Chapter 34

Tamarinda faded from sight, from reality itself. Burns had been forced to send the only woman he’d ever truly loved to that one terrible place from which a human could never return.

His lover had sacrificed herself. He didn’t know why, exactly. He had an inkling: that purple-haired girl, somehow. He’d smelled the girl’s awful perfume on her. The perfume, and the smear of blood upon her cheek. That blood hadn’t belonged to Tamarinda.

So. What was done was done and could not be undone. Al-Sahir hadn’t given her much of a choice. That conniving bastard had used her spellbinding against her as a means to his own end.

Oh, yes. Burns brushed his hands and cracked his knuckles, pivoting to face the magician. This would, indeed, be his end.

Burns lowered his head and smiled, wide, wider, his teeth tiger-sharp. He channeled his fury as the canyon channels the river, allowing it to course through him, filling him. It filled him with a fire that burned bluer and hotter than he’d ever burned. All the anger and frustration he’d endured over the millennia—if he saved it and stacked it and added it all up, it could not measure up to what he felt now.

He’d been forced to fulfill the Forbidden Wish against his own woman.

And this was the wretched man who had forced his hand.

His human form shimmered, the flame inside consuming him. He allowed it to hurt, using the pain as fuel. The magician’s eyes were black pinpoints on white, mouth twisted in a grimace. No doubt he’d long imagined Burns strength and potential. His terror must be devouring him from within, imagining that power unfettered and turned upon him.

Hmm. Burns nodded. Devoured. Good idea.

He dropped and reformed, taking the shape of the tiger. Striped shadow, hunter of the night, he who met each danger with a sharp smile. It had been so long since those curved claws had the pleasure of tearing flesh and breaking bone.

It had been far too long.

He sprang, one heavy claw swiping outward, hooking into the magician’s arm and ripping. The magician’s mouth opened in a scream, a high-pitched wail. He could not run, he could not cower. No place to go.

The wound wasn’t enough to cripple or maim. It was enough to bleed, and to cause pain, and to incite greater terror. One wound wouldn’t kill.

A hundred wounds, well. That was different. And maybe after a hundred wounds, he would begin to feel a little better.

He roared and pawed the ground, shaking his massive head. The magician held his arm and screamed, the smell of urine filling the hot, heavy air.

Burns crouched, readying to spring. His woman, his hand. The line of Al-Sahiri Guardians would pay for what he had endured, on this night and every night that had ever led up to it. Those nights were as uncountable as the grains of sands that filled the Empty Quarter, where time itself cowered before the oppression of infinity.

It would to be a long time before he began to feel better.

Al-Sahir screamed, all humanity stripped from the sound.

Burns smiled and ran his tongue across the tips of his fangs. It would be a very long time, indeed.