She was still working on the chain when the car slowed and stopped. She heard the crunch of gravel as the driver walked around to the trunk. The lid flew open and Fareet’s face stared down at her menacingly. He no longer looked average to her. His expression was that of a monster.
“I see you’re awake. Probably testing the chain, right? It’s a special heat resistant metal that I got from a Russian chemist several years ago. Then I killed him, of course. We can’t have heat resistant items popping up in the market, it would be bad for business. But it did come in handy just this once.” His voice had that crazy conversational tone that lunatics use. "I wouldn’t even bother. It will take weeks to burn through it and you won’t even be alive in twenty-four hours. So conserve your strength for the big finale. I promise you it will be worth the wait.” He began fiddling around in his pockets, searching for something.
“Why don’t you let the boy go, Fareet? You have no use left for him. The Were know that you have him and they are tracking his scent as we speak. If you leave him here they won’t be able to find you later on,” Azar said nonchalantly, as if Aaron’s life didn’t matter to her at all.
She looked around Fareet's silhouette and could see that they were still in civilization. She couldn’t see a street sign, just a Starbucks through trees but it looked like every other Starbucks on the planet. She desperately looked for weapons, other cars, anything that could help. They'd parked off to the side of the road in a rest area for broken down vehicles. Azar could still see the lines of traffic going past, but she doubted they could see her. But at least Aaron could get medical attention if they left him here.
“Oh half blood, do I look like a fool? The boy stays because he is like a dead weight around your soft human heart, anchoring you in my grasp. Whilst he is under my control, you will stay to protect him. You really are a disgrace to the Ifrit, but right now that works in my favor. Soon you will be my final tribute to the Great Lord Balraka and he will come back to earth and burn this city to ash!” He sounded like a crazed zealot, his voice hitting that slightly higher octave that seemed to be universal to maniacs everywhere and his hands raised in the air like Balraka was in heaven rather than the very pits of hell.
“Seriously, weren't you hugged enough as a child or something? You must know how crazy this all sounds. You are talking about killing hundreds of your own kind.” She didn't add that he would be killing millions of humans as well. She doubted he even saw them as anything other than food for Balraka. Fareet just gave her a blank look, and Azar realized that life, be it Djinn, Supe or human, meant nothing to him. It made her so angry. “I am going to kill you. You chose the wrong half blood to pick on asshole,” Azar promised softly from the trunk of the car. Her hands lit up again, fire curling from her fingers and she desperately wanted to reach out and fry this mofo. Rationally, she knew that it would probably tickle him, but it was an outlet for her futile rage.
Fareet just laughed in her face. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a syringe. In one quick move, his hand swept down and stabbed her in the ass, then slammed the trunk shut and she and Aaron were in darkness once more. The darkness brought the realization that their chances of surviving this were starting to fade, and fast.
“What the hell?” Her vision suddenly went blurry and her arms got heavy, her fiery hands going out almost immediately. She'd been sedated. She tried to reignite but she couldn't get more than a flicker.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled groggily to Aaron. She failed him.
His response was a bare whisper. “You tried.”
The rest of the night passed in a haze. Whatever Fareet had shot into her wore off quickly, so periodically he would stop the car, open the trunk and stab her with another needle. He didn’t talk to her again. From the intel she could gather during her periods of lucidity, they were still driving, probably staying on the move so the pack couldn’t trace them. She tried to kick out the rear tail light so she could signal to the cars behind them, but whatever was in that drug cocktail had made her weaker than a kitten. She kept working on the chain between her wrists, but she could barely call up enough flame to toast a piece of bread, let alone burn through some kind of super heat resistant metal.
Each time she woke, she checked on Aaron, and he seemed to be better. His breathing had evened out, which was quite a feat considering a good portion of her body weight was on top of his. She could hear his heartbeat and it was nice and strong. That was about as much conscious thought she could muster.
Every time she drifted back into oblivion, she prayed that her supernatural A-Team would be there the next time she woke. Just this once, she wouldn't mind being rescued by a knight in shining armor.
Chapter 13
Azar struggled to open her eyes. She could see the light through her eyelids, so she knew it must be morning. She finally forced her eyes open and realized the whole world had been turned upside down. Or maybe it was just her. She looked up, or down, and realized she was hanging by her feet from a chain, suspended about six feet from the ground. The chain was wrapped around her middle, binding her slave cuffed arms to her body and then ran up to loop around her ankles. She turned her head but all she could see was the cool blue water of the ocean and the New York City skyline juxtaposed proudly along the horizon.
She tried to make the synapses in her brain fire, so she could work out what the hell was going on. She shook her head to chase away the cobwebs that clouded her mind. She must be on a boat; she could see the prow and the odd bit of surf splashed up and hit her in the face as they moved through the choppy surf.
Azar heard a groan below her and looked down. She let out a yell but it was muffled by duct tape that she hadn’t noticed was there. Directly below her, Aaron lay on the steel deck, a knife thrust through his chest to the hilt. She frantically wiggled around, trying to loosen the chains that bound her so she could help him. She called the flame to her and arched backwards to touch the chain.
“I would stop and think before you melt through those chains.” A shudder ran through her body at the sound of Fareet's cold voice. She whipped her head around looking for the source and found him standing to her left. He was smiling. “I think this is kind of dastardly, even for me. You see, I needed to be sure you would stay exactly where I put you whilst I dealt with other matters, so I devised a carefully laid out plan.” He pulled out a knife that had been sheathed on his hip. “People don’t know this about me, but during my slavery, I was used as a metalsmith. I had quite an affinity with metals; gold, silver, iron, steel, it didn’t matter. I could shape it and mold it until it was something spectacular. My human master,” he spat the word out like it was poison, “worked me until the skin of my fingers bled. He made a fortune off my labor. People from all over Europe came to his crappy little kingdom to get the finest crafted metals on the continent. That was until he was killed in an unfortunate avalanche on the road to Constantinople from what is now Russia. He was killed instantly, and I was also assumed dead.
“But I digress. This knife is of my own design. It’s the sister blade of the one currently pinning our Were friend to the deck over there, like a butterfly to a board. See these hinged secondary blades?” He pointed to what looked like thin flat spikes that molded to the shape of the blade. Two were attached to the tip and another two were positioned midway up the blade. “When they are stabbed into your victim, they sit flush to the blade, making it easy for the blade to slide into the flesh. But were you to try and pull it out,” he pressed a finger to the tip of one of the secondary blades and it fanned out, creating an angry spike that sat out at a forty five degrees from the blade, “it would gut you instantly, like a spear gun no? In the case of our friend over here, it would catch on his heart and tear it from his body. You see, I’ve precisely placed the blade in his chest so that if you were to do anything crazy, like fall on top of him from a great height, the blades would knick something vital and he would bleed out before you could get your hands in front of you to stop i
t. If you tried to remove it, well, a lot of important organs would come with it.” He took a little bow, as if someone was applauding him for being sadistically cruel.
However, he was right; she was stuck until she could think of another way to get herself free without killing Aaron. He looked terrible, his face had lost all color and a spreading pool of blood haloed his torso. Thankfully, he appeared to be unconscious. The stiller he was, the more likely he would survive.
Fareet stood there with a smile on his face. He knew he had her. For now at least. But there was something she wanted to know while he was feeling so chatty. She started to speak, but the duct tape over her mouth muffled her words. Fareet rolled his eyes and reached over to rip it off. Azar swore a blue streak as the duct tape took a layer of skin with it.
“That hurt!” Her eyes watered from the sting. “What I want to know is how you plan to kill me? From what I hear, a fire pledge means you have to use your Djinn abilities to burn the sacrifice. If you plan to set me on fire, you may as well just drop me back in Brooklyn so I can go get a shiatsu massage at Mama Lynn’s Nails and Beauty.” Easy, she said to herself, you just need to needle him enough to get him to spill his plans, not enough to kill you on the spot.
“Oh, that’s easy half blood. As you are my final tribute, I have saved the best for last.” He reached over his shoulder and only then did Azar see the hilt of the sword strapped to his back. As he removed it from its scabbard, it glowed faintly with a white blue light. Oh, crap. She knew what that was alright.
“Drakhul.” Its name choked up from her throat. Drakhul was like Ifrit kryptonite. It could be wielded by anyone to kill an Ifrit, from a human child to another Djinn race. A single knick was deadly to an Ifrit, and the death would be as painful and horrible as any imaginable. It was one of the Great Weapons forged by the first Djinn, when the Council held a lot less sway and every Djinn was as big and powerful as Balraka.
The Great Weapons were an urban legend among the Djinn, and the story of their strength was whispered about by all types of supernatural creatures. All six weapons were said to be lost to time, and quite frankly, no one was too upset by the fact. The last thing the Council needed was for some backwater Djinn to stumble across one of the most powerful weapons ever created and then get it in their head to overthrow the only system of governance the Djinn had ever known.
"Where did you find it?” She whispered.
“It was buried in the ice above the avalanche that killed my human master. I was lying on my back in the snow, amongst the mud and ice that had poured down on top of our caravan. I was so sure that I was dead, that a shard of ice must have buried itself in my body because the cold was that excruciating. I was staring at the ice wall that had been exposed when the cliff face had given way. Drakhul was buried so deep that all I saw at first was a faint glimmer in the ice. It was no more than a flash, but somehow I knew it was important, that it was calling to me. I dug for months at the ice to chisel my way towards it, and when I finally knew what it was, well, I knew it was a higher power that had gifted me my reprieve from slavery and granted me this powerful weapon. I knew that Balraka wanted me to save him from his icy prison.” He walked along the deck, waving Drakhul like a pendulum. If she had any doubts about his sanity before, she knew he was completely nuts now.
“So I escaped from Europe in case the Djinn Council discovered that I had not perished with my master, came to this barbaric new world. I gained power until I was sure that after I had released Balraka, I would be able to rule in his stead amidst the chaos. I cannot free him this time, but I shall never stop searching for a way to unlock the bars of his cell. Until then, I can create a world for him to rule.”
Fareet had Drakhul thrust in the air like a conquering hero of old, and the whites around his eyes showed, making him look as crazy as he obviously was.
Azar knew that the likelihood of her surviving the day just dropped dramatically. Drakhul could be the tool of her freedom or her doom but only time would tell which way it would go. However, she would fight hard to make sure she was victorious, because quite frankly, the excruciating agony that would follow a cut by Drakhul was not the way she wanted to die. Now all she needed to do was figure out a way to take it from him without letting the blade slice her in any way. Should be easy enough, she lied to herself.
“I can see the cogs turning in your head half blood, but it is useless. You will be my final sacrifice and the city of New York will burn. Now if you could just stay right there, I have some cattle to herd into a suitable holding pen. We want Balraka to have a nice feast when he finally arrives!” Fareet all but skipped off towards the metal stairs that led to the lower decks.
As soon as he was out of sight, Azar looked around for a way out of this mess. They were obviously on a ferry; she could see the NYC Department of Transport logo spray painted to the side of the boat. Given the direction they were heading in relation to Skyline, she'd say it was the Staten Island ferry. At this hour of the morning, it would be filled with hundreds of commuters, tourists and children on school excursions to the Statue of Liberty. Hundreds of people who were about to become breakfast for Balraka. She had to stop hanging around and do something.
Aaron was still prone on the deck beneath her, and she couldn’t risk jostling that knife, just in case Fareet was as precise as he claimed. Her hands were cuffed behind her back, so she couldn’t climb back up the chain towards the crow’s nest to free herself from the chains without falling. She could try to swing and melt the chain simultaneously, but she would have to time it perfectly so that she didn’t land on Aaron. It would be worth a shot, but the margin of error was large, and then Aaron would bleed out in seconds. She only had one more plan, and she just prayed that Aaron was conscious enough to help.
“Aaron! Can you hear me? I need you to wake up.” To her surprise, his eyes popped straight open.
“I’m alright. Well, not alright, but I’m conscious,” he said, his voice stronger than she’d expected. “I thought it would be better if I didn’t let him know I was awake. He likes to do things when I’m awake.” The faint tremor in the boy's voice let her know what he meant. Fareet tortured Aaron when he was awake. It was just another nail in Fareet’s coffin.
“You did good, Aaron. It was best to let him think that you were unconscious. It’s what he gets for underestimating a Were. You are much tougher than anyone thinks. I know this first hand. I’ve met your Pack. You guys are strong, tough and resilient.” She was psyching him up, because the next part of her plan wasn’t going to be pleasant. “I think Fareet is going to try and burn down New York, and right now we are the only two people on the planet that can stop him. So I need to get down, and to do that, you’re going to have to do something really brave.”
“That means painful, right?” There was a thin note of teenage sarcasm mixed in with the fear in his voice, and that gave Azar a little bit of hope.
“Yeah it does. Sorry kid, I really tried to think of another way but they all end up with unsatisfactory endings.” Or you dead, Azar thought. Aaron was a smart kid though; he knew what she meant even if she didn’t say it aloud. “I don’t think Fareet was bluffing about the knife in your chest. I think what he underestimated was my experience with trauma cases and your cast iron will.”
Azar analyzed his chest wound with the critical eye that had been drummed into her from years of training. If you worked in the emergency services on the streets of Brooklyn, chances were you had attended your share of stabbings. Fareet had stabbed him on the left side of the chest, just below his pectoral muscle. The blade was on a twenty degree angle in his chest, probably so he could insert it between Aarons ribs. Azar gave thanks for small favors. It was going to hurt, but with a bit of luck, he might survive until she could get help.
“Okay Aaron, here is the plan. It’s going to hurt like Hades, but I’ll be able to get down there and help really quickly. What I need you to do, on my word, is jerk up and to your right just a half an inch. Your
rib bone should stop you from going too far off course. Your lung might collapse, and it’s going to get a lot harder to breathe, but the knife will be away from your heart and I might be able to move you to safety. Okay?” Aaron’s face was twisted in pain already, but he had a stubborn look on his face that kind of reminded her of Tao, so she knew he understood.
“Alright, get ready! Remember only half an inch.” She twisted her body so she started to swing out on the end of the chain. She called her flame again and arched backwards so she could touch the chain with a fingertip. She felt the metal soften and melt almost immediately. She swung out to the furthest point and blasted the chain with everything she had.
“NOW!”
Aaron’s scream of pain drowned out the sound of the chain snapping and she thudded to the ground right across his legs. She rolled off him as gently and quickly as she could, folding her body through the loops of her bound arms like a circus contortionist, so that her hands were finally in front of her. She crawled up to Aaron’s torso. He was white and sweating with pain, his breathing labored. Blood bubbled from the small hole in his chest.
Azar tore off her shirt and pants to use as pressure bandages. Aaron’s eyes widened a little at the sight of her taking off her clothes and she smiled at him reassuringly.
“Don’t go getting any ideas, Kid. I’m going to try and use them as pressure bandages to slow down the bleeding a little. I’m hoping that the combination of pressure and your accelerated healing will keep you stable enough until I can get you help." She tore her shirt in half, and pressed a wadded up piece to the wound on his front, wrapping it as tightly around the knife as she could. "Okay, now I’m going to roll you to the side a little so I can get my hand under your back. I’m going to melt the metal around the knife so it slides out.” She gently curled his free side up and pressed her palm to the metal deck around the knife. When it was hot enough, she gently lifted Aaron into a sitting position by his shoulders, the knife sliding out of the melted metal flooring as if it were butter. She could smell the burning of his flesh as the heated metal pressed against his skin. She sat him up and pressed the other half of her shirt against his back wound before wrapping her pants around his torso as hard as she could.
The Azar Omnibus: The Complete Azar Trilogy (The Azar Trilogy Book 0) Page 16