by T. G. Ayer
Then the pretender king stormed down the hallway, leaving the guard standing frozen to the spot. Then his gaze flickered from the hallway to Saleem, who was still sitting at the edge of his chair, staring at the open door, expression indecipherable.
The guard cleared his throat, reached for the doors and closed them with a soft snick. I frowned, though, certain I’d caught the man giving Saleem an almost-imperceptible bow before he shut the door.
I stood there for a moment, staring at the closed door, brow furrowed.
“Mel?”
I flinched at the sound of Saleem’s voice, then spun around to meet the amusement on his face. A face that bore evidence of having recently come to blows with someone’s fists.
And from the looks of it, a number of fists, a number of times.
His left eyebrow was split and swollen, the cut still red with congealed blood. The skin around his eye sported a generous array of colors, from sickly yellow to purple to a dull blue.
“Nice look you got going there,” I said after composing myself. “Before you know it, you’ll be setting a new trend in Mithras.”
Saleem snorted, the edges of his form blurring as he transitioned to the astral plane. “Between my brother and his benefactor, they have that pretty much under control.”
I frowned some more and drew closer to him. “What do you mean? Are there others in captivity?”
His face went dark. “A few. Those who were not eliminated.”
The words sent a shiver along my spine. “Can we help them?” I asked, my voice urgent now. “I can go look…see if I can take them away to safety.”
Saleem shook his head. “You won’t be able to jump anyone out of Mithras. Not without being discovered.” He reached for me and pulled me into an ethereal embrace, an embrace that made me feel like staying right where I was, where I felt safe.
But I wasn’t.
If I didn’t do anything about it, my safe place was in danger of being very dead, very soon.
Problem was, I was failing spectacularly at the whole saving-of-people thing. So I was more than a little concerned about pulling it off.
I leaned into Saleem, his warmth evident in spite of his astral form. And it made me smile.
Chapter 8
“What’s funny,” Saleem asked, peering down at me as I rested my head against his chest.
“You’re hot,” I said, feeling a rush of sadness wash over me.
Saleem’s chest vibrated with laughter. “That’s what all the ladies say.”
I punched his chest lightly. “Not what I meant.” I spread my fingers across his muscles, pressing my palm against his warmth. “There’s heat in your astral form. Is that part of your djinn powers?”
“Yeah. It’s elemental magic, from what I know. I didn’t really pay all that much attention in Science of Djinn Power and its Interaction with the Physical and Ethereal Planes 101.”
I snickered. “That’s a mouthful.”
“It’s actually only the shortened title. I left out the other half that’s about energy manifestation and manipulation.”
“Thanks,” I said with a smile.
Then I inhaled sharply, the ticking of time echoing inside my head as I again tested my life-thread—again a fraction stronger, though still nothing from Kai’s link. I moved away, patting Saleem’s chest with both my hands. I looked up at him, wanting desperately to take him away from his captivity.
His eyes narrowed, and he shook his head. “Don’t you even dare think about it,” he said sternly.
“What?” I asked, my voice rising to a suspicious squeak. “Please do not tell me this power to read my thoughts runs in your family. I have enough of that from your mother already. Don’t need it from you, too.”
Saleem chuckled, then winced, whatever pain that existed in his physical form being transmitted into his ethereal one. “Ugh, I’d better refrain from laughing. I think my last session may have ended with a broken rib.”
“Can djinn’s bones break?” I asked softly, trying not to envision that session with the unknown fists.
“Why? Thinking of breaking a few?”
“Most assuredly.”
“Not mine, I hope,” Saleem said lightly.
I shook my head. “You’ll be okay as long as djinn do not feel the pain when their siblings are pummeled to an unidentifiable mass of blood and bone.”
Saleem’s eyebrows rose as he fought a smile. “Woah there, Tracker. That’s a whole lot of violence that I haven’t seen before. Developing your mean streak, I see?”
I snorted. “Anyone tries to hurt what’s mine, and they’ll see what mean really looks like.”
Saleem cupped my cheek gently and smiled as he stared at my face, as though memorizing every detail. “I really love seeing this vicious bad-girl version of you, but what exactly are you doing here?”
I sighed. “No clue. I got blasted here. Didn’t have much of a choice.”
“Why here?” Saleem asked then paused, a stunned look on his face as my words sank in. “Blasted?”
“Yeah.” I lifted a shoulder then dropped it, the effort taking too much out of me for some reason. Probably the weight of failure. “Mission to save Kai went sideways. I got zapped every which way to Sunday. And in the end, the package was taken.”
Saleem lifted a finger and made a slow reverse-rolling motion. Though I was well aware that every second was ticking by with maddening speed, I was relishing this little reprieve, away from the madness that was life these days.
I took a deep breath and said, “Where shall I start? A bunch of assholes are after our favorite walker: the Walker Council dickheads framed her for murder, mysterious ShadowWraiths are either trying to taze her to death or abduct her, nosy reporters are popping up following up on leaked FBI reports, and operatives of supposedly defunct governmental agencies are suddenly turning up alive, also very interested in said panther.” I paused to take a breath, then squinted as I put a finger to my lip and pretended to think some more. “I’m pretty sure I missed something.”
Saleem swallowed then cleared his throat. “That’s enough to absorb right there. Wanna give me a minute or two before you hit me with another shitload?”
I snorted. “You don’t know the half of it,” I said then cringed and peered up at him, twisting my lips. “Sorry. Didn’t mean it that way.”
He shook his head. “It’s okay. If I were there, I’d have been helping, but surely Kai has a bunch of people helping.”
“So much for all that help. The entire plan went to poop—”
“Poop?” he asked smirking.
“Too much shit going around. Need a change,” I replied, giving him a dark look before continuing, “The entire plan went to poop, and now they have her. And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, they shocked the…hell…out of me, and that’s how I ended up here.”
“Never heard of that happening before.”
“Wasn’t in the Science of Djinn Power and its Interaction with the Physical and Ethereal Planes 101 syllabus I take it,” I asked, an eyebrow raised.
Saleem let out a low chuckle. “Ten points for remembering the name.” Then he sobered. “So I take it everyone’s a little occupied over there, huh?” he asked slowly, the corners of his eyes thinning. I knew disappointment when I saw it.
“For now, yes. But not for long. I aim to get Kai out of the…” I cleared my throat and cast about for another word, then threw my hands in the air, “aargh, I give up, whatever, shit…out of the shit…and I’ll be back here asap.”
Saleem shook his head, and I knew what he was about to say.
“Don’t you even think about it,” I snapped waving a threatening finger at him. “We’re coming. We’ll round things up today, and the team will come straight here.”
“That’s not what I was about to say,” he replied serenely.
I blinked. Apparently, I didn’t know that I was a tad clueless as to the working of the djinn’s mind. I huffed and mimicked his rolling motion, on
ly reversing the direction of my finger to tell him to go on.
His lips twitched, but he had the grace to refrain from smiling. “What I was about to say is, yes I told you a week, but there is a specific window in which you need to arrive. Not before. And not after.”
“Window?” I scowled. “You didn’t say there was a window. Why is there now a window?”
Saleem’s expression remained enigmatic. “Things are falling into place, ducks are getting themselves in a row, parts are being lined up—”
“I get the picture,” I snapped, widening my eyes at him, impatience spiking my temper.
He cleared his throat. “Anyway, there’s a window.”
“Thanks for telling me about this window. What if I came now to break your idiotic ass out of here?” I asked, shaking my head, frustrated, and annoyed with him, for reasons I did not comprehend.
Probably that lightning bolt to the brain, because it’s definitely not PMS.
I swallowed a grunt of annoyance and ignored my thoughts.
Yeeyup, definitely PMS.
Chapter 9
When I looked up at Saleem, I found him smirking and I narrowed my eyes, wondering if he’d heard my stupid inner self’s commentary.
But he merely said, “I would have just sent you straight back. The timing is…crucial.”
“Fine,” I said, folding my arms. “What’s this timeframe then?”
“Two days from today, on the night of the half moon, between midnight and midday.”
“That sounds like it’s a trick,” I muttered.
“No, I mean it. That’s the day that corresponds directly with the seventeenth of the month of Nadir, which in Kamsin is the night of the full moon. It’s a significant day, a few banquets and a celebration or two. A perfect time to get away what with all the…distractions.”
I nodded slowly, still not convinced. “I see. Would it have hurt to have told me that the last time I checked in on you?” I knew I was harping on a moot point but I was looking at something to prod.
Mhhh. Are you sure it’s not PMS? Maybe you’re due for a visit—
I shut off my stupid thoughts as Saleem shook his head. “I had a vague idea of when the best time would be, so I said a week. Figured we’d be speaking again anyway.”
“And what made you so sure of that?”
He shrugged. “I know you. You don’t dive headlong into something without first checking out the lay of the land. Besides, if you had a team supporting you, I’d assume Logan would be along for the ride. Dude kinda knows the drill.”
I sighed. The mention of Logan’s name had successfully doused my ire. “Yeah, about that.”
“Something wrong with Logan?” Saleem asked, concern now flickering in his obsidian eyes.
I shook my head. “Just that he’s still recovering. I know he’s out of his coma, and slowly getting back on his feet, but I highly doubt he’s ready to head straight into a mission.”
At this point, I wasn’t entirely sure if Saleem was aware that his fire-mage buddy was actually dragon royalty.
Saleem nodded, disappointment filling his eyes and then he rolled his shoulders and nodded again. “That’s okay. We can do this without him. He’d have been a valuable asset, but we need him well recovered more than needing him on this mission.”
I paused and studied his face. “What are you not telling me?”
He met my eyes, the innocence in his face enough to conjure up a bright sparkling halo above his head. “Not telling you what?”
“Don’t give me that. You sound like you have a plan, like you’re…organizing things.”
“Sadly, as much as I’d love to say yes, that’s not the case. I’m on my own. Omega’s managed to eliminate enough of the strong opposition that even the regular guys who would want to fight them off won’t take up arms because of the danger to their family and their homes.”
I understood, and I was all too aware that I need to get back. I cleared my throat and took another step away from him, already feeling bereft. “Okay. Two days from today on the night of the half-moon between midnight and midday. Got it.” Then I raised a finger and waggled it near his nose. “Now, while I’m gone, behave, don’t destroy the place, and don’t touch that brother of yours. He’s mine.”
With that, I began to shimmer away, opening my mind to sense my thread, sending up a prayer of gratitude to whichever deity would listen that I’d thought to use a Link Tether.
I followed my thread and sighed with relief as I felt it strengthen beneath my touch. My energy had returned and I was skimming through the astral plane straight to my body.
I was tense already, wondering how badly my physical form had been hurt. If my astral form had struggled for so long to recuperate, there was no telling what injuries I’d sustained.
But, just as I reached the partition in the Veil that would take me to the bedroom, I drew to a slow stop, my senses flaring.
I had one thing to check first.
I scanned the threads within the astral plane for any sign of the stolen panther, muttering silent prayers and curses as I skimmed along back and forth, desperate to track her down. I’d really believed that my brain, my mind, had needed time to recover.
And having traveled all the way back to the room at the Elite HQ, I’d believed it was true. But had I been wrong after all?
I refused to entertain that possibility, frantically searching the interconnected threads swirling around me. At last, after spinning about, desperate and lost within the maelstrom of energy lines, I came to a shuddering stop and forced myself to take a breath. My heart was racing, my breathing was short and desperate. I simply could not function at optimum level in this state.
And if I wanted to find Kai, I needed optimum functioning.
I blinked back tears and inhaled slowly, centering myself, pulling calm around me like a warm blanket. And then, only when my heart had ceased its thundering and my breath had calmed, did I begin again.
With my mind now clear, and focused, I found Kai’s thread within seconds, following the feedback and skimming along until I reached the point in the Veil where her life-force throbbed, a concentration of energy marking her location.
At last, relieved, I let out my breath and drew closer, testing her aura, checking for any indication of injury. Other than her brain surging with energy from being zapped so hard, I found no wounds to be concerned about. The red-and-green tinge to her aura implied sedation though—some potent drug was currently running through her system.
From her heart rate, it appeared she’d be unconscious for a while, and she definitely wasn’t going anywhere. I strengthened my connection to her, holding on tightly so that should anything change—either within her body or her immediate environment—the link would send vibrations along her life-thread toward me.
But now that I’d made that decision, I frowned, thinking for a moment that perhaps I should go straight back to her first, and then come back to check on my body. And I was convinced enough that I was about to move off in Kai’s direction when my nostrils twitched, an acrid odor singeing my nostrils.
I snapped my eyes open, surging to consciousness in an instant, and was immediately struck with searing pain in every muscle of my body, including my brain.
And I was enveloped by the stench of scorched wood and burnt fabric.
I tilted my head forward and looked down at my torso, letting out a soft squeak at the sight of half a navel, a whole left nipple, and a dime-sized portion of a right boob, all bare to the air as they peeked through a layer of black flakes of incinerated shirt.
The shocked sound that escaped my lips was half a grunt, half a sob and a dollop of a giggle as I spotted the rest of my soot encased body, along with a row of ten toes sporting half chipped-away blue nail-polish.
Damn, I really really liked those boots.
I blinked and sat up sharply, ignoring the black flakes as they drifted off me and settled in little piles on my bare thighs. I cast a shocked gaze arou
nd me at the bed and then the walls and the carpet and the edges of the door, at the dense black scorch marks spreading out from my body in a large circle.
I sprang off the bed, my knee hitting one of my Persian daggers—which thankfully lay unharmed within the burned fabric of what had once been my clothing—aware that the soft rapid panting that echoed around me was a certain badass tracker about to go full-on hysterical.
And why should I not get hysterical? I pretty much deserved a bit of hysterical considering my current situation.
One, I was bare-assed naked. And two, I’d pretty much incinerated Horner’s room.
Oops?
Chapter 10
I stood in the center of the room, having taken a few minutes to grab a change of clothes from my satchel—which had thankfully escaped incineration—and watched the agents milling around the room, blinking at the sounds of cameras going off, tensing every time someone looked over at me, their expressions part fear, part horror.
Just then, Horner walked over the threshold, his eyes widening as he took in the destruction. The ragged-edged circle of the scorch mark fanned out in a radius of at least six feet, random points of the black jagged lines reaching a foot beyond the major perimeter.
“I heard it was bad,” Horner said, almost beneath his breath. “But this…”
I held my breath, watching him study the pattern of the burn in much the same way as I’d done myself when I’d hopped off the bed in horror—except of course he wasn’t naked. Thankfully.
Get a grip, Mel.
Whatever power had struck my astral form and thrown me into Mithras, had then been transmitted to my physical body on the bed, and had then been expelled in such an explosive force that I was mildly surprised that the entire room hadn’t been obliterated.