by T. G. Ayer
Maybe one day. Hopefully sooner rather than later.
I was about to comment when a small group arrived: Kai and company. And they’d brought Darcy and Cassie along with them. Baz and Lily were accompanied by Grandma Ivy as well.
But a certain tall, dark, and handsome was missing.
I met Kai’s gaze as she drew close to us, and watched the sad glitter of her green eyes as she gave me a rueful smile. I reached out and held onto her forearm, giving it a small squeeze, wanting to tell her that she’d done what she could. But I wasn’t able to hide my own disappointment either, and there was really no point in saying it out loud.
I waited as the group gathered and made their greetings, a nervous flutter in my gut.
“Missions are always harder when the team is larger,” said a voice from my side.
I smiled and glanced at Grandma Ivy who was also watching the group. I studied her for a moment, the pale blonde hair, the youthful looks courtesy of the shifter bloodline, and I could see what Kai had to live up-to. A mother who was a powerful mage, a father who was an influential and powerful alpha and a secret agent badass grandmother. That’s a whole lotta living up-to to do for one person.
But from what I could see, Kai was doing just fine.
I nodded and met Ivy’s eyes. “Have to admit it’s a lot of responsibility to bear.”
“Wish I could say it got easier.”
I snorted. “Thanks, Grams,” I said with a laugh. “Let’s hope this doesn’t happen too often then.”
“Something tells me it will.”
“Remind me not to look to you for comfort,” I said with a teasing grin.
Ivy shook her head. “That’s not what I meant.” She waved a hand at the group who’d gathered in small pairs as they circulated to chat. “What do you see here?”
I looked at the team and frowned, but it didn’t take me long to figure out what she meant. The Ni’amh.
Ivy gave a slow nod, and as I turned to look at her, I caught a flicker of worry in her eyes.
“So when are you going to help us get all educated and trained and stuff. You know, we need all the help we can get, and I’ve been told you’ve done a bit of research into the whole prediction.”
Ivy pursed her lips and looked away, leaving me unsure of how to follow the line of inquiry up with her. It felt so similar to talking with the djinn queen, making me aware I was dealing with a key asset. One I couldn’t afford to push into a corner where she’d react with outright refusal to help.
Thankfully, Kai looked up from across the clearing, and I took that as my cue to call out, “Ready when you guys are,” before giving Ivy a neutral smile.
Her response was a cheery grin and a knowing look, as though the pair of us shared some kind of secret. Which happened to be true—if we didn’t count Kai and Celeste. The rest of the people who needed to know the truth were gathered before me.
I had to acknowledge the little pulsing of guilt I felt as I sent Darcy and Nerina a smile. The pair were standing beside each other while Cassandra stood near the water in deep conversation with Natasha.
I closed in on the open space in the clearing, and as I sank onto the blankets, Natasha waved a hand. A blazing fire appeared in front of me, though the flames were low and controlled, so as to not block our view of each other.
“Wow, now that’s cool,” said Baz as he leaned closer to inspect the flames. “It’s even hot.”
Steph and Lily were rolling their eyes. “Be careful you don’t burn off your nose, you idiot. The fire is real,” said Lily, slapping him on the bicep with the back of her hand.
A thought flashed in my mind, one where I momentarily considered that Lily might have unspoken feelings for the vamp-human, but then I shoved it out of my head.
Too much to deal with, Mel. Focus.
I addressed the team. “So I don’t think we’ll be here too long. We just need to go over a few things. The agreed time, as requested by Saleem for reasons still unknown to me, is tomorrow midnight. We’ve obtained a portal key to help us with access,” I said, registering Kai’s frown and her intention to speak. I nodded at her and continued, “So just for clarification for everyone, the story is as follows, just in case you are missing any of the pieces.”
Finding I couldn’t sit and talk about this any longer, I boosted to my feet and began to pace a short distance. “A couple of weeks ago—Okay, maybe I need to go back a little further than that.” A few chuckles echoed around the fire and Kai and Nerina both nodded. Drake sat on the other side of the fire, his glittering eyes focused on me, expression sober. He too sent me a supportive nod, and I took a deep breath.
“A couple of years ago, Queen Aisha of the Djinns was kidnapped while on a trip to the Earth-World. Her sons were concerned—she’s not the flighty or irresponsible type—and the elder son who was also the next in line to the throne, came to our plane to investigate, hoping to find her. What he found instead was Omega, who recruited him with promises of helping him to find his mother. What Saleem didn’t know was that Omega themselves had taken Aisha and was holding her hostage…sort of.”
“Sort of?” Lily frowned.
“Yep, I’ll come back to that. So, Saleem continued to work for Omega, uncovered clues but kept getting stonewalled. In the interim, he became concerned about his brother who’d been left to control the realm. He’s not known for having important character elements, like a spine.”
Someone snickered.
“But Saleem was also tied down by his agreement with Omega, and although he didn’t say as much, I think he’d attempted to return home and was shut down by them. Which is when he came to me. As far as Omega was saying, they’d been unable to track Aisha down, but it didn’t take me too long to find her.
“Omega has a property out in Aspen where they are currently holding the queen. It took only one visit to confirm her presence, and I went in to speak to her at Saleem’s request. That’s when things got a little complicated.”
I’d been about to voice my betrayal to Saleem to the entire team but then swallowed the bold truth down. “On my announcement that I was there to break her out, the djinn queen refused and promptly reminded me that her powers as queen of the djinn meant she could get out of her captivity whenever she wanted to. Omega was well aware of her abilities and had threatened her with something—this is another unknown variable that I hope to find out—and as a result, she refused to leave. It’s possible the lives of her sons were threatened, but I couldn’t figure out exactly how. Either way, Aisha has refused to join the mission.”
“It certainly would have helped to have her guide us through the Veil,” said Kai, her expression dark.
“But you’re a jumper? Why can’t you get us there? And we have Nerina as well,” Lily said with a frown.
I nodded. “Unfortunately we have it on good authority that cross-Veil travel has been shut down. Mithras has been quarantined, and we’re concerned there may be protective wards set up. Not sure about that but better to be safe than sorry.
“So to avoid setting off any wards, we’ve obtained a portal key. So we have our way in sorted. And we have the allocated time set in stone. Other things we need to be well aware of is the city is under the control of an as yet unconfirmed element, but I have my suspicions.”
“Do tell,” said Kai as she too got to her feet. She shifted over and leaned against a nearby tree. The look she gave me was filled with admonishment, given that this was something I should have already clued her in on, but given that she was traveling to meet her dragon, that wasn’t entirely possible.
I cleared my throat. “I’ve spoken with Saleem a few times. A couple of times in a dream and then in an astral projection. The first time I visited him, I could see that he’d been tortured. And he was confined to his quarters. We didn’t have time for him to detail exactly what had happened that ended in him being in chains in his own home, but what he did say was we needed a team, and he told me when to come. I visited him recently ag
ain, and this time I walked in on the torturers—figuratively speaking. They were doing the whole let’s-whip-the-bottoms-of-your-feet-until-we-break-you routine, with spiked whips, just FYI. So his feet were a bloody mess, though the rest of him did look in slightly better condition. Not sure how much longer that will be for though.
“Anyway, the most shocking part of the scene was the mage who was attending Saleem. He’s a MindMelder named Ward who is apparently supposed to be dead. He’s a lowlife piece of shit who seemed to enjoy what he’s doing to Saleem. I watched him work on Saleem to change his memories, to make him more compliant.”
Kai looked over at Darcy who nodded and said, “Ward’s powerful, but Saleem is a djinn, with royal blood and the future king. Add to that the fact that he’s also a strong-willed, powerful and passionate guy, and I don’t think Ward realizes it’s not going to be all that easy to crush Saleem.”
“Well, they already have Rizwan under their control, which likely happened a long time ago,” I said. “He betrayed Saleem and helped capture him, so there’s going to be some sibling issues we’ll have to work through. But, Darcy is right, Saleem’s not about to give in easily.”
Kai shifted forward, mouth open to ask a question and I grinned. “There’s more?” she asked, eyes wide. “Right. I’ll wait.”
“So, apart from the back from the dead MindMelder, I ran into someone else, whose presence raised a shitload of questions.” I paused for a few moments and then said, “Agent Blake seems to be running things in Mithras.”
Lots of swearing echoed around the clearing, everyone present likely having had their own run-ins with the asshole.
Chapter 35
“So what we are likely looking at is a human-run operation to control the djinn realm, for reasons we have yet to discover. Division 7 is going to be who we need to fight.”
The team was silent for a few moments, and then Kai’s voice broke the tense quiet, “That guy seems to be everywhere. I’d love to know what interest they have in Mithras and the djinn, but I guess we do need to prepare in terms of weaponry.”
Drake cleared his throat. “I’ve commissioned a truckload of weapons and ammo, all capable of bringing down a djinn army, or a gargoyle one if it came to that. And any weapons we have that can fell a supernatural is pretty much deadly to a human.”
“Problem is I’m not entirely certain these humans are going to be vanilla.”
“Shit,” muttered Drake. “Still, they’d have to be some superhuman meta not to go down.”
I shook my head, and Kai began to pace, hands on her hips. “We ran into those shadowmen, the ones who were boosted with natural shadowmen powers. They were not easy to take down, that much I can say. Granted I was in the astral plane the first time around, which is what made it harder. My second run-in with them went a little better, but they do pack a huge punch and if you can’t teleport you’re in for a bit of a shock.”
Someone snorted and then the group chuckled at that.
“So now you guys know the basics, and we have weapons covered. We just need to map out the process. If we had eyes on the inside or someone familiar with the realm, it would help. Not as though we can hack into the city archives for palace plans.”
“Why not?” asked Baz. “If they have even a modicum of modern security systems we should be able to find a loophole and get in. To be honest, it would be far easier if they didn’t do things old school. A security system we can hack but manual security rounds, real eyes on every corner…that’s going to be a problem.”
“Even then we don’t have a clue unless I go back to see the queen. Probably should have thought about that before I stormed off so angrily into the ether.”
Drake pursed his lips, squinting as he shook his head. “Still, unless she’d have had access to city planning, she wouldn’t know the kind of details we need, like access tunnels, water pipelines, security routes and schedules.”
“And even if she did know something, how much is likely to have been changed by Omega when they took over?” asked Kai, scowling now as it became clear that our way in wasn’t going to be easy at all.
“Leave it to me,” said Ivy, her forehead creasing as she nodded. “Sentinel will have the plans, maps, etc. I’ll do a little digging and grab what we need.”
“Right, so once we get the maps and city plans, we’ll be left with one big issue.”
“Which is?”
“Transport. Once we get inside the djinn realm, we’re going to have to be able to get around fast. We have a couple jumpers, but I’m not sure that’s going to cut it if we split up. Someone’s not going to be covered.”
“We’ll have a team comm set up. Maybe we could use that to call for emergency extraction?” Darcy offered, also looking a little concerned. I understood why. If Ward were a danger, she’d want to avoid him. But if they did end up bumping into each other, she’d need to yell loud, and we’d need to move fast.
I was about to reply that we’d have to work on something or maybe take another jumper with us, thinking of suggesting Larsson. But a voice from the dark cut me off. “You don’t need to worry about transport. I think I can manage that part of the mission.”
The entire team turned toward the darkness where the voice had emanated and watched silently as a tall, dark-haired man strolled into the light of the fire.
“Logan!” Lily squealed. I didn’t have a chance to duck aside and was bumped almost off my feet as the shifter flew at Logan and flung herself into his arms.
I hid a smile as I searched out Kai’s gaze, but she was grinning too, her expression filled with relief. The darkness I’d seen there was fading away although she still looked a little uncertain.
“Lily, if you’re done squeezing Logan to death, we’d like to get a chance to do that too,” I said, raising an eyebrow in mock-impatience.
Lily laughed and let go of Logan. “Sorry, I’m just so damned glad to see his face. He’s all yours now,” she said and skipped off to join Steph within the shadows.
I stepped forward and wrapped Logan within my own hug. Logan and I had spoken in the past, but we’d never had the chance to bond in order to reach hugging level. It was more because he was my only link to Saleem, the one person I knew who would care just as much as I did that the damn djinn was in trouble.
Logan squeezed tight and said, “Hang in there jumper. We’ll get him back.”
Tears flooded my eyes, and I swallowed a sob. But he seemed to feel my pain and squeezed harder, then turned me around and walked me back into the darkness where we could have a modicum of privacy.
An arm curled around my shoulders, we walked a short distance then stopped, the light of the fire now a dull glow. “I thought you weren’t going to come,” I said, sniffing at the tears that still threatened to flow.
Logan chuckled. “I thought I wasn’t coming either.”
“Did she give you an earful?” I asked, imagining Kai ripping into him when he’d declined to join the mission.
“That she did. And then some. I deserved it though. It shouldn’t have taken me so long to change my mind.”
I shrugged. “What difference is a few hours? You’re here now, that’s what matters.”
Logan shook his head. “No. I should have dropped everything the moment Kai told me. I was just…torn. I guess I wasn’t sure if leaving Drakys would seem like a betrayal of my duties.”
I snorted. “What did your sister have to say about it?”
Logan’s grin was wide as he shook his head. “You know what they say about dragons breathing fire?”
I laughed at that, the image I conjured up far too amusing. “I’m glad you’re here. The team’s large and filled with talents but I’m not a seasoned operative and to be fair neither is Kai. We’re best working alone or in small teams. With you here, I can breathe a little.”
Logan nodded. “I’ll do whatever is needed, but I won’t take point.”
“Why the hell not?”
Logan stared at me for a lo
ng moment. “You’ve done everything up to this point. I won’t step in now just because I finally deigned to join you.”
I let out a hard laugh. “You’re hilarious you know that? I’m beginning to wonder if you accidentally fried your brain cells with that new-fangled dragon fire of yours.”
I folded my arms and watched as Logan stared at me, confused and a little surprised at my attack.
“You have years of experience on me, leading missions, taking on military forces. You have the skills in tactical measure and weaponry. Do you think it’s smart not to take point when the next best thing is a jumper chasing her tail who barely knows her ass from her elbow when it comes to subversive tactical missions? I’d say you’re a little reckless.”
“I’d say you’re underestimating your abilities and those of your team. But this argument would have been moot had I decided not to come.”
“Not a relevant argument. If something goes wrong and I muck things up, you’re going to live the rest of your life knowing you didn’t do everything in your power to ensure we got Saleem out alive.”
Logan lifted an eyebrow, though the corner of his lip had a distant curl to it. “I’m thinking you’ll be blaming yourself if the djinn did end up biting the bullet,” he said with a smirk.
“No. I’ll just be blaming you,” I replied, squeezing my folded arms tighter as I avoided his gaze.
Chapter 36
Logan let out a loud guffaw then reached for me. He grabbed a hold of my shoulders again and gave me a quick shake before ruffling my hair. I let out a low squawk and nudged him in the ribs. “What was that for?” I ran my fingers through my hair and glared at him, peering up at him as he hadn’t let go of me yet. Logan just ignored me and kept walking, leading me back to the fire and to Kai’s side.
“Did you tell him off?” Kai asked me serenely, giving Logan a dangerously sweet smile.
“I tried. But he’s too much of an idiot,” I muttered. “I don’t think common sense works for him.”