Feral Magic

by Tate James

  They seemed okay with it, though, didn’t they?

  I mean... other than that thing Raze had said about ruining me for everyone else, Hunter and Boden included. But he was just posturing, right?

  Sure. Yeah. Let’s go with that.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  East Texas was hot and humid, but wasn’t it always? It was like walking around inside a mouth—not even remotely sexy—and it was wrecking havoc on my heavily bleached and dyed hair. Mother. Fucker.

  All the keratin treatments in the world weren’t saving me now.

  “Now, remember—” Boden started to say as our car pulled up outside the Palm Valley Animal Control Center. PVAC. Just the name made my teeth grind together so hard they hurt. Even knowing it was a front for Bast and her cult didn’t help matters. There were so damn many of these kill shelters that were chucking poor, innocent animals in their gas chambers...

  I shuddered. There were some seriously fucked up people in the world.

  “—stay behind us,” Boden was saying, and I forced myself to focus on him again. “I’m not saying that because you have a vagina.” He smirked at me, referencing our earlier conversation. “I’m saying that because you don’t have claws and fangs. Also, you have no clue how to use your abilities, and I really, really would rather you not do another time jump. My stress levels can’t handle another three days of wondering if you’re alive.”

  I gave him a sheepish smile and saluted. “Understood, boss. Stay behind the big kitties.”

  Hunter grunted an annoyed sound. “Not a cat,” he muttered, but followed Boden out of the car anyway.

  There had been no point in trying to disguise our arrival; Bast already knew we were coming. We’d seen black-robed weirdos everywhere we’d gone since our plane landed. How the hell they were just wandering around in cultist attire and no one was commenting on the oddity of it, I had no idea. Magic, I guessed?

  Outside the car, both guys stripped down and shifted into their feline—ahem, I meant animal—forms. We all figured it was best to be fully prepared for whatever we walked in on, especially given how Raze was trapped in an anti-shift cage.

  Boden gave me a look that seemed to convey, “Are you ready?” I nodded firmly, gripping my amulet between my fingers and trying really hard not to freak out.

  But, like, what could go wrong. Right? I had two seriously badass shifters by my side and the power of a god quite literally at my fingertips. I mean sure, I didn’t know how to use that power, but lets not nitpick here.

  With a snarling yowl, Hunter charged the front doors with his massive shoulder. Once again, not totally sure if cats—or cat-shaped marsupials—had shoulders, but for lack of a better way to describe it, we’re rolling with shoulder.

  The doors burst open, the chain that had held them closed on the inside snapping like a toothpick and flying across the room ahead of us.

  Now that was an entrance.

  Inside the building was little more than a dirty, damp warehouse with a cage full of pissed off Raze right in the middle of the room.

  I wasn’t totally sure what I’d been expecting, but this... wasn’t it.

  Yeah, sure, I knew the animal shelter was a front, but I’d expected more of a dramatic cult headquarters. Where were the open-flame sconces and ancient artifacts? Where was the altar that Bast sacrificed innocent cats on to increase her powers? Where were all the chanting acolytes?

  From the shadows, several dozen black-robed cultists appeared.

  Oh, there they were. Spoke too soon on that last point, but the rest was still valid!

  “What the fuck?” Raze bellowed, his gaze landing on me like a ton of fucking bricks. Uh-oh. “You brought her here? Are you insane? Boden, you’ve completely lost your damn mind!”

  I flinched a little at his ire, but the big, tawny lynx in front of me snarled and hissed in response with what I was fairly confident was the cat version of, “Hey, fuck you.”

  The cultists didn’t waste any time fucking around with grand statements and witty banter... In fact, it seemed like most of them had no voice at all. In all the run-ins we’d had, I had only heard maybe three of them speak. They were practically Ninjalinos. You know, from PJ Masks? Don’t act like I’m the only one who watches kids’ cartoons while hungover. We all do it.

  They burst into action, running at Boden and Hunter, who fended them off with teeth and claws. Really, these cultists were not an army. They weren’t even well-trained, and it seemed a bit too easy how fast the guys were dispatching them.

  Whatever. My task in all this was to free Raze from the cage so he could shift.

  Making myself as small and inconspicuous as possible, I wove between disemboweled Bastites and two aggressive, murderous cats until I reached the barred enclosure in the middle of the room.

  “Hey Raze,” I greeted the wild man in the cage. “Long time no see, huh?” I gave him an awkward wave and tried not to squirm under the ferocity of his glare. Oh wow, he was really mad. “I’m just going to...” I stretched out my hand, passing him the rolled-up leather containing an assortment of lock picks. There was no way in hell the guys would’ve been able to teach me how to pick locks in those few hours we’d had on the plane, so we all decided I’d just get the picks to Raze, and he could work it out himself.

  “This was the plan?” he demanded, giving me a long side eye as he withdrew some picks and carefully reached his arms between the bars to reach the outside of the cage. “You know this is a trap, right? Bast wanted them to bring you here.”

  “No duh,” I snapped back, sarcastic as fuck. “But I also wasn’t going to let her drain you of all your blood and then take a bath in it. Jesus Christ Supercats, you must think I’m a real bitch if you thought I’d be cool with that.”

  Raze quirked a brow at me but didn’t stop messing with the lock. “You watch too many true crime documentaries, Maggie,” he muttered, grunting as he clicked the tumblers into place and the cage door swung open. “Come on, let’s go before she closes her snare.”

  “Too late,” a familiar and totally unwelcome voice sang just moments before Raze went stiff as a board and dropped to the ground unconscious. Behind him stood my old friend Scarface, holding what looked like an electric cattle prod. But like, made for taking down rhinos or... uh... panthers.

  “Take her to the portal,” he ordered someone behind me. Someones, I soon discovered as several sets of hands grabbed at me and lifted me off the ground.

  “Help!” I shrieked before someone clamped a sweaty palm over my mouth. Hunter and Boden were across the room, each surrounded by at least five Bastites. Trained or not, the Bastites were just using sheer numbers to keep my guardians distracted while they took me... where? What had Scarface said? Take me to the portal?

  I kicked and thrashed against their hold, flopping around like a great white on a fishing line, but it was no good. There were too many of them, and I was too damn small on my own.

  Fat load of use the fucking amulet was now! Useless hunk of metal!

  The black-robed assholes carried me toward a doorway, but it was no ordinary doorway. This one glowed with a creepy, shimmering green, and the image beyond it was not of the next room. Certainly not any warehouse room I’d ever seen before, that was for sure.

  I wriggled and thrashed harder, trying desperately to break their hold. All I managed to do was turn myself around, though.

  The last thing I saw before they tossed me into the portal was Raze dragging himself back to his feet and shifting.

  Then I was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Those pricks must have thrown me harder than I realized because when the spots cleared from my vision, I could feel a painful throbbing at the side of my head. Touching my fingers to that spot, I found blood there.

  Ouch. I must have hit my head on...

  Oh, right. I hit my head on the edge of an intricately carved block of stone because I seemed to be... uh... this could be the head injury, but I was pretty s
ure I had just relocated to the inside of a pyramid. And not an ancient one... a new one.

  It seems like a leap, I know. But I’ve seen The Mummy several times. I know what the inside of a pyramid looks like when it’s all new and not crumbling with age.

  “What the claws,” I muttered, looking around in stunned disbelief. “Hello? Is anyone else here?”

  Suddenly, a wash of panic rolled through me. If I really was inside a pyramid, what if I couldn’t get out? What if my time-jumping ability had brought me here and I couldn’t make it work to take me back, and I had no food or water or...

  Holy fuck. Was there enough air? When would it run out? Were there ventilation shafts? Why didn’t I have better knowledge of how pyramids were designed?

  I was right in the middle of a full-blown panic attack when poof!

  Just like that, Boden, Hunter, and Raze all appeared in the tomb with me, all in cat form and—

  “Raze, is that Scarface in your mouth?” I exclaimed, recognizing the tattooed and bleeding forearm clenched between Raze’s teeth. Sadly, that arm was still attached to the rest of Scarface, who was still very much alive.

  “Oh good,” a woman’s voice boomed, echoing through the huge burial chamber, “my guests have arrived.”

  Looking around, I located the speaker and instantly hated her. I’m aware that it’s not nice to judge people based on their appearance, but for starters, this chick was like every stereotype of an Egyptian queen all rolled into one golden, perfectly formed beauty queen. I’m talking the dead straight, silken waterfall hair with blunt cut fringe, heavily black-lined eyes with the cute designs on the outer corners, heavy gold and turquoise jewelry, and sweet fuck-all fabric covering her bits.

  For another thing, she was clearly Bast. Of course I instantly hated her; her minions had been trying to kill me for close to two weeks!

  “Bast, I presume,” I responded, propping my hands on my hips and giving her my very best sassy face. “Too good to visit us in the real world? Or just don’t have any clothes?”

  Yeah, I don’t know where I was going with that insult. In my defense I was feeling a bit shaken up and, well, scared. We’d well and truly walked into her trap, and I had no freaking idea what to do next.

  The gorgeous goddess-woman grinned a feral sort of grin, and a bigger than average domestic feline circled her ankles as she cat-walked toward me. “So you’re the one,” she purred. No joke, she purred it. “You’re the descendant. The true descendant of that whore Hatshepsut.” As she said the name of the long-dead queen—my mother, I guess—she spat at the sarcophagus she was walking past.

  Was I to assume that that was Hatshepsut’s coffin?

  Ew! Was she in there? Dead?

  I shuddered. Dead things creeped me right the fuck out. I could barely even handle walking past cemeteries.

  “Uh, yeah,” I replied, doing a confident hair flip. “So they tell me.”

  Bast slunk closer and behind me, and three distinctive growls rumbled from my guardians. I had no idea what Raze had done with Scarface, but I trusted they were watching my back while I faced off with this ancient goddess.

  She got within a few feet of me and stopped, stretching out her hand.

  “Give me the amulet,” she demanded. “You’re not worthy of it.”

  I scoffed. “Um, excuse me? Says who? You’re an evil, power-hungry, forgotten goddess. I hardly think that makes you the best judge.”

  Bast’s beautiful face twisted in anger, turning it ugly.

  Just kidding, that bitch even made murderous fury look good. The woman was a freaking goddess, for fuck’s sake. I still hated her.

  “How dare you call me forgotten?” she hissed at me. “I have an entire legion of followers in your world just waiting for my command. It won’t be long until I’ve built enough power to return in my physical form, and then we’ll see who’s forgotten.”

  From the back of her loincloth situation, she produced a huge, deadly sharp-looking dagger. Where the fuck she had just been storing that, I didn’t even want to know.

  “If you don’t hand it over willingly, I’ll simply need to cut it from your neck as you lie dying at my feet.” As she spoke, raising her knife, she swayed closer to me, and her eyes seemed to go all creepy. Like, the pupils thinned out to slits, and the gold irises—weirdly, the same color as my own—expanded to cover the whites.

  Cat eyes. She had cat eyes.

  Oh, shit!

  I’d been so caught up in staring into her eyes, I just barely dodged the swing of her blade. What kind of freaky-ass hypnotic bullshit—

  “Fuck!” I yelped, scrambling and barely keeping my feet as she advanced on me with seriously impressive skills. It was all I could do to keep backing out of her reach.

  Where were the guys? My guardians? Why weren’t they leaping into this mess to save me?

  I spared a fraction of a second to look around for them and screamed.

  Full. On. Screamed.

  The three of them were surrounded by... Oh wow, deep breaths, Cleo. Deep fucking breaths. If you pass out now, you’re dead. Finished. Gone.

  With one eye on Bast—because the bitch was trying to kill me—I tried to process what was happening. My guardians, all in big cat form, were surrounded and being attacked by mummies—and I did not mean British mothers. I meant legit dead people wrapped all in bandages, yet somehow totally animated and kind of badass fighters.

  What. The. Fuck?

  This took psychotic breaks to a whole other level. Which sort of made sense given my head injury. But if I died in a hallucination, would I die in real life too?

  “Oh, you just spotted my helpers?” the goddess sneered at me, slicing at me with her blade and forcing me back a few more steps. We were moving farther and farther away from my cats, and it was spiking my anxiety. “It was so kind of Hatshepsut to bury her entire army with her, arrogant bitch that she was. A little shot of goddess magic and voilà. Indestructible minions.”

  Well shit. Did she just say “indestructible”? That... wasn’t good.

  “Hey!” I shouted, pointing across the room. “What the fuck is that?”

  Now, you might be thinking that no one is seriously dumb enough to fall for the oldest trick in the book. And you’d be right. She did not. Instead, I turned and freaking bolted as fast and as far as my legs could carry me.

  Which was all of about a hundred feet, until I hit the far wall of the burial chamber and found a grand total of zero exits.

  Yep, I was screwed. I wasn’t the fittest half human out there, and I was already getting winded. Sooner or later she’d just cut my throat or something.

  The evil goddess knew it too. She didn’t even hurry to follow me, just wandered casually—sexually—across the space, picking her way through ripped-up, writhing mummies and spinning her pointy dagger around her fingers.

  Watching her approach, I clutched my amulet tight inside my fist.

  “Okay, now would be a really awesome time to do something magical,” I hissed at it. “Anything. Anything at all. You seemed to have no issues dragging me halfway around Boston when I was lost, so a little help right now when I’m about to get skewered by a really pretty, really old chick—that’d be great.”

  For a hot second... nothing happened.

  Nothing.

  Useless piece of—

  Right when I was considering throwing the damn necklace at Bast because it was clearly defective, it started humming in my grip.

  “Yes!” I crowed, jumping up and down with excitement.

  My rapid change of mood seemed to startle Bast, and she paused halfway across the room, frowning at me in suspicion. But too freaking bad because my amulet was finally doing something.

  The humming intensified, and I released the necklace from my grip, gaping as it glowed and floated just above my white tank top. The glow intensified, then abruptly shot out from the gold disc in a laser of light. Straight into the dead center of Hatshepsut’s sarcophagus.

&nbs
p; “Oh crap,” I groaned. “Not more dead people.”

  The lid of the coffin slid to the side as though from an invisible force and crashed to the ground. So dramatic. Mentally, I cursed the amulet in all the creative ways I could think up while bracing myself for yet another reanimated dead thing.

  Shudder. So creepy.

  To my immense relief, the physical corpse of Queen Hatshepsut didn’t climb out of the sarcophagus like a scene from Night At The Museum. Instead, a glowing, see-through woman rose up and floated to the floor.

  As her toes touched the stone, she seemed to gain a fraction more substantiality, and her shimmering, gold-painted eyelids flickered open.

  “Bast,” she croaked, peering at my opponent with a furious glare. “I should have known you couldn’t let me rest in peace.”

  The forgotten goddess’s jaw dropped, and she stared at the slightly transparent version—spirit?—of Hatshepsut. Bast almost looked like— Oh wait, that was a good burn.

  “Hey Bast,” I snickered. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Yeah, there it was.

  “How?” Bast breathed in horror. “How is this possible? I didn’t call your spirit forth. Only a goddess can do that, and I didn’t—” Her words broke off, and her gaze snapped back to me. “You.” She spat the word, then turned back to the dead pharaoh with a bitter laugh. “So the rumors are true, Hatshepsut? You had a bastard baby with Ra? How did you do it? How did you hide her in time?”

  The spirit of my ancestor—er, mother—shook her head at Bast, a sly smile crossing her face. “Oh Bast, you fool. Cleo is my blood, but she’s not Ra’s. I told you when I was alive and I’ll tell you again now, our relationship was purely friendship. My heart belongs elsewhere.”

  Bast scoffed an ugly sound. “Senenmut was infertile. You told me so yourself.”

  Hatshepsut smiled wider. “That’s right. And what did you say when I confessed my most painful secret to you, old friend? When I came crying to you and told you about my heartbreak over never having a child with the man I truly loved? There I was, pharaoh, friend to the gods, powerful beyond belief but cursed to never have a child of my heart. What did you tell me, dear friend?”