Crucible of Fate (25 page)

“Where the fuck are your khatyu?”

I heard my name yelled, which answered his question, and then men pounded up the stairs, and Kabore was with them, directing, shouting orders, sending them all in separate directions.

I grabbed Logan’s shoulder and dragged him from the house, back out into the courtyard. Koren was there to meet us, along with a disheveled-looking Danny, and he pulled Logan after him to a bench. They sank down onto it, and I watched the area flood with my guards and lights as they roused people from nearby homes and carried lanterns and flashlights into the area.

Kabore came running and stopped close, checking me over before he touched me, something he never did. Gently, he pushed me down on the bench beside Koren before he knelt in front of me.

“You must stay, my lord, both you and the semel-netjer. Everyone’s up. Dr. Pakhom is with Rahim. I have men here around you to see to your safety. Please remain here.”

I nodded, and he rose and was gone.

Everything was whirling. I’d just gotten Yuri back—I couldn’t lose him. It simply wasn’t possible. What was I supposed to do?

There was yelling suddenly, two of my men had joined me, and the sound almost shattered me.

“My lord, we found your sheseru.”

I was up and running again, and Logan was right behind me. Taj had been discovered and taken to the makeshift hospital. When we arrived, Dr. Pakhom was working frantically to stop the bleeding as Taj fought to keep an oxygen mask off his face.

I reached him and got around the doctor trying to cover his mouth. He grabbed my hand, and they squished together with blood.

“Hanif Tarek has ten men,” he rasped, and I saw his pallid skin; he was ready to pass out. “They shot Jin when we came up to the house. I didn’t see them, I wasn’t ready and then Jin went down and Yuri got in between a machete and Jin, and—oh God, Domin, he’s dead… I’m so sorry. He’s dead.”

My knees went out and I sank to the ground beside the bed. The same bed Yuri had been in earlier in the day.

“But you have to save Jin. Jin… save….”

“Get out!” Dr. Pakhom screamed. “I can’t save men if you don’t— Get out!”

Everything spun, and I was grabbed and lifted and yanked. I realized Logan had me and I was being dragged after him. Then we were back outside in the hot, sticky night air.

“Where?” Logan demanded. “Tell me where they would be!”

“I—I don’t—”

“Domin!”

Jamal’s words came back to me then, our conversation about the tribe of Feran.

“Conceal him?”

“Yes.” Jamal nodded. “If they were to take him into the catacombs of Abtu to hide him or simply abandon him there, then for us, who are not familiar with the cavern, it would be highly unlikely that we could locate him….”

“Domin!” He yelled again.

“They took them to the catacombs,” I apprised him. “Hanif wouldn’t think we’d ever go there because we don’t know them. That’s where they are.”

“You’re certain?”

“I am.”

“Okay,” he said, and that quickly, I saw his reason return, saw the frenzy leave him, and watched him take a breath and settle.

“Kabore!” I yelled over at my steward. “I need you to get keys to a car and meet me at the catacombs now! Right now!”

“At once, my lord!”

He never second-guessed me, so by the time we reached the Hummers, he was there with five men. Logan and I got in the back of the one Kabore pointed at, and Koren followed, scrambling in after us as Kabore got in the passenger seat and one of my men slid behind the wheel, ready to drive.

“Where are we going?” Kabore shouted.

“To the catacombs,” Logan roared. “Domin knows that’s where they went.”

“How do you know?” Koren yelled as the engine roared to life and four other men climbed in before we lurched forward.

“I just do,” I said, lowering my voice so everyone else would, ordering the driver to hurry.

“Logan, we should wait to speak to the yareah or see if Rahim or Taj will wake—”

“No, Domin knows,” Logan assured his brother.

“This is crazy,” Koren chided. “You don’t know and—”

“Domin,” Logan cut off his brother, his tone solid. “Yuri’s no more dead than I am,” he announced, and I when I gazed into his golden eyes, he was him again, all strength and power. “Do you have any idea what you would actually need to do to kill Yuri Kosa?”

“It just takes a gun, Logan, which they have.”

“Yeah, but that makes no sense,” he said thoughtfully. “If they were going to kill Yuri, they could have shot him like they did Rahim and Taj. It’s not logical.”

I closed my eyes and breathed in and out and tried to think with my head and not my heart.

The Hummer made it to the top of the hill, and the headlights found a black panther in the darkness.

“My lord!”

Logan was out of the car before it even stopped, running fast, legs flying, arms pumping, covering the ground and then falling down beside Jin. I was right behind him, glancing around for Yuri and seeing nothing.

“Check everywhere!” I ordered the men fanning out around us.

“Jin!” Logan howled, and I watched him wrap his arms around his mate and bury his face in his fur. “No, no, no… please.”

I had never seen Jin so still, and it was hard to watch Logan lift the large head of the panther into his lap.

“I need you! Your son needs you!”

Nothing happened, and I noticed Logan’s shirt smeared with fresh blood.

“Logan, he’s bleeding.”

“I know he’s fucking bleeding,” he choked out, his voice as I had never heard it before, utterly fractured.

“Anything?” I called over to the others.

“There’s blood, my lord… so much blood.”

I wasn’t ready to lose Yuri. Maybe in another fifty years. Possibly. But not yet, not now….

Logan roared and the air suddenly reeked of sex.

“What did you—” I went down on one knee, not because I was fighting and wanted my friend, but because of the energy it drained from me to have the heat and desire wash over me. His pheromones simply annihilated me.

Koren went to his knees beside me. “Domin, Yuri’s—”

“No,” I said, my hands in the dirt in front of me, head down, trying to draw air into my lungs when it was too thick and wet.

All my men, even Kabore, were frozen. It was overwhelming, the power rolling off Logan Church. And it should have mattered, it was chemical, my body should have responded, but it didn’t. I was a semel, and so I was as strong as he was. Logan and I were different on the outside, but inside, where it counted, we were the same.

“What the hell is that?” someone gasped.

“Shit.” Koren caught his breath, and his hands, clutching at me, hurt. “Domin, watch out.”

I glanced up in time to see Jin’s body contort, lift, and bow into a semicircle before snapping in half the other way.

Scrambling to my feet, I dragged Koren back, then grabbed Kabore’s arm and yanked him after me. I didn’t want to be close.

There was a fine mist of blood, then a hotter spray as Jin screamed, and wings—huge giant dragon wings—erupted from his back.

My men were smart and fell to the ground, faces down in the dirt, so no one was disemboweled by the force of the appendages as they cut through the air.

“Oh Logan,” I moaned, terrified for him.

The creature that rose was not Jin. All I saw were the huge green eyes of a bird, almost a hawk’s head, something resembling a beak, reptilian black skin, and claws, but longer and hooked, like talons. I should have been horrified. Everyone else was except Logan, who was rising slowly and holding out his hand.

There was something… familiar.

“Come to me,” Logan said, and his voice was like honey.

But I needed help, and I was afraid that if Jin succumbed, if he changed back, I wouldn’t get it.

“Yuri!” I screamed.

“No,” Logan cried out as the creature Jin was now disappeared from in front of him and reappeared, towering over me. I understood that he had actually just leaped or flown, but it was too fast to track with the naked eye; it seemed like magic.

“Oh dear God,” Kabore moaned, and I could tell how truly frightened he was.

The head of the beast moved just like a bird, almost robotic, and when he bumped my chin, I tilted my head back, baring my throat. If he wanted to kill me, I was dead.

“Jesus, Domin,” Logan said under his breath, easing closer.

I closed my eyes, trying not to shake as the beak slid slowly up the side of my neck.

“Don’t move don’t move don’t move,” Koren chanted at a whisper, his breathing shallow as I felt his hand close around my bicep.

He was trying to offer me his strength, but I was afraid that if he tugged on me, if he jostled or stirred me in any way, Jin would startle and kill me.

“Domin, you stupid fuck,” Logan exhaled.

The talons closed on my shoulders, and I felt the ends like nails pressing through my shirt but not breaking skin, closing but not tightening.

“Domin,” Logan pleaded. “Please don’t send him into that cave after—”

“Yuri,” I said, going for broke. I leaning my head forward and slid my palm flat up the curve of the beak. I quivered as he inhaled my scent but also Yuri’s, the sweat from his skin, the musk from him marking me, and whatever lingered from us being in bed together. I watched the nekhene and I understood where the term hawk-cat had come from, and maybe even, possibly, stories about Horus.

The eye flicked everywhere but he saw me clearly, and when he tipped his head, like he was listening, I grabbed hold of his shoulder. He reacted and the talons closed instinctively.

Razor sharp claws met through my body, through skin and muscle, and then bone. The cracking made me scream.

“Domin!”

A rush of air and then I was fifty feet off the ground, dangling from what was left of my collar bone and shoulder.

“Jin!” Logan roared below us, and I saw him start to run.

Why doesn’t he shift so he can keep up?
I wondered vaguely as my head whipped back when we moved from gentle lift to flight.

It was probably what it was like to be carried off by a bird of prey. I couldn’t even fathom the speed as we blasted through the dark night toward the rock. At the last second, he dipped, and rock formations, huge stalactites and vugs were a blur as we passed them. A miscalculation, a wrong turn, and at the speed we were going, we’d be dead. It would be an instant death to be shattered on one of the walls of the enormous cave.

I heard gunfire, but it was ricocheting off rock and not hitting us. They couldn’t see us, it was too dark, and we were moving too fast, only the roar of the nekhene cat giving us away.

He released me when he dropped to the floor of the cavern, and the wings did what they had not done to my men—when he whirled around, he beheaded two of the men before the others hurled themselves into the dirt.

“Defend me!” Hanif Tarek screamed, and I saw him then—the new semel.

I stumbled forward with my ruined left arm and saw one of the men rise, rifle in hand, and aim for Jin.

Kicking hard, I caught him in the side of the head. He went down fast and I stumbled forward to reach Tarek.

“No!” he screamed, and I saw that it wasn’t Jin he was terrified of, but me, bleeding and broken, lurching toward him.

He lifted a pistol.

“Where is my mate?” I yelled.

“I’m going to kill him. You’re vile and unclean, and it’s a desecration that you are the semel-aten.”

I didn’t stop moving forward. “I’ll trade you your father for my mate,” I lied, because he wasn’t going to live to see the dawn. “Tell me where he is!”

“Stop walking before I shoot you!”

“Where is my mate?” I thundered as I heard wailing behind us. His men, except for the one I had kicked unconscious, were being eviscerated.

“I’m going—”

“Your father for my—”

“Fool!” he rasped as he fired.

Same shoulder, which was actually kind of lucky.

“Blow it up!” he shrieked into a walkie-talkie I hadn’t realized he had.

We were in further than I thought, so I heard the explosion, but there was no blowback.

I slammed him up against the huge rock he stood in front of and closed my hand around his throat as I felt his gun press against my cheek.

“The priest ordered me to kill your mate, semel-aten, and that I will do.”

“Why?” I trembled with pain.

“Only the priest had honor; he was all I could believe in. It was all a nightmare, my father, the things he let his sheseru do to me—all of it. But when I told the priest, he said once I killed your sekhem, once Yuri Kosa was dead, that it would all end… everything would end… all the horror… just end.”

“Oh, it’s going to end,” I promised, and I shifted to my werepanther form, crushing his throat, his windpipe, in my grip.

Everyone always forgot I was a semel. But no matter what they said, no matter how many times they all said
kadish
, impure, I wasn’t. My blood was of the line of Menhit, and I was a werepanther.

Hanif Tarek had been surprised, and his last expression conveyed that. The priest had lied, convinced him I was not a true semel. But I was, and he paid for his mistake with his life. I had a moment of regret that the priest had known about the horrors at Ipis and had done nothing to stop them, but the semel’s son had chosen to put this faith in the wrong man.

Releasing his body, I stumbled back and fell down, dropping to my knees in the dirt. Unable to hold onto my half-man/half-panther form, I cried out for Yuri before I stared at the nekhene cat.

“Please,” I begged.

He shuddered, and I saw that he, too, was losing strength. I had no idea what kind of wounds he’d sustained before Logan’s pheromones forced the change, and I was suddenly panicked even as I shivered.

I was getting cold.

“Jin,” I said, my voice cracking. “Yuri.”

He was gone like he’d never been there. He left no trace of sound, nothing. And it struck me then why Logan hadn’t shifted earlier, because if he needed to bring Jin back, he had to be himself to do it. I envied him his reason in the midst of a nightmare.

It was all my fault.

Jin, forced into a new and frightening nekhene form, that was on me. Logan, outside, probably hoarse from yelling, petrified of losing his mate, that too was my fault. No one would be in Ipis if they hadn’t followed me. I was to blame for all of it. I had led Rahim and Taj and everyone else to their deaths. I was a horror.