Master and Apprentice

by Bateman, Sonya

  “It would seem that way. But I can’t be sure. Your situation is unique.” He worked one-handed at the leather tie around the scroll. “I don’t suppose you’d let me see it.”

  “Hell no.”

  “Well, I had to ask.”

  I made a vague noise and moved toward the window, still searching for the source of the wrongness. Maybe they’d sent more goons out. “You know, you should really consider healing yourself,” I said. “You’re going to be permanently crippled or something.”

  “I won’t use my power.”

  “You’re an asshole.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

  “How can you stand by and watch your sister murder innocent people?” I wanted to shake him, or maybe tear his throat out with my teeth. That was a new urge. “I’m sure this isn’t the first time she’s done it. Did you even try to save your so-called brothers?”

  “I …” His face crumpled. “I couldn’t. Vaelyn held me back.”

  “Uh-huh. And if you’d done something about her years ago, maybe it never would’ve come to this.”

  “You have no right to judge me.” For a minute Calvin took on the qualities I’d come to expect from the Morai—vicious, seething hatred; a barely restrained animal gleam in his eyes. “You’re his apprentice. The innocents you killed didn’t even have the chance to defend themselves. I won’t be condemned by the likes of you, thief.”

  Something inside me cracked. Only Ian called me thief, and he’d earned the right. I grabbed the front of his robe and yanked him toward me. “My name is Donatti. And I learn from my mistakes. Are you gonna do that, or just keep hiding in your little sanctuary behind your man-of-the-cloth act like a sniveling coward? Because if you are, then your brothers died for nothing.”

  His fury deepened, and I realized I was holding a two-thousand-year-old djinn by the scruff like a misbehaving dog. Not the most brilliant idea. Before I could say Sorry, my bad, his anger switched to astonishment. “Have your eyes always looked like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, they’re … not exactly human anymore.”

  “Huh?” I let go of him, and my hand moved automatically toward my face, as if I could see with my fingertips. “They were human last I checked. What’s wrong with them?”

  “Go and look.” He gestured at the other end of the room, where the mirror still hung on the wall.

  I turned slowly and approached with caution. My uneasy feeling grew the closer I got to the mirror. From a few feet away, I could tell something was different. My eyes had always been blue, deep blue, like new denim. But now they were pale and wintry, and the irises took up a hell of a lot more eyeball. Add the pinpoint pupils and black rings lining the lids, and it looked like I’d gotten an eye transplant from a Siberian husky.

  Terrific. I had permanent guyliner. Jazz was going to love this.

  I pushed away the pain of thinking about her and stared at my alien reflection. Just another side effect Ian hadn’t foreseen. “Oh, man,” I groaned. “This is some weird shit. Do you think it’s—”

  Something moved in the mirror. A silhouette-shaped distortion rippled the image, then settled. That was probably a bad thing. I backed away and grabbed for my gun. “Calvin,” I said. “Any idea why your mirror doesn’t work for bridging anymore?”

  “What do you mean, it doesn’t work?”

  I kept watching it. “We tried to come through here first, but it was blocked or something. I think your sister might be fucking with it.”

  “How clever of you, Gavyn Donatti.”

  The voice came from the mirror. The reflection vanished, and Vaelyn took its place.

  Chapter 19

  I wasn’t waiting for an insurgence this time. I shot the glass with zero hesitation.

  Unfortunately, the bullet bounced off the surface like I’d fired a cotton ball.

  Vaelyn grinned. “Now, child. There’s no need for that,” she said—and it was Calvin’s voice, Calvin’s inflections that emerged from her mouth. I had to glance back to make sure he was still standing behind me. If I had any lingering doubts about the twin-sister bit, they were crushed now. “We aren’t going to kill you yet,” Vaelyn said. “You are no threat … weak, diluted, tenth-generation scion of Doma that you are.”

  “Yeah? Well, this Doma just took out three of your wonder boys.”

  “Yes. We know. All the more reason for prudence and patience on our part.” Her smile stretched farther, baring an impossible number of teeth. “Khalyn won’t turn on us, Gavyn Donatti. He can’t. You’re wasting your breath, when you should be saving it to run.”

  “Blast you, Vaelyn!” Calvin took a menacing step forward, despite the quaver in his voice. “How long have you been spying on me?”

  “Your bluster is amusing, brother.” The grin fell away, suggesting that she was decidedly not amused. “You will give us what we want. You will perform the ba’isis for me.”

  “I won’t.”

  No translation came to me for that word, but I doubted it was a spell for world peace or eternal sunshine and rainbows.

  “Time grows short. We will not be patient much longer.” Vaelyn sneered and raised a hand. “Think there is nothing left we can take from you, brother?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I won’t help you.”

  She cut her gaze to me, and the lunatic grin resurfaced. “Run, Gavyn Donatti,” she whispered. “Run and hide, little mongoose. We will enjoy the chase.”

  My mouth disengaged from my brain. “Make me, bitch.”

  “Very well.”

  Her lips moved, and the mirror shivered like a lake in the wind. She reached forward. Her hand broke the surface and extended into the room.

  So I put a bullet through it.

  Vaelyn showed no sign of pain. She didn’t even flinch. Her smile stayed put. “Ela na’ar,” she said, and withdrew. I knew that one. Fire.

  Behind me, Calvin screamed.

  I whirled to find him engulfed in flames—real ones, not the psychological burn of a flame curse. And I didn’t know any putting-out-fire spells. “Shit! Now’d be a good time to start using your magic,” I yelled. “Stop, drop, and roll, damn it. Do something!”

  He gibbered a few words between screams. They weren’t English, or djinn, and they didn’t change anything. He just stood there burning.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” I scanned the room looking for something wet. Fat chance. I had a better shot at finding a stripper in his closet. My gaze landed on the heavy velvet drapes at the window. I grabbed them and yanked hard. The curtain rod detached along with them, pulling a few chunks of plaster from the wall.

  I tossed the drapes over the burning djinn. When he was covered, I wrapped both arms around him and dumped him on the floor. The heat seared my skin, practically melted my chest and arms. Trying to ignore the pain, I beat at the fabric with my palms until smoke squirted from the folds. I rolled him twice, gave him a few more whacks just in case, and pulled the drapes off.

  At least he wasn’t on fire anymore.

  The sight of him did unpleasant things to my stomach. So did the stench. I crouched next to him, hesitant to touch any part of his charred, smoldering body. “Hey. Calvin. If you’re conscious, you should try and get up. We’ve got to get out of here, before—”

  Too late. I could feel the heat at my back, hear the ravenous crackle of flames. All those books and scrolls made great kindling. I glanced over my shoulder. The fire already licked at the ceiling, and it was spreading fast.

  No sign of awareness from Calvin. I’d have to carry him out. Lucky me.

  I slid one arm under his knees, the other under his back, and tried to lift him. Only managed a few inches before I dropped him. He was damned heavy, and the crinkle-slick feel of his ruined skin didn’t help. Jaw clenched, I heaved him into a sitting position and managed to sling him over me in a fireman’s carry.

  It took forever to get on my feet. With Calvin across my shoulders like a freakish stole, I t
raced the path back out of the monastery and started across the yard. I wasn’t sure how far away we should get from the place. Maybe the South Pole. But I wouldn’t be able to carry him too much longer, so I settled temporarily for the phone booth tree.

  There, I set him down as gently as possible and propped him against the trunk. He groaned. I hoped that meant he was conscious. “Calvin,” I said. “You’ve got to heal yourself. We aren’t safe here. We’ve got to move, soon.”

  His lips parted slightly. “Can’t,” he whispered.

  “Why not? You haven’t used magic for fifty years. You should have enough juice to make a whole new planet or something.”

  “Please … help.”

  “Damn it, I can’t heal you. I’m mostly human. I don’t have enough power for that. You have to transform, remember?”

  He drew a rattling breath. “Blood,” he gasped.

  “Shit.” I really didn’t want to do that, but there were no other options. I knelt and fished out a switchblade. Since I’d already sliced my palm earlier, I reopened the cut and held it to his lips with a wave of disgust. Blood drizzled into his mouth, a demented communion.

  When the flow stopped, I pulled back and hoped it was enough. A faint glow outlined him and grew stronger. His body shifted, constricted, bowed forward with looping and fluid grace until his head touched the ground. He vanished into the light. Finally, the biggest goddamned snake I’d ever seen lay coiled at my feet.

  My brain chose that moment to remind me that a djinn in animal form could kill humans. I decided against climbing the nearest tree or running like hell, but my hand went to the butt of the Sig and stayed there.

  After a minute, he changed back into sitting, exhausted Calvin. He studiously avoided looking at me. “You could have left me in there,” he said.

  “Maybe. But it would’ve cost me a billion Hail Marys, and I haven’t said those since grade school.” I frowned. “Why couldn’t you heal yourself ? I mean, you didn’t do anything magical in there. You should’ve had plenty of power.”

  “I’m not as strong as you believe. There are … complications.”

  “Whatever.” I held a hand out to him. “Come on. I don’t know how far that fire’s going to spread. We should really go somewhere else.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  I sighed. “Look, let’s save the incredulous chitchat for when we’re not close enough to roast marshmallows, okay?”

  “It won’t burn farther than the monastery.” He took my hand anyway, and levered himself up. “But you’re right. We should get away from here. Vaelyn may still be watching.”

  “Terrific.” I glanced around at the impassable, directionless forest. “Which way do we go, Columbus?”

  “Follow me.” He started off in a direction I was pretty sure led up the mountain.

  I fell into step with reluctance. One way or another, I’d have to try and get to Ian soon. I couldn’t destroy him—didn’t want to anyway, damn it—and I couldn’t take many more unexpected voyages into his personal hell. Unfortunately, I suspected things were about to get worse. I was hanging around with a Morai, and I had no desire to kill him. Hello, bad luck.

  “All right,” I said. “I’m almost afraid to ask … but what’s a ba’isis?”

  He took his time answering. “It’s a fertility spell,” he said slowly. “Vaelyn is coming into her reproductive cycle, but she’s unable to conceive in this realm because of the tether bond.”

  I nodded. Ian had more or less explained that. Part of the spell that bound them to their tethers screwed with their blood, exactly so they couldn’t do what Ian had done. Breed with humans. But Akila had been able to break it for him because tether spells were a Bahari thing. “So she’s going to get one of her studs to impregnate her,” I said.

  Calvin shook his head. “She wants a child of her own. But she doesn’t want a scion.”

  My head pounded sickly, and I connected the rest of the dots before he continued.

  “Gahiji-an is already fertile. She intends to force him to breed with her.”

  It took me a few minutes to react to the news. I couldn’t imagine how she’d possibly get Ian to screw her. Then I decided that I didn’t want to know. But I had to wonder how she knew about this fertility spell—and why she needed Calvin to do it, instead of just doing it herself.

  I suspected he’d used his magic at least once more after he released Vaelyn.

  “So, about those Morai scions,” I said.

  His back stiffened while he walked. A good sign he was about to lie. “What about them?”

  “Who’s their father?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Wrong answer.” He was moving pretty fast for a guy who’d been on fire twenty minutes ago, but I didn’t have any trouble keeping up with him. “You wanna try again?”

  “A Morai, apparently.”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Brother Calvin. You know a hell of a lot more than you’re saying.”

  He stopped midstep. After a few seconds, his shoulders slumped. “Maybe we should rest for a few minutes, and have that chat you mentioned.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Here. We’ll have a seat.” He made his way to a fallen log, brushed a few pine needles from the surface, and settled on it.

  I hung back. “What are the chances of bugs crawling on my ass if I sit there?”

  “Slim to fair.”

  “I’ll stand.”

  “Suit yourself.” Calvin let out a breath and absently fingered the wooden crucifix around his neck. “It was an experiment,” he said at last. “When I first released Vaelyn, she seemed … sane. Grateful. And she was curious about my work, about my discoveries regarding djinn magic in the human realm.”

  “And her being your sister, you weren’t suspicious.”

  “Yes. I believed she’d found some balance.” He blinked slowly. “I had long ago accepted the fact that I’d never return to our realm, and worked to carve out my place here. Vaelyn told me that she wanted the same thing—only her vision of staying in the human realm included a family. More than that, a community, separate from humans but at peace with this realm.” A quick sigh escaped him. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “Yeah. Road to hell, right?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Never mind,” I said. “So you were trying to give your sister a community. Does that mean they’re your scions?”

  He shook his head. “I’ll get to that. In the first few years, she would disappear for weeks at a time. Exploring the new world, she said. Each time she returned a little more confident, and just a bit … harder. Hungry, and anxious. I didn’t want to see the decline. Finally, after a two-month absence, she came back with a companion. Another Morai. She said she’d found him in London, living as a museum curator.”

  “Who was it?”

  “His name was Barzan. I had never met him before, but Vaelyn claimed he sought peace among humans, as we did.” Calvin frowned. “Once she’d found him, she pressed me relentlessly to attempt the fertility spell with him. One child, she told me. She wanted them to raise a child, her and Barzan. She’d made arrangements for a human surrogate. A young woman, she said, living in poverty, whom she intended to pay enough money to start a new life.”

  “How noble of her,” I muttered.

  He hesitated for a minute. “I wanted to believe her,” he said. “Allowing her this gift, this opportunity to become a mother of sorts—I hoped it would smooth the rough edges I saw resurfacing in her. And so, I relented. I performed the ba’isis. Since the binding spell that creates our dormancy in this realm is one of air, I was only able to undo it temporarily. Three days,” he whispered. “Seventy-two hours. Plenty of time to impregnate one woman. Or dozens.”

  I shivered. Ian had done the same thing a century or so back, when Akila undid his fertility bind permanently. But he’d done it to stay alive, to keep the Dehbei-powered barrier between realms running and make sure the Morai stayed
trapped. I suspected Val and Barzan had slightly different motivations.

  “Vaelyn had already built her community. Her compound, as you called it. She’d recruited young, fertile human women with the promise of wealth and power. She had formed a cult. And Barzan seeded them all.”

  I decided I should sit down after all. “So now those two are running the army down there,” I said. “What do they really want? Besides Ian and Akila, I mean.”

  “I don’t know. But Barzan isn’t with her anymore.”

  “You sure about that?”

  He nodded. “Shortly after the ba’isis expired, he went mad. I’m not certain whether it was a side effect of the spell, or Vaelyn, that drove him insane. She may well have, just to get rid of him—since it was obvious she wanted complete control. After the scions were born, she had their mothers slaughtered. She recruited human males to do it.” He closed his eyes, crossed himself. “Barzan fled into the mountains. Lived in caves, sealed himself away from all contact. Until …”

  “I destroyed him,” I said through numb lips.

  “Yes. Quite a feat, considering how powerful he must have been.”

  “He was powerful?”

  He looked at me like I’d just asked if water was wet. “Living scions increase a djinn’s power in this realm. Surely Gahiji-an told you that much.”

  “Oh. Right.” I frowned at him. “But he really wasn’t that strong. I mean, we had a lot more trouble with Lenka, and he didn’t have any scions.”

  “Maybe he wanted to be destroyed,” Calvin said.

  “Or maybe the guy we found up there wasn’t Barzan.”

  He offered a dry laugh. “How many djinn do you think there are in these mountains?”

  “I don’t know, but I saw someone with Vaelyn when they attacked my house.” Jazz’s house, a little voice reminded me. I told it to shut the hell up. “A guy in a white hooded cloak, like the one she wears. I’m almost positive it was another djinn.”

  “It must have been a scion.”

  “Could a scion keep a single bridge open long enough for five guys to pass through?”

  All the color fell out of him. “No.”