by Stark, Jenn
“No,” I said, not missing the way the demons were shaking as well as they held their guns on Nikki and Danae, the excitement of the kill wafting off them like poisonous fumes. I suspected there was more than simple bullets in those weapons…and then I noticed something else. Explosives. Wrapped to the legs, arms, and torsos of the demons, enough firepower to rip us all apart. Without warning, an image of Sariah’s shattered body filled my mind, making my throat tighten, my lungs burn. The Shadow Court wasn’t leaving anything to chance, and a slow, steady fire awakened inside me, ready to set the world ablaze.
Nevertheless, something was screwy here. I glared at Ahmad. “Why aren’t we already dead?”
Jarvis answered for him. “Yet another good question. It is such a shame that we won’t be able to usher in this new world order together,” he said with what seemed like real regret in his voice. He turned and favored Warrick with an indulgent smile. “We can’t kill your compatriots, or the enforcers here will transcend the restrictions we’ve imposed. Their dedication is that strong. Commendable, really.”
“Fuck off,” Warrick said succinctly.
Jarvis sniffed. “I cannot kill you personally because I too am bound to the djinn in my own way. He is a being possessing both great power and a strict moral code. You die by our hands before the contract is complete, depriving him of completing our assignment, he is not only released to his own devices, he has lost faith with us. Fortunately, the moment you die, in the modern vernacular, all bets are off.”
“In other words, don’t lose, dollface.” Nikki drawled the words with such exaggeration that I had to smile. I refocused on the djinn, who still stared right through me, as if he could see out into Ahmad’s grand estate as it rolled down to the beach. Ironic that, after three thousand years locked away from the world, he still hadn’t seen the open sky.
“All right. So we fight here?” I focused hard and was able to move one foot, then the other. It took all my energy, though. So even if I could access some of my magic, I’d have to sacrifice mobility to do so. Nifty.
In my mind, I could hear Sensei Chichiro urging me to strike, to kick, to slash. I hoped she planned on sitting on my shoulder and yelling instructions in my ear when things got real. I needed all the help I could get.
“You’ll fight here,” Ahmad said.
“Now, now, we should give them some space, shouldn’t we?” Jarvis countered, turning to Ahmad. He flicked his hand toward the walls, and Ahmad hesitated, a slight flush rising in his cheeks, but Jarvis’s eyes were on Qadir. Ahmad glanced to the djinn as well, and there was no discounting the mulish look on Qadir’s face as he stared at the walls, despite his overall passivity. Clearly, the djinn wanted some air.
“I assume there’s no problem with that?” Jarvis pushed, and now it was Ahmad’s turn to look mulish.
“Of course not,” he said pompously. He gestured with a rich man’s indolence, and the entire northeast wall of the receiving room fell away, retracting back into pockets that allowed the room’s light to spill out onto the wide flat surface paved with stone. It ran all the way to the beach and was bordered by gently flowing palm trees, an oasis at the water’s edge.
Beside Ahmad, the djinn stirred to life, staring out at the wide-open sky with such naked longing, my own heart caught.
“Yes,” Jarvis murmured, his tone almost wheedling. “See what you are fighting for, Qadir.” Then turned to me with a smirk. “You see, I’ve even given you a sporting chance. Ahmad’s magic is strong and his wards are great, but under the stars, anything is possible, no?”
I narrowed my eyes. Jarvis was smart, and I could almost smell the duplicity rolling off him. He didn’t want me to win, so what was he doing here? Because he had to know…
He had to know…
I didn’t have time to work out all the angles. Qadir rushed forward, moving with a speed that I should’ve expected in a supernatural creature half made up of wind, but somehow, I’d overlooked that detail. The djinn caught me before I could draw my first breath, and we went tumbling end over end. With my hamstrung abilities, I couldn’t defeat this creature with fire, but instead, I made note of my position within the cartwheel and rolled a few more rotations toward Hugh. The demon enforcer was no idiot. He might not be able to take out the posse of demons while Ahmad’s wards kept him restrained, but he could still help me.
As soon as I got close enough, Hugh wrenched his hands forward, and two shining iron-bladed scimitars blew through the air, aiming directly for me. I even caught one. The other one passed harmlessly and buried itself in the wall. Still, one iron pointy thing was better than none, and when I came up again, I shoved the blade into Qadir’s shoulder with a satisfying thunk, then jerked it out again as the djinn reared back.
“Drop your weapons, Syx, or the women die,” Jarvis ordered, a single shot ringing out to punctuate his words. I didn’t have to look to imagine it flying by either Nikki’s or Danae’s face, and I heard the clatter of iron against tile. The Syx weren’t taking any chances either, preferring to wait until the situation fell in their favor.
Meanwhile, Qadir’s eyes went wide, his mouth curving—but not in dismay, unfortunately. Way more like a delighted grin. “That’s right, Makeda—fight,” he snarled.
“I am not—oof—”
My protest was cut off as the djinn bent forward and rushed me again, this time catching me right in the solar plexus, knocking all the wind out of me. I went flying, barely managing to hold on to my scimitar, and crunched to the ground at Warrick’s feet. Fortunately, he’d seen fit to drop his weapons as instructed, and I grabbed two of them before struggling back upright. I staggered to the side a little, but the moment I stepped beyond the border of Ahmad’s magic-warded room, I remembered Jarvis’s remark, and at the same time, Sensei Chichiro’s voice filled my mind.
“Qadir is old and fat, slow,” she said tersely, her voice as clear as if she really was sitting on my shoulder. “He has lived in his chalice too long, plotting his poisoned revenge. He has forgotten to stay strong and ready. That is why he fights the way he does, seeking to knock you off your feet, to beat you by blunt force and not skill and subtlety. And do not forget, he has named two parties in his grievance, not one.”
Before I could process what she was saying, Qadir was on me again. I barely got off a few defensive slashes before he was too close to my body, defeating my advantage with the blades. I stumbled back a few more steps, and another voice came to me, this one as welcome as rain in the desert. “Miss Wilde.”
Armaeus didn’t need to say any more. His smooth, confident voice reminded me of who I was and what I was capable of, out beyond the direct pull of Ahmad’s wards.
I stretched out my hands, my blades still in place, but this time, they were electrified with my magic and anger in equal measure. I threw the mother of all fireballs at Qadir, and it was my turn to knock him off his feet. He went sprawling, his body disintegrating into wind, his scream rising into the heavens. I didn’t give him a chance to react any further. I raced forward, both hands together, my scimitars twin blades of destruction as I swept them down and through his body, cleaving him in two.
He stared up at me with clear surprise. Then to my horror, he ripped the rest of the way, the bottom half of his ruptured form dissolving into mist while the top burst apart in a rush of color and fire. A moment later, I realized my mistake. Two djinn stood in front of me now, both looking equally pissed.
“Son of a—”
“You will not defeat us, you wretched queen!”
“I am not the freaking queen,” I snarled. I brought my weapons down again. As I did, I finally remembered my wits. A second later, fifty blades hung in the air, all of them wrought from pure iron.
“Witch,” the second Qadir snarled, and Danae’s laugh rang out, sharp and fierce.
“I’d be real careful of your tone if I were you.”
Her bold voice caught Qadir’s attention for a half second as I set the knives to flight, but
the two djinn dissolved into themselves and then, with a gust of wind, reappeared fifty times over, one for each of my blades.
“Will you stop,” I snapped as the Qadir collective rushed forward. Easily a third of them dropped with the first assault, but it wasn’t enough. One of the djinnlets reached me, and the moment it did, the mini genies coalesced back into one, and it was with all his reconstituted might that Qadir bore down on me, wrapping his hands around me, choking me half to death.
“You bastard,” I gasped. “I’m not who you think I am. You’re fighting the wrong battle for the wrong guy.”
“I will defeat you, and I will defeat your king,” the djinn roared, three thousand years of bad breath blowing back my hair.
Well on the way to losing consciousness, I sent out an appeal I knew Armaeus would be more than happy to answer. I was right. In less than the blink of an eye, the Magician rose up beside us in a rush of smoke and fire, and the battle waged anew. He pulled Qadir off me, ripping him apart, clearly not having been watching the fight up to now. When one djinn once more became two, however, I ended up with the stupid one. He crunched his heavy body into mine while out of the corner of my eye, I watched the second djinn and the Magician trade lightning bolts.
As they fought, my version of Qadir decided to wrestle with his inner demons on my time.
“Witch!” he seethed, his black eyes haunted with pain. “You kept me from my third and final act. The act that would have freed me and all people. The act that would have seen a father kill his only son, drain his power, and take dominion over all the land the Sun touched. And you stopped me. Why?”
Somewhere far back in Ahmad’s warded chamber, I heard a strangled cry, but I had problems of my own.
“I am not your queen,” I tried again, but that argument was clearly getting me nowhere. There was an air of desperation about this djinn, a need for freedom and self-determination. To not be bound by those who believed themselves stronger than he was, to live his life. Ordinarily, I would’ve supported that, but as it happened, I currently had mixed feelings.
“Die,” Qadir howled as he scraped his hand toward me, clipping my jaw. The blood that spewed out across his face refocused me—mainly because it was my blood. Sensei Chichiro’s admonitions roaring in my head, I surged forward. As I shoved him backward, I assembled a bed of iron spikes for the bastard to land on. They pierced him through from shoulder to hip, and he screamed with infernal pain. But he didn’t get up. I staggered back, staring down at him, and dragged in ragged breath as I heard Nikki shout, “Sara!”
I whipped around to see more of Jarvis’s men entering the room, as the gun-toting demons crowded around Nikki and Danae, even edging closer to the Syx. The security guards had devices in their hands—detonators? I couldn’t tell. Behind them, Ahmad’s counselor Hassan stood tall, his hands up. So it was the warlock who was managing the horde so effectively…here, and in Pompeii too? Just how deep was Ahmad in with the Shadow Court?
Either way, surely he wouldn’t kill Nikki and Danae and the demon enforcers while I was still fighting the djinn. Not like this. Not like—
“You’ll need to drop the wards,” Hassan announced, and I felt more than saw Ahmad lift his hand as Jarvis gestured to his men, thumbs depressing buttons and the spark of electricity flaring—
I didn’t think. I didn’t breathe. Armaeus! I roared in my mind, and the Magician turned, instantly assessing the situation and—for the barest moment as Ahmad dropped the wards—he stopped time.
In that tiny moment, no more than a heartbeat, I rushed forward, ripping the explosives free from the demons and the detonators for good measure, then disintegrating away, reappearing in the bowels of Queen Makeda’s cellar domain. This was a place that mankind did not deserve to see, and this was a place to which the djinn would never return. They had suffered enough here. I dumped the triggered explosives and wrenched myself away again, propelled by the force of the explosion as Armaeus set time once more in motion. I blew back onto the plaza outside Ahmad’s home, staggering as I took up the fight again.
This time, however, when Armaeus struck at Qadir with his iron scimitar, Qadir stood firm and took the cut, a wide gash opening from neck to hipbone to bleed golden blood. He clasped his hand over his breast, blood spilling through his fingertips, and his eyes turned to smoke.
“Enough!” he hissed. “I cannot win unaided. It is finished.” He turned and, with a mighty roar, swept Armaeus and me back into Ahmad’s chamber…where the dead zone crashed down over us. Both of us. Armaeus cursed, driven to his knees.
“Return to the chalice,” Jarvis ordered, and Qadir’s eyes shot wide even as his body turned into smoke. He could not defy the charge of his owner, however, and a moment later, as if a great wind had been sucked from the sky, he vanished into the chalice, the lid clattering closed.
25
My third eye still remained fixed open, and there were more gyrating energy circuits rocketing around the room than I could fully process.
“What?” Ahmad’s wail startled me, and I whipped my gaze toward him. He continued to stare at the chalice as if it were going to render him a response. “My father wanted to kill me?”
I threw my own question out, my voice cold with rage. “You were going to allow him to murder us? Are you insane?”
It was Jarvis who answered for Ahmad, however, since Ahmad was clearly still reeling from his admittedly legitimate daddy issues.
“You aren’t the only member of the Council who has chosen to stick your head in the sand, Justice Wilde. We made our first pleas to the Emperor, never suspecting he would turn us down, and to the High Priestess. The other members of the Council, while strong, did not possess the requisite darkness within them to carry out our tasks. And though your strength is undeniable and your darkness ever growing, you were a failure as well. So our work continued. And we encountered Ahmad during the course of our search for the hidden storehouses of magic that would help turn the tide of the battle that is even now being fought.”
“Once more for the cheap seats?” Nikki asked. I glanced her way—and stopped. She and Warrick had edged ever so slightly closer to the chalice. Warrick was a demon enforcer, and only a demon could kill another demon—but he couldn’t kill a djinn. So I wasn’t sure what he was up to, but I would take his protection of Nikki however it came.
Speaking of demons…
While Jarvis chuckled indulgently, I glanced around. Other than the Syx, all the demons in the room had gone eerily still, as if someone had turned off their electricity. Just how sophisticated had the Shadow Court gotten in their demon-control tactics? Hassan still stood at the doorway, but his hands were down, his gaze on Ahmad.
Jarvis’s unctuous voice recalled my attention. “I think Justice Wilde understands me well enough. A meeting is taking place even now, a show of faith, if you will, between our strongest allies, our most highly placed politicians and military directors, seeded all over the world. And as it happens, I have my own personal show to bring them. I’ll arrive with my newfound magic and my warrior djinn to seal the deal. I thank you, Justice Wilde, and you as well, Armaeus, for making all this possible.”
“We live to serve,” I said drily. With the double whammy of being in Ahmad’s dead zone and Jarvis’s unmistakable flush of power, I didn’t know quite how to play this. Meanwhile, Armaeus knelt, his expression almost distracted, as if he was working out all the various mathematical possibilities of different courses of action. I tried not to tell him to hurry it up already. There would be no point in us making a stand if our magic wasn’t sufficient to the task. We were immortal, but not unkillable.
Strangely enough, I didn’t feel particularly worried. I felt nothing but an ever-quickening anger that seemed like it might never burn out. I needed a trigger to light things up, a lever I didn’t yet have. But it was coming. And when I blew…
I refocused on Jarvis. “So you’re just going to have a little meeting, give them a PowerPoint display of your n
ew magical skills, trot out your new little buddy in a bottle, and the world is going to kneel down to you? That’s all it’ll take?”
“No,” Jarvis said. “The world won’t kneel, and we don’t want it to. We need perhaps two billion humans on this planet, no more, and then we can build a new Atlantis. We can start over with the force of magic to guide us and the remaining population of souls separated into their proper places. They won’t know what happened, and they don’t need to know. There will be tragedies. There will be wars. With the swift cruelty of fate, merciful death will roll out across nations large and small, and those who are left to pick up the pieces will not much mind being taken care of.”
“You’ve given this a lot of thought,” I said, not trying to hide the sarcasm in my voice. Ahmad staggered to Jarvis’s left. “My father…” he murmured again, the words practically a sob.
“Your father is the least of your concerns,” Jarvis said curtly, turning on him. “The magic you’ve given me as part of our agreement is not sufficient, I’m afraid. I would take it all.”
“You can’t,” Ahmad protested as I glanced sharply at Armaeus, who still seemed locked in a game of internal Jeopardy. I tried to reach out mentally to poke him, then remembered the dead zone. “You don’t have the power.”
“Fair enough,” Jarvis said. “But then, I don’t need the power, do I?”
He spoke laconically and strolled over to the chalice to drift his hand lightly along the rim. Holding their positions, Nikki and Warrick went still as statues. That’s when I noticed that Danae had shifted toward the pedestal as well, but was now studying the floor.
“Unlike you, your father, and so many before you, with the possible exception of the actual Queen of Sheba, I fully understand the power of the djinn captured in this fragile vessel,” Jarvis said. “Its bonds are eternal until it is granted clemency. The greatest oracle in the modern world told me this, so I know it to be true.”