In a single movement, Rafe lifted a knife from a table, flipped it in his hand, and slashed Omar across the stomach. “Do I pass the test?” he asked coldly as the head handler staggered back. “I gutted the feral.”
Omar stared down in shock as blood seeped through his shirt, spreading over the material like spilled wine.
The queen screamed and the other handlers surged forward. I gathered up Cosmo’s body, not wanting anyone to step on him. I rose, and clutching him to me, I tore for the double doors on the far side of the room, hoping Rafe would follow. As I reached them, the doors flew open. I skidded to a halt to look up at the two manimals now blocking my path. The bull-man thrust me aside, while the rhino-man took several precise steps forward.
“All bend to the king,” he announced formally.
The room echoed with a thud as everyone present dropped to one knee and bowed their heads. All except Rafe and me. Still holding Cosmo’s limp body in my arms, I met eyes with Rafe across the room and with a single tilt of his head, we agreed upon a plan. With the knife in hand, he backed toward the French doors. I slipped along the edge of the room to meet him there. But when the bull-man said, “The king comes among you,” I couldn’t help but turn to look. And suddenly I knew, beyond any doubt, that this nightmare had only just begun.
The king who stepped into the ballroom wearing a green velvet robe and bejeweled crown was none other than the tiger-man who’d prowled through my nightmares and nearly every waking moment for the past two days.
Chorda.
28
As everyone in the ballroom lowered their heads in deference to Chorda, I slid down the wall with Cosmo in my arms. Across the room, Chorda stood in the archway, his head bandaged under his crown. He surveyed his subjects like a dictator.
“My king!” The queen rushed to his side. “Omar has been murdered!”
My view was suddenly blocked as Dromo dropped to one knee before me and lifted Cosmo out of my arms. “No,” I said hoarsely, grasping Cosmo’s limp hand.
Chorda swept across the ballroom toward the handlers. They bent low before him. “Who did this?” he bellowed.
“Let me take him,” Dromo whispered, “before they throw him on a trash heap.” His eyes cut to the queen. “Let me bury him next to his mother’s bones.”
Around me, guests shifted nervously as the handlers spoke to Chorda in low voices.
I let go of Cosmo’s hand. “Wait.” I arranged Jasper so that the stuffed monkey poked out of Cosmo’s overalls the way he liked. My lips brushed his fuzzy silver head one last time and then Dromo stood.
“Follow me,” he whispered. He cut through the crowd, clasping Cosmo to him, as if carrying a sleepy child off to bed.
I rose unsteadily and searched among the glittering bodies for Rafe. Had he escaped through the French doors when the king was announced? I hoped so. But I couldn’t do the same with Chorda blocking the way. I started after Dromo.
“Lane,” a rough voice called out. “You got my invitation.”
I glanced back to see the guests scuttle aside to give Chorda a direct view of me. A smile curved over his black lips.
“You know her?” The queen’s words quivered like an over-tight harp string in the silence.
Bitterness filled my mouth. I hiked up my skirt and dashed for the archway. Shrieks erupted around me. I banged into a manimal servant and sent his tray flying. Plates loaded with food shattered across the floor. As I skipped over the mess, someone snagged my dress and hauled me backward. I screamed as Chorda spun me to face him, his expression triumphant. I thrashed against his hold, but he caught my wrists and pinned them together in one hand.
“Now what?” Rafe stepped through the open French door. “You can’t rip out her heart here.” He swung his arm wide. “Can’t eat it with them watching. You only do that out in the zone when there’s no one around. No one to see what you really are: a bloodthirsty beast.”
Chorda bristled, and turned slowly.
“How many people have you killed, cat chow? Thirty? Forty?” The knife in Rafe’s hand dripped with Omar’s blood. “When are you going to notice that your cure — the cure your twisted animal brain came up with — it’s not working.”
With a roar, Chorda threw me aside and launched himself across the room. Rafe lifted his knife, ready for the fight, but Chorda’s reach was longer. He slashed at Rafe, tearing through his shirt and leaving four bloody scratches across his chest. The knife clattered onto the floor.
I jumped up and snatched another from a place setting. A handler rushed for me. I dodged him and he stumbled aside. I ran for Chorda’s back, but another handler tackled me from behind, bringing me down so hard, my chin hit the floor with a crack. He wrenched the knife from my fingers and kept me pinned down with his knee on my back.
With a laugh, Chorda retracted his claws and began to beat Rafe with his fists. Rafe defended himself as best he could against Chorda’s superior speed and strength, but he lasted only moments before crumpling to his knees. He spit out a mouthful of blood and glared up at Chorda. “Time to face the facts, whiskers. You’re a psycho with a disease and you aren’t ever changing back, no matter how many human hearts you scarf down.”
Chorda grabbed Rafe by the throat, lifted him into the air, and threw him against the wall. He extended his claws once more and moved in, his eyes glowing with hate and bloodlust.
“No!” I screamed.
It was enough. Chorda seemed to remember himself … and that he had a ballroom full of witnesses. Standing over Rafe, he pulled in his claws. “When you caught me in your snare, you were going to kill me without a thought. But now our places are reversed. You are at my mercy, yet I am choosing not to kill you. Tell me, hunter, who is the beast?”
He waved several handlers forward, including the one holding me down. I felt his knee lift and scrambled to my feet.
“Take him to the zoo,” Chorda told the handlers, where he can live in his own filth like the animal he is.”
I shoved through the guests to face him. “The only animal in this room is you.”
The crowd gasped and I sensed them edging away. I whirled on them. “Oh right, you all can’t see that he’s part tiger.” Not a single person would meet my eyes. “Cowards.”
“Out!” bellowed Chorda. “All but Lane.” He turned his red-brown glare on the handlers and pointed to Rafe. “Put the animal where he belongs or you will be joining him.”
The handlers scrambled to do Chorda’s bidding. I tried to block them, but the blond handler who’d ridden in the rickshaw with us shoved me aside. They hauled Rafe to his feet and three more handlers lifted Omar’s body and carried him out of the ballroom. The guests and manimal servants stampeded out of the ballroom after the handlers.
Only the queen remained, her eyes pinned on me. “How do you know her?” she asked Chorda.
“I ordered all but Lane to leave.” Chorda took a seat at the head of the table. Only then did I notice my dial hanging around his neck, as was an electric blue Ferae test. My father’s machete was stuffed into the sash around his waist. I stared at the two of them: the tense, almost haggard queen, and the tiger-king with glittering eyes and twisted ideas.
“Leave!” Chorda snarled, and the queen flew from the room, though not without throwing me one last hate-filled look as she closed the door.
I was trapped.
“My bag … you found Director Spurling’s letter. You burned down her house.”
A smile crept over his black lips. “What else could I do? Once you got the photograph, you would have left the Feral Zone … without giving me what I need.”