Tiger Eye (39 page)

—only to be knocked aside by the invisible wall. Hari found his feet in an instant, swiping at the air with his claws, hurling himself against the barrier, loss and fury and love spilling over into the night.

Golden light bathed the tiger, and a moment later, the man took its place. Sweat covered Hari’s body, his eyes glowing like twin suns.

“The spell has not been lifted,” said the Magi softly. “I can feel it all around you, despite your skin.”

“Release her,” Hari ordered, his deep voice filled with death.

“A life for a life, Hari. That is the way it goes.”

“My life?” Hari held out his hands. “Take it if you can. Anything you want, if you will let my mistress go free.”

“No,” Dela breathed.

“Anything?” asked the Magi. His smile was cruel. “My price then, Hari. My daughter stands behind you. I want you to fuck her.”

Chapter Eighteen

Whoa.

Even Hari looked stunned. Lise stared at her father like he was the devil.

“You have got to be kidding.” The girl held up her hands when Hari turned to look at her. “Stay away from me, man.”

An expression of profound disgust settled over Hari’s face. “How could you ask such a thing, Magi? What father demands the rape of his own daughter?”

The Magi threw back his head, his lips twisting into a snarl. “A father who has bred his daughter for that exact purpose. Oh, Hari. I have been waiting for this opportunity for over a millennia.”

“For what reason?” Hari slammed his fists against the barrier. “Do you wish me to make her pregnant? Are you still, after all these years, lusting after a shape-shifter child of your own blood?”

The Magi’s laugh was low, hard. His boot ground into Dela’s
ribs and she stifled a cry. Hari heard, though. Dela felt his gaze trace every inch of her face, taking in injuries she had no desire to imagine. Bone-deep rage whitened Hari’s lips and knuckles. Claws split through his fingernails.

“I once wanted a child of tiger blood,” said the Magi, soft. “Someone who would be of both worlds, yet belong to me alone. But I lost that desire a very long time ago. All I care about now is being separated from your life. Your
curse.
Do you know the price
I
paid, Hari? Immortality, yes—but my magic turned against me, turning my power into pain.”

The Magi knelt over Dela, pressing his knee into her ribs. He looked up at Hari, and his smile was sickening.

“You’ve grown close to your mistress, Hari. Intimately so, I suspect. Do you like how I’ve treated her in your absence? Don’t you wonder what else I’ve done, that you cannot yet see?” The Magi ran his tongue up the side of Dela’s face, and she snarled breathlessly at him.

Hari threw himself against the barrier, his face elongating, muscles contorting. His scream was wordless, deep; the air quaked, and Dela wanted him to stop—stop and save his strength.

Don’t give him the satisfaction
, she pleaded.

The Magi shook his finger at the enraged shape-shifter.

“My daughter, Hari. Or else the only rape performed tonight will be on Ms. Reese.”

The situation was unimaginable. Even in Hari’s worst nightmares he had never considered such a horrific choice. Rape a girl, or watch his mate suffer the same fate. And even if he did such a thing, the Magi still might kill Dela. Just as he had killed Hari’s sister, right before his eyes.

“What are you?” shrieked the girl, staring at her father. “What kind of monster would do this? Why?”

“Hari!” Dela called out his name, and Hari saw what it cost her. Her face was a swollen mass of bruises and blood, her clothes torn, stained red. But her eyes—her eyes were still bright, and they were pleading with him.

Don’t do it. Please, don’t do it.

If he did, if he succumbed, it would kill them both. He knew this, as did she. Some lines could not be crossed—some rivers were too deep, acid instead of water.

“I love you,” he said to her, and it was all he could say, all he could do in that moment to make her understand he had heard her message, that no matter what was to come, he would suffer with her, he would die with her. That in the end, they would both close their eyes and know their hands were clean of everything but love. Untouched, unsullied by dishonor.

Hari stopped fighting. His hands fell to his sides, and he stared at the Magi, who watched him with a sudden trace of uneasiness.

Dela smiled.

The Magi saw and comprehension twisted his face into an inhuman mask of fury. Snarling, he curled his fists and raised them above Dela’s head. Hari shouted, throwing himself against the wall.

Dela brought up her own hands. Hari willed her his strength.

Before the Magi could strike, a huge form darted from the sky, knocking aside the Magi. As the man flew through the air, his barrier collapsed. Hari stumbled past, falling on his knees beside Dela.

“Delilah,” he breathed, desperate to touch her, unable to find a scrap of skin spared by the Magi’s cruelty. Dela reached for his hand, and brought his palm to her lips.

Scales hissed, feathers whispered. Dela gasped, and for a moment even Hari forgot to breathe. It had been so long.

The dragon’s coils writhed against the hard ground, claws
piercing stone. Golden eyes spun like watered marbles in a fine, angular head, set atop a delicate neck. The dragon regarded Hari and Dela with a quiet grace, but when it set its gaze upon the Magi, sprawled in frozen disbelief, a rough hiss escaped its thin scaled lips. Golden light shimmered around the dragon’s body, and a moment later an elderly naked Chinese woman appeared.

“Long Nü,” Dela breathed.

The Magi’s stunned expression dissolved, his lips curling into a snarl. “We had a bargain!”

Long Nü’s smile was infinitely cold. “I promised not to interfere with Hari. You said
nothing
about the human.”

The dragon woman settled her golden gaze upon Hari.

“I believe, brother, you have a man to kill.”

Hari kissed Dela’s palm, and she watched him stand and face the Magi. The Magi, eyes narrowed, began chanting under his breath.

Dela felt something whisper against her neck. It was Lise, kneeling, her eyes wide and dark with fear.

“You should leave,” Dela said, but Lise shook her head.

“If Hari is going to kill my father, I have to watch. I have to know he’s dead.”

Long Nü appeared beside them. Lise jumped away, but the old woman caught the girl’s wrist.

“I will not hurt you,” she said, then released her. Lise rubbed her wrist, but obeyed the unspoken command. Dela didn’t blame her. The merchant from the Dirt Market was gone; in her place, a creature from fairy tale—only, much more intimidating.

“I would have come sooner.” Long Nü’s wizened fingers brushed against Dela’s ribs. “But I was detained. Helping
you
, I suppose.”

“Helping? But—” Dela stopped, and gave the shape-shifter a
hard look. “You went after Wen Zhang. His men, too. That’s what they meant, when they asked me to ‘call her off.’ It was you.”

Long Nü shrugged. “Wen Zhang was upsetting a particular balance, interrupting a series of events too important to be frustrated by a collection of thugs. You can thank me later.”

The Magi and Hari circled each other. Hari began a partial transformation, claws extending from his hands, fur rippling over his thickening arms.

“I thought the Magi’s powers had lessened,” Dela said, as his hands began to glow.

“He never lost his powers, but after he cursed Hari, his magic turned against him. For the past two thousand years, the use of his gift has caused him pain. How much, I do not know.” Long Nü leaned over Dela, her eyes briefly glowing. “There is only one outcome to this battle, Dela, and that is for both Hari and the Magi to die.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I have no time to explain. Only, their lives are linked. Each is the other’s weakness. They are not immortal to each other, Dela. If Hari kills the Magi, he will die, too.”

Two thousand years fled past Hari’s gaze, but the only thing that made the beast howl was the memory of Dela’s face and body, battered almost beyond recognition. The Magi had laid his hands upon Hari’s mate—the woman he loved more than life.

No. Dela
was
his life.

“I have waited for this,” he said. “Since the day you killed my sister—from the moment I realized you were still alive.”

The Magi’s laugh was bitter. “And I have thought of nothing but you for the past two thousand years. What a fine mess I wove.” His fingers spat fire, blazed with heat. Hari noted a fine
tremor race up the Magi’s side. “I have had many years to grow accustomed to pain, Hari, and I have held myself down with it. But now—now is the time to remember some of what I lost.”

The Magi’s hands exploded in a blaze of light and crackling heat, and Hari dodged twin gusts of flame that spewed out into the night. The shape-shifter recovered instantly, sweeping in low with his claws bared, raking at the Magi’s throat. The Magi managed to block the blow, glancing fire against Hari’s skin.

Steel flashed in the Magi’s hand. A dagger, hidden in a sheath beneath his shirt. Hari smiled, flexing his hands, the beast splitting his skin.

Finally. Blood.

“What kind of crap is this?” Dela struggled to sit up, but only succeeded in blasting the breath from her lungs. She collapsed, Lise cushioning her head. Dela glared at Long Nü. “Does Hari know?”

“No, and you cannot tell him. If you do, it might ruin everything.”

“You can’t get much more ruined than dead!” Dela snapped.

“He does not have to die.” Long Nü’s eyes blazed with unearthly light. “I would not have invested so much of myself if that was the only outcome.”

Dela stared at her, some premonition tugging at her mind; the memory of a dream, a nightmare in a tub in China. Death, sliding in on a sigh. Hari’s anguished eyes.

“Explain yourself,” she said.

Long Nü skimmed her hands over Dela’s face; not touching, but close, close. Dela smelled sandalwood, stone.

“A life for a life. That was the price of the spell, the motivation that cast it. Hari gave his life for his sister. There is no greater gift, but the Magi twisted the power of Hari’s sacrifice to create something dark, perverted. He still thinks darkness is
the key to ending the spell.” Long Nü cast a significant glance at Lise.

Not twenty feet away, Dela saw Hari lash out at the Magi, raking his claws down the man’s chest. The Magi screamed, steel and flame flashing in his hands. Hari leapt backward. His movements were a dance; he struck the Magi again, this time in the face. Blood spurted.

“Enough of the story!” Dela cried, sensing imminent death. “How do we break the spell?”

A hint of warmth touched Long Nü’s lips. “A good choice,” she breathed, soothing back Dela’s hair.
“Your
choice, Dela. The only thing that can break the spell, and the bond between Hari and the Magi, is another gift of love. Love to counteract the darkness.”

“A life for a life,” Dela murmured, sinking down into her mind, feeling her world grow still.

“Do you understand?” Long Nü pressed. “Do you truly understand the price, Dela? A life for a life. That is what you must pay.”

Dela understood, and she nodded.

The Magi was in pain, his eyes wide with fear, rage. Still, he pressed on. Still, he angled his knife at Hari, sweeping down—

Hari laughed, sidestepping the rushed blow, knocking the Magi on his back with one well-timed kick to the back of his knees. Without the use of his greatest powers, the Magi was useless in a fight. The man slammed into the ground, gasping for air.

Hari was on him in an instant, snapping first the wrist holding the knife, and then taking the weapon and slamming the blade, point first, through the Magi’s other hand—splitting flesh, cracking bone—pinning the man to the ground.

The Magi howled, his back arching off the ground. Hari straddled him, running his claws across his throat—

*  *  *

“Do it,” Dela said, taking one last look at Hari, poised over the Magi.

Long Nü placed her hands above Dela’s heart. The colors of sunset shimmered across Dela’s vision, and she thought—she thought—

The Magi had no last words. There was a story in his black eyes, and Hari wondered—just for one moment—what if? What if the Magi had been a good man?

Hari’s sister would have lived, her child born. He would have been spared two thousand years of slavery. So much pain, averted.

But he would not have found Dela.

“Thank you,” Hari whispered. “For that, anyway.”

The Magi’s eyes widened, a question on his lips.

Hari slashed his throat—

—I love you, Hari. I love you—

—and leaned away from the gushing blood, hearing breath slide through the Magi’s lips, his eyes blazing once, then dulling into emptiness.

Feeling rather strange—almost, in an odd way, bereft—Hari staggered to his feet. Blood dripped from his claws.

He stared at the Magi’s body until soft sounds of weeping tugged at his attention. Hari turned, and found the Magi’s daughter curled in on herself, tears running down her cheeks. At first he thought she was saddened by her father’s death, and then he thought her tears were for relief—but as he drew near he saw her gaze was for Dela, stretched still and silent upon the ground.

“Delilah?” Hari called her name. She did not stir, and Long Nü looked at him, her eyes solemn as winter water.

“Your curse is broken, Hari,” she said. “A life for life.”

He stared at her, at first not understanding, but as he looked down at Dela’s pale face, her still chest, comprehension brought him to his knees. He crawled to Dela’s side, reaching for her face, pressing his ear to her chest.

Silence.

“No,” he breathed. “No, not now. Please, Delilah.”

“It was her choice,” Long Nü said. “You were linked to the Magi by the spell. If she had not given herself up, you would have died the instant you killed the Magi.”