His normally luminescent skin was grey and pallid, and he looked dead.
She couldn’t stand them being in his flesh anymore and began ripping them out. Oliver stopped her when she got to Drakhul.
“I’m not taking any chances,” he said as he drew it out of Jack’s thigh, moving it carefully back into its protective case.
With the removal of the last weapon, life rushed back into Jack’s body and he drew in a deep breath. His eyes fluttered open.
“Are you okay?” She leaned over him, searching for signs of pain. She rested her hands on the dais, mostly to keep herself from falling flat on her face. But it meant she was very close to Jack’s face.
“It’s good to see you, Azar of the Ifrit. Do I take it that you have won?” His smile was weak, but reassuring.
“It’s not over yet, but the Unseelie Queen, Imposter King and the Blood Prince are all dead.”
Jack gave a sigh of relief. He lifted a hand and ran his knuckles over her cheek. “You are the balance.” She rubbed her face against his hand, needing the rush of energy that came from his touch. “I would be yours, if you would allow it?”
Uncaring of all the eyes in the room, she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his. It was exactly how she knew it would be, life altering. She could almost hear her blood singing as she deepened the kiss, and his hands came up to wrap around her waist, his thumbs stroking the underside of her breasts.
A voice cleared. “I’m the last person to want to break up a hot lip-lock, and seriously, we should explore my voyeuristic tendencies in depth another time, but we really should be getting back out there,” Oliver said, amusement coloring his words.
She helped Jack sit up, and watched the wounds that the Great Weapons had made erase as if they’d never existed. The greatest weapons on Earth, and he healed from them in an instant. Lucky, she thought, as one of her staples pulled at her flesh.
“You interfered. Aren’t you going to get into trouble for not being impartial?”
Jack laughed. “I’ve never been impartial, but as for the rest, that is for Danu to decide.”
She hugged him tight against her, the need to physically reassure herself too great. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and squeezed her back, making her wince.
She sighed. “I need to get back out there. I have to make sure the Originals stay contained. Once the goblins start to flee, they might go searching for something more interesting to destroy in their anger, and we are still way too close to New York City for my liking.”
Killian came over and gave her a long once over, assessing her wounds. He was wearing that haunted expression again, the one that graced his normally regal features all too often since their father’s death. She didn’t need him to say the words, but she knew that watching her almost die at the hands of Oisrin would be tearing him up inside. It was just the type of man he was, he wore his responsibilities like a yoke.
“You need to rest. You’re wounded.” He was using his authoritative Director voice, but Azar was a Councilor now, she was not so easily compelled.
“I’m fine. Stitched and patched and ready to rock.” She kept her voice steady and strong, impressing herself, but not so much Killian.
“You are in pain, you need to rest.”
“I’ll rest when I’m dead, Killian.”
Oops, wrong choice of words, she thought, as his face hardened.
“That is what I worry about, Azar.”
She squeezed his arm. “I need to finish this. I promise, once this is over, I will rest for a month.”
Oliver laughed and she shot him a dirty look.
“What? We all know that there is no way you could stay out of trouble for a whole month.” She scowled harder, but he pulled her from Jack’s arms and wrapped her in his own. “Don’t worry, Az. We love you anyway.”
She flipped him the bird, but she smiled while she did it.
“Let’s finish this already. It’s really turning into a drag.” She hefted Basatine off the ground, her sword arm feeling instantly stronger. At least her sword was feeling excited for the upcoming battle.
Killian ordered Ethan to stay and guard the weapons vault and followed her out. Jack chose to stay with the Great Weapons. “Just in case.”
Oliver also followed her out, in human form.
“No jaguar?”
“No,” he said curtly. Apparently he was still pissed about being left behind. She’d apologize later, maybe stroke his fur to get it all unruffled. Maybe, she’d stroke other things too. She looked over her shoulder and winked at him, and whatever he saw on her face made his own eyes hood with lust.
They ran out of the dens and into chaos. There were no longer distinct sides to the battle, there were just people running from four powerful titans. They were at least twenty feet tall, their power so strong that it was bitter on her tongue. The punch of their presence winded her, even though she’d prepared herself for it. She wanted to scream, cry, fuck or run away and never stop. Only Killian’s hand on her elbow steadied her.
“Where are the other two?” Azar panicked. Had they escaped the containment area already?
A sharp keening noise erupted from the chasm where the Originals had emerged from their deep prison.
“They mustn’t have made it out before you ended the ritual by removing the weapons,” Killian yelled over the sounds of screams. She did a rough headcount. Ifrit, Shaitan, Marid and Sila. Balraka, Thanamen, Kuma and Tel.
Her gaze was immediately drawn to Balraka. Killian was scary in his full-blooded Ifrit form, but Balraka was the stuff of nightmares. He had a huge set of flaming bat wings, at least thirty feet in width, a face like the side of a cragged basalt cliff and hooves the size of car tires, all encased in a tight blue flame. He was terrifyingly beautiful. Her own Ifrit begged to come out, but the one wing would throw her off balance if she needed to fight.
It didn’t seem to make much difference when you were hacking Finlay to pieces, a mean little voice whispered in her head. She stuffed that voice back into the box where it belonged and pushed back against her Ifrit. She’d had her fun. Azar didn’t want to risk getting lost in the red haze again.
She noticed Mira and her Adel vainly trying to keep Balraka in the clearing, and out of the highly flammable forest, and the even more flammable city.
“Mira needs help.” Killian looked torn, and Azar resisted the urge to huff. “Seriously, I’ll be fine. I’ve got Oliver to watch my back. Go!”
He changed his form, and in that second, watching him wing his way toward Balraka, she noticed how much they had evolved from their Original ancestor. She wished she had more time to really appreciate and compare, and briefly wondered where her favorite historian was at this moment. Was she fighting, or desperately trying to record this event for future generations?
They seemed to be holding their own against the combined power of four of the Originals, and honestly, that was more than she’d hoped for. The problem was that ninety percent of the field was incapacitated on the ground with fear. Thanamen, the Shaitan original, was just too strong. Every so often, a wave of fear so consuming that she had to check if she’d peed herself, swept across the clearing, dropping everyone to their knees.
“Come on. We have to go talk to a legend,” she said to Oliver, already weaving her way through the fighters.
“Talk? We are in the middle of a battle with ancient horrors, and she wants to talk,” he complained as he pushed through the crowd. “Which one in particular?”
“Tel. Sila.”
He grumbled something she couldn’t hear over the noise of battle, but raised the guns he’d appropriated from Ethan on the way out of the dens. He hadn’t left the man unarmed though; Ethan had been a walking arsenal.
Unlike the rest of the Originals, who were causing as much destruction and havoc as possible, Tel stood in one spot, her face tilted to the sky, the sun on her face.
A small number of Adel stood around her, their weapons out but not at
the ready.
“What’s she doing?” Azar asked the closest Adel in a low voice.
“I think she’s enjoying her freedom,” he whispered back.
“I can hear you just fine, you know.” The booming of an annoyed Sila was not something she’d prepared for.
“You speak English,” Azar was so surprised, that it just slipped out. English wasn’t even thought of when the Originals went down into their hellish prison.
“Ah, it was one of our abilities long ago, to understand all languages, despite the dialect. It was what made us such powerful negotiators. Like so many other things, that ability seems to have been lost to the steady march of time.”
She sounded sad. Azar had been prepared for manic, homicidal, or even just plain angry. Any of those things would have made it easy to send her back into the depths. But sadness…
“I’m Azar, of the uh... Ifrit.” She didn’t think she should mention the Unbound. “I…” she didn't really know what to say to a being that’d spent a thousand years in a prison that was created before time itself. She didn’t think she’d take the suggestion to go back very well.
But apparently, the ancient Sila was perceptive. “You want me to get the others back into their prison. We’ll go back soon enough, Weak Blood.” Tel didn’t seem to be insulting her, in the way she’d heard so many times. It actually seemed to be some kind of title, said with respect.
“I’m sorry. But the world can no longer handle the enormity of your powers.”
Tel thought for a moment. Azar would struggle to explain this moment to Stacia, to describe the Sila Original in words. She was greater than immense, her presence making her much larger. She was too ugly to be considered beautiful, but too beautiful to be ugly. Her hair was the color of midnight, but in the sun, it shimmered like the rainbows of an oil slick.
Finally, Tel nodded. “You are right, this I know. But I find myself unwilling to slither back into my prison quite just yet, or force my brethren back, despite what logic would dictate. However, I will tamp down the effects of Thanamen’s powers, purely because he hasn't gotten any less obnoxious in a million years. We were mated once, you know.” She winked, and Azar gaped.
Then suddenly, as if someone had restored the oxygen, Azar could breathe easier. People who laid on the ground whimpering could now run into the forest.
“TEL!” Thanamen’s thundering bellow sent shivers down her spine, but Tel just smiled. Well, at least they now knew how one of the ancient blood feuds had begun.
Azar nodded her thanks. “I’ll make sure no one disturbs you until it’s time.”
Tel inclined her chin at Azar, then tilted her face back to the sun, breathing deep.
Azar and Oliver moved away, and she looked back at the battlefield. None of Lustre or Finlay’s troops remained, although a few of Oisrin’s guard still fought in small groups. But they would be taken, or they’d flash and run. She trusted Lorcan to round up those malcontents later.
The rest of the battle was basically containment. Even as she watched, the Originals were being drawn closer to the crack in the earth, inch by inch.
For the first time since Brennus and Drustan flashed into the New York compound so many months ago, she let herself breathe easy. They had won.
Even Basatine allowed her arm to hang limply at her side.
“It’s over,” she breathed, scared of jinxing the whole thing. But when nothing happened, she let herself feel relief. “It’s over!” she shouted, and thumped Oliver on the shoulder.
Murphy's Law would tell you that these were famous last words.
Two warriors flashed in front of her, their tabards dirty and bloody. Oliver stepped in front of her, guns drawn.
As focused as she was on them, Bast’s yelling surprised her. Mostly because it wasn’t inside her head, but coming from her back. “No!”
She spun around in time to see Bast fall, a bright red gash across his chest, Cian at the other end of the blade. Her mind couldn’t process it all. Bast, in his human form. Cian, his blade bloody. Basatine, lifted and spun lightning fast, slicing at Cian’s throat. All in the blink of an eye. As the Golden Prince of the Fae fell to the ground, and she dropped Basatine in the dirt.
She was on her knees over Bast a second later.
“No. No. No. Bast, what have you done?” She could see the necrosis of Posidagi’s curse crawl up his legs, blackening them, as the long-denied magic fulfilled its deadly purpose on his corporeal form.
“You… are my… heart.” Blood gurgled out of the wound in his chest, his lung perforated. She slapped a hand over the wound, trying to create a seal with her palm.
She gripped his face with the other. “Change back, damn you. Go back to smoke form!”
“...late,” he whispered, his chest heaving as the necrosis encroached up his torso. Her fingers dug into his jaw, as if the sheer force of her will would keep the rot from darkening the golden planes of his face.
She touched her forehead to his and sobbed. “No, you can’t leave me. Fight! Please, you can’t leave me now. Not now.” Tears streamed down her face, running over his cheeks.
He couldn’t die. She refused to let him. Not when they’d finally won and they could be together, like a real couple, without worrying about servitude, or Fae plots, or ancient swords. They could love each other without the weight of the world crushing them.
She could distantly hear Oliver pounding his fists into flesh.
“Why?” he roared, his voice more jaguar than human.
“She was immune. I couldn’t let her live if she wasn’t mine…” Whatever else Cian was about to say was cut off by her enraged werejaguar ripping off the Prince’s head with his bare hands.
Bast rattled out a long breath and didn’t take another. His eyes closed, the putrid blackness of death streaking over his cheeks.
“Bast, don’t leave me.”
She laid her cheek on his and sobbed onto the cooling chest of the man she loved.
Chapter 21
No one approached her for hours, and she growled like a feral animal any time anyone attempted to move Bast’s body. She laid her head on his blackened chest, and continued to cry.
She begged Danu, God, Allah and whoever else she thought would listen. Then she raged at those same gods.
Night fell, and she wept some more. Her tears seemed endless even though her eyes ached. She knew she should get up, get on with business, but she didn’t want to. Fuck them, she’d given enough. Oliver had shifted to jaguar, prowling around them in circles, letting out pained jaguar screams into the night. But she didn’t care about anyone else’s pain, even Oliver’s, when her own heart was shattered.
Exhaustion finally overcame her and she faded into the darkness of sleep.
Hours later, or maybe it was only minutes, the black abyss of unconsciousness morphed into the cruelest of dreams. She dreamt she was in her oasis. Bast stood smiling down at her, no longer black with necrosis, but glowing in his golden glory under the warm Persian sun.
“About time you woke, Jaanaman. I’ve been waiting for you.”
“You died!” she accused, even as she plastered her body to his.
“I did. I’m sorry for hurting you.”
“You didn’t hurt me. You broke me!”
Then she cried some more. Apparently, she hadn’t run out of tears in her oasis.
He stroked her hair, his big hands warm and so real on her nape. He whispered reassuring things to her in his mother tongue.
“You know I would never leave you, Jaanaman. But it’s time for you to wake up.”
Azar snuggled closer, pressing her face to warmth of his body. “No.”
He laughed, his chest rumbling under her ear. God, she’d loved his laugh. He kissed the crown of her head, and then tilted up her chin so he could press whisper-soft kisses across her face. She caught his lips and kissed him back with every ounce of feeling in her body; the pain, anger, sadness, happiness and above all, love.
“I
love you, Azar Nazemi, but you have to wake up. They need you to go back.”
“I don’t care.” And she really didn’t. She’d given them her freedom, her loyalty and the life of the man she loved. She wouldn’t give them this too.
He looked at her, his golden eyes serious. “I need you to go back.”
Hurt filled the places in her soul that were left untouched by grief.
“But I’ll lose you forever,” she sounded defeated, even to her own ears.
Bast placed her away from him, so their bodies were no longer pressed together. “You are stronger than this, to go to pieces and give up the will to live over some man. That is not the strong, smart, loyal woman I fell in love with. Now, wake up!”
She slapped him. “You weren’t just some random one night stand, Jackass! You are the great love of my life.”
And then she kissed him. She could feel his smile against her lips, and he lingered before pulling away again.
“Miracles exist, Jaanaman. Now wake up.” With that, he put two hands against her chest and physically pushed her out of her oasis.
Her eyes snapped open in the darkness. The light of the dawn sun was brightening the horizon, and she lay against Oliver’s warm chest, his hand stroking her hair. She closed her eyes again and let the motion soothe her. He wouldn’t let anyone else close enough to touch her.
She took a deep, shuddering breath and looked up at Oliver, to thank him for being there. Only it wasn’t Oliver’s green eyes that looked back at her, but Bast’s golden ones.
Azar bolted upright and he let her go.
“What the fuck? You died! I felt you take your last breath and your body go cold!”
The Azar Omnibus: The Complete Azar Trilogy (The Azar Trilogy Book 0) Page 67