by Lara Adrian
She ducked into the shadows and began to run.
Now all she had to do was decide if she was confident enough to walk right into Temesis’s tower, through his defenses and guards, thus giving him warning that she’d arrived. Or if it was worth using the last of her money—her father had better appreciate this; every time she thought of that vihuela, her chest hurt—to bribe a gang of Cracktown down-and-outers to create a distraction while she scaled the smooth glass edifice the wizard called home.
***
Chapter 6
by Lara Adrian
Munira hurried through the nighttime shadows of Port Nightfall, the backpack containing the Light of Ta’lab slung over her aching shoulders, her stomach pitching a serious revolt. Behind her in the darkness, she could still hear Soledad’s menagerie of undead pets clambering after her in the distance. The crab-beasts, crocodile-dogs, and snake-things were bad enough, but it was the zombie moans of Tariq and his reanimated pals that made her ifrit blood run cold as ice in her veins.
She didn’t know what was keeping Soledad’s undead minions so hot on her heels. Could be the blood trail she was leaking from her stomach wound, or the fact that she had actually managed to escape El Sótano with the necromancer’s precious Light? Hell, maybe it was her stench. The putrid sewers of Below and the corpse-water filth of the tunnel she’d had to navigate to find Pier 12 had steeped her in a disgusting stew of foulness.
Any chances she might have had to use the element of surprise on Temesis were pretty much nullified based just on the stink of her. She couldn’t sneak into a room full of month-old roadkill unnoticed, let alone attempt to catch the shrewd wizard unaware. It was that sober reality that finally made her mind up on whether she should chance a trip to Cracktown for some outside assistance, or just suck it up and waltz right into Temesis’s lair on her own.
Still, as she approached the tall glass high-rise, illuminated like a glittering column of crystal and diamonds against Port Nightfall’s evening sky, she had a moment of doubt. A small, bitter voice reminded her that her father’s problems hadn’t been hers to clean up for a long time. She didn’t owe Azhar anything, did she?
But as soon as she thought this, a wave of shame washed over her. She knew to her marrow that if she were the one in trouble right now, nothing would keep her proud djinn father from risking everything he had—including his life—to save her. The fact was, it was she who’d abandoned him. She’d walked out, turned her back on her family, the same way her mother had not long after Munira had been born.
Munira stood on the street in front of Temesis’s tower and shifted the backpack around in front of her. She unzipped it and carefully removed the octagonal, jewel-encrusted brass lantern. It didn’t seem all that remarkable on first glance. But the longer she looked, the more the dark red jewel embedded in the heart of the lamp began to glow.
Munira peered deeper into its murky, blood-hued facets. The glow inside the gem twisted and churned, glorious with color and vibrant with a magical, mesmerizing life of its own. She felt the dark light of the lantern reach out to her. It was alluring, seductive … dangerously so. The Light beckoned to a part of her she didn’t recognize, something that was burrowed deep within her, an astonishing, terrifying magic that seemed all too willing to awaken the longer she stared into the blood-red gem.
“Holy crap,” she muttered, forcing herself to break the unsettling connection.
When she looked up, she found half a dozen of Temesis’s guards storming toward her from the lobby of the high-rise. Behind her, still making their way up the shadowy street, Soledad’s undead beasties were closing in.
Munira faced the guards and walked toward the building entrance. When they reached for their guns, she held up the Light of Ta’lab for them to see.
“Let her pass” came the detached growl of Temesis’s voice seemingly from all around them.
One of the guards opened the door and Munira walked through, heading straight for the elevator that would take her to the top floor. She was accompanied by the biggest of the armed men. He sniffed in disgust as the doors closed and the car began to rise. Munira smiled and inched her olfactory rankness even closer to him, trying hard to ignore the bite of the rather large gun he’d jabbed into the side of her bruised ribs.
A moment later, the polished steel doors slid open and she found herself walking into the midst of Temesis’s palatial home. Glass walls overlooked the twinkling city below. Above her head, expansive skylights made it seem possible to reach out and touch the stars that glittered against the black night. Breathtaking sculptures and ancient artifacts—enough rare objects to fill a museum—adorned the impressive place.
And there, in the center of the spacious suite, stood the cylindrical water prison that held her father submerged and powerless inside. His eyelids lifted as though he sensed her in the room, but he seemed too weakened to even attempt to lift his head.
“Oh, my God,” Munira gasped. “Dad …”
To her left now, Temesis strolled out of another room. He was dressed in a long red tunic and ceremonial robe. “My compliments, Munira. I knew you’d succeed. And with a few hours to spare, as well.” He held out his hands. “I’ll take the Light now, if you please.”
Munira shook her head. “Let him go. That was our deal.”
He chuckled and walked across the room to a white marble pedestal lit by a ring of black candles. A polished silver dagger lay atop the obelisk, the blade gleaming on a small cushion of blood-red silk. A chill worked its way down Munira’s spine as she stared at what was quite obviously an altar meant for a magical sacrifice.
“Release my father,” she demanded, wanting to get the hell out of this place as quickly as possible.
Temesis shook his head. “You’re not in any position to make demands. And you are no match for me, little girl.”
He thought her no better than a child? Anger replaced her earlier chill. The heat of her ifrit fury started roiling inside her. She let it flow into her limbs, down to her fingertips where she clutched the Light of Ta’lab. She backed subtly toward the water prison in the center of the room, needing to give her fire a chance to regenerate from its exhaustion down at the pier. “You made a promise, Temesis. My father for the Light. We made a deal.”
The wizard sent an irritated look at his guard. “Shoot her.”
Munira heard the click of the weapon as the guard prepared to carry out his master’s command. She forced all the heat she could muster into the hammered metal of the Light, dodging the bullet that narrowly missed her head. As she ducked, she tossed the lantern at Temesis like a hot potato. He caught it, screaming in agony as his hands seared on contact.
Munira rolled low on the floor, coming up next to the cylinder that held Azhar. She smashed her hand through the magic and glass, pushing still more fire into her blow. The prison shattered. A cascade poured out, spilling her father’s limp body onto the floor.
Temesis was still roaring in pain, still determined to get his burned, smoldering hands on the Light. Munira raced for it, too, thwarted when the guard stepped directly into her path with his weapon pointed at her face. Munira sighed as if defeated, even though she was far from it. She gathered a ball of ifrit smoke from deep within her lungs and belched it out at him, spewing a cloud of hot ash into his eyes. Blinded, he screamed and fell to his knees in a blubbering heap.
She dived for the lantern, snatching it out of Temesis’s grasping reach. She held it close to her, unaffected by the magic that was still burning deep within the Light. “Try anything, and I will melt this damn thing into a puddle of solder.”
The wizard stood, glaring at her with dangerous rage. To his credit, he didn’t seem eager to test her threat. She walked over to where her father slumped, soggy but reviving.
“Azhar, get up,” she said. Still holding fast to the lantern, she reached out to give her father her other hand. “Come on, get up. I’m taking you out of here right now.”
His strong hand clamp
ed around her fingers, and she pulled him to his feet. Azhar didn’t move fast, his dark head still drooping weakly against his chest. Munira and he hadn’t taken more than a few careful steps when a strange, heavy darkness began to descend on the penthouse from above. Munira glanced up—just in time to see the huge, taloned feet of an unearthly winged beast come crashing through the glass of the skylights.
The undead griffin was hideous, its body and legs comprising mange-speckled reanimated lion parts, its feathered head and wings taken from the rotted corpse of an enormous eagle. Soledad had apparently felt the need to improvise: The eagle’s clawed feet thrust out from the breast of the griffin like short, spindly dinosaur arms. Munira shuddered at the sight, guessing the necromancer’s design had probably seemed better in concept than in its reality.
The beast shrieked a bone-raking cry as it touched down on the floor of the penthouse suite. Massive wings swept downward, revealing the long silver hair and cold, shark-like black eyes of the rider who clung to the creature’s back.
Soledad.
Munira gasped. She couldn’t help it. The mistress of El Sótano had never been seen outside her sewer-realm Below. Testament to that, her skin had the same gray pallor as many of her undead subjects. But Soledad was very much alive. Pissed off, too, if the tight line of her black lips and deep scowl were any indication.
El Sótano’s most powerful resident turned all of her ire on Temesis. “You broke our covenant, wizard.”
Defiant, he shook his head. “I never set foot in your realm. There was no breach on my part.”
“You cheated,” she charged hotly, her fury making the griffin paw the air and snap its sharp beak. “You conspired against me repeatedly, and now, with only a few hours to spare in our truce, you attempt to undermine my dominion by stealing the Light that keeps my subjects obedient to me? Already they are pouring into your city, drawn to the Light’s power.”
As Soledad spoke, Munira glanced at the lantern still clutched tight in her hands. Now she understood why the crab-beasts and zombies pursued her from the pier. All the way up in the penthouse, she could hear the screams of Temesis’s guards carrying from the lobby, the cries of the pained and dying echoing in the elevator shaft that was the only means of escape for her and her father.
Soledad’s undead mount shifted beneath her in agitation. The necromancer glanced across Temesis’s lair, to the dagger resting atop the candlelit pedestal, then to the slumped bulk of Azhar’s body, the big ifrit djinn held upright by Munira’s will and not much else. “I might have known,” Soledad snarled, a vein pulsing under the nearly translucent gray skin of her brow. “You wouldn’t be satisfied in simply stealing the Light, would you? All this time, you planned to bind its power to your own by feeding the Light the lifeblood of a djinn.”
“I’ve grown bored of ruling Port Nightfall,” Temesis replied with a belligerent shrug. “I have bigger plans. Plans that extend beyond this ridiculous little tourist-trap town.”
“You bastard!” Munira cried, unable to hold back her outrage.
Being duped was one thing, but being used as a tool meant to hammer the final nail in her kin’s own coffin was something else entirely. She summoned fire to her fingertips, ready to cook the damn lantern and say to hell with Soledad and Temesis both.
But something held her back.
It was her father’s hand, coming to rest on top of her own, the one radiating heat waves where it clutched the Light of Ta’lab. “Munira,” he murmured. “Wait …”
His voice caught Soledad’s attention. The curtain of long silver hair sifted like silk against the smooth black surface of her form-hugging leather suit. Her round shark’s eyes narrowed on Munira’s father. “You …”
In the moment of distraction, Temesis lunged at Munira in an attempt to grab the lantern. She sent him reeling back with a single touch of his face, taking perhaps more satisfaction than was healthy in the sizzle and pop of his blistering skin.
“We’re out of here,” she told her father, taking hold of his wrist. She hauled him toward the elevator. They didn’t make it very far.
The griffin stomped its nasty taloned claw down in Munira’s path. It screeched like a thousand fingernails down a chalkboard, its breath like a blast of sulfur in her face.
“Ugh!” she gasped, recoiling. She winced up at Soledad. “Can’t necromancers create anything that isn’t hideous and doesn’t reek of death and decay?”
The gray-skinned face softened only for an instant as Soledad peered down from her abomination of a mount. In that moment, she seemed more female than monster. Almost attractive, in a death-warmed-over kind of way. “I can only claim one thing of beauty in my entire life’s repertoire.”
Soledad’s gaze moved to Azhar then, and lingered on him for too long. In the silent exchange that passed between her father and the mistress of El Sótano, an unsettling realization fell over Munira. Her mind flashed back to all the times her father refused to speak of her mother. All the times he tried to reassure his sullen little girl that she was nothing like the woman who bore her.
“Oh, no,” she murmured, incredulous at the thought. “Tell me it’s not her, Dad …”
They weren’t listening, still caught in a disturbingly sweet look of regret and longing. Good Lord, Munira thought. Of all the scenarios she’d imagined over the years, never had she dreamed she might be the heir apparent to the sewer-realm of Below.
Fresh screams carried up from the floors of the high-rise beneath the penthouse. More of Temesis’s guards being attacked and killed by the unleashed horde of zombies and undead beasties.
The wizard’s face took on a panicked look now. “The Light, Munira. Give it to me! There isn’t much time. I can control its power and drive the monsters back!”
“Don’t listen to him,” Soledad countered. The shark-like glint sparkled dully in her eyes again, shrewd and merciless. “The Light belongs to me. It can belong to both of us, child. Let me have it, and I will take you Below with me to be part of my world. I will teach you everything I know.”
Munira couldn’t have cared less about the Light of Ta’lab or its seductive powers. All she wanted was to get the hell out of there with her father. Preferably before the army of beastly creatures came flooding into the room.
“You both want it so badly?” she asked, the muscles in her arms coiling with ifrit heat and strength. “Then go ahead and fight over it.”
She lofted the lantern high into the air. It sailed up, through the broken skylight. Temesis bellowed. A cloud of shimmering magic churned beneath his feet, catapulting him up into the air at the same time Soledad spurred the griffin into an upward leap.
The necromancer reached the prize first. As she grabbed the lantern, the undead griffin opened its beak and snatched the wizard around the waist. The great bird swooped away on Soledad’s command, Temesis’s howl of defeat carrying on the night wind.
“Come on.” Munira pulled her father along with her as she punched the call button on the elevator. The doors slid open and a trio of crab-beasts came clacking out of the car. Munira screamed, leaping out of their way. “So not in the mood,” she said, then shot a stream of ifrit fire at the disgusting little buggers.
As the smoke cleared, a fine white mist drifted into the penthouse. “Anyone need a lift?”
“Arielle!” Munira cried, never more happy to see her friend and business partner until that moment.
“Quite a party going on down there,” she quipped. “It was hell trying to get an elevator. And for what it’s worth? I’d avoid taking the stairs. They’re full of undead icky and it’s all heading this way.”
“Get us out of here,” Munira said, holding fast to her father as she reached out and took the sylph’s diaphanous hand.
Arielle floated them down to the street, just in time to see the last of the creepy-crawlies and zombies entering the lobby of the glass high-rise.
Munira shuddered, then turned an arch look at her friend. “I don’t know ab
out you, but I’m in the mood for barbecue.”
Arielle smiled. “You sure you’ve got it in you after all you’ve been through today?”
“Let’s find out.”
She called upon the remainder of her ifrit power, watching as Arielle sucked in air beside her. They turned it loose together. It wasn’t going to make it. But then, on Munira’s other side, Azhar joined in. He stood tall next to his daughter and threw a fireball of pure blue flame at the wizard’s lair.
The place went up in a dizzying shower of sparks. Temesis’s magic, the very spells that had protected the tower and kept him safe within it, ignited like shooting stars, sending tails of shimmering fire and ash high into the night sky. One detonation after another lit up the street—probably all of the city and the Baja Peninsula, too.
Humans paused on the darkened street to gape in awe at the stunning display. Munira heard one of the milling tourists remark, “Holy mackerel, Judy! Will you look at that? I told you Disney World’s got nothing on Port Nightfall!”
Munira and her two companions headed away from the spectacle as more tourists gathered to watch the magical explosions. While they strode toward the other end of town, Arielle tapped Munira on the shoulder. “So, would this be a bad time to tell you I’m going to be taking some time off? I kind of told my new boyfriend we could spend a couple of weeks together on a beach somewhere …”
Good old Arielle. Half undead a few hours ago, already back to her usual, flighty self. “Yeah, sure,” Munira said. “A couple of days off sounds really good to me, too, now that you mention it.”
“You’ve certainly earned it,” her father put in from beside her. “Munira, I have never been more proud, nor more grateful. I can never repay you for saving my life.”