Tiger Eye (11 page)

The Magi glided close. It was disconcerting watching him, his shoulders relaxed, his smile lazy. His eyes betrayed him, though—they were cold glass, sharp and bright, completely unafraid. Even with Hari at her side, Dela felt isolated under that gaze, vulnerable. She had escaped this man once before, but looking into his face, she wondered if she had been lucky—if simple surprise had been her only savior.

Dela searched his body with her mind, seeking steel, any kind of metal. She found nothing. He was completely unarmed. No less dangerous, though—she remembered his strength, his inhuman rage. The hollow void of his eyes. He frightened her, and she did not trust him. Not one bit.

“I have been searching for you, Hari,” said the Magi softly. “For nearly two thousand years I have walked the earth, hoping to tell you this: I am sorry. I was a different man then. Time has taught me the error of my ways.”

To anyone else he might have sounded as sincere as the Dalai Lama, but Dela could taste his deceit like a squirming worm in her mouth.

“Bullshit,” she said, angry. She felt Hari stir, but refused to look at him, instead staring deep into the Magi’s frightening eyes. A deep calm descended over her mind. “Why are you really here?”

He did not try to pretend. His contrite mask evaporated like a noxious fume. A horrible, startling, transformation. “Can’t you read me?” he asked, tapping his forehead, his smile sly.

“Do not speak to him,” Hari warned. “Do not tell him your name, do not stare too long into his eyes. Anything you give him, he will use against you. He is a master manipulator.”

The Magi lay a hand over his heart. “I am a survivor, Hari. Just like you. Perhaps our methods differ, but in the end, we are still both animals. Ruled by instinct, hunger—” He looked at Dela. “—lust.”

Hari’s muscles bunched, and again Dela squeezed his hand. The Magi’s smile widened, and he said something in a musical language she did not understand. Hari stiffened, and a moment later spat out a tangle of incomprehensible words.

“Oh, he likes you,” said the Magi, once again turning his cool gaze on Dela. “How very interesting.”

Hari tucked Dela behind him. She began to protest, but one look at his face and the words died on her tongue. This time, it was Hari who squeezed her hand, a gentle fleeting pressure, warm and solid.

“Say what you must,” Hari said, his voice low, rough. “I am tired of these games. I can ignore you just as easily as I can fight you.”

“You were always a terrible liar.” The Magi tilted his head. “There is too much history between us, Hari. Too much blood and pain. We are the tragedies myths are made of, bound together until some final end. You can no more ignore me than you can die.”

“Very dramatic,” Dela said, peeking around Hari’s arm. “Do you have a point?”

The Magi’s smile was fleeting, forced. “Indeed. I have a task for Hari. If he completes it, I will set him free.”

“Only my skin can set me free.” Hari narrowed his eyes. “Or so you told me, once upon a time.”

“I have your skin. Help me, and I will return it.”

Dela stifled a gasp as Hari threw back his head; his bark of laughter was sharp and cold, so cold. “I would rather remain a slave than help you. Oathbreaker. Murderer. I will have nothing to do with you, unless it is to cut your throat.”

Something tightened in the Magi’s eyes, a bright cruel hunger. “A life for a life, Hari. Was that so hard a bargain?”

“The kind a devil might make,” Dela said.

The Magi’s careful mask fractured. Real anger contorted the
fine lines of his face, which suddenly appeared hollow, sunken: a breathing cadaver. Dela again smelled garlic, the spice of hot pepper. The Magi shook his head, backing away. Profound menace shadowed his eyes.

“I am done,” he said softly. “Remember this day, Hari. You as well, mistress. I tried pleasantries. I should have stayed with pain.” He looked at Dela. “I would have asked you for the box. I am sure you can guess how I will claim it now.”

Hari growled, but Dela shook her head. “Bite me.”

A cold smile, full of teeth. “I just might.”

For a man who purportedly possessed the power to screw with reality, the Magi’s departure was decidedly ordinary. Without a backward glance, he strolled down the corridor past a crowded Starbucks, and pushed open the great glass doors that led out to the taxi circle.

A strangled cry spilled from Hari’s throat, and he began running after the Magi. The shape-shifter moved incredibly fast—a golden-eyed inferno—and Dela tried to follow, dodging startled shoppers left reeling in his wake.

The Magi, halfway through the doors, glanced over his shoulder and smiled. He raised his hand.

Dela screamed as something hard impacted her stomach. Crippling pain contorted her body. She crashed to the floor as claws raked the insides of her ribs, cutting bone.

Through blurred vision, she saw the Magi make his escape; it seemed to her that his shoulders were hunched, his arms wrapped over his own belly.

Strangers touched her. Dela wanted them gone, away, all those unfamiliar hands and voices, pressing against her useless body. And then Hari was there, pushing everyone aside, scooping her up into his strong warm arms. He said her name, but she could not make herself answer.

Darkness swallowed her.

*  *  *

Dela dreamed, but her dreams were ordinary, without secrets from the future. A tiger ate a chocolate bar, and she was dressed like Alice in Wonderland, perched cross-legged on a spotted mushroom, trying to outwit an evil, grinning caterpillar. Dela was just thinking of a witty comeback to the caterpillar’s insulting remarks about her slug-shaped dancing shoes when she woke up.

Disoriented, eyelids gummy, it took her a moment to realize she was in bed.

In bed, tucked against a warm body, a heavy arm draped across her waist.

Dela inhaled the light, indefinable aroma of forest after heavy rain, which barely masked the scent of leather, man. Hari. Not that she had expected anyone else. His weight around her body was unexpectedly comfortable. Soothing. She was afraid to move; she did not want him to pull away. He made her feel safe, a precious gift after a most unsettling day.

She must have twitched—or perhaps her breathing changed. Hari stirred, carefully rolling from her. Dela caught his hand, but she did not look at him. Instead, she tugged Hari close, entwining his fingers in her own until he spooned against her back. His breath warmed her neck, and she sighed.

“Are you well?” he asked quietly, his voice low, rumbling from his chest.

“Better,” she said. “I’ve never fainted before.”

“The Magi sent his powers into your body. I think you made him angry. That, and you were a fine distraction.”

Dela remembered her fleeting glimpse of Hari’s anguish, and fought down a shudder of regret. “You could have gone after him.”

“No,” he said. “I could not leave you.”

“The curse.”

“No,” he said again. “You.”

Again she sighed, snuggling deeper into his warmth. “What happened after I passed out?”

“I brought you here. You were unconscious, but shivering. So cold. I could not seem to warm you, so I thought to use my own body in addition to the blankets. I hope you do not mind.”

“I don’t,” she said. Boy, did she not mind. “And you’re really sure that was the Magi, even after all these years?”

“Yes.” Hari went very still with that one word. Dela tensed.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Sorry he’s still alive, sorry you had to see him … sorry I stopped you. I must have seemed cruel.”

Hari’s chest rose and fell against her back. “Yes, Delilah. At first you did seem cruel. I wanted nothing more than to tear out his throat with my bare hands. I wanted to lap his blood. Taste his death. An old dream.”

He sighed then, and it was a weary sound, ancient and sour. “But you were right. It was neither the time nor the place for my revenge.” Dela felt him shake his head, heard soft laughter, full of bitter surprise. “You are … remarkable, Delilah. You made me listen to reason. Reason, in the middle of a true blood-rage. I do not know what you were thinking. No one comes between a tiger and his prey.”

“Ignorance is bliss.”

This time there was more warmth in his quiet laughter, and Dela felt it from the top of her head all the way down to her toes. She drank in the sound; with it, a memory, carried on the back of his voice.

“The Magi,” she said slowly, trying to remember, to puzzle out the nagging inconsistencies. “Why didn’t he use his powers on me at the Dirt Market? Why didn’t he try to force the old woman to sell him the box? If he’s really so powerful, why would he hold himself back, especially over something so important?”

“He still hurt you,” Hari pointed out. “But you are right. Despite
the harm he caused, his powers seem to have diminished. That, or he has learned caution.”

Dela shuddered, recalling the feel of sharp fingers in her guts. “Caution, maybe—but if that’s diminished, I don’t think I want to know what he’s like at full strength.”

Hari’s arms tightened. “You must understand, Delilah—when I first encountered the Magi, his might was such he could make the air burn with just his fists. If he did not concentrate on withholding his powers, he could not rest his hands on wood or cloth without setting it on fire. For that very reason, he lived in a cave and slept naked on a bed carved of stone.”

“Nifty,” she muttered, remembering heat, the touch of the Magi’s skin. Comprehension made her gasp. “Wait. Is that how your chest was burned? Did he hurt you with just his hands?”

“Yes,” Hari said. His arms tightened. “His fingers were the tools.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have stopped you.”

“No. A good hunter chooses the time and place. I will have another chance, now that I know he wants me back.” Quiet revulsion tainted his voice, a low shudder of hate and bewilderment.

Now that I know he wants me back.

“But for what?” Dela asked. “It doesn’t make sense, not after all these years. I’m sorry, Hari, but you’d think he would have forgotten you by now.”
And just what do you know about psychotic sorcerers? Nothing, nada, zip. You’re a babe in the woods.

“I do not know, Delilah. Discovering he survived is terrible enough. That he wishes to become my master … intolerable.”

Intolerable indeed. The idea of that cold-eyed awful man holding anyone’s life in his hands made Dela want to run screaming for the hills. That, or go all Pompeii on his ass.

“How did he find us?” she asked. “I’m sure he didn’t follow me to the hotel, and he doesn’t know my name.”

She felt Hari shrug, as though to say, “Magic.” Dela, however,
was not entirely comfortable chalking up the Magi’s successes to simple power. Anyone who needed to use bad pickup lines to kidnap a woman was running low on
some
kind of cylinder.

“Be grateful he does not know your name,” Hari said. “I was careful not to use it in front of him. Your name might have given him power over you.”

“How?”

“Familiarity. When you know a person’s true name, it opens a crack into their life, into their mind. Your name is not what you are, but it is what you are called, and that is a profound knowledge to have over another.”

“You gave me your name,” Dela said.

“You were the first person to ask in a long while.”

She sensed there was more to it than that, but she didn’t feel like prying, not if she wasn’t ready to hear the answers.

Her hand felt dwarfed in his loose grip. She freed her fingers and stroked the elegant bones of his wrist, watching the play of shadows against his skin. Surreal, being held by Hari, but she liked it too much to pull away. Perhaps it was the intensity of their shared experiences, her flight into his mind, but all her earlier hesitations were fleeing. She wanted to touch him. She wanted to be touched. His presence felt safe, familiar as home.

“He called you a Magicker,” Hari said, after several minutes of comfortable silence. His lips grazed the tip of Dela’s ear. She shivered. “I have also sensed your power.”

Uneasiness replaced pleasure.
Guess it was too much to hope he would forget.

“I suppose the Magi is also a Magicker?” she asked.

Hari nodded, solemn.

“It’s complicated,” she warned, still reluctant. Of course, Hari was a self-proclaimed shape-shifting warrior who had spent the past two thousand years imprisoned in a box. He
could probably handle complicated. He could probably handle just about anything.

“If you do not wish to speak of it …”

But that was not an option. If she and Hari were truly stuck with each other, he had to know the truth.

“It’s not that,” she said. “What I do runs in my family, but it’s not magic. Not magic like you, anyway.”

“I suppose that is a matter of perspective,” Hari said, and Dela wondered fleetingly if he wasn’t right.

“The simple explanation is that I—we—can do things with our minds. My brother, for example, reads thoughts. If other people are weak or inclined to accept what Max is putting in their heads, he can manipulate, or encourage visions and beliefs.”

“I can imagine the temptation for abuse.”

Dela was not offended. “It’s very serious. Even before our powers manifested, Mom and Dad raised us to adhere to strict rules of privacy and ethics. We couldn’t get away with anything. My mother can read auras, while my grandmother is a pre-cog—sometimes she can see the future. Non-intrusive gifts, but because the power seems to change from generation to generation, my parents knew the possibility existed. They wanted to make sure we were raised responsibly.”

“Can you also read minds?” Hari’s voice was soft, unafraid. Dela slowly exhaled, tension draining from her limbs.

“No,” she said. “I have good instincts for people, and sometimes I dream of the future, but my real talent is with metal. I don’t know how or why, but it just … speaks to me. Besides being able to manipulate metal in subtle ways, I can always sense its components, its age. If a particular person has handled it long enough, I can hear that individual’s echo—an imprint—and I can see the story of the metal. What it has been used for, where it has been. That doesn’t happen often; it takes time for those energies to accumulate.”