The Night Witch: Wilde Justice, Book 6

by Stark, Jenn

  Nikki made a face. “You know I hate to ask, but…”

  “We have tried,” the djinn said, answering her question before she posed it. “There were several who made the attempt over the years, thinking that at some point, the spell would lose its potency. It did not. We were left to mourn the demise of those who sought only to improve our lot. It was…an unkind death.”

  The djinn fell silent, but Warrick spoke again.

  “And a death you will avenge.” He glanced at me. “The vengeance of the djinn is well documented and not something you should take lightly. They will turn on you without a moment’s hesitation should they feel warranted.”

  “And I’ve got to say,” Hugh cut in. I was surprised to see him nearly halfway to the throne. “After three thousand years of hanging out in this basement shithole, watching a few of my bravest friends die in a fruitless attempt to get the fuck out, I’d be feeling pretty pissed off.”

  The head djinn made no comment, but his gaze tracked Hugh as the demon continued his slow amble. He deliberately jostled a few of the djinns’ shoulders, and though they reacted with flashes of irritation and even outrage, none moved against him.

  “There’s more to this,” he said in an almost singsong voice, and Raum took up the tale.

  “He’s right,” he said, his voice so melodic that even a few of the assembled djinn looked his way in surprise and wonder. I could relate.

  “The djinn are born deceivers,” Raum continued, and now he began moving as well. “They were the original sirens of the ancient world, luring unwary humans to their demise. It’s why they had to be caught in vessels such as the chalice in order to ensure they would not deceive.”

  The head djinn scoffed. “Unlike you, who can be constrained with little more than a circle of chalk,” he said, his derision plain.

  Raum laughed, and both Nikki and Danae jolted, as well as a few more djinn. I didn’t know what the beautiful enforcer’s story was, but he was by far the most compelling demon I’d ever met. The closest I suspected to a true angel of any of them. I found myself wondering what his sin had been, the crime that had relegated him to the ranks of demons.

  As if he could read my thoughts, Raum turned to me, his sea-green eyes flashing in the darkness. Our gazes met, and my throat closed up, my heart quailed. A rush of sadness swept over me, then was gone.

  He turned back to the head djinn.

  “You struck a second deal,” he said, his words low and resonant. “You struck a deal with the djinn Qadir himself. Even as you allowed him to be taken, to betray his first master. There had to be a reason it was even possible…”

  As he spoke, he continued moving slowly through the room, and I realized Warrick was on the prowl as well. The demons were circling ever closer to Qadir’s chalice, tightening the net. It felt like an Old West shootout with everyone posturing, hands twitching, but not quite going for their guns, knowing that whoever made the first move would be held accountable. The demons certainly didn’t care about starting the fight, but they wanted to be in the best position possible before they did it. The djinn couldn’t start the fight, but they weren’t idiots. Eventually, one of the demons would get too close and implied aggression could be justified.

  I, on the other hand, simply wanted it done, but I’d spent a fair amount of my life hunting down artifacts. This one had a riddle tucked inside it, I could feel it.

  A riddle. Something about that caught at me. Some piece of information. My own fingers twitched down to my side, and I dipped my hand into my pocket again, shaking free a card. The Knight of Swords, and I sighed, tucking it back into place. No matter how this played out in the short term, we were going to be making a run for it, and soon.

  As the demons moved forward, I shifted over to Danae.

  “What do you think?” I murmured.

  She didn’t need any explanation. “I’ve never summoned a djinn before, and I’m still not sure I did here. The circle I activated above was secondary to the one I completely missed. So they are clearly well prepared. The ancient scripts that circle these walls are curses for the unwary, but they aren’t typical arcanum to ward off the ignorant. These are quite specifically stated to warn off the educated—but in such a way as to hint at the wonders we will be missing out on should we walk away.”

  I scowled. “Meaning what, exactly?”

  “Meaning that Queen Makeda has been expecting someone to spring this trap for a very long time. And she wanted to make sure they made the attempt despite the obvious dangers.”

  Raum took another step forward, then seemed to sink slightly into the solid rock. A sudden click and hiss flowed through the room, and everything erupted at once.

  “Had to happen sometime,” Hugh crowed, while Warrick bit out an annoyed curse. The pack of djinn turned as one, transforming themselves into the hellspawn beasts I was getting to know all too well. Short, thick-bodied pterodactyls, lifting up on their skinny, taloned hind legs and taking wing.

  “I hate these guys,” I muttered.

  To my surprise, Hugh turned toward Nikki and offloaded two of his throwing stars on her. “This isn’t their natural form. They’ve taken on the glamour of hellspawn because you remember those creatures, Sara—and your memory is stronger than the rest of our fears combined.”

  “Well, they sucked,” I protested, but Hugh didn’t seem to care.

  “Don’t let them touch you,” he ordered. “These are mean motherfuckers, but they can’t hurt you if you have iron.”

  I widened my eyes. Iron, of course. Raum turned to Danae, tossing similar weapons to her. “You were well chosen, Mistress of the Iron Sea,” he said. “Any spell you cast will have a potency a hundred times over. I suggest you get to it.”

  “Meanwhile…” Warrick wrapped one arm around me and hauled me up high against his chest, the move startling me.

  “You’re the one with the strength to manage what’s about to come out of that chunk of iron up there,” he announced, slashing out his free hand to keep the djinn back. “Danae can destroy the cup, but she can’t control the djinn. It’d kill her.”

  “Then go—” I started, but he was already moving, grunting with approval as he sliced through djinn after djinn.

  “Their magic is old, strong,” he shouted over the din. “The archangel was right to send so many of us. They’re not to be underestimated. The riddles of the queen are deep indeed.”

  Riddles. Once more, that word smacked into the deep processors of my brain, but there was no more time to think. We reached the throne, which now was surrounded by djinn at each of the cardinal points, the one nearest to us the head spokesman for the group.

  “You are not worthy,” he declared as Warrick set me down.

  All four djinn repeated the accusation. I took a step away from the demon enforcer as Warrick laughed in the djinn’s faces.

  “And you are failures,” he growled. “Stand back!” His hand swept up, and a moment later, a curved iron blade slashed down into the nearest djinn. As an arc of light flared wide, I burst forward and grabbed the chalice from the armrest of the throne. The weight of its magic jolted through me with such unexpected pain that I nearly dropped the damn thing.

  Sariah! The vision was like a firestorm of agony, but I saw her plain as day. Her eyes were wide, her face radiant. She stared back at me with an expression of utter satisfaction, her mouth opening to speak—

  Another knife of power stabbed through my hands, and I screamed, the sound rocketing around the room. For the barest moment, I had a vision of Nikki whirling toward me with startled eyes, Danae staring over at me, horrified—and Warrick paying me absolutely no goddamn attention at all. Instead, he redoubled his efforts in gutting the djinn surrounding us, his cry one of exaltation, not worry.

  Freaking demons.

  I wrapped my hand tighter around the chalice and crackled out of existence.

  23

  I re-formed in the Magician’s penthouse office with a strangled cough a moment late
r, thrusting out my hands. “It burns!” I gasped.

  Armaeus was there, of course he was there, and he grabbed the proffered chalice and sent it spinning off deeper into the room, then pulled me close.

  “You’re safe. Safe, Miss Wilde,” he murmured. “Always safe.”

  “Holy crap,” I managed, collapsing against him. “They seemed so—normal at first. Reasonable. But once they made the switch to hellspawn, it was a freaking zoo. I can’t believe I caused that.”

  Armaeus hugged me close, his soft laugh ruffling my hair. “Despite what the demon Hugh claims, you cannot know what was born of your memory, versus a form they may have been cursed to take on. From all accounts, Queen Makeda’s magic ran deep. She could have easily transformed the lesser djinn into hellspawn if she knew the proper spells. It was dark magic, but not inaccessible to someone with training.”

  “That’s even worse,” I groaned, remembering the attack at Pompeii. Were those djinn too? Was that magic still surviving, turning magical creatures into ravening bird bats? “Those horrible, pitiful creatures. How could they have lived so long on such a thin thread of hope? How could they have done so much without even knowing they would ever be redeemed? And should they be redeemed?”

  Armaeus leaned back from me, his dark eyes glinting with amusement. “Now you understand why the Arcana Council prefers to let mortals find their own way in this world, whether they are gifted with magic or not.”

  “But these—”

  “I know. The djinn are not mortals. They’re not exactly demons either, not in the true sense that we have come to know them. They are a kind of creature unto themselves, who dip their hands into both the mortal and immortal realm. But you have done what Ahmad sent you to do, I see. You found the vessel of the djinn Qadir and retrieved it.”

  He gestured to the chalice, now at a safe remove, caught in a sphere of smoke as it levitated in a corner of the room. “I seem to remember him telling you not to go anywhere with the chalice after you captured it, though.”

  “Ahmad can go suck an egg,” I grumbled. “I happen to know a Magician with a trick for stopping time. If ever I needed a time-out, it was now. Those birds…”

  I shuddered again. Armaeus’s face softened as he studied me, and unaccountably, I felt tears surge up behind my eyes again. I glanced away, struggling to collect myself. “What’s going on with Sariah?” I blurted. “When I closed my hands around the chalice, I—I felt her, suddenly. Her presence. Her strength.” Her pain.

  “She felt you too,” Armaeus said. “She is part of the reason I knew to expect you. She woke up not ten minutes ago, doubtless when you first got your hands on the chalice and lifted it from its pedestal. In so doing, you set into motion some very powerful magic—magic I felt. Magic that doubtless Ahmad felt as well.”

  I grimaced. “The Shadow Court?”

  He shrugged. “If they were paying attention, undoubtedly. And I suspect they were. What I saw only made sense because Eshe had prepped me on what to expect. She has provided all the background she could on Ahmad and his story. He served in his position as Sun for over a millennium before I ever ascended. The Council could have tracked him down at any time, but we, in our hubris and isolationism, never bothered to pursue him. If he didn’t want to be a part of the Council’s activities, we would leave him to his desert idyll and not worry ourselves overmuch with his actions unless and until we needed to call him to a vote. Over the centuries, it proved prudent for us to not do anything that escalated the Council’s concern so high.”

  “Because you didn’t want to get involved.” It was an accusation, but there was no heat to it. What I’d accomplished today, the Council couldn’t have. Not without drawing a whole lot more attention to itself. “You were content to let humanity fend for itself.”

  “We were.” Armaeus nodded. “Then, when I lost my memory of the Sun, the Moon, and Star as Arcana Council members in absentia, it was as if the other members of the Council forgot them, too. When those memories returned, it wasn’t a true recollection, merely an absence of forgetting, if that makes sense.”

  “You didn’t think about them before, so you weren’t triggered to think about them again.” I sighed against him. “The Shadow Court made you forget them? Why?”

  “There could be any of three hundred and forty-seven reasons thus far.”

  I managed a weary smile. “So you have no idea.”

  “On the contrary, I have three hundred and forty-seven reasons why. The answer will prove most illuminating. It’s a curious development, and one which will require much study. But not today.”

  He turned again to the chalice, his elegant fingers tracing a circle, and the smoke-filled sphere surrounding the chalice gleamed with power.

  “It too will require much study. You can’t keep it here, of course, and I must remove any trace of my magic from it, but this will provide me with some preliminary information that I need to analyze it. To capture the scrollwork etched into the chalice, understand the intention of the spells that bound the djinn, both those enacted by Ahmad’s father and those added by Queen Makeda, you see?”

  He pointed, and now that I could study the chalice more closely, I could see what he meant. The heavy markings on the chalice looked as if they’d been filed smooth in a wide band around the base of the cup and its rim, replaced with fine scrollwork. The etchings were too indistinct for me to read at this distance, but they had the unmistakable sense of feminine power.

  “And now you must return back to the moment you disappeared,” Armaeus said. “Until I can help you more.”

  “Ready when you are.” I braced myself for the surge of power and pain that I’d already come to expect at touching the chalice of the djinn Qadir. Armaeus dropped the magical thrall around the vessel, I grabbed it with a hissed curse, and fled both warmth and comfort…

  Only to reappear in the middle of Armageddon.

  “Sara,” somebody shouted as I dropped to the floor, rolling away from a trio of attacking djinn in their hellspawn party outfits while I shot out an arcing flare of fire to keep the bastards away from me. Frankly, I was little surprised. As fiercely as the Syx, Nikki, and Danae were fighting, they didn’t seem to be making much headway. I struggled upright, and Warrick beat his way toward me.

  “Sara,” he shouted again. “The Magician? Did he get what he needed?”

  “He did. Was I gone for long?” I asked, wondering if Armaeus was losing his touch. I felt the murmur of indignation all the way from Las Vegas.

  “No—oof!” Warrick shoved back an entire line of djinn. “Barely a heartbeat or two, but the djinn, we’re not meant to hurt these people. They’re not”—another punishing blow—“ours to fight.”

  I blinked, finally realizing the difference in this djinn battle: no black goop. It was a rumble in the ruins, but nobody was losing or gaining any ground. We could go on fighting like this for another millennium and have nothing to show for it.

  “So what the hell are we supposed to do?” I demanded. “How are we going to fight something we can’t get rid of? It’s like an infestation of ants.”

  “We escape. Legs over there knows the way. Follow her. We’ll follow you.”

  I looked at him and swiveled to where he gestured, where I saw Nikki doing her best impression of Crouching Tiger Fabulous Dragon, flying out with brutal kicks and martial-arts-worthy karate chops. Even though she was doing a fair job of keeping the djinn from harming herself or Oman, she also wasn’t gaining any ground. We were stuck on permanent defense.

  “Nikki?” I shouted as Warrick shoved me toward her.

  She looked up with a bright grin, as if she’d be more than happy fighting back hellspawn for a few hours more. Oman huddled behind her, his face waxy with shock.

  “Dollface!” she shouted. “We gotta roll. I’ve rubbed shoulders with enough of these creepers that I know the tunnels the martyrs took to make their bid for freedom. They didn’t make it, but we damned well better. Otherwise, they’ll just
wear us out. Oman’s brain is fried, and I can’t take a breath long enough to get a fix on Ahmad’s Sun deck, so until we get these bat boys off our backs, we’re stuck. I don’t like being stuck, gotta tell you.” She punctuated this last with a vicious strike of her left elbow, sending a squawking pterodactyl flying.

  I redoubled my grip on the chalice, grimacing with pain. “Then let’s go.”

  “Only problem with that is—”

  “I don’t care,” I snapped as I ducked away, a djinn claw barely missing my shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  “Roger that.”

  She turned and collared Oman, who looked ready to follow her anywhere, and shoved him toward the nearest arched doorway, one of easily a half dozen. How confident was she that she’d made the right choice?

  Around us, the djinn screamed with eerie, keening excitement, and I understood why Nikki had hesitated. “We go, they can go too,” she shouted. “So let’s hit it.”

  We ran. Danae was right on my heels, and I assumed the demon enforcers were following behind us, but I didn’t need to worry about them so much. The route twisted and turned and then split off in two directions, but Nikki never faltered. As I drew up close behind her, I realized she wasn’t just going on borrowed memories from the djinn. No, in her fist, she held the neck of a small, violently flapping creature, which she clearly had conscripted in the role of guide on her way out the door. The creature squawked and flailed, its eyes rolling, but it didn’t slow Nikki down one bit. It took us another five minutes of hard running through ever-tightening tunnels before I sensed the corridor gradually sloping up.

  I risked a look back and saw nothing but the flapping of furious wings at first, but fortunately, they didn’t seem to be getting any closer. I couldn’t understand for a moment why, then spied what was running directly in front of them. Warrick, with Danae hiked up against his shoulders. She faced backward, her hands spread wide, her hair flying. She shouted imprecations and spells I couldn’t fully understand, but they seemed to be doing the job. The djinn in their birdlike forms followed us closely, but never too close. Somewhere in their squalling midst, Hugh and Raum ran as well…at least I hoped so.