by SGD Singh
Asha swooped into an alleyway and landed, still in hawk form, on the edge of a roof that stood by some miracle that defied physics. Aquila perched beside her, and the two of them peered down at a line of sweaty men who stood in a rough line under the tangle of lights strung between rotting structures. They laughed and called to each other in what Aquila assumed was Bengali, with English scattered between the words. He wished Ursala was with them, and only partly because he spoke the language.
Silas says there's no time, so we'll have to do this the hard way.
What? Aquila blinked his bird eyes at Asha in surprise. You mean kill all these guys? They're civilians!
Asha tilted her head, fixing him with one falcon eye. You know what this place is, right?
Aquila thought he heard a woman scream then, and understanding threatened to make him ill.
Uh… no. Even having been to an Underworld, Aquila refused to believe his fellow man could… no. I mean, I can feel you're about to lose your temper, but I thought—
They're waiting in line. Laughing. While Ranya and who knows how many other women are—
Jesus Christ. Aquila wondered if Asian sparrow hawks could throw up.
Wait here.
What? No fucking way you're going in there by yourself.
Aquila. Wait here. Trust me. You do not want to see your sister like this.
She's not my—
Wait. Here. That's an order.
Asha dove into the alley then, landing on her human feet amongst the crowd of men, and it took every ounce of Aquila's self-control not to follow her as she straightened, her weapons in her hands.
The men froze, surprised into silence by the sudden presence of a fully armed female, dressed in all black. And then Asha's eyes began to glow, and the crowd took a collective step back.
That was as far as they got though, because in the next instant Aquila watched every human in the narrow street drop to the ground, apparently dead. Out of habit, he hoped they were only unconscious.
Without even glancing up at him, Asha rushed into the building, and Aquila was left to wait. He felt her horror and disgust increase, her temper flaring with each step even as her strength doubled, then tripled.
Aquila dug his talons into the crumbling ledge of the roof and tried to stay calm for Asha's sake as she easily dispatched four Asura, who were apparently as surprised as the civilians to see a Jodha. Their attempts to morph into Asha's greatest fears fell flat as they died one by one.
Aquila. Asha's temper was beyond anything he'd felt before. There's no time. I need you to clear the basement level. I'll meet you at the exit. Hurry.
Aquila was through the door before she finished, the stench alone almost knocking him over. This building could only be described as a sewer some raving lunatic set up as a special torture chamber.
Oh my God, this place is… there are no words vile enough for this place. He sprinted for the stairs, leaping over the bodies of men littering the narrow space.
Asha's only answer was her mix of rage and pity.
The dim stairway was decorated with flashing Christmas lights that were at complete odds with the horrific surroundings. Bollywood music blared, shaking the flimsy walls, and growing louder the farther he descended.
Aquila felt his skin crawl and his guts churn as he reached the basement and let his eyes adjust to the murk beneath dull disco lighting. He took in the rows of filthy plastic curtains between crumbling and blackened cement walls, and Aquila felt it to his very bones.
This is Hell.
His weapons were in his hands, and he felt some small comfort in the worn handle of his gurkha blades before he consciously decided he wanted—no, he needed to destroy any patron of a place like this.
Aquila screamed over the music in the rudest Hindi he could muster, “Time's up, dogs! Run back to your rich fathers!”
The first man to peek his depraved head out from a curtain met Aquila's blade before he could disentangle himself from the filthy plastic curtain, and he fell to the sticky floor, dead before he could say a word. Aquila rushed to cut the girl's chains. He tried to control the murderous energy rolling off him as he tore fake silk from the walls and wrapped it around the girl's broken and bleeding form, careful not to touch her as she sat curled into herself, trembling with fear. He yanked the curtain aside, pointing his blade at the fallen man and nodding a promise to her. He didn't have to tell her to run as he turned back to the corridor of humanity's darkest nightmares. He went to the next room, and the next, and the next, counting the seconds until he could finally leave, sure he would never sleep again.
Aquila felt he had lost a portion of his sanity by the time he finished and met Asha by the door four minutes later. She was healing a girl who looked no more than ten, wrapping her arms around shaking shoulders and whispering in her ear before the child fled, disappearing into the street.
Aquila met her gaze for one long moment, trying to breathe for the rage that pulsed through his blood, and then Asha spun, shifting to swoop up the stairs, and he followed, catching up with her just as she closed a door in his face.
Wait. Asha ordered, and Aquila paused, his skin cold with her dread.
What? Why are you panicking?
It's really bad.
Hysterical laughter threatened to burst from him. Bad? The fucking basement was bad. How is this any…?
Asha was filled with a repulsed sympathy that stopped him cold.
Asha, I'm coming in.
I would give anything for you not to have to see this. But we have no time and Silas said not to touch her, so, I need your help.
Eyeing the questionable doorknob, Aquila kicked the rotting wood aside. What he saw made him stop, unable to breathe.
He hardly recognized Ranya, chained to a metal cot. Asha had obviously covered her with her own long over-shirt, but what Aquila could see of her skin was covered in deep lashes and bruises. She appeared to be unconscious, but it was impossible to tell. Her one good eye was swollen closed, and, oh, Jesus, her mouth was sewn shut.
Aquila jerked his gaze away from her face to see that Ranya's fingers were completely destroyed, each one covered in thick scar tissue. Her nails were gone, the old scars crisscrossed with fresh slashes and drying blood.
Asha touched his shoulder, and Aquila jumped, then relaxed into her healing touch.
“I tried to heal her,” she whispered, her glowing eyes full of tears. “Nothing is working.”
“Is she dead? She looks dead.”
Asha shook her head once, shuddering. “She's alive. Barely.”
Aquila stepped forward and with a swing of his blade, cut the chains that bound Ranya's limbs to the walls. He took one end of the putrid mattress and lifted it. “Let's get the hell out of here then.”
Asha lifted the mattress's other end and they began making their way through the door, and back down the cluttered and stinking stairway. “There were four Asura guarding her,” Asha said. “I'm guessing there are more of them, and they'll know something's wrong.”
“And the other women?”
Asha paled. “I healed them. Physically, at least.”
Aquila stopped walking until she looked at him. “If we don't save Ranya, everyone is screwed, right? You did the best you could under the circumstances.”
He felt her temper flare, but Asha nodded.
By the time they got to the corpse-lined alley, supporting Ranya between them, an ambulance was waiting for them.
The driver didn't give the bodies a second glance as he slid his sunglasses down his nose and studied them with a lazy smile. “Airport transportation for friends of Miss Hewitt, I presume?”
Chapter 14
“We'll be there in ten minutes, Asha. What the hell do you want me to tell you?” Lexi shouted into her phone, glancing up as Nidhan swerved the helicopter, keeping it low over the wide river that wound between Rishikesh's steep hills. This was the Ganga, the largest body of holy water in the Satya realm.
Asha
's voice was shrill. “We may not have ten minutes, dammit!”
“Well, if she dies, she dies. I can't honestly say I'd be too broken up about it.”
Nidhan made a very Punjabi noise of irritation, and Lexi rolled her eyes.
Silas took his eyes off the turquoise water long enough to raise one thumb at her.
“Look,” Lexi cut off Asha's incoherent yelling. “Silas just said she won't die today, okay? So calm down and stop screeching at me. I don't control the laws of physics, and last I checked, sand cats don't fly. You'll have to wait.”
She hung up. “Jesus Christ, you'd never think she was talking about the same homicidal Witch who enjoys killing babies in her spare time. The same one who just tried to destroy our entire fucking realm.”
Nidhan frowned. “Silas says—”
“Yeah, yeah, Silas says.” Lexi threw herself into the copilot's seat. “The Triputi Prophecy requires three of us to save our realm. That's why Ranya was taken in the first place, blah, blah, blah.” She pointed the knife she was twirling at Nidhan. “She'll never help us. I can promise you that right fucking now. The bitch is completely unhinged.”
“There it is,” Nidhan said, pointing with his chin, and Lexi followed his gaze to see a Hindu Temple on a hill in the distance. Its sculpture-covered walls were painted all the bright colors of the rainbow, as if the fairy of bubblegum had cast a spell over the building.
Nidhan circled the temple complex, driving leaves from their branches and sending the silk flags crowning the building into a frenzy. “Do I just land—oh, there.”
“If she kills Silas, I swear to God,” Lexi told Nidhan, glancing over her shoulder. “We don't leave his side until we find out what sort of sick trap this is, am I clear?”
“Yes, Lexi,” Nidhan said, flipping switches and pushing buttons as the propellers slowly stopped turning. He opened the helicopter's door. “You've only said that one million and fifty-three times.”
Asha was waiting for them and launched herself at Nidhan, hugging him for about five seconds too long.
He looked at Lexi over his sister's head in surprise, and Lexi went cross-eyed, making a circular motion at her ear.
“Good to see you too,” Nidhan told Asha, prying her arms from around his waist, and patting her shoulder.
Lexi shook her head and they followed Silas inside. The Chosen One moved with an urgency that verged on panic.
“Why is she locked up?” Silas called to Aquila, who stood outside the third door on a wide veranda overlooking a courtyard garden.
Aquila unlocked the door and pushed it open. “Well, considering that she's the same person who tried to murder us all on multiple occasions I thought—”
Silas spun, and Lexi could have sworn his eyes looked a little glowy. “You thought wrong.”
Aquila stiffened, and Lexi moved to stand next to Silas. Nidhan was already at his other side, and Aquila blinked at them in surprise. “What? Orders were to keep her alive, not put lives at risk.”
Silas looked at the four of them in turn. “The four of you will not enter this room, understood? Your negativity toward her will only slow down her recovery.”
Lexi crossed her arms, blocking the doorway. “Silas, if you actually think I'm letting you go in there by yourself, you really should've appointed a different bodyguard.”
“Yeah,” Nidhan said. “Like maybe a Revenant, or even a Reaver.”
Silas looked at them, then sighed. “She will not hurt me,” he said. When no one replied, he straightened, his eyes definitely glowing. “Ranya has given up more than any of us to reach her destiny. She has been through unimaginable suffering, and her mind paid the price. Yes, she committed terrible deeds in the past. Don't think for one second I don't know that just as well as the rest of you. The woman who raised me as her own son died because of her. Horribly.”
His eyes bore into them, and Lexi refused to turn away even as her skin crawled with the memory of the tortured nun. The same woman who had refused to break her vow of silence even to save her life. Lexi hoped she had died believing Silas was safe, that somehow the Familiars hadn't found him.
“But I know this much,” Silas continued. “That with compassion, Ranya will heal. If we have the courage to forgive, we will discover that love can heal even the very worst among us.”
Before he could start a lecture about love, Lexi brushed past Silas and entered the room. Ranya was unconscious on a bed of brightly colored silk.
As she looked down at the destroyed Witch, Lexi felt, in spite of every cold-blooded, insane action, a twinge of sympathy. It was like seeing a vicious dog that someone even more vicious had beaten and starved.
“Holy shit,” she finally said. “What the fuck happened to her hands?”
“Many of those are old scars. This is why she covered her fingers.” Silas held his own hand above the Witch's. “The Asura… they have ways of training those under their power. Ways that most don't survive.”
“Well, fuck a duck.” She couldn't see this broken creature as a threat. Lexi hit the bedpost hard enough to feel the sting, then turned and stalked out of the room, leaving Silas to administer his compassion at his own risk.
Nidhan joined her and Asha on the veranda a moment later. “Way to prove Silas' point about negativity, Lexi. Thanks for that.”
She waved it off with a shrug, while Asha hugged Nidhan again, like some clingy weirdo.
The four of them watched Silas through the open bedroom door as he pulled a chair to Ranya's bedside and, after kissing the rosary around his neck, he raised his hands. They couldn't see his face, but based on the light in the room, Lexi assumed his eyes were glowing bright.
“If she kills him, you guys are witnesses that I was ordered to stay out of that room,” Lexi said. “I will not be called a terrible bodyguard when no one can disobey him.”
Asha still hung onto Nidhan's arm as if he would float away if she let go of him, and Lexi looked pointedly at Asha's death-grip. “You all right there, Asha?”
Asha seemed to notice her posture for the first time, and she stepped away from Nidhan, smiling. “Yeah, I'm fine. How are you, Lexi?”
Lexi narrowed her eyes and waited for Asha to explain, but she only smiled wider.
“I'll be better when this whole Ranya thing is squared away, to tell you the…” Something in the room caught her attention. “Okay, that's just… wow.”
Silas was weaving an illusion. The four of them watched in enraptured silence as the walls of Ranya's room disappeared, leaving only pillars that reached to a domed ceiling covered in a pearl mosaic. Bright sunlight shone in gentle rays outside the gazebo-bedroom, revealing what Lexi thought looked like an Italian garden stretching out on all sides, with wide paths of river rock, fountains, and manicured hedges. The room itself was bathed in warm light that cast the clean lines of wooden furniture and floors of Italian tile into a soft glow. The Indian chairs and dressers in the room melted away before their eyes, replaced by plants as the pillars between the room and the garden were wrapped in climbing white roses.
It was the most beautiful bedroom Lexi had ever seen.
Looking behind her to the temple's garden, she watched it bloom with renewed life.
Lowering his delicate hands to hover over her, Silas began to heal Ranya.
† † †
Two days passed. Silas spent most of each night healing Ranya within the perpetually sun-filled garden room, while the others watched from the veranda. The Jodha would break for meals, catch a few hours of sleep during the middle of the day, and then spend a few hours training. Silas never left Ranya's room, even when he slept. But for a few sadhus who cooked their meals at sunset, the temple seemed to be deserted.
Gradually, Ranya's body healed, until the only outward sign of damage was the scars on her fingers, which Lexi supposed would always look like they had been dipped in acid. Yet the Witch still hadn't regained consciousness.
Asha kept suggesting that the two of them
touch her, but Silas was adamant that she wasn't ready yet, whatever the hell that meant.
Lexi tried to sleep, but she kept waking up from nightmares she couldn't quite remember. She had only vague sensations of having her heart ripped out, and the image of Zaiden's face when he said goodbye for good fresh in her mind.
On the third day, after cursing at the ceiling yet again, Lexi got up and dressed, checked her weapons, and made her way along the veranda toward the garden. If she couldn't sleep, she could train.
“When else can I talk to you without Nidhan around?” Lexi heard Asha's voice coming from Ranya's room, and she froze.
“All right,” Silas' voice answered. “Talk to me if you want. You want me to tell you the Prazasti's warning means nothing, that the Vasana in Bhutan was wrong, that Nidhan will survive December. Right?”
Lexi felt her legs give out beneath her, and she slumped against the wall.
What the actual fuck.
“Stop showing off and tell me how to fix this,” Asha snapped, and Lexi knew without seeing her that her friend's eyes were glowing.
“Many of us won't live through December, Asha,” Silas' voice was soft, and full of sadness. “You need to accept that there is a price for peace. And that is a price very much worth paying.”
Lexi heard Asha sob, and she covered her own mouth.
When was Asha going to say something?
“I know you won't,” Silas said. “I know you'll do whatever you can to keep your brother safe. And I won't stop you.”
Asha sniffed. “Will it work? At least tell me that much, damn it.”
“You know that I can't read the future, right?” Silas sounded as if he was smiling. “But, from what I can See right now? It… could work.”
Lexi couldn't hide any longer. In two strides, she was through the door and at Asha's side. “Tell us what to do, Silas,” she said, hardly recognizing her own voice. “We'll do whatever it takes for him to survive.”
Asha's surprise passed quickly, and she wrapped her arms around her. Lexi felt the familiar warmth of wellbeing fill her as Asha healed her automatically, then said, “We obviously can't tell him we're keeping him out of danger.”