The Fire King (7 page)

Robert. In his fine linen suit, looking as though he had stepped directly from the cover of
GQ,
straight into the firefight. Cool, calm, utterly unbothered by the violence. And Ku-Ku, standing guard in the hall, wearing mini-shorts and a pink tank top, chewing gum, holding a knife and semiautomatic in her hands.

Soria was going to kick Roland’s ass. Oh, God, was she going to throttle him.

“You should leave the shifter,” said Robert smoothly. But a moment later he appeared at her side, dropping gracefully to one knee. Soria made room for him, stepping over Karr to work on freeing his other hand. He was a big man, nothing but sinew and hard, lean muscle. She felt small beside him, practically Lilliputian.

Thousands of years old,
she thought.
Impossible.

Just as shape-shifters were impossible. Or mermen, gargoyles, psychics, and magic spells. Or women who could speak any language in the world.

“Why are you here?” she asked Robert, flinching as more gunshots rang out down the hall. “Serena said nothing about you.”

“And my contract said nothing about her. I was paid to be here, just as I was paid to intercept you at the airport.”

Soria stared. “I told you, Roland wouldn’t do that.”

“Not when he has an agency full of able-bodied men and women at his disposal? Interesting quandary, isn’t it. Maybe you should ask your esteemed boss what he’s so afraid of the others knowing.” Robert undid the bolt on Karr’s wrist, tossed it away, and then quickly reached behind his back, beneath his suit jacket. He pulled out a small pistol and slid it across the floor to Soria. “For you, fully loaded. Roland said you’re trained.”

“Roland’s quickly becoming a jackass,” Soria replied, staring at the gun like it was poison. “I’m not touching that.”

“I told you not to think too much about the arm.” Robert left the gun on the floor and backed toward the door. Ku-Ku glanced inside, pigtails bouncing, then disappeared again. “A gun is a gun. Not a reflection.”

Soria remembered what it felt like to hold a gun in her hand. The weight, the smooth slide of the trigger beneath her finger. The kick and roar.

“Who are those men?” she muttered.

“Mercenaries. Well trained, expensive. Good equipment. They came by car, probably from Beijing.”

“You think the Consortium sent them?”

Robert said nothing, and pulled the mask off one of the dead. Soria did not want to look, but found herself staring into the face of a middle-aged man of indeterminate race; perhaps Asian, maybe Latino. A bit like herself: a mixture of different things. His features had not softened in death, but retained a coarse harshness; the brow lines were deep, the mouth twisted in a grimace.

“No,” Robert finally replied, staring thoughtfully at the corpse. “I don’t think these men belong to them. Someone different is running this show.”

“How can you tell?”

A brief, sardonic smile touched his mouth. “Professionalism precedes itself. These men were not psychotic enough to be Consortium.”

Nausea climbed Soria’s throat. She looked away, and focused on the bolt beneath her fingers. Karr, watching both her and Robert through narrowed eyes, worked loose his other hand, shaking off the chain mail wrapped around his fist. Soria held her breath as his immense hand flexed—and then forced herself to start breathing again as he sat up and reached over to where she was fumbling with the other bolt.

Their fingers brushed. Karr rumbled, “Who is that man?”

It was easy for her to understand him, his language crystalline in her mind, rich with nuance, though it was still difficult for her mouth to form the right words to reply. Different muscles made unique sounds, and the rolling growl of some vowels made her feel as if she were imitating Eartha Kitt’s Catwoman.

“He is no one,” she told him.

“More a wish than the truth, I think,” he replied, and then, “How did you loosen the others?”

“Turn it, like this.” Soria showed him how to handle the bolt, still taken aback every time he spoke with calm and thoughtfulness similar to the restraint he had initially shown in the video, so at odds with his bursts of rage.

She looked up and found Robert watching them, smiling faintly. “I’ll be close,” he said, and stepped out of sight into the hall.

Close, my ass.
Soria gritted her teeth and started working on Karr’s ankle restraints.

He freed his other hand, and sat up quickly, spine cracking, gauze sliding off the long lines of sores and wounds she had treated. In the few moments she had looked away, his face had regained its humanity, as had his flesh. The scales were gone, jaw normal, teeth no longer razor sharp. Only his eyes still shimmered with magic, lost behind a rough mane of golden hair.

He helped her free his ankles, fumbling at the last moment as a faint tremor raced through his body. When the last shackle was loosened, he stood, swaying, his joints still popping. The sheet fell away. Soria ducked her head, trying not to look, but Karr reached down and grabbed her hand. He pulled her up, fast, and then bent to pick up the gun.

He held it awkwardly on his palm, the barrel pointed at her. Instinct took over. She reached out without thinking, plucking it deftly from his grip. He let her, though his eyes narrowed.

“I did not free you to hurt you,” she said, remembering the video of the catacomb, and how a simple reassurance would have probably prevented the deaths that followed. Maybe. Except for Serena.

Karr’s jaw tightened. “That means nothing to me.”

“Mercy,” she whispered, struggling to pronounce the soft growl. “I think
that
means something to you.”

He went very still. Soria tore her gaze from him, looking down at the gun. The safety was off, and the weapon felt odd in her left hand, unnatural. Holding it frightened her, but Soria could not bring herself to put it down. A crazy woman. She was crazy for doing this.

It won’t make the dark place go away inside you,
whispered a small, hard voice in her head.
It won’t make it easier to sleep at night. You were reckless the last time you got hurt.

And before
that
she had been reckless, too; in that free-spirited, love-of-life way that had taken her on long journeys down unfamiliar roads, into the most remote regions of the world, with only luck, brains, and a gift for languages to keep her safe. She had considered the consequences and danger but never let herself be ruled by fear. She’d never imagined that what could go wrong actually would. She had trusted people as much as her instincts would let her.

Now, here, she felt that same drive in her gut, that old intuition. She had thought it dead inside her; trust, gone forever. Maybe it should have stayed dead.

Karr glanced sharply at the open door. Soria heard nothing, but in two smooth movements the shape-shifter crossed the room and pressed himself against the wall. She followed, but was several steps away when he lunged through the door into the hall, golden light streaking across his skin. Soria heard a muffled snarl—and watched in horror as Karr stumbled back into view, a leopard clawing at his shimmering body.

Soria ran forward, but there was nothing she could do as Karr slammed his arm into the leopard’s mouth, trying to push her away. Robert and Ku-Ku were nowhere in sight. The gun was useless in Soria’s hand.

“Serena!”
she screamed, shoving the weapon into the elastic waistband of her leggings. She lunged and grabbed the leopard’s slashing tail, hauling backward as hard as she could.

The shape-shifter twisted violently and her body began to shift, a transformation of light and flesh that lengthened her legs and straightened her spine. She did not stop fighting, though. She struggled harder, with terrifying desperation. Karr pivoted on one foot and slammed Serena so hard against the wall it cracked. Merciless, enraged.

Soria heard a scuffing sound behind her, and she turned. One of the masked gunmen had appeared, was raising a weapon. His eyes widened when he saw Karr and Serena, and he stared with a horror that seemed to melt through his ski mask. Soria was afraid he would piss himself. She had a feeling her own bladder might empty, were their positions reversed: the sounds that Serena and Karr were making as they tore into each other were hair-raising, and the spectacle of their desperate inhuman bodies was something out of a fantasy movie.

To be honest, Soria later thought, she might have been fine if she had stayed perfectly still. But she did not, and the movement caught his attention. The man’s gaze fell on her with almost desperate relief.

His mouth moved. Soria could not hear him. She realized she was holding the gun again. She had no idea how it had gotten back into her hand, but it was pointed at the man. Her arm trembled violently.

Shoot him,
she told herself.
Him or you.

But her finger was frozen, and she could not focus enough to aim. When she looked at the man in front of her, she saw another face instead: pale and fleshy, covered in thick glasses perched on the tip of a bulbous nose speckled with greasy pores. She could smell the memory, smell
him,
like old kitty litter and moldy broccoli.

Ghost fingers twitched. Pain rocketed through her head. She heard another shout, but it sounded very far away.

And then strong arms grabbed her around the waist and yanked her backward. Shots boomed out. The gun was wrested from her hand, and her vision cleared enough to see Serena—barely human, covered in spotted fur—returning fire. She was bleeding from deep cuts and scratches; and her eye patch was gone, revealing a gaping hole.

“Are you hurt?” rumbled Karr, the tremendous heat of his body soaking through Soria’s clothing into her skin. For one moment she sagged against him, limp and numb, hungry for someone else to be strong—these arms holding her were the strongest she had ever felt—but reality set in, and she shook her head in response, struggling to break free.

Karr did not release her. He held on even more tightly as Serena finally lowered the gun. The masked soldier was dead, and two other bodies that Soria had been too distracted to notice lay sprawled in the hall nearby.
Robert and Ku-Ku’s work,
she decided, wondering where they were.

Serena stared at the piles of corpses, at the blood spreading toward her clawed feet. She was human only in her bipedal form; everything else belonged to a cat. The shape-shifter’s face made her look so much like Egyptian statues of Isis that Soria suspected the gods of the Nile had sprung into existence because of interactions between shape-shifters and humans.

Serena herself was certainly imperious enough to frighten mere mortals. She looked at Soria, her single eye cold and furious and more disturbing than the hole in her leopardess head. But her voice was worse: full of pain and dread, and edged with unease. “You released him,” she said.

“I did what I had to. Those men wanted Karr alive.”

“Karr,” Serena echoed, staring. “Everyone who knew about his existence is beyond reproach.”

A low growl rumbled from Karr’s chest. “Speak so I can understand you,” he commanded. “Or I will think you are planning how to capture me again.”

“Maybe we should be,” Soria retorted. “We were discussing the attack. We don’t know who sent these men, but they came for you.”

And me,
she did not add. The men now dead in the cell had told her, in no uncertain terms, that she would be traveling with them. She knew quite well it was the only reason she hadn’t taken an immediate bullet to the brain.

“Let go,” she said to Karr.

He growled again, softly. “Will she use that weapon on you?” He was talking about Serena.

“To stop you, maybe, so don’t bother using me as a shield.”

“I am no coward,” he snapped, pushing Soria away—but with a gentleness completely at odds with his harsh voice and demeanor. Then Karr stepped in front of her, facing Serena with his arms held loosely at his sides. Scales rippled over his massive muscles, and a ruff of golden fur spread down his spine. His fingers lengthened into long black claws. “Tell her we will finish this,” he whispered.

“Serena,” Soria said quietly, but the shifter-woman was already shaking her head.

“I am no fool.” Serena stood very still, her gaze locked on Karr. “I might not speak his language, but I know what he wants.”

“Then let him go,” Soria replied. “Or kill him now. I think he would prefer that to the cage you had him in.”

“What are you saying to each other?” Karr demanded. “Tell me!”

Soria ignored him.

A bitter smile flitted at the corner of Serena’s feline mouth. “Look at his anger,” the shape-shifter warned. “You think you know him so well? He’ll murder you for that naivety.”

“You have bigger problems,” Soria replied. She moved in front of Karr, felt him reach for her—and knocked aside his hand without thinking. He went very still, and so did Serena, tensing. Soria pretended not to notice, but inside her body, her heart hammered so hard she thought she might pass out.

“Give him a chance,” she whispered, unable to speak any louder; not without the risk of her voice breaking on the words. “Give me a chance to do my job and find out whether or not he can be trusted.”

Serena stared, golden light trickling from her eye. “You’re a fool.”

“You could have killed him already,” Soria replied quietly. “Or drugged him. But your people want him alive, conscious. Someone else does, too. Why?”

“Because they are all idiots,” Serena whispered. “You can never trust him. It is in his blood. His kind are broken from the inside.”

Chills rode down Soria’s spine. “How do you know?”

“He is a chimera. All they are good for is war.”

Serena spat on the ground at his feet. Karr snarled. Again, Soria acted without thinking and grabbed his arm. Deep scratches covered his skin, which was slick and hot with blood. She expected him to pull away, even to strike her, but instead he quivered beneath her grip, rooted in one spot. She risked a look at him, unwilling to let go no matter how much she wanted. Touching Karr felt the same as being burned, and his gaze was no different. He stared at her with wild intensity, dangerously thoughtful.