Jinx was lost for words. What exactly had she wrought on her family? Snarling chupacabras and their noxious odor were everywhere, and her son–the son she only just found out existed–was now in mortal peril. The evil naga wanted Lucian, and she was about to be enslaved once, again.
Her head throbbed as she willed herself frantically to think of something, anything that could free them. Her mind was as blank as a sheet of paper. There was no chance now of letting Lucian wish her free. She had to watch over her son and protect him, however she could. She cast a look at Lucian. His red eyes were inscrutable.
“Come with me now, Lucian,” the Pater Rex said. The chupacabras parted to make way for him. “Let’s leave this mess.”
“I won’t leave her,” Lucian growled, baring his teeth. The gnome had the sense to shrink back but scowled as he did.
“Lucian, come now,” the gnome said, his face twisting convulsively.
“Tell me what she wants,” Lucian growled.
“Your sssoul,” Devika hissed, a smile curling her pretty lips. “When my sssoul was melded with my husssband, I gained sssuch power. Imagine what powersss I would possesss if I melded with you.”
She opened her mouth to display her blackened mouth. Jinx cringed.
“You don’t have a Nephilim powerful enough to do that,” Lucian snarled at her, refusing to flinch.
“Don’t we?” Devika smiled benignly. “Thingsss have changed sssince you went into your punissshment.”
Lucian didn’t doubt it. He took another glance at the Pater Rex, who convulsed and ticked like a madman.
“Jinx, you have to go,” Lucian murmured. He gripped her hand.
Jinx looked up, confused. “Why? How will that make anything better?”
“It won’t,” he whispered and took a sharp glance at Hakim in the bomoh’s arms. “You have to watch out for your son and kill the bomoh when you have the chance.”
“I heard that,” the bomoh replied and resumed kneading Hakim’s arms.
Lucian ignored him. “Don’t worry about me. I’m not going to take that last wish, no matter what they do.”
“If you die, Lucian, things won’t be good for me, anyway. I’ll be in limbo without a master,” Jinx said.
“You’ll still have a son,” Lucian muttered and gripped her chin with his massive, black-clawed hand. “I don’t intend on dying. I promise.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “What can we do?”
“Nothing.” He stared at her. “Yasmina, we can’t do anything, now. We will have to ride fate and hope that we arrive at a good destination. There is nothing we can do right now.”
* * * *
Jinx felt sick. She felt the truth in her bones. To just go? To separate from him? It didn’t sound like a good plan. Together, they were stronger; apart, they’d be lost. She squeezed his big, warm, comforting hand. She didn’t want him to let her go.
She was cursed in so many more ways than one.
“Lucian, tell your genie to release her spell, now. We are leaving,” the Pater Rex rumbled as Devika swished her tail.
“Yes, and make sure he takes that last wish, Pater. I want my genie, and your giant demon is impeding my progress,” the bomoh said.
“You have my word, Missster Bomoh,” Devika purred. “Husssband, ssshall we go?”
Lucian dipped his head and pressed his lips to Jinx’s. His heat and strength fueled her. He was giving her what power he could, and she was grateful.
“I love you,” she whispered. Lucian growled and squeezed her tighter to his chest.
He muttered something guttural and thick in a foreign language. She didn’t know what he’d said but she understood the sentiment. His eyes glittered red and alien but pained with grief. “Drop the spell, and let me go,” he whispered.
Jinx bit her lip, barely able to suppress a groan of reciprocal grief.
It was like tearing off a layer of skin. Jinx painfully tore her protective spell from him, peeling it back like hot wax. The moment the last tendril of her magic left Lucian, the Pater Rex let loose a powerful smack. She careened back onto the couch.
“Lucian,” she cried and frantically muttered a resumption of the spell. It was too late. In the crackling of sweet magic, Lucian was gone.
“Oh no!” Jinx felt the weight of defeat crush her slight shoulders. She staggered underneath its weight. She may never see Lucian again, never feel the safety of his arms or the heat of his lips. “Lucian…” she whispered.
“Shall we take our leave, then?” The bomoh grinned, his broad mouth making him look more like a distorted toad than ever before.
Jinx struggled to straighten her weighted shoulders and glared at him. She knew her parents were still covered by some kind of spell, unable to move and frozen in horror.
Guilt swamped her. Lord, what had she done by bringing them to her family?
She turned to face them.
“I’m so sorry. I only wanted to say goodbye,” she whispered, hoping they heard.
“Shall we go, Miss Jinx?” the bomoh asked pleasantly, his hands still hot on her son.
“Yes,” Jinx croaked, her gaze riveted to the evil little pelesit still contaminating Hakim’s shoulder. Hakim’s dark eyes were angry and accusing. Jinx didn’t blame him one bit.
“Mother, Father. I’m sorry I came back,” she whispered. “I…I…thought…”
Her mother mouthed something wordlessly. Then, the world began spinning as the bomoh used his magic to whisk them away.
* * * *
Jinx didn’t need to open her eyes to know where she was. The hum of the markets above was audible in the subterranean room. She opened her eyes. The bomoh had deposited Hakim on a chair to her left. Clearly unused to magical travel, he was unconscious.
“What are you going to do?” Jinx asked nervously as the bomoh stalked toward his bookcase. She noticed her lamp sitting there, innocuously shimmering in the light.
“Nothing. We shall give the Pater Rex and his…err…wife some time, I think. I’m sure they have some plan to get Lucian to take that last wish.” He turned and looked at Jinx. She suddenly felt naked under his roving gaze.
The bomoh gathered the hem of his shroud with his fat hand and mopped a sweaty rivulet from his neck. “First things first. I do believe I said I’d make you pay for destroying my collection of djinn, didn’t I? So, the question is what shall we do in the interim?”
* * * *
Lucian felt her exhalation of horror as if she’d done it in his ear.
“Jinx,” he roared as his feet finally found solid ground. “Jinx!” His eyes flew open and registered an all-too-familiar scene. He was in the transparent box, once again hanging over the frozen streets of Mortlake, London. This time, there were no Hellcats to help him and no wandering genie.
“So,” the Pater Rex grumbled. Lucian glanced down. Suddenly, there was a sharp jerking on his wrists. He was pulled forcefully into the air, the muscles in his arms screaming as he was hauled and strung up like a ham―just as he was when Jinx first found him. “You now know my wife’s plan.” Lucian noticed that the Pater Rex’s face was pale and drawn, as if the effort of moving them and the chupacabras across continents had worn him out more than it ever had done before.
“What happened to you?” Lucian said, shaking a strand of hair from his eyes.
“You know what happened,” the Pater Rex snapped.
“How did Devika get so strong? How is it that she is more powerful than you?”
“Not more powerful,” the Pater Rex convulsed. “No one is more powerful than I!”
“That might once have been true, but Devika’s oozing magic. How did she gain such control over you?”
The Pater Rex scowled at him and slammed his lips so tightly, the shorter bristles around his li
ps stood up.
“Lovely, Lucian, I became stronger sssince I was able to take away hisss ability to make anti-venom,” Devika hissed from behind.
The Pater Rex jerked in surprise, as if he forgot his wife was there. His bright, hazel eyes twitched beneath reddened lids. Whatever ailed him was getting worse.
“Husssband, if you would be ssso kind.” Devika swished closer, her metallic stench wafting around her. “Before we get down to busssiness, I think you ssshould force Lucian into taking that lassst wisssh. The lassst thing I want isss the genie arriving in the midssst of proceedingsss.”
The Pater Rex nodded grimly. Lucian braced himself and watched as the Pater Rex rolled up the cuffs of his sleeves. The gesture was more symbolic than practical. As he rolled up his left cuff, something caught Lucian’s eye. Two large, putrefying puncture wounds marred the soft flesh of his wrist. Sick, black tracks crept from the wounds to follow the delicate lines of his veins. Devika had bitten him! The Pater Rex caught his eye and glared. Devika grinned with a sibilant hiss and magically disappeared, leaving nothing but her smell behind.
“What happened to Tabor, the old Nephilim?” Lucian asked, trying to distract the Pater Rex from whatever magical torture he was planning. His skin prickled as if an army of ants decided to march over him.
The Pater Rex looked up, frowning thunderously. His usually red cheeks paled. “Our old Nephilim is dead,” he replied.
Lucian felt a sick tugging in his gut. “How?”
“That night, when Omar and Antigone escaped, extracting Devika’s soul from my body was too much for him. After he succeeded, his body gave up and died. That was a shame.” He looked away and took a deep breath. “He was a good member of our Family.”
“You still use that word?” Lucian growled. “After what has happened? After your wife has treated you so…poorly?”
The Pater Rex mouthed wordlessly as he danced his hand over the septic puncture wounds.
“She’s bitten you and doesn’t care,” Lucian goaded.
“She cares. She simply has plans grander than mine. It took some persuasion to get me to see her reasoning.” His words drifted into silence, and his body convulsed, again.
“What are her grand plans?” Lucian asked. He winced as he heard something pop in his shoulder.
“What is it to you?” the Pater Rex snarled. “You’ll be a whimpering mess when she’s finished with you.”
“Like you are?” Lucian knew he shouldn’t goad the demented little man but old habits sometimes were hard to break.
“Silence, boy,” the Pater Rex bellowed “You heard Devika. I suggest you take that last wish.”
“No.” Lucian swung limply from his bonds, the muscles in his arms screaming.
“You don’t have a choice,” the Pater Rex said.
For one of those long, ticking seconds, nothing happened. Then, with the sound of a small tornado and a malevolent glint in his eye, the Pater Rex launched his assault.
A pain so fierce and sharp it was almost sweet seared across Lucian’s thighs. The scent of burning cloth and skin perfumed the air. Swallowing his scream, Lucian snarled and gritted his teeth with the effort.
“Take the wish,” the Pater Rex growled again then paused.
“A little cut won’t make me betray her to that bomoh. I can’t put her in any greater danger.” Lucian gasped, trying to ignore the dripping of his blood as it fell to hit the transparent ground beneath him.
“I admire your sentiment and once would have shared your view. I think you’ll discover, however, that the only thing more dangerous than an angry gnome is his angry naga wife.”
Lucian heard the crack of the Pater Rex’s magic before he felt it. Raw pain screamed through his body. His face was on fire, burning. Heat licked him with hundreds of hot evil tongues. This time, he couldn’t suppress a roar.
“Just take the damned wish,” the Pater Rex bellowed. Lucian paid no heed.
He was completely on fire. His hair was burning, and blackness loomed in front of him like a soothing cushion. He wasn’t dying, he knew that, but he was going to lose consciousness, soon. By the gods, he’d be grateful when he did.
“Call her,” the Pater Rex boomed again, his voice echoing through the small box. “Call her, and I will end your pain, and Devika will give me the anti-venom.”
Call her?
Lucian writhed in pain. He couldn’t smother the flames consuming him. The Pater Rex’s magic fire surrounded him, torturing, burning, and destroying as it crawled over him. The pain created waves of nausea as stars flickered behind his burning eyelids. The Pater Rex wouldn’t kill him, surely, not when Devika so desperately wanted him?
He moaned and opened his frying eyeballs. He could dimly make out the Pater Rex’s furious little face. He was ticking and convulsing crazily, his eyes glazed and wild.
“Call her,” he shrieked, his little body trembling with hysteria. Through the haze of the fire, Lucian saw a bolt of magic fly. He squeezed his burning eyes shut before it hit.
A new agony exploded throughout his body. He fell for a second but found himself swinging limply by one arm. There was a sickening thud on the floor of the cell and a sound like pattering rain.
“Agh,” Lucian screamed. He realized the pattering was blood spraying from his severed arm.
“Say her name. Make that wish. Goddamn it, boy. Don’t make me kill you!”
Vomit bubbled in Lucian’s throat. He’d be damned if he’d cry out her name. His body was pain personified as the black cushion of unconsciousness loomed closer still. He reached for it, his heart hammering in the tortured confines of his chest. In his mind’s eye, he searched for her and cradled the part of her soul she so lovingly gave. If he were to die, he’d die remembering her.
* * * *
Jinx felt Lucian’s life force slipping away like water through parted fingers. Her master was leaving her. She felt his pain and his desperate need for release. She was terrified for him. She had to get to him.
Blood dribbled from her mouth. She bit her tongue in the beating she willingly received. The bomoh hadn’t hurt Hakim, yet; she would do anything to make sure he didn’t.
“You bastard. Let Hakim go.” He was the only thing keeping her here, and she had to get him free. The boy was awake now, and his dark eyes were wild, accusing, and fearful.
“Must we rehash this conversation every five minutes?” The bomoh sighed and rolled a rubbery knuckle down Hakim’s jaw. The boy flinched away as the bomoh chortled wetly.
From some deep part inside her, Jinx could sense Lucian’s weakness increasing. His desire to fight was leaving. Damn him.
Jinx wasn’t a particularly powerful genie and knowing this made her feel wretched. “Hakim,” she said softly, noticing the fat ear of the bomoh twitch with the effort to hear.
He didn’t bother to respond but stared mutely down at his feet.
“Do you know the motus spell?” she asked.
“It doesn’t matter whether he knows it or not,” the bomoh said. “He can’t leave here, and even if he managed it, my pelesit will find him. No, your gorgeous boy will be mine, just as you shall.” He grinned. “It’s so nice to keep it all in the family, isn’t it?” He laughed.
Jinx thrust her hands into her pocket dejectedly. The bomoh was right; whether Hakim knew enough magic to summon the motus spell was irrelevant. He was bitten by the pelesit. The bomoh would always find him.
There was only way they could be free of the bomoh.
She was going to have to kill him.
There was no other way.
Could she do it?
She stared at the bomoh. Sweat sluiced down his cheeks despite the subterranean room being remarkably cool. The orange shroud was wrapped tightly around him, baring his face, hands, and little else. A random ima
ge of Jabba the Hutt in Return of the Jedi flashed through her mind. Tim had made her watch it endlessly, even making her conjure a golden bikini complete with chain on one occasion.
Chewing this thought like an unsatisfying piece of gristle, Jinx plunged her fingers into her pockets. It was then she felt something deep in the recess of her left pocket–something she’d almost forgotten about.
It was her crucifix and broken chain.
Would it work?
“You’re looking rather intently at me, my dear…” the bomoh said and walked closer toward her. The scent of his magic was sweet and cloying.
She had an idea, but the logistics of its execution would be difficult.
Jinx fondled the chain. It was warm and thick but not injuriously so. She chewed her lip. She had to get Hakim out of here before she attempted her plan. He was still a child and didn’t need to see her fail, or perhaps even worse, succeed in the murder she planned.
Gripping the chain and withdrawing it discretely, she stared at the bomoh, “How could I not look at you intently? You’re the ugliest creature that has ever disgraced this Earth.” She dug deep within the well of strength Lucian gave her.
“I’ve had enough of your rudeness and demands. How dare you!” The bomoh snarled to reveal his hideous teeth.
Jinx’s heart started to hammer. She felt the bomoh’s magic building. She threw a quick glance at Hakim, whose eyes had widened in horror.
“I dare you, you fat, hideous toad,” Jinx growled.
The bomoh raised a hand to either strike her or blast her with power. Jinx didn’t care. Using all Lucian’s gifted strength, she forced her magic at Hakim. The room exploded in rainbow smoke so that for an instant all were blinded. With an enormous spasm of magic, Jinx shoved Hakim back and away, out of Kuala Lumpur and hopefully back to Perth.
Not waiting to see if her spell had been successful or to feel the swamping weakness, she lurched forward to where she hoped the bomoh stood. She pulled the long chain of her crucifix taut and jumped.
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