Page 30 of The King

Max transported everyone to the base of Garra de Águila with little more than a blink of his eyes. Met with the rugged terrain Maggie had promised, Max planted his feet, rolled back his shoulders, and demanded, "Casimiro, it is time.”

"Spread out. Just as we planned," the King gave the order to begin the intricate tactical strategy Declan had designed.

Knowing they were doing everything exactly as planned, Max accepted each and every Gift bestowed upon him and instantly put them to work. Infused with the Magic of the Ancient Big Cats, Destiny, The Powers That Be, and the Celtic Goddess Morrigan, the King trained his Enchanted gaze on the peak of the mountain. Digging through the dense desert foliage, limestone bedrock, gypsum, igneous rocks, and thick red clay, he followed the veins and trails that bore into the Earth over time.

The deeper he tunneled, the stronger the overwhelming sense of hatred and disgust became. It was coming from all sides. Shifters of all Creeds, Races, Lineage, Clans, and Prides were dazed and confused but angry and full of rage. They were out for blood and revenge. They were fighting for their lives. They were…

“Yip! Yip-yip-yip!”

Yelping and whining as he furiously dug at the sand, Duke, Caitlin's German Shepherd, had found something – something so important that Max was there in a flash. No sooner had he dropped to his knees than the rays of the bright Mexican sun flashed upon a dusty silver locking wheel just like what was used on the hatch doors of submarines.

“Stand back!” Claire boomed from just over Max’s shoulder.

Jumping to his feet, the King stepped back and mirrored her stance as Duke ran to the Banshee's side. With everyone out of range, the King of the Big Cats and the Matriarch of the Clan of the Sun blew away nearly half a ton of sand into the air. Through the thick storm of shining particles, clumps of dirt, and dust that clung to his sweaty flesh like dew on a rose's petals, he saw it.

Shining brightly, the rays of the desert sun reflecting in every direction, he saw the perfectly circular door that led to his Mate. With a flourish of his hands, the locking wheel spun clockwise. The hiss of the release of the hermetically sealed hatch was the only warning he got before a rush of recycled air, rage, and Magic of all origins rushed into the open air.

Stepping up to the manmade hole in the ground, the stench and sting of silver in all its forms, Stygian Iron, Ichneumon Blood, Celestial Bronze, and Imperial Gold attacked from all sides. Just as he and the others had discovered, Pandora O'Baoill had done her homework. She was taking no chances. She had designed every part of her massive torture chamber to contain and disable all members of the Paranormal Community – no matter their heritage.

“But we’re prepared,”Casimiro snarled."The Powers That Be knew this was our destiny, that we would someday need protection against anything and everything the worst and most evil threw at us."

“Indeed,”Max growled.“Now is the time.”

Without looking back, he called to his friends, “Be well,mi familia.I shall see you on the other side.”

No sooner had he uttered the words than did he release his iron grip on the magnanimous Power entrusted to him by Chaos, the Universe, the Great Goddess, and The Powers That Be at the moment of his inception. Together, the King and the Panther with whom he shared his soul made sense and order of the frenzied whirl of manic wrath and the unrelenting need to rid the world of those who had dared to touch his Mate. Shaking with the sheer effort it took not to throw back his head and roar his intention to decimate the enemy to the Heavens, he braced himself for what was to come.

A tempest of Primordial, wondrous Mysticism, the makeup of everything that made Max who he was and who he was meant to be – the true and rightful King of the Big Cats and Mate to the Daughter of Lugh and an unstoppable Empress Eagle Shifter, shook his body. His blood ran cold like the snow and ice his Siberian Tigers called home. Then, in the blink of an eye, it was hot – almost scalding, like the Black-Maned Lions of the central plains of Ethiopia they were meant to protect.

Destiny, in all Her wisdom and with the consent of all the Big Cats he protected with his very life, was drawing strength from every Supernatural Feline on Earth. Only one other time in all his life had Max pulled this much Authority and Supremacy into his heart, soul, body, and mind – and it had been to save his mother from a fate worse than death and then sadly deliver her to the Heavens.

“Today will be different,”Casimiro adamantly vowed.

“Si, mi Patnera.”

With every cell of his being vibrating, his very physique contracted and contorted, expanded and swelled. It was preparing all that he was to Shift into the massive, indestructible form of his Royal Warrior Panther.

The Enchantment of the Elders, the Spirit of Righ Nan Cat – the Celtic Black Panther King of the Cats, and the Strength, Ferocity, and Courage of the Jaguar Prince, known to the Muisca – the Indigenous People of Columbia - as the Guardian of the Underworld, became one with not only his body but the very essence of who and what he was. Harnessing and compressing all that Power, the absolute Divine magnitude of everything that had ever existed, fused together in perfect harmony.

Pushing all that energy into every striation of every muscle, the very structure of his being constricted then immediately expanded. Under the methodical and well-practiced command of the King and his Panther, two unstoppable, damned near-immortal Beings, the Shift began.

From one beat of his heart to the next, Max became a very large human-cat hybrid representation of Casimiro in all his glory. What many in South America knew asHombre Gato, or Catman, in this form, the two unrelenting Beasts of Legend stood over ten feet tall and resembled the Wolfman in all those late-night movies Juan Carlos and Sophia watched when they couldn't sleep, with one important distinction - they were no Lupine.

His chest was broad and brawny. His arms were thick with corded muscles pulsing with the need to strike. The voice of the Jaguar Prince filled his mind, breathing the motto the Muisca had given them so very long ago.“We kill with one blow,”and the King agreed. The desert beneath his feet shuddered, forcing him to dig the long claws extending from his feline feet deep into the sand, preparing himself for the final transformation.

A blaze, flaming shards of dominion and sway, heaved and stretched every bone, muscle, and joint in his body. Instinctually, he knew the wings of the Mighty Raven King, Feichín, he'd been blessed with from the Morrigan, the Celtic Goddess of Destiny, Fate, War, and Magic would not help in the bunker, but maybe Max could use them as he'd seen the Dragons do.

“As always, we adapt,”Casimiro professed.

Forcing their wings from under the shoulder blades of their Warrior Panther out into the open air, the two Kings acting as one adapted the skeleton of their blessed Raven wings. Using the modified joints that allowed for folding and locking, along with the fused wrist bones that gave them ease when flying, they forced the tips to curl downward and become one with the thick musculature above the waist of their Warrior Panther. In the blink of an eye, he no longer possessed appendages for flight but now had fierce, deadly blades like those of the Shotel Sword of the Black-Maned Lion Warriors of Ethiopia.

Folding them forward, they hugged his body as he prepared to descend into Pandora O’Baoill’s House of Horrors. Flashing their fangs and smiling when Claire winked and nodded, Max and Casimiro imagined their lethal venom - which there was no antidote for - attacking and invading their enemy’s body.

The thin, incredibly sharp, retractable claws at the ends of his fingers grew in size and girth. Not only could they slash through any malleable substance like flesh, muscles, and bone, but also lay waste mortar, brick, and steel.

The time for control was over. The Warrior Panther was at the helm. The enemy was within reach. Their Mate was close. The battle for the Light and the demise of the evil Dark was at hand.

Raising his arms over his head, he simply stepped forward and catapulted himself into the dark, vertical tunnel leading to the Selgair, Inc. facility. Giving control of their descent to gravity, both Max and Casimiro instinctually knew when they'd fallen precisely eighty-five feet.

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