9. Lion Versus Spider
Chapter 9
Lion Versus Spider
The were-lion the size of a mountain gorilla bore down on the petite spider-kin like a semi-truck barreling toward a doe.
Unlike a doe frozen in headlights, Liliana dodged nimbly to one side, danced past the massive lion and trailed the tip of her sword across his upper left arm, leaving a scarlet path.
If the contest had been to first blood, Liliana would have just won. But she had no illusions this battle would end in anything but her death or the death of Tray Bradley.
Bradley turned on his toes, faster than she expected. He struck at her with the massive mace.
Liliana turned her shield at an angle, so the mace struck it a glancing blow. The force was still enough to throw her back hard against the triangular bars of the dome. She blinked, dazed, her whole body aching.
Her enemy wasted no time following up his advantage. The mace came at her head with crushing force.
Liliana ducked just in time.
The mace CLANGED against the bars, catching some of her hair.
She felt the strands yank free as she danced away from the restricting bars, toward the center of the dome.
Bradley's clawed foot flew out, trying to trip her or strike her legs.
Ha. Don’t think so.
She leapt up and over, spinning around in the air. Her dodge turned into a driving thrust toward the lion's body.
Bradley bashed her sword aside with his shield hard enough to rip it from her hands. The sword clattered across the concrete cage floor.
His mace followed up the defense with a powerful attack, spiked head swinging toward her body.
Liliana barely got her shield up in time. She took the full force of the heavy mace driven by the werelion’s superhuman power squarely on her shield.
She heard a snap under the crash of metal against metal as the mace connected. Her arm went numb. Her shield, smashed concave by the force of the blow, was ripped off her arm. The blow flung the light spider-kin through the air clear to the other side of the Dome.
Liliana tucked, touched the concrete floor with her right hand, and flipped herself to land on her feet.
Her weapons were gone so she flicked her wrists to pop out her arm blades.
Sickening pain flashed up her left arm as the blade came out on that side. With her second eyes, she could see that both forearm bones were broken. Her arm blades were much tougher and more flexible than bone. The spider-kin staggered a step, steadied her left arm with her right, and flicked the left blade back in, unable to stifle a groan.
More blinding pain hit her, but the unbroken blade stabilized her arm like a living splint. She couldn't use the blade, or the arm. She felt like vomiting.
Tray Bradley bore down on her again from the other side of the circular cage, slowly this time,. His smile grew as he walked. He had all the time in the world.
Seeing his mass, his skill, and assessing her weaponless petite self, down to one functional arm, she felt a wave of hopelessness. She wiped sweat off her upper lip with a hand that shook.
Liliana didn’t want to die, but she’d already seen where this path led. An image of her own smashed corpse flashed in her memory.
Behind Bradley, the Fae prince stood, hands white-knuckled on the bars, his fear bare on his face for any to see, his control shattered. If she died today, he would mourn. She saw that on his face. Beyond that, he would die, too, very soon.
She didn’t want that beautiful, complex soul to end.
Liliana straightened her back. In order to survive, she couldn’t keep going down her current path. She had to change her fate.
I am making a fatal mistake.
She’d fought the lion-kin as if she were a lion-kin. If she had been a lion, she would be a tiny weak lion in a hopeless battle against the fiercest lion in the pride. But while she was her father’s daughter, she was also her first mother's daughter.
She was not a tiny weak lion. She was a spider.
As the gigantic werelion accelerated his stride with a wicked fanged smile on his scarred face, mace drawn back for what he expected to be a finishing strike, Liliana leapt up and to the side, left arm hugged into her body to protect it.
She caught one of the bars of the cage with her right hand. She flipped up, body extended and toes pointed, in a one-handed handstand on the side bars. When her feet went through one of the topmost triangles, she hooked her ankles in the bars. She swung forward, popping out her arm blade to slash Bradley across the shoulders as he charged under her.
Bradley roared a lion's rage and pain, shaggy mane shaking.
Liliana flipped to one side. Her slippers touched down on the concrete floor. She attached a silk line to one of the bars of the cage about two feet off the floor. As the lion charged her again, she danced to his left to yank the line taut.
Even as Bradley tripped, he tucked into a roll. He bounced back to his feet on the opposite side of the dome, mace and shield still in place. "Is that all you got?" he taunted. "I'm going to crush you, little bug."
Liliana swallowed, remembering her crushed body in her vision. But she no longer followed that path.
She climbed the inside curve of the cage to the top as fast as she could. Having one functional hand slowed her. She touched her wrist to a cage bar, attaching a line, as Bradley came after her again.
Holding the line in her good hand, she swung from one side of the dome to the other, avoiding the lion by several feet.
He shifted his charge so she couldn’t avoid him. To attack her, he was forced to put all his weight on his injured left knee.
The spider-kin bounced off the side of the dome to reverse direction She hit that knee from the unexpected angle with the full weight of her body.
She both heard and felt the sickening crunch, even over the noise of the crowd outside the cage.
Everyone in the hangar heard the lion's roar of pain.
Bradley staggered. For just a moment, his shield lowered.
"This is for Marilyn," the spider-kin whispered. She released her line, landing on the lion's shield. Her body weight forced it down another few inches to expose the lion's neck.
He drew back his mace. If that blow struck her, Liliana would die.
She swept her razor-sharp arm blade across his throat, lightning swift, with every ounce of strength she had behind it.
Blood flew in a circle that caught every spectator in the front row. A bit of warm spray touched Liliana’s cheek. The new penny scent of blood overpowered the scent of sweaty lion.
The bushy-maned lion-kin's head slid off backward. His weapon dropped from limp fingers. Liliana rode the twitching body to the ground.
The crowd that had been shouting and growling in a cacophony of noise so ubiquitous, Liliana had long since ceased to hear it, went silent with a collective gasp.
She stood balanced on the lion-kin's shield on top of his massive chest drunk with battle joy. She lifted her face to the ceiling, too high on adrenaline to care that everyone was staring at her. "Daniel Magoro is the king of the lions of North Carolina!" she shouted. "Anyone who says different must face me!"
She opened all her eyes and bared her tiny fangs to her potential opponents. She turned a circle, feet balanced on the shield atop the dead lion beneath her, with the champion lion's blood dripping from her arm blade. "Who challenges Daniel Magoro?" she shouted, daring anyone to answer.
The lions that had spoken for Tray Bradley all dropped their eyes in submission as she looked at them.
One man didn’t look away. Colonel Alexander Bennet met her gaze with one as fierce as her own. Some intense emotion that she couldn't name shone from his dark eyes.
Liliana wished she had not given her word not to look into the prince's heart and mind. She would have given anything to know what he thought and felt in that moment.
Arel Magoro's voice broke the tense silence. "Daniel is king!" she shouted.
Every face but Liliana's and Alexander's shifted and roared in a wave of sound so deep it rumbled the spider-kin's belly. It shook the metal supports of the old hangar.
By the cage door, Daniel was mobbed by the jubilant lions who supported him, and a great deal more who had been too afraid to express their support before. Strong, hairy shoulders lifted the big old lion and carried him away. Even most of the lions who had supported Bradley smiled with relieved delight that Daniel would be king instead.
The pride swept Daniel and his family away, out the doors into the parking lot to celebrate under the stars,
Liliana was left standing in a cage with a dead body.
The cage doors were designed to be opened from the outside. With both arms in good shape, the spider-kin could probably have found a way out.
Probably.
Liliana hated cages. Battle joy still sang in her blood from defeating a powerful opponent in single combat, yet she was stymied by a cage.
A pool of blood spread around Bradley's body. There was no way to step off him without getting it on her slippers.
Alexander Bennett opened the outer door of the cage. While Lieutenant Runningwolf held it open, Alexander opened the inner door.
He had to bend down to reach into the dome through the low entrance. He held his hand out to her.
The spider-kin stepped off the dead body, ignoring the puddle of slippery blood she walked through.
She refused to take the prince's hand. She was the pride-king's champion now. She walked out, head high under the cage door that wasn't at all too low for her. Adrenaline in her veins made even the throbbing pain in her arm fade to unimportance.
The prince followed her out of the cage into the echoing emptiness of the hangar.
Liliana swiped at the blood on her cheek, trying to wipe it off, but there was more on her hand. She just smeared it, making even more of a mess.
There was a spot of red on the prince’s otherwise pristine white shirt. Liliana had threatened the prince's life. She had also committed bloody murder on a military base right in front of a colonel who commanded a unit who specialized in countering dangerous Others.
She lifted her chin, defying him. She was the pride-king's champion now.
Colonel Alexander Bennett ordered his three guards to drop back some distance from him, and turn around to form a perimeter, watching outward for danger. The two lions obeyed instantly. Liliana was theirs to guard now as much as their commander. But the badger-kin, moved away reluctantly, with many a backward glance.
John Runningwolf seemed to think the most dangerous thing in the hanger was the petite spider-kin splattered with werelion blood.
Liliana smiled at him, showing fangs. She liked the idea that he might be right. “Are you worried I will kill your commander?”
The badger-kin’s voice sounded bland as he wrinkled his nose at her. “There’d be so much paperwork.”
With a white handkerchief, the prince wiped Liliana's cheek. When her face was cleaned to his satisfaction, he gently took her right hand. She let him clean the blood off it as best he could with the handkerchief.
Liliana didn’t have to wonder for long what lay behind his dark, unreadable eyes. By promising her a kiss, he gave her what she wanted most.
He cupped her face in his hands, leaned in close, hesitating an inch from her lips so the kiss would be her choice.
Liliana closed the tiny distance.
He kissed her gently at first, lips just brushing hers.
A wash of lavender greeted her third eyes as she opened them. Overwhelming relief. Beneath it was the sharp magenta of admiration, and arctic blue of soaring pride as if she were in some way his, and had made him proud. A fleeting thought of her fighting for him was colored with manipulative satisfaction. He’d gained the ally he sought and she was as formidable as he could hope.
But drowning that icy bit of calculation was a volcano of scarlet red desire. Alexander Bennett wanted her. He wanted to own her. He wanted to possess her. He wanted to control her. But most of all, right then, he wanted to sink himself into her body and touch all that she was.
His kiss deepened, growing hungrier, more demanding.
Liliana made a little sound in the back of her throat that she had never heard herself make before. Her knees trembled. The lion had not weakened her with a mace, but this Sidhe prince did it with a kiss.
The spider-kin pushed against his chest with her one good hand. She needed to take a step back from him to give her head a chance to clear. She licked her lips. Her breath came faster than when she fought. "You are a man of your word."
A broad smile sparkled in his eyes. It looked hungry and dangerous, not at all like the politician's meaningless mask he gave her in his garden.
This Fae prince wanted her. He didn't love her. He probably never would, but he desired the power and fierce, dangerous beauty in her, just as she did in him.
Pete told her before that love might grow over time if given the chance. It was like combat. She risked everything. Love might happen or it might not. She might gain everything she wanted or lose her heart.
"I looked into you," she told Alexander.
"I knew you would." His smile stayed undimmed. He’d allowed her to see his inner self, something he’d threatened to shoot her for before.
"Are you going to start pointing guns at me again?"
His smile turned smaller, still heated, but now crooked with amusement. "Do you still want to find out if I have a heart the bloody way?"
"I know you have a heart. I feel it." It beat fast beneath her fingers.
He covered her small hand with his, holding it tight to his chest.
She let her arm bend so she was not holding him so far away. She didn't want him to be that far away. "Today is my birthday," she told him, not certain why it mattered. She had somehow moved so close to him that she could feel the heat of his body through their clothes.
"Happy birthday." It was the usual social response, but the heat in his voice made the words a mere carrier. "How old are you?"
"One hundred forty-seven."
His smile went crooked again. "You're very spry for your age."
She giggled. "I am young. Spider seers live long lives. My grandmother was born in Egypt before the largest pyramids were built."
She made her decision in that moment. This Fae prince had a heart. Liliana would fight to make it hers. "Take me home," she ordered the prince.
He bowed to her and extended an arm in an old-fashioned gesture, offering escort to a lady.
She took it.
The three bodyguards fell into step around them.