by Tamsin Ley
“Bonding. That’s what that was. I’m sealed to you. Now rest and let me hold you.”
She did rest, safe and at peace for the first time since making her horrific wish.
Chapter Nine
Ophir rolled off Tanika’s body, and the loss of her warmth was sharp. Immediate. He tugged her against his chest, reclaiming the comfort he’d found in her arms. She murmured and snuggled her luscious backside against him. He wanted to stay here forever. But they had one last thing to do.
He whispered in her ear. “Wake up, my love. We have a portal to destroy.”
She curled herself tighter into a ball. “Now?”
He reached down and pinched her ass, hard enough to elicit a yelp of surprise, but not enough to truly punish. “Yes, now. Your wish is complete. He’ll take the first chance he can to hand the portal to a new master.”
She bolted upright, the curve of her breasts illuminated in the faint glow of dawn outside her bedroom window. “But the bank is closed.”
“No better time to break in, then, is there?”
With a gleam in his eye, he rose and conjured his clothes back into place. She scrambled for her own, and he smirked, watching her slide her feet into her leggings.
“You could help, you know,” she grumped.
“And miss out on your divine curves? I think not.”
She flushed as rosy as the sunrise outside.
Once they were both clothed, he led them to the convertible, settling her into her seat before asking for directions.
“We have to go to Redmond.”
He squeezed her knee and drove them to a nearby doughnut shop.
“Why are we stopping?” she asked.
“I’m going to use a lot of energy to create a crucible hot enough to melt the portal. Carbs loading’ll help.” While the tired young man behind the counter filled two coffees, Ophir picked out a dozen doughnuts. “What’s your favorite?” he asked Tanika.
“Oh, none for me, thanks.”
Tipping the young man a hundred, he handed the pastry box to Tanika so he could douse his coffee with sugar. She took a deep breath of the box top and moaned. “Just holding this is going to make me gain twenty pounds, you know.”
At the passenger side door he held out the keys and relieved her of the box. “Will you drive so I can eat?”
Her eyes lit up. “Drive? Me? This is nothing like my Ford Escort.”
“You’ll do fine.” He bit into a Bavarian cream, tangy sweet cream flooding his tongue, and pastry melting in his mouth. He held it close to her mouth. “Try this. Just a taste.”
Licking her lips, she hesitated, then leaned in and took a demure bite. “Oh, God.” She closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the head rest. “That’s delicious.”
He shoved the rest into his mouth and reached for another, feeling the slowly building energy settle into his bones.
“Are you really going to eat all of them?”
He waggled his eyebrows and nodded, amused by her censuring tone.
“Lucky.” She put the car into drive, eased out of the parking spot, put on her blinker and looked both ways before pulling onto the nearly empty street.
He laughed around a mouthful of jelly doughnut. “You don’t have to be so cautious.”
“About the car? Or the doughnuts?”
“Either.” He held the doughnut toward her, and this time she took a big bite. Raspberry filling dotted the corner of her perfect mouth. He leaned over to lick it off, thrilled at the way she turned into him to transform the move into a kiss. After a long moment, she pulled back and took a breath, waggling a finger at him.
“Don’t distract the driver.” A smile adorned her face as she stepped on the gas, lurching them forward.
They reached Redmond in record time, where the bank’s two-story brick building cast a long shadow across the pavement. Tanika pulled into the parking lot, stopping in a far corner under a huge oak tree. Cutting the engine, she looked around. “Someone is going to notice this car.”
Ophir gave her the last bite of a maple bar, then kissed the stickiness from her lips, savoring her flavor as much as the doughnut. “Don’t worry about it.” He opened the door and got out. “You can even leave the keys. Only the people I want to see my car see it. Come on.”
Taking her hand, he strode to the front door, flicked his fingers, and the locks released. He’d disabled the security cameras and alarms the moment he’d seen the First National sign. Luckily all these were small spells. He was going to need every reserve once they reached the portal.
“What about the guard?” she asked.
“Sleeping.” Holding open the heavy glass door, he allowed her to lead the way. Putting the guard to sleep had been a bit of a heavy lift, but a necessary one.
She crept forward, darting looks left and right, making him smile. Not bothering to hide the echo of his footfalls on the marble floor, he lagged just far enough behind to admire her sexy ass twitching as she took one cautious step after another. Past the teller stations with their antique wrought-iron cage fronts, down a short hall decorated with crown molding, and around a corner to the steel vault door.
Pausing, he asked, “I need to know how big the portal item is and what it’s made of.”
She looked at him, deep worry in her eyes.
He reached out, smoothed a hand over her cheek, and pulled her into a kiss. “It’ll be fine. I’m going to create a crucible. All you have to do is drop the portal in.”
“That’s all?”
He nodded. “It’ll melt the metal and ruin the crystalline structure that gives it power.”
She took a shaky breath. “A gold pendant. About the size of a walnut.” With a small voice, she added, “Please tell me this will work.”
Her words touched him. He bent and kissed her again, gently, reverently. “I will never let you down.”
Letting her go, he placed both hands on the wheel lock and twisted until there was a clunk. The door swung open silently. Inside, rows and rows of lockers lined the walls.
Tanika walked straight to the left wall and pulled out her key. “It also requires a bank manager key.”
“Never mind. Just point me to the correct box.”
She did, and he breathed a release spell at the lock. His heart was thundering in his ears. Everything hinged on getting this done before Elim realized what was happening. “You don’t need your key. Be ready to open it. I’m going to conjure a crucible now.”
Closing his eyes, he summoned the whirling pool of energy from the pit of his stomach and focused it at waist level in front of him. Heat filled the room, radiating outward from the glowing pinpoint floating there. Opening his eyes, he stared at the growing circle of light, willing it to become a tiny, blinding sun. He flicked a glance at Tanika and nodded, every ounce of his attention on the brewing heat.
Tanika yanked the box outward and fumbled with the flip-top lid. She pulled out a black velvet pouch and let the heavy box crash to the floor. He could feel the portal’s energy, smell the anise-sweet scent of its magic. But that magic no longer had any power over him. Ophir breathed through his nose, pouring all his strength into the crucible. Sustaining this much energy output could cause him to collapse. Tanika had to hurry. She struggled with the pouch’s drawstring, and he shouted, “The whole thing.”
Understanding lit her features, and she tossed the entire pouch into the whirling heat. The velvet went up in a puff of dark smoke. In the center of the crucible, the pendant darkened for an eye blink, glowed red, then golden white.
When he was sure the structure was melted through, Ophir cut the energy flow. The melted gold continued to hover a moment longer, still caught in the force of residual energy. Then it fell like a giant teardrop to the floor, landing with a splat.
Tanika jumped backward to avoid the volcano-hot spatter. Ophir stepped forward, worried she’d been burned. He might be immune to the heat, but he should have warned her. He’d taken no more than one step when his legs gave
out and he fell face first onto the hard tile, the world going dark around him.
Chapter Ten
Tanika believed she was strong. A big girl. She ought to be able to drag a man across a perfectly flat, smooth floor. But no. Ophir’s big frame might as well have been an elephant. Her ballet flats refused to find purchase on the highly-polished marble, and she was forced to remove them, praying the police couldn’t ID a person from their toe prints.
Even in bare feet, it took her forever to slide him as far as the vault door. She paused to rest, staring into the room of safe deposit boxes. Globs of hardened gold adhered to the marble, and a crack marred the tile her metal box had hit. The box’s lid was bent, but she’d managed to force it back into its slot while waiting for Ophir to regain consciousness. When he didn’t, she’d had no choice but to move him herself.
She knelt next to him, smoothing her fingertips over his brows. She hadn’t thought a djinn could be rendered unconscious. Was mortality already creeping up on him? Her stomach churned with regret. He was hers, and now it was her turn to take care of him. They had to get out of here before the bank opened in…she glanced at her phone. Forty minutes. Shit! She grabbed his wrist and pulled again, inching him along the floor until he cleared the vault’s threshold.
Stepping over him, she moved his legs aside and pushed the heavy metal door shut, spinning the locking wheel. What would the employees think when they got here? She shook her head. She had to trust Ophir could cover their tracks—was somehow still covering their tracks. At least there’d been no alarms so far.
Grabbing his wrist, she pulled again, progressing to the corner of the short hall leading to the main lobby. Ophir’s hip snagged on the corner as she attempted to round it, and she had to tear his belt loop free of where it had caught on the baseboard’s ornate brass corner plate. Stupid, fancy bank.
Sweat trickled between her shoulder blades. She tugged harder, all too aware of the ticking clock echoing in the lobby. Someone would be arriving to open the bank at any moment. Dropping to her knees next to Ophir, she patted his cheeks. “Ophir, wake up.” She smacked him harder. “Wake up!”
His eyes rolled beneath his lids. Then his lashes parted the barest millimeter. He mumbled something unintelligible.
“We have to get out of here. The bank’s about to open, and I can’t drag you the rest of the way fast enough.”
A shiver rippled along his skin and seemed to reach into his bones. Then he rolled to his side, pushing upright on wobbly feet. Relief made her own knees weak. She wedged one shoulder under Ophir’s arm and led him toward the doors. Down the steps. Into the bright morning sun.
Across the street, a man jogged behind his leashed dog. A pickup truck zipped past, country music twanging from the open windows. No one seemed to take any notice of two people limping across the empty parking lot.
Cursing her choice of parking spot, she helped Ophir limp across the vast stretch of pavement to the convertible. The top was up, and she frowned, not remembering Ophir putting it up. But she’d been so frightened, he could have walked on his hands into the bank and she might not have noticed such a detail. As they neared the car, the soft top accordioned back, exposing the interior.
Elim sat in the driver’s seat.
Tanika let out a half scream, and Ophir nearly fell at the sudden loss of her support. He forced his bleary eyes to focus, catching himself with one hand on the top edge of the convertible’s windshield. Tanika was repeating, “No, no, no…”
Elim grinned at him from behind the steering wheel, his perfect white teeth as menacing as fangs. His face had lost its craggy lines, and the subtle fire in the depths of his eyes glowed with djinn health. “Where are we going next?”
Ophir somehow found the strength to straighten, glaring down at the djinn. “How the hell are you here?” He’d felt no flow of magic from the portal between the time it had emerged from the box until the crucible rendered it useless. “This shouldn’t be possible.”
“My dear mistress’s stubbornness taught me a few things.” Elim leered at Tanika. “One of which being that I no longer need a portal to move between realms.”
Still reeling from energy depletion, Ophir tried to focus. He’d known the crucible would cost him, but he’d counted on not needing much magic immediately after finishing the job. And never considered he’d pass out completely. Poor Tanika’d dragged him out all on her own. He turned to her. “Are you okay?”
Her lips were still formed around the word “no” and her skin was ashen. “You promised he’d be trapped on the other side.”
Guilt gnawed at his chest. “He should be. I don’t understand.” His guilt turned to anger, giving him strength. He squared his shoulders and faced Elim. “How are you doing this?”
Like a racecar driver, Elim lifted himself up and swung his legs over the car’s door, keeping the vehicle between himself and Ophir. But he didn’t act afraid. Instead, he pushed his shoulders back and shook his head as if enjoying a sea breeze. “The tiniest connection to an Earth-bound djinn is enough of an anchor, it seems.”
Outrage filled Ophir. He hadn’t felt any shifting of power, but this method of travel between dimensions was new to him. “You’re using me?”
Tanika sank to her knees on the pavement.
“I wonder what my range will be?” Elim turned his back and took a few steps away from the car.
Tanika started sobbing.
Ophir stalked around the hood, his legs protesting the movement. He needed to come up with another deal, and fast. “Wait. I have questions.”
Elim paused and looked over his shoulder, a slight smile on his lips. “What do you offer for answers?”
Dammit, he wasn’t ready for this. Not mentally or physically. If he only had something—anything—to use as leverage. Stopping his advance, he stared intently at the djinn. “Do you have access to full power?”
Laughing, Elim faced away and resumed walking. “The wish has released me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I believe the police have arrived, and I don’t want to be caught up in your mess. I have quite a few lost years to make up for.”
Elim winked out of existence as flashing lights appeared at the end of the street, headed in the bank’s direction.
Ophir wobbled back toward Tanika and pulled her toward the car. His glamour would make police look the other way—a useful spell for driving, and doubly useful now. He expended a tiny fragment of energy to strengthen the magic, fighting the nausea that swept in as a result. Was his extraordinary weakness from more than just creating the crucible? He’d have to think on that, but later. He shoved Tanika into the passenger side door just as a police car squealed to a halt at the bank’s front steps. The rumpled guard greeted the officers at the glass door.
Ophir sagged in the driver’s seat, Tanika equally wilted in the passenger seat. He closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the headrest. “That went horribly wrong. I’m so sorry, Tanika.”
Her shaking breath suddenly huffed to anger, and she began beating his shoulder with her fists. “You said he wouldn’t be able to come back!”
“I had no way of knowing.” His heart broke as he realized how badly he’d betrayed her. How much he’d underestimated Elim’s power. He grabbed her fists, self-recriminations making him feel like he weighed a thousand pounds. Love had made him impulsive. Reckless. He should’ve thought his plan through better. After essentially losing his portal, Elim had used Tanika’s unfulfilled wish to access Earth, so it should be no surprise he could find yet another thread to follow. A thread Ophir provided. Ophir swallowed, an idea forming. A horrific idea, but one that should work, using the only leverage Elim had provided.
He hugged Tanika’s balled fists against his heart. “I believe we can still banish Elim from this world.”
She stared at him, her breasts heaving, tears coating her cheeks. “How?”
He pressed his lips together, hesitant to speak the solution aloud. A solution that would finally grant hi
m his eight-hundred-year-old wish. The wish he no longer wanted. “If I go back, he no longer has a channel.”
Her mouth fell open. “You can’t! You said you’d stay with me forever!”
“I know.” He stared sightlessly out the windshield. Every molecule in his body ached at the thought of leaving her. “But we can’t allow him to stay.”
In the rearview mirror, he spotted a police officer squinting the convertible’s direction. Dammit, their suspicion was too strong. Even the glamour could only hold up against certain levels of attention. Elim was probably watching from some nearby tree and laughing. Grinding his teeth, Ophir started the engine, slammed the car into drive, and peeled out, tearing up an edge of the grass between the sidewalk and street. As soon as he was several blocks away, he slowed again and pulled into an empty driveway.
Turning to him with knit brows, Tanika said, “I see a major problem. Didn’t you say you needed a portal? You can’t go back without one.”
He’d considered this when he first decided on this course. “The weakness I experienced is due to more than merely creating the crucible. I think it’s because of Elim. He used me as an anchor between Earth and our realm. I should be able to trace the path back to the source. Back to… home.” The word felt like poison on his tongue.
Still barefoot, Tanika jumped out of the car and started walking. He climbed out after her and jogged to catch up. “Where are you going?”
“I don’t know. I just want it all to go away.”
He stopped, letting her pull ahead. “I promised you I’d free Earth of his presence. And I mean to do it.”
Her steps faltered and her shoulders slumped. “It’s not fair. I only just found you.”
In three strides he was next to her, his heart in full agreement. Yet he couldn’t stay here with her, not with a potentially vengeful djinn stalking her. The only way to protect both her and the rest of humanity was to go back. “I have to do this. He’s a danger to you and every other person he meets.”