Home > Dragon's Ground (Desert Cursed #2)(10)

Dragon's Ground (Desert Cursed #2)(10)
Author: Shannon Mayer

Balder blew out a long snort and slowed his walk, surprising me. A whisper of wood smoke reached my nose along with the sudden stench of gorc. Fuck that shit.

I gave Balder the lightest tap with my heels. “Come on, get moving.”

He planted his feet. What the hell was this ridiculousness now? I frowned and slid out of the saddle.

“What are you doing?” Kiara’s words were a half-strangled whisper. She’d picked up on the smell too.

I frowned and shook my head. What was going on with Balder?

“I’m checking his legs and feet.” I quickly ran my hands down Balder’s legs, picking up each hoof and checking them. Shoes were all on tight, no sign of bruising or heat in his joints or tendons. There was no reason for him to stop.

A rattle of rocks down the hill closest to us snapped me around. I leapt straight up onto Balder’s back, spinning him so I faced the noise. Kiara let out a whimper that was most unbecoming of a lion.

The noise came again and then. . . the distinct and horrifying sound of a goat being throttled.

Kiara gasped. “What is that?”

“Not what, but who.” I grimaced, shook my head once and then urged Balder forward as I spoke over my shoulder at Kiara. “Stay here.”

“By myself?” The words were strangled syllables.

I shrugged. “Gorcs are on the other side of the hill probably torturing a satyr.”

Her face paled, and I looked away from her. What she chose to do was up to her. I was not forcing her hand one way or another. But I wouldn’t let someone I knew be killed by a band of gorcs. Typically speaking, they didn’t rove in numbers bigger than four, so I was banking on speed and surprise.

Balder climbed the hill, leaning into it, and I leaned forward in part to keep my head down, in part to help him by at least not throwing my weight around. As we crested the hill, I found myself behind a pair of fifteen-foot-high boulders. I sat straight up and moved Balder with my heels, quietly getting us around the curve of the boulders so we could look down into the small depression between hills. I found myself looking at a curious scene. One that didn’t seem to fit with what my brain had been telling me I’d find.

There was a fire pit at least five feet across with four gorcs in various stages of reclining around it, and with them was a satyr—Marcel to be exact. He seemed to be telling them a story by the way his hands were going, but I did note rope hanging from his left wrist that went to a metal bar hammered into a large boulder.

More than that was the body of something over the pit. Long legs, a torso, and human features that had been burned to a char. Nubs on the head. Shit, they were eating a satyr. The gorc closest to me leaned out with a knife and cut a chunk of flesh off the torso, bringing it to his mouth.

I narrowed my eyes, seeing the sweat run down Marcel’s face, seeing the fear in his eyes. Four gorcs were no small thing, but if I caught them off guard, I might be able to pull this off.

I slid from Balder’s back and ground tied him just as Kiara rode up beside me. I put a finger to my lips and motioned for her to get off.

She slid from the saddle, and I saw the way her knees shook. We couldn’t speak, not this close to the gorcs. As a beast, they were large, over seven feet tall, and a cross between ogres, goblins, and something else. They were a creature created by the Jinn to harass the legitimate supes that lived on this side of the wall. Ugly, tooth-filled, claw-tipped hands, and powerful, they were not something I liked crossing. The worst was that they were not stupid. Or at least not as dumb as I would have liked.

The more gorcs we killed, the better. As far as I knew, there were no females, only males; which meant that the more we killed, the more the Jinn had to make, and that should sap the Jinn of their energy.

At least that was the running theory at the Stockyards. We didn’t really know much about them other than the fact they worked exclusively for the Jinn. I wished Maks was with me. He would’ve had at least some info on the gorcs.

I put a hand on Kiara and mimed for her to take her clothes off. That would allow her to shift without ruining a perfectly good set of threads. I, on the other hand, could shift and take my clothes and weapons with me in the form of a collar around my neck. A very small perk for the rather large fact that my form was about as un-lion-like as one could get.

I turned my back on her, letting the shift take me. For me, it was like walking through a door, stepping between two legs and four. The change was swift, and painless, and in only a few seconds I was on four legs, standing between Balder’s front hooves. He dropped his nose and breathed softly across my thick black fur, ruffling it. I reached up and batted his nose gently, pushing him away.

I glanced behind me and saw with some surprise that Kiara was naked and making her way to shift. Honestly, I’d have expected her to tell me to fuck off. I also couldn’t help noticing the tiny bulge of her stomach, the telltale sign of a child on its way. The first Bright Lion born in more years than I wanted to think about. Much as it was hers and Steve’s, it was still a good omen. Even I could admit that.

She shifted and gave a shiver, her golden coat shimmering in the dull winter light. I motioned for her to draw closer with a flick of my left ear. Kiara crept forward on her belly, her golden eyes wide with anxiety and fear as her tongue hung out, panting.

I put my mouth into the rounded cup of her ear closest to me. “Let me go in first. I will call for you if I need help. This will be good for you, to face them, and put them on the end of your claws.”

Her ear flicked once and I took a step back and turned to face the slope down. Dropping to my belly, I crept forward, one step at a time with my eyes locked on the scene that was playing out. Marcel was telling the gorcs a story that was a little too familiar.

“I’m serious, this woman gallops along the canyon of the giants, the entire rush of them right on her very pert, very lovely ass, and she comes to a dead end. But that doesn’t stop her, no. Her horse is injured, and like any lovely, thoughtful creature, she sends him up the treacherous slope first.” He drew a breath and his eyes scanned the area, landing on me for the briefest of seconds before darting away. Of course, he didn’t know that I had a second form. Or that I would be of any help. All he saw was a simple black house cat.

But I wasn’t so sure that him telling my story of fooling the giants would keep the gorcs entertained. Not when they were most of the way through the first body. Even in the time it had taken me to shift and tell Kiara the plan, most of the flesh had been stripped off the first satyr.

Marcel cleared his throat. “Anyway, she climbs up, the queen is behind her, and this tiny, beautiful woman starts cussing out her ex-husband.”

“Why she do that?” the gorc closest to him asked. “No good in sack?”

“Well,” Marcel gave a nervous grin, “according to her, he was a no-good, cheating, tiny-dick man who couldn’t satisfy her.”

The gorcs laughed together and I used their laughter to cover me as I shot forward, tiny pebbles rolling down around with me. I slid to a stop, some scrub brush working for a bit of cover. Not really a cover, but then I was a six-pound house cat. Not exactly hard to hide if no one was looking for me.

I let out a slow breath as Marcel went on with the story. His words washed over me as I focused on the closest gorc. If I could launch myself onto his upper back, I was pretty sure I could slash his throat. While I might not be able to break bones with my bite, my claws and teeth gained strength from the weapons I carried, as strange as that might seem. And currently the flail of Marsum was a part of that strength.

Booyah for me.

The best part was, in my house cat form, the power drain that happened if I used the weapon on two feet didn’t happen on four feet. I didn’t know why, and I wasn’t going to question it.

I pushed my way through the scrub grass, the spines brushing through my thick fur.

“You tell another story before we eat you.” The gorc closest to me thumped his big flat foot into the hard-packed earth and the concussion of it crept up through the pads of my paws. “I like your stories. You keep talking, we no eat today.”

Marcel gave that braying goat cry that set my skin to crawling as if it would run right off my body. That was nervous satyr laughter if I ever heard it.

   
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