Ghostland

by Jory Strong

  Aubrey looked up from her work. Pierced eyebrows drew together in puzzlement. “Haven’t you ever been in an occult store before?”

  Aisling shook her head. If one existed in the San Joaquin, it was a well-kept secret, even from Geneva, whose sheltering of those with otherworldly gifts was known, though never flaunted.

  Aubrey spared a glance at the glassed bookcase. “Javier’s collection is amazing, but it’s nothing compared to the store in San Francisco.” She shrugged. “Selling information isn’t illegal. Nine times out of ten it either doesn’t work for the untrained or it ends up getting them killed. And if it does work, and they get caught doing something they shouldn’t with it, then they’re punished. Believe me, the Church sees to that.”

  Aisling couldn’t let the subject drop. “People have disappeared. There have been human sacrifices.”

  Aubrey’s hand tightened on her pen. “The police have already been here, several times, asking who looked at the books. We cooperate with them. There’s no guarantee of privacy. Anyone who shops here knows that.” She put her pen down, glanced at the growing dusk and slid off the stool. “I need to close the shop now.”

  Zurael said, “Will Javier be here tomorrow?”

  “Maybe. He comes and goes.”

  Aisling worried about asking further questions and revealing where her true interest in visiting the shop lay, but she couldn’t waste the opportunity. “Do you know anything about men and women who have crosses branded into their skin?”

  Aubrey shook her head. “Sounds like they’re religious zealots, maybe members of one of the cults that live outside the city. There’s a place called The Mission at the other end of Oakland, just before The Barrens. Ask there. We don’t get many true believers here.”

  “Have you heard of a substance called Ghost?” Aisling asked.

  “No. Is it something we should carry here?”

  Dread at the possibility made a knot form in Aisling’s stomach. “No, you shouldn’t offer it for sale. Anyone who uses it invites death.”

  “You’d be surprised how many customers, especially untalented humans, are turned on by the prospect of dangerous magic.” Aubrey came out from behind the counter and Aisling stopped her with a touch to her wrist.

  “What about these symbols?” Aisling used her finger to draw imaginary lines on the countertop.

  Aubrey picked up a pen and pulled a sheet from the pad of paper. “Use this.”

  Javier’s assistant stiffened when Aisling re-created the branded patterns Elena had traced in tea on the coffee table after the trip to the ghostlands.

  “They’re punishment brands for someone caught using magic that’s against the law,” Aubrey said, immediately shifting away from Aisling. “Now I really need to close up and leave.”

  “Do you know of anyone who wears these brands?” Aisling asked, but Aubrey was shaking her head no and opening the front door for them to leave before the words were completely out.

  “SHE lied about knowing of someone with the brands,” Zurael said after they’d put some distance between themselves and the shop.

  “I thought so, too. But we know more than we did.” Aisling slid her hands into the roomy pockets of her work pants to keep from curling one of them around Zurael’s arm as they walked. It worried her that in such a short time his heat and scent had come to represent security. “Tomorrow we can visit The Mission and ask about the man and woman bearing the cross brands. It doesn’t seem likely that religious zealots would frequent places like Sinners or sell something like Ghost.”

  Zurael’s hand stroked down her spine and made her shudder with pleasure. “Humans have a long history of seeking enlightenment through mind-altering substances. But I agree, the man we witnessed selling Ghost at Sinners didn’t appear to be doing so with the intention of converting followers or leading them to salvation.”

  Even though she didn’t believe in the Church’s vision of heaven and hell, Aisling worried for her soul. She knew too well how choices made in life followed a person in death.

  “Is there such a thing as salvation?” she asked, curious what a being who most likely called one of the dark places in the spiritlands his home would say.

  Zurael laughed and stopped walking. She stopped with him and both of them turned.

  He cupped her face and brushed his thumb across her lips. In the fading light the liquid gold of his eyes held both amusement and desire. “I’m not the one to ask about salvation for the children of mud. Until I met you, I would have seen them all destroyed in the fiery burn of justice and retribution.”

  “And now?”

  Zurael leaned in, unable to stop himself from pressing a kiss to her forehead. “And now there is at least one I would argue should be spared.”

  He closed his eyes and inhaled her scent. It filled his lungs and dissolved into his bloodstream, surged downward until desire pulsed through his cock in time with his heartbeat and the whispered sound of her name across his soul.

  His fingers traced the delicate bones of her spine, slid over the gentle curve of her buttocks. Had the first son of The Prince felt this way about the human female he’d become obsessed with?

  Zurael rubbed his cheek against Aisling’s silky hair as his father’s imagined voice issued a warning through time, drew his thoughts to the moment they stood together in the Hall of History, before the mural of Jetrel. She became his weakness, the bait used to trap him. And overlaid on the Prince’s words were those Malahel had spoken of Aisling. It’s good you already intend to kill her. She is dangerous to us and will be made even more so if she learns what’s written on the tablet.

  Fierce protectiveness surged through Zurael when Aisling’s arms wound around his waist and she pressed more tightly to him. He would argue she be spared.

  She’d admitted she didn’t know how to bind him and wouldn’t have summoned him if the need weren’t urgent. He’d been a shadow in her mind when they were together in the ghostlands. He could attest to the truth of her innocence when it came to the Djinn. He would offer his belief that powerful forces were at work and had ensnared her in a trap the Djinn benefited from.

  His palm glided upward. The heat intensified between them. Worry for her made him ask, “How were you able to draw the brands Elena showed you?” They’d been inked in tea on the coffee table and gone within seconds, so quick they’d left little impression on him.

  “I have a memory for things like that. Sometimes it feels as though I’ve seen them before, even though I know I haven’t.”

  “Like an ancestral memory. You know nothing of your parents?”

  “No.” Aisling’s lips brushed his earlobe and sent lust boiling through him so he ached.

  His hands curled into fists at her back with the material from her shirt gathered in them. Her soft moan was echoed by his as the contours of her breasts and the hard points of her nipples became more pronounced.

  It would be so easy to urge her into the shadows, to press her against the wall of an abandoned building and take her there. Or to command her to grip a windowsill as he’d commanded her to grip the counter in front of the mirror so he could mount her as he’d done then.

  A shudder went through Zurael. Arousal leaked to coat his cock head in molten desire.

  “We need to keep walking. It’ll be dark soon,” she said, her breath hot on his skin. It drew his thoughts to her lips. It renewed his fantasies of placing her on her knees before him so he could know the feel of her mouth and tongue on his cock.

  He opened his hands, freed her shirt in favor of sliding over delicate, feminine curves to cup her hips. “Do you think I fear the dark or the creatures that roam in the nighttime, Aisling?”

  “No.” She pressed a kiss to his collarbone. “But I do. And it would be better if my neighbors didn’t see me out in it and wonder why I’m not a prisoner to it as they are.”

  Reluctantly Zurael set her aside. Misgiving, guilt, worry forced the lust to recede into the background. At Sinners he’
d accepted Aisling’s need to approach the Ghost dealer. The task of finding its source was hers, set before her by the spirits protecting her in a land the Djinn feared. But in the occult shop he’d struggled against letting her question Aubrey and draw further attention and danger to herself.

  It was only a matter of time before Aisling’s questions would ripple outward and turn the hunted into hunters. If they viewed him as no more than her lover, her companion and bodyguard, then they would underestimate how lethal he was. They wouldn’t know until the moment of their own deaths that there had never been a possibility of defeating him or harming her. But looking at her standing before him, fragile and soft, intoxicatingly feminine, he felt a soul-deep fear for her.

  Zurael knelt on the ground. He swiped his hand across the loose earth, smoothed it into a dark tablet. A few sure strokes and he’d drawn a symbol representing the name of a lesser angel killed by the Djinn in some ancient battle. It was one he remembered from his childhood and the endless hours he’d spent studying the tomes kept by the House of the Serpent.

  He let the symbol remain for a heartbeat then cleared it with the sweep of his hand. “Can you draw it?”

  She laughed softly and his chest tightened. The ease in which she knelt and recaptured the name in quick lines across the dirt, the talent she took pride in and performed with confidence, was the very thing that would make her death necessary if she were to see the text written on the tablet he’d been sent to retrieve.

  “Close your eyes,” he said, an ache forming in his chest when Aisling complied with a smile, trusted him so easily when he might bring only death to her.

  This time he wrote several sentences using script and symbols many of the Djinn no longer studied or remembered. It was an account from a history text, a record of angel sightings in long-dead and forgotten cities.

  “You can look now,” he said, watching her closely, giving her only enough time to scan each line once before he cleared it away. “Can you copy it?”

  Her eyes met his. Pleasure had given way to somber expression, to private, guarded thoughts he longed to coax from her as much as he feared what they might reveal.

  She leaned forward. Her hand moved with the same sure confidence she exhibited when re-creating only a solitary symbol. There was only a brief hesitation on the name of an angel whose purpose the Djinn had never been able to determine, before she moved on to complete the task, her perfect accuracy deepening his fear for her.

  He had to ensure she never saw the tablet he sought. Even the pleading of a Serpent prince wouldn’t spare her from a Djinn assassin if she did.

  Zurael erased her work and stood. He offered his hand because he couldn’t stop himself from wanting the feel of her skin against his. A shudder went through him when she placed her hand in his in a simple display of trust. Pain over possibly betraying her lanced his heart even as his cock responded by growing harder and fuller.

  They resumed walking. Silence reigned between them, though around them the increasing dusk brought the sounds of insects and frogs, of swaying weeds and the rub of leaf against leaf—the thinly veiled hush before the predators stirred and woke, arrived to claim the night.

  “In Stockton the Church or a religious council is always involved when magic practitioners are on trial,” Aisling said as they drew close to her home. “It happens rarely, since few admit openly to being gifted, but if the brands Elena saw are punishment brands as Aubrey said, then Father Ursu might be able to identify the man who sold Ghost if he was judged here. If nothing else, he’d know what offenses they represent.”

  Zurael’s hand tightened on hers in protest. He didn’t trust the Church not to set Aisling to a task in the spiritlands if she went to them. Father Ursu may have claimed Henri’s death weighed heavily on him, but that hadn’t stopped him from going with armed men to take Aisling from her home and family.

  “It would be dangerous for me to be with you if you go to see him,” Zurael said.

  In a non-corporeal form, as he’d been when he followed her from the house, he was nearly impossible to kill or detect. But he was also at his weakest, when a spell trap set for any number of other beings would also ensnare him. He would expect such traps at the church, just as he’d expect one of those rare humans who could read heavily masked auras to be present. They’d think him demon instead of Djinn, but the damage would be done and the risk for Aisling increased unnecessarily.

  “You asked Raisa about the library. Let’s look for information there first. If you ask Father Ursu about the brands or the man who wears them, he’ll wonder what your interest is, perhaps have the authorities intervene and collect the man for questioning.”

  “You’re right,” Aisling said, and he could hear the worry in her voice. “We might never get a chance to talk to him if the police or Church get to him first.”

  They rounded the corner and her house came into sight. He felt her tension build with each step. Several times she called for the ferret, Aziel, but there was no flash of black or chirped greeting.

  Zurael pulled her keys from his pocket as they neared the front door. He laughed at her consternation when she realized she’d been in such a hurry to escape his presence earlier that she’d left without them.

  She took them from him, glanced around again, though the yard was overgrown and held a number of places for her pet to hide. “Maybe he’ll show up once I start cooking dinner,” she said, worrying her bottom lip. “I can leave a window open for a little while longer.”

  Zurael’s thoughts went to the few things she had in her cabinets. In the Kingdom of the Djinn, few knew hunger. Even the sila, those of lesser birth who had no ability to change shape or become non-corporeal, didn’t lack for food or shelter unless they were cast out into the elements by their houses or clans and not accepted into another.

  His life had been one of luxury, of fine food and respectful servants, of incredible freedom borne along with the heavy weight of responsibility that came with being The Prince’s son. Until he’d been summoned, he’d never known true fear, had never experienced so deeply the emotions that buffeted him when he was in Aisling’s presence.

  “Let me provide tonight’s meal,” he said, and as soon as the words were out, he saw the opportunity they provided for him to return to the occult shop.

  “Full darkness will be here in—”

  He stopped her by the touch of a fingertip to her lips and felt his heart fill with tender warmth when a fleeting look of worry moved through her eyes before she gave a slight nod, accepting he would be safe out in the night, where she wouldn’t be.

  “I’ll travel fast and be back soon,” he said, finding himself suddenly reluctant to leave her.

  She nodded and turned back toward the barred, metal door, slid the key into the lock and opened it enough to unlock the wooden door behind it.

  He couldn’t resist the temptation to touch her one last time, to trace her spine and feel her shiver as desire flared inside her as surely as it did inside him. When he returned he’d have her again. He’d know the silky heat of her wet core, the ecstasy of being buried so deep inside her their heartbeats blended and pulsed in sync with one another.

  “I’ll have to close the windows before you get back,” Aisling said, letting the exterior barred door close as she gave Zurael the house keys.

  Somehow he managed to part from Aisling, to seek the shadows and will his physical shape to fade. He became a swirling, eddying wind that twisted, picking up random twigs and leaves as he retraced their steps to the occult shop. He knew even as he did it there might be no chance to examine the primitive statue and perhaps destroy it.

  Javier’s assistant had assumed the crystal in the figurine’s forehead reacted to Aisling because she was first through the door. But he’d seen images of similar statuettes in the history books of the Djinn, and all of them were dangerous tools in the hands of someone capable of summoning and binding those who could shed their physical form.

  What had tak
en quite a bit of time to do as a man took only a few minutes without the hindrance of flesh. With a thought, unseeable particles condensed, re-formed and clothed him in the manner he’d chosen when he left the Kingdom of the Djinn.

  From deep in the shadows another presence emerged. The aura was heavily masked but recognizable to Zurael. He turned and said, “What brings you here, Irial?”

  “My father sent me,” Irial said, stepping closer, the green of his eyes a sharp contrast to the stylized raven marking his cheek.

  Where Iyar en Batrael was the pitch-black of night, the eldest prince of the House of the Raven was the golden-brown of the forest floor in evening light. Teeth flashed white, but the amusement didn’t quite reach the green of his eyes as he said, “I think my father worries the little shamaness will distract you from your task and perhaps be your downfall. From what I’ve witnessed, even from a safe distance, he has cause for concern. Beyond that, I’m simply a messenger boy, sent to gather what you’ve learned so he can feed the information to Malahel en Raum in silken threads for whatever web the two of them are weaving.”

  There was no reason for Zurael to withhold most of what he’d learned, though he carefully parsed through it, avoided mentioning Aisling’s ability to quickly memorize script and symbols. And underlying his recounting was a subtle message: He didn’t view her as an enemy of the Djinn. He would see her spared.

  Irial’s face was grim by the time Zurael stopped speaking. He glanced at the occult shop. “I can feel the traps from here. They’re powerful. I’m not sure it would be safe for you to enter the shop again, even in a corporeal form.”

  Frustration spiraled through Zurael, but he wasn’t foolish enough to ignore Irial’s assessment. Irial was gifted with the ability to recognize the presence of entrapment spells before they could be triggered.

  “We can get closer,” Irial said, “I want to see the figurine.”

  AISLING remained on the door stoop long moments after Zurael disappeared. She’d been so anxious to return to the house, to escape the impending darkness. But now the thought of going inside alone held no appeal.