The Fire King (35 page)

But why aren’t
you
dead?
Soria wondered, a chill stirring over her skin.
And did you participate in betraying Karr?

All around them, human monks leaned out of caves, or stood lightly upon uneven steps that had been carved and hacked from the mountainside, precariously narrow, bordered by thick ropes used as handrails—not much protection against the stiff winds and dizzying drop that had to be well over a thousand feet. It reminded her of the cliff dwellings of the American Southwest, or of those in Afghanistan’s Bamyan valley, where the two giant Buddhas had stood before being dynamited by the Taliban. Those mountains were full of caves where people still lived, as were parts of China. And also, apparently, here.

“Althea,” Karr rasped again; and Soria felt a tremor race through him, held as she was against his chest. “What has happened?”

What have you done?
Soria looked at Tau, and found him staring back at her, golden eyes glittering in his wolfish face. She did not like the way he held her gaze, as though she was a challenge, one that he already felt he’d bested.
Dangerous,
she thought.
He’s dangerous.

Yet she did not disagree with Karr’s handling of the situation. Tau was dangerous, but in the same way a family member might be. Like her uncle. Someone you trusted who betrayed you.

Tau was like her uncle, except on a far more extreme scale. He had committed a terrible act, but had explained it away with a reason that Soria knew Karr would find compelling. In this case, revenge. Revenge followed by contrition. Which Soria totally did not buy.

“What happened is that you are alive,” murmured Althea, closing her glowing golden eyes. “Alive, after all these years. And, oh … if only you had stayed dead.”

Karr went very still. Soria tapped his broad, scaled chest with her palm, and he let her down slowly, carefully. When her feet were firmly on the ground, he shifted into a humanoid shape, his face becoming more leonine while scales and fur lingered over his powerful, naked body. Soria felt very small beside him; small yet fierce.

“You want to explain that?” Soria asked.

Althea blinked hard, staring down at her. “You speak our language. How is that possible? None but a handful of chimera understand our tongue.”

Soria tilted her head, jaw tight. “I asked you a question.”

Karr’s hand fell gently on her shoulder. “Althea. I was awakened from my tomb. I found the world quite changed. But I was
not
expecting to discover that any of you were still alive. Tau has offered some explanation, but he did not mention you.”

“And why would he?” Althea inhaled a shuddering breath, and ran long, elegant fingers through her silver hair. “We exiled him. For murdering you—and for other crimes.”

Soria turned to stare at Tau, even as Karr murmured, “Murder? But I asked him to—”

“Because you thought—” Althea interrupted, taking a step toward the edge of the cave. But she stopped, head tilted, listening. Soria tried to listen, as well.

Karr’s hand tightened on her shoulder. “Those … sky wagons,” he murmured. “I hear the blades.”

“No,” Althea breathed, covering her mouth. “No. Not now. Not again.”

“Who is here?” Karr limped up the stone steps toward her, golden light trailing across his shoulders. His voice shook with anger. “If you are alive, who else?”

“Dozens,” she whispered, staring at him as though he were both ghost and nightmare. “All of us who were your strongest warriors. After you died, we were changed.
He
changed us. And the things we did—”

She did not finish, and the expression on Karr’s face was horrible to look at. “Who is here now?”

“Just three of us,” Althea breathed. “And some children. Shape-shifters still mate across different breeds. This is one of several sanctuaries.”

Karr’s jaw tightened. Tau said, “I told you this would happen. I warned you he had come back to life.
I felt it.”

His voice was closer than it should have been. Soria flinched, turning, and found Tau looming over her. He was almost human, though more animal than man. Standing upright, covered in fur; his face very much resembled a wolf.

Werewolf
she thought, thinking that she finally understood the origin of the legend.

The duffel bag at Tau’s feet was open, and in his hands he held something both strange and familiar: a small brown doll with two gold beads sewn into its head, and a sliver of corroded metal that was larger than a needle but sharp on one end. Soria had seen that doll in a vision, red threads pouring from its gut. Dread filled her. She tried to grab, but he knocked her aside. Karr lunged, and Tau slammed the needle into the doll’s gut.

Karr folded over, grunting. Soria, sprawled on the ground with her ears ringing, saw blood pour down the front of his legs.

“Tau,” Althea said, voice choked. “Stop this.”

But Tau did not. His eyes were glowing. There was no madness in them, no delusion; just simple calculation. Three thousand years, Soria thought. He had been alive all that time, making a life for himself while knowing—believing—that Karr was buried alive. And he had thrived.

The heart that could do that was beyond cold. It was dead. It had been cut out, along with whatever soul Tau had possessed all those millennia ago. Soria suddenly felt as though she was looking at a burned out shell.

“Because of you we were losing the war,” Tau whispered, bending low to stare into Karr’s face. “Hiding, when it was our right to fight. Our right to take their children, as they had taken ours. Our right to
destroy
them, without mercy, as they were trying to do to us. And you … with your honor. With your rules. There are no rules in war, my friend. And after you were gone, we beat them. We won.”

“No,” Althea breathed, digging at her face with long nails that shimmered into claws. Blood welled. “We lost everything.”

“What,” Karr rasped, eyes glowing with fury and pain, “did you do?”

Tau’s wolfish jaw twisted into a grimace, and he dug the needle deeper into the doll’s guts. “You had no stomach.”

Soria gritted her teeth. It was difficult to imagine she was a match for this creature—this monster of myth who had betrayed his friend—especially when she had only one arm. Nonetheless, anger carried her forward. She lunged, taking with her a loose rock near her hand. She slammed that into Tau’s elbow with all her strength, and the doll tumbled from the chimera’s grip, needle still stuck inside.

Tau snarled, whirling on her, but Soria was too furious to back down. She had been this angry only once before, and a man had died. She had been afraid to ever feel that way again, but the rage was inside her, flowing through her blood, and it felt good and strong.

Karr was still bent over, blood gushing through his fingers, but he met her gaze and began hobbling toward the doll. Althea pushed away from the wall and leaped forward, landing light on her feet. She was also looking at the doll—but not, Soria sensed, to keep it from Karr.

Tau did not seem to notice. He was staring at Soria, and she spat at him, desperate to keep his attention.
“Coward.
Crippling a man you are too afraid to fight.”

Behind him, Althea reached the doll and pulled out the needle. Tau began to look over his shoulder, but Soria darted in, ready to smash her rock against his testicles. Instead, she found herself hit so hard that she flew off her feet—and right over the edge of the mountain ledge into cool, empty air.

For one moment Soria felt as though she were floating, the blue sky blazing above and surrounding her in soft light. She heard Karr howl her name. And then she plummeted toward the ground.

She had time to think, which was awful. There was time for her life to flash before her eyes—no joke, because she saw
everything,
including Karr—

Strong arms caught her. The impact was so jolting, Soria’s head snapped back and made a cracking noise. There was nothing broken, but Soria was so stunned that she could hardly muster the emotional energy for relief. She looked up, expecting to see Karr … and found herself staring into the angular face of another dragon entirely.

“I should drop you,” Long Nu rasped, her voice nearly lost beneath the roar of the wind.

“So drop me!” Soria shouted back, heart hammering. “You’ve come here to kill, haven’t you?”

The dragon-woman’s eyes glittered, and she twisted sideways. Soria saw two helicopters behind her in the distance. “I have come to end this. Whatever it takes,” she agreed.

Karr watched Soria spin off the ledge and tried to follow her. He tried with all his power, blood still trickling from his closing wound—closing, he imagined, because the needle had been plucked from the doll—but Tau got in his way, slamming claws into his gut, grappling and holding him until Karr knew it was too late: he would never catch her. She was dead.

“You see how it feels now?” Tau hissed in his ear, hot spittle flying across his cheek. “I never loved Yoana, but I loved my child. How does it feel, Karr? Tell me.”

Karr screamed, throwing back his head in agony. Golden light blurred his vision, then darkness as well, churning and rolling inside of him like a storm. His heart cracked—with grief, and also with something pure and cold and primal.

Rage. Blinding, soul-killing rage.

He threw himself away. His mind was swallowed in golden light as his body transformed, thickening and breaking itself as his claws erupted and wings unfurled from his aching back. He felt his father in him, and his mother, and embraced every deadly aspect of his nature, lost in his desire to rip apart the thing in front of him.

Tau stumbled backward and then braced himself, snarling. His eyes also flashed, but the light was tinged with red: gold rimmed in crimson, bloodshot with hate and fury.

Karr threw himself at Tau and took them both over the ledge. He did not try to fly. The two chimeras spun wildly, snapping at each other’s throats, punching and raking with their claws. Karr closed his teeth over Tau’s ear and ripped it off, taking bone and brain. Tau screamed.

Karr broke away, twisting as the ground raced toward him. His wings beat furiously, but only enough to slow him down. His back feet hit rock, almost pitching him forward on his face in a devastating fall, but the strength of his wings was enough to save him. He tumbled, but not hard enough to crush bone.

He searched for Tau and found him nearby, sprawled on his back. Still breathing. Eyes open. Drool and blood flowed from his mouth, and his limbs were twisted at odd, broken angles. But there was defiance in his eyes. Satisfaction.

Tau laughed when he looked up at Karr; a cold, empty sound. “You cannot kill me,” he breathed. “You cannot kill any of us. I made the bargain. I sealed it with the sacrifice. Blood of my child, blood of the mother, blood of the friend …” Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes—suddenly pain or grief, Karr could not tell. “I told myself I could make another baby. A better world for a new life, when the war was over.”

“Sacrifice,” Karr repeated, his enemy’s words cutting through his desperate fury.

“I found something,” Tau breathed, his gaze briefly turning inward. “Something came to me, and it was powerful, and it breathed inside my heart. Taught me dreams and possibilities. It was not my wife who gave me the ability to kill you, but another. I never saw its face.”

And then Tau’s expression hardened, and he tilted his head sideways to spit blood and teeth. “I knew you would never break. Never lose your mind. You were too strong. So, I drugged you. It was easy to do. I killed Yoana myself, and covered you in her blood.”

“Tau,” Karr breathed.

“You made me do it,” he hissed. “If you had been stronger, if you had listened to me, I would not have been forced to take such measures. It was your fault. You
did
deserve to die. The rest … torturing you … was for me. My child. All our children who you lost through your weakness.
You were never supposed to wake.”

“I see,” Karr said. And he ripped off Tau’s head with his bare hands.

The helicopters landed in a pasture on top of the mountain, located just above the cliff face where the monastery had been built into the rock. Except for a rather noticeable trail that led to the edge, along with several small
gers
and milling livestock, Soria would never have guessed that there could be such activity directly below, in such an improbable place.

Long Nu dropped her on the ground, hard. Men poured out of the helicopters. None seemed shocked by the sight of a dragon, which raised all sorts of questions for Soria, despite the fact that these were Long Nu’s mercenaries. Of the men, it was Baldy—the mercenary who had raised his fist to her—who led the charge.

“Make sure she doesn’t go anywhere,” Long Nu rasped to him. “And I want her unharmed. If there is so much a tear in her eye when I return, you will die.”

Baldy’s jaw tightened, but he gave a curt nod. Grabbing Soria’s arm with bruising strength, he dragged her past the gathered men, all of whom looked at her as though she might have an Uzi stuffed up her dress.

If only,
she thought, imagining a machine gun strapped to her missing arm, just like in the movies. Bang, bang.

But then memories filled her—her finger pulling the trigger, the two bangs, the shots in the head—and she pitched forward, almost stumbling as the nausea, fear, and stress of the last ten minutes rolled right up her throat. She gagged, and Baldy cursed, grabbing at her braids to haul her backward into the helicopter. He threw her down inside, and she heard a loud protest beside her—a familiar voice. Evie.

Soria was stunned to see the girl. She had a bruise forming under her eye, and her bottom lip was split. Her cheeks were flushed, her gaze sharp and furious. Her hands were bound behind her back.

“What the fuck?” Soria snapped, rolling over to stare at Baldy. “What is she doing here?”

Baldy smiled grimly. “Apparently, she started poking around, all worried about you. Started calling people, asking the wrong questions. Brought attention to herself. We had to control the situation.”