The Night Witch: Wilde Justice, Book 6

by Stark, Jenn

  I blinked and glanced again at Armaeus. Still out to lunch. “Eshe?”

  “We didn’t truly think she would come to our side, but she is proud, and she doesn’t get out all that much. It was, in the end, easy enough to sway her into a trance state. Her visions were extraordinary and varied, and we assembled interpreters from all corners of the earth to work them out. As with all prognostications, they were a jumble of possibilities, but once we separated the main threads of her predictions, we knew what was possible. And we were willing to take the steps to make some of those possibilities happen.”

  He turned back to us and smirked, which was lost on Armaeus in his glassy-eyed state. “The Arcana Council could not countenance a member of our organization killing a member of the Council. But up to that point, it seems, anything was fair game. Even the desecration of Justice Wilde’s own flesh and blood was not sufficient to move the Council and their feet of clay. So, no. I won’t kill the Sun and take his remaining magic for my own. I won’t have to.”

  With an elegant flick of his finger, Jarvis slid off the lid of the chalice. Smoke and fire immediately billowed forth, and even I stepped back, witness to the impressive display of Qadir’s might.

  “Another small detail I forgot to mention,” Jarvis said, his words flush with excitement. “Should Qadir refuse any command I give him, he will never be set free.”

  The djinn slowly took form once again as the bigger, meaner cousin to the Syx. His face was a glory to behold, his body straight and firm, his chest massive. Only his eyes remained vacant pools of smoke for the moment as Jarvis continued. “The djinn cannot refuse a command from its owner, on penalty of remaining trapped forever in its vessel, without even the hope of being called forth in service to interrupt its exile. Queen Makeda knew this. She also knew the third wish of Sheikh Iman, Ahmad’s father, and the profound destruction it would cause Qadir. As it turns out, she herself was part djinn, and understood the moral code. A father killing his own son is a violation most foul, one that Qadir would pay for far more than Iman ever would. She would not have wished that fate on any of her kind, and she despised Iman for placing such an onus on Qadir. But place it, Iman did.”

  Ahmad issued a choked moan, his face naked with horror. “She saved my life.”

  Jarvis shrugged. “I wouldn’t go that far, but she certainly extended it. Now, however, I’m afraid your amnesty is at an end.” He turned to the djinn. “It’s time, Qadir, for you to complete the task you have avoided these past three thousand years. You are bound to me, and I have no problem with the stain you so fear. Complete the request of Sheikh Iman, and kill his only son.”

  Qadir’s eyes cleared, and as he turned his head to sweep the room with his gaze, they met mine. In that moment, I could see the torture in his soul. This djinn had killed scores and would kill more without compunction, but there was something about this request that still haunted him, all these centuries later. Despite the djinn’s dismay, however, there was also grim resolve. Before today, it had been three thousand long years since Qadir had last been summoned from his prison. He would not relegate himself to a second eternity of entrapment.

  “Now,” Jarvis ordered.

  “No,” Ahmad whispered. The djinn turned toward him, pulling an enormous scimitar from his waistband.

  “No,” Ahmad said again as Qadir approached him. I didn’t like Ahmad, but even I didn’t want to see him go out this way. I struggled against the layers of magic that draped over me like a lead blanket. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nikki and Warrick shift again, still edging toward the now-empty chalice that sat on the gold-draped pedestal. But all the other eyes in the room were on the djinn and Ahmad as they met in the center of the chamber.

  “No,” Ahmad said again—but this time, there was a firmness to his tone. A certainty. The djinn halted at it, but Jarvis merely chuckled.

  “Ahmad, you are long past the time of taking a stand yourself. You know that.”

  “I do know that,” Ahmad said, and once again there was the flare of haughtiness I’d first seen in the lounge at the Dubai airport as he’d flashed the medallion of the Sun at me. He stood straighter, and his eyes burned with both deep pain and deep knowledge. “I know a great deal. Not the inner workings of your infernal Court, but certainly your plans, your ideas. And I agreed with them. I, too, wanted to see magic return to the world in a system of order, of righteousness. So that the lowly, vulgar Connecteds who ruined the divine nature of our ability would be put in their place or wiped from the earth. So that those humans without any magic to them at all would know our strength and bow to us, just as the flowers in the meadow turn their faces to the sun, welcoming it for the strength and the nourishment it brings. These are the things you promised me, Jarvis, and I believe you will grant them, whether or not I am here to see it. But you are without honor to force this djinn into fulfilling my father’s wish. With the stain of that request on his soul, even if the directive comes from you and not my father, he will suffer. For all his murders, all his many sins, he does not need that added to the pile.”

  Then Ahmad turned to me. “I betrayed you many times over, Justice Wilde,” he said. “I helped the Shadow Court twist the weather to speed its agents into the most vulnerable Connected communities. I gave Jarvis the power he needed to command the hellspawn to rip your sister limb from limb. It was the price of my entry into this foul arrangement with a Shadow Court. For that, I deserve to die.”

  He turned back to the djinn. Qadir remained motionless, watching him. “But you, djinn Qadir, you do not deserve to kill me.”

  In a movement that was startling in both its swiftness and brutality, Ahmad lurched forward, grabbing the scimitar from the djinn’s grip. Without hesitation, he turned it and plunged it into his chest, piercing himself through. An explosion of magic shot from his body, sending us all reeling. Even the djinn disappeared in the burst of smoke, as Nikki, Danae, and Warrick leapt toward the pedestal that held Qadir’s empty chalice.

  It was a testament to Ahmad’s personal power that the dead zone held even as he fell, and after the first bolt of power, his magic burned like an incarnate flame, immediately consuming him and the djinn, who stepped forward and wrapped Ahmad’s body in his arms. Qadir spoke words I couldn’t translate with the roaring in my ears, but within seconds, the fire dimmed, gradually seeming to vanish altogether inside the djinn’s body.

  “Uh…oh,” Hugh muttered beside me, but I didn’t understand why, and Jarvis didn’t waste any time.

  “It is finished,” he said, his face flush with excitement. He lifted his arms and turned toward Armaeus and me with exultation in his eyes. “I can feel the rush of the new magic filling me. Magic that Ahmad grants me through the agency of the djinn under my control.”

  Across the room, Armaeus’s brows tented, this new piece of information apparently interrupting his playlist of crazy.

  “And now, Qadir and I will finish what the djinn could not finish alone,” Jarvis crowed.

  “Whelp, that would make for an awesome fight,” Nikki allowed, drawing our attention. “I think you’re missing something, though.” She nodded toward the center of the room.

  Qadir stood up from where he’d laid Ahmad’s body to the ground, a body that was now nothing more than the golden robes of Ahmad’s position. In his hand, he held Ahmad’s medallion. He turned toward Jarvis.

  Jarvis thrust his shoulders back, beaming. “Yes. Yes, I should wear the medallion of the Sun. It is well past time. Bring it to me,” he commanded. His eyes were only on the djinn as Warrick and Nikki took their last steps toward the chalice. Danae, her forehead bloody, had finally crawled to the pedestal as well. Warrick helped her to her feet. Then Qadir started speaking.

  “Jarvis Fuggeren, you hold my bond. You do not, however, hold honor,” he rumbled, his voice heavy.

  “I’m sorry to hear you feel that way,” Jarvis sneered. “Alas, you are my servant, bound to all I command. Such was your dishonor that you have no recour
se. You have earned the ultimate curse.”

  “I have,” Qadir sighed. “And I will pay its price.”

  He reached Jarvis and draped the medallion over Jarvis’s head. Then, with a brutal lurch, he grabbed the long chain in his hand and twisted it tight.

  Jarvis’s newly enhanced magic was nothing to take lightly. He practically pulsated with rage, Ahmad’s borrowed power once more rocking through us, but this time, Armaeus and I bent against it, even made headway. The dead zone was cracking as Ahmad’s stolen magic was tested in the djinn’s grasp.

  “You will return to your prison attended by the hounds of hell,” Jarvis screamed.

  “You attacked my people,” Qadir shot back. “I heard their cries and their horror as they lay naked and bloody on the sands of our homeland. You have no honor in you.”

  “You will submit,” Jarvis choked. “You will return to the vessel which—”

  A small crash sounded at the back of the room. The sound that should’ve been so indistinct as not to be audible over Qadir and Jarvis’s shouting match arrested us. Danae stood above the chalice, Nikki and Warrick flanking her, and she held shards of the chalice in her hands. It was destroyed.

  I caught only a glimpse of Jarvis’s horrified expression as Qadir stared at Danae, his eyes flaring wide. “My queen,” he gasped, then turned back to Jarvis, roaring with delight. Another ball of magic burst from the two men, exploding out across the sand and sea.

  “Miss Wilde,” Armaeus alerted me, but I felt it, too. The destruction of the dead zone. A wave of fire swept through the room, setting the demons into motion, which in turn triggered the Syx. As they set to battle, Armaeus and I, our free hands up, built a web of magic that arched over the two battling figures in the center of the room—

  And then suddenly, there was only one.

  The djinn threw Jarvis Fuggeren’s desiccated form to his feet, whirling on us. His eyes glowed gold, smoke pouring from him, his form shifting back and forth in a hundred different incarnations, each scattering to mist. Finally, he settled on the form he’d taken most readily, the giant burly chested demon with golden skin and fiery eyes. He stared down at Jarvis’s smoking body, then back to us.

  “That was a freebie,” he muttered.

  26

  Armaeus gestured with a sharp flick of his hand, and Ahmad’s golden medallion skittered across the floor to him, but none of us moved. The djinn Qadir stared at us, oblivious to the battle going on around us as the Syx dispatched the remaining demon army of the Shadow Court.

  “I have broken my bond,” Qadir said, his eyes returning to smoke. “I am at my weakest. If you would strike, you should do it now.”

  “You are a djinn of great power,” Armaeus countered. “Perhaps one of the strongest magical beings in the world. You didn’t drain Ahmad’s magic from him. He gave it to you.”

  Awareness and sorrow flickered in Qadir’s expression. “He was a man of honor in the end. He lived a long life. He will be judged, but yes, there was grace within him.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about,” Armaeus said. “You know what he did. And so now you possess not only the power he granted you, but the power you’ve liberated from Jarvis as well.”

  Qadir’s mist-filled eyes narrowed. “Which is, as I said, a good reason for you to act and act quickly, while the weight of my deceit still cripples me.”

  Armaeus shook his head. “I don’t think so. We have a need for the magic of this world to be bent to good purpose, not to hide in the shadows any longer. What Jarvis has planned is already in motion.”

  Qadir gestured toward Jarvis’s body with one meaty hand. “I have no quarrel with mortals, other than this one, who willfully attempted to slaughter those who stood guard with me and over me these long centuries. The world of your kind is not my world, nor my interest.”

  “Yet I would like to make an offer to you,” Armaeus countered. “An offer that, of course, you can refuse.”

  Qadir said nothing, his eyes still filled with shifting smoke, and Armaeus continued. “We have gone for three thousand years with the Sun remaining hidden from the Council, whether due to pride or foolishness. I would raise you to that position in Alsain Ahmad’s place, if you would take it.”

  I sent a startled glance Armaeus’s way. He was no longer the head of the Council. Did he have the power to raise anyone anymore?

  I kept my thoughts to myself, however, as Qadir straightened. “You would make me the Sun? But I am a demon to you.”

  “Not cool enough to be a demon,” Warrick commented from across the room as he sent another creature back across the veil in a splatter of black goop. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, bright boy.”

  The Magician’s gaze never wavered. “You are a djinn, and within you is a power that transcends time. Power born in the ancient world, that we have forgotten how to wield. And in the coming battle, such power will become important. Will you join us?”

  Qadir stared at Armaeus, then back to the chalice, still broken in Danae’s hands. His gaze lifted to her face, and his eyes cleared.

  “You freed me,” he murmured. And though his words were quiet, they pierced through the noise of the battle to reach Danae. She shrugged, clearly unimpressed by the emotion in Qadir’s voice. To her, at least, he was still a demon, and her disdain and distrust remained written all over her face.

  “It wasn’t my idea,” she said.

  The two of them stared at each other a long, fraught moment, while the chaos of the Syx raged around us. Then Qadir smiled, slowly and deliberately.

  “You are on the Council?” he asked her.

  Danae scoffed. “Hardly. I stand with Sara, nothing more.”

  Qadir shifted his glance to me. “You are on the Council.”

  I nodded, and he returned his gaze to Armaeus. “I will become your Sun, though I don’t know what that means, exactly.”

  “A whole lotta meetings, I’m telling you right now,” Nikki said, crossing to me from her position at the pedestal as Armaeus stepped forward.

  I couldn’t help it, I felt compelled to explain to the djinn what the Magician would not. “You will be held under the control of the Council,” I said, drawing Qadir’s attention. “They have the authority to restrain your actions should they wish to do so. You won’t be able to harm others without someone knowing.”

  Even as I said the words, I felt a new truth behind them. The Council sat on the sidelines, governing from the shadows. But who was to say there weren’t even deeper shadows they never looked toward? And who was to say what wrongs could be righted in those shadows? If the Council wanted to come after me, maybe I should let them. Or maybe I should send out the night witch to do her worst.

  For his part, Qadir studied me another few seconds, then nodded.

  “And I say, let them come,” he said, as if responding to my thoughts. I blinked, not missing Armaeus’s hard smile. Was this why he’d been lost in such deep thought while Jarvis had been pontificating? Did he know something about Qadir I didn’t?

  Armaeus stepped forward and slid the medallion on its chain over Qadir’s head, the gold of the amulet sizzling as it connected with his flesh. Beside me, Nikki winced.

  “That’s gonna leave a mark,” she muttered.

  “It is good to have you with us,” Armaeus said, stepping back again. “And now, I think, in all the confusion of your ascension and Jarvis’s departure from the Shadow Court, we have the advantage of time and surprise. There is some work that can be done.”

  “Miss Wilde.” He turned to me, and I felt an unusual pressure at my wrists. I glanced down. The cuffs of Justice were now around my own wrists. Not constraining me, exactly, but definitely exuding a menacing appearance.

  Armaeus’s lips twitched into a dark smile. “I think that will work nicely.” He turned back to Nikki. “You have the situation under control?”

  “Are you kidding? I’ve got a date with the spa in about thirty minutes, give or take.” Nikki grinned. “I’m just s
ad I’m gonna miss the show.”

  I blinked as the Magician shifted slightly. Suddenly, standing between Qadir and me was Jarvis Fuggeren, his smile smug and aristocratic, his elegant suit perfectly pressed.

  “I believe there is a meeting we should be attending,” he said. Qadir flinched as a set of heavy gold manacles appeared around each of his wrists, a third yoke around his thick neck. “Together with the spoils of war.”

  “The blond fool would have liked the shackles,” Qadir grunted. “But I drained his thoughts as well as his power. He no more knows his keepers than you do, Magician. He hoped to meet them this night, or to impress their proxy.”

  He blew out a long breath. “The place we go is a private chamber in a building he calls the Palais des Nations. You know it?”

  “Intimately,” Armaeus said in his smooth, smarmy Jarvis Fuggeren voice. If the man’s corpse wasn’t still steaming halfway across the room, I couldn’t have said for sure it wasn’t Jarvis in the flesh standing next to me. I fought the urge to edge away.

  “His allies there are people he wished to impress, particularly the woman, this proxy,” Qadir continued, tilting his head as if trying to hold onto fading memories. “He wants her body, but there’s more to his quest than that.”

  “Cut to the chase, Qadir. You’re going to make me sick,” I muttered, and the djinn looked my way without fully seeing me.

  “He seeks her approval. She is the gateway. The gateway to the very gods—the masters of the Shadow Court.”

  “Bingo,” I breathed, and beside me, Armaeus grinned.

  “Then, as Miss Dawes would say, we will do our best to give her a show,” he promised.

  We vanished into smoke and reappeared moments later in the midst of an amphitheater-like hall. I’d never been to the UN’s official base of operations, but this room certainly looked like some side chamber of a yesteryear political palace. The gallery was filled with rows upon rows of VIPs—and to my surprise, some of them I even recognized. The rich, the famous, and the well connected of multiple nations, from diplomats to debutantes. If this was a sampling of whom the Shadow Court had drawn into its circle…damn. We had our work cut out for us.