The Detective Inspector Chen Novels Volume Two by Liz Williams

Author:Liz Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2017-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

62

“You know what? I haven’t done this enough,” Jhai said.

“Tough,” Zhu Irzh replied unhappily. He didn’t want to sound unsympathetic, but Jhai was right. Deny your own true nature and look what happens: suddenly you’re standing on a terrace in someone else’s Hell, while a raging, pacing tiger waits impatiently for your blood. “Do your worst.”

“I always do.” But she was nervous all the same, Zhu Irzh knew. Jhai, still in her tattered bridal finery, stood before Agni and his guests and his harem and closed her eyes. It didn’t take long; she must have been really pissed off, Zhu Irzh thought. Stripes barred Jhai’s skin. A tail switched her ankles, and that was that: the bridal dress fell to the floor like a pool of blood. Jhai turned, snarled, and leaped at Lara.

She hit her cousin around the waist, bowling the growling Lara across the length of the terrace. Lara was a lot bigger in her tiger shape, Zhu Irzh noticed, though there was little to choose between the two women in their human aspect. Perhaps it was something to do with the number of kills. In which case, oh dear. Lara rose and swatted Jhai with a paw; Jhai went down, bloody grooves along her flank. She struggled up, but Lara was waiting. Lara sprang onto her cousin’s back, jaws aiming at Jhai’s throat. Jhai rolled over like an angry kitten and raked Lara’s gut with her hind claws.

It didn’t disembowel her, but it must have hurt. Lara screamed and it sounded more human than cat. She sprang backward, curling into a ball, but one paw lashed out and caught Jhai across the throat. There was a lot of blood. Jhai went down, making gargling sounds. Zhu Irzh started forward and was hauled back by one of Agni’s spirits. Lara’s tail twitched, she crouched, her head went down, and she sprang, claws fully extended. And Zhu Irzh, a coward after all (or so he would tell himself later) closed his eyes, but only in the second that it took for a spell to go spinning past him, radiating out like the ripples of a stone hurled into a pool and tasting of blood and Jhai and pain.

When the demon opened his eyes again, Jhai was standing on the blood-slick stones of the terrace, naked. One arm dangled uselessly by her side and her ribs were gouged into furrows. A ragged tear ran across her collarbone to the shoulder. But in her good arm, she was holding a small, surprised, striped cat.

“You didn’t say I couldn’t use magic,” Jhai said.

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