by Alisha Basso
I turned to leave, hesitated. I was giddy and confused about Rafe and really wanted to talk with Mervyn. I’d so hoped he’d be here.
I pulled out my phone and checked the text message again. Mervyn said he was coming to the Center. Maybe he was here, but downstairs, waiting for me in my cube. Heart lifting, I took a couple steps toward the elevator.
Then I stopped as another thought hit me. If he’d just gotten here, maybe he was on his way up. It’d be a real comedy to miss each other, me in the front elevator and him in the back.
A quick peek at my mental map revealed no Mervyn. In case my magic was on the fritz I decided to try technology, to use his phone to dial my extension. I sat down in his chair and reached for the phone.
A bone-deep chill wicked into me. Mervyn’s chair was wracked with pain.
I jumped to my feet, heart pounding, my veins on fire. Adrenalin, hell on magic. I clamped my eyes shut, took as deep a breath as I could, inhaling needles, then knives. Ignoring the pain, I controlled the exhale, pressing the air out over a slow ten-count. When my heart wasn’t thudding so badly, I opened my eyes.
Mervyn’s chair was infused with pain, okay. Didn’t mean it was recent. Didn’t mean it was anything abnormal. I needed more information.
Gingerly, I sat again and gradually opened my senses. The pain was…vivid. I repressed my flinch. Recent, then. And the type of pain…prickly, bloody…oh damn.
It was Mayan.
The searing in my veins was replaced by ice. Because of Y12 and my own heritage, I knew about pain of the Mayan variety. Mayan nobles had used bloodletting in their rituals. One of the less-horrific practices was spiny needles through the tongue. On the eve of the Mayan Doom, this residue of bloody pain in Mervyn’s chair was ominous. I tried to suppress the cold but it seeped from my veins into my very soul.
I threw off my trance and jumped to my feet. Where was Mervyn? Where was Rafe? The whole floor was curiously silent, devoid of murmurs or mouse clicks or even sanitized Christmas music. Where was everybody, dead?
How morbid. According to Mervyn’s computer clock, it was six minutes past eleven. Everybody was emphatically not dead, just gone. Second shift had cleared out for home, and graveyard shift was simply quieter than the college kids.
Still, that pain in Mervyn’s chair wasn’t good. I’d head to my cubicle, in case he’d left me a message there. Besides, I had to see if the Doom function was still pointing toward the pits of hell.
In my cube, no note waited for me. I fell into my chair and jabbed the button to update my numbers, frustrated and scared. It kept nagging me. Why had Mervyn come back? What was the message he’d gotten, and why had he thought it had come from me?
Staring at my cubicle phone, a thought struck me. Mervyn would pay attention if he saw my caller ID. I grabbed the handset and punched redial. A cheery tune beep-booped in my ear, eight notes long. I hit the switch hook to cut the line, then, holding my breath, keyed in Mervyn’s cell phone number, a nine first for an outside line.
It was the same tune.
The hairs stood on the back of my neck. Someone sat here and called Mervyn, enticing him away from his family. Why? And who? Even with my caller ID, not many people could have contacted Mervyn with an urgent message supposedly from me and be believed.
A colleague, or a friend.
Trying to breathe, barely gulping air, at that moment I finally caught sight of my updated spreadsheet.
It was a horrible replay of last time. Twenty minutes ago the world’s fear was all but gone.
Within ten minutes, that gain had been wiped out.
I sprang to my feet. God, if it was connected in any way with the pain in Mervyn’s cube…I needed help.
Rafe!
For the first time in my life, he didn’t answer.
I panted through my panic. Argued with myself even as I started pacing my cubicle. It didn’t mean what I thought it did. It didn’t mean Rafe had abandoned me…or rather, that he’d abandoned humanity. He might not know our Venus gain had been wiped out. Or if he knew, he might be doing some jinni thing to save the world.
I tried my mental map, but no Rafe. I had no idea if that meant he was gone or if jinn just didn’t show up on internal radar.
My whole body prickled with panic. I tried talking myself down. Rafe wouldn’t abandon me or the world. After all, he’d cared enough to maneuver me into calling him in the first place, right? Although he’d left without even saying goodbye and what did that mean…no, he’d kissed me. I touched my cheek, trying to remember if it was a fond see-you-later kiss or a semi-regretful goodbye-forever peck.
I’d balked on the last orgasm. Maybe Rafe had simply taken things into his own hands. Not with orgasms, but with the enemy mage. Maybe Rafe was working his own counter to the swift silver needle and killing twine.
That was probably it. No need to panic. If he was working magic it’d simply be something big, and that’d take lots of room, so he’d left our little dorm room for a bigger space.
Chants, Rites and Rituals on seven. Or the roof. I started for the elevator.
Lots of room…and from that graph, lots of energy. Except jinn demanded their pound of flesh for working heavy karmic loads, but Rafe wasn’t getting his pounds from me.
So where was he getting it? Maybe drawing a mote from each human on the face of the planet but after meeting the real Rafe, getting to know him, his honor, his caring…he’d pay the cost more personally.
Like self-sacrifice?
My insides iced. If he was, I had to find him.
I didn’t know for sure he was working magic or even that he’d stayed on Earth. But my churning gut prodded me into the elevator. Finger stiff with fear, I hit the up button, and waited.
And waited.
Chapter Seven
I hit the button several times before I noticed it wasn’t lighting up and became aware of the faint echoes of a shrill bell. I pressed the arrow and held it, then bent toward the doors. The bell was coming from several floors up. It was a signal I recognized.
The elevator was being held.
Crispy fried crap. I tried the other cars in the bank, with the same results. I could cross to the rear elevators but what if those cars had been held too? The button locked so a person didn’t need to stay with the car to hold it. One person could render them all useless. I didn’t relish the idea of humping the length of the Center only to hit more dead ends, ruining my lungs for nothing.
It would have to be the stairs. I threw open the door to the well and called up, “Rafe, please! I need you.”
No answer.
I managed to run up a flight, nearly passed out and had to slow to a huffing walk. Stupid cancer reducing my lung capacity, to say nothing of the being-tired-all-the-time shit. I kept slogging up that echoing concrete well as long as I could, past third floor Analysis, past fourth floor Accounting, still slogging upward until my lungs were on fire and my legs were trembling.
Rafe. I paused. “Rafe!”
No answer. He’d never not answered. I pushed again into a huffing run.
Just before the fifth floor, I stumbled. My shins barked concrete, sharp pain fracturing my determination. It took everything I had to pull myself up by the handrail and keep going, limping and wheezing. The pain receded to a constant dull throbbing.
Rafe, I called again. “Rafe.” My voice was hoarse.
Where was he?
On the sixth floor landing I fell and finally stayed down, unable to breathe. Oh, Rafe. Please. I need you. Hot tears threaded down my cheeks.
He appeared in a lick of flame, fully clothed in jeans and tee. He was haloed by magic, like he’d been working something big and wasn’t planning to be interrupted long. “Amaia?” His magic tamped down and he knelt and grabbed me, circling my ribs with his strong arms, lifting me to my feet. A palm on my breastbone thrust warmth into my chest. He said, “I thought you’d have the sense to stay in bed. You need to rest.”
“I can rest after
the end of the world,” I gasped. My heart was slowing. “Do we have time for a few more orgasms?”
“I am sorry, no.” He petted my back, and my lungs filled with cool fresh oxygen.
In seconds I could breathe better than ever. “But it’s only been maybe twenty minutes. Surely we could—”
“Amaia, no.” He held me a moment, a warmth that was more than physical working its way into my chest. “Not only have we passed the point where Venus magic would work, the world’s balance is as sick as it was before.”
“Damn it. I saw the numbers, but I’d hoped… Doesn’t matter. A destructive fall that abrupt has to be intentional.” Four human orgasms…no, it wasn’t just my pleasure that last time, it was our pleasure. A jinni’s climax would be a thousand times as powerful.
Someone had wiped that out in an instant. I shivered.
He caught it and pulled me flush, hand protectively cupping my head, my face against his chest. The skin of my cheek seamed with his powerful muscles, and it felt so good.
It gave me the strength to say the worst out loud. “Rafe, I think a wizard is channeling the pain of others to feed his magic. I think he used someone I know.” I explained about Mervyn, my voice hitching.
Rafe palmed my jaw and lifted my face. His black eyes searched mine, a soft jet velvet, surprisingly stripped of inhuman glitter. “I’ll take care of this. You go back downstairs and rest.”
“I can’t. There has to be something I can do. Unless…” I stared into his deep black eyes. “Am I in your way?”
His gaze softened further. “You’re right—the enemy is using ritual human sacrifice of wizards. But it’s self-sacrifice, the most powerful release of energy possible.”
Pain hit me. Mervyn had somehow been coerced into hurting himself? “That’s horrible.”
“Yes. But the point is, even your magic is a thimble in comparison. Go back to bed.”
“I…I really can’t help?” It stripped me of all pretensions. No hero, not even a practical-but-effective research wizard. I’d been in a position to save the world and I’d failed. And the world would pay the price.
Not just the world. Mervyn. And when the nightmare gods tore into the world, his family and my friends.
My chest constricted with a straitjacket of guilt. Esther and the rest, laughing, enjoying themselves and each other, our closeness one that defied time and miles. The nightmare gods feeding on them…all because I’d let fear sway me into making a bad decision.
I was worse than a failure. I was useless.
“You’re right, of course.” I turned out of his arms, fighting prickling tears. “I’ll try to find Mervyn. Whatever ritual the enemy talked him into, it’s really painful. I’ll have to try to make him stop—”
“Amaia.”
“What?” I looked back.
Rafe’s eyes were infinitely sad. He looked like he was going to say something, then shook his head. “Nothing.”
I turned again to shuffle back down the stairs. The nightmare gods, come into the world. I was dying anyway, so I wouldn’t pay for long.
No, my friends, full of life, would pay the real price.
And Rafe will pay the highest price of all. The ultimate price.
The voice, shimmering like glass wind chimes on the ethereal, wasn’t one I recognized. Startled, I touched it mentally. I felt compassion, and peace, and a wisdom beyond anything I’d ever encountered.
And infinite sadness.
“Who are you?” I asked. And could Rafe hear us?
This is between us, and who I am doesn’t matter. What matters is the humans sacrificed all. Ask yourself what would compensate for several humans’ death sacrifice?
“Death sacrifice? Are you saying Mervyn…?” Horror flooded my body, cold acid. Mervyn couldn’t be dead.
But the voice was gone.
So I asked myself that ghastly last question. What could produce power equal to the sacrifice of several human lives?
Sacrifice of a jinni’s.
No. It was only a guess. But if it was even a possibility… I leaped back to the landing and seized Rafe by his steely biceps. “Where are you getting the energy to save the world? Tell me!”
“My choices are my own.” His voice hardened, deepened, and now his eyes did swirl with potency.
Those eyes, seriously ohshit, reminded me he was a whole level of power beyond human. That he wasn’t really my guardian angel. He wasn’t really mine at all.
But I loved him like he was.
Oh, God. I wasn’t falling in love.
I loved him.
I threw away my fear and drew myself straight, meeting his black diamond eyes. “Except I called you. You saw to that, you sneaky bastard. So you owe me.”
His eyes narrowed, needle-thin. “What did you say?”
Those cutting, deadly eyes…but this was vital. I pumped iron into my spine and poked him in his powerful chest. “I said, you’d better tell me what you’re planning. Or else.”
“Or else?” His eyes went laser-thin, lancing black fire. His tone went just the opposite, frosty-polite—which was scarier yet. “Or else what, exactly?”
“Or else I’ll…I’ll have to tickle you.” I goosed him in his rock-hard belly.
It surprised a laugh out of him. I breathed a sigh of relief.
“C’mon, tell me. We’re a team, right? All for one and one for all?”
“Not for this. Amaia, this is not a game. I must go.” He started up the stairs.
At least it wasn’t a jinn flame teleport. I could follow. “I know, end of the world, no picnic. But see, here’s the thing. I think you’re going to do something bad, something extreme maybe. And since you tricked me into calling you, I think I deserve to know what.”
“Something bad?” He stopped to frown down at me. “You should know me better. I’d never do anything destructive.”
“I didn’t say destructive, I said ‘bad’.” As in him-getting-hurt bad. “You doing the jinn version of an easy Calm spell, maybe?”
He heaved a breath. It made his chest really big but I virtuously ignored that. He said, “It has gone beyond that. It’s only a matter of time before the universe rips and the nightmares come through. When that happens I’m going to pour in my own constructive energy to close the rip.”
“Okay.” I limped level with him and put my hand on his arm. “Where were you planning on tapping this energy from? Maybe I can help.”
“Amaia…” Pain flickered across his features. “I’ll have to use a great deal of the purest power available. I can cast my spell in a vortex of positive energies to amplify it, but even so…”
He shook his head and started up again. Toward the nearest “vortex of positive energies”, the roof of the Center. “It’s too much for even a wizard of your caliber to help.”
Apparently I had to spell it out. “I don’t mean I’d help cast the spell. This pure energy you’re using comes from life force, right? But whose life? You gonna sacrifice a wizard or two?”
He spun, clomped back down and faced me, his expression grimmer than death. “Jinn never sacrifice. We only take what is offered.”
“Right, but since the only life you’ve been offered is mine, why’d you walk away from the pump?”
“Listen to me.” He took me by the shoulders. “Your life is more dear to me than my own. I will never take it. Never.” He released me, whirled and started up again, his massive shoulders hunched.
My mouth fell open. He felt my life was precious? A pitiless jinni?
Stars above. My love wasn’t totally one-sided. A startled joy flared in my heart, and I ran a few light steps after him.
But if he wasn’t using my life, then whose? It turned my legs to lead. “Rafe. Whose sacrifice are you using?”
He stayed mute, humping stairs until I could no longer see him.
“I said, who’s the fuel?” I called after him.
“Leave it, Amaia.” His voice rang down the well.
“Damn i
t Rafe, whose life are you using?”
He leaned suddenly over the railing and snarled, “Mine.”
My breath, never too good these days, died. I whispered, “How much?”
He barked a humorless laugh. “With the power the worm has fed into the rift? Most of it. Perhaps all.”
“You can’t!” I ran up the stairs toward him, wheezing not from the cancer but because my heart was crying.
He swore, strode back down to me, met me on the landing and caught me to himself.
Tears welled in my eyes. I petted his chest blindly, pleading with my hands instead of my voice. You can’t use your life. Take mine.
“Amaia.” He grabbed me by the upper arms and held me away from him.
I looked into his face. His eyes were closed but his clenching jaw told me everything. Desperately I said, “What if something goes wrong? If you use up your life, who will be left to fight? You have to use mine.”
He took a deep breath, opened his eyes and gently released me. His gaze was so sad. “Even if I would…you can’t. You don’t have enough life left.”
Even if I would, you can’t. The jinni who’d been my guardian angel, the one who kept me sane after my parents died, the man I loved, needed me. Needed my power. And it wasn’t enough.
I truly was impotent.
If only I hadn’t stopped Rafe from completing the Venus magic. If only I’d noticed the imbalance sooner. But if onlys wouldn’t close the rift. Ineptitude on my part or sheer bad luck, it didn’t matter. We were all dead unless Rafe paid the price with his life.
Chief Wenkermann was wrong. Jinn didn’t always demand their pound of flesh.
“It has to be all you?” I blinked. A hot thread trickled down my cheek. I didn’t know how life magic worked—maybe there was another way, if not a different spell, to at least take the brunt of the cost from Rafe. “We have top-level wizards at the Center. The Chief himself is a first class combat mage. He doesn’t believe the Mayan Doom is real, but if you tell him, I know he’d be willing to back you. If you tell them the need, they all would.” I remembered it was nearing the witching hour of midnight. “Well, whoever we could call back on such short notice. Maybe a dozen, would that be enough?”