Deep breaths, Eliana. Do not think about two years ago. Do not think about the last time you were with Arta, just before the room exploded and shards of glass drove themselves into your scalp, forearms, and chest. Don’t think about the hospitalization and the pain. Above all, do not think about the roars of a lion you heard just before you blacked out.
****
Arta Shahani stood at the curb of the one runway Summertown Airport, took a deep breath of clean air, and admired the pristine mountains. An eagle floated overhead, enjoying the updraft. He wished he could ride the wind with the bird, and watch the green vistas and mountains roll under him again. One of the hazards of living in the Washington D.C. area was he sometimes forgot the more remote, less populated portions of the country. No matter, once he was with Eliana, it didn’t matter where he was. “With thee, my love, hell itself were heaven…”
He tapped his foot and jingled the change in his pocket and then stopped, suddenly self-aware of his mannerisms. Arta felt a flush of embarrassment dashed with a tinge of boyish anticipation. Eliana. All he had to do was think her name and crazy things came over him. His pulse raced, muscles tensed, blood rushed to all the wrong parts of his body. He knew the term for it, flight, fight, or f—
The sharp blast of a car horn interrupted his musings.
The object of his fascination sat in a black government sedan in front of him.
Eliana.
For a frozen moment, he stopped breathing. His stomach plummeted, and his pulse kicked into erratic beats. He couldn’t stop staring at her. Her green eyes sparkled with humor, and a mischievous grin spread from one flushed cheek to the other. Just as lovely as the first time he met her and took her hand. A jolt of joy headed for his pants. That would never do. He placed his briefcase over his groin and waved.
“You’re looking well,” he called to her through the open window. “I like what you’ve done with your hair.”
“Are you flirting with me, Dr. Shahani?”
“Is it working?”
“Keep trying.” Eliana leaped out of the car and popped the trunk. “Did you empty your closet, bring your complete wardrobe? You always struck me as a clothes horse.” She laughed. “Trust me, you won’t need much in the way of formal wear here.”
Her laughter reminded him of the tinkling of crystal. Their assignment in Arizona hadn’t given them any time for dining out. A leisurely meal, time spent alone. Time to man up and explain what happened two years ago. With thee hell would be a mansion of delight. Their last case together had been hell, but the time without her had been worse.
He dragged his larger bag over to the back of the car. “I wish it was just clothes. I stopped by to see my friend, the Imam. Told him I had a confirmed ‘Ifrit possession in another state, and a local Imam to help us. It was the only way I kept him from coming with me. He filled my bag with an anti-jinni arsenal, special weapons—conventional and unconventional—given to him by his predecessor.”
“Smart of you to give him that cover story, tell him we had a local religious leader on the case. No way to predict community response to his presence. With everyone on edge, the town’s a tinderbox.”
She bent to slam the trunk of the car, affording him a view of one of the wonders of the world, her lovely round ass. Unlike other women who starved themselves to be stylish, tall, curvy, and luscious Eliana paid no attention to the media telling her she should be tall and skinny.
“Hey, you coming? Or you going to stay asleep on your feet all day? We’ve got work to do. I’ll get you up to speed on the way to the hospital.”
He pulled open the passenger side door. “Yes, of course. Your beauty dazed me.”
“Flirt. What’s next? Poetry?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Will that help?”
“Maybe, if it’s not too schmaltzy.”
He shook his head. “Then I am at a loss. I specialize in Rumi’s love poems.”
She started the engine. “Save them for another day.”
“Has something happened since we last spoke?”
“You could say so.” She briefed him on Mayor Schaeffer’s edicts. “This little burg has as many hidden and not so hidden agendas as our nation’s capitol. Don’t expect a lot of help from the locals. They want this all to go away as soon as possible.”
“No one likes it when you interfere with business. The timing does make me wonder. One month before a major festival, children disappear and reappear, a girl is found mauled by an animal, and two young women are pregnant—from a supernatural rapist. If that news gets out, the mayor is right, aside from extremists who might want to picket and protest the town, no one will be coming to West Virginia, much less Summertown.”
A werewolf howl filled the car, and Arta jumped. “What is that?”
“My phone. The ring tones are a mess.” Eliana yanked her mobile out of her pocket and glanced at the caller ID. “My boss, Bert Blackfeather. Gulf War veteran. Won the purple heart and a few other awards he refuses to discuss.” She pressed speaker. “Solomon here. You’re on speaker, and Dr. Shahani is in the car with me.”
“Fine. I needed to talk to both of you anyway. The forensic engineer you wanted is tied up with a ten-story parking lot collapse in Chicago. Got any second stringers in mind?”
“Crap. Not off-hand.” She frowned and turned to Arta. “Do you?”
The only engineers he knew taught at universities and seldom practiced their profession. He began to shake his head, then stopped. “There is one guy. He worked on the structural investigation of the twin towers after 9-11. He’s at Columbia University in New York City.”
Eliana gave him a thumbs up. “Sounds promising. What do you think, Bert?”
“What’s his name?”
“Hong Feng. American Chinese. Second generation. We spent a lot of time in detention together in high school. It’s a wonder we graduated.”
Blackfeather guffawed. “Take one rebellious Chinese-American guy, one unruly Persian-American guy, and one disobedient Ethiopian-Moroccan-American and put them all in West Virginia. Sounds like the opening line of a bad joke.”
“You forgot one Native American boss to order them around. Thanks for your vote of support. You gonna run a background check on him?”
“Is there a choice? I just hope I can convince him to drop everything and run off to the Appalachians to help.”
Arta chuckled. “If he balks, tell him I’ll post those photos on the Internet.’”
Bert was still laughing when she pressed the off button.
“You own incriminating pictures of Feng?”
He shook his head. “Embarrassing not incriminating. Before and after shots of the worst haircuts ever seen, given to him by his mother his senior year. A bowl cut, I swear. At his request, I took clippers and shaved his head. His parents were on the phone with my mother for days.”
“Ohmigod. I can only imagine. My father would have killed me.” Eliana laughed until tears streamed down her face. “That photo. Is it on you?”
“Sorry. For the purposes of national security, I am required to keep it in a safety deposit box.” He reached over and brushed back a strand of long black hair that had fallen out of Eliana’s tight ponytail. “You never told me you were Ethiopian and Moroccan. That explains a few things.”
“Like?”
“Your fascination with jinnis, your quick wit, your facial structure, your beautiful skin.” My burning desire to speak in love poems every time I’m with you.
Color crept up her neck, and she locked gazes with him. “I owe my complexion to my parents. My father’s Moroccan; my mother was Ethiopian. I was born in the United States. First generation.”
Mesmerized by her green eyes, he spoke as if from miles away. “Your cultures also include a double dip on supernatural entities with zar, the Ethiopian equivalent of jinnis.”
“The zar meetings, the singing and dancing, those are a form of support groups in countries where women are suppressed. Besides, my mother sai
d male zar spirits only visited lonely spinsters or widows, women who wanted male company. The zar never bothered women who were happily married.” She sighed. “My mother was happy, married, and beautiful. That is, until acute myeloid leukemia took her away from us.”
“You must miss her.”
“I do.” She bit her lower lip and stared ahead.
He yearned to reach over and stroke her cheek, run his fingers down her neck, and pull her close. Did her lush red lips taste like wine? Honey? Cinnamon? He could practically feel her lips on his. He wanted to run his hands over every inch of her, visit her secret gardens of pleasure. When this case was over, he was going to do something more than just file the paperwork and say good-bye.
She placed her right hand on the center console. “She gave me this on her deathbed.” Hebrew letters covered the face of a large signet ring. “Made me swear to wear it at all times. Claimed it came from King Solomon. Told me it would protect me from evil jinnis.”
Arta traced a fingertip over the intricate script surrounding a pentacle. “Does it work?”
She gave a weak laugh. “I doubt it. The case I worked on in Kentucky three years ago, the alpha werewolf wore one nearly identical to mine. He said his was the real signet ring handed down through the generations. The last Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, claimed his was the original. Hard for there to be more than one true Solomon’s Seal, don’t you think?”
He tapped the ring. “Did you authenticate it?”
Eliana locked gazes with him. “What? And ruin the mystique? No. This way, my memories of my mother and her stories about our Ethiopian lineage are still intact.”
Arta tore his eyes away from hers and stared at the ring. “Eliana Solomon seems a bit short for a woman with such long family history. What’s your full name?”
“Eliana Dameka Solomon.”
For a moment, while she sat with her gaze fixed on the road, her profile reminded Arta of ancient Middle Eastern coins in a museum case in the Smithsonian.
“What does your middle name mean?”
“Little woman.” She laughed. “Not a good fit for me. It’s a family name. My mother’s name was Dameka, and her mother’s, all the way down the line back to Ethiopia, I’m the odd woman out with a different first name. My father’s request. ‘Too many little women’, he said. Enough about me. What about you?”
“My family fled Iran with the deposal of the Shah, when the Americans were taken hostage. My father, Ardeshir Shahani, was the Shah’s private physician, trained in the United States. The prince allowed my father, and only my father to treat him when he was ill. Said he cared for him like no other doctor. The Ayatollah overthrew the government, and my parents feared for our safety. It wasn’t good to be a favorite of the Shah during and after the revolution. They packed their car full of all their belongings and drove from Tehran to Turkey in the middle of the night. Before the revolution, my mother, Azedeh Shahani, was a university professor of poetry and literature.”
“Ah. Now I understand your love of poetry. You can’t help it, can you?”
“My mother specialized in Rumi’s work. Were you aware he was also a musician and a Sufi mystic? His message was always about love and forgiveness.”
“We could all use that, couldn’t we? How did your family get from Turkey to the United States?”
“My mother delivered my sister, Tahmineh, in Ankara. They emigrated as soon as it was safe for her to travel. I was born in Maryland. A massive heart attack killed my father when I was a child. I attended the University of Maryland Medical School on a scholarship, and you are well acquainted with the rest of my resume.” When this case was over, Arta was going to take a chance and tell her the truth about his father’s special healing powers—and what he really was.
“We’re the first generation born in this country, both from a family of immigrants. Our parents placed all their hopes for a better future on us, didn’t they? What about Feng? What’s his claim to fame?”
Arta patted his pants pocket, searching for his phone to pull up his friend’s university home page with Feng’s research activities. Where was the damn thing? Was it in his briefcase? Arta reached down to pick up the bag just as the car screeched to a halt. His head smacked the padded dashboard. He yelped and bounced back, grateful he’d fastened his seatbelt. “What happened? Are you okay?”
Eliana whipped the car over to the side of the road and jumped out the door. She ran to the tree line and shaded her eyes with her hand. “Did you see that?” She yelled.
Arta extricated himself from the seatbelt and the vehicle and rubbed his brow. His forehead was developing a lump already. “Lots of very green trees—that’s it, nothing more.”
She wheeled on him. “There was a pack of black dogs running through the woods.”
He turned, and followed her pointing finger, straining his ears and eyes to sense movement. “Sorry, no—wait—”
Closing his eyes, he inhaled deeply, and his stomach rolled with nausea.
“Jinni stink. He’s here.”
Chapter Eight
Jerusalem, 955 B.C.E.
Solomon paced the length of his throne room and stopped in front of Benaiah, captain of his soldiers, bodyguard, and confidante. He pitched his voice for his friend’s ears only.
“Your men were positive it was the queen and her servants, not a merchant’s caravan?”
Benaiah grinned. “Who else brings wagons laden with ebony and cages filled with wild animals? The men have been waiting almost as long as you, my friend. Your anxiety is theirs. Your wishes, theirs. Your hopes, theirs. They live to serve you, just as that silly bird does.” He nodded at the hoopoe bird, preening on a decorative brass perch Solomon had commissioned for the striped creature.
“Excellent idea. Why didn’t I think of that?” Solomon whistled and the bird flew to his side. “Hoopoe, find the queen’s caravan. Tell me where she is.”
Benaiah’s eyes followed the bird as he rose into the sky. “You know, rumors say she’s a jinniyah.”
Solomon nearly spat with disgust. Ever since the announcement of the queen’s upcoming visit, his people had been eager to share stories from their distant relatives, none of whom lived in Sheba, but all of whom allegedly saw the woman with their own eyes. God only knew what stories they told about him in far off lands. Perhaps to the people of Sheba, he was a two-headed monster who ate children for breakfast.
He shook his head. “How can you listen to such tales? I took you for a wiser man. God tells me I must judge someone for myself, not violate His commandment of telling falsehoods about our neighbors.”
Benaiah shot back, “She’s not our neighbor. She’s a foreign queen. What if she plots to steal your kingdom? Even with the route under our guard, her escorts are armed to make the journey. For all we know, she’s planning an invasion. I’m the commander of your guard. I must consider the woman a threat.”
“My friend, I love you as a brother.” He thumped Benaiah’s shoulder. “You have been fighting so long, you forget for everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven—even peaceful state visits. She is no more a jinniyah than I am a jinni.”
Like a dog with a bone, Benaiah would not let the matter go. “They say her legs are hairy and her feet those of a goat.” He hooked his thumbs into his sword belt and pursed his lips. “Didn’t Hoopoe report on her to you?”
“He said nothing about hooves.” Solomon’s stroked his beard. “Look, if she’s a jinniyah, I should be able to command her with my seal, just as I do the big one over there.” He pointed at the jinni standing at attention by his throne. “In fact, I think I will surprise the queen with a special gift for her arrival.” He motioned for the giant to come to his side. “I want you to do something special for our guest. Something that will make her feel at ease.” He beckoned for the jinni to come even closer and whispered in his ear. The scowling creature disappeared in a burst of green light, leaving Solomon dazzled for a moment.
&
nbsp; Blinking, Benaiah glanced around the courtroom. “What did you tell him to do?”
“All in good time, my friend. Now what test shall I give the queen?”
The captain crossed his arms over his broad chest. “I want to see her feet.”
Solomon shook his head. Benaiah was a good man, but his mind travelled on one track—firebrands, arrows, swords, and death. Protect the king at all costs—even if it made the sovereign weep with frustration.
“You won’t let this rest, will you? We can’t ask the Queen of Sheba to lift her skirt in public so we can stare at her toes.”
“What if she needed to raise it to go over a stream? Send our men out to tell her there was a rockslide. They can direct her to the creek just outside our walls. Together, you and I can witness her lifting her skirt to keep it out of the water. That will give us proof of what she is or is not.”
His patience snapped. “Are you mad? That’s not a stream, it’s dirt and filth, waste matter from our city. What kind of welcome is that? We’ll do no such a thing.”
Benaiah’s face darkened, and he opened his mouth to protest.
“Not another word. Cease this foolishness. Go sharpen your sword instead of your tongue. Leave me in peace.”
The soldier’s mouth snapped shut. Spine stiff, Benaiah turned on his heel and marched out of the room.
Solomon sighed. He hated to be so curt with the man. Yes, he was trying to protect his king, however, Benaiah’s fears made him sense danger in every shadow. He needed a respite from the soldier’s suspicions. He needed time away from being the head of state, away from the eyes that followed his every move, away from his guards, hangers-on, and elders giving him unwanted counsel. Only the wolves and lions knew when to keep their thoughts to themselves, it seemed. He longed to sit up in the hills and just be.
“Ooo-poo!”
Kiss of the Virgin Queen Page 8