Ghostland (ghostland)

by Jory Strong

  Her hands shook as she dealt with the groceries under Zurael’s unblinking stare. Her stomach had been cramped with hunger while she walked, but now the thought of food made it tense in rebellion.

  Aziel gathered his courage and scurried into the kitchen. He climbed up the leg of her pants and settled on her shoulder, his familiar presence bringing comfort.

  Aisling turned her head slightly and closed her eyes. She buried her face in his soft fur and concentrated on the faint beat of his heart and his warmth.

  The rumble of his stomach made her smile. She returned to the task of dealing with the items she’d purchased. A package of chicken breasts remained on the counter when she was finished.

  Aziel would have been happy to eat his food raw, but she needed to keep her hands and mind busy. She washed a cutting board then cast a nervous glance at the demon before pulling a knife from an oak block. His smile was a savage flash of white in a face worthy of an ancient god.

  Her heart fluttered. Heat painted her cheeks and made her look away. She remembered only too well how his eyes had traveled over her naked body, and his penis had grown hard in response. She wondered if the reason he hadn’t killed her was because he intended to use her first.

  Aziel’s tail twitched. His sharp claws dug into her flesh as if he sensed the direction of her thoughts and wanted to derail her fear before it rose to consume her.

  Aisling took a deep breath and cut a chicken breast into slices before searching for oil and a skillet. The smell of frying meat stirred her hunger. She added more chicken. Her gaze strayed to the demon and she willed herself to meet his eyes, to reclaim her courage when dealing with him.

  His name had been given to her by Aziel. She’d summoned him with a pure heart and commanded him to fight something evil. Those were not things she could undo and she didn’t want to.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  Surprise flickered across Zurael’s face. It was followed by a tightening of his features and a stiffening of his spine, as if somehow she’d struck him with her question in a way she couldn’t with the knife. “No.”

  Aisling’s attention returned to the chicken. She removed the strips cut for Aziel and set them aside to cool.

  While the remaining piece cooked, she opened the cabinet and studied the cans she’d brought home. None of the vouchers covered fresh fruits or vegetables, and the small amount of money she’d been given by Father Ursu would barely have paid for salad. She’d have to plant a garden once she found a way to protect it from human and animal scavengers.

  Homesickness stabbed through Aisling’s chest. Her hand went to her work pants. She touched the bills folded inside the pocket. At the moment it seemed impossible that she’d ever have enough money to return to the farm. Traveling was a luxury for those who could afford the road tolls and the cost of protection as well as transportation.

  She pulled out a can of green beans and opened it, then cleaned a pan and heated the vegetables on the stove. When her meal was finished cooking, she loaded it onto a plate. She put Aziel’s dinner on a saucer before setting it on the floor.

  There was a table in the corner of the living room but Aisling remained in the kitchen, conscious of Zurael’s unwavering stare. Aziel ate greedily, then scampered past the demon to disappear into the shaman’s workroom.

  Aisling finished her meal slowly. It was difficult to eat with Zurael watching her, but the prospect of finishing her meal and walking past him was equally unnerving. She washed the dishes when she was done with them. Her stomach knotted when Aziel reappeared holding the carved image of a hawk in his mouth.

  It was time to pay for the name he’d given her.

  The ferret retreated to the shaman’s ceremony room. Aisling stiffened her spine and approached Zurael. She tried to concentrate on the narrow space between the edge of the counter and where he leaned on the door frame.

  It was impossible to keep her eyes from traveling over the exposed skin, the tightly fitted pants, the tattooed serpent coiled around his arm. Her gaze darted upward when he shifted position. Her eyes met his, but he didn’t reach for her or speak as she slipped past him.

  ZURAEL was finding it harder and harder to remain aloof. She’d caught him off-guard with her offer to share her meager food supplies.

  He’d known life was hard for the humans without wealth or privilege. He’d assumed a female with the ability to summon a Djinn would reek of arrogance and hold a position of power. Instead he found Aisling vulnerable and strangely innocent.

  It was an intoxicating combination.

  From the moment she’d returned home, he’d been unwillingly aroused. He’d been assaulted by darkly erotic fantasies and the scent of sweet surrender.

  Her fear had lessened. Her gaze had strayed to linger over his flesh. Her mind had filled with images that left her lowering her eyelashes and blushing.

  He could have her if he wished it. The Djinn weren’t promiscuous, but they weren’t afraid of the carnal side of their nature either.

  Zurael’s hands curled into fists. He forced his thoughts to veer from the direction they were taking. He reminded himself that once he’d honored his debt to the House of the Spider then he was free to finish what he’d come here to do-not only for himself, but for his people. Aisling couldn’t be allowed to live, not if she was able to summon any of them at will and might one day bind them.

  Misgiving slithered through him. He’d thought it would be simple to kill her, but now there was no rush of rage to catapult him into action. There was no satisfaction to be found in bloody images of retribution.

  He couldn’t pinpoint the moment his resolve had weakened. Was it her offer to share her food? Was it the instant she’d bravely faced him and their eyes met as his talons danced over her jugular and her terror beat against his palm?

  He was no longer sure he could kill her, and yet he knew with certainty an assassin from the House of the Scorpion would be sent if he returned to the Kingdom of the Djinn and she remained alive. A human who could summon a Djinn was a threat to all of them.

  Zurael rolled his shoulders and shrugged the thoughts aside. There was little point in thinking of the future and his part in it. For the moment Aisling was bait for a more dangerous prey.

  His eyes followed her when she gracefully sat on a bed of packed earth at the center of the room. When she folded her legs and ducked her head, he couldn’t look away from the delicate curve of her neck.

  She pulled on a thin leather string until a small pouch emerged from underneath her shirt. Zurael stepped farther into the fetish-guarded room when she opened the pouch and dumped a dozen tiny carvings into her hand before scattering them onto the dirt.

  Bone fetishes gleamed against clay-red soil. The ferret scampered to her side. He dropped the hawk he carried in his mouth a short distance away from the collection of figures on the packed dirt.

  Zurael drew closer. Uneasiness settled in his chest as he realized the ferret had been with her when she’d summoned him in her astral state.

  He hadn’t remembered before. In his mind’s eye he hadn’t seen the creature, and yet as it picked up the carving of a serpent and placed it in Aisling’s hand, Zurael’s earlier memories were overlaid with fresh ones, images with Aziel draped over her shoulders as he’d been in the kitchen. He could sense nothing otherworldly about the animal, but now its presence worried him. It raised questions he couldn’t answer.

  A raven fetish followed the serpent, a spider came next. Zurael’s thoughts flashed to his visit with Malahel, where a spider, a raven and a serpent had gathered around a crystalline altar as the stones were cast.

  Aziel hesitated. He cocked his head as if he were listening to a voice only he could hear. When his attention returned to the scattered fetishes, he picked up a bear. Once it was placed in Aisling’s hand, he scratched the ground until the remaining carvings were in a pile.

  Aisling set the four she held in her hand aside and collected the others. She returned them
to the leather pouch and dropped it under her shirt.

  Another step took Zurael to a wooden strip, one of four trapping the dirt into a square. Aisling’s gaze flicked nervously to his face then back to what she was doing.

  He crouched but didn’t interfere as she selected the raven and stood it on the dirt. The spider followed, to the right and down, east to the raven’s north. South was marked by the serpent, west by the bear. She picked up the hawk resting in the center of the other four and set it aside.

  Zurael tensed when she drew a small athame from a sheath hidden at her lower back. He cursed himself for not thinking she could be armed, even if it would be nearly impossible for her to kill him.

  She connected the four fetishes with arced lines so they were bound in a circle. When she turned her palm up and he saw she intended to drag the knife’s blade over it, Zurael reacted without thought.

  Fear and rage flooded him. He knocked the athame from her hand and took her to the ground with the swiftness of a pouncing cougar.

  “You will not bind me,” he said.

  The confusion in her face calmed him as quickly as the sight of her getting ready to make a blood offering had spurred him to strike. In place of the rage and fear came awareness, of the softness of her body beneath his, of her scent, of the hardness of his cock where it pressed against the juncture of her thighs.

  She licked her lips in a nervous gesture and he wanted to cover her mouth with his own. He wanted to plunge his tongue into her heated depths and taste her essence.

  Shock made him scramble off her. For the Djinn, the sharing of breath was the sharing of spirit, and he had no wish to give a piece of his soul to another-especially one of the alien god’s creations.

  Aisling sat. His words reverberated through her mind. The heat of his body and a fierce awareness of his arousal lingered.

  She hesitated only a second before saying, “I have no desire to bind you, and even if I wanted to, I don’t know how. I’m not a witch or a sorceress.”

  Anger flashed in the demon’s eyes. She knew he was remembering her summons.

  “I wouldn’t have called for you if the need wasn’t urgent. If there was another name I could have used instead, I would have.”

  Her admission surprised him. His gaze traveled to the fetishes that had been scattered when he pinned her to the ground. She could see the question forming, but before he could ask it, someone knocked on the front door. The knock was followed by the sound of the door opening and a female voice calling, “Hello. Is anyone home?”

  Aisling rose from the dirt and brushed herself off. Aziel darted into the living room ahead of her. Surprise held Aisling in the doorway for a second when she recognized the woman the dark priest and his followers had intended to sacrifice.

  “I hope you don’t mind me coming here,” Elena said.

  “I don’t mind.”

  “May I have a seat? Can we talk? Or do you have a client with you?”

  “Please, sit down. I can give you water or make hot tea.”

  “No. I’m fine.” Elena took a chair.

  Aisling sat on the couch while Aziel curled up on the second chair.

  “Luther says you saved my life last night,” Elena said.

  Aisling didn’t think Elena meant Father Ursu or Bishop Routledge. “Luther?”

  “Luther Germaine.” Elena’s eyes widened slightly when Aisling didn’t respond. “He’s the mayor of Oakland.”

  “Until yesterday I lived outside Stockton.”

  Elena smiled. Her gaze traveled around the room. “That explains a lot. Someone with your ability…” Her eyes met Aisling’s. There was a fevered intensity in them. “I want to hire you to find out what happened to me last night.”

  Aisling’s stomach fluttered nervously. “What do you mean?”

  Movement at the corner of Aisling’s eye distracted her. Her heart rate spiked when she turned her head and saw the snake moving toward them in a mesmerizing glide of scales over wood. Its likeness to the serpent tattooed on Zurael’s arm was unmistakable.

  Elena gasped and started to rise from her chair.

  “It’s all right,” Aisling said automatically, though she had no idea whether it was or not. The snake was venomous, the demon as lethal in this form as in any of his others.

  Golden eyes gleamed in the dusky room as Zurael closed the distance between them. With ease he found the edge of the couch and followed it with his upper body until he reached the armrest. He dipped his head to allow gravity to work in his favor as he slid down to the cushion and across to Aisling, the rest of his body following in an exotic pattern of black and gold.

  Aisling’s pulse raced. Her breath shortened as Zurael’s upper body rose once again, swaying like a cobra ready to strike.

  His face was only inches away from hers but she didn’t cower away from him. She refused to cringe each time he tested her.

  His tongue flicked out to touch her cheek, to taste her fear and measure it. For an instant she thought she saw approval in the golden depths of his eyes when she didn’t flinch.

  He coiled himself around her arm and rested his head on the back of her hand in perfect imitation of the tattoo he wore in his human form. His scales were smooth and warm against her skin, his tongue a whisper across her knuckles.

  Aisling glanced at the ferret curled on the chair and smiled. If Zurael thought to horrify or terrify her, then he’d failed. Aziel had once taken the body of a huge, heavily banded king snake. She’d spent hours with him draped over her neck or coiled around her waist.

  Elena dropped back into her seat. Aisling’s attention returned to her guest.

  “I want to hire you to find out what happened to me last night,” Elena repeated, reaching into the pocket of her jacket and pulling out a change purse with fancy stitching. She tossed it on the coffee table between them.

  The sound of it hitting the table was like a gunshot in the still room. Aisling really looked at Elena then. Instead of images of a naked female painted with sigils and lying helpless on an altar, she saw the cut of Elena’s clothing, the expensive weave, the jewels she wore on her fingers and wrists, her neck and ears.

  “Go ahead and count it,” Elena said with a negligible wave of her hand toward the coffee table.

  Aisling opened the purse. Her hands shook slightly when she saw the pieces of silver. They were more valuable than the coins and bills created by the Treasury. Even now, long after The Last War and the plague, the distrust of anything other than gems or fine metals as payment lingered.

  With enough silver coins she could return home. She could give something back to the woman who’d taken her in as an abandoned infant and raised her with love and acceptance.

  Aisling counted the silver pieces. There were ten of them.

  “That’s half of what I’m willing to pay you,” Elena said.

  Aisling closed the purse and returned it to the table. Her palms were damp as she rubbed them over her knees. “What do you mean when you say you want to find out what happened to you last night?”

  “I want to know how I ended up on that altar. The last thing I remember is being at a club. Then I woke up in a room at the church. A nun was washing the bottom of my feet and Father Ursu was praying over me. They wouldn’t let me leave until they were sure I wasn’t possessed.” She shivered, and for an instant the anticipation glittering in her eyes gave way to a fear.

  “Won’t the authorities investigate?”

  “No. Not now. Luther swallowed his pride when he asked Bishop Routledge for help.” Elena’s lips twisted in distaste. “Luther’s wife is devout and from an extremely influential family. She’s been confessing her sins to the bishop since she was a child. I’m sure he’s heard an earful about Luther’s affair with me. I doubt the good bishop would have helped if Luther wasn’t the mayor and married to one of his important constituents.”

  Elena leaned forward with the intensity of a predator. “Father Ursu told me you were there when something went
wrong during the ceremony. He said a powerful demon slaughtered them all.”

  “I was there in an astral state.”

  “Can you find their souls? Can you ask them why I was picked as a sacrifice?” Elena slid forward, to the edge of her seat. “The police won’t investigate because the dark priest was Anthony Tiernan. His family is wealthy and powerful. His followers were from similar families. Luther won’t push because all of the families involved want to keep what happened quiet. The Church wants the matter closed, too, because of the demon. Everyone I’ve gone to thinks justice was served, everyone but me.”

  Aisling shivered. Even for a purse of silver she wasn’t sure she wanted to seek out the dark priest or his followers in the ghostlands. There were malevolent beings that collected human souls just for the song of their terrified cries and the pleasure of hearing their tortured screams. There were dark places that required a heavy toll to enter and an even heavier one to exit. There was knowledge that could shatter a person’s mind and entities who would separate a travelers’ spirits from their body in order to take possession and clothe themselves in human flesh.

  “Could you find them?” Elena asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Elena’s hand settled on the purse. She pushed it toward Aisling. “We could call this a third of your fee instead of half.” She blinked away tears. “Please, I’ve got to know why they picked me. I have to know if I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time or if someone put Anthony up to it. He was arrogant and spoiled, but he had no reason to hate me or to strike out at Luther. I didn’t see him or any of his followers at the club.”

  Aisling looked down at the brightly patterned purse. Temptation writhed with fear in her belly. The bills Father Ursu had given her represented more money than she’d ever possessed, and yet they weren’t enough to buy fresh fruit or vegetables. The silver Elena was offering… it was a down payment on a dream Aisling had never dared to believe was possible for her or her family, a life without the fear of being collected by the authorities at will or evicted from land they didn’t own.