I drew my breaths carefully, keeping the sound of my breathing as quiet as I could while I waited for the right moment to pounce. I was only going to get one shot at this.
A gorc who sat across the fire leaned forward, his eyes narrowing as they landed on me. “What is that? A pussy cat?”
Well, fuck. So much for surprise.
I launched up and onto the back of the gorc in front of me, landing on his shoulders and neck. I dug my claws into his thick hide and they cut through his skin like a razor blade through silk and with about the same tearing sound.
He shot to his feet, his hands reaching back for me while his companions laughed and slapped their hands on their legs. Because let’s be honest, it probably was funny as a camel in a three-legged race with a rhino. The gorc howled, and I kept slashing at his neck, light pink blood splattering all over the place. If I didn’t have to bite him, I was going to avoid it at all costs.
Gorcs tasted like rotting flesh.
I swiped my claw across the veins in his neck, finally getting deep enough to hit them. The resounding spurt shot across the fire, hitting one of his buddies in the face. The gorc went from trying to grab me, to grabbing at his neck.
“Get the cat!” he screeched, but I was already off him and racing across to the next gorc. That wound would kill him soon enough. The next gorc was still laughing, not grasping what had just happened to his buddy. There was no time. I wouldn’t be able to reach the second one’s neck. But there were veins in the inner thigh that would work just as well, much as I didn’t want my face that close to his dirty, unwashed junk.
The gorcs wore a light brown uniform that helped them hide in the desert and the surrounding hills, but it wasn’t made to protect them, and it wasn’t much of a barrier to me. I cut through it in a single slash, the strength of both the flail and the two kukri blades I carried giving my claws and teeth the edge I needed.
This time, though, it would be my teeth doing the damage. No matter that I didn’t want to use them on the foul-tasting shithead. I grimaced as I shot upward in a single bound and landed on the gorc’s thigh, sinking my front and back claws in to hold myself steady. I looked up at him and batted my eyelashes as he stared down at me in utter shock.
“You’re going to die, big boy,” I said.
He swiped at me with a big meaty hand and I dodged it, then bit him hard, sending him onto his ass as I chewed my way through layers of meat and muscle, gagging on the taste of his blood. The pulsing vein was there. I knew it was, and I went for it with every ounce of energy I had.
“Watch out!” Marcel’s warning was all I needed.
I let go and bounded off the gorc as one of his buddies brought a spiked club down on his leg, right where I’d been. The snap of bone and the explosion of blood and roars of pain set the scene on fire. Two down and out of commission, two to go. This was Kiara’s chance to face her demons.
“Kiara, now!” I screamed for my backup.
I shot forward, heading for the fourth gorc who was closest to Marcel. As I drew close, I walked through the doorway in my mind and went from four to two feet in the space of a single breath, faster than I’d ever shifted before, and it stole the wind from me.
The gorc’s eyes widened and then narrowed. “Zamira.”
“Ah, good, you know me. Can’t say I know your name.” I yanked my kukri blades out, still moving forward, and slashed toward him with a yell, the scream of one seriously pissed off woman.
He met me with a blade of his own, big and bulky, slow. But if I let him hit me, it would only take one blow to snap me in half.
The dance of blades between us clattered through the air, but more than that, I listened for the sound of a lion roaring into battle. A sound that never came.
Well, fuck.
Chapter 6
The gorcs behind me around their campfire were starting to gather themselves, and that was not good since I was apparently on my own in this. I could take them, or at least I thought I could.
Marcel had pinned himself as far away from the action as he could, and it was then I saw the chain around his one fetlock tying him to a large ring near the fire. As if the rope on his wrist weren’t enough.
“Marcel, nice to see you,” I said as I parried the gorc’s blade, flinging it back at him with a grunt.
“Well, probably not as nice as it is for me to see you. You are getting a free flouncing for this, Zam. Two. Three. However many flouncings you want, just get me out of here,” he yelped as we drew close to him.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Flouncing is the last thing on my mind right now. How about we settle for killing the gorcs?”
“Sure, I guess.” Even in that moment, he sounded disappointed. Like I’d turned him down again and his ego just couldn’t take it. I grinned, and the gorc glared at me.
“The Jinn. . . are they still looking for me?” I spun into a kick that I managed to land on the gorc’s kneecap, snapping it sideways with a satisfying crack. He went down, but that didn’t mean he slowed. He punched me in the gut, sending me stumbling backward, gagging as I fought to draw a breath. I tripped over the logs near the fire and ended up on the ground. I took a quick glance at the other gorcs.
Two were down, the third was coming my way.
“They are always looking for the females of the pride, you know that,” the first gorc growled. “They want you as they want them all.”
“Why is that again?” Might as well get info while I was here. Assuming I made it out alive, this could be seriously good intel that, for all we knew, would pinpoint just what in the sands of hell the Jinn were up to.
“Don’t matter to a dead kitty cat,” the gorc behind me said.
My skin prickled, and I ducked and rolled to the side as the spiked club sailed through where my head had been only a moment before. I didn’t bother to yell for Kiara, not again.
She knew I needed help, and she was going to just sit up there and watch me fight it out on my own.
“Marcel, the chain!” I yelled. “Use it!”
I needed whatever help I could get.
Even if it was from a sexually amped satyr.
I dropped to the ground and spun with a leg extended, knocking the second gorc to the ground. I didn’t wait to see if he was knocked out. Without thought, my right hand reached for the handle of the flail, and I grabbed it before I could stop myself. Almost as if someone else was controlling me, or maybe as if the weapon was calling me.
“Shit,” I growled as I yanked it from my back and began to spin it, the twin balls clanking almost like metallic bells. The gorc on the ground scrambled backward, crying, both hands out. “No, no! Not that!”
I stared in shock as he pushed to his feet. . . and ran away. I turned to face the last gorc standing. My breath came hard and pain filled. I could feel a crack in at least one rib from the punch, but it was the fear on the last gorc’s face that had me captivated.
“You cannot be using that. It’s impossible.” He held both hands out in front of his body, pointing a single finger at me with each. “Not possible!”
“You don’t know me well enough to say what I am and am not capable of.” I took a step toward him, picking up speed on the flail. He took a step back and then another, and another, before he spun and ran from fear of me. But that wasn’t the truth, and I knew it.
They recognized the flail. They knew it had been made by Marsum, their master, and they knew the flail’s power. But they acted like it was more than a weapon. The handle warmed under my fingers, making itself tacky and hard to pry them off. But pry them off I did.
“Off, you fuck,” I muttered at it. No, I would not start talking to the weapon.
I turned around. The second gorc who’d had his leg smashed was flat on his back, a pool of blood around him. Between my slashing and the break from his friend, he was unconscious. I walked over to him, pulled a kukri and thrust it through one of his eyes, hurrying his end.
I checked the first gorc I’d attacked, and he was dead, bled out.
Two dead gorcs and a chained-up satyr were all that were left. I went back to Marcel and pulled the flail, swinging it hard against the chain on the ground. The metal shattered like glass and Marcel brayed with excitement. I gave him a stink-eye. “Seriously, shut your goaty little guts the fuck up. We don’t need to draw anyone to us.”