Dragon's Ground (The Desert Cursed Series Book 2) Read online

  “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.”

  He made a zipping motion across his mouth, even while he grinned like the fool he was. Another time I would have grinned back. But not in the midst of this mess. I grabbed a kukri blade and sliced through the attached rope.

  “Thanks.” He rubbed at his wrist.

  With some effort, I put the flail back in its sheath across my spine, wondering why I’d pulled it in the first place. While the fight hadn’t been going great, it also hadn’t been so close to being a full-out rout on the gorcs’ part that I’d need to pull the powerhouse weapon that liked to suck my energy away.

  That spoke volumes about the attachments the magical weapon could have, which should have made me nervous. But it didn’t.

  “Marcel, let’s get the fuck out of here before they bring their friends back.” I turned from him, checking the gorcs’ bodies quickly to see if they had anything worth taking. The only thing of interest I found was a sheaf of papers in a leather satchel. I flipped through them. They were blank. I took it anyway. Good for lighting fires at the very least.

  Marcel followed me with a small length of chain dangling behind him. “How did you know I was there? You must really like me, to save me from the gorcs. I didn’t think you really liked me, seeing as you turned down my offer to flounce.”

  “Or I really don’t like gorcs because they are creatures that belong to the Jinn, and I’m not an asshole to leave anyone with them, maybe?” I offered.

  “No, I think you really like me. Ten flouncings for you. The question is, all at once or spread out over one glorious night?” He made a reach for me, and I stepped out of the way.

  I couldn’t help the laugh. I really tried not to, but he was so dumb, he was funny. “Marcel, seriously. I do not want a flounce of any kind from you.”

  We climbed the loose scree slope to where I’d left Kiara and the horses. Though I was irritated with her, I wasn’t really pissed. At least not until I stepped around the boulder to find only Balder left standing where I’d given him the command.

  Kiara and her horse were gone.

  I sighed, anger and frustration coursing through me. She was a fucking child having a baby and obviously couldn’t be trusted. I was babysitting her. Fuck me sideways. I looked at the satyr.

  “Can you keep up on foot?” I asked Marcel.

  “Of course.” He sounded indignant. “I can outrun any horse.”

  I lifted an eyebrow, doubting he could outrun Balder, but kept that to myself. “Then why didn’t you outrun the gorcs?”

  He frowned, and a wave of sadness rolled off him. “I was caught with my friend. We were. . . busy.”

  His friend. The one on the spit that had his bones picked clean by the gorcs. I reached out and put a hand on Marcel’s shoulder. “I’m sorry for your loss. Truly.”

  “We’ve been friends since we were boys, I never thought. . . ” He closed his eyes and big fat tears rolled down his cheeks into his sparse beard.

  I turned away from him, his grief making me feel more than I wanted to. “Well, unless we want to end up the same way, we need to move. Where there is one gorc, there are more. And two ran off to tell their buddies we are here.” Not to mention they knew my name. That couldn’t be good in any scheme of things.

  He bobbed his head, and I mounted up on Balder. I turned him, and we started down the slope toward the flatter plain at a jog. As soon as we hit flat ground, I urged Balder into a gallop. Kiara and her horse couldn’t be that far.

  I had to give Marcel credit, he kept up even with that uncomfortable length of chain dangling. Two miles away, I slowed Balder and Marcel followed suit. “We need to get that chain off or it’s going to rub you raw.”

  “We need to get farther away, I think.” Marcel turned and squinted into the distance.

  I froze. “You see something?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “We can move faster if you are free of it.” I slid out of the saddle and searched for my lock-picking kit in th
e pack.

  Jewel thieving 101. Never leave home without all your tools.

  I dropped to the ground and slid the pick into the iron lock, working it for only a few seconds before it popped off.

  The fetlock was raw, fur gone, flesh torn. I put my picks away and grabbed my hacka paste. Without a word, I rubbed it over the wound and Marcel let out a low sigh. “You’re not like the other supes, you know that, right?”

  “Yeah,” I muttered. “I know.” Did he really have to point out that I was a house cat now? Like right after I saved his hairy goat-bellowing ass?

  “No, I don’t mean your cat shape, though I do find that interesting.” He crouched, and I had to look up fast so I wasn’t staring right at his crotch, a definite invitation to a satyr. “I mean you look out for others. That’s not normal here. It hasn’t been normal for a long time. Not since the massacre.”

  A chill swept down my spine. “What do you know of the massacre?”

  He shrugged and stood. I followed his lead and chose to walk Balder for a bit.

  Marcel sighed. “We all knew that the lions took the brunt of the Jinn’s anger. We knew it and we let them because we were afraid and they were the strongest of us. As long as the Jinn were occupied, they let the rest of us live our lives. Once they massacred your kind. . . we no longer had the safety we once falsely believed we had. We all should have stood together.”

  I frowned, unsure how to take that. As a compliment maybe, but also a confirmation that other supes didn’t look out for one another any longer. It was one thing to know that, of course, but to hear it so blatantly put was a little hard.

  He was quiet a moment. “Where are you going?”

  “Dragon’s Ground,” I answered without much thought, simply because it was no secret. And I doubted Marcel was going to run off and tell the dragons I was on my way. I grinned at the thought of him asking one of the dragons for a quick flouncing.

  “Funny, I’ve been hearing a whisper of a rumor about a dragon that was an outcast.” He tipped his head to one side, as I slowly turned to him.

  “What did you say?”

  He paled, and I realized that perhaps my intensity level had gone a little high.

  I reached out for him and grabbed the tip of one of his nubs. “What rumors?”

  He tilted his head to one side, then pushed my hand away so he could scratch at the nubs on top of his head. “Well, Rev, that’s my friend I was meeting, he came from the western slopes. He said there was a dragon sighted there, but. . . ”

  “It was very small?” I couldn’t help the hope in my voice. Lila, it had to be her!

  “Yes, how did you know?”

  “Could you find where Rev was? Where he heard about the little dragon?”

  “Well, yes. I know where he lives, but his wife hates me. I really don’t want to go there.”

  I put a hand on his shoulder and tightened my fingers until I knew he was feeling the pinch. “You owe me, Marcel. And besides, you should probably tell his wife that he’s gone, don’t you think?”

  Horror flickered over his features. “Tell her that Rev is dead? Good goddess of the mountains, you want me to be killed, don’t you?”

  I fought the irritation that wanted to climb up and out of my mouth. “I doubt very much she’s that bad. She cannot be worse than the gorcs who wanted to roast you on a spit and eat your liver for breakfast.”

  “Says you,” he muttered under his breath, causing my lips to twitch. I’d never met a more spineless creature and yet he made me laugh.

  “Come on. Maybe we can catch up with the cowardly lioness.” I hopped into the saddle once more and Balder broke into a fast trot, picking up on my energy. There was only one dragon that was too small to be believed, and I wasn’t about to let her go this time.

  Though she be but little, she was fierce, and she was my friend, damn it.

  Chapter 7

  Two more miles and we caught up to Kiara and her horse. I wanted to roll my eyes when she first caught a glimpse of us, and booted her poor horse in the sides. He just didn’t have the energy to give her more than a half-hearted gallop.

  I let Balder take the reins, as it were, and we took them over in a matter of minutes. “Kiara.”

  She stared at me as if I were a ghost come to haunt her. “You’re alive. I didn’t know it was you, I just saw something chasing me and I thought. . .”

  “No thanks to your sorry hide.” I threw the words at her. “I know you were scared, but we could have taken them together. Now they know we’re here. I couldn’t stop them all!”

  She slowed her horse and Marcel jogged up beside me. “Is she available?”

  I waved a hand at him. “She’s pregnant.”

  “Oh, perfect,” he cooed. I spun in the saddle to look at him.

  “What? How can that be perfect?”

  He grinned, and I knew it would be in his mind as perfect satyr logic. “Well, I can’t knock her up, and I know she likes to flounce a bounce. How could that not be?”

  Yeah, satyr logic.

  Kiara frowned. “Who is that?”

  “The satyr I pulled out from the gorcs.”

  Marcel waved at her, winked, and blew her a kiss. She blushed and looked away, and I remembered all too clearly the curl of magic Marcel had at his disposal. Sex magic was a real thing and if you weren’t aware of it, you’d end up flouncing a satyr before you thought better of it. I sighed and smacked the top of his head. “Leave her alone, Marcel.”

  “Okay, but only for you, pussy cat,” he said.

  I whipped around and glared at him until he squirmed. “I mean, Zam.”

  I nodded. That was better. “We’re making a pit stop.”

  “No.” Kiara shook her head. “We’re not.”

  I stared at her a moment and then laughed. Because she was out of her mind if she thought she was in charge.

  “What’s so funny?” She glared at me. “You ran into danger without any thought of me or my baby. Just like Steve always says you do to him.”

  I rolled my eyes. I couldn’t help it. “Please, Steve is an idiot.”

  “WAIT!” Marcel roared the word as he skipped and hopped so that he was in front of us, trotting backward. “Do not tell me this girl is the one that your ex flounced around with?”

  His eyes were wide with a mixture of shock and hope.

  Kiara huffed. “It wasn’t like that.”

  He held up his hands. “Right, I’m sure Steve loves you the best.”

  If I hadn’t been sitting in the saddle, I would have fallen to the ground laughing. As it was, I bent over the saddle horn and struggled to breathe for a good solid minute. “Oh, my gods! Marcel, you are my fucking favorite satyr of all time.”

  “Well, no doubt, you did save me,” he said.

  Kiara was not amused.

  I was in my fucking glory.

  “That was good, right?” Marcel danced around us. “I mean, it took only a little putting of the puzzle pieces together, but damn. Too funny.”

  He gave a hop and a kick with both feet, flicking his tail as he did.

  I grinned. “Yeah, that was good work.”

  The wind swirled around us, bringing the smell of rain right before a roll of thunder cut through the air.

  I hunched my back. I was no different from most other felines. I did not like getting wet if I could avoid it.

  “Marcel, how far to your friend’s home?”

  He cocked his head. “If we’re going full speed, maybe half a day’s ride?”

  I bobbed my head. “Then we go now, as fast as we can.”

  Outrunning a thunderstorm was one thing, but there were still gorcs behind us. I wasn’t going to assume we’d lost them. In fact, we were going to ride like they were hot on our asses. I couldn’t throw the feeling that they would come after us.

  They know your name. Of course, they are coming after you.

  “My horse is tired,” Kiara whined.

  “Then shift and run on your ow
n feet,” I said without another look. “We need speed and you need to give it up.”

  “I’m pregnant. I don’t want to shift again. It hurt.”

  She was clinging to an old wives’ tale that shifting too much while pregnant could harm the child.

  But I couldn’t force her to do it.

  What if something did happen to the baby that had nothing to do with the shifting? She’d blame me. I’d blame me. I hunched my back further. “Fine. We go as fast as you and your horse can go.”

  As fast as they could go turned out to be a quick walk. Fuuuuuk. I wanted to tip my head back and howl like a wolf shifter.

  I finally got off and walked beside Balder. I might as well give him a break where I could. And the blood flow would help when the cold came—

  The rain slammed into us without any warning. There was no gentle patter that led up to it, just an opening of the heavens that left us soaked in a matter of seconds.

  Marcel was as bedraggled as I was, and I could see him shivering, his upper body naked except for the dusting of fur that protected him. I went to Kiara’s pack; she yelled as I yanked her blanket out and handed it to Marcel. He bobbed his head and wrapped the blanket over his shoulders.

  “That’s mine!”

  “Well, then, you should have thought about that before you condemned us to all get soaked, you selfish twit!” I snarled back at her. She cowered from my anger and I didn’t feel a stitch of sorrow for it.

  We stopped after a few hours to eat and feed the horses to keep their energy up. The rain hadn’t eased off a single drop. If anything, as the day began to wane, the rain came down harder, pushing across us in sheets and waves. The only thing keeping us from full-on hypothermia was the fact that we were all walking, moving, and keeping the blood flowing.

  As we stood in a tight circle to eat, a rumble slid through the ground and up the soles of my feet. I blinked away the raindrops hanging from my eyelashes and looked back the way we’d come.

  A dark mass of bodies rumbled our way, their large flat feet slamming into the ground, which was the only warning we were getting. The gorcs had found their friends. A hell of a lot of them.