I took off to the right, spinning the flail as fast as I could. The armor on the ophidians was thick and I had no idea just how big of a hit it would take to do damage.
The sand gave under my feet, pulling me down and I dove sideways as it gave way completely. Rolling, I came up to my feet and spun, twisting so that I brought the flail down on the ophidian I’d been going for. The creature’s body was barely above the sand but it had to be enough.
The twin spiked balls slammed into the sand snake’s body, and dug in hard, flexing and pulsing as it drew down the ophidian’s life force in a matter of seconds. I yanked it free.
“Left, left!” Lila yelled.
I spun, and brought the flail down, hitting what looked like just sand, but trusting Lila. Blood burbled up through the desert ground, and then it was gone, sucked down by the flail.
“The last one is going for Maggi!” Lila yelled and I was off and running, the flail held out from my side. “Straight ahead!”
I fought to pick up speed, the ground moving wickedly fast ahead of me. “Come on, you worm! I’m back here!” I yelled at the ophidian, wishing, hoping, they could understand me.
Of course, the creature didn’t so much as slow for a second.
“Behind you!” Lila shrieked.
Everything seemed to slow. I leapt up into the air, spun and shifted forms as I came back down, landing on top of the ophidian’s head. I dug my claws in, driving them through his skull as if I were the jungle cat I was meant to be and not a house cat with delusions of grandeur. The ophidian lashed its head side to side as if to dislodge me.
“Lila, get to Maggi!” I yelled as I fought to hang onto the ophidian. It wouldn’t take long before the big bastard would figure out that if it went underground it would lose me. I had to kill it now.
It let out a long low hiss at me, and I hissed right back, letting the growl rumble through me. The ophidian exploded out of the ground, writhing and twisting. I dug in with all four feet, my claws strengthened by shifting while carrying the flail. I clawed at the top of its head, peeling back scales in chunks.
Blood flew, sticking into my fur, stinking like raw sewage. Why did everything have to stink so fucking bad? There wasn’t a lot of time to consider the question as the ophidian snapped its head hard to the side and I lost my grip. Once more I flew through the air, shifting forms and landing on two feet in a crouch, the flail in my right hand. I stood and swung the weapon in an uppercut that caught the lower jaw of the ophidian.
The flail drove through, pulsing and vibrating, the handle warming and sticking even more to my fingers. Happy, the weapon was fucking happy to be eating down the ophidian. I yanked the flail back, and the ophidian fell to the ground, dead.
Before I could even think, I was off and running toward Maggi. Behind her were Balder, Batman, and Demon.
And Marsum. Only he stood in front of her, his magic swirling around him, driving the ophidians back, keeping them at bay. “My magic can’t get through their hide!” he yelled.
I gave him a nod. “Lila, eyes!”
Once more she flew into the air, circling around me. She called out where they were, and I slammed the flail into them. Four more fell in half that many minutes and then we were scrambling to run once more.
“Get Maggi.” I grabbed Demon and directed him to lie down. Marsum and I shoved her onto the camel’s back and then we mounted the horses. Balder’s eyes were rolling hard and his body frothed with a nervous sweat. I didn’t blame him. We’d been here before and the outcome for him had been rough. “Easy, buddy, no bites this time.”
Lila flew ahead of us, circling around and then checking on the ophidians as we raced toward the water’s edge. I held Demon’s lead and prayed that we would make it, prayed to whoever would listen, whatever gods were watching over us, to buy us a little more time.
“Right into the water,” Maggi groaned, finally sitting up. “Right into the water if you want to find the Wyvern.”
“I don’t want to fucking find him! Not yet!” I yelled at her. That was the last thing we needed.
The waves crashed toward us, booming as they hammered the sand as if driven by the motion of the sea. I wondered in a flash of curiosity that overcame the fear of running from the ophidians, where the hell all that water had come from. Because there were no oceans out this way, no lakes or rivers even the size of what we were seeing.
Like the witch’s swamp out in the middle of the desert, this body of water had no reason for being here other than existing on the whim of the Wyvern. Marsum and Batman rode into the water first, legs splashing through, and a moment later, Balder and I hit it, slowed to a trot and looked around. Maggi was fully sitting up, the side of her face purpling all across her cheekbone and jawline.
“You okay?”
“I believe so.” She put a hand to her head. “But we have other concerns, I think.”
She lifted a hand and pointed out into the water. Something swam toward us, undulating through the waves, sending more waves our way. There was a flip of a scaled tail and a burst of air as the Wyvern cleared its lungs. An enormous head shaped like a bullet turned our way, and its eyes, jeweled like Lila’s, only blue, locked onto us. No, locked onto me before he dove into the water and headed our way.
Lila was still high above us and she dive-bombed to me, pulling up at the last second. “Um, he’s bigger than my father.”
“Goddess on a crippled cow, are you serious?”
“Ride!” Marsum yelled.
I booted Balder to the right, Maggi turning Demon at the same time.
We raced along the edge of the water as fast as the horses could go.
The thing was, we could see the end of the water, it looked to be about a mile away from us.
Only it kept stretching, kept spreading farther across the sand. Good for us in keeping the ophidians away.
Bad in that it kept the Wyvern close.
I looked across at Marsum as he turned his face to me.
“What are we going to do?” Lila clung to the front of my saddle, her body vibrating.
“Marsum, any ideas?”
He shot me a withering look. “I have not dealt with the Wyvern in a very long time and we did not part on good terms.”
“Davin dealt with him,” Maggi said. “Maybe he could help.”
Before Marsum could answer, a wave crashed around us, spreading out and disappearing into the sand behind us. The water stilled and the Wyvern rose out of the waves ahead of us. The horses slid to dual stops and backed up rapidly. Demon stopped but just stood there, chewing his cud like the ass he was. Okay, camel he was.
“Bad, this is going to go bad,” Lila whispered. “He’s very angry.”
Indeed.
I stared up at the Wyvern, taking him in. That was an understatement. The Wyvern was built like a whip-thin dragon with longer legs and what looked like webbed toes. Scales of darkest blue and green, he would blend in well with the water, especially with the silvery scales along his belly. A row of spikes ran from the tip of his nose up between his eyes and down his back, following a pair of ivory horns that swept over his head. Smallish eyes locked onto us.
“You are either very brave, or very stupid to come here.” His voice rumbled around us and the horses whinnied, prancing nervously, splashing water up in sprays.
“Likely the second,” I said. “I wouldn’t say I’m particularly brave.”
The Wyvern snapped his long jaw into the air and a booming laugh rolled out of him. “Funny, cat. What do you want?” His head shot forward and I found myself staring into his maw. I swallowed hard, understanding clearly what he was saying without uttering a word. He could kill us in an instant and we wouldn’t even see it coming. As big as a dragon and faster than the ophidians we’d run from, there would be no facing the Wyvern.
“Are the ophidians yours to control?” The question popped out of me. I needed to buy myself time to figure out how to get the stone from him. Hell, I didn’t even know where it was . . .
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The Wyvern shook his head, still far closer than I would like. “No, they have a new queen, and she has been pushing on my boundaries for the last week. Irritating fleas.” He blew out a slow breath. “But that is not why you are here.”
Lila hunched herself down farther on Balder’s neck and I tried not to do the same. I was looking straight into his mouth, eyeing up his teeth that were easily the length of my left arm. The right being a smidge shorter.
“Well, there is a problem that you might be able to help with,” I said.
The Wyvern pulled back. “A puzzle? I do like puzzles.”
I glanced at Marsum and he just shrugged. I realized then that he’d been very quiet this whole time. Both he and Maggi had said nothing.
“Yes, I guess you could call it a puzzle.” I cleared my throat and composed my thoughts. “The Emperor is trying to free himself. Ishtar is gathering the stones, and the Falak could be freed.”
There, that about summed it up.
The Wyvern pulled his head back. “Truly, all of that? And what of these two with you?” That big head slid toward Marsum and Maggi, eyeing them up, his posture shifting each second. What would he do if he knew that one was the Ice Witch, and the other a Jinn master? Nothing good.
“That’s Maks, he’s my mate and a caracal shifter,” I said, pointing at Marsum. “And that’s my aunt. She has no power, so to speak, but has great wisdom.”
A low rumbling chitter slid through the Wyvern. “Your problem is you do not think I can smell a lie, cat. That I cannot see who these two are, or what they have done. You are right about the world falling to pieces, but that is of no concern to me.” His head turned to my aunt. “I hold the stone, Maggi, and you won’t be getting it.”
“She doesn’t want it—”
The Wyvern’s tail slammed down in the water between me and the others. “They show you what you want to see: That this one is your friend,” he motioned at Maggi, “and that this one loves you.” He motioned to Marsum. “Creatures who desire power cannot be trusted, cat. You should know that by now. Have you not realized that the Emperor wants the power you hold? That you are the key to his freedom?”
“I can’t free him,” I said.
“You already started down that path, and you will free him willingly before this is done, which means perhaps you are better off dead now.” He circled Marsum and Maggi, his body big enough to coil more than once. I stared in horror as my two traveling companions disappeared from sight.
“Please, don’t hurt them!” I yelled. “Wyvern, if you are as reasonable as you seem, then you have to know that sometimes things are not what they seem.”
That slowed him and he looked over the rounded edge of his body. “You have traitors all around you, and yet you trust them. Why? Are you so starved for love?”
I held up both hands, palms out in a sign of surrender. “What will you do when Ishtar comes for the stone? What will you do when she cuts it out of you?” I was taking a gamble that the stone he held was within him.
“She cannot.” He snorted.
“You are either very brave, or very stupid.” I parroted his words back at him. “She is not the Ishtar you knew when you worked with her to put the Emperor to sleep. She raised me as her daughter, as the child she never had, and she tried to kill me when I did not give her what she wanted. And she has been working with the Emperor all along, playing us all. She has Merlin now too, I think.” Again, that was a lot of info, but for some reason I knew I had to tell him.
His eyes narrowed to glowing slits. “Brave or stupid, perhaps I am stupid then too.”
“I can carry the stone for you,” Maggi called out. “I have the strength she does not, Wyvern. You know this.”
“What the fuck?” I growled. “Maggi, are you insane?” Even as I looked at her, the madness that had been there before flickered in her eyes. The need to be strong, to not be the weak link. I understood it, painfully so. “This is not the way!”
The water lashed at the horses’ legs and they danced sideways. The tail of the Wyvern appeared and flipped between us, Maggi and Demon on one side, Marsum, me and the horses on the other. “None of you will have my power!” he bellowed, whipping his head toward Maggi. So much for being reasonable.
She let out a shriek.
“Time to run!” Marsum yelled as he threw a ball of energy at the Wyvern, slamming him in the side of the head, knocking him down, a splash of water rising up over him as he sank. Maggi got Demon going, and only had that chance because of Marsum. But I suspected him helping her was going to bite us all in the ass.
“Go!” Marsum shouted, and I wanted to grab him and shake him and Maggi. The Wyvern turned and roared at us, showing off every row of teeth and then some. “None of you will escape death.”
I leaned over Balder’s neck. “Faster, my boy.” He dug in hard, and we galloped through the water, the Wyvern pacing us out in the depths of his ocean.
We were royally screwed. The water would go as far as the Wyvern wanted it to.
Maggi was catching up to us, her face twisted with shame. “I’m sorry! I couldn’t help myself.”
“Later!” I said. We would discuss her issues later. If we all made it out of this alive.
Another wave pulsed toward us, hitting the horses and Demon hard enough to make them stumble but still they managed to keep going. Another roar from the Wyvern, a bellow that rattled the air around us. “Death to you all.”
“Yeah, fuck you too!” I hollered back, giving him a standard one-fingered salute.
“Like that will help?” Marsum snapped.
I looked at him. “How in the hell will it hurt at this point?”
Oh, being wrong sucked so badly, and I really had to stop asking questions like that.
Lila tugged at my shirt. “The water! He’s going to leave!”
I took a quick look at the water below us as we galloped, watched as it pulled back from us out to the depths. I blinked and lifted my head as the water slid farther down Balder’s legs. “You’re right. The water is receding.” That was good, wasn’t it?
Maggi twisted in her seat. “Oh, he is a crafty one and won’t even bother to kill us himself.”
The water continued to drop, now just to Balder’s hooves. The sand to the right of me was drying rapidly with the heat of the desert.
“Crap, the ophidians,” Lila yelped.
Now it was my turn to twist in my saddle, looking out the way we’d come to the dry sands of the desert. There were no gorcs left, only a few bits of armor that could be seen dotting the landscape. A puff of sand went up as an ophidian rose to the surface and slithered across. I could almost feel its beady damn eyes lock on us, and the forked tongue slid in and out, tasting the air. Tasting us.
“Shit fuck damn.” I cursed through gritted teeth. “Keep moving, we have to use what time we have of the water still around us.” Even as I spoke, the “ocean” slid farther away, toward the east as the Wyvern laughed. Fucking laughed at us. How was I ever going to convince him to help me find my brother?
“Go, as fast as you can.” I leaned into Balder, hissing softly at him. Behind us, Batman didn’t hesitate, leaping after us. Demon was the slow one to start, but a few whacks from Maggi’s quirt and he passed both horses.
The water had soaked the sand thoroughly, which would buy us a little time, but not enough. And surely not enough to get all the way south. “I don’t know the terrain, Lila. Can you scout ahead?”
She launched into the air, and shot ahead of us, her wings a blur like a hummingbird. “I’m on it!”
I blew out a breath and looked at Marsum. His hands were black with the Jinn’s magic, but he did nothing with it. “I can’t kill them; they are immune to my magic. The best I can do is slow them down. Maybe.”
Between one hoofbeat and the next, we went from wet to dry sand and the horses slowed, their hooves sucked down into the looser material. Going slower was not going to help us.
“Can you firm up t
he ground?”
“I’m not a fucking elemental!” Marsum snapped. “I kill things.”
Elements. I had a stone that froze the shit out of things. I reached up and touched the stone under my shirt. “I’m going to try something.”
Maggi’s eyes were hard on me. “I could freeze the sand with that stone. I could stop the ophidians in their slithering tracks. Give it to me.” Again, that madness was there, creeping back in around the edges of her eyes.
I stared straight back at her. “You’d kill me once you had it back in your hands.”
I let go of Balder’s reins and he took off. Wrapping both hands around the stone, I tried to open myself to that part of me that was magic. The doorway in my mind was there. I could see it. “Come on, come on.” I squinted my eyes closed. Open. Open. Open.
Nothing happened. There was no pulse of magic, no flood of power. I squeezed the stone harder, but then backed off. What if I broke this one too?
“Whatever you’re going to do, hurry!” Marsum yelled.
Please. That was my only thought, just please. We couldn’t come this far to die now at the mouth of a bunch of oversized sand worms.
Please. The doorway opened a crack. Just a little, enough that the magic in me began to spill out.
My muscles quivered as a blast of cold air hit me in the face. I gasped, clutched the stone hard enough to dig my nails into it, and the doorway in my mind flung open. My fingers holding the stone iced over, and the stone stuck to my chest . . . I couldn’t breathe. I opened my eyes and mouth, forced a lungful of air down though it tasted like cold fire, scorching my insides with an arctic blast.
I had to move. I had to finish this.
I took my feet from the stirrups and slid to the right, hanging from the saddle, dangling like a stunt rider, one knee hooked over the pommel. With a wrench, I pulled the stone free of where it stuck to my chest and held it in my hand. Each beat of Balder’s stride rocked me, threatening to toss me the rest of the way from the saddle.
I reached out and tipped the stone into the sand. Ice shot outward from it, freezing the desert in a line that ran straight south and north, blocking the ophidians. I hoped it would, anyway. Even if it blocked the majority of them, that would have to be good enough.
Wyvern's Lair (Desert Cursed Series Book 5) Page 17
