All Your Wishes

by Cat Adams

  Hasan untucked my shirt and used the fabric to wipe our eyes and nose. Once he could see clearly again he led us cautiously forward, gun in hand, moving from one rock formation to another, using them for cover.

  He’d been in these caves before, so he knew what to expect. I didn’t.

  The place was bigger than I expected. I’d caught a glimpse through the porthole during the ceremony in Indiana, but that hadn’t really given me a true feel for it. Nor had the small cave opening give a clue. Just a few steps in, along a narrow path and around a bulge in the rock, the cave opened up into a passage at least twenty feet wide and fifty feet high. Magical light flared to life at our movement, revealing fangs of rock in every shade of brown and gold from pale tan through cinnamon and umber. Some of the stalactites and stalagmites were tipped in the palest cream. The cavern was stunningly beautiful.

  Hasan listened hard, hoping to use sound to track his enemy. I heard the distant trickle of water but there was no sound of any human movement. Hasan growled, the sound coming from my lips. It was an eerie sensation, and God how I hated it. I wanted him out of me! I struggled with renewed vigor but he beat me down brutally.

  He took one step, then another. At the third step I felt a spell snap into place. The ground beneath us melted into thick, viscous mud.

  A mudder that worked on stone? I admired the spell even as I felt myself sinking rapidly to the hips in the equivalent of localized quicksand. At that point I stopped being admiring and started being scared—well, more scared. Drowning in mud was not how I wanted to go. My survival instincts started to rise in full-fledged panic, but I drove them back by sheer force of will. Better to die than let Hasan get whatever it was he wanted.

  Hasan didn’t agree. He started flailing around, which only made us sink faster. I was up to my armpits in goo when one wild arm wave found the solid rock at the edge of the pit.

  The spell had a limit.

  Relief flooded through me in spite of myself. Hasan gently tossed the gun onto the ground just past the edge, then grabbed the rock edge with our fingertips and pulled until we had a full-hand grip. Pulling harder, he got us close enough to get hold of the base of a nearby stalagmite. Using every ounce of vampire strength available in my body, and every ounce of energy that had been poured into my nifty special-duty gloves, he pulled against the sucking mud. I felt my muscles straining and tearing, but he forced our body forward, finally managing to drag us to the edge of the spell and then out.

  I lay on the floor for long minutes, sodden and spent, my breath coming in grateful, heaving gasps, my muscles screaming in protest at the abuse they’d suffered. I heal well, but it would take days before the damaged muscles in my upper body stopped giving me hell.

  I would have been content to stay there a while longer, but I felt the stirring of magic thrumming through the stones beneath me.

  Hasan felt it too. It was his turn to panic. Rahim was dead. The Guardian child did not have enough mages with him to do the spell. How—

  Mages! You brought mages with you, he accused me.

  Yup. Good ones.

  You’ll pay for that, he hissed in my mind.

  How exactly do you plan to do that? I’m your ride. Damage me much more and you’re screwed.

  You have loved ones.

  Yeah, and your magic isn’t working. Pull out of me now to do something and you won’t get back in. I’ll drown myself in the muck if I have to.

  Wordless rage consumed him. He knew I’d do it. And even if he animated my corpse, there wasn’t enough strength left in my damaged upper body to haul me out again.

  Never having possessed a living human body before, he had no understanding of physical limits. He was startled—and disgusted—by the realization that he had damaged me, that I could not be manipulated without consequences. Startled, he pulled back. Not out, but back, and only for an instant.

  Long enough for me to unsnap the sheath to my knife, but not long enough to draw it, and not nearly long enough to cut myself.

  Oh, no you don’t. Hasan scolded me as if I were a toddler. You are a child. I have existed for eons here, and longer than that at home. What does your text say about the humans? Ah yes, a grass that grows one day and withers the next.

  Our “text”? The Bible?

  Indeed.

  I was weak, but he managed to drag me into a sitting position, then slowly, painfully, got us onto my feet, though most of my weight was supported by a column of rock.

  The boy has power, Hasan said with grudging admiration. More than either his father or the old man. But less skill.

  Give him time.

  No, Hasan answered firmly, I don’t think I will.

  He bent down, intending to pick up my gun.

  It wasn’t there.

  He stared, wide-eyed, at the spot where he’d tossed it. Someone had taken it—and he hadn’t seen, or heard, a thing. Though I had.

  You distracted me.

  Maybe. Or maybe somebody in the cave had thought to grab the sujay from Vargas’s body. Either way, score a point for our team. Hasan might be inside my head, but Great Aunt Lopaka had been training me about shielding my thoughts from other sirens—and apparently the same trick worked pretty damned well against evil ifrits. Yay.

  You think you’re clever. But every act of defiance will cost you dearly in the end. He showed me hideous images, things that would haunt my nightmares, silently promising that he’d do all that and more to the ones I loved.

  Right, like you wouldn’t have done all that anyway.

  He couldn’t deny that.

  The power of Ujala’s working was building, I could feel it. I wondered how many of the Guardians were helping, how many of the mages I’d brought along were still alive. One of them had to be: Someone had taken that gun.

  Hope flared to life. I might be alone fighting for control of my body, but I wasn’t fighting alone.

  A wave of magic washed outward, stealing my breath and affirming that hope. I rejoiced as I felt it burn against my skin.

  Hasan was much less happy. He forced our body forward, moving in virtual silence. All the lights within sight of us had been extinguished, but the cavern wasn’t dark, not to my eyes. Faint but distinct lines and swirls appeared as if etched into the rock, glowing in faintly fluorescent green, in patterns that I knew had meaning but couldn’t comprehend. It was hauntingly beautiful. As we moved deeper into the cave, they grew in number, brightness, and intensity.

  Hasan was worried. If he didn’t hurry, the boy might be able to bar the way before we reached the altar. That was unacceptable. He would not be thwarted. Not this close to his goal.

  What altar? I asked. Of course, he didn’t answer, but he was eager enough that I could finally tap into his mind and figure out what he wanted, why he was doing all this.

  The ifrit wanted to go home.

  Oh, not in the warm, fuzzy way. No, he wanted revenge. Hasan had been exiled because he was a serial killer. He’d slaughtered his fellow djinn in the double digits, after putting them through unspeakable horrors. I saw that he wanted to hunt down the ones who’d discovered his crimes, then prosecuted and punished him. He intended to extract the most hideous, painful revenge on them that he had been able to imagine. And he’d had eons to plan every bit of it. My stomach roiled at the images that played through his mind.

  But, eager as he was, he still remained cautious. Now was not the time to make a mistake through haste. Humans, while puny and generally ineffectual, could show surprising resourcefulness when roused. There was also the demon to consider. He would be remiss indeed to think it hadn’t taken steps to keep him on Earth until he’d done what he’d been released to do.

  Hasan paused, looking for traps. Without success. He couldn’t use magic to search while using the body, and the boy and his allies—and the demon and his—had cloaked their traps too thoroughly. Our head snapped to the left at the faint scrape of a boot echoing slightly in the open area he knew lay just a step or two ahead;
there was a sharp intake of breath and the rustle of fabric to the right.

  I could hear from his thoughts that he was tempted to slide out of my body and use his powers to destroy the foolish humans who were scattered throughout the cavern, lying in wait to oppose him. But he didn’t dare. He knew he couldn’t trust me. I heard him curse me mentally with frustrated fury.

  The ifrit’s frustration was intense enough that my I felt my fingers actually dig into the stone of the column where I stood. How dare she threaten him, fight him. When he no longer needed her body he would make her pay, and he’d take time and pleasure doing it.

  But first, he had to deal with the boy. He considered the layout of the cave complex. He knew it well, having been sent from the djinn world to the place of his imprisonment through this very temple—and been jailed here by the demon and its servants until he’d stolen and consumed the vosta.

  He was almost certain where we were—two steps from a crossroads—but in the confusion of the fight, he might have gotten turned around. Too, there was always the chance that the boy had thought to use illusion magic to change the appearance of the tunnels.

  Hasan moved us cautiously forward. As he did, the lights and swirls rose up to dizzying heights, to the ceiling of an enormous cavern. The pattern there was dominated by a feature that was recognizable to anyone who’d ever read a map: a compass rose, and at its center, a glittering diamond the size of my head. Even the dim light provided by the magic made it glitter. In the faint illumination I saw tunnels branching in each direction. Hasan paused, debating which path to take to the main cavern with the altar of ceremony.

  PAIN.

  I dropped to the ground, my body slamming onto the uneven stone with teeth-jarring force as my left leg gave out beneath me in a spasm of pure agony. A knife, glowing eye-searingly blue-white with magic, was embedded in the muscle of my left thigh. Dark blood flowed from the wound, soaking the leg of my pants and wetting the cavern floor beneath me. The blade hadn’t hit an artery—the blood wasn’t spurting—but this was no minor injury. I instinctively grabbed for the knife with both hands, swearing.

  Then snatched my hands back at the realization that I wanted that knife in me. It was my only hope of keeping Hasan at bay.

  The moment I knew that, so did he, and he redoubled his efforts to regain control of our shared body. The struggle probably only lasted a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity. I watched my arm start to lift from the floor, the muscles visibly trembling from the strain of conflicting messages.

  You will do this.

  I will not.

  I heard someone take a step but saw no one.

  In the distance, indistinctly, I heard the sound of male voices chanting, felt the flow and eddy of power moving more strongly than ever through the stones beneath me, seeming to thicken the very air I drew into my lungs.

  The cavern played tricks with sound, but there was no mistaking the direction from which the power was coming. It poured from the mouth of the eastern tunnel in a blistering wind that brightened the runes and sigils on the wall.

  No! Hasan’s fury gave him strength enough to overpower me. With a hiss of pain, he ripped the knife from the wound, flinging it away to clang against a rock somewhere out of sight.

  He rolled us over, my blood splattering and smearing on the ground as he tried to drag us to our feet. He almost couldn’t do it. My body was reaching the end of its resources; exhaustion and injury compounded by blood loss made it increasingly hard for him to move.

  When my body lurched to its feet, a stifled scream broke from between my gritted teeth. My right leg bore the bulk of my weight. My left dragged, almost useless, blood pouring steadily from the knife wound. Each time Hasan put any weight on it, every time it bumped against anything, the deep, throbbing pain became a piercing lance of pure agony.

  Cursing under his breath, Hasan used my hands against the stone walls to steady himself and we shambled drunkenly forward. He staggered from one rock formation to the next. Even as he did I could feel the spells being wrought to the east draining him.

  But nothing they did could drain his will. I knew that even if I bled to death, he could keep my body animated for several minutes, moving toward his goal. For a moment he rested, leaning against a column, digging through the pouch of spells, looking for something, anything he could use to kill the boy. Without Ujala, the other mages in the working would lack the knowledge to complete it. Nothing then could stand in his way.

  I fought for control, tried to use my fear and pain to my advantage. I stopped him in his tracks for a moment, but only a moment. Then we moved inexorably forward again.

  The mouth of another cavern was only a yard in front of me, the golden light of magic illuminating the way. Each word of the chant, clearly audible, struck Hasan like a small hailstone. I felt them hammering hard against my skin. When each struck, a wisp of smoke and the scent of myrrh rose from my body, covering the increasingly strong smell of spilled blood.

  The trail of blood marked my passage like slime behind a snail. Something … someone was behind me, following that trail. I was pretty sure I knew who. I tried not to think too much about it, lest Hasan overhear the thought. Instead, I focused on the pain and my continuing battle for control.

  I might be losing, but by damn I wasn’t giving up. It was costing him, too. I knew that because I could feel both his frustration and eagerness building. Success and freedom were mere heartbeats away.

  We stepped into the doorway and I had to blink several times to adjust to the brilliant scene in the next space. Before me was a casting circle, with a mage holding a gemstone at each compass point and a djinn jar set at the exact center. It stood, a barrier, between Hasan and the elaborate altar at the opposite side of the cave, which was set between huge stalagmite columns that had been carved in the shapes of towering nude figures. One male and one female, they must have been a hundred feet tall.

  The chanting grew, building toward a crescendo, and each mage raised the vosta he held over his head: To the north, Ujala, with a diamond; the south, one of his uncles, holding the sapphire; on the east, Cox, with a topaz; and in the west, another soldier, whose name I didn’t remember, grasping an emerald.

  Hasan pulled a spell disk and cracked it as he stepped away from the wall, intending to throw it directly at Ujala. I pulled back, not fighting until the crucial instant, when I used my concentrated will to foul his aim, so that the full-body bind hit a column three feet to the boy’s left, far enough away to do no harm at all.

  Something about one of the shadows caught my attention, tugging at the edge of my consciousness as Hasan grabbed another spell ball. A blur of motion from behind ended with a huge, fur-covered body slamming into my injured leg and bowling me over sideways. The magical flame ignited by the spell ball streamed off course, a good eighteen inches to Ujala’s right.

  I fell, my newly empty hands grabbing deep into the fur of a huge golden wolf who dug his claws into my belly and chest. I wouldn’t have thought I had enough strength left in me to do it, but adrenaline can let you do amazing things. Hasan flung Kevin aside, hard. The wolf hit the cavern wall with a bone-cracking impact that left him crumpled on the ground at the foot of the altar, neck twisted at an impossible angle.

  Hasan tried to make me stand, but couldn’t. My body had taken too much punishment. I had lost too much blood. He looked around the cave, trying to figure out his next move, while I tried to see if anyone else had been hurt. The magical blow Hasan had loosed had missed Ujala, but found another target. On the far side of the room, perhaps a half-inch away from the circle, was a body so badly burned that it no longer looked human. I thought it a corpse … until it moved.

  I shuddered. She wasn’t dead. She, because the body was too small to be any of the men. Morales then, it had to be, but her uniform and flesh were charred beyond recognition. The pain I felt had to be nothing compared to what she was going through. Yet she still fought, trying to move an arm that was so badly
damaged it shouldn’t be able to move at all. Why?

  My own memories supplied the answer. If she touched the circle, she’d become part of the magic, and her death by magic would activate the node. The spell Ujala and the others were working was powerful, but it wasn’t powerful enough. Hasan was still free, still strong enough to inhabit my body. But weakened as he was, with my body failing beneath him, he would not be able to resist the power of the node.

  Hasan either heard my thought or came to the same conclusion. Whichever, it didn’t matter. He knew, and with a hiss of fury he tried to dig in my pouch for another spell.

  I didn’t let him. Ujala and the others might not have freed me yet, but their spell was working. The ifrit was weakening.

  I called on my vampire strength, but more than that, I embraced my siren heritage.

  I should have done it sooner. Reaching out with my mind, I sought help from my aunt, my cousin, from everyone I knew, everyone I loved, from the men and women fighting with me in the cavern.

  And they were there: Three soldiers besides those in the circle; Kevin his neck broken, but alive, human essence determined, his wolf furious; Emma and Dawna, steadfast and loyal; Gran; my aunt; Isaac and Gilda Levy; John Creede; El Jefe; all there, all willingly giving me their strength of mind and will. I reached for Bruno and found … nothing. Just a vast, echoing void where his presence would normally be. I sought and found Matty, felt his pain, his sorrow, and his determination to exact revenge—revenge for the loss of his brother.

  Bruno was dead.

  The knowledge hit me like a sledgehammer to the gut. “No!” I howled as pain ripped through my heart and soul. The agony of my loss, combined with the strength given by my loved ones, became a weapon. I struck Hasan with all its power.

  The blow staggered him and in that instant my body and mind belonged only to me. Grabbing Cooper’s knife from its sheath, I slammed it into my injured thigh.