Queen of Kings - Maria Dahvana Headley [97]
Her muscles tensed for the leap over the trench, and for a graceful moment, she was in the air, high above the crowd, higher than any true lion could leap.
Augustus’s face was shocked and upturned. She could see his heart beating through his throat. Terrified of her at last. He had underestimated Cleopatra.
The force of her landing threw the emperor to the ground, and he cowered on his back before her.
“You took my family!” she screamed, her voice still that of a lioness. She dug her claws into his shoulders, relishing his terror. “You took my country!”
“Get it off me!” the emperor shrieked. His eyes were wide, and reflecting in them, Cleopatra could see two female figures. First an old woman, and then a young. The elder had a distaff in her hands, and she raised it in the air, spinning it so swiftly, Cleopatra could scarcely see it move. The old woman looked into the queen’s lioness body and saw her. Her eyes flashed silver-white, and Cleopatra felt her body begin to weaken as though she was suddenly bound with ropes, caught in a web.
The young girl rose up from her seat, smiled and lifted her hands, throwing some glittering substance into the air.
It showered over Cleopatra, and for a moment, Cleopatra was no longer a lion. She felt herself melt back into her human form, crouched atop Augustus in his laurel crown, her fingers bloodied.
She did not care.
Everything ceased to matter as she finally saw the face of the man who stood beside the witches, the man she’d thought an impersonation of her husband.
“Antony!” she screamed.
The knowledge ripped through her. It could be nothing but dreaming—but she reached out her hands to touch him. Did she imagine it? Did he cringe back from her?
She did touch him, an almost him, a faint him, with her fingertips, just as someone leapt upon her and tore her from her husband again.
23
A grippa and Usem both threw their bodies between that of the emperor and the monster. Agrippa locked his hands about Cleopatra’s throat, feeling the woman’s flesh in his fingers, even as the lioness growled before him. Her fangs grazed his shoulders.
He clung to her, screaming wordless obscenities against a world wherein something that should not exist, that could not exist, could suddenly be before him, attacking his emperor. He howled invective against magic and its unpredictability, the witches surrounding the emperor even now, and yet here he was, fighting the monster, and he was not a witch at all, but a soldier. Agrippa did not believe in magic. He did not believe in witches.
He did not believe in the thing he was doing.
Usem attacked the lioness from behind, his arms locked about her shoulders, his dagger seeking purchase. Would its poison kill her? He had no way of knowing. The Psylli clung to her back, feeling her toss him from side to side, feeling her sandpaper fur and, at the same time, her silken skin.
She was one moment a lioness and the next a woman, and Agrippa held her ferociously, pressing his thumbs into her jugular vein. Even a monster could be killed. Monsters died in the stories, their heads chopped off and buried, turned to stone by the sight of their own hideous aspects, poisoned by their own venoms.
He would kill this queen, this beast, this fury.
Her lips were pink, and then black and feline. Her eyes were golden and slitted, and then dark and long-lashed. Her fingers were dainty and pale, and then curved and taloned. Her waist was tiny and her hips were round, and her thigh came up beside his and wrapped around his back. He gasped, feeling suddenly deranged, and losing his grip on her throat.
Was he killing a woman, a defenseless—
No. He was killing a monster. He saw her jaws opening for him.
Out of the corner of his eye, Agrippa saw the man who was and was not Antony lift his hand in a gesture of command.
“Now!” Antony yelled, and suddenly there