by Stark, Jenn
I stumbled as I turned my attention forward again, jostling the chalice I held tight to my chest. It was definitely reacting, either to my rough handling or the fact that it had been taken from its chamber, not once but twice. Either way, as we turned into a tunnel where the air was decidedly fresher, I could tell it was heating up. I clamped my hands down on it, glaring at it for good measure. I had no interest in releasing this genie from its makeshift bottle a second before I needed it.
We pressed on, the tunnel gradually widening, and the gloom around us lightening as well. Racing beside Nikki, Oman thrust his arm out, gesturing forward. “There—look! This stone, these walls are not man-made. This is a cave. We’re nearing the surface!”
His announcement seemed to do more than encourage our small troop. The mini hellspawn in Nikki’s hands started freaking out, its wings batting at her in a frenzy, and the screams of the djinn behind us lifted to an unholy roar. If there was anyone around the opening of this cave within a three-mile radius, we were hosed, but there was nothing I could do about that.
I bent double as the chalice in my arms started shaking more aggressively as well. Did it also know that it was nearing its release? Was it reacting to the cries of its fellow djinn? Did the spirit inside, Qadir, have any idea what was going on? These questions kept time with my pounding feet as I rushed up the passageway.
It was only when I glimpsed a break in the unrelenting gloom ahead that I sensed something else. Something bad. My third eye flipped open, and the crisscrossing net of electrical bursts covering the opening ahead of us was another indicator that our lot was not necessarily improving. Crap.
I raced toward the opening of the cavern a few seconds longer, then braked sharply and lurched to the right.
“Down!” I shouted. Nikki and Oman heard me, and Nikki yanked him back with one hand as she freed the hellspawn-cursed djinn. It screamed in utter joy and burst forward.
As I hit the ground, I could hear Warrick and Danae crash to the ground behind me. I covered the chalice with my body as a roar of wings flew overhead, trailing talons ripping at my hair and my clothes. But the hellspawn weren’t trying to stop me anymore. If anything, they were using my body as a launching pad to move forward as quickly as they possibly could. The entire lot of them soared above me and burst out into the open air as Hugh and Raum caught up to our party. Hugh reached me first and leaned down, yanking me upright. A second later, Raum raced up, and Warrick pulled Oman free from Nikki, now carrying two humans as Raum hauled Nikki to her feet.
But we didn’t run any longer. We wanted no part of the carnage going on outside the cave opening.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Nikki muttered as the exalted cries of the djinn turned to horrifying screams of terror and pain. The sound of bodies crashing to the sand in hideous, crunching thuds came next.
She looked at Warrick, her face sheet white. “I thought no one could kill these guys?”
“You can’t,” Warrick said, his voice unusually quiet. “But doesn’t mean you can’t cause them pain. Enough pain to take them back to their most natural forms, no matter how powerful the spells laid over them.”
That appeared to be what was happening before us now. Djinn littered the ground outside the cave and lay sprawled like the victims of some apocalypse. They moved, but only barely, their bodies sliced to ribbons, their blood spilling out over the sand. It was golden, I saw, my own horror mounting. The djinn remained in the same human forms they had presented back in their prison chamber. Men, women, children. It was like watching a mass-murder scene unfolding in real time.
“Dollface,” Nikki said, and I turned back, knowing what I needed to do. We couldn’t rush out into the midst of whoever was waiting for us. It almost certainly had to be the Shadow Court or their minions. “We need to go back to—”
“The palace,” whispered Oman suddenly, sounding on the verge of tears. “Yes, yes.”
Without any further prompting, he flung himself away from Warrick and toward Nikki, practically jumping into her arms and pressing his cheek against her. She swung around, her eyes wide as the rest of us crushed together, and I focused. It was the largest group I’d ever attempted to move, and I felt the strain of it on me. In the last moment, a burst of smoke billowed up from the tomb, the cries of something else stirring beneath the sands, and that was all that was needed to get us underway.
We appeared in the middle of a large, ornate chamber, clearly one of Ahmad’s receiving rooms, which was impressive since, once again, I’d never been there before. But such was the intensity of Oman’s vision and Nikki’s connection to me that it proved to be enough.
We fell apart, the demon enforcers rolling to their feet and brushing the embers away as Oman patted himself down frantically. Nikki pulled off her draping scarf. It had been reduced to a charred and tattered mess at the hands of her djinn guide.
“He better be okay,” she muttered, and I grimaced. I’d seen all sorts of carnage in my service to the Arcana Council, Connecteds performing terrible acts of violation against other magical beings, but this attack against the djinn guardians somehow struck me as more horribly wrong than usual.
Ahmad stood at the front of the room, not moving a muscle until I stood. His eyes lit up with joy and more than a little avarice as he saw what I held in my hands.
“The djinn Qadir,” he murmured, his voice practically vibrating with awe. “You have brought it.”
I’d been through my share of artifact deliveries, and I knew the danger I was in. Suddenly glad for the team surrounding me, I straightened my shoulders. More than a few clients would opt to kill me at this point rather than have any evidence of what I’d brought back to them leak out to others, whether ally or enemy. Fortunately, setting aside my own not inconsiderable skills, with a witch, three demons, and the awesome that was Nikki Dawes, I didn’t worry as much about my personal safety. And, too, this time around, it wasn’t a question of money changing hands. I almost felt a stab of disappointment at that. I hadn’t set any price for the delivery of this artifact. I’d merely done the job to stick it to the Shadow Court and help out a fellow Arcana Council member. I needed to start raising my rates again.
“Come, come,” Ahmad said excitedly. He turned to Oman as the guide approached, beaming at him, embracing him with his cheek to either side of his trusted guide. As he pulled back, though, I caught the flash of steel in Ahmad’s hand.
My response was automatic. With a flick of my hand, I shoved Ahmad back, using the same energy I’d used to lift Armaeus a few inches. Invisible, but effective. Ahmad flinched back, and the steel disappeared once more into his robes. Oman leaned away from his master, starry-eyed with delight, with no idea of what Ahmad had planned for him. If I had anything to do with it, he never would.
I slanted a hard glance at Warrick. He rolled his eyes, but nodded. The burly demon would see to it that Oman remained safe until we could get him away from Ahmad. I had no doubt that the Sun had his reasons for killing the man, but I had better reasons for keeping him alive. Though he’d been half out of his mind with fear, Oman had fought well and admirably, and had done his job without shirking. He didn’t deserve to die for that.
Speaking of…
I fixed my glare on Ahmad as he turned back to me, oblivious to my darkening mood.
“Was that the Shadow Court waiting for us at the mouth of the cave?”
He shook his head and spread his hands, patently confused. “In truth, I don’t know. You emerged so far away from where you started that it is only by a slight miracle that I knew where you were, and even that information was relayed seconds before you arrived here. You came in with a rush of wind and the sound of gunshots. I assumed it had to be you.”
Hugh snorted. “Generally a good assumption.”
“I should never have doubted for a second that you would find it,” Ahmad said, his joy palpable as tears glistened in his eyes. “Finally, after so many thousands of years, the djinn of my father is returned to t
he house of Ahmad to finish his final quest. It is a great gift that you give me, Justice Wilde. My payment to you and the Council shall be rendered tenfold.”
Despite the pretty words, I still wasn’t feeling all that great about this transaction. Beside me, Nikki remained tense, and even Danae had drawn closer to me as if to render emergency aid. The three demon enforcers stood loose and at their ease, willing to watch mortals sort things out. Until the djinn showed up again or there were more demons to fight, they only needed to stand down.
“Justice Wilde, please, it is time.”
Ahmad stepped aside to indicate a small pedestal set on a dais ringed by a half circle of heavy drapes that looked like they’d been made from cloth of gold. I took another step forward, and there was no denying the tremor the chalice gave at the movement.
I frowned. “It’s been a long time since anyone’s dealt with this particular djinn. Do you have safeguards in place to protect yourself and your people?”
“And us, for that matter?” Nikki asked.
Ahmad beamed like a boy asked to present his science fair project.
“Of course,” he said, gesturing around us at the room, with its marble floor inlaid with metal scrollwork and the draped dais. “This entire room was originally constructed to house the djinn. It’s warded at all four corners and reinforced for both the djinn’s safety and ours. There are doors behind these curtains that go straight to far more comfortable quarters than Qadir has been forced to endure these past centuries. He will be treated like the great and mighty djinn he is.”
Ahmad spoke overloudly, and I glanced down at the chalice, wondering if he was pitching his voice to be heard through the thin metal. At this point, nothing would surprise me.
“And you can handle him?” I pressed.
The Sun straightened with imperious authority. “The djinn is bound to my family, and only I can transfer that bond permanently. What Queen Makeda did was a result of her own great power, but it is a spell that is easily broken by a member of my family.” He placed one hand on his breast, beaming beatifically. “I am more than ready to release the djinn.”
At that proclamation, the chalice trembled violently, almost jerking out of my hand. I found my patience wearing thin with all of Ahmad’s dramatics.
“Well then, let’s get this over with,” I said, my mind already moving ahead to the next challenge. We still had to track down the Shadow Court and neutralize them for good. I couldn’t shake the image of the scattered djinn on the dunes at the mouth of the tomb’s ruins. I didn’t think I could ever shake that image. I reached Ahmad, but to my surprise, he didn’t take the chalice from me. Instead, he stepped back and gestured to the pedestal, the small stand ringed with tiny, intricate scrollwork.
Fair enough. Ahmad wasn’t taking any chances, and he shouldn’t. I stepped forward and placed the chalice on the pedestal. No sooner had I straightened than Ahmad edged close and placed one hand reverently on the lid of the chalice.
“Djinn Qadir, bound to this house. Step forth to serve.”
The djinn didn’t make us wait a moment more. The lid didn’t so much slide off the chalice as burst up in a blast of smoke and sparks. The smoke continued, billowing out of the chalice and roiling over the edge of the pedestal and into the room. Emerging from the clouds was an enormous form that seemed to construct itself out of the mist, a creature as large as the demon enforcers, then larger still, his head and chest expanding out and up until his skull struck the ceiling. His white-hot glowing eyes blinked, and then the creature turned into another whirling dervish of light and smoke, but compressing down, down, until he stood before us, an enormous male, bronzed and fierce. Other than the fancy gold pants and bald pate, he could have been the brother of one of the Syx.
“Djinn Qadir!” Ahmad declared. “Do you serve?”
The genie turned toward Ahmad, his face impassive. If he didn’t like his role of cosmic handyman, he didn’t show it. “I serve,” he responded, in a rush of languages—Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, Aramaic, Greek, Japanese, French, Urdu, German, Hindi, Dutch—even English in the end. As if he was learning all the languages of the world and running through them, one by one. I thought about the djinn in the ruins, who’d picked up our language even more quickly.
What had happened to them out on that killing field? Had the Shadow Court left them, or were they torturing them still?
“Excellent,” Ahmad said, beaming, though my stomach had curdled and I was barely paying attention anymore. “Then I transfer your bond to your new master.”
From out behind shimmering drapes, Jarvis Fuggeren stepped forward.
24
I reared back as a dozen armed men flooded out from the drapes—not even men but straight-up demons, their guns trained on Nikki and Danae. I lifted my hands and made my second unfortunate realization. My hands barely crackled enough to toast marshmallows. It wasn’t quite a dead zone, but it was close enough. Beside me, Warrick, Raum, and Hugh remained barely constrained. I couldn’t tell if they were being held in check by force of magic or by the reality that they couldn’t reach all the demons in time to save Nikki’s and Danae’s lives. Either way, they remained stock-still, though their eyes boiled over with fury.
“You are wise not to strike,” Ahmad said modestly, addressing the Syx—and then me directly. “Even you, Justice Wilde. I have never been successful in fully suppressing the magic of the Council, though I have certainly tried over the centuries. Though in Pompeii, I gave you some trouble, no? And certainly here, even my small talents will serve to delay your reactions long enough that your compatriots will fall. First, I have gifted Jarvis with a measure of my own power, so you have not two beings of magic before you, but three.”
I shifted my glare to Jarvis, who preened. But Ahmad wasn’t lying. As I fixed on Jarvis with my third eye, I could see, for the first time ever, real power crackling off him. Freaking great. At least that explained how he’d been able to reach out to me in Hell.
“Secondly, I assure you, the dampening effect of my magic on you will be a quite sufficient deterrent. I will plug these unfortunate souls full of enough holes, they will not survive long enough for you to reach them. Your legs, you see.”
I didn’t need to move far to confirm his taunt. My feet felt like they were encased in cement. I reached out mentally for Armaeus and felt the pressure weighing down on that attempt, too. Smothering me. Would Armaeus figure out what was happening in time? I doubted it. He had no reason to be tracking me, and he was fascinated by the riddle of the chalice.
“What is wrong with you?” I gritted out, staring daggers at Ahmad. “Why are you doing this?”
It was Jarvis who answered. “We so long held out hope of turning you to our cause, Justice Wilde. Despite your position on the Arcana Council, you were never meant to be one of them. And yet, though you claimed affinity with the Connected of this world, you apparently were not meant to be with them, either. That makes you an outcast to both sides, and as such, no use to me. Ridding you from this earth will be my pleasure.”
“Good luck with that,” I muttered, but I kept my eyes on the djinn Qadir. My third eye in particular. The djinn stood impassively at Ahmad’s side, looking bored, but he was possessed of so much magic that my third eye had to squint to fully take him in. This was a being of no small Connected merit…and like nothing I’d faced before.
Ahmad spoke in an overloud, self-important tone, stroking his Sun medallion. “You shall fight the djinn Qadir to allow him vengeance for the deaths of his people—deaths that you caused,” he announced.
“What?” I pulled my gaze away from the djinn to refocus on Ahmad. “What are you talking about? I didn’t kill any djinn—I didn’t think I could.”
“They will carry their injuries for eternity. Is that not a fate worse than death?” Jarvis asked.
With every word, Qadir grew in stature, his face darkening until he regarded me with murder in his eyes. When he spoke, his words were low and menacing.
My eyes flared even wider. Makeda? Did this guy not know who I was?
It wasn’t an unreasonable mistake. I didn’t even know if the Arcana Council had a Justice in place at the time of the djinn’s existence. But Makeda? And who the hell was her king? As far as most historians were concerned, the Queen of Sheba didn’t even exist, let alone have a husband out there somewhere.
I glared right back at Qadir. “Look, buddy, I don’t have any problem with you, and I certainly have no quarrel with your people. Whatever happened to them…”
As I spoke, Qadir’s face only grew darker, and I couldn’t blame him. Even listening to myself, it sounded like bullshit. This guy wanted a fight. He deserved a fight. I shot a look at Jarvis. “And so, what. If he kills me, is his service to you done?”
“Qadir shall kill you as his third act to the house of Ahmad and his first to me. When he kills you, his service to Ahmad’s house is done,” Jarvis intoned. “And you can die knowing you helped usher in a new world order, one that is long overdue. One that is already in motion, in truth. It is only a shame you won’t be around to see it.”
I opened my mouth to issue another zinging quip when Warrick grunted in pain. Apparently, the dead zone was working its reverse mojo on him, too.
“Sara,” Warrick said repressively, his eyes filled with rage and his body trembling with his need to move. “We cannot kill this creature. It is a djinn, not a demon. The difference is enough that we can’t strike it dead. We will likely be unable to even slow it down. The demons, though…we can break this hold.”