Now that he was able to take her full measure, he realized the woman was unlike any he’d ever seen before. She had vivid blue hair (like the color of the sky right after a cleansing rain) and flat, black eyes.
There were no whites. Her eyes were completely black. But that wasn’t what made her unique. In Kingdom, and especially in Wonderland, the strange abounded. It was that only parts of her were solid. Other bits were so vaporous he could literally see through them.
Obviously frightened, a black puff of smoke enveloped her and where she’d stood only moments ago, was now a multi-colored cat. Not unlike the Cheshire himself, but this one was very obviously female. Its eyes were the same solid black, and its fur was the brightest blue, but she wore a dazzling collar of fiery jewels and her sharp claws were painted a bright pink.
“Who am I?” she said. “Who are you?” She blinked and then blinked again, cocking her head to the side while her furry tail whisked gently back and forth.
Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he felt the urge to spit. “Are you a woman who can change into a cat? Or a cat that changes into a woman?”
She sniffed before proceeding to clean her paw with long, slow licks of her bright pink tongue.
“Why does it matter? I saved you. You belong to me now, man.”
He snorted.
Her cat face transformed into the human face from earlier and what had once been so mesmerizing was now alien, almost macabre to see attached to the furry body of a feline. “Well I do not belong to you,” she sniffed as if offended by the very notion.
Aeric frowned. “I never said you did. And how exactly did you save me anyway?”
“You were out cold.” She shrugged a furry shoulder, as if that was explanation enough.
“So?”
“So!” She shrieked, bounding onto his chest with all four paws. Her weight was miniscule, oddly comforting. But he had to admit that the human face on the cat’s body was wrecking havoc with his mind. It wasn’t that shifters didn’t exist in his lands, but they were rare, so to see one flaunting its dual form as though it hadn’t a care in the world made him feel peculiar.
“Yes, just so, and please shift. Bloody hell you’re going to give me nightmares for years.” Muttering oaths under his breath he was sure she couldn’t hear, he waited for her to do as ordered.
“What was that?” She shoved her nose in his face, her black eyes narrowed into sharp slits. “Did you say something about me? Perhaps you’d like to repeat that for all the woods to hear?”
“What?” His brows dipped. She was as insane as the rest of them. No matter that she could talk, if he couldn’t understand half of what she was getting at, it really didn’t matter. “I said you cats are all the same, satisfied?”
“I’m not a cat. I’m a woman.”
The tail swishing behind her screamed liar.
“Girl, Cat, I’m tired. Get off me now so that I can set up camp.”
She laughed. “Set up camp! Here?” Disbelief mixed with arrogance peppered her words and made his spine stiffen.
He swiped at her angrily. “Yes. Here. And you’re not wanted, you may go.”
A visible tremor coursed down her back.
She held up a paw, ticking off claws as she counted down the ways she thought him stupid. “One. You were just bulldozed. I know, I saw it happen.”
“I was not,” he grumped.
She pinned him with an ‘if-you-say-so’ stare. “Two, you cannot walk on that leg. I had to set it.”
“It wasn’t broken,” he snapped.
Rolling her inky eyes, she huffed. “Of course it wasn’t broken, I had to set it in stone. See.” She pointed down to his leg as if he should already know that and what an imbecilic ass he was for not already realizing it.
His jaw dropped. From the knee down, his leg was absolutely and completely set in stone. “What have you done to me?” he roared.
He had to give her credit, she neither blinked nor startled at his outburst. “If you know anything about anything then you know that a leech’s vine is tipped in poison. By tonight your leg would have swelled to the size of an elephant’s trunk and by tomorrow it would have rotted out completely.”
He hadn’t known that. A hunter by trade, he prided himself on knowing all there was to know about flora and fauna. But having been so averse to coming into Wonderland it was true that he hadn’t exactly made a point of learning this place as he had others. But surely he should have known at least that about the vines. Wracking his brain though, the memory simply wasn’t there.
Was it possible that things continually evolved in Wonderland?
“The only way to spare your parts,” she licked her lips, yanking him from his thoughts, “is to get you to the fairy spring right away. The stone has frozen the spread of the toxin, but the moment the stone comes off it’ll pick right back up where it started. So the stone stays.”
“How did you get the stone on me anyway?”
She touched a paw to her cheek. “And you call yourself a hunter. I’m appalled.”
Annoyed, he scowled. “I’m a damn fine hunter.”