“There has to be another way of doing this,” I said, looking around at the rows of bound Nasiri jinn. Each of them looked petrified, with some of the younger jinn crying for their mothers. In spite of what they’d done, these jinn in The Oasis were just another family.
“What other way?” Derek asked. “Besides, it’s too late to backtrack now.”
He was right. As much as I hated what we were doing to these creatures, I couldn’t think of any other way but force. Nuriya was so attached to Ben that she’d formed this strong bond that would tie him to her for his entire life. Ben himself had been convinced that there was no negotiating to be done, that it was set in stone.
I rested my head against Derek’s chest, trying to shut out the horrible scene around me. When Jeriad had made the offer of help to Derek, I hadn’t thought that it would be such a violent route as this. I’d thought that perhaps Jeriad’s jinn acquaintances might be able to help us in some other way, perhaps via a friendly connection of Nuriya’s who might put in a good word for us and persuade her to let Ben go. I had been so anxious to accept Jeriad’s proposal, since there was nothing else on the table, that I hadn’t stopped to consider what exactly this would involve.
“Let’s just hope we’re reunited with Ben soon,” Rose murmured to my right. She held my hand and squeezed it.
Ten minutes later, it appeared that the Drizans had emptied every single chamber. They piled out of the apartments and gathered around the Nasiris being held captive on the ground. Some of the younger Drizan jinn dipped down to poke and taunt the Nasiri cruelly. I had half a mind to snap at them to stop, but I knew that wouldn’t help.
“Now we’re just waiting for Cyrus,” Derek muttered.
“They’re coming.” Aiden pointed toward the staircase nearest to us.
The towering form of Cyrus descended the stairs, carrying Nuriya in his arms. He’d tied her with the same strange rope the other jinn had been bound by. Her cries of anguish on seeing her family lined up along the wall were muffled by a gag in her mouth. She coughed and choked.
Cyrus laid Nuriya down on the ground in front of the rest of the Nasiri jinn, and, to my surprise, removed her gag. Perhaps he enjoyed the sound of her sobbing.
I tried to avoid looking at the queen, seeing as there was nothing I could think of to alleviate her suffering or prevent the Drizans’ path of vengeance. To my dismay, she addressed me directly, forcing me to look up.
“Benjamin’s birth mother,” she gasped, as though she didn’t know my name. “You don’t understand. My darling Ben is in grave danger. He needs us. If you let the Drizans have their way with us, your son will be lost to you forever. Bahir is with him now protecting him, but he will sense my pain and leave Ben. If that happens, oh! I can’t bear to think of it! He’ll be left stranded and—”
“Enough!” Cyrus snapped. He stuffed the gag back in her mouth.
The blood drained from my face. “What?” I choked, staring down at Nuriya. “What do you mean, Ben’s in danger? Where is he? What happened to him?”
I stumbled forward, ignoring the angered expression on Cyrus’s face as I reached down to pull the gag from Nuriya’s mouth. But, bizarrely, as much as I tugged, it was stuck fast. I turned to Cyrus with pleading eyes.
“I need to hear what this jinni has to say about my son,” I breathed. “Please, remove the gag.”
Cyrus’ eyes smoldered as he looked from me to Nuriya. Then he turned on Jeriad, whose face remained stoic as he witnessed the scene. Cyrus’ jaw twitched as he stooped down and pulled out the gag.
Nuriya coughed and spluttered, tears streaming down her cheeks.
I bent down to her level and touched her shoulder. It felt surprisingly solid for such an ethereal creature, and I gripped it hard.
“Where is Benjamin? He’ll be left stranded where? Are you saying that he’s not here in The Oasis?”
Nuriya bit down on her trembling lip and nodded. “He’s not here. After you left, an oracle informed us of something terrible about Benjamin.” She swallowed hard. “The Elders intend to make him their slave for eternity. They want him for themselves—they have since he was a newborn. An Elder imprinted on him when he was an infant and formed a bond that would connect the two of them for as long as Benjamin’s heart remained beating. Ben is currently in the supernatural dimension with Aisha, my niece, and Bahir, my partner, trying to find a way to get rid of the bond that the Elder formed with him. The Elder is calling Benjamin back to Cruor, and since he drank so much human blood recently, the spirit has become strong enough to take control of Ben’s body like never before. I don’t know exactly where they are now in the supernatural world, but Bahir is inside Ben, battling the Elder to keep his mind from being taken over. If I continue to be harassed, Bahir will sense my disturbance and come for me. He might be on his way already! Benjamin needs two jinn with him!”
Her words left me speechless. I froze, kneeling on the floor and gaping at the jinni.
My son, bonded to an Elder?
“What does the Elder want with him?” Derek asked, shock shaking his voice.
“He wants to use Ben to nurse himself back to health and help all the Elders rise up. Other vessels are of no use to them, for they are too weak to inhabit regular vessels. But Ben’s Elder, Basilius, managed to form a special bond which allowed him to gain nourishment from the blood Ben consumed. If he manages to lure Ben back to Cruor, he will certainly be strong enough to inhabit Benjamin and take him over fully.”
“When did he leave?” I asked, shaking her shoulders. “How long has he been gone?”
“Days now,” she replied.
Oh, no. No. Not my son.
I’d often feared that something bad had happened to Ben while he’d been in Aviary, but nothing could have prepared me for this.
Nuriya had every reason to lie to us regarding Ben in order to save her and her family’s skin from the Drizan jinn. But something in her eyes made me believe that she was telling the truth. As hard as it was to swallow, Ben having been bonded to an Elder would explain a lot of things, like why he was the only vampire we’d ever come across who couldn’t physically stomach animal blood.
And if there was even the smallest chance that Nuriya was speaking the truth, breaking Benjamin’s bond with the jinn would actually do more harm than good. Possibly irreparable harm. I clenched my jaw at the irony. This bond created by jinn that had caused me so much pain before now appeared to be his saving grace. And by trying to cut it off, we were cutting off my son.
The Drizans had to stop with their raid.
I faced the agitated Cyrus. Even though I knew this monster would never agree to it, I couldn’t help but try. “Your lordship, we must call this off. Your actions could be greatly injuring my son, for if Nuriya speaks the truth, he is bonded to a much worse force than the jinn.”
The tension that had been building between Cyrus and me since I’d entered Nuriya’s bedroom while he tortured her reached breaking point. He whirled around to glare at Jeriad.
“What is this, dragon?” he seethed, fire in his eyes. “I cannot tolerate this vampire any longer. None of this was part of our deal. We agreed to extricate the young man from the Nasiris’ clutches, and that was all. What we choose to do with these traitors is none of your business.”
I looked pleadingly at Jeriad, but what could the dragon shifter do? We had already entered into an agreement with the Drizans on the strength of the goodwill the dragons had built with the jinn over the years. Their willingness to bend to the dragons’ requests only stretched so far.
“Please,” I croaked, not sure what other option I had left but to beg for any scrap of compassion this hard-hearted jinni might possess. “Just… stop harassing the Nasiris. At least for now.”
Cyrus shrugged me off. He moved closer to Nuriya and replaced the gag in her mouth even as she sobbed. Then he turned his back on us completely and looked around at his jinn companions. “We return now to the palace. Make sure that not a singl
e Nasiri gets left behind.”
He scooped up Nuriya again in his arms and, shooting one last glare my way, vanished. He was followed a moment later by the rest of the Drizan jinn, carrying the Nasiri captives in their arms, leaving me, Derek and our small army standing alone in the magnificent atrium.
Jeriad approached Derek and me, his piercing, aquamarine-blue eyes meeting mine. “Queen Sofia. Backing out of an agreement with jinn is simply not done.”
“So where is his end of the agreement?” Rose asked. “He’s supposed to find Ben for us.”
Jeriad glanced at my daughter. “I suspect that he sensed the truth in Nuriya’s words, that Benjamin is no longer in The Oasis. His agreement was to break the bond and return Ben to us, on the understanding that Ben would actually be here. He never said he’d go hunting elsewhere for your brother….”
I stared at my husband, and I could see from his blood-drained face that the same question was running through both our minds. What now?
Benjamin was trapped somewhere in the supernatural dimension, and if what Nuriya said came to pass, Bahir would leave him, and he wouldn’t have enough protection to stop the Elder from calling him to Cruor… What will become of my son?
Chapter 3: Derek
I wanted to resist taking Nuriya’s words seriously. I wanted to believe she’d spoken them solely out of desperation, in an attempt to save her and her family, and Benjamin was still here somewhere in The Oasis. Yet another part of me sensed the truth in the jinni’s words, even despite her desperate situation. What she’d told us about Ben just… made sense. I recalled the vision that Ben had shortly before we’d all left The Shade for The Oasis. He’d described Cruor in vivid detail, and of a dark presence engulfing him as a newborn. The pieces of Benjamin’s mystery fell into place in my mind.
And yet I wasn’t ready to resign myself to Ben’s fate.
“We need to do a thorough search of this place,” I spoke up, glancing around at our companions. “Search every nook and cranny.”
We split up and began making our way around the massive atrium, searching through sprawling apartment after apartment. We checked every room, in cupboards, under beds, but Ben was nowhere to be found down here.
“Perhaps he’s being kept in the upper atrium,” Aiden muttered.
“Let’s search there now,” Sofia replied anxiously.
We hurried back into the kitchen and climbed up the narrow staircase toward the prison above.
“Maybe he’s in one of these cells,” Sofia whispered, gazing around the dimly lit prison corridors. This network of cells was like a labyrinth. There were so many small chambers that it took us a long time to complete the task, even with all of us splitting up in search parties and moving with supernatural speed. Ashley straying from Landis and getting lost didn’t help.
Once we were certain that Benjamin was not down here in the cells, our last hope remained with the upper atrium. My throat tightened as we climbed the final staircase leading up to the prison’s exit. The atrium above is where Jeramiah lives. I still hadn’t gotten used to the idea of Lucas having a son, much less the idea of meeting my nephew in person. I wondered how much Jeramiah would look like my brother, and whether he would sound like him.
I swallowed as we entered the upper atrium’s gardens. This place looked different now compared to when the Maslens had inhabited it all those years ago. It was a bizarre feeling to be standing here, in the same place where that fateful night occurred. The night I’d rescued Sofia from the hands of Borys Maslen, the night that Benjamin Hudson and my brother had lost their lives.
“I suggest we enter the gardens to keep ourselves positioned centrally while we scope this place out,” Aiden spoke up.
We took his suggestion and entered a rose garden nearby, eyeing the various levels of the atrium. We’d been to this upper atrium only recently, but we had been trapped by the powers of the jinn, and we hadn’t had a chance to walk around and explore the place. Before we launched into another search for Ben, we needed to get a better feeling for the scope of the atrium. Because looking for him here wouldn’t be as simple—it was packed with vampires. Though there were no bloodsuckers to be seen walking around. I guessed that spotting the Drizan jinn had given them such a scare that they were still locked in their apartments, not daring to come out.
We wound our way through an orchard and several ornamental gardens before we arrived at a large pond. Rose stopped near the edge of it and stared down at a slab of stone set among the green grass. I walked toward her to see what it was. A memorial stone. Lucas Dominic Novak. Benjamin had mentioned this memorial stone during his recounting of his stay here in The Oasis. Jeramiah must have installed the slab in honor of his father.
We finished passing through the gardens, arriving at the other end of the atrium. Still, none of us detected a single vampire out on the verandas.
I feared that disturbing them in their homes would quickly descend into a fight. They were spooked after seeing us accompanied by the Drizans, but if we started barging into their apartments, they would get defensive. We had to handle the situation delicately, in spite of how desperate Sofia and I were.
“We should just go around knocking on their doors,” Sofia said, eyeing the nearest apartment to us. “We’ll address them calmly and explain that we’re not here to cause any trouble—we’re merely looking for Ben.”
“Or Joseph, which was what Ben called himself during his stay with these vampires,” Rose added. I wasn’t sure if the vampires were still ignorant of Benjamin’s real identity or if the jinn had finally informed them.
The vampires and I split up again into small groups, while the dragon shifters remained in the gardens. I didn’t think that bringing those menacing men to the vampires’ doorsteps would help.
We began knocking on doors, and surprisingly, our method worked. They were alarmed to see us, and asked many questions, but nobody tried to fight us. Nobody knew where Joseph, or Benjamin, was either. We insisted on searching inside their apartments, which they allowed us to do, albeit begrudgingly, as long as we were quick about it. They also warned us that if we dared touch a single one of their humans, they’d wage war on us. We were accompanied by dragon shifters, and we would have won in a struggle, but I reminded myself of how The Shade used to be, before Sofia came along. If we freed the humans from the cells, these vampires would only find new innocent victims tomorrow. Surviving on human blood was how they chose to live, and as much as we had all changed in The Shade, attempting to force our rules on them wouldn’t change a thing. As Sofia and I discussed the matter, I could see that the suggestion of simply wiping out these Oasis vampires was near the tip of her tongue, but she didn’t say it. She never was one to encourage violence as a solution, and she knew what slaughtering my brother’s son and his entire coven would do to me.
Reluctantly, we left the matter behind and continued moving from chamber to chamber. We even came across a handful of witches, though they didn’t attempt to harm us with their magic. We avoided answering as many questions as possible and moved about the rooms in silence.
In the end, I didn’t find myself face to face with Jeramiah.
But we didn’t find Ben either.
After one last sweep around the layered verandas, we admitted defeat and headed back to the desert.
“What about the camel stable up in the desert?” Rose suggested desperately.
Although none of us really expected him to be there, we searched the camel stable. Ben wasn’t there.
Sofia and I locked eyes. There was no point in fooling ourselves any longer. We weren’t going to find Benjamin in The Oasis.
“I believe that Nuriya was speaking truth.” Jeriad spoke up, breaking through the tense silence. “We dragons can detect liars by a mere glance into their eyes. And I didn’t detect untruth in Nuriya’s gaze. I believe that your son indeed left here and is in the supernatural dimension.”
But we had no idea where. Or what state he would be in now, i
f Bahir had left him as Nuriya had feared.
I clutched a palm to my forehead, closing my eyes and trying to focus my mind.
I let out a breath.
“All right,” I said heavily. “With Jeriad’s assurance, we’re going to assume that what Nuriya told Sofia is correct. We’ve been wasting our time… I have not the first clue in hell what we can do now, if anything, to help my son. But before we do anything, we ought to return to The Shade.”
Chapter 4: Derek
As we traveled back to our island, the dragons’ supernatural speed didn’t seem fast enough. As I’d admitted to everyone, I didn’t have any semblance of a plan for how to help my son. And the thought that we had just made things worse for him by getting the Nasiris kidnapped by the Drizans was eating away at me. What would happen to him without the protection of two jinn? Would the Elder really manage to draw him back to Cruor? The latter shouldn’t even have been a question, for I knew the kind of powers the Elders could have over a person—I knew them too well. I was just fumbling for some hope in this predicament.
When we finally reached The Shade, I was glad that it was overcast again. The spell that Ibrahim had cast over us to keep us in shadow while we were gone had lasted till now, but I didn’t want any hunters detecting our movements.
The dragons remained above the clouds until we were past the boundary, then descended upon The Shade, silently and gracefully. They touched down in the clearing before the Port.
We had been gone longer than I’d hoped, and the first thing I wanted to do was check on my sister and Xavier. I wondered if Vivienne might have given birth already. But aside from checking that she was in good health, and possibly meeting my new niece or nephew, I needed to see how they’d been holding up since we’d been gone.