Wyvern's Lair (Desert Cursed Series Book 5)

by Shannon Mayer

  He gave a quick nod. “Davin. He’s been ruling the Jinn for centuries. We keep trying to fight him, by killing off our leader with the strongest males we have so that we have the best chance at bringing him to heel, and it’s never enough.” He bowed his head. “Never enough until you.”

  “How do I save Maks?” I touched a hand to his face. “He said you knew a way.”

  Marsum’s jaw flexed. “I told him that to keep him helping me. We’ve never held Davin off this long before when a transition happened between souls and bodies. It’s Maks’s love for you that is strengthening us. The only way to stop Davin now is to kill him.”

  “How? Then she’ll be the leader of the Jinn, and he’ll be in her body, idiot!” Lila snapped. “That is not going to happen.”

  He brushed his hand over my cheek and then he pulled me into a careful hug, holding me close to his chest, his words rumbling through my ear as if by whispering. “Trickery, that is all I can tell you. The answer lies in trickery.”

  My throat squeezed in on itself. Trickery was not much to go on. “How long before he’s back?”

  Those arms tightened further and I knew the answer, he didn’t have to tell me.

  “Oh, little Zam, thank you for these.” He plucked the three gemstones he could see out of my hands with ease. I let him. I let him take them. Lila scrambled, hissing, her wings outstretched as she snaked her neck around, snapping her teeth at him.

  “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. What a shithead. I’m going to puke acid all over his stupid face,” Lila snarled, her words gurgling with said acid.

  “No. Don’t.” I grabbed her before she could do just that.

  I pushed away from him as he stood, his hands full of the stones.

  My fingers brushed against the handle of the flail, my heart breaking with what I knew I had to do.

  It was time.

  24

  Davin strode out of the small stone merchant’s stall into the street. “And the power is mine, and my name is Death.” The starlight above gave a nice glow to the Blackened Market and highlighted his figure as he did a slow circle in the middle of the main street. Strutting.

  Death. I had to embrace death.

  “Lila, we need to take him down the road, away from this place, make him think he’s chasing us,” I whispered, wincing as I slowly pulled the flail, my heart breaking, the pain in my body barely competing with the pain in my heart. For the moment, he was basking in having the stones, and had forgotten me. But that wouldn’t last.

  “Oh no.” She whimpered the words and then flew from my hand. I didn’t tell her what I hoped to do. Didn’t tell her that maybe there was a chance, that Marsum’s words had given me one last drop of hope to drink in.

  Lila shot around Davin’s head, only it wasn’t just Davin any longer that we would face.

  Maggi strode down the center of the lane of the market, all but glowing in the dark, her gauzy skirts flaring around her. “What did I say, my love? That one day you’d come back to me.” She smiled and he threw her the sapphire stone.

  A traitor in the midst . . . and I’d been looking at her the whole time like an idiot thinking she was helping me. Even when she’d proven herself back at the Wyvern’s Lair, demanding the stone, I’d still believed she was on my side. As long as I kept the stone from her. And now she had it once more.

  “Well, you did say that.” He grinned at her, took her by the hand and pulled her against him for a kiss. I could have stood there, stunned into not moving, but I had no time. I had to change my plan and fast. There were moments to let your jaw hang slack, and this was not one of them.

  I shifted to four legs, the transformation forcing my body to heal my broken ribs in that split second, to push through the pain as my bones locked back together, and then I was racing across the road, drawing them down the street.

  “We still need her!” Davin yelled.

  At least that much could stay the same.

  A blast of power erupted in the ground beside me, ice blue and frozen through. “I’ll kill you now, cat!” Maggi screeched. “You took my stone, you took my magic, and Merlin forced me to help you!”

  Just like that, the Ice Witch was back to how she’d been when I’d first met her.

  I didn’t look back, just kept on weaving down the road, drawing them closer to the shifter section of the market.

  I dove through the bars on the first cage I came to, crouching in the shadows. A large presence behind me made me flatten myself farther. The smell of lion was everywhere, familiar, and while I wasn’t afraid, I wasn’t exactly comfortable. “You keep your distance,” I growled.

  A nose lowered and brushed against my side. “You sure about that?”

  I whipped around and his scent slapped me in the face. “Bryce?”

  “You shouldn’t have agreed to give him the flail. I was here all along. This is where he stuck me. In a cage. I couldn’t shift, he blocked my scent, and I couldn’t say anything, but we could have figured it out.” His golden eyes glittered in the dark and I wanted nothing more than to grab him and hold him, to allow myself to believe he was really there. I crouched as Davin and Maggi strode by, talking, laughing, holding the stones.

  There were too many questions for Bryce and literally zero time to answer them. “Wait for me here.” I butted my head against his nose and slid out of the cage, creeping along the street behind the two I needed to deal with.

  “What choice do I have?” he grumbled and I smiled. There was my grumpy-as-shit brother. And to think I’d missed him.

  A glance up into the sky showed me Lila flying high, way high up, watching. Waiting.

  I scooted forward, knowing that I would have only one shot at this if I were lucky. And if I weren’t lucky, I’d be dead in a few minutes. Maggi and Davin would hold three of Ishtar’s stones and goddess only knew what that would lead to.

  And why hadn’t he taken the emerald? That worried me almost as much as him taking the others.

  Running low with my belly to the ground, the pads of my feet were silent on the cobblestones as I closed the distance between us. Muscles bunching, I leapt into the air, shifting, pulling the flail and swinging it all in that one smooth motion.

  Please, please, please, please, please, please.

  The mantra whispered through me. Please let this work. The flail slammed into Maggi’s back and head, the twin balls striking at the same time. She screamed and I held on tightly, dragging her backward with me, using her body for a shield as Davin spun.

  “Help me!” she wailed to him, one hand outstretched.

  “No.” He shrugged. “I would rather have the stone, and she is hurrying that along for me.”

  Maggi slumped. “Fooled again. Damn you. Damn me.”

  The flail’s handle was warm and tacky under my hand, and it pulsed as it drew her life and her magic from her in loud sucking gulps.

  “I thought he loved me,” she whispered. “He told me while you slept that we would be together finally if I helped him.”

  The looks she’d shot at him made sense now. “He fooled us both. Davin fooled us both,” I said.

  The flail dug in harder and her knees buckled. I held her up, keeping her in front of me. Maggi gripped my hand. “I should have died when I gave you the cuffs. I selfishly let you take me along for one last breath of life.” She shoved the sapphire into my hand. I took it, tucked it under my shirt into the pouch at my waist. One down.

  With a wickedly rapid pace her body shrunk, skin and muscle disappearing until she was nothing but bones and a long shank of hair. Bony fingers touched the necklace with my father’s ring on it. “Lila.”

  “She is done.” Davin flicked a hand at Maggi’s shrunken body, flinging it away from me, my fingers tangling in the chain that held the ring. It snapped as she was torn away and I barely managed to catch what was left of it and the ring.

  I still held the flail and it shivered in my other hand. “Not yet,” I whispered
.

  “Talking to my weapon?” He grinned. “That flail is mine. I created it. And it will not fight me.”

  I’d heard that line before. It had been him at the Oasis, both times. Not Marsum.

  The handle shivered again, and I gripped it a little harder. “Really? Maybe it knows which one of us would never throw it aside.”

  I tried not to think about the fact that I’d literally just traded it away, but that was different. I hoped.

  He stepped toward me and I stepped back. A lion roared from one of the cages—Bryce. Damn it, I should have trusted my instincts before. I should have listened. I should have seen him for who he was.

  “It’s a weapon,” Davin said. “That is all it is.”

  “No, it’s not.” I spun as he threw a billowing mass of magic at me. I swept the flail out and slammed it through the black cloud. It sucked down the magic so fast, there was a moment I wasn’t sure it had ever been there.

  “Impossible,” Davin snarled, his eyes narrowing.

  “What do you think it will do to you when I slam it into you?” I began to circle him, an idea forming quickly. Trickery, this was all about trickery. “Will it drain you like it did Maggi down to nothing but skin and bones?”

  “That weapon will never harm me. And I doubt you have it in you to kill the man you love.” He smirked at me.

  “The flail just sucked your magic down like it was starving.” I smiled, feeling the predatory pulse in my veins. “The flail is mine now. I am Jinn, too, or did you forget that?” I let my eyes dart to look over his shoulder then back to his face.

  He held out the white stone. “Perhaps I should show you what I am capable of?”

  “Now!” I yelled, and he spun as if there would be someone behind him.

  Only there was no one there.

  Trickery it was.

  I bolted forward, swinging the flail to the side. He whipped back to me, fast with Maks’s muscles and training, a snarl on his face.

  He grabbed me by my free arm, and kicked me in the belly, stopping me in my tracks. The wind went out of me in a whoosh.

  “You think you can outmaneuver me?”

  A fist connected with my face and I went down, blood filling my mouth. I clung to the flail, knowing it was my only hope. Tears leaked out of my eyes, pooling with the blood. Another fist, another and another.

  My vision blurred and Davin laughed. “Tears? Tears are for children. You would be better off begging on your knees than crying in the dirt.”

  Another blow to my middle and then the heel of his boot ground into my hand that held the flail. “Let it go.”

  He was afraid of me holding it.

  “No.” The word gurgled out of me. He would have to kill me to take it from me.

  The handle warmed under my palm and I gripped it harder.

  “Then you die.”

  I turned my face so I could look him in the eye, hating what I was going to do. I lurched upward and hugged him to me. Embracing him. Embracing death. “Love is strong enough. It always has been, it always will be. I trust it and the men who love me with my life.”

  His face twisted and he roared as his magic swirled around him. “Bitch! They can’t take me!”

  Distantly, I wondered where Lila was. Had he caught her, and I’d not seen? But I had no chance to look for her.

  He threw me to the side and I hit the ground hard, wind knocked out of me.

  I pulled myself to my hands and knees, still gripping the flail. “Maks is strong enough. He did what he did to save me. He took Marsum’s head to save me and Marsum let him because he believed in his son. He believed love was strong enough.” Blood dribbled down my chin as I lifted my head, surety flowing through me. “They are strong enough.” They had to be. Just for a moment.

  Long enough for me to do what I had to do even if it cracked my heart wide open.

  He stumbled backward, and I struggled to stand. My vision blurred and my body ached all over from his fists and boots. Rather telling that he would beat my body hand to hand than to face off with magic.

  “You can drain his magic,” I whispered and the flail shivered, “and his life without me holding onto you, so I won’t be his next vessel.” Another shiver against the palm of my hand. Unsteady as I was, I stood as Davin flailed backward, screaming into the night.

  People were stepping out of their merchant stalls, watching the drama unfold. I didn’t care if there was an audience for this. If they wanted to fight me afterward, I would fight them all.

  Another roar from Bryce, unintelligible other than a broad warning of danger. No shit.

  Davin flailed, went down to one knee and stayed there, panting. “They are not strong enough.”

  With my free hand, I touched his face, tipping it up so I could look into those blue eyes one last time. The path to this moment stretched out in front of me. My need for Maks, leaving Ford behind, taking Maggi and Marsum with me, and even farther back than that to my family’s crest being etched into the flail, so that I took it when I’d found it all those months ago. Maybe this had been coming far longer than even I realized.

  “I wish there was another way,” I said, my voice breaking with the pain in my heart. “I wish there was another way to save you.”

  He blinked once and a smile ghosted over his lips. “You were right. Love is strong enough, Zam. Do what you must.” He held out his hands, palms up and I lowered the flail to them. The spikes dug into the flesh and he grimaced. I held the handle for a moment.

  “I wish it could just take the Jinn masters and their power, not you,” I whispered.

  The flail flung itself out of my hand, ripping the flesh as it hadn’t for a long time. A glow lit up around the spiked balls as it began to suck his life away.

  Those blue eyes, those pretty blue eyes never looked away from me. “Always, Zam, I will always be near you. No matter how far you go, no matter that you think you’re alone, I will be there.”

  My vision wobbled along with my lower lip as I struggled to keep it together. “Maks. It isn’t fair. It just isn’t.”

  “I know.” He smiled and a tear slid from one eye. “But we had a little time. More than some get.”

  “I don’t care.”

  He mouthed three words to me. Use the flail.

  But I was using the flail. Marsum . . . trickery . . . Jinn magic . . . flail that absorbs magic . . . a spell to hold the Jinn masters in one body, that was magic, wasn’t it? The answer was there. I’d just not seen it. He gave me a slow wink, seeing me understand, and a sad smile. “Tell Maks I always knew he had it in him. He was always the best of us.”

  I reached for the flail’s handle, took hold of it. A rush of power slid through me, healing my wounds, drawing from him and feeding into me. One last shot, one last chance to save Maks. “Only the Jinn masters, flail. Only them and their spell. Leave me Maks.”

  The weapon tried to pull itself away from me again, but I was ready for it this time. “No! I am your master now, and you will do as I say!”

  The words left me in a yell that echoed through the night, and in my peripheral vision, I saw the people watching cringe away. “I brought you out of darkness,” I said, “and I can leave you there again. Only the Jinn masters, only their energy and their spell!”

  Goddess, would this work? Had I literally held the answer in my hands the whole time?

  Those twin spiked balls dug harder into him and I tugged on the handle as if I would pull it away. There was a slow pulse . . . and then Maks threw his head back and screamed, his body shaking as the magic flew out of him in a black billowing mist that swept around us, faster and faster before it shot straight into the flail with a boom like thunder.

  People screamed, echoing him, doors slammed, and I stood in the center of it, seeing the Jinn masters as they were drawn out and eaten by their own creation.

  One by one, they slid into the weapon. Not as many masters as I would have thought. Only five. The first three gave me a salute as they dis
appeared.

  The next was Davin.

  He raged and fought, scrabbling against the weapon. “We are not done, you and I.” His voice no longer constrained by Maks’s body was harder and full of so much condescension, I was shocked I’d not heard it before.

  “Yeah, we are.” I softened my grip on the flail’s handle. “Never again, Davin.”

  With a final grimace, he slid away, absorbed by the magic in the flail.

  And then there was one master left.

  Marsum. He stood there ghostly in form as he began his inevitable slide toward the weapon.

  “I knew if he found love that we would have a chance.” Marsum smiled and I realized that Maks had his smile. I’d just never seen the connection before.

  “You sent him away, all those months ago? Sent him to find me, or someone like me.”

  “In a moment of lucidity, when Davin didn’t have control, I did. I saw the Oracle many years before, and she said that love was the answer to bringing the Jinn back to what they once were. I am sorry for your losses, Zam.”

  My eyes welled with tears. “You threw me into the water at the Oasis.”

  He bowed his head toward me. “So Davin wouldn’t kill you. I knew your mother.” His jaw flicked. “And in another life before I was a master, I loved her fiercely, even if she did not return that love.”

  My jaw dropped open. Holy shit.

  “But it was not to be, and I knew it.” He smiled again. “I saw her in you, and something more. Something stronger than even she’d been.” He reached out with a ghostly hand and brushed it against my cheek. “For the sorrow we brought you, I am sorry. For the freedom you have given the Jinn from this spell, I am not. I will watch over you two, my son and my son’s mate.”

  Just like that, he slid away into the flail, gone forever.

  I yanked the flail away from Maks’s hands and went to my knees beside him. “Maks?”

  Carefully, so very carefully I cupped his face, tipping it to mine so I could see his eyes. He was alive, but not saying anything as he wobbled there, his body seemingly unhinged from anything holding him steady.