by Marjorie Liu
“Serena!” she screamed, shoving the weapon into the elastic waistband of her leggings. She lunged and grabbed the leopard’s slashing tail, hauling backward as hard as she could.
The shape-shifter twisted violently and her body began to shift, a transformation of light and flesh that lengthened her legs and straightened her spine. She did not stop fighting, though. She struggled harder, with terrifying desperation. Karr pivoted on one foot and slammed Serena so hard against the wall it cracked. Merciless, enraged.
Soria heard a scuffing sound behind her, and she turned. One of the masked gunmen had appeared, was raising a weapon. His eyes widened when he saw Karr and Serena, and he stared with a horror that seemed to melt through his ski mask. Soria was afraid he would piss himself. She had a feeling her own bladder might empty, were their positions reversed: the sounds that Serena and Karr were making as they tore into each other were hair-raising, and the spectacle of their desperate inhuman bodies was something out of a fantasy movie.
To be honest, Soria later thought, she might have been fine if she had stayed perfectly still. But she did not, and the movement caught his attention. The man’s gaze fell on her with almost desperate relief.
His mouth moved. Soria could not hear him. She realized she was holding the gun again. She had no idea how it had gotten back into her hand, but it was pointed at the man. Her arm trembled violently.
Shoot him, she told herself. Him or you.
But her finger was frozen, and she could not focus enough to aim. When she looked at the man in front of her, she saw another face instead: pale and fleshy, covered in thick glasses perched on the tip of a bulbous nose speckled with greasy pores. She could smell the memory, smell him, like old kitty litter and moldy broccoli.
Ghost fingers twitched. Pain rocketed through her head. She heard another shout, but it sounded very far away.
And then strong arms grabbed her around the waist and yanked her backward. Shots boomed out. The gun was wrested from her hand, and her vision cleared enough to see Serena—barely human, covered in spotted fur—returning fire. She was bleeding from deep cuts and scratches; and her eye patch was gone, revealing a gaping hole.
“Are you hurt?” rumbled Karr, the tremendous heat of his body soaking through Soria’s clothing into her skin. For one moment she sagged against him, limp and numb, hungry for someone else to be strong—these arms holding her were the strongest she had ever felt—but reality set in, and she shook her head in response, struggling to break free.
Karr did not release her. He held on even more tightly as Serena finally lowered the gun. The masked soldier was dead, and two other bodies that Soria had been too distracted to notice lay sprawled in the hall nearby. Robert and Ku-Ku’s work, she decided, wondering where they were.
Serena stared at the piles of corpses, at the blood spreading toward her clawed feet. She was human only in her bipedal form; everything else belonged to a cat. The shape-shifter’s face made her look so much like Egyptian statues of Isis that Soria suspected the gods of the Nile had sprung into existence because of interactions between shape-shifters and humans.
Serena herself was certainly imperious enough to frighten mere mortals. She looked at Soria, her single eye cold and furious and more disturbing than the hole in her leopardess head. But her voice was worse: full of pain and dread, and edged with unease. “You released him,” she said.
“I did what I had to. Those men wanted Karr alive.”
“Karr,” Serena echoed, staring. “Everyone who knew about his existence is beyond reproach.”
A low growl rumbled from Karr’s chest. “Speak so I can understand you,” he commanded. “Or I will think you are planning how to capture me again.”
“Maybe we should be,” Soria retorted. “We were discussing the attack. We don’t know who sent these men, but they came for you.”
And me, she did not add. The men now dead in the cell had told her, in no uncertain terms, that she would be traveling with them. She knew quite well it was the only reason she hadn’t taken an immediate bullet to the brain.
“Let go,” she said to Karr.
He growled again, softly. “Will she use that weapon on you?” He was talking about Serena.
“To stop you, maybe, so don’t bother using me as a shield.”
“I am no coward,” he snapped, pushing Soria away—but with a gentleness completely at odds with his harsh voice and demeanor. Then Karr stepped in front of her, facing Serena with his arms held loosely at his sides. Scales rippled over his massive muscles, and a ruff of golden fur spread down his spine. His fingers lengthened into long black claws. “Tell her we will finish this,” he whispered.
“Serena,” Soria said quietly, but the shifter-woman was already shaking her head.
“I am no fool.” Serena stood very still, her gaze locked on Karr. “I might not speak his language, but I know what he wants.”
“Then let him go,” Soria replied. “Or kill him now. I think he would prefer that to the cage you had him in.”
“What are you saying to each other?” Karr demanded. “Tell me!”
Soria ignored him.
A bitter smile flitted at the corner of Serena’s feline mouth. “Look at his anger,” the shape-shifter warned. “You think you know him so well? He’ll murder you for that naivety.”
“You have bigger problems,” Soria replied. She moved in front of Karr, felt him reach for her—and knocked aside his hand without thinking. He went very still, and so did Serena, tensing. Soria pretended not to notice, but inside her body, her heart hammered so hard she thought she might pass out.
“Give him a chance,” she whispered, unable to speak any louder; not without the risk of her voice breaking on the words. “Give me a chance to do my job and find out whether or not he can be trusted.”
Serena stared, golden light trickling from her eye. “You’re a fool.”
“You could have killed him already,” Soria replied quietly. “Or drugged him. But your people want him alive, conscious. Someone else does, too. Why?”
“Because they are all idiots,” Serena whispered. “You can never trust him. It is in his blood. His kind are broken from the inside.”
Chills rode down Soria’s spine. “How do you know?”
“He is a chimera. All they are good for is war.”
Serena spat on the ground at his feet. Karr snarled. Again, Soria acted without thinking and grabbed his arm. Deep scratches covered his skin, which was slick and hot with blood. She expected him to pull away, even to strike her, but instead he quivered beneath her grip, rooted in one spot. She risked a look at him, unwilling to let go no matter how much she wanted. Touching Karr felt the same as being burned, and his gaze was no different. He stared at her with wild intensity, dangerously thoughtful.
“We are leaving,” she told him, and then looked at Serena and said, “Watch your back. You have a leak.”
“Or you do,” replied the shifter-woman; but she seemed distracted, staring as she was at Soria’s hand on Karr’s arm, and then his face, her expression inscrutable.
The half leopardess retreated down the hall, still facing them but stepping lightly over the corpses with a grace and ease that made Soria think that she had eyes in the back of her skull. “Go. I’ll give you a head start, and then I’m coming. Maybe you’ll be alive when I catch up. Or perhaps I’ll finally have enough proof to kill him.”
Soria suspected the second option was far more appealing to Serena. “The man came alive after being in a coffin for thousands of years. You think it’ll be that easy?”
Serena said nothing, but stooped to pick up another gun from one of their fallen enemies. Karr moved sideways, so smoothly that Soria hardly noticed until she suddenly found herself partially hidden behind him. The protective gesture startled her, but not enough to distract from the guns held loosely in Serena’s clawed hands, weapons aimed directly at their heads. Soria could almost hear the shots, imagined the bullets slamming into both her and Karr.
But Serena did not shoot. “Go,” she whispered, and disappeared around the bend in the hall.
Soria stared after the shape-shifter, breathless. Karr shook off her hand and strode down the hall, watching where Serena had disappeared. Tense, coiled, still begging for a fight. Utterly alien. Lethal.
And he was her responsibility now. If he hurt anyone it would be her fault for letting him go, for trusting in nothing but faith and instinct. A tremendous risk, and the enormity of it slammed into Soria so hard that she held her stomach, bent over with nausea. She was a fool. Certifiably insane.
Karr’s back was still turned. “What is this?”
“You have your freedom,” Soria said through gritted teeth. “For now. Prove you deserve it.”
“No shifter would agree to such a thing.” He gave her a sharp look, which darkened instantly into a frown. “Are you certain you are not hurt?”
“Yes,” she muttered, and turned from him to walk unsteadily down the hall, trying in vain not to look at the bodies on the ground. Listening hard for the living. No way to know how many gunmen were left, and Serena’s own men might not react well to seeing Karr loose.
She glanced over her shoulder and found him standing very still, this giant of a man, inhuman and bleeding. Watching her with that same frown.
“You prefer to stay?” she asked.
“It is a trick,” Karr said. “Why are you helping me?”
Soria set her jaw, suffering a trembling weakness in her knees. Her stump throbbed. All she could smell was blood: her hand was sticky with it. She wanted to go home and hide for another year, in shadows, away from the world and its nightmares.
“No one else can,” Soria told him, and started walking again, not waiting to see if he followed.
But he did, moments later.
Chapter Five
No one stopped them. The halls were silent. Karr did not trust the quiet. During his days of captivity there had been voices, footsteps, the clink of metal and glass. Always, someone nearby.
Now, nothing. Everything felt emptied, broken, like the remains of a village after an army’s sweeping pillage. Even the small white lights burning cold and bright from the ceiling held a hint of death about them; there was no spirit in their odd, unwavering flames. He wondered if his elderly caretaker was safe.
Soria walked in front of him, quick on her feet, almost running. She was his guide through the labyrinth of rough-hewn corridors, the walls little more than dirt and stone. He was led by her, defended, perhaps manipulated—but it was all done in such a manner that Karr found himself unable to turn her away, to shed himself of her presence. She was, he thought, indispensable. And that, in his view, was almost as strange as coming back from the dead.
“You are unwell,” he said, as Soria stumbled. Three times now she had almost gone down, and she had begun clutching her empty sleeve, twisting it in her hand, her knuckles white.
“I am fine,” she told him.
Another dead man lay in their path, the seventh that Karr had seen since the first encounter in his cell. Blood seeped from a massive head wound, pooling along a slant in the floor away from the body. His bowels had voided, and the scent triggered memories: battlefields churned to mud and ravaged flesh; shape-shifters and chimeras, lost forever in death, bodies halfway between animal and human. His vision darkened, as though the sun were setting again in his mind. Sunset had always brought out the scavengers.
Soria stopped, staring at the body. “You need clothing.”
“I think not,” Karr replied.
He was finding it difficult to speak. His voice sounded wet, thick, as though made of mud; and he swallowed hard, struggling to remain impassive when all he wanted was to charge ahead, quickly, and be free of this place. His body ached to shift as well, but the hall was narrow and small, and he could not say what would happen. His control had always been limited to what skins his instincts made him wear.
Soria frowned. “I was not suggesting his clothes.”
“You misunderstand,” he replied.
“Then tell me.”
Karr struggled for words. “It is another cage.”
A peculiar expression passed over Soria’s face, and he pushed past her to take the dead man’s weapon. It was heavier than it looked, and he tried to hold it as he had seen the others do. Soria gasped. He found her staring at him with alarm.
“You should put that down,” she said.
“You fear it?”
“I do.” Soria held out her hand. “Please. Give it to me.”
His fingers tightened, but her unease was infectious. He wondered if it was wise to hold something so dangerous, a weapon he knew so little about. Perhaps it was magic, as the lights seemed to be, or another manifestation of human tinkering. Certainly it was nothing as straightforward as good sharp steel or his own claws.
“I require a weapon,” he said.
“You can kill a friend just as easily as an enemy with one of those. They are difficult to control, and you have no training.”
“But you do.”
Her expression hardened. “I know enough.”
Karr studied the weapon, its long dark lines. It was hammered from some odd metal, he thought, a construction both clunky and elegant, depending on the angle from which one studied it.
He reluctantly held out the weapon. Soria released her breath and took it from him, gingerly, with distaste, kneeling quickly to set it down. She lingered, though, studying the weapon, and squeezed part of it with her fingers. Karr heard a click, and watched as the base slid free. Soria held it up to him, turning it sideways so that he could see the small objects tucked inside: made of metal, pointed on one end.
“Bullets,” she said, pronouncing the word carefully. “And this is a gun.”
“Gun,” he echoed.
She tossed aside the bullets and stood. Karr gave the gun another long look, then started moving again down the hall, stealing the lead from her. Such weapons caused great damage from a distance, and though he and Soria could just as likely be attacked from the rear, it bothered him that she should be so exposed by going first. It bothered him more than he cared to admit. She was the enemy. She was allied with a shape-shifter.
Shades of gray, whispered a small voice in his mind. You do not know where the lines are drawn in this place. Make no assumptions. Just watch and learn.
He could see the human woman in his mind, standing in front of the masked soldier, pale, sick, her weapon unsteadily raised, her dark eyes lost. But not with fear. Just memory. Karr knew the signs.
Not that it helped explain anything about her. Or about why seeing her in danger so utterly stopped him. Suddenly, killing the shape-shifter had no longer seemed so important. Suddenly, breathing was impossible. Suddenly, despite his strength, he could not move fast enough to reach her.
But he had. And the shape-shifter, rather than continuing her attack, had acted to save the woman, too.
You are living in a mystery, Karr told himself. In war, as in life, he had become accustomed to finding himself in situations where he had no control. Even over himself. But this was wholly different.
Perhaps he was different.
He touched his side and felt the thin line of a scar. Behind him, Soria made a small, irritated sound.
“About the clothes. If you want to survive outside this place, you need to follow basic rules. Covering up is one of them.”
“Do not patronize me,” said Karr mildly, listening hard for anyone else who might be close. He continued to finger the scar in his side, remembering the blade that had slid into his body, twisting. “I understand survival.”
“Not like this,” Soria replied, with an intensity and gentleness that cut him so deeply he could do no less than stop again and look at her.
“I do not trust your interest in helping me,” he said.
“I do not care,” she replied. “Trust is irrelevan
t when committing oneself to an honorable action.”
It was an old proverb. Her mouth had trouble pronouncing the low, formal tones, but the meaning encapsulated in those few short words was perfectly clear. Karr had heard it often while growing up, and it startled him to hear her repeat an adage known to few outsiders. He thought she looked surprised, as well.
“Where,” he asked slowly, “did you learn my language?”
She ducked her head, braids swinging. “We have to keep moving.”
Suspicion filled him, then a thought, a theory that made his chest tighten with unease. “Were you held captive by my kind? Was that how you lost your arm?”
She flinched, then met his gaze. “No.”
He felt little relief at her answer. “But you were among us. For some time, I think.”
Soria shook her head, knuckles white as she twisted her empty sleeve. “You are wasting time.”
“Were you a slave?” he persisted. “I forbade the practice, but I do not know how long I have been gone. Someone else—”
“Stop,” she commanded, her hand flying up to touch him but pausing just at the last moment. His skin prickled, suffering the heat of her nearness. He wanted to feel her touch, and gritted his teeth until his jaw ached. “I was not a slave,” she told him quietly. “Now, please. Move.”
“Perhaps there was another before me,” Karr went on in his coldest voice, furious at himself for wanting this woman. “Did you learn my language through interrogating him? Gaining his trust?”
She blew out her breath and shoved past—or tried to. Karr grabbed her arm and she twisted, shoving her knee up into his groin. No human had ever struck him, and he was unprepared for the attack. Pain exploded, rocking him forward as he stifled a throat-cutting gasp. Tears squeezed from his eyes. He was dimly aware of the woman standing beside him, still and silent as a grave.
“I am sorry,” she said. “Reflex.”
Both were lies. He could hear it in her voice. But he felt no anger, none except for himself. The woman was a fighter—in spirit, certainly—and he had cornered her. Underestimated her.
Karr wanted to vomit, but there was nothing in his stomach. He fought for breath, sparks dancing in his vision, keenly aware that the woman stayed by his side. When he finally managed to steal a glance at her face, she was pale but resolute. No fear filled her gaze. Just a question: What is he going to do?
