Lost (17 page)

"I…I'm
sorry. I wish we had tried other avenues, wish we hadn't come here
and killed your friend."

Set
bowed his head. "Now is not the time to discuss such things. It
is not the place of one such as you or me to question the actions of
our queens. The stream moves as it moves and it is for us to be the
tssath
…the
strong raft for our queens to guide to the safe haven."

Set
stepped forward and clasped me on the shoulder with a hand that could
have easily ended my life with a single injection of venom. "Again,
your sentiment shows much honor if little understanding of the way
the world works. Go see to your queen and I will go see to mine."

Isaac Nazir
The Lamia Enclave

I did
eventually go to Celeste, but first I asked the workers to lead me to
our quarters. We followed another winding, seemingly aimless set of
paths and five minutes later I followed the workers into another
cave, only calling it a cave didn't do it justice.

Two steps into
the mouth of the cave the passageway took a sharp turn to the right.
Directly after the bend a curtain of vines blocked off the passage so
completely that they seemed to divide two different worlds. On the
outside of the curtain was a dimly-lit passage that, other than being
exceptionally clean, looked much like any other cave. On the inside
was a series of rooms lit by organic-looking bulbs that seemed to
grow into the surface of the rock.

The floor was
carpeted with something that looked like an extremely short,
extremely dense kind of grass. There were three stone beds that were
little more than raised platforms carpeted by more of the soft green
vegetation that made up the carpet.

I hesitantly
set Kristin down on the large bed in one of the rooms, but I was
surprised to find that the 'mattress' was soft and springy. I bent
down and poked at the carpet and was amazed at the complete lack of
insect life. I was able to shear the end off of one of the blades of grass,
but the clear liquid that leaked out was more like water than
anything else.

It was an
environmentalist's fever dream. There wasn't anything artificial
anywhere. There was even a bathroom that seemed to dispose of wastes
by having some kind of plant absorb them. The kitchen didn't have any
kind of refrigerator, but there were long vines hanging down one wall
that had a variety of fruit growing off of them.

The vines were
simply too small to grow the crazy amount of fruit I was seeing, so I
was pretty sure that the main body of the plants must be somewhere
else. Presumably that was where they got the sunlight, water, and
nutrients that they needed.

After giving
myself a quick tour I came back out to the main room to find that my
escorts had remained exactly where I'd left them.

"Please
carefully set Ash down next to Kristin. The bags can go wherever."

The lamias
nodded and did as requested before returning to a kind of parade rest
as if waiting for additional orders. I searched my brain trying to
come up with all of the questions that I might need answered before
dismissing them.

"Are we
safe here, are there any threats that we need to worry about?"

A nod followed
by a shake of the closest one's head, and then he walked over to the
curtain and pointed to it.

"So the
curtain keeps everything undesirable out?"

Another nod.

"What
about outside? Do we have to worry about dangerous insects? Spiders?
Snakes?"

Three more
shakes.

"Can we
eat the food or will it make us sick?"

Once I was
satisfied that we were indeed safe and that we had food and water
enough to make sure that we weren't going to starve, I dismissed the
workers with my thanks for their help, and then went looking for
Celeste.

I was still in
hybrid form, so it was easy to pick her scent out. I didn't want to
go crashing through the walls of vegetation though, so it took me a
few minutes to find the correct path.

When I finally
found her she was sitting on a large rock that had been carved into
the shape of a bench, dangling her hybrid feet in the stream that ran
through the center of the small clearing. She stood as I came into
sight and then stalked over to confront me.

"What did
you do, Isaac?"

"What do
you mean, what did I do? I took care of Ash and Kristin. What else
was I supposed to do, go off and pout like a spoiled child?"

She wanted to
hit me. I could see it in her eyes, but something stopped her from
taking that step. It didn't stop her from hurling insults at me
though.

"No, you
oaf. What did you do to ruin things with the lamias? It's never
happened like this before. We were supposed to win one challenge
match and then be granted access to their queen. You screwed things
up somehow, offended them by asking for help deciding who to fight."

Anger had been
building in a slow burn in the back of my mind for months now. First
Oblivion had stolen Jess' memory, which had destroyed the life I'd
struggled so hard to build with her.

Then Alec had
made a ton of bad decisions that had nearly gotten us all killed,
until Adri came back, at which point we were supposed to just forgive
and forget months of hell. Then Alec had started freezing me out,
replacing me with Ash and a bunch of pack leaders who'd never lifted
a finger to help us when Brandon had been half a step away from
killing our dominants and absorbing the submissives.

That was all
old anger that I knew all too well, but it had been joined by new
anger. Anger at Ash for not turning and running sooner so that we
could have worked as a team rather than him getting nearly cut in
half. He'd left me alone with no help other than Celeste to try and
keep him and Kristin alive, and neither of the Hunts had bothered
telling me the full truth of what we were getting into by going to
the lamias for help.

Even worse,
they'd both acted like they had all of the answers when the truth was
that they didn't know much more than they'd already told me. And now
to top it all off, Celeste was blaming me for the mess that we were
in.

"How many
times?"

"What?"

"How many
times did your ancestors come here and ask the queen for help? Twice?
Three times?"

"Three
times, why?"

"Because
you're behaving like a child. Of course things aren't going the way
that you planned. You know next to nothing about what we're dealing
with. You have a bunch of lame theories passed down from ancestors
who came here before humans even understood how electricity worked.
We're dealing with an entirely different species here, one with its
own culture, one that doesn't seem to have much, if any,
cross-contamination with modern human culture. We have no idea what's
going to happen next."

"What, and
you're better placed to know how to get us out of here alive? Maybe I
only have a handful of stories passed down over hundreds of years,
but that's more than you've got. You should be grateful that I came
and bailed the three of you out rather than just leaving you at the
hospital to die."

"Oh, so I
should just shut up and soldier? Is that it?"

"Yeah,
basically. You have your role to play and I have mine. All you have
to do is hit people. I have to figure out what changed this time
around and get us back on track so we can get our answers and get out
of here before you go up against their real fighters and get your
head handed to you."

"That's
the biggest crock of crap I've heard in a long time, but you're right
about one thing. You're going to end up sitting around on your butt
while I risk my life over and over again killing people I don't have
any quarrel with so a pair of
queens
can have some kind of
pissing match over whose boyfriend can beat the other one's boyfriend
up. The least you can do is not make my job harder by coming within
inches of getting us all executed out of hand."

It had been a
mistake to come looking for Celeste. I still wasn't sure why I'd done
so, but one thing was certain. I didn't particularly care whether I
ever saw her again.

I turned and
stalked back to the cave where I'd left Ash and Kristin without
looking back.

Isaac Nazir
The Lamia Enclave

It wasn't a
very good excuse, but with all of the craziness that had happened
since we'd arrived in Louisiana, I completely forgot just how many
different shapes I'd worn in such a short time. It was all the more
ironic considering that I'd been worried about that very thing less
than two hours before, but once I made it back to the cave, instead
of settling down for a long stretching session to minimize the
inevitable cramps, I just flopped down on one of the empty beds and
let myself fall asleep.

The cramps
blindsided me. I woke up to excruciating pain as every muscle in my
body simultaneously tried to rip itself free from the bones it was
connected to. I'd pushed the envelope before and transformed too many
times in too short of a time period, but the cramps had never been
this bad before.

Maybe it was
the result of being wounded, or maybe I really hadn't ever pushed
quite so many transformations in such a short time. Either way, two
seconds after the cramps began I started wishing I was dead. Trying
not to scream never even entered into my mind, the pain was simply
too intense to allow for rational thought.

I writhed on my
bed for what felt like forever before the pain started to subside
enough for me to register anything else. Even at that point I was
still hurting pretty badly, but I was able to at least open my eyes
enough to see that I wasn't alone inside of my room.

Celeste had
slipped into my room and was busy stretching and rubbing my legs in
an effort to shorten the duration of the muscle spasms. It was still
hard to think of much else other than the pain, but I noticed that
she was exceptionally good with her hands.

I'd fallen
asleep on my stomach and the muscles in my neck had pulled my chin
all of the way down to my chest, so it was all I could do to breathe,
let alone turn my head to the point where I could see Celeste, but I
knew it was her based on her scent. After another micro-eternity of
pain she finished up with my second leg and moved around to my right
arm.

The arms went
faster. Nearly everyone's strongest muscles are in their legs, and I
was no exception to that rule. The muscles in my arms were still
impossibly strong compared to most humans, but then again Celeste had
the same kind of preternatural strength and she was able to rub out
the spasms and knots in both arms in about half the time she'd taken
with the legs.

By that point
the pain had lessened substantially, but the muscles in my core were
still fighting against each other like they wanted to rip me in half.

"Sorry,
Isaac, but these beds weren't exactly made with human bodies in mind.
You're up too high for me to get the rest of you from here. I'm going
to have to climb up there and straddle you."

She was right.
I hadn't paid it much attention, but everything inside of our cave
was sized for seven-foot tall lamia rather than for sub-six-foot-tall
females. The lamia apparently liked their beds taller, wider, and
longer than I was used to.

A few seconds
later Celeste was up on the bed with me, kneeling with her legs on
either side of my waist as she tried to relax the muscles in my back
and shoulders. The pain was getting down to manageable levels, but I
still couldn't speak, and fighting my own muscles to make them unknot
enough for me to breathe had tired me out more than I'd realized.
Even as the pain decreased, I found that I was having more and more
difficulty breathing.

Celeste was
apparently listening closely enough to realize what was going on.

"I'm not
done with your shoulders yet, but we'd better get you flipped over or
you're going to be in real trouble soon."

Celeste hopped
back down off of the bed and then pulled me to the very edge of the
bed before climbing back up next to me and turning me over. This time
she straddled me just above my knees and went to work on my
diaphragm, pushing in on my upper stomach when the muscles seemed to
want to contract, and then pulling back away to give them a chance to
relax again.

It wasn't as
efficient when it came to relaxing the muscles in my abdomen, but the
sheer amount of pressure she was putting on my stomach compressed my
lungs even beyond what my diaphragm was doing. It hurt more than the
cramps, but she was effectively breathing for me because whenever she
let off the pressure my lungs naturally expanded, at least a little,
even when the muscles had other ideas.

Over the next
few minutes my abdominals slowly started to relax and I was able to
breathe at least a little on my own. Once I wasn't in any danger of
suffocating, I stopped panicking and Celeste moved up so she was
straddling my stomach. She wasn't sitting on it, her weight was all
on her knees so as not to make it difficult for me to breathe, but I
was relaxed enough that I could start processing other things now as
she started on the muscles of my chest.

Her hands were
firm, but surprisingly soft. She was too focused on her task to look
up and meet my gaze, but that was probably a good thing. Before I'd
gone to sleep I'd showered. Once the swamp water, blood and dirt had
all been cleaned off I hadn't been able to bring myself to put one of
my dirty, bloody ha'bits back on, so I'd just pulled on a pair of
jeans and fallen asleep without a shirt on.

Apparently
Celeste had felt much the same way. She'd showered while I'd been
asleep, and then slipped into the clothes from the boat. She was
wearing a soft, black tube dress that trailed across my skin as she
leaned forward to work the last of the spasms out of my pectorals,
and I could feel her bare legs rubbing against my sides.