Ghostland

by Jory Strong

  Some of the recovered pieces fit together tightly. Others crumbled at the edges, distorting the symbols or leaving blank spaces.

  Vague memories stirred as she scanned the text. Ancestral memories perhaps, though some of the curves and shapes reminded her of those Zurael had drawn in the dirt. A cold shiver slid down her spine when she came to the sigils she did recognize, the ones she’d seen painted on Elena and later on Nicholas.

  Javier ran his fingers over a line of text. “I won’t bore you with all the details of how I’ve acquired the missing pieces over the years, but as you can see the tablet is ancient. In fact if you believe some of what’s written in the moldy tomes the Church has in its possession, it was given to an elite priesthood by God himself, much like the commandments were handed to Moses.

  “Instead of laws though, what’s inscribed on the tablet gave mankind—or at least those deemed worthy by the priesthood—dominion over demons and other spirit beings. It’s ironic when you think about all the heretics and witches and black magic practitioners who have been burned at the stake or otherwise killed by the Church and its religious predecessors. Most of them were working with faulty, weak spells and incantations, developed by man, while the Church once had in its possession god-given instructions. But I digress . . .”

  He turned slightly, shifting his focus to the cage at his feet. “If she attempts to summon help, Zurael, kill her.”

  Javier pulled the Taser barb from Aziel with a jerk of his arm. The ferret cried, tried to stand, fell to his side again.

  “Good,” Javier said, putting the gun on the floor, then unlatching the cage. He waited a minute before reaching in to pull Aziel out by the scruff of the neck. “I asked you a question over lunch, Aisling, but you declined to answer. Perhaps you’ll reconsider now and confirm what I already know is true. Could you summon a spirit and require it to possess the body of someone foolish enough to Ghost?”

  Fear for Aziel churned in her stomach. Nightmare images from her first trip to Sinners crowded in. “Yes.”

  “Excellent. See, we’re already starting to work well together. Now for a tougher question. Can you summon a spirit and require it to possess someone who is dead?”

  Aisling’s throat closed in on itself as she remembered John’s voice coming from Felipe’s corpse. Her heart thundered in her ears. She shook her head. Lying.

  “Wrong answer, I think,” Javier said. “And truthfully, you’re of little use to me if you can’t do that. Ghost is difficult to obtain, and there’s always the possibility it’ll wear off at an inopportune moment or become unavailable.”

  From the folds of his robe Javier retrieved an athame. And as quickly as Aubrey had slit Elena’s throat, he did the same to Aziel.

  “Prove you can be useful to me,” Javier said, dropping Aziel’s carcass onto the altar. “Bring your pet back to life or fill his physical shell with another entity.”

  Aisling shook with grief and rage.

  Her throat burned.

  Her heart felt as though it had been ripped from her body.

  Even the knowledge that Aziel had died before, when he wore other bodies, didn’t lessen the anguish of having witnessed this death, of knowing he’d suffered.

  Through tear-filled eyes she saw the spiderweb strands crisscrossing Javier’s face and hands. She forced aside the wild pain crashing through her heart.

  “I have to touch him,” Aisling said, the words barely a whisper. “And unless you want Zurael’s spirit to take over Aziel’s body, he can’t touch me while I do it.”

  Javier’s eyes turned to black ice. “Is she telling the truth, Zurael?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Javier hesitated a moment. He studied Aisling closely, then finally nodded. “Release her. But my earlier command stands. If she tries to summon help, kill her.”

  A shaky breath escaped from Aisling when Zurael’s deadly talons dropped away from her neck. She took an unsteady step forward, kept her head down and tried not to broadcast her intentions.

  Javier backed away from the altar. The athame remained in his hand, as if, like Aubrey, he felt vulnerable without a hostage in front of him.

  Aisling blinked away tears and tried to appear as if her only focus were her dead pet. She was small and Javier was armed, confident not only in his personal strength but at having Zurael under his command. He never expected a physical attack, hadn’t thought to command Zurael to prevent anything but a cry for help.

  With each step Aisling reinforced the desire for Javier’s death, just as with each swing of the owl fetish in her workroom, she’d desperately wanted her assailant to perish.

  When she was close enough she lunged forward, and felt the slash of the athame blade across her palm as he instinctively defended himself. But if anything, the gift of her blood only ensured that his soul was delivered to those whose names she called upon in the spiritlands.

  As soon as she touched him, his eyes widened in disbelief. They filled with horror in the instant she felt his soul part from his body, cut through cleanly like a scythe through wheat.

  Raw emotion surged through Zurael as the entrapment spell dispersed. He reached Aisling before Javier’s corpse hit the floor, took her in his arms and held her as she gave in to the anguish of losing Aziel.

  “Aisling,” he whispered, eyes burning as he pressed kisses to her wet cheeks, her lips, to the places on her neck where his talons had pierced her skin.

  Fear for her, the fury and terror of being enslaved and forced to hurt her, to watch helplessly as she was hurt—all of it paled in comparison to the wrenching agony of witnessing her heartbreak and knowing he had to leave her.

  He had to take the tablet and return to his father’s kingdom. It wasn’t just his honor at stake, but a future with her.

  His chest grew tight with worry and fear. The task she’d accepted in the spiritlands wasn’t complete. Peter Germaine still lived.

  Against his chest her sobs gave way to tremors of pain, to shuddering gasps. He rubbed his cheek against her hair, told himself she was safe at the moment and he wouldn’t be gone long.

  “Aziel will come back,” Aisling whispered against his chest, repeating it several more times, each time with more certainty, as if saying it would make it so. She pulled away then, lifted a face ravaged by sorrow, and Zurael found her exquisitely beautiful, utterly compelling in her vulnerability.

  He brought her hands to his mouth, pressed a kiss to her palms in silent acknowledgment of what she’d done, saved them both. He understood now her silence since returning from the spiritlands after taking Felipe and Ilka there, could guess what had happened, what terrible price she’d paid for a gift she wouldn’t welcome.

  “I need to leave, Aisling,” he said, and was barely able to endure the pain slicing through his heart when tears formed in her eyes.

  She exhaled a ragged breath and gave a slight nod of understanding. “You want the tablet.”

  He leaned in, kissed the tears away. “I want you, Aisling, only you. If I hadn’t promised to return to the Djinn as soon as I gained possession of the tablet, then I wouldn’t leave you, not even for a moment.”

  His lips took possession of hers. His tongue sought hers, spoke of the things he hadn’t yet put into words, the emotions she elicited, what she’d come to mean to him.

  “I’ll return to you,” he said when the kiss ended.

  Every instinct fought leaving her. But honor and duty demanded it.

  He pulled away, turned to the altar where Aziel’s lifeless body lay and felt a renewed surge of fury. The sting of failure.

  Zurael gathered the tablet pieces. And when it was done, he kissed Aisling again, promised again, “I’ll return to you,” then gave up his physical form and went back to a place that was no longer home.

  Silence settled around Aisling, heavy and thick, like the numbness making it hard to think, to know what to do next. Slowly she became aware of the metallic smell of blood clinging to the air, the death stenc
h of voided bodies.

  Elena. Aubrey. Javier.

  Aziel.

  The tears started flowing again. She wouldn’t leave him here with the others.

  Aisling picked him up, intending to escape the house. But as she stepped past Elena, she felt the phantom prick of Aziel’s claws in her shoulder, the warm imagined brush of his tail against her cheek, as if even in death he served as her guide—reminding her of the promise she’d made to Sinead in exchange for being led to where Nicholas was bound to the altar.

  It wouldn’t wait. As dangerous as it was to travel to the spiritlands in this house where magic had been raised by human sacrifice, Aisling knew the longer she waited, the more treacherous it would become to locate Elena and reunite her with Sinead. Even so, she might have delayed performing the task, convinced herself that with no one to stand guard over her physical shell, it would be better to wait, perhaps seek shelter with the Wainwright witches until Zurael returned and Peter Germaine was dead. But the heavy feel of the crystal amulet in her fetish pouch, the cold still radiating from it—so different than Zurael’s heat—made her feel as if the being it represented was aware of her plight and stood ready to protect her.

  She left the room where the corpses lay as they’d fallen. The house had the quiet, empty feel of abandonment.

  It was in the red zone. She wondered if that would protect her from being arrested or if she should step forward and claim to be a victim before the bodies were discovered. Elena’s driver could testify she hadn’t come willingly.

  Aisling pushed her worries aside for later, for after she’d paid her debt. She slipped into a small room, an office with a door that locked. She knelt on the floor without ceremony and fixed the name of her most powerful protector in her mind, though she didn’t summon him as she slipped into the gray world of the spiritlands.

  Eighteen

  THE elaborately carved door to the House of the Spider opened. The same male Djinn wearing the simple white trousers of a student bowed low and stepped back, out of the way. “Welcome, Prince Zurael en Caym of the House of the Serpent. You honor us with your presence.”

  Zurael entered and found Malahel en Raum waiting for him. She was once again dressed in the gray concealing robes of a desert traveler, with little showing except for eyes so dark they appeared black.

  “You were successful, I see.”

  He gave her the tablet, anxious to be rid of it, anxious to leave. Despite all the arguments he’d fashioned and his plans for making Malahel en Raum and Iyar en Batrael his allies, he felt a desperate, urgent need to return to Aisling.

  “The human female who summoned you is dead?” Malahel asked.

  Even the question sent a spasm of pain through his heart. “No. She isn’t an enemy to the Djinn. I won’t allow her to be harmed.”

  Spider black eyes bore into him. “She’s enslaved you.”

  He stiffened, glanced away, and saw again the wall tapestries with their carnal depictions of intertwined humans, angels and Djinn. And rather than deny Malahel’s claim, he said, “I am not bound to her in the way you imply.”

  The arrival of Iyar en Batrael forestalled whatever Malahel might say. He stepped into the room from one of the many hallways leading off it, his golden eyes gleaming against his dark face.

  “Did the female have a chance to learn what was written on the tablet?”

  Every muscle in Zurael’s body tensed. In his mind’s eye he saw Aisling kneeling in the dirt after they’d left the occult shop, easily duplicating the Djinn text he’d written in the dirt. He saw her standing next to Javier’s altar, scanning the tablet, effortlessly committing it to memory.

  “She saw the tablet but killed the human who possessed it. She freed me from his demon spell and made no effort to stop me from returning home with it in my possession.”

  Zurael met their eyes, let them read his determination, his intentions, reminded them with the force of his will that he was a prince of the House of the Serpent. “She isn’t an enemy to the Djinn. I won’t allow her to be harmed.”

  They offered him nothing. Neither alliance nor open disagreement, and he didn’t linger.

  Aisling was alone. Unprotected. Physically weakened and suffering emotionally over the loss of Aziel.

  Zurael sought out The Prince. But when his father wouldn’t grant him an audience, he turned away from his father’s house and hurried toward the sigil-covered gate that led to the world once belonging to the Djinn.

  Few could pass through it without The Prince’s permission. Zurael would have preferred to gain it, to warn his father that he would lose a son if he sent an assassin to Aisling.

  Miizan en Rumjal, his father’s advisor, stood at the gate. He wore the scorpion of his house on his neck, though in the Djinn’s prison kingdom it wasn’t necessary.

  “The Prince sent me,” Miizan said. “I am to remind you that his words are still law here and he hasn’t changed the ones he spoke to you last. Unless summoned, you may leave the Kingdom of the Djinn only once.

  “He gave me no further instructions, but I will issue a warning. The House of the Scorpion is aware of your return. We are aware of the threat posed by the female who summoned you. We know she still lives and you wish her to remain alive. None from my house has yet been sent to her. But if you break The Prince’s law and return to her, we will finish what you did not.”

  Miizan glanced at the gate, then transported away without saying anything more, leaving the pathway back to Aisling unguarded.

  Zurael wanted to rage. He wanted to gather the sand around him in a seething mass and roar through the desert. The raw helplessness and fury filling him equaled what he’d felt when he was trapped and bound by Javier’s spell.

  Aisling. He ached for her, feared for her. Hated being away from her.

  Zurael turned from the gate. Fresh determination surged through him. He would force his way in to see his father if necessary.

  A swirl of air preceded the energy signature that was Irial. The Raven prince took form. His teeth flashed white in a savage smile. Green eyes burned with intensity. “So the game plays out. A prince of Serpents becomes the pawn to be sacrificed for a child of mud. I’d find the situation more amusing if I didn’t suspect a similar fate waited for me.”

  AISLING felt changed, different. Whether it was gaining her birthright on her last visit or the culmination of her experiences since being brought to Oakland, she didn’t know. But as the spirit winds swirled around her in greeting, whispered to her, she felt a confidence she’d never experienced before, and knew that as long as Elena hadn’t entered one of the places of power in the spiritlands, then she could easily find her.

  But it wasn’t Elena’s name Aisling spoke. It was Aziel’s. She dared what she wouldn’t have before, and the gray nothingness parted to reveal a man.

  Confusion crowded in with her first glimpse of him. He was Irial and yet he wasn’t. Instead of a stylized raven tattooed on his cheek, black wings and outstretched claws spread across his chest. And unlike the demon image she’d seen when she summoned Irial, Aziel was naked save for sheer trousers like the ones Zurael appeared in when Javier’s spell forced him to take a form.

  Understanding dawned. “You’re Djinn,” she said, feeling awkward, strangely shy now that Aziel was a man.

  Aziel smiled and it flooded her with warmth and familiar comfort. He closed the distance between them and took her face in his hands, pressed a kiss to her forehead—touched her in the spiritlands, where few ever did.

  His thumbs brushed away tears she didn’t realize were falling. “You’ve always loved me well, Aisling. And because of you there’s hope for others of my kind. A final lesson.”

  He stepped back. In the blink of an eye a robed stranger stood where Aziel had been, a black-haired man with sharp, unfamiliar features. She tried to see him as she’d seen the dead circling Felipe and Ilka, expected to see him as a pure spirit, transparent and nearly formless, perhaps bound by silken threads to unseen
beings. Instead she saw a knotted mass, two entities tangled together so thoroughly their physical forms fluctuated between robed stranger and Djinn image.

  “The Djinn are the children of Earth,” Aziel said. “We existed long before the alien god arrived with his army of angels. He thought to enslave us, to give us over to his children of mud as familiars. I killed the sorcerer who bound me and now our spirits are joined. This is what it means to become ifrit. It is a Djinn’s worst nightmare, what we fear even more than being bound, to become ifrit, soul-tainted, to have our names no longer spoken, to know we will never step foot in the kingdom carved out deep in the spiritlands where the Djinn wait for a chance to reclaim what was once ours.

  “In the beginning, as humans mark it, the alien god tried to make an example of one of us. He forced The Prince into the image both Zurael and Irial have shown you, then named him demon. We were the first to be called by that name, but the beings to come after, the ones created by the children of the mud, they are the true demons.”

  “And my father?”

  Aziel leaned in and pressed another kiss to her forehead. A love that had existed from her earliest memory flowed down the bond they shared, came with his thoughts. Elena waits. I’ll see her to Sinead. Leave this place. And Aisling was given no choice as the spirit winds swept in.

  She rose from where she knelt in the small locked office, still cradling what had been Aziel but no longer was. The sight of the ferret brought a fresh wave of sadness, not for his death this time, but for his loss from her life.

  A final lesson.

  He wouldn’t come to her again.

  Aisling swallowed hard. She wondered if Zurael would return—or if once he was among his own kind, free from the horror of being bound by Javier, he would decide against coming back.

  Child of mud. He’d called her that more than once. He’d made no secret of what he thought about humans.

  Not all humans, a small internal voice whispered in her mind.

  She felt his absence acutely. Had expected him to be back by now.