Ollianna’s red hair came into view and there was a moment of absolute quiet as she was surrounded by other witches. Surrounded.
She did a slow turn.
“I see.”
Emmy stepped out from the circle, her face still bashed in from the flail, her body bent at weird angles, and yet she was alive. Horrifically still alive. How the hell was this even happening?
“She let them get away. They must be stopped!” Emmy’s words were broken like her jaw, and hard to understand.
Ollianna shook her head. “That stone was going to be our death. It drew on us to keep the Emperor—our father—confined. I do not wish him free, but I do not wish to die for the cost of his prison either. Nor should any of you.”
A bevy of hissing rolled through the witches. I turned my head to see the fae watching me, their eyes dark with hate—not for me, but the witches below. “Help me kill them. All but the redhead,” I whispered.
The grins that met my words sent a chill through me. The witches were not my friends and I refused to think of them as family, but Ollianna was different. She’d tried to help in her own way.
“You sure?” Lila’s question was meant for only my ears. I nodded slowly. I was sure. Maybe I would lose this form, but not yet.
Not yet.
14
I crouched on the tree branch directly above Emmy at the edge of the witches’ swamp and stared down at her—the witch I’d already smashed in the face with the flail. Her blond hair was filthy, her dress was in tatters and what I could see of what was left of her face was right pissed. She was the witch Ollianna had tried to kill and obviously failed, and I knew in my gut that if we could take her out first, we’d have a fighting chance.
Emmy was about to have the worst day of her life.
I didn’t roar as I dropped from the tree, I just dropped, silently. I landed on Emmy’s back, wrapping my front paws around her shoulders and digging in with claws that had the strength of the flail running through them as I dragged her down and backward.
She screeched and fell with my weight on her.
“Her head, you must take her head!” Ollianna screamed, and then the world erupted.
Emmy and I were thrown through the air, but I didn’t let her go. I clamped my jaws around the back of her neck and bit down with everything I had in me, expecting it to be hard to not only snap her neck but remove her head.
My teeth sunk through with enough force that they clicked as they touched, and I yanked hard to one side, Emmy’s head popping off like a flower. She rolled under me still twitching, her death throes spurting blood out of her neck hole like a hose. I spun and leapt back into the fray as a witch of great age stood in the middle of the seething mass, watching it all go down.
Ollianna held back four witches on her own, hands sweeping from side to side, blasting them with power like I’d never seen before. Her face was a determined mask, and for just a moment, I thought there was a likeness to my own face, and then it was gone. I shot forward and snagged a witch by an ankle, flinging her behind me and into the air.
What looked like a hundred tiny arrows flecked with red ribbons slammed into her body, pincushioning her before she even hit the ground, motionless. The fae fell from the sky to her and went to work on her neck, gleefully singing as they tore into her flesh and worked to take her head.
I spun as Ollianna went down to her knees.
A roar exploded out of me and the witches turned as I raced toward them. A spell came at me and I didn’t understand how, but I knew the flail could absorb magic, so shouldn’t I be able to as well? The thought was faster even than the spell as it flew and I held onto it.
The shimmer of sparks cascaded down my body and disappeared. I would have sworn the flail shivered inside me, my claws and fangs tingling. I bared my teeth as I leapt at the stunned witch, her hands still spinning the magic that had done nothing to me. We went down in a snarling, screaming tumble and I didn’t think about it, just went for her throat, tearing it out in a single bite.
The witch to my right screeched and her hand swept down at me, a blade going straight through my right shoulder, pinning itself to the scapula.
I roared and swiped at her with my other paw, driving her back. A glitter of blue scales and then Lila was on her head, yanking her back by her hair as the jewel hummed under her skin. The witch slowly froze until there was nothing but a block of ice. Only this time, Lila slammed her tail into the witch’s neck.
The crack rebounded through the air as her head rolled from her shoulders.
“Enough.” The word was quiet and yet the power in it made me shake. Like the Emperor, that voice made me want to obey and that was enough for me to hate it.
I snarled and turned toward the woman speaking as I hunched my back, the fur standing along my spine. The old one in the center of the fight but not taking part. Just like the Emperor.
My right shoulder burned from the knife wound but I barely acknowledged it as I slunk across the ground, ready to pounce on the old woman.
One gray eyebrow flicked upward. “Truly, you would attack me?”
“You would kill Ollianna.” I growled the words.
“She killed Patrice and tried to kill Emmy. Her sisters,” the old woman said. “You think you are the only hero of this world, Zamira of the desert?” She shook her head. “You will learn soon enough that there are many heroes, and that they all have a story. Go then, take the betrayer with you if you like her so much.”
She waved a hand at us. Ollianna let out a sob. “Mother, you know the diamond is wrong for us. I wanted to protect—”
“You wanted to live,” the Mother witch said. “You are not willing to give your life to the cause as you swore you would. And now your father seeks to break free. Who do you think he will destroy, Ollianna? His enemies? Or the ones who betrayed him?” She flicked her fingers at Ollianna and sent her flying through the air, out past the edge of the swamp.
Then her eyes turned to me. “And you.”
I didn’t move nor take my eyes from her. A slow, wicked smile slid over her face. “Before your journey is done, you will cross breadth and width of our world. You will lose everything you hold dear, and you will wonder if you are the hero many want you to be, or a pawn pushed across a chessboard.”
Lila sucked a breath of shock, but I didn’t move.
“That’s it?” I snorted as though her words didn’t send chills all the way down my spine to the tip of my tail. “Broad stroke prophecy? Even I can do that. Ready for it? You will die, one day, old woman, and when you do, the regret in you will make you wish you’d never lived, that you’d never seen the eyes of the Emperor.”
Her eyes widened, and she stepped back as she made a motion in front of her as if she could drive me away. “Begone from my home, monster. You are neither witch nor shifter nor mage nor Jinn. You are nothing, and everything. And that means you will never find a place of peace. Wander forever and never know what it is to belong.”
Well, that was a curse if I ever heard one. Even if it wasn’t backed up by a magical spell.
I realized as I crouched there, she couldn’t fling me out like she’d done to Ollianna. She was waiting for me to leave.
I stood and backed up, step by step leaving the jungle. At the very edge of the swamp, with the heat of the desert calling behind me, and the cool of the jungle in front of me, I hesitated.
Lila dropped to the ground beside me. “You can do this, Zam. We will break our curses, I’m sure of it. Just not today.”
I let out a roar, full of defiance, of anger and frustration as I took that final step backward and my body shifted to two legs. If I couldn’t be a jungle cat, I couldn’t stand to be a house cat. At least, not for right now. I backed up, eyes on the moving jungle until I bumped into Balder’s nose. He blew softly over me, and I turned, stumbled and Shem reached down, holding me up by the edge of my shirt. “Zam, what happened back there?”
“Hang on a second.” I forced my leg
s to move forward. My shoulder and the wound there made itself suddenly and keenly well-known as I walked toward the black and red lump in the sand about a hundred feet past where Shem, Ford, and the horses had stood waiting.
Ollianna didn’t stir as I drew close.
“Hey, Ollie,” I said.
She pushed herself up to a sitting position. Her gray-green eyes found mine and I cringed at the pain in them. She’d been ousted from the only home she’d ever known because she’d helped us.
“You want to come with us?” The words popped out of me as Shem and Ford rode up. Shem gave a strangled squawk.
“Heaps of camel shit, tell me you’re joking,” Shem said. When I didn’t answer him right away he groaned. “She’s not kidding. Can you believe this? She’s not kidding! She wants a witch to come with us!”
I laughed then. I couldn’t help it. “Shem, we have with us a dragon, a priestess of Zeus, shifters of every variety, half-breed Jinn, and gods only know what else. Why not a witch? She saved us. She tried to save me. That has to be worth something.”
Her eyes fluttered closed. “I cannot give you the form you want, Zamira.”
Well, there went that small hope. “Right. But that doesn’t mean you can’t come with us.”
I made myself hold a hand out to her and she shook her head. “I will not touch you. Not while you carry the stone.”
Ford leaned out of his saddle and held a hand to Ollianna. She took it and squeaked as he yanked her up onto the saddle behind him. She seemed bothered by the fact that he was there in front of her and did her best not to touch him, which was amusing as shit.
“Careful, he’s looking for a mate,” I said.
She whipped around and stared at me. “I am not having a child of a shifter!”
I laughed at her. “Ollianna, just think of the cubs you could have.”
It was Ford’s turn to whip around and stare at me like I’d lost my mind. “You are insane. A witch? She’d turn me into a toad if I didn’t pleasure her right!” And then he winked at me. A game of teasing the witch was right up his alley.
I took a few steps, then a few more, feeling my way south, feeling my connection to the pride of my heart.
Boom, and there it was, they were waiting at the edge of the blasted lands only a few hours from us. Not all of them, though. I still couldn’t pick up on Darcy or Steve or Nell.
Ford and Ollianna rode ahead of us and Shem swayed on Balder’s back as I walked beside him. Lila flew around us, staying close.
“Did you sense something between them? Ford and Ollianna?” Shem asked quietly.
“Why do you ask?” I tipped my head to the left, stretching the tightening muscles around the wound. It had healed with my shift, but not well.
“Because you suggested they pair up within seconds of them meeting. It was strange, don’t you think?”
I shrugged and winced. I wasn’t about to say that I would throw Ford at every woman within reach if I had to. To prove that he wasn’t right for me. “I was teasing, lightening up the tension.”
Lila shook her head. “No, it was weird.”
I frowned. “Well, maybe I’m weird then. What the fuck do you want?”
Shem smiled, but it was sad. “Something changed for you in the swamp, Zam. I don’t know what. But something. Maybe you connected better with who or what you are, I don’t know. But you came out, they touched hands and you suggested they be mates. And look at them now.”
I looked ahead to see Ollianna’s head pressed against Ford’s back, her eyes closed and tears streaming down her cheeks. Funny to think that a witch could have such emotion. More than that was that her arms were around his waist and he was holding her.
I stared at them a long time, wondering if Shem was right. But I could feel nothing strange, nothing weird as they were saying. Even what I’d said to the Mother witch was just what it was. Not a real prophecy but a broad-based saying that could have applied to anyone.
“There is power in words, both written and spoken,” Shem said. “I suggest you be more careful with them. While you may not feel it, or sense it, you are shaping the world around you.”
I swallowed hard and then looked to the south, hoping he was wrong.
“Your mother was the same, Zam,” Shem said softly. “It was part of her ability and she didn’t even know it, I don’t think. She was younger than you are now when she died and she’d only just started to learn what she could do. I believe . . . you are more dangerous than you realize. Some people believe that power is diminished the farther it gets from the source within bloodlines, but that isn’t always the case. Sometimes power jumps a generation.”
I looked at him and he looked away. He looked away from me like there was something wrong with me.
My lower lip trembled, catching me off guard. That stupid witch was right. I was nothing. I didn’t belong anywhere. Lila shook her head and flew to my left shoulder. She wrapped her tiny arms around my neck along with her tail. “Don’t look like that, Zam. I’m not afraid of you. I will never be afraid of my sister.”
A tear slid down my cheek and she wiped it away with the edge of one wing. “Thank you, Lila.”
Shem rode ahead of us, catching up with Ford and Ollianna. What was happening? Was Shem right about the jungle? It had given me a glimpse of what could be, of what I’d always wanted. “You know that line about it’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all?” I said.
Lila shook her head. “Never heard it before.”
I laughed. “Well, it’s bullshit. I wish I’d never been in my real form. I wish I didn’t know what I was missing. Whatever magic slid over us in there . . . if Shem is right and it’s changed me, how is that good? How can that possibly help us?”
Lila sighed. “I don’t know. All I know is we have to stay together, no matter what. Men will come and go,” she tipped her head toward Ford as if he and I had ever been a thing, which made me smile, “but sisterhood is forever.”
I lifted my hand to her, dreading what I was going to say next. “Lila, I couldn’t do this without you.”
“Of course not. I thought we’d already covered that.” She bobbed her head and grinned, showing off her teeth.
Now to the tough part.
I was going to have to just dive in on this one, though, no way to make it nice and neat. How did I tell her that she had to give up the one thing that leveled the playing field for her? The acid she produced was finite in its amount and took time to replenish, and her size, like mine when I was on four legs, didn’t always work in her favor either. The sapphire she carried was the one thing that gave her power.
The one thing that gave her strength.
“Shit.” I growled the word. I just had to rip this off like a bandage stuck to a messy fucking wound. I took a breath. “Lila, here’s the thing—”
Ahead of us, Shem shouted, cutting me off. “We’ve got a place for camp!”
Lila lifted off my shoulder and was gone in a flash of wings into the dark before I could say anything else.
“Shit indeed,” I muttered. I clutched my injured arm to me, the knife wound reminding me that I was far from invincible. A little farther to the left and there would have been a lung puncture involved.
The sand slid out from my feet the farther we got from the witches’ swamp and I found myself turning to see if there was anything marking the wretched place. Behind us was nothing but darkened desert without a single flicker of light.
Ahead of me, I could feel the pull of my pride, of Kiara and the others who I could sense waiting. This close I could pick up on tiny bits of emotion; Kiara was a mix of worry and anger. That could mean a lot of things, but my money was on Steve being an ass. Even if I could no longer pick up on him, it was an easy bet really. When was he not being an ass?
All that ran through my head, pulling me south while a tiny part of me wondered if I could have stayed in the swamp. If I could have begged the witches to lift the curse on me. If they w
ould have done it even if they could have. No. The answer was no, of course, they would have skinned me alive over hot coals before they ever gave me freedom from my curse.
Footsteps, light and barely brushing the sand, whispered behind me. The swoosh of a satin skirt in the air and then Ollianna was there beside me, looking toward the swamp.
“They would have told you they could give you the gift of freedom from your curse, but it would be a lie. At best a manipulation to hold you there. At worst, a way to get you to do their bidding,” she said.
I turned my head. Her words were almost exactly what my own thoughts had been. “And you? Do you not grieve what you’ve lost?”
Her smile in the dark was sad. “It is complicated. Mother did me a kindness by sending me out with you. The other witches would have tortured me for years for turning on one of our own, killing me, but so slowly that it would have been nothing short of eternal torment. So I will miss some of them, but they would have been my death had I stayed.” She stared out across the sand and I wondered if she could see the edges of the swamp.
“They sound like great sisters to have,” I muttered. “With them, you don’t need enemies.”
She laughed at me. “My sisters see me as the betrayer. I am the villain to them no matter how you see me. And what would you do if that little dragon turns on Shem or Ford? What would you do to her if the jewel takes her over and makes her the beast of legend? Would you let her go on killing those you love?”
I frowned. “I wouldn’t fucking torture her. I’d help her if I could.”
“And if you thought she was beyond help?” A dark red eyebrow lifted with more grace than I had in my entire body. I grimaced.
“I would do what I had to. I am not a child to shy from the ugly parts of life.”
“Exactly. And that is what I did to save the rest of them. I did the unspeakable.” She sighed. I really didn’t want to like her, but she was easy to be around, and blunt. I liked that.
Something the Mother witch had said bumped around in me. “She said I was neither shifter nor Jinn nor witch . . . that I would always be alone, which is really just an asshole thing to say but . . . the other blood she said I carried . . . was new.” Gods, this was a hard question to ask, harder than it should have been. “Am I part witch?”
Oracle’s Haunt: Desert Cursed Series Book 4 Page 12
