Read Online The Fire King by Marjorie M. Liu - Free Book Online Page 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