in tight and spinning hard enough that if I’d not had my claws dug in deep to its flesh I would have been flung out.
As it was, I just dug in harder. A few choice words slipped out of me that rhymed with ducking mother ducking bird.
Hopefully Reyhan didn’t hear me.
The rhuk levelled back out, whipped around with its beak and tried to pluck me off. I swatted at its face, avoiding the snapping beak that was filled with teeth. More like a lizard than a bird, it was going for blood now. But I wasn’t any less determined.
“Snap its neck like a turkey!”
I didn’t look to where Vahab raced along underneath us, though his words carried clear.
Like I didn’t know that the neck was the place to bite.
I belly crawled my way up the rhuk’s back as I tried to get closer to the neck—my original goal.
What I didn’t expect was a bolt of lightning.
Nor for that lightning to hit the bird and in turn hit me.
The arc of brilliant white light slit the sky open and slammed into the rhuk. The electricity shot through the bird and into me. It shouldn’t have hurt me. We weren’t on the ground.
But the power inside the electricity was not natural. It felt more l
ike . . . a Jinn’s magic as it crawled under my fur and spasmed my muscles and bones right down to the tips of my ears. I breathed it in. Jinn magic for sure. And while I might not have my own magic, I absorbed this as if . . . as if I still had my flail with me. Not enough, though.
Even with that, I barely managed to keep my claws clenched tight as the rest of my body went limp, dangling from the back of the big bird.
My tongue lolled out and I struggled to keep steady. I had to keep steady for Reyhan, I couldn’t let go.
“Is she dead again?” That voice was familiar, and I knew it belonged to the angel I’d seen both times I’d been near death.
“No, no, I think she’s going back on her own.” That one belonged to the demonic-looking beasty. Though they had saved me. I tried to see them, tried to ask them why they’d helped me before.
“Seriously, she has to have the worst luck I’ve ever seen.”
“Well, she’s a black cat, after all.”
The words were gone in a haze. I’d not needed them this time.
Slowly the magic faded, and I blinked. I still hung from the bird. Could still hear Lila and Reyhan scream back and forth.
Vahab yelled from below us. Balder trumpeted a whinny.
It could have been a minute I was out or an hour. I wasn’t sure.
With a snarl I pulled myself up and scrambled along the rhuk’s back. The bird squawked and then I was on its neck, my mouth pinning the long narrow vertebrae with my jaws.
Perks to being a jungle cat. My jaws closed down.
I didn’t have to wait for someone with bigger teeth to come along and help anymore.
The bird’s wings tucked in as if it were going for another dive, but as I squeezed down with my incisors, the snapping of bones reverberated through me as I crushed the spinal cord.
We dropped from the sky like a stone, the rhuk’s wings crumpling.
“I got the kid!” Lila yelled, swinging up to where I could see her as I followed the rhuk to the ground.
The impact snapped my mouth off the back of the neck, and I was flung hard out into the loose sand and hard ground. I rolled and came up on two feet in a low crouch, hands on my smaller daggers. Waiting.
The rhuk shuddered and lay still, but the bird’s back still rose and fell. It breathed; it was alive.
Hoofbeats and then Balder was there beside me. “I’m sorry.” I held out a hand and he gave me a well-deserved snort, flinging snot onto my outstretched fingers. “I deserved that.” I wiped my fingers along his mouth where I’d driven the bit into his tender flesh. “I’m sorry, my friend, I never should have taken that damn sword.”
Vahab rode up with Dancer. “That was well done. Good thing you listened to me finally and broke the neck. That is the way with birds, you know. Best way to deal with them quick.”
“Much help you were,” Lila yelped as she slid into view, Reyhan clutched in her claws. She dropped the cub to me, and I held her tight to me until she shifted back to two legs and gave me a hug back.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry that I scared you.”
“Was that the bad knife?” Reyhan asked.
“It was.” Apparently, she’d been more awake during my and Lila’s conversations about Lilith than I’d realized.
“You threw it away. So, it’s gone now?”
“I did.” But already I knew I couldn’t leave it in the other rhuk. If the wrong person got a hold of it . . . then we were in serious trouble.
Take, for instance, Asag.
I grimaced just thinking about having to handle Lilith again.
The rhuk behind us let out a gurgling cry.
I lifted Reyhan up onto Balder’s back. “I have to give it mercy.”
I pulled my shotgun free from the saddle and checked the chamber. I had two slugs ready to go. Funny how I’d not even thought of the long-range weapon when the rhuk had been bearing down on us. Of course, that could have been Lilith too, keeping me focused on her.
With a sigh I made myself go around to the back of the bird’s neck. Like the few large dragons I’d met—Lila included—the creature seemed so much bigger once it was still and on the ground. The wings were at an odd angle, not broken, just spread wide. Its beak was partly open as it struggled to breathe.
“Mercy.” The rhuk spoke softly. “You said you’d give me mercy.”
I swallowed hard, my willingness to end its life wavering with those words. “Did you have to speak?”
“You thought us dumb creatures? Easier to kill then, yes?” It didn’t open its eye but lay still on the ground, struggling to breathe, the gurgling of each breath and effort of drawing it in growing stronger.
“Yes.” There was no getting around that truth. And I was no liar. “I’d prefer you just be a monster that needs killing.”
It clacked its beak and teeth a single time. “You think that dragons are the only ones caged?”
I went to one knee, behind its head. Probably the safest spot I could be if it was faking its paralysis. One snap of its teeth-encrusted beak could easily cut me in half.
“You? The rhuk? You’re caged?”
“The Storm Queen takes the rhuk when they are fledglings. Barely old enough to eat on their own. It’s how she holds her own against Asag. That and the fear that she could be the one to end him . . .” The eye opened, and I could see that the solid black held a shimmer of some other color inside of it. This close there were flecks of gold and brown, mimicking the tawny feathers that covered the massive body. “Her power fled me as I fell. She believes me dead and so I am . . . free. Give me mercy. Kill me. Send me to my family beyond the Veil.”
I put a hand against the feathers and lifted my blade. There was no way I could save this soul. I’d paralyzed the bird.
A nose pushed against my shoulder, and I looked up to see Balder right behind me. Of anyone else here, he had all the reasons to want the rhuk dead. They hunted the unicorns, feasted on them and gave them over to the Storm Queen.
He bumped me again with his nose, then twisted around to touch the saddlebags across his back. I closed my eyes, knowing what he was getting at. “And if I use the horn that your father gave for you, what next? There is power in it to give you your life back as it was, Balder.”
He blew out a snort and pawed the ground, then reached back and all but yanked the saddlebags off. I stood and untied them. “This could be a terrible idea.”
Balder snorted and I looked to Lila, who sat quite still on Balder’s back. Her eyes were closed.
“Lila, what do you think?”
“I think that no matter what you do, this is a defining moment. Just like bringing Vahab and his pet dumbass with us was.” Her eyes opened and she looked at me. “There’s small choice in a barrel of rotten apples. I trust you.”
I grimaced, agreeing with her and Shakespeare. “Fair.”
“Aren’t you going to ask me?” Vahab put his hand to his chest.
I blinked over at him. “You? I’m beginning to think you aren’t even a Jinn. Why would I ask your opinion?”
His hand splayed wider on his chest. “I am the FIRST Jinn!”
Fen peeked out from around his shoulder riding along with his master the same way Lila did with me. He rolled his eyes and shook his head. Interesting.
But not really my issue I had to deal with in that moment.
I pulled the unicorn horn out, rolling the spiraled horn in my hands. This had been Torin’s, and he’d died fighting off a rhuk. The very creature I was considering healing with the horn. He’d given his life so that we could survive, so that we could see these journeys through. What would he say to us saving one of his enemies?
“Fuck,” I whispered.
Reyhan cleared her throat. “We don’t say fuck here.”
“Well, you don’t,” I muttered as I knelt back by the rhuk’s head. “If I heal you, will you fly away, far enough away to stay safe from the Storm Queen?”
The rhuk rolled its big eye to me. “Why?”<
br />
“Cause I’m a fuc—freaking genius,” I said with a quick glance at Reyhan. “I don’t know, okay? I listen to my horse. He’s a good boy and he said to save you.”
“You trust him,” the bird mumbled. “As a pair together should trust one another.”
I didn’t know really what it was mumbling about, but kind of got the drift. “Yes or no. That’s the question.”
“Yes. If I can live and be free, I choose life.”
I laid the horn tip against the bird’s neck, pushing it through the feathers until it touched bare skin. A flare of light burst outward, sending bright streaks of color like a rainbow gone mad, spilling out and over the rhuk’s body. The body I’d broken, and now was healing.
Goddesses help us if the bird was lying its face off.
But . . . Balder had not been wrong before, and I trusted him now.
The rainbows flung about us like tiny worms in the air, dancing and tripping over one another as they fell onto the rhuk, burrowing in under the feathers.
The rhuk let out a low breath and . . . stopped moving, the breath in its body stilling. “Shit. Is it dead?”
What if the horn was killing it? I didn’t even know if it was male or female. Not that it mattered.
“Excuse me,” Reyhan said. “I think someone is coming. I can hear them.”
I twisted around to look back the way we’d come. Apparently, our passage and fight with the rhuk had not gone unnoticed. I twisted around and stared out across the desert, not liking what I was seeing. Blocky creatures all in a row and headed straight for us.
I groaned. “Lila, is that . . . what I think those are?”
“Oh man, why can’t we catch a break?” she yelped. “Those are pillars, I’m sure of it.”
The rock monsters belonging to Asag.
And they’d found us.
7
Maks
The Storm Queen’s words rung sharp in his ears.
Kill him.
Tell her you are my son.
Marsum’s voice was resigned. She will want you then. She will overlook the fact that you aren’t pure.
“But I don’t want that!” Maks snapped.
Kingdom of Storms (The Desert Cursed Series Book 8) Page 5
