Hell, I knew the answer, or I thought I did.
They pointed not at me, but at Lila. “We have waited for the little queen to arrive. She said she would come, and she was the marker of what we should wait for.”
I hopped off Balder and stalked through the little weirdos, pushing them away from Lila. None of them had weapons that I could see, and they didn’t push back. She glared up at them even though they seemed genuine about honoring her.
With a quick slash from one of my hunting knives, I cut the ropes loose over her and she popped up, hissing and spitting, acid flicking from her mouth.
The red-robed creatures went to their knees, bowed forward and put their heads to the ground in a perfect circle around her.
“I’m no one’s queen,” she said. “I’m just me.”
The thing was, she had killed her father, Corvalis, who’d been a tyrant and the leader of the dragons. So, technically, they weren’t wrong. She was the heir apparent, even if she had left Dragon’s Ground without taking the throne.
“You are the daughter of the old ruler, which makes you queen, and now you are here. You brought with you companions to serve you?” The one who’d spoken first before lifted his head. Or I assumed it was the same one, they all looked alike.
“Why did you net her if you want to bow to her?” Maks asked as he drew up with Batman. “That’s not the behavior of worshiping a queen.”
The group of them didn’t move from their position of heads to the ground. I motioned for Lila to come to me and she flew to my shoulder. I agreed with him, this felt hinky.
I took a few steps back. “But it is the behavior of those who might think they can control a queen. And use her power over the other dragons.” I put a boot to one of the red-robed creatures and pushed him over. He didn’t fight me, but instead stared up at me from his back. “That about right, you little jerk?”
He closed his eyes and shook his head rapidly. “Please don’t kill me. I do only as my mistress bids. She asked us to bring the little queen to her. That is the goal, no harm is meant.”
The others gasped and they went to their hands and knees. Hands grabbed at him and dragged him across the ground. They spoke in that weird whispering echo and it rapidly spread through the pack of them.
“You aren’t supposed to speak. That’s the priest’s job.” The words rebounded around us as they took him down.
His bulbous blue eyes were frantic as he tried to push them off. “Save me, I’ll tell you anything I can! Please!”
The screech that went up from the remaining red-robed ding-dongs was ear-piercing, but I didn’t let it slow me down. I bolted toward them, shifting forms mid-stride. Sure, a six-pound house cat didn’t sound fierce until it’s slicing your face into ribbons with claws that were sharper and stronger than they had any right to be.
I launched onto the back of the ding-dong closest to me, dug all four sets of claws in deep until he screeched and writhed to get away from me, then bounded across to the next. Maks waded in with his bladed spear and one head rolled off, the blood not even showing against the red robes.
“Grab him!” I yelled at Maks.
Lila looped above us and spit out a mouthful of acid.
If I thought the screams from my claws were something, it was nothing to the screams from her acid as it burned right through them, cutting them down before they could come at us.
Maks scooped up the defector under one arm and ran back to the horses. I ran after them, shifting back to two legs as I leapt onto Balder’s back. Lila barrel rolled past us and dove into the sand to remove the last of the acid from her lips.
The screams of those red-robed little creatures echoed across the desert landscape, and if I knew anything, it was that screams brought out the worst of the supernatural world looking for a quick and easy meal. “Lila, hurry, we gotta go.”
The last thing I wanted was a run-in with something bigger than us, something stronger, or with more magic. Which, at that particular moment, was pretty much anything in the supernatural world.
I held Balder back waiting for her, letting Batman and Maks get ahead of us, knowing we could catch them. Lila burst out of a sand pile and shook off the loose grains as she flew toward me. I barely waited for her to grab hold of the back of the saddle before I urged Balder to go.
The pounding of hoofbeats under me, the wind in my ears, and I could still hear the screams of the red-robed ones behind us. The minutes ticked by as we galloped away as fast as we could through the loose sand. Balder loved it, his neck stretched out and his ears pricked forward as he picked up speed with each stride.
The screams faded in the distance until there was finally nothing. Maks pulled up first and Batman let out a low snort.
The little red-robed man, creature, whatever he was, sat in front of Maks. The little guy was shaking hard and stunned by what had happened.
“What are you?” I asked. Rude in our world, but whatever. I was already known for not having much tact. The east might as well get used to it.
He turned his head to me. “My name is Insha. I am of clan Tuvok. We are ghouls. I did not mean for you to kill them.” He looked back the way we’d come. “My mistress will not be happy with me.”
I wrinkled my nose up. I’d heard of ghouls but hadn’t had much dealings with them. They had very little magic and worked like ants, using sheer numbers to overwhelm their intended prey. “Scavengers then. Are there more ghouls around here?”
He shook his head rapidly. “No, most ghouls have been scattered, the clans broken and mixed, so there is no true loyalty now except to our mistress, may she forever grace us with her presence and beauty.”
I looked at Maks. His eyes were thoughtful and rested heavily on the head of the ghoul sitting in front of him. I wondered who this mistress was but let the question slide for the moment. We had more pressing issues than a ghoul’s love affair with a woman.
“Ghouls are a distant cousin to the Jinn,” Maks said. “But with less magic, and the same connection to the sands. Minor abilities in glamor and mind control.”
Insha bobbed his head, his enormous eyes blinking under the heat of the sun. “Yes, that is true. But we have no dealings with the Jinn, not since the forbidding happened.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Lila, you think you can find us a place to take shelter for a few hours?”
Insha twisted suddenly, pointing straight east. “A mile that way, and we’ll come upon a shelter we could use within the rock valleys, an old structure that is safe from the others that lurk in these lands.”
He didn’t seem to notice that his sharp movement had made Maks pull a knife and place the point directly against his upper spine.
Slowly Maks put the knife away when it was apparent that the ghoul was oblivious and just giving us a direction to follow.
I looked from Maks to Lila and then back again. They each gave a quick nod. There was no reason to think that our new companion was up to something. He’d wanted to be free of the other ghouls, and now we needed shelter.
More was our bad for trusting the little jerk.
“All right,” I said, “let’s go.”
We started out again at a brisk walk, all four of us silent. My mind raced with what I did know about ghouls—which wasn’t a great deal. And what the hell was this forbidding he was talking about? Who had made the forbidding? And why against Jinn?