“I don’t know,” I finally said. “I . . . I’ve always been weak, Lila. As far as anyone else is concerned, at least.”
She put her two front claws on my knee and gave my leg a squeeze. “Well, maybe now is the time to try, then. I won’t laugh if you can’t do anything but squeeze out a fart.”
I laughed and shook my head, then lifted both hands covered in blood and a few feathers. “Try what? What am I supposed to try, Lila?”
She frowned. “Yeah, I don’t know. I guess you have a point.”
I went on, still laughing. “Meditation? Chanting? Singing to the stars? Dance naked under the moon?”
“Not funny,” she grumbled. “This could save us one day, you know. You should take it at least a little bit serious.”
I rolled my eyes, not so much at her but at the world. At Maggi for putting these thoughts in Lila’s head that I was someone special, because the reality was I already knew that my abilities had to do with hard work and a spine of steel, not natural talent.
“Look, I’ll close my eyes and do like a . . .” I flipped my hands around and a few feathers floated off, “soul-searching thing. Like when I look for my pride, but instead of looking for them, I’ll search me, okay?” I didn’t even know if it was a thing, what I was talking about. But by the way Lila’s eyes lit up, it would do. And it would settle this hope she had.
“Good. At least try. The miserable have no other medicine, but only hope.” She pushed off my legs and curled up next to the fire again. “That’s from Measure by Measure.”
“I know.” I rubbed my hands in the loose sand, working the worst of the blood off, then dipped them in the pot we had for cleaning.
Sweet fucking goddess, this was stupid. Dumb. A waste of time. But then again, it wasn’t like we were going anywhere until morning.
I sat on the ground, folded my hands in my lap and closed my eyes. I took a big breath in through my nose and out my mouth. I turned my thoughts inward as if I was going to search for my pride, but instead of sending energy outward, I kept it all to myself.
The energy rumbled around in me, pushing to get out, to search for those who were attached to me. I couldn’t help it as a flare of energy tugged on me, the color a deep, pulsing green wrapped in threads of black, as if it were sickly. I frowned and let my own energy flow toward it.
My stomach clenched as I realized who was calling to me, to my energy.
“Maks.” I whispered his name and Lila grabbed at me.
“What do you see?”
I swallowed hard, understanding now that Maks was part of my pride, as was Lila. He’d sworn his fealty to me as one of my seconds.
And he was sick.
Dying.
How was that possible?
I pressed my fingers into my eyes as if I could block out the sight, except I wasn’t seeing his energy with my eyes, not really. My muscles shook and trembled. Dying, how could he be dying?
“Lila, he’s in trouble. I don’t know how, but we have to help him. He’s sick, and it’s killing him.” I finally lowered my hands and opened my eyes. “The energy around him is black and it’s literally sucking the life out of him.”
So much for looking into myself for my own power. Then again, I wasn’t surprised. I expected nothing more than to find exactly that—nothing. And now I’d found Maks. And I knew he needed us as much as the rest of my pride.
“Just how are we going to do that? We know he’s . . . possessed or whatever it is that’s going on. He wants to hand you over to Marsum.” Lila paced in front of the fire.
I scrubbed my hands against a tuft of grass. “I know. Maybe we need to find Merlin. He seems to know more about Maks and the Jinn than he should. Maybe he can heal him?”
Lila bobbed her head once. “And if we can’t find Merlin?”
She had a point. Merlin wasn’t exactly known for showing up when needed. More like showing up when you least needed him. Or when he wanted to try to kill you and then explain that somehow that was really helping you.
I frowned, drew in a big breath and got a distinct whiff of rotting compost. I wrinkled my nose and twisted around. “I smell garbage. Do you smell that?”
Lila turned her head into the wind and then shuddered and gagged. “Gods, that is awful. What is it?”
My brain kicked in, labeling the scent about two seconds slower than it should’ve as the strange shape sailed toward us through the black sky.
Woven ropes bound together, knotted with iron straps. I saw it all in a flash as the net landed on us with a heavy thud, pinning us to the ground. Or really, just me. Lila sat in the middle of a square of empty space, her luck so good that it landed neatly around her.
The rope and weight of it was across the back of my neck, my spine, my legs, and pretty much everything was held down—after my experience of being squashed and nearly killed by the werehyena because I was in my cat form, I wasn’t about to shift.
Already the struggle to breathe was a real thing; I fought for each breath.
“Shift! You’ve got bigger problems than the net!” Lila yelled as the ground rumbled under me.
“If I shift, it will crush me!” I yelled, fighting to get out from under the weight, but damn it, it was heavy. That’s what you get when being hunted by giants.
“I wanna wanna eat!” an all-too-familiar voice boomed from not far enough away.
“Balder.” I snapped his name and then let out a hiss. How he’d managed to avoid the net, I have no idea. I struggled and fought the bonds as Lila swooped around my head.
“What do I do?” Lila yelled.
I gritted my teeth, knowing I had no choice. If Balder stayed, the giants’ queen would eat him. She would crush Lila. I had to send them to safety. There was no way I was going to live through this. But Lila didn’t know that.
“Take Balder, find Maks!” I managed to get the words out while my lungs felt as though they collapsed within me.
He would come, if for no other reason than to take me to Marsum—assuming he was within distance for her to find. Assuming I could dodge the queen of the giants long enough to survive. The sound of hoof beats and then a roar from the big three-titted bitch told me Balder and Lila were out of range already. If they pushed hard, they might get to Maks if he’d stopped for the night. Maybe. I just had to hang on until then.
Two hours maybe? I knew I was being hopeful. Two hours was what I held in my head as the time I needed to survive.
Right, no problem. One house cat against the queen of the giants. I could do this. I could; no, strike that, I had to. There were too many others depending on me. I had to find a way to survive. And if Lila brought Maks back, maybe we could figure out what was wrong with him.
The net stayed on me as the queen leaned low and close, her breath as vile as I remembered. She sniffed a few times and my hair fluttered toward her. A sneeze came next, coating me with slime.
“Fuck off!” I yelled or tried to yell. It came out more like a wheeze with the weight of the iron balls.
“Oh, kitty, kitty, I remember you. You is a thief, thief.” She whipped off the net and I scrambled forward, fighting to get my legs under me fast enough to stand and face her. A thick finger flicked me in the middle of my back and sent me sprawling onto my face.
I rolled to my back and looked up at her, then grinned and waved. “How you doing, queen bee?”
She glared down at me, thick green snot dripping from her nose and her eyes. Sweet baby goddess, she was sick as . . . well, I would have said as a dog, but I felt bad maligning dogs like that. She wiped a hand across her face, smearing the bright green and now a strand of dark yellow snot all the way from her nose across her cheek to her ear. “You take my jewel, jewel.”
“Yeah, well, to be fair, you weren’t guarding it that well.” I reached slowly for the flail. Only it wasn’t there.
She held it up by her finger and her thumb. “You looky, looky for this, pretty?”
The flick in the back made a lot more sense now. She’d taken the one weapon that could do damage to her.
I raised both hands in surrender. Shifting forms would buy me a bit more time, but I’d leave that until the bitter end. I had more pressing matters. “What are you doing outside your territory? You lost, you big dummy?”