The Fire King (29 page)

“You see?” he murmured, his voice filled with awe. “They exist.”

“How … ?” Soria meant to ask,
How do you know, how did you do this?
But before she could utter the words, a boom smashed through their small cocoon, and Soria was flung back into her body. Her chest ached and it was hard to breathe. Sharp pain lanced through her skull, and she sagged forward, hardly strong enough to keep from pitching sideways and knocking herself and the chair to the floor.

Someone grabbed her braids, yanking back her head. Soria tried to open her eyes, but they felt glued shut. Even getting slapped hard enough to make her ears ring did little to help, though the pain was enough to pull her back into true consciousness. She got hit again, on the other cheek, and the sting made her angry.

She cracked open her eyes, found herself staring at Serena. “Hit me harder,” she muttered. “It’s just getting good.”

Serena slapped her so hard the front feet of the chair lifted off the ground. “How’s that?”

Soria spat blood on the floor—and became dimly aware of someone behind her, fiddling with the handcuff on her left wrist. Her vision was a bit blurred, but there was another person in front of her, cutting at the wire binding Karr’s legs. Karr’s arms were already free, and his eyes were just beginning to flutter open.

Beside him lay Long Nu, limbs askew, mouth slightly open. She was not dead, just unconscious. Something sharp and dartlike, jutted from her shoulder.

“No one’s ever going to trust you,” Soria said to Serena, realizing that a double-cross had taken place. “What now? You change your mind?”

Serena gave her an icy smile that would have frozen blood had Soria’s not already been flowing cold. “Whoever said it needed to be changed?”

Her handcuff snapped open. Soria flipped the shapeshifter a one-finger salute, then craned around to look at the person who had freed her. Red hair filled her vision, along with the familiar lean line of a pale jaw.

“Yo,” she muttered, rubbing her sore wrist against her thigh.

“Greetings,” Robert replied, speaking an archaic form of Arabic. He glanced sideways, and said in slightly accented Taiwanese, “Ku-Ku. Go check the perimeter.”

The person who had been using wire cutters to free Karr stood gracefully and turned. It was the girl, though Soria had not recognized her from the back. She wore a black body suit much like Serena’s, except that her feet were clad in black high-top sneakers decorated with sparkling pink laces. Ku-Ku’s glossy back hair was pulled up high, and she blew a pink gum bubble at Soria’s face before reaching down and picking up a machine gun that she slung over her shoulder. Her eyes were still cold and empty, and ringed in glittering black liner. Soria felt properly intimidated.

Ku-Ku slipped silently out the door, and shut it behind her. Serena said, “You do know she’s too young for you, Rob.”

“Everyone is too young for me,” he replied, taking the cutters to clip at the wire embedded in Karr’s flesh. “But I assure you, our relationship is strictly professional. I had to regenerate my testicles once, and that is not something I want to repeat.”

Soria rubbed her aching head. She was very ill, and it was affecting her hearing.

Slowly, carefully—because her knees were quite wobbly—she slid out of her chair and crawled to Karr’s side. His hands had been freed but were a bloody mess, much like the rest of him. She patted his face, very gently, and his eyes opened for a brief moment. He stared at her, but she was certain he wasn’t really seeing her. His lips moved soundlessly.

Serena said, “He needs to move. Now. Wake him up, or I will.”

Soria gave her a dirty look. “You’ll probably give him a concussion. Why don’t you mind your own—?”

Robert reached out, grabbed Karr’s balls, and twisted. Karr’s eyes shot open, and a loud grunt of pain passed his lips as he jerked upward, swaying and furious. He tried to lunge at Robert, but was too weak to hit him before the man moved smoothly out of arm’s reach, wiping his hand on his pants, and saying in the click language of the San Bushman of the Kalahari, “Soria, make him start wearing pants.”

Soria stared, even as she tried to steady Karr. “One of these days you’re going to tell me how you know all these languages.”

“I get around,” Robert said dryly, in Russian. “But you’re the only person I can practice on all at once.”

Soria frowned at him, then said nothing more as Karr exhaled slowly and gave her a bleary, pained look.
“Are you well?”
he asked her.

“Better than you,” she replied, brushing her thumb across his cheek. “Can you walk?”

“I do not imagine there is an alternative.”

Robert raised his brow, not understanding Karr’s language. “Was that a yes?”

“He’ll need help,” Soria suggested, and glanced at Serena. “What about Long Nu?”

“We leave her. She has done nothing wrong.”

“You’re crazy. Kidnapping, torture, death threats—”

The shape-shifter held up her hand, her single eye glinting dangerously. “She is one of us. I will not restrain or harm her. Not for doing what she thinks is right. Drugging her pushes the limits.”

“She won’t feel the same about you, not for helping us.”

“You assume I’ll be around when she wakes up.” Serena studied the unconscious shape-shifter, and her expression softened with compassion. “She is the oldest of us now, and the most powerful. And she cares. She cares a great deal about our survival. She has suffered for it.”

Serena looked at Karr, and the compassion disappeared; everything in her features hardened. “There are so few of us left. We must breed if we are to live. And so, what if everyone learned that we can take mates from other shifters? It would be tempting, easier, because of our secrets. But those children from such unions? How would they live and survive? Chimera require special rearing, with control over their abilities more difficult to learn. They are violent by nature. They are made for war. There is no place for such instincts in this new, modern age.”

Soria narrowed her eyes. “You seem to know a great deal about his kind. I wonder why that is.”

Robert laughed quietly to himself. It was an unpleasant sound. Serena backed away, looking toward the door. “We must go.”

Soria stood. “You know something. What are you hiding?”

Serena peered out the door. “Come. Hurry.”

Robert grabbed Karr’s arm and slung it over his shoulder. “I knew a giant once,” he muttered, wincing. “He was always drunk. But I think you’re heavier.”

Karr’s eyes flashed golden.
“I am going to bite off your hands for touching my balls.”

Soria bit back a smile, opened her mouth to translate—only to have Robert shake his head. “I can guess what he said.”

“No,” she replied mildly, slinging Karr’s other arm around her waist. “I really don’t think you can.”

It was cold outside, and the stars glittered. There was a smooth breeze carrying the faint scent of smoke. It was perfectly quiet, eerily so. No one spoke as Serena led them quickly across town, back toward the helicopters. Soria glimpsed movement on her right—almost cried out and then swallowed her voice when she saw Ku-Ku looking back from the shadows, gliding alongside them like a specter.

Soria kept expecting to be shot at, and the anticipation was almost worse than an actual bullet. When the helicopters were finally in sight—or rather, just one of them, as the other seemed to be missing—she murmured, “Where are the men?”

“Fool’s errand,” Robert muttered, as Karr’s breath whistled quietly with pain. “Serena sent them away. Said there was a package—the human kind—that needed to be retrieved at a certain set of coordinates. They’ll be there soon. I suspect they will wait for quite some time before realizing they’ve been duped.”

“Will they hurt Long Nu when they return?”

Robert exhaled sharply, but with cold laughter. “Doubtful.”

Serena climbed into the pilot’s seat and began prepping the helicopter. Ku-Ku slid up front beside her, while Robert helped Soria ease Karr into the back. She grabbed a first-aid kit that was belted to the wall, turned on a flashlight which she held her in teeth, and began trying to clean up the mess that the wire had made of his legs.

It was awful. Karr glanced down, and tightened his jaw. Soria hardly knew where to begin, and spit the flashlight into her hand. “Robert, can you get him some antibiotics to prevent an infection?”

“I have some. But first, the hard part.” He took the gauze from her, along with a bottle of peroxide, and began swabbing at the long, serrated cuts. The peroxide foamed. Karr hissed.

Soria could not hold his hand—not while handling the flashlight—but she sat close, nudging his elbow with her thigh, and a moment later he reached out, grasped her leg in one huge hand, and squeezed gently. His grip was warm, firm … and very much alive.

Relief hit her so hard that her eyes burned with tears. They were out of there. She was loose, free with him.

The importance of that, and how much it meant to her that he was safe, was staggering. Soria struggled with herself, finally gaining control over her emotions, but not before sharing a long look with Karr that said more than anything that language alone could have conjured.

The helicopter roared to life. Serena shouted, “Where am I taking you?”

“Ulaanbataar!” Robert called back, before Soria uttered a word. When she stared at him, brow raised, he shrugged. “Roland said you had a lead there.”

“He said that, did he? What else?”

“That I am not to leave your side.”

“So why did you the last time?”

“Because some things you can handle yourself. And others”—he glanced up front at Serena—“require a different kind of touch.”

Soria shook her head. “I do not want to know.”

“I’m certain that’s a lie,” Robert replied, “but it’s the results that count.”

It took them two hours to fly to Ulaanbataar. Serena landed on the outskirts of the city, almost ten miles away. It was still night. A Land Cruiser was parked nearby. Soria heard the heavy rush of water: a river was close, though she could not see it in the darkness.

Karr’s legs had been bandaged as well as possible, and he had choked down a first round of amoxicillin. Robert and Soria helped him walk to the Land Cruiser. Ku-Ku followed, as did Serena more slowly, her one good eye faintly glowing.

“I won’t be traveling on with you,” she said quietly. “I’ll take the chopper south, as far as it will go, and then leave it. I can find my way back to civilization more quickly on my own.”

Soria hesitated. “Thank you.”

Serena looked like she couldn’t care less. Tilting her head, she leaned in toward Karr, who was perched on the edge of the Land Cruiser’s backseat. He was almost too large for the vehicle, especially with his wounds. Soria suspected they would have to put down the back seats so that he could use the trunk space as well.

Karr watched Serena warily. Golden light flickered dangerously in his eyes.

“I am not changed in my opinion of you,” she told him quietly. “I think you are dangerous. To believe otherwise is naive.”

“Then we feel the same,”
Karr rumbled, and Soria translated.

A cold, almost seductive smile passed over Serena’s mouth. “I will take that as a compliment.”

Soria had the uncomfortable feeling that Serena would take a great deal more than that, if she had the chance. Even Karr narrowed his eyes. He did not look amused.

Serena inclined her head toward Robert. “Don’t be a stranger, old man. I have a grandchild to show you.”

“A grandchild,” he said, gently mocking. “You must have been birthing babies when you were a baby.”

Warmth touched her gaze, but it was so fleeting as to have been imagined. Serena turned, nodded at Ku-Ku—who was watching her with those empty, dead eyes—and began striding back to the helicopter.

Soria hesitated, glanced at Karr and then ran after her. Serena must have been moving more quickly than she looked, because she was already climbing into the machine when Soria caught up. The shape-shifter paused, one foot raised, lean with muscle and sharp angles. Her blonde hair seemed spikier than usual, her cheekbones higher and more feline. Feral, dangerous, and deadly.

“Why did you help us?” Soria asked, breathless from running. “Back in the village, and now?”

Serena hesitated and looked away. “I thought of my daughter. Kidnapped, strapped down. For nothing but experimentation. We shifters hide because humans would find us freakish and dangerous. We would be hunted without mercy, without a chance to prove ourselves. It was only fair to give your chimera
his
chance.”

“And yet?”

“I meant what I said. His kind …” She stopped, looking down at her hands. “There are none like him. He comes from an age when the chimera were still powerful. When they meant something. His presence alone could bring those days back. We cannot afford that.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “He is living proof of a time better left forgotten.”

Soria wished she had more time, but she felt the pressure of those waiting behind her, as well as the tenseness of Serena’s posture, swaying deeper into the helicopter. “I still don’t understand. The chimera are part of you. You can’t deny your children.”

“Children grow up,” Serena replied bluntly. “And then, sometimes, they kill you.”

She climbed into the helicopter, and slid the door shut in Soria’s face.

The wagon—or
car,
as Soria called it—was too small for his body, though after they folded down the soft leather seats to reveal a rather more spacious area (a marvel of human ingenuity that he would be most pleased to investigate at a later date) Karr was able to rest on his back with more comfort—meaning that he could lie down with his knees up so that his calves and ankles did not rub or bounce against the hard surface beneath him.

The pain was relentless; nauseating, strength-sapping, almost worse than a stab wound because it was spread over a much wider area. Those wires had cut him deeply; and the lacerations were rubbed full of dirt. Even though he had suffered terrible, life-threatening wounds in the past, pain was pain. It always felt like the first time.