The Fire King (28 page)

Karr glanced at Soria, and found her staring up at Long Nu. She was rigid, trembling—but not with fear, just anger. And a stupendous stubbornness that bled into her scent like smoke. The resolve in her eyes was frightening, almost as if he were looking at a different woman.

“Do not help her,” Soria whispered, her accent thick as it choked on the growling tones of his language. “Karr. Do not dare help her.”

Do not. Do not break,
he told himself. Not now, when he had already endured so much. He had suffered worse pain, more terrible conditions than this … and had never found himself so close to the precipice as he was now.

It was not even the threat to Soria that made him falter.

Looking at her made him feel stronger, the resolve in her eyes as rock solid as anything he had ever known. It made his heart burn with passion for her, even then, in that moment.

Instead, what cut him deeply, and made him question himself, was the endless cycle of it all: that this should be happening again, after so much time, even when it appeared that few shifters were left and perhaps no chimeras at all. He could not fathom the stupidity and uselessness of the old vendetta.

And yet, here he was. Trapped. Karr had once thought that death was preordained, and he had taken his own life; he had removed himself from fate. Or so he had thought. Now, thousands of years later, he was set for death once again. This shifter would murder him no matter what he did. She would likely murder Soria, simply for knowing the truth.

If he found others of his kind, he would be condemning them as well. If he did not first lose his mind.

You are bound. You can do no harm except to yourself. You will not kill Soria. You will not hurt her.
But the idea of losing his mind terrified him more than death. Death was easy. He knew that firsthand. Just darkness and nightmares. But to live, to live with the actions one committed, whether conscious or not …

Memories swelled inside him. His scar tingled, and he felt a brief pressure around his throat like fingers. Those fingers were sliding up his neck, were in his gut, probing his flesh. He gritted his teeth.

Long Nu narrowed her eyes and said cryptically,
“There is something about you. Something more than your blood. How
did
you survive?”

Soria bared her teeth.
“I thought you didn’t care.”

“She cares about power,” Karr remarked. “Resurrection is a great magic. Controlling and killing my kind is power. She is a queen, and cares for nothing else.”

Long Nu’s eyes flared hot with light.
“I care for my people, I do this for them.”

“You murder for them. For what? To keep them ignorant and pure?”

Soria blew out her breath. “Heil,
Hitler.”

Karr did know who Hitler was, but Long Nu gave her a hateful look. Murderous, even. Whatever was driving the shifter ran deeper than the threats of the old queens with whom Karr had dealt. Those female shape-shifters had considered chimeras to be a very real threat: volatile, unpredictable, far too potent to be trusted. Karr could not always disagree.

But there was a dark river running through the old woman in front of him, dark and pained and deadly, and it made her more dangerous than the past queens. Emotions were running her actions. Not calculation. Not just survival.

“Does your word mean anything?” Karr asked, his voice strained, barely recognizable. He was wondering if she translated his words directly from his mind, or Soria’s. “Or have you lost all your dignity?”

Her gaze did not flinch, nor did her hand slip one fraction from Soria’s throat.
“I keep my promises. Always. That is no lie.”

Dragons do not lie,
Karr told himself again, and he believed her. He could see the truth in her eyes, in her scent. So, oaths still meant something.

“Promise there will be no death,” he said roughly. “Kill me if you like, but no other. Not Soria, not anyone I might find. They are innocent in this matter. If they have survived this long unknown to you and yours, they can have no interest in causing the trouble you seem so eager to avoid.”

“Karr, no!” Soria snapped, leaning forward against Long Nu’s claws, cutting herself more deeply upon them. Blood trickled down her throat, and the sight of it made him ill. It reminded him too much of Tau’s wife, Yoana, dead on the shore of the river with her neck torn out, her expression frozen in horror.

He controlled himself, though. He watched the old shifter, and caught the moment when something changed in her eyes.

“I promise,”
she whispered.
“I give you my word.”

A great and terrible fear swallowed Karr’s heart, but he washed it down with resolve, along with the realization that part of him had given up hope that his kind still existed. He had succumbed, on a primal level, to the idea that he was utterly alone, with nothing to lose.

You
do
have something to lose,
he reminded himself.

But the attempt would keep Soria safe, so it was right. There was honor in it.

As for the rest, he could very well be wrong that there were no chimeras left in the world. If that was the case, then it was good that he still remembered some of his mother’s lessons. Like how to fool a mind reader. Assuming he still had a mind when this was over.

Something was wrong. Besides the obvious, something was very wrong with Karr.

Soria felt safe harboring that thought. Long Nu was obviously telepathic, but she was not as strong as Roland, and he had taught Soria some things over the years. Here and there, bits and pieces. Languages might be all her mind seemed capable of handling, but both she and Roland had always known that the root of that gift lay in the ability to read another person’s mind. And a mind reader was just as vulnerable as normal people to being scanned.

Roland had taught Soria how to partition her mind. How to create blocks of safe space. It was an odd and difficult thing to do, but she’d had years to practice, and not just with Roland. There were others at Dirk & Steele who could play mind games. She had gotten very good at keeping things private.

Something is wrong,
she thought again, disturbed that Karr had acquiesced so easily—not just to selling out his kind, but attempting
this,
whatever it was. It sounded like the same thing that had caused him to lose his mind all those years before, and his grief and horror at that still rocked inside her, relentless and searing. She doubted he would ever forgive himself, though he might learn to live with the hole in his spirit, just as she had learned—was still learning—to live without her arm.

Because of that, however, Soria felt confident Karr would rather rip out his own heart than risk murdering an innocent, or before condemning anyone to being murdered. No matter what Long Nu promised.

The old shifter backed away from her, and stood beside Karr with her hands clasped behind her back. “If you trick me, I will know,” Long Nu told him. “And I will kill Soria.”

Betrayer, betrayer,
Soria projected at the old woman, knowing that much would be heard.
Dirk & Steele helped you, offered safe haven to your shape-shifters. We have kept your secrets, and this is what you do. You’re nothing but a self-interested murderer, a piece of trash. You think that any of us are going to let you—

Long Nu shot her a deadly look. Soria did not stop. She let her thoughts run wild, thinking of the most disgusting, hateful insults she could imagine, savoring the faint flush that appeared in the old woman’s cheeks and the glitter of her golden eyes.

Hit me,
she pushed.
Go ahead, do it. Show how tough you are, bitch, threatening a cripple tied to a chair.

The old woman’s mouth became a hard line. “I could have had you killed, had I wanted. Don’t make me change my mind.”

“Why didn’t you?” Soria pressed, leaning against her restraints and trying to ignore the narrow look that Karr gave her. “Because you needed a translator?”

“I thought I did.” Long Nu glanced grimly at Karr. “He has an interesting mind—more so than I imagined when I learned of his existence.” She held out her hand, scaled and clawed. The very tips of her fingers, little more than black hooks, were still wet with Soria’s blood. She held them over Karr’s mouth. “Taste her blood, chimera. Maybe it will help you concentrate.”

“You know better than that,”
Karr growled. And then his jaw clenched, and Soria heard an odd crunching sound. Blood seeped over his bottom lip. He had bitten his tongue.

“Blood calls to blood,” whispered Long Nu, watching him intently, head tilted as if she were listening for something.

Karr ignored her, looking straight into Soria’s eyes.
“Maybe I
will
take some of her blood. If I have her permission.”

“You do,” Soria said without thinking. She trusted that glint in his eye, which she felt as though she had known forever.

Long Nu hesitated, and again clasped her hands behind her back. “You’re wasting time. Call to your people. Find them, if they exist.”

Karr fixed his gaze on her.
“Remember your promise.”

Long Nu said nothing. Soria did not trust her. Karr was going to die here tonight, and so was she. No one was going to help or spare them.

No one helped you the last time you were tied up,
she thought, battling the same unholy urge to scream that had hit her when Serena first started binding her to the chair. There were so many memories, so much that swelled and burned inside her, leaving nothing but white rage. But, better rage than fear. Better rage than tears and helplessness.

She jerked against her bonds and felt the phantom presence of her arm swinging free. It was a useless little ghost making pain in her head. Soria bit the inside of her cheek, tasting blood and wanting more.

Karr gave her one last look and closed his eyes. Soria hoped he knew what he was doing. She hoped to God that it would get them out of here—untied, or whatever, because when and if she found herself free again, she was going to take care of this. She was going to rip apart Long Nu and anyone else who got in her way.

Horror crept through at the violence of her thoughts, and yet she could not shake them. It made her want to hide for another year in the dark.

Long Nu stood near Karr, her back slightly turned. Soria tried to scoot her chair closer to him, ignoring the look the old woman gave as she did. Karr looked terrible, covered in deep, oozing cuts and bruises, but he began to hum to himself, a low, sonorous sound that was more a purr than a melody. Golden light trickled from beneath his closed eyelids, seeped down his face, and left behind a trail of fur and golden scales. His cheekbones shifted, growing wider and more pronounced, while his hair thickened, roots spreading down the sides of his neck. Muscles bunched in his already impressive chest, expanding and thickening … and she watched his limbs with concern: the wire was already cutting into his skin, a simple but effective trap.

Karr did not transform all the way, simply lingered in a half state, more human than animal. The low purr that rumbled from his chest gained strength until the sound felt like thunder rolling through Soria’s bones. She remembered what he had told her about losing his mind: the nothing, the emptiness, followed by the realization that he had murdered. He had no memories of the event, except the testimony of his friends.

His eyes began moving beneath his eyelids. Long Nu watched without blinking, still as stone and tense. This made Soria angry all over again, afraid for him. She scooted forward until she was so close that the tips of her shoes could touch his leg—and they did, just a brush.

And Soria got sucked into his mind.

The sensation was twisting and violent, almost as if she were swirling down a drain. But when it stopped, unlike her past encounters with his thoughts, she was not bombarded with memories. There was just darkness, still and quiet. She did not feel Karr there, but sensed a great eye in the distance, unblinking and golden: Long Nu. Spying.

But just as suddenly as she arrived, she was yanked away—cut sideways through a sticky veil that Soria could feel on her mind like gum—until she was through, free, and warm inside familiar arms.

“I did not expect that,” Karr rumbled.

Soria shuddered. “You are crazy.”

“Yes,” he replied, and turned her around so that they faced each other. Even in this place that was not real, she had to crane her neck to look up into his eyes; and each movement seemed magnified as though physical action were an echo felt again and again, until dying into some lost place inside her dreaming muscles.

But what a dream. Karr was made of golden light, glowing and radiant as though every perfect dawn were burning under his skin. Flames flickered inside his eyes, licks of shimmering heat streaming down his tawny hair. He was otherworldly—an Adonis, an Apollo, something so beyond her imagination that she could barely see past the shine. And yet, there was something about him that still retained humanity: blazing, indefinable, and raw. Karr might not be human, not by any stretch of the imagination, and yet he was
more
human than many who bore the name.

“Is this what losing your mind feels like?” Soria asked. “Because I think I just did, quite literally.”

He squeezed her shoulders. His hands were large and warm, even here. “I found something.”

“You found something,” she echoed. “I thought you were afraid of doing this.”

“I am.” Karr’s eyes blazed more brightly. “I suppose I could be afraid of everything, as anything could be a trigger. But I am still me. If that changes, my body is bound. I might cripple myself if I lose control, but I am prepared for that. I would only hurt me.”

“You did not have to do this,” Soria remarked, feeling the echo of each word sink through her. “Can Long Nu hear us?”

“No.” Karr tugged her, gently. “Not here. Close your eyes and then open them.”

She did as he asked, suffering the disconcerting sensation of floating—and when she could see again, it seemed as though she were. The world was spread beneath her; or rather, an abstract view of it. There was nothing but an impression of shapes bound by dips and curves, and scattered among them were lights. Tiny stars.