The Fire King (13 page)

You were never a fool before,
whispered an urgent voice inside his mind.
Not with anyone. Do not start now.

Too late. Karr could not control himself. He lunged from the shadows, streaking across the road—and at the last moment, the man in the white shirt glanced up and saw him. His eyes widened, mouth contorting with shock and horror.

Karr barreled into him, pulling back his claws so that all he did was batter the human into a wall. Screams filled the night, but he ignored them, whirling to face the man still holding Soria, who dragged her in front of him to use as a shield.

Soria stared at Karr, her expression shaken—and then something warm entered her eyes, a warmth that cut through his rage, twisted at his heart. She began to laugh. The man holding her arm stared at her like she was insane, but she hardly seemed to notice. She bit her bottom lip, shaking her head at Karr with a fierce, dangerous smile.

Karr stalked forward, staring at the human whose white-knuckled grip on Soria began to loosen. Until, with very little fanfare, he shoved her toward Karr and ran away down the road. It was an unsurprising response, though not nearly as satisfying as planting his claws in the man’s already bloody face would have been.

Soria stumbled against him, her fingers briefly digging into his mane. She smelled tense, frightened—far more so than her face revealed. His larynx was just human enough to rumble, “Are you hurt?”

“Seems like you are always asking me that,” she replied, and then, “No. But we need to get out of here, now. I had help coming before you showed up.”

“Really,” Karr remarked, hearing the distant whoop of those flashing white wagons that had hounded him for the past hour. “It looked to me as if you only had an audience.”

Soria made a low, noncommittal sound. “Come on.”

Karr glanced at the humans around them, staring as if they had been confronted with a ghost, a monster, some apparition of tooth and thunder. He had seen such dazzled gazes often enough, but this time there was no awe, no wonder in their faces. Just fear.

His tail lashed angrily. Soria began running down the street. Karr followed, knowing full well that it would look as though he was chasing her, hunting for the kill. Such misconceptions had always plagued him among humankind—and among shape-shifters, as well. He heard more cries behind him, shouts, but the voices faded into a meaningless din.

He caught up with Soria as she rounded the corner and entered a dark, quiet street lined with wagons and small, scrubby bushes. All the buildings were squat and barren in appearance, but there were doors set in regular intervals, along with barred windows, and he heard children crying, raised voices, trills of music, and other loud sounds that seemed out of place. Urine and grease scents filled his nose, as did the same bitter odor that plagued the entire city and that he associated with the wagons.

Nonetheless, it did not take much imagination to find the similarities between this and any other human settlement he had ventured into. Places where people crowded always smelled dirty and thick, with sounds crushed upon each other.

He did not scent the shape-shifter, though. Not on Soria, not near her, not anywhere close. Which only meant that they had not yet made contact.

“Did you find the help you came for?” Karr asked, slinking through the shadows.

“Not quite.” Soria glanced at him—and then behind, scanning the street with tense, thoughtful eyes. “We need to leave this city for another, in the south.”

“Why?”

“Good question,” she muttered. “I was not given a reason.”

He stopped, tail lashing. “There is a shape-shifter in this city.”

“Serena?”

“Someone else.” Karr studied her face, finding it somewhat disconcerting that she was taller than he at this angle. “Were you expecting anyone?”

“No. But that was not what you were asking, was it?”

Have you betrayed me?
Karr wanted to say, but he had spoken the words so often, in so many different ways—to her and within himself—that to say them out loud again suddenly seemed … tiresome. She had betrayed him or not. She was an ally or not. She was truly as compassionate as she seemed or not. He had no straight answers, and could hope for none; he could simply watch, and observe, and calculate strategies and possibilities based on words and actions, and all the myriad things that could describe a person’s true character. And why it mattered to him—why, when he was alone, with no one else to anchor him to this unknown world but this woman—was the one thing he did not want to contemplate.

“Those men,” he rumbled, walking again, ducking behind a wagon as a man on a wheeled contraption rolled by. “Why were they hurting you?”

Soria matched his pace, walking backward for a moment to look behind them again. “I had to contact someone who lives far from here. There were safer places for me to do so, but they would have kept a record of my presence, and I did not think that was wise. So I went to a place of … ill repute.” Her mouth had trouble forming the word in his language, her accent raw and unsteady. “Unfortunately, they were not content with the price I paid.”

“You bloodied a man’s nose.”

“He deserved it.”

“I am sure he did,” Karr replied mildly, which caused her to give him another sharp look. “You said you had help coming?”

“Po-lice.”
Soria pronounced the word in her own language, slowly. “Soldiers, you might call them. They keep the peace. One of the men watching our fight … summoned them for me.”

Karr’s ears twitched. “Are they trustworthy?”

“Sometimes.” Soria frowned. “Thank you for helping me. I was not … expecting to see you.”

“You thought I left.”

“Why did you change your mind?”

He hesitated, unsure what to say, suddenly finding it difficult to speak in the skin he wore. It was not that his mouth had trouble forming the words, though that was true. Instead, some ideas were easier to express when wearing a different kind of mask: human, lion, or dragon. Same heart, but the spirit felt altered.

Besides, he thought he was rather conspicuous as a lion.

Golden light flowed over his body, but he made the shift brief, pushing himself to the point of pain to transform as quickly as he could into his human body. Scales flared over his fur and skin, and then receded. His spine crackled, terrible pressure gathering around his jaw and nose, so much that for a moment he could not breathe.

The discomfort passed, though. Within moments he was a man again, and Soria grabbed his hand, pulling him into a crack between buildings where potted plants lined the ground and the air smelled stuffy. The space was so narrow, his shoulders brushed the walls on either side of him. Cold stone, clammy against his skin.

Soria blocked the exit, her back to the street, and craned her neck to stare at him. A faint blush stained her cheeks. “If you were going for subtlety,” she said tightly, “then you failed.”

“I believe I failed the moment I entered this place,” he replied, the tight space making him uncomfortable. “I have never been accepted, save by my own people.”

“Your
people. Who have golden eyes and can change shape, but are not shape-shifters. There is no logic in that. Not for me.”

“There is a difference between race and mere ability,” he told her, exasperated, the cramped space still making his skin crawl. “What I am—” He stopped as a breeze shot down the alley, revealing fresh scents—fresh and familiar. A growl rumbled up his throat.

Soria reached for her empty sleeve. Not thinking, he caught her hand before she twisted herself into knots. She froze. So did he. Her hand was small and warm inside his, her bones delicate.

“I smell the shape-shifter,” he said, wishing his voice did not sound so strained.

“Could be a coincidence.”

“And are they still as numerous as humans?”

She hesitated. “No.”

“I find that hard to believe.” When Soria began to protest, he shook his head and added, “I was not calling you a liar.”

“For once.”

His jaw tightened. “When I … was killed, there were many shape-shifters of various clans, though they kept themselves apart from humans. What happened?”

“Time,” she said. “Time or people. I do not know.”

Karr leaned against the wall, trying to ease his claustrophobia. “Justice, perhaps. Why are you aware of such things if others are not?”

She broke eye contact, looking down at her feet, their joined hands, anywhere but at him. “We should keep moving. Find you clothes.”

“Answer the question.”

Irritation flashed through her eyes. “How is it you think I speak your language?”

“You refuse to tell me how you learned, so I cannot say. But it argues for the continued existence of my people.”

“I wish that were the case.” Soria stood on her toes, peering into his eyes. “I am not like other humans. My brain functions differently. I can speak many languages.
Any
language.”

Karr stared. “That is … unlikely.”

“I can speak your language because I am in your presence,” she persisted. “The moment I leave you, that knowledge begins to fade. I cannot tell you how or why; it just does. I never learned from your kind, or from anyone who has been among your people. I simply knew how to talk to you from the first moment I stepped into that cell.”

She was playing him for a fool—or telling the truth. Unfortunately, he suspected it was the latter, which complicated things even more. “You are a witch?”

Soria gave him a dirty look. “Are you?”

“I am what I am,” he replied, then paused. “Are there others like you?”

“Not exactly … but similar.” She drew a deep, shaky breath, as if it had taken something from her to tell him this. And he supposed, perhaps, it had.
“That
is how I know about shape-shifters. Some of us who are different found each other.”

“Different,” he echoed. “And the interest in me? Is it because I am also … different?”

“I truly do not know. I was sent to speak to you because no one else could. I was told to find out if you are a danger to others. But there are … competing agendas at work here. I can see that now.”

Karr briefly closed his eyes, unsure how to react. All of this was too much. “I
am
a danger to others,” he admitted.

“You are dangerous,” she agreed quietly. “But that is not the same thing as being a threat.”

A careful distinction—one that very few had made in his life. “And if you learned otherwise? What would have been done to me?”

Soria’s expression turned impossibly grim. “I have been asking myself that same question ever since I saw you.”

They would have killed me,
he wanted to tell her.
And I would have done the same in their place.

Karr glanced up and down the narrow alley, tasting the lingering scent of the shape-shifter. No doubt his own scent was drifting in the wind. “You were told to journey south?”

“Yes.” Soria tried to loosen her hand from his, and he let go, startled to discover that he had still been holding on. He had rarely held the hand of anyone in his life, except for the children entrusted to his care. But this made him uneasy. He did not care for the way he kept responding to her, seemingly without thought. Perhaps the woman was a witch, after all.

“You do not sound enthusiastic,” Karr rumbled.

“Something is wrong. In more ways than the obvious.” Soria began to lean against the wall alongside him, braced against her arm. She stopped, though, wincing.

Karr remembered the exact spot where the man had held her, squeezing very tightly, white-knuckled. Perhaps bruising her to the bone. No telling what other damage had been done before he arrived. Rage flashed through him.

Soria glanced up. “Your eyes are glowing.”

“Are they?” he asked sharply, and looked away, over his shoulder and down the alley. “What makes you uneasy?”

His companion was silent a long moment. “My friend, the man who sent me here, is withholding information.”

“Then he does not trust you,” Karr replied. “Or he does not have enough information to share—not without causing more harm than good.”

Bitterness passed over her face; so much that he wondered who this man was, and what he meant to the woman. “You sound sure of yourself.”

“From experience.” Karr peered up the wall, noting the smooth stone surface. The windows were spaced at regular intervals, and the bars covering the glass looked useful. “Will you journey south?”

“Will you?”

He hesitated. “I do not know what I should do. I understand nothing of what happened to me. I should not be alive. And now you tell me that … years have passed, and everything I know is gone. And yet”—his voice dropped to a whisper—“they still want me in chains, and dead.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”

Such a simple question. Deceptively so. It was one that Karr had not asked since childhood, when he had first learned that there were those who would murder him simply for being born. He had not understood the answer then—not him, or Tau, or any of them—and he suspected this woman would do little better. It was not an easy thing to say or hear.

“We are their unwanted children,” Karr told Soria, suffering a hard, throbbing ache in his side. “We are their mistakes.”

And then, as if his words were a blade, his pain intensified. He doubled over, hissing, clutching his side, feeling with breathtaking clarity the sensation of steel entering his body. Something warm and wet touched his hand. Blood. His scar was bleeding. Quite a lot, really.

Karr stared at his hand, which was glistening red. His knees buckled and he fell hard, dimly heard Soria call out his name as another rush of pain rippled through him. It was difficult to breathe.

He was dying again. Only, this time, he was not ready.

There was blood on her tennis shoes. It was so dark in the alley, she hardly noticed—not when Karr bent over, hissing in pain. But she heard the drips, and felt them, and looked down.

Blood. On the concrete, on her shoes, forming a puddle between herself and Karr.

“No,” she whispered, stunned. “Karr.”