Considered in tableaux, it was a fairly improbable picture.
In the cockpit of a plunging aircraft, a slim, auburn-haired man with cat eyes and claws, dressed in a black, high-necked muscle shirt patterned with gray and white spots and black leather pants held a much larger man with white hair and a white, leopard spotted sleeveless leotard by the throat. The larger man was actually pinned to the pilot’s seat of the jet by his neck, so deceptive was the strength in the smaller man.
It didn’t hurt that the jaguar man had recently stolen a lost artifact of the Children of Bast from the Millennium City Museum. He’d used a clever decoy attack on a Lemurian ambassador and one of his people’s relics. Held fast in a grip even he found unbreakable, Mal knew with certainty that he clearly had unlocked some of the Phoenix Tablet’s secrets and knew how to use the energy of death and rebirth to enhance his power. His mere presence had an awe inspiring effect that Mal knew was that of an Alpha werebeast.
Then a strange thing happened. Actually, a series of strange things occurred in an odd sequence.
The first strange thing was internal to Malcolm himself. Usually, during a fight, especially one where he’s being held fast by something, his thoughts went red with rage and defiance. This time, they narrowed as his preternaturally keen senses came into sharp focus. His customary ability to intuit the emotional states of others also crystallized and he felt his mind open up to his enemy’s feelings.
And the werecat king called Gabriel was mad with rage. It was a rage that ran both hot and cold at the same time and continually reforged itself in the cauldron of primal instincts and animal cunning that had been ninety-eight years and countless degradations in the making. A king that no longer allowed that which was not absolutely his to live.
And Mal realized that the monster he’d called his king was ready to kill him for leaving his side. He also realized that with the right push, he could make
So naturally he did the only thing he could, he stalled, “Hell…o, Gabri…el.”
And in that maddening whirlwind of screaming air and spinning metal and state of the art technology, the smaller man kissed the other, “Mmm, hello, my Eros,” he purred as he pulled down the collar of Mal’s uniform and inspected the column of his neck. Then he snarled, “I see you’ve healed my Mark,” to which Mal gurgled, not even able to bluster out a reply.
“Well, that just won’t do. You see, I’ve realized a few things. One of them, the most important, is that a king does not suffer to live those that are not *absolutely* his,” he sniffed at the only bitemark that had out-lasted the other three that had once graced his neck. When he caught the scent of the one that had left the bite mark shaped scar, he recoiled violently, hissing.
“Oh, are you kidding me, Malcolm? Seriously? You kept that truck-stop trick you met in the Pagoda? Uh, call me crazy but you went from the penthouse to the alley next to the parking garage. It’s pathetic. You really need me to kill you, don’t you? To put you out of the misery of dealing with that one? And what kind of accent is tha’? Scottish?”
Malcolm hadn’t even been paying attention to the mad cat-man’s ramblings. He’d been groping blindly at the chair and fuselage with the arm that was on the opposite side of his body from where his former king kept an iron grip on his throat. Finally, feeling a thick cable, he ripped it free and jammed the torn end in Gabriel’s face as he heard him make fun of Knight’s accent.
The jaguar man hissed out a snarl as jagged metal, torn cables and wires were shoved in his face. He recoiled, instinctively expecting an arc of electricity or something to shock him, releasing Mal’s neck.
And they both sort of stared at each other a moment as they realized that one, nothing of the sort had happened and two, they were about to hit the ground. Mal flew out of the hatch as quickly as his will would propel him as he felt Gabriel try to follow but it was too late.
He’d cut it too close and when the jet exploded, the shockwave caught Mal and hurled him violently into a nearby tree, snapping the trunk to shards, his spine reacting similarly, shattering and only his innate suppleness keeping him from being torn limb from limb.
But as his body came to rest nearby, his consciousness fled into a deep darkness and sought out his mate as his flesh began to slowly re-knit.
And at the center of the small crater left by the crash was a tablet made of obsidian, with ancient etchings in its surface and lashes of azure, violet and golden-green light playing along the jagged edges as it lay in three pieces. The golden-green light became more and more sickly and corrupt as it nestled into the slowly regenerating Jaguar King. The azure radiance spilled into Malcolm’s form and the purple shadow spread its wings to the open sky and took flight.