I took a step. “Fuck off.”
Her body shuddered but she never looked up at me. I found myself leaning over her to peer into the flames of the brazier.
In the waters of the Caspian Sea, Balder floundered as I swayed on his back, my hands limp to my sides. Deeper in the water, Shem was under the same influence.
I knew a dream or a vision when I saw one.
“Ishtar!” I snapped her name, and her head lifted slowly until she was staring at me.
Her eyes flickered. “Do you think you’ve found your strength then in the blood you despise?”
The words made no sense, so I ignored her. “Why are you doing this? You were my mother once, my mentor, my friend!” The emotions I’d held back for so long rolled up. “Why?”
“You are mine, a child I could never have.” She shook her head and her hands tightened again, the brazier groaning under her grasp. “But you will bow to him. I see it in your future. And that cannot be. Give me my jewels.”
I took a step back. “You cursed Bryce to remain crippled.”
“It kept you close to me,” she whispered. “I thought for a long time he was the one, but he was not. His weakness broke him. Your weakness gave you strength.”
Her eyes were wild and the stones glowed brighter under her skin. I could name them all, I’d brought them all to her. Obsidian. Gold. Silver. Purple Quartz. Lapis. All gave her more power.
She let go of the brazier, stood and took a step toward me. Her face twisted suddenly, her lips in a rictus snarl.
“You will die. I will kill you myself. My hunters will take back the jewels.” She held a hand out and from the shadows behind her came a snarling laugh. My skin chilled as the beast stepped into the light, its body dark, speckled, the hind end lower than the front, the teeth chattering as it snickered.
Werehyenas. They made Steve look like a sweetheart. Ish hated them. How she could possibly use them . . . it showed me just how far she’d sunk.
“Mistress, is that the cat you want caught?” He snickered and his body shivered.
Ish’s eyes locked with mine and I refused to back down. I lifted my chin. She lifted hers. “It is.”
I took a step back, snarling as the hyena scrabbled toward me, its claws digging hard for purchase on the tile. “Oh, I’m gonna like this,” he yipped.
He leapt at me and I held my ground until the last possible second. The rancid hot breath was all over me as I twisted out of the way. I kept my eyes locked. Pain rocketed through my collarbone.
Blink.
A tiny pair of claws dug into my collarbone. “Zam, what are you doing?” Lila screeched.
I stared down at her and realized we were in the water, Balder lunging forward, fighting the waves and my legs as I turned him into the Caspian Sea.
“Fucking hell!” I yelled as I turned him back to shore. To my left, deeper out Shem still swam out ahead of us. Doing the same thing I’d been doing. His horse floundered, chest deep in the water as the waves built up alongside the wind, shoving us deeper and deeper.
“Shem!” I yelled at his back. He didn’t so much as flinch as he let go of the reins and fell sideways into the water, his body stiff as a damn board.
His horse took its now riderless back as its cue to leave. He bounded out of the water and raced south down the shoreline. I pulled Lila from my shirt and wrapped Balder’s reins around her. There was no time to think about what just happened with Ish. Shem needed help.
“Stay here!” I yelled at her. I dropped my stirrups and dove into the water after Shem as she sputtered. The water was not quite glacial, but close, and my skin seemed to shrink three sizes over my bones making it difficult to swim hard. If I hadn’t had the same pull on my mind, I would have been cussing him out, but the truth was, I knew it wasn’t his fault. Ish was fucking with us.
“Where the shit am I going to go?” Lila snapped her teeth in my direction as I came up, but I was already swimming—as it were.
Now, I wasn’t the strongest in the water. Being raised in the desert will do that to you. But the water was not so deep yet that I couldn’t touch bottom if I needed to. I swam hard for him, pushing off the bottom with my feet here and there to help propel myself forward. Moments later, I grabbed one of his feet, turned and headed for shore, dragging him behind me. “Come on, man. Help me out here!”
A bolt of lightning danced through the sky. I flinched but didn’t let go of Shem. That was how this worked. My feet found the bottom again as the water grew shallower, and I pulled harder. “Shem, snap out of it!”
He is mine. The voice boomed out of the sky and rattled my bones. I clenched my hand over Shem’s leg. That was not Ish.
That was the Emperor.
“Fuck off, he’s part of my pride and I’m the alpha so he’s mine!” I roared the last word into the wind and kept dragging Shem with me until we were on shore. The wind slashed at us, swirling faster and faster, building with each pass.
“Hurricane!” Lila screamed from Balder’s back. I looked to her to see her clinging hard to the saddle, all four legs and sets of claws dug in hard and deep, her wings tucked tightly around her body.
Maks galloped up to us, Shem’s horse in hand. He jumped off and helped me shove Shem across the saddle, lashing the bigger man down as best we could, considering the situation. He was going to have a bloody big headache when he woke up, but there was no other way to move him.
Balder and Lila joined us and I leapt onto my saddle, ignoring the cold as it sunk deeply into my bones. We had to get free of this storm or it wouldn’t matter how cold I was—we would all die.
Maks and I moved in tandem, pinning Shem and his horse between our two horses. I reached up and braced Shem on one side. Maks did the same on the other. We galloped along the beach as the wind and weather snapped and howled. Lila shivered against me and I wasn’t sure that it was all the cold water that poured down my body, or the fear of the storm and what drove it.
Ten minutes passed, and I knew because I was counting in my head. The storm kept pace with us, biting hard on our heels. A huge water spout shot up out of the sea, swirling and bobbing as it curled toward us. Because the hurricane-force winds weren’t enough to convince us we were in trouble.
I looked across at Maks and shook my head. We couldn’t keep this up. We had to do more than just ride south and hope to outpace this thing Ish or the Emperor had created.
A thought hit me. They’d been consorts once. What if they were working together again?
As if one of them wasn’t bad enough.
Maks tipped his head to the west and I nodded. If we changed directions fully, we might lose the storm in the hills. Or at least find shelter.
Maks took the lead and I stayed next to Shem, keeping a hand on him where I could. We’d lashed him down good but if he started to thrash as he woke up shit was going to get real, quick.
The horses galloped over the first hill to the west and into the shallow valley below. Over and down, over and down. The foothills did help with the gusts of the wind around us. At least within the valleys.
Part of my brain said Merlin would surely show up with some magical shack we could crawl into and find safety. But my gut said that wasn’t going to happen. Wherever he was, it wasn’t here and we were on our own.
The wind shifted with us again, and this time shards of sharp rocks shot through the air, bouncing off our heads and shoulders, the horses’ rumps taking the worst of it, making them leap and bolt in all directions.
“Hail!” I yelled. And no small amount, but large chunks of ice the size of my fist. One on the top of the head and you’d be sent flying. I leaned over Balder’s neck to protect him and Lila as best I could.
The hand I had on Shem grew numb. Between the bath in the Caspian and the wind and hail, my body temperature had dropped to where I didn’t feel the cold anymore. Warmth was going to be necessary in a matter of minutes if I was going to be of any use.
Or alive. There was that too.
Lila shivered against me. “Where are we?”
“Don’t know.” My teeth chattered, my eyes were locked on Maks’s back. It was all I could do to keep him in front of me, to keep the horses moving. My focus was such that I didn’t notice when the wind began to slowly, painfully slowly, abate.
Maks slowed Batman and circled around for us. “Up ahead in the foothills are some old caves.”
I nodded, my teeth chattering. He led the way and a few moments later in the base of one of the rock-strewn hills, a cave appeared out of seemingly thin air. The mouth of the crevice was narrow and tall, but it looked like the horses could fit through if we pulled their gear off.
Maks leapt off Batman and handed me the reins. “I’ll check it out.”
He was gone before I could say otherwise and was back just as quickly. “It opens wide inside, so we can turn the horses around.”
How the hell had he even known it was here? I realized that he’d led us straight to it and the understanding hit me.
It was a Jinn’s hidey hole.
I forced my body to obey me as I dismounted. “Get Shem inside. I’ll bring the horses,” I said.
He nodded and helped Shem off his horse. Though ‘helped’ would imply that Shem was of any use. My uncle just kind of flopped into Maks’s arms, forcing him to take all his weight.
I worked my fingers over Balder’s gear first, breaking a nail in the process but hardly feeling it. Saddle off, I slid the reins over his head and sent him toward the cave. He went, good boy that he was, and I moved to Batman. Lila hovered around my face.
“What can I do to help?”
“Go sit on Shem,” I said through clenched teeth. “We don’t need him wandering off if he wakes up and is out of it.”
The wind smacked me in the face with sand brought from the coast. I closed my eyes against the grit until it passed.
“You think he might?” she asked.
I nodded. “Yeah, he might.”
She turned and was gone before I finished getting Batman’s gear off. Like Balder, I flipped his reins over his head and sent him through the cave. I trained both horses and they trusted me when I asked them to do scary things. I eyeballed Shem’s horse who danced at the end of his reins, neighing after his new friends.
He bucked when I moved to loosen his saddle girth.
“Don’t be a shit!” I snapped, my patience not at its best. Not his fault, I reminded myself. He was as scared as the rest of us and with practical strangers. I forced myself to soften, placing a hand on his neck and standing as still as I could while touching him. We didn’t have time for this, but it was what I had to do if he was going to stick it out with us. Maks appeared from the cave and scooped up the two saddles and disappeared once more.
“Easy.” I slid one hand to the girth strap and loosened it, then pulled the saddle and pad slowly from his back. He let out a long low snort and I tugged him forward. I didn’t want to lead him through the crevice, that was how you got trampled. But I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t have time to get him to fully trust me. Maks stepped out as I came to the crevice. Light flickered inside.
“Fire is going. Get in there and strip,” he said.
Another time I would have smiled. Another time.
I tugged the horse after me and he leapt forward, ramming his chest into my back, which sent me flying into the cave. I fell to my knees and he trampled over me to get to his buddies, Balder and Batman, on the far side of the cave. I stayed there, breathing hard as I checked for broken bones. He’d clipped my right shoulder with his hoof, but otherwise I was okay.
Maks came through behind me and dropped the third saddle.
Without a word, he picked me up and carried me to the fire. Shem was already stripped and stuffed under some blankets near the fire.
“Lila,” Maks said, “keep the fire going.”
“You got it.” She grabbed a stick and tossed it onto the flames, then fanned them with her wings. I wanted to ask how they had gotten so much stuff together, but my teeth were chattering again as the heat slowly made its way into my body. Maks yanked off his shirt and I just stared.
Lila snickered. “She doesn’t need the fire, Maks. You just need to take your shirt off to warm her up.”
He grinned. “Could be a worse reaction.”
Even as cold as I was, I was blushing. “You’d think I was a teenager again,” I muttered. I got my cloak off and my sodden shirt halfway over my head before he helped me with it the rest of the way.
He tipped his head to the side. “You’re right, Lila, that is a cute bra.”
I reached out to slap him but he caught my fingers and kissed the tips while Lila laughed, and then he was helping me out of my pants.
“We really have to stop meeting like this,” I said.
“Nah, I like it. You need me, at least to keep you from freezing.” He slipped his arms under my legs and carried me to the fire and sat, his back against the stack of saddles. He pulled a single blanket over us and I made a noise of displeasure at such light covering.
“Yeah, well, you either get all the blankets and I cuddle up with Shem, or you get me.” Maks held me a little tighter. “Please don’t pick the blankets.”
“Ohh, pick the blankets,” Lila whispered.
Laughter shook out of me along with the shivering. “You two are horrible. We could have died.”
“Yes.” Maks nodded. “I think that’s why it makes this whole situation even funnier. Death and laughter go together better than people realize.”
I leaned my head against his shoulder and Lila crawled up behind me. Her claws slid into my hair as she deftly braided it back from my face. I wondered where she’d learned to do it, but then again, she’d seen me braid my hair back a few times. “You’re a quick learner.” I spoke through chattering teeth.
“It’s hardly a complex spell,” Lila said. “Three strands, over and over? Basic weaving.”
I smiled, a laugh not quite making it past my lips. The movement of her untangling my hair, of her care for me warmed me as much as Maks’s broad chest. He had one hand behind my back and the other over my legs with his palm resting against the skin of my outer thigh.
My shivering slowed, but I didn’t fall asleep. I listened to the sound of the fire crackling, to Maks’s heartbeat, to Lila’s wings as they fluttered, the stamp of the horses’ hooves and Shem’s muttering in his sleep.
“That was Ish, trying to stop us,” I said softly.
Lila squeaked. “The storm? You and Shem blacking out?”
Maks turned his face to me. “Wait, you blacked out? I thought you were going in after Shem. And why would she attack him?”
I rolled my head side to side. “She wants the jewels back. She’s sending hyenas after us for them.”
Maks grimaced. “Fuck.”
“My thoughts exactly. Which means we are running out of time. We have to hurry. As soon as that storm is done, they will be on us,” I said.
“We can’t fully outrun them,” Maks said, carefully saying and not saying what was going through my head.
“I know. We’ll have to kill them.” I looked up at him. “They’re the assholes of the desert. I don’t feel that bad.”
Lila tugged on my ear and I turned to her. “How bad can they be?”
“They are werehyenas,” I said. “They’re big, Lila. Not quite as big as the White Wolf, but big enough that a lot of them in a pack will pose a serious fucking problem.”
Because we didn’t have enough shit happening right then. “Ish has totally lost it,” I went on. “Completely gone. There will be no convincing her to pull back, or that she’s going mad. The jewels are under her skin. To take them . . . you’d have to cut her open.” The image of her naked and feral gave me a shiver of fear that caught me off guard. I’d never been afraid of Ish before. No, not Ish.
Ishtar.
I would no longer call her by the name of the woman I thought of as my mother. She was Ishtar once again, a
violent desert goddess whose mercy was fickle at best.
There was only one thing I could do now.
“I need to find the rest of our pride,” I said. “I’m going to try to find them, like I did Bryce. The faster I do that, the faster we can get them and face the hyenas together.”
Maks shifted me on his lap. “What can I do?”
“Just hang onto me.” I curled in tighter to him.
“Easy.” His face turned against mine and his lips brushed against my cheek.
For once, Lila said nothing. Then again, she’d been pushing hard for lion cubs to play with. Making those cubs would be something else. Assuming we ever found the time to do a test run.
A slow smile slid over my lips. Yeah, a test run would be rather nice.
“Dirty thoughts?” Lila leaned over and grinned at me. “I know that smile.”
I shook my head. “Lila, you are far too smart for your own good.”
“Ha, I knew it!” she crowed and Maks’s eyebrows shot up. If I could have stopped the blush, I would have. I settled for closing my eyes and reaching out for the other members of my pride.
Chapter Six
The cave warmed significantly with the horses, the fire, and the rather lush man I curled against. I sighed and kept my eyes closed and my thoughts on the other members of my pride. I was supposed to be finding them.
But with Maks this close, all these unresolved feelings, pent-up sexual attraction, and frustrated wants were doing bad things to my head. And more importantly, other parts of my body that were not about to be denied. My hands crept up his bare chest, following the curves of his muscles all too easily.
Not what I was supposed to be doing. I clenched my fingers against my palms. This close to Maks, I couldn’t focus. Which meant I had to leave him behind.
“Shit.” I stood and held the blanket close as I walked to the back of the cave behind the horses. Maks didn’t try to stop me, though I felt the loss of his heat keenly. He was the desert that called me home in more ways than one.
Jinn's Dominion (Desert Cursed Series Book 3) Page 6
