How the fuck was I getting us out of this mess? Maks’s hand pressed a little harder, then slid through my hair, trailing a tingle of energy everywhere he touched until he left off and reached for the flail’s handle.
I put my hand over his, stopping him. That was not a good idea. If he started a fight we couldn’t win, we’d both die. I couldn’t fight one Jinn, never mind four, even with Maks at my side. They were not gorcs, and I knew my limits.
Apparently Maks did not know his.
I leaned closer to see those blue eyes of his were open and snapping with an anger I’d never seen in him. Rage was a good, dangerous look on him that sent my blood pounding into overdrive.
Don’t judge me. I have a thing for men who can take charge, and Maks was that with a soft heart that gave me the best of both worlds.
But did I trust him enough to take the flail? The weapon was beyond destructive, and though he’d used it once before, something in me told me not to let him take it. I pushed his hand away and the anger etched deeper onto his face.
So be it. He could be angry with me all he wanted, but we needed to get out of here as fast as we could. I shifted into my cat form, which did two things. It hid me from the Jinn, and it hid the flail from Maks.
He rolled to his belly and shifted to his other form of a desert caracal. Sandy brown with black tips on his ears and points, he wasn’t that much bigger than me, really.
We just needed to creep away.
Except we were too late.
“Maks, you fucking shit, get back here!” The Jinn, Bart, I think, screamed his name.
We bolted, but Maks was slow and I couldn’t leave him behind. Well, this was going to hell in a handbasket in a fucking hurry.
The Jinn raced after us, screaming a war cry that set my hair standing on end. A war cry I heard in my nightmares reliving the Oasis.
I pushed Maks ahead of me, guarding our rear. Which was something of a laugh, considering. We needed speed because Jinn were faster than a horse when they wanted to be.
“Lila, get him out of here!” I yelled. There was a snap of wings and then a whoosh to my side right before Lila scooped Maks in his caracal form right off the ground.
The Jinn screamed and shot bolts of magic that looked like flaming spears at them as they climbed out of reach, high above our heads.
I spun, digging my back feet into the dirt and launched myself at the closest Jinn, knowing what I was doing was near suicide. But it would get Maks and Lila away.
Part of me knew I was being a fool for someone I shouldn’t have been risking my life for.
The other part of me said fuck it, I cared for Maks, and he was becoming part of my life in ways I couldn’t define. Even if that weren’t true, the Jinn were my enemies and they needed to die.
The screech that left me echoed through the air as I landed on the Jinn closest to me. I hit him in the belly and slashed at him with everything I had. A wildness overtook me as I fought to find my way through his guts to his spine. I would tear it from him. I would destroy him. I would take him to the ground and snap his bones.
I knew this madness. I’d felt it before and knew it made me as dangerous as I could be, but it also put me well inside the realm of death’s reach. The wild madness, though, didn’t allow me to really accept that I could die. Dangerous, deadly, in those moments I was a lion, through and through.
Warm, salty blood splashed around me, coating my mouth and nose. Someone screamed, a long drawn-out wail that pitched all over the place, and then we were on the ground and I was being pulled from him while the other Jinn laughed.
“You don’t think this is that idiot Dirk’s kid, do you?”
Dirk, my father, the man they killed, my hero. And he was not an idiot.
A sudden white-hot fury lit up my reflexes that I couldn’t have held back even if I’d wanted to.
I shifted right then and there, and in a single fluid motion, grabbed my kukri blades and swept them up through the Jinn’s middle, following it with a double slice across his neck, cutting through his spine. The look of surprise stayed with him as his head rolled from his shoulders.
“Yeah,” I said, “I fucking well am.”
Chapter 11
With a dead Jinn at my feet and kukri blades in my hands, the three remaining Jinn stared at me, shock written all over them. Of course, they didn’t think to find any lion shifters in the middle of the desert plains, certainly not one of Dirk’s children. Dirk, the thorn in their side for the entire time he’d lived in the desert. Dirk, the man who’d had two children, both of whom escaped the slaughter of the Oasis.
And now they faced one of those children. I would have laughed at their expressions if I didn’t think I was going to die right then and there.
The flail called to me, a pulse against my back. . . I reached for it, yanking it from the sheath and turning it, sending it into a fast spin before I could think better of it. Before I died, I would take as many of them with me as I could.
I didn’t wait for any of them to move. I slammed the two balls into the Jinn closest to me. He screamed and went flying through the air, slammed into the other two and they tumbled to the ground. Again, if not for the severity of the situation, I would have laughed. They looked like a messed-up version of the Three Stooges, a play my father had reenacted for us on dark winter nights.
Maybe I wasn’t going to die. And if I wasn’t dying, it was time to go. I spun, jammed the flail into its sheath and bolted into the darkness, heading toward the standing stones. Three miles wasn’t that far, but it damn well felt like it in the dark with Jinn at my back. Not that I believed there would be safety there, but the horses were there, and I knew we had a better chance at outrunning the Jinn.
I shifted into my cat form partway there and turned on the speed, scooting across the black plains with twice the speed I had on two legs. But that many shifts that close together and I could feel the energy drag on me.
It was the only excuse I had for not noticing the Jinn on my right as I drew close to the horses.
“Gotcha, cat!”
He shot toward me and I veered to the left without thinking.
The path took me straight through the standing stones. I raced through the center and the Jinn followed. At least, he followed before he slammed to a stop like he’d run into one of the stones. On the other side of the circle, outside the rocks, I slid to a stop, spun and looked back.
The Jinn was floating in midair, his body stretched out, his arms and legs flung wide and shaking as though he were being electrocuted.
Around us the rocks began to hum, singing a tune that tugged me forward. My eyelids fluttered with the warmth that pulled me forward, the call to give myself over to the stones.
“Zam, help me!” Lila screamed. I snapped out of the hold the stones had on me and bolted away and around the circle to where the horses were. To where Maks stumbled toward the circle. Already another Jinn had joined his friend. I shifted to two legs, groaning as I did, and tackled Maks to the ground. I pinned him flat on his back and he still fought with me to get up. His eyes were glazed, and his breath came in gasps. He tried to push me off and in our combined weakened states I have no doubt we looked ridiculous.
Floppy limbs, we probably appeared like rag dolls trying to fend off each other.
I straddled him, sitting on his hips as I held his arms above his head while my own arms trembled with the strain. “Stay with me, Maks.”
He groaned and closed his eyes. “Let me go, Zam. The Emperor calls and I must obey him.”
“No. You’re here with me. With Lila. We need you.”
I knew if Maks had been at full strength there would have been no contest. He’d beaten me once before, and I knew the power in his body.
He gave a sudden burst as if reading my mind and flipped me onto my back. He pushed with both hands as if to stand. I did the only thing I could. I wrapped my legs around his waist and dragged him down to me, growling through clenched teeth.
“You aren’t going anywhere, Maks,” I said.
Now, maybe there was something other than kissing him I could have done to distract him and break the spell the Emperor had on him. Anyone else and I would have just knocked them out, or put them into a choke hold till they passed out, but what would be the fun in that with Maks? To be fair, I couldn’t think of any other way to distract him in those few seconds.