“Are we going to fight them?” Lila’s jeweled eyes flickered and the stone that gave her the ability to freeze creatures on contact seemed to glitter under the skin on her chest where it lay hidden, absorbed as it was. She hadn’t asked for it, but before our fight with the Jinn, the jewel had just sucked itself into her. Easier for her to fly, and fight that way, but she’d had no say in what was happening.
But that was then, this was now, and our current situation was beyond dangerous. Not to mention I had the horrible feeling that not only had we walked into it, but that we’d walked into a trap thinking we could slip the noose.
Only now, the noose tightened, and I wasn’t so sure we weren’t about to be hung for our trespass.
The horses shivered and danced forward as if they too felt the tightening rope. Batman stumbled as he hit something hidden under the water.
“We can’t outrun them here.” I dug my claws in the blanket, which I was still partially hidden under. “Even without the chance that one of the horses would break a leg, the terrain is too fucking rough.”
“Then we have to fight,” Lila said, and again I looked at her. Really looked. Her body shimmered as always, the scales hard as iron and light as a feather, but it was her eyes that caught me. There was something off in them, as though the Lila I knew had stepped back a little to allow this stranger to step forward in her place, a stranger who lusted for battle, for blood. It was a look I’d seen on Ish’s face more than once. And more than once I’d ignored it, thinking my imagination had the better of me.
“No fighting.” I stood and looked around, the blanket sliding down off my back. No point in hiding now, not for me. The trees around us were thick with old man’s beard, the moss hanging all the way to the water in most places like a natural curtain, the darkness of the night could work in our favor. “We hide.”
“Easy for you and Lila,” Ford said. “You’re the size of fucking peanuts. How the shit are you going to hide me, Shem, and two horses?”
So much for not pointing out our size difference.
I jumped off Balder’s back and shifted in midair to two legs. There was no real choice here. It was all hands on deck if we were going to make it out of this fucking swamp with all the same body parts we came in with. “You two,” I pointed at Shem and Ford, “strip, shift and get your asses up into the trees.”
Neither of them argued, at least. Lila paced the air. “What about me?”
“Lookout duty,” I said, “but be careful. They like pets and they’d fucking love a dragon that spits acid and carries a jewel.”
There was one itty bitty part I hadn’t been fully up front about when we’d talked about going into the swamp. The witches had seen me running out of the swamp, jewel in hand. But how I’d gotten that jewel . . . I’d been in my cat form. I’d slipped in right under their noses and they’d seen me as a new cat to own. I’d spent hours with them grooming me, feeding me tidbits, and in general loving the shit out of me.
I’d done my part, purring and rubbing my head against their legs as I listened to them talk about killing the other creatures in their swamp, and about snagging unwary travelers as they tried to pass by. Despite what Shem wanted to say about them sticking to their own swamp, they were dangerous, and many people had lost their lives by thinking they’d found a place that was safe from the desert heat.
The bird call came again and my skin danced and popped out more than a drop or two of nervous sweat. I remembered all too well what the witches did to their captives they didn’t like. I’d seen it while I’d snooped around their domain, looking for the jewel that I now carried. Bodies of men skinned alive, their eyes and tongues removed, fingers hacked off, what looked like bite marks in the muscle, testicles peeled like grapes . . . and they were somehow still alive. Their moans, the way their heads rolled from side to side as they tried to find some sort of way to escape. To free themselves even though they had no way they could leave. A witch had sat in the room with them, crooning the same thing over and over.
“When you run from a witch, and steal like a snitch, we’ll find a way to make your skin dance, for you there will be no last chance. A soul today, gone tomorrow, I will be the weaver of your sorrow.”
The best I could tell was that they’d been caught in the swamp and tried to run. The only reason the same hadn’t been done to me was because they’d thought I was a cat, and once they saw my real form, they hadn’t connected the two shapes.
At least I didn’t think they’d connected the two shapes.
My gorge rose as the old memories floated to the surface like bubbles in the muddy water around me. Images I’d pushed aside for the last year, too busy to do more than glance back at them. But now that I was here . . . I couldn’t seem to get them to go away.
I held out one of the leather saddlebags to the two men. They stuffed their clothes in before they stepped off the bit of solid ground we stood on and slid down into the swamp, naked as they day they were born.
“Cold,” Shem bit out.
I glanced around at him, the corner of my mouth twitching as I raised an eyebrow. “I’d agree with that. For both of you.”
Ford snapped his hands over his crotch before he turned from me and shifted to four legs. I didn’t even have time to laugh. The witches called again, closer, and I rushed to the two horses. I yanked off the saddles and bridles as fast as I could, setting the tack up in a low branch, tugging the long moss around them. The water was up to my mid-thigh and I struggled to get the tack out of the slime. I should have kept Ford close to do the heavy lifting.
“Lila, can you cover it with the hanging moss?”
“Yes.” She swooped down and grabbed the long moss as she went, dragging it with her to cover our gear. My hope was twofold. One, we’d be able to catch up to the horses, on the other side of the swamp. And two, if the witches saw the horses without tack they’d just think they’d wandered in from a desert herd and not think to look further. We’d lose our tack, but not our mounts or our lives.
I hoped.
Lila covered the gear and I scooped up handfuls of the muddy water onto the horses’ backs, smearing the sweat stains from the saddles. “Sorry, buddy,” I whispered as I smeared the stinking mud around Balder’s muzzle and along behind his ears, rubbing it over his head. The foam and slobber from the bit and sweat stains were too obvious otherwise. He snorted and pawed at the water, stirring it up in a frothing black foam. “Go south, my friend,” I whispered into his ear. “Stay true and go south.”
I quickly did the same for Batman and then kissed at them, sending them off at a fast walk as they wove through the swamp. Balder looked back once at me and I shook my head. “Go.”
He snorted once, bobbed his head, and broke into a jog, leading Batman to the south.
The screech of the witches shattered the air so loudly, I knew I was out of time. I shifted fast to four legs, my body groaning with the multiple shifts one on top of the other, and promptly sunk down to my nose in the black swamp water. I swam to a chunk of land that was covered in only a few inches of the black moss and flattened my belly to it. The cold sunk through my fur and into my skin and deeper into my bones. Cold of the swamp or cold with the fear for what was coming? I was no fool. I knew how bad this could be.
The Jinn were right bastards. These witches were just as horrid. And unlike the Jinn who Maks now led, these witches had no one holding them back from killing us. I breathed slowly through my nose, doing all I could not to move even while my body shook. There were a few moments where nothing happened. I closed my eyes so they were just slits. Lila had tucked in close with the gear, hidden by the moss she’d pulled down, her bright colors out of sight under a bit of cloth. I could only hope Shem and Ford were as equally well hidden.
A soft whoosh rolled toward me along with a ghost of a mist that skimmed the top of the water. I wanted to tell the others to hang tight, this was it.
The witches had found us.
Voices rose above the
sounds of the swamp, light and airy, beautiful and sweet. Though my body shook, I kept my breathing as slow and even as I could. No need to give myself away.
We just had to wait for them to pass. Maybe they’d follow the horses. I cringed. That wouldn’t be good either. The last thing I needed was a rescue mission to get Balder and Batman back from the swamp. And yes, I would go and rescue them if it came to that—they were family too.
From where I was, the curl of a red skirt was the first of the witches that I saw. A flash of bare toes under the edge of a skirt that swirled around within the mist and on top of the water. I let my eyes drift upward, careful not to move any other part of me.
Fine-boned, dark-haired and dark-eyed, the first witch looked to be about fifteen at the oldest, though I knew that was a lie. They all looked like teenagers when I was here last too, but they were anything but. Her ruby red lips matched her dress and she cooed softly as she walked daintily toward me, lifting her feet over the logs she encountered, her hands clutched in the material of her skirt. “Oh, there is something here, I think. Yes, Ollianna, do ye feel it?”
A second witch in a dress as black as the muddy water stepped up next to her. Auburn hair flowed around her as if held up by a thousand tiny strings. As fine-boned and beautiful as the first witch, she tipped her head to the side and ran her tongue over her lips. Check that, she ran her forked tongue out and over her lips as if she were tasting the air. I shrank into the water farther, slow and smooth, not even a single ripple giving me away.
“Perhaps. Horses have been through here. It’s possible they wandered in. The desert bred ones take water where they can,” Ollianna said. Her eyes seemed to skim over me, unseeing of my hiding spot.
I wanted to breathe a sigh of relief. Score one for us.
“We did not come here for horses,” a third voice said, huskier than the first two. The final of the three witches wore a pale purple dress that made her blond hair look as though she’d been plucked out of a storybook garden. Hell, there was even a diadem woven into her hair. Obviously someone important. Or at least she thought so by the turn of her face, the way she held her nose up.
Have at it, you special fucking snowflake. Be the queen of the swamp for all I care, just leave us the fuck alone.
The only good thing I could think was that they didn’t look familiar. Which meant they might not have dealt with me before. Which meant they might not put this black cat together, should they see me, with the one there the night of their theft. Fingers—paws—crossed.
With the three of them float-walking around, fingertips wiggling away as if they were feeling for something only they could possibly understand, I began to believe they would pass us by. Let me tell you something, hope, it’s quite the fucker when it’s snatched from you.
The redhead—Ollianna—was the first to nod. “Horses, that is all I feel here. Emmy, Patrice, let us go, I have tea brewing on the fire that I would rather not over steep.” She turned and swept by me so close that her skirt brushed over my back, covering me for the space of a heartbeat. Icy cold shivered down my spine at that barest touch. The dark-haired girl in the red dress nodded—Patrice.
“Agreed, Emmy, come along.” Patrice snapped her fingers at the final witch as if calling a dog.
Emmy, though, didn’t take well to that snap of fingers, and worse, she didn’t move. Her purple skirt flowed around her like water, her diadem catching the bits of starlight that dared to cut through the heavy foliage above our heads. I held my breath as her eyes swept toward me. I closed my eyes. A few more seconds and we’d be free and clear.
Oh, what a fool I was.
Against my chest where the diamond I’d stolen from these very witches lay under my skin, the stone throbbed suddenly, burning with a fire that had me fighting not to gasp. As if it would wriggle its way out from my flesh and hand itself back to the witches.
This was new. This placement of the stone should have been in my collar like all my clothes and weapons. Lila’s stone had stuffed itself under her scales, but this was a first for me. And the worst possible time to have it react like this.
I gritted my teeth and sunk farther into the water so I could use one paw to press against the lump under my skin. Little fucker, you better not think you’re going to come out of me now.
Sweet desert goddess, for the first time I regretted my ability to shift with all my clothing and weapons still on me. Because maybe if I couldn’t have done that, the stone wouldn’t now be a part of me. A part of me that wanted freedom and hurt like a red-hot poker forcing its way out from the inside.
“Wait,” Emmy said. “I feel something. There is a power calling to me here.”
The other two witches stopped and turned but didn’t come back. “What is it? Are you sure you are not feeling things again? You do recall that is an issue you’ve had in the past,” Ollianna said.
Emmy glared at her. “Another witch, I think, I can’t be sure.” Emmy held her hand out and waved it through the air. “A witch with potential, like me.” The way she said that one word made my heart want to stop right then and there. That’s just what we needed. Another fucking witch coming in from the other side and one with potential. Trapped. We were trapped between an untrained witch and three very trained witches that were on the hunt for us.
Or was she feeling the power of the jewel? Bitch tits on ice, this was going south fast.
I barely kept my nose above the water as Ollianna, Patrice, and Emmy headed toward me, their eyes glued to the trees behind me.
“Well, well, Emmy. I’m impressed. The sensation is so small that I’d thought it was a ripple from one of us, not a new witch,” Patrice said.
“I am not so sure.” Ollianna stood closest to me. I could only hope she was weaker than the others, that she wouldn’t sense the jewel right under her perfect nose.
The three of them stood in front of me, hands outstretched as if calling the new witch to them. And the diamond heated under my skin, stretching my flesh as it wriggled. Tears pooled in my eyes as the sensation grew.
Go, go, get the hell out of here, you filthy witches. Go to your bloody tea pot! That was all I could think as I held my breath and the stone vibrated, and my skin began to tear.
I couldn’t help it, the pain was too intense. I yowled, shrieking as I arched out of the water and then curled back around the stone.
And just like that, the pain stopped, the stone went quiet. I looked up as the three witches stumbled back, arms windmilling, eyes wide, as they lost their connection to their magic and sunk into the thigh-deep water. Their dresses soaked up the filth and clung to them, just like it would to any normal person.
I had one card left to me.
I shook my head and let out a plaintive meow, desperate to pretend I was still just a cat.
There was a trio of gasps and then Ollianna laughed. “A cat? Oh, holy moon goddess, most likely she has residue on her from being touched by a witch!” Patrice giggled, though the giggle turned into a weird growl right at the end of it which she swallowed down, covering her mouth with one hand.
I shrunk away from them, backing up until I was at the base of a tree that was remarkably not sunk well below the water line. I moved to slide around the tree trunk. Surely they wouldn’t give chase to a little black cat.
Emmy was the first to recover, her body and dress sliding upward, the mud and filth stripped from her with tiny droplets that spread out around her like splatter paint as she wove her magic through it. Her two companions did the same, laughing and smiling. Hell, they didn’t look like horrible witches at all. They didn’t look mean or nasty or . . . Emmy pointed a finger at me.
“Bad kitty.”
Shit fuck damn it all right up a camel’s asshole, there was no way this was going to be good for me.
A burst of magic flew from her like an arrow, straight at my head. I dodged the blow and it hit the tree instead. The trunk groaned and split open like an overripe tomato, the smell one that echoed the stench i
n the swamp—death incarnate, rot, foul rank nasty.
“Let the cat go. The fairy farts will eat it soon enough,” Ollianna said. “A cat is not worth your time or the effort to track it down and skin it. You know that.”
“I hate cats,” Emmy said. “Stuck up, pretentious little gits. Why the Mother tolerates the beasties at all is beyond me.”
“You should catch that one, give it to Mother,” Patrice said, and I shrunk back farther and sunk into the water. I went down over my head and came back up sputtering but they were no longer looking at me.
“Emmy, there is nothing more to be done here. A cat and a pair of wild horses. Now that I think about it, all were most likely brought in by the fairies to draw us out so they could irritate us,” Ollianna said with a flick of her hand as she removed the last of the mud off her dress and feet. “Most of these alarms are not more than the fae getting their fickle revenge on us, you know that.”
“Then why,” Emmy said, “is there a lion in that tree there?”
And just like that, things went from almost okay, almost free and clear, to being in so much shit we were going to stink for the rest of our lives.
13
From where I was, halfway hidden by the tree trunk that had taken the blow meant for me, I looked up. There, dangling out of the tree like a pull cord for a set of shitty shaggy gold curtains, was Shem’s tail. Hell, he probably didn’t even know he was showing his colors. And had the starlight hit a different angle they might not have noticed him at all.
With a laugh, Emmy flicked her hand toward the tree tops and Shem let out a strangled snarl as he was pulled out. Clawing at the branches, he fought to hold himself in the tree, but it was no use, not against a witch and her abilities. He might have been something of a shaman or a seer depending on which day you asked him, but he had no real ability when it came to magic.
He twisted and thrashed as she yanked him unceremoniously from his hiding spot. Holding him in midair, she spun him around so he was upside down, his belly facing them. He snarled and lashed out with both front paws but said nothing. Maybe they would think he was just a wayward lion wandered in from the desert like the horses.
Oracle’s Haunt: Desert Cursed Series Book 4 Page 10
