I didn’t have time to watch to see if he was okay.
The first golem reached me, and I dodged its sword and grabbed its leg, dragging it toward the water, my claws digging in far deeper to the stone and clay than I thought they would. Then again, I was carrying Lilith when I shifted.
I am lending you my strength.
The golem tumbled under my efforts, and a foot and knee touched the edge of the waves.
And those parts completely disintegrated. The golem stumbled up, one-footed and off balance as it turned away from the water.
“Hell no.” I leapt up and grabbed onto its back and then threw myself backward. Already off balance, the golem flailed and fell with me into the shallows.
Reyhan squealed. “That’s so good!”
“Lila, get her out of here!” I snarled as I leapt toward the next golem. This one was flying at me, parallel to the ground, fist straight at my head.
I jumped straight up and landed on its back and shoved it down into the water. A quick glance at Vahab showed me that he was flinging the creatures out into the water with a quick snap of his hands and whatever magic he had left to him.
Golem after golem came at us. Fen did get out of the water and grabbed more. But with each golem we tossed, we ended up taking blows too.
Gashes down my side, my face, a tooth knocked out, more and more came. More and more injuries flowed.
I lost count and could no longer see through one eye. Blood dripped down my skull when Mamitu lifted her hand.
“Pause.”
Pause. What the hell kind of shit was this now?
23
I looked over at Mamitu with my one eye, and her glowing orange eyes that told me Asag was in charge. No surprise there. I didn’t actually expect him to leave the party early.
“Pause? No one pauses in the middle of a fight!” Vahab yelled. I could hear the fatigue in his voice. The golem army had been coming at us nonstop. The position of the sun told me we’d been at this for at least four hours. My legs and muscles agreed with that assessment and begged me to just lie down in the wet sand.
“Can you not see that I have been kind?” Mamitu purred as she spread her hands wide. “I have let the golems come to you, only a few at a time. Allowed you to think that you could survive.” I swallowed hard, knowing that what Asag said through Mamitu was true. “I have held them back when I could have unleashed them fully. Now that you are somewhat fatigued, perhaps you would like to revisit our bet? Perhaps you’d like to just give the girl to me and I will let you go?”
“No.” I growled the one word but didn’t dare shift back to two legs. Simply because I was not sure I would have the energy to shift back. How long before Cassandra found us? Goddess above and below, she was our only hope now.
Mamitu laughed. “You will be fun to break, Zamira Reckless Wilson. I will have you both by the end of this.”
The fact that he knew my full name was only a little unnerving. I took the moment as I could, breathing deeply and snagging a bit of jerky from my saddlebags, swallowing it whole. I glanced over at Vahab and Fen. The dragon sat on the edge of the shoreline, his body as bruised and battered as mine, blood running freely down his sides. He and I were not using magic to launch the golems, and the bastards were hard with their blows.
Lila hovered just above Reyhan who stood knee deep in the water, her eyes wide as she hugged her own body, shivering. If I sent her now, the golems would chase her and take them down before they reached the Storm Queen—assuming of course that the Storm Queen would give the child safety.
“You think that there are only five hundred of my creations, that is amusing,” Mamitu said. She clasped her hands behind her back. “Five hundred is not even close to what is out there. Waiting for you. Obeying me.”
When was it time to throw the towel in? Not yet. It could not be yet. I looked at Fen and Vahab and they both gave me a slow nod. We were good. For a little longer at least.
“Are you tired?” I asked him. “Because it sounds like to me you are afraid of losing and are trying to hedge your bets.”
Excellent. He hates it when women think him weak.
Mamitu’s eyes changed from orange to her own color. “Zamira, be careful!” And then she was gone again, orange eyes blazing. “She thinks herself clever, that one. Clever is a very undesirable trait in my women. You should remember that when I am riding you. I like my women quiet.”
I grimaced. “You’re disgusting.”
“And yet you parlay with me? You talk with me, why?”
I bared my teeth at him as the heavenly sound of wings reached my ears and my hopes flared. “Because I’m buying time for my reinforcements to show up.”
He fled Mamitu and one of his golem’s eyes turned orange a split second before he turned to look back the way they’d come. Mamitu slumped to her hands and knees. “Zamira, the girl is not his goal any longer. You have intrigued him too much. Defied him, and he wants only to break you. Get the child out of here now while he is not looking, and she will be safe with the Storm Queen. I swear it.” Her eyes fluttered and she hit the sand, face down.
“Reyhan, shift! Lila, you heard her, fly to the Storm Queen, go!” I tipped my head and Lila was already scooping up Reyhan, in her cub form, and flying hard across the water. There was no time for goodbyes. No time to wonder if it was the right choice. It was the chance we’d been waiting for.
The strangled screech of a rhuk was music to my ears and I let out a bellowing roar, welcoming Cassandra and her rhuk back.
The sky above us darkened as they swept in, each one bigger even than Cassandra. Older. Wiser. Far from useless.
Screaming defiance, they dropped toward the army, one after the other.
Once more the battle opened up, only this time there was no holding back the golems. They flowed toward us, over the dunes like an anthill kicked over and over again by a naughty child. I glanced up to see Cassandra diving into the golems and grabbing talons full of their bodies even while they hacked at her feet. She dove to the ocean and skimmed the surface, coming up with nothing but bloodied talons.
And her fellow rhuk, they were as large as her, but their feathers were dulled and many of them sported white crested necks and heads. While they moved slower than the younger rhuk, they dove and took out the golems in numbers that should pare them down rapidly.
Should.
I fought with everything I had, my eyes now solely on tossing one golem after the other into the drink. Because they were no longer trying to cut me down.
They were trying to capture me. Which meant I could draw them out to the water.
“Fen!” I yelled for him. “Grab Vahab!”
I turned and dove out into the ocean, swimming hard.
The dragon didn’t hesitate but scooped up his master and then he shot toward me, dodging blows, flicking his tail at the golem that tried to grab him. He scooped me up from the ocean.
“Out, out over the water!” I clung hard to him with my paws, careful not to prick him with the tips of my claws. I did not want to hurt him, not when Lilith was a part of me.
“They’re following!” Vahab shouted.
“Good. Hold your breath and dive deep!” I said, and Fen nodded. He dove straight down into the water and the first wave of the golems followed us. We floated far below the surface and watched them hit the waves, poofs of silt and clay billowing out where their bodies had been just a moment before.
But of course, we could only hold our breath for so long. Fen swam to the surface, and we bobbed up for a breath. The rhuk were making short work of the golem army and I wondered just how pissed Asag was that we’d found a way to beat him. That we’d figured out their weakness.
A few more golems tried to come at us, and we just ducked down in the waves. They would follow and turn into nothing. They didn’t know that the water blew them into pieces.
I should have known the fight would not go so easily.
Less than an hour ticked by and the go
lems were done. I looked over my shoulder at the speck that was Lila and Reyhan. They were almost to the island by what I could see.
“Be safe, my friend,” I whispered.
We made it back to the shore and I let my body shift to two legs which healed many of the wounds I’d suffered, though it depleted what was left of my reserves. I slumped to my knees and stared up at the sand dunes as my hair dripped salt water.
“Did we really just beat him?” Vahab sat next to me, elbows resting on his knees. “I mean . . . doesn’t that seem a bit easy to you?”
I grimaced. “Despite how hard it was, yes. It feels . . . too easy. Which means something else?”
He nodded. “Yes, something else.”
The wind whined around us, and I turned as the rhuk landed. Cassandra and a dozen others, just as she’d promised. They were covered in wounds, but nothing fatal that I could see. Cuts, bruises, a few missing feathers.
“Zamira, you saved me from the Storm Queen, and now I have saved you from Asag. We are at evens now.” She bowed her head. “I wish you well.”
Launching into the air, she led her other rhuk up into the sky and they fled north, away from the ocean. Away from the Storm Queen and her magic. “Thank you.” I lifted my hand and bade her a silent farewell.
“Still seems too easy,” Vahab muttered.
“I really wish you’d stop saying that,” I shot back. “Do you want him to try again?”
“No, of course not.” Vahab stood slowly, wincing, and held a hand to me. I took it and he helped pull me to my feet. “Gods, you are a solid brute, aren’t you?”
I barely heard him speak. My eyes were drawn to the ocean and the frothing waves that were rolling toward us. My first thought was that we’d found a friend of the Nasnas monster.
My second was that we really should have kept our mouths shut about the ease of beating the golem army. Like . . . had we learned nothing?
Apparently.
The wave slowed and washed up at our feet, and a series of eyes stared out at us. Heads slowly lifted and long hair floated on the surface of the water. I blinked a few times before I found my voice. “You don’t work for Asag, do you?”
The women ducked back down, turned and slid into the waves with a series of flips, showing off their tails. Vahab stood next to me, hands on his hips. “That was weird.”
“Yeah, I don’t much like it.” The water stirred and frothed, as if something larger was rising from the depths, and my anxiety and adrenaline spiked hard, flooding me with the urge to grab Lilith and prepare myself.
What I didn’t expect was to be grabbed from behind.
What felt like ropes dropped around me, binding my legs and arms tight to my body, before they were pulled hard at my ankles, dropping me onto my face. I yelled as I went down, and Vahab and Fen spun.
Face down in the sand, I could see nothing, and I rolled to my back.
“Aqrabuamelu,” Vahab yelled. “Gods be damned, man, not you too!”
A bellowing roar rattled my innards and ears, and I found myself staring up at a body that I thought at first was a spider. No, no it was much worse than a spider.
The body of the beast was arachnid in style if you didn’t count the massive curving tail that dripped with a poisonous tip. Or the body of the giant that erupted from where the scorpion’s head would have been. You know, if it had been small enough to step on, and not so large that even a rhuk or a dragon would have a hard time picking it up.
I was yanked to the hands of the scorpion hybrid.
“Vahab,” he bellowed. “Run while you still can.”
I twisted to see Fen’s face. Horror was written all over it, and then he launched himself toward us.
The arc of the scorpion’s tail came down faster than I could truly follow, and then Fen was on the ground, writhing as his mouth foamed.
“NO!” I screamed the word and then more of that same sticky substance was shoved over my face and I was stuck onto the underbelly of the scorpion. Stuck. We turned and scuttled away from the ocean’s edge as I thrashed, trying to get myself free.
“Do not fight me,” the Aqrabuamelu said. “You will only force me to quiet you in a way you will not like.”
I made myself still, but my heart and my mind raced. Fen was injured, dying.
How in the seven realms of hell was I going to get my sorry ass out of this mess?
24
Lila
Flying over the ocean had been a dream of mine for years—hearing the cry of the gulls, smelling the salt of the water, the glistening of waves under a bright sun. Carrying a small, writhing jungle cub while I did it? Yeah, that hadn’t been in the cards I’d been looking at. “Hold still, Reyhan!”
“I am,” she whimpered as she twisted in my talons for about the hundredth time.
To clarify, she was not being still.
“Almost there.” I clamped my mouth shut on the flow of words that wanted to fly from me at top speed and concentrated on getting the cub to the castle. And getting back to Zam. The connection between us was there, and I could feel her shock at something. What had Vahab done this time? Or had it been Fen to surprise her? That left my heart thumping in a way that had nothing to do with my exertion. I did not want Fen to turn out that way. I wasn’t sure I could do that again, you know, believe in someone’s love only to have it be a total and complete lie.
Narrowing my eyes, I pushed all that away and stretched myself into the realm of exhaustion. The faster I got the cub to the Storm Queen, the better. Then I could get back to the fight and help.
The outline of the castle was clear, the rhuk resting on the battlements clearer yet. And while I could feel their eyes on us, I already knew that they would not be bothered. We were small prey to a beast that size. Small prey went unnoticed.
Ask me how I know.
Clamping my jaw tight and muttering a series of rather muddled Shakespearean curses, I prayed for a wind at the back of my wings and clutched Reyhan a little tighter.
She grumbled about being held too tight, but we were climbing now, up the side of the castle.
Better yet was a voice I knew.
“Maks!” I whispered his name to myself and angled to the left where his voice had rumbled from. He was here. I would take him with me back to Zam. We’d be together again and that may have made a tear form up in the corner of my eye.
The window where his voice came from was low down, near the water line. I doubted that would be the Storm Queen’s bedroom, so maybe he hadn’t been taken to her bed yet?
Only one way to find out. I flew to the window, the bars keeping me from going in. Carefully I landed and pinned Reyhan between me and the bars, only to have her slip through. Damn cats and their rubber bodies!
“Reyhan!” I reached for her as she fell, but she was caught by a set of hands.
“Lila?” Maks stood and we were eye level. Reyhan curled in his arms, purring.
“You smell like Zam,” she said.
He looked at her and then to me. “Lila, what are you doing here? Where’s Zam?”
I opened my mouth and then noticed the chains on his wrists. Prisoner, was he? “Long story, let me sum up. Zam might be in trouble. We need the magic thingy from here. Then we need to go back to Zam.” I pointed with the tips of my claws as I spoke, from him, to the castle, then back the way we’d come.
“And what about me?” Reyhan asked.
I motioned for Maks to come closer and I gripped his face with my claws. “The demon wants the kid. Mamitu said the girl would be safe here.”
Maks shook his head. “I wouldn’t leave her here. Not with Dani.”
My eyebrows shot up and anger on Zam’s behalf shot up with them. “First-name basis, huh? Do you call her honey too?”
Maks stared hard at me, his blue eyes never wavering. “If I lose my honor, I lose myself.”
Tension flowed out of me and I let out a long sigh. “Antony and Cleopatra, as if you could stump me. And you’re damn lucky you
didn’t lose your honor. I’d have made sure you lost what you lost your honor on.” I glanced at his crotch, to make sure he got the point. Then pointed to make doubly sure.
He smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile. More like a tired one. “It came close.”
That was not what I wanted to hear, but at least he’d kept his pants on. “Hold your wrists up.” He did as I asked and I brought up a little acid, spitting it on the chains that were holding him prisoner. I mean, I wasn’t so pissed that I would spit right on the manacles.
The acid ate through the chains in seconds. He rubbed his wrists. “The door is locked too.”
“I gotta do everything around here,” I muttered. “Hang on to Reyhan. I’ll get you out.”
I leaned out on the ledge, looking for another window. There was one about five feet to my right. Close enough; it should be to the room leading into Maks’s cell.
I snorted. Of course he’d gotten himself caught, chained, and stuck. It seemed that as much trouble as Zam found, Maks found just as much, and I was always bailing them out. I smiled to myself, flew to the window and slid through. No bars on this one. I blinked in the change of light.
“Who be you?”
I spun and let out a roar as someone grabbed my tail.
“Oh, a tiny roar even!” A cackle came next and I yanked my tail out of the hands of a very old, very frail looking woman. The thing was, she smelled like a Jinn. I wrinkled my nose.
“I’m here for my friend.”
“Good, I’m tired of watching him.” She waved a hand at me, turned and left. But not before she flipped a key over her shoulder. “I’d hurry, if you want to get him out of here before Dani realizes he’s gone . . . she still has some hope that he might give her a child. Foolish girl.”
Foolish indeed.
I dropped down, scooped the key up and jammed it into the locked door. Maks stepped out and looked around. “Where is the old woman? I was sure I heard her.”
“You did; she left and told us to hurry.”
Kingdom of Storms (The Desert Cursed Series Book 8) Page 15
