Exquisite Captive

  Raif sighed and turned his back on the city. He’d made his decision—but could he live with it?

  “Zan?” he called, shutting the door behind him. Jordif’s loft was still and quiet.

  He walked down the hall, toward Zanari’s bedroom. Her door was open and she was kneeling on the floor in a circle of earth that glowed bright green, her eyes closed and an expression of intense pain on her face.

  “Zanari!”

  Her eyes flew open and for a moment she just looked at Raif, her expression cloudy, her body convulsing with shivers. He broke through the circle of chiaan-infused earth and knelt down next to her.

  “Where is he? What’s happening?” he asked, panicked. He’d only seen Zanari’s voiqhif affect her like this once: the day she saw Haran torturing one of the tavrai.

  “Raif—there’s so much darkness in him. Like he doesn’t have a soul. It’s like being at the bottom of a dark well in the middle of the night.”

  She wasn’t answering his question.

  “Did he get to her? Is Haran with Nalia?”

  He should never have left her alone. He jumped up, preparing to evanesce—then he froze, crushed by the choice he had made on the roof.

  The sand dune.

  His father’s tear-stained face.

  “I have no idea where he is. It was dark,” Zanari said. “I heard sirens, but gods, that’s all over the city. Everything else is fuzzy.” Zanari shook her head and tears welled in her eyes. “It’s so frustrating. I feel like I get close to understanding, to seeing more, and then it’s like someone’s covering my eyes. What’s the point of this gift if I can’t use it right? If I were Shaitan, they would have taught me how to do this, but . . .”

  Zanari buried her face in her hands.

  Raif rubbed her back. “It’s okay. You’re doing your best.”

  “My best is going to get her killed.”

  “Don’t say that,” he said quietly.

  If Nalia died, whatever bits of him she’d taken with her would die too. He’d have to learn to accept that, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to start now.

  Zanari shivered again and Raif pulled her up. “Listen, there’s been a change of plans.”

  He quickly filled her in on everything that had happened since Nalia had called him earlier that evening, leaving out those moments in the conservatory when there had been nothing but the feel and smell and taste of her.

  When he was finished, Zanari put her arms around him. “I’m sorry, little brother.”

  Zanari had always read between the lines, but he wondered how much of what he’d lost—what he was giving up—was showing on his face.

  “We should go now,” he said. “Before Earth’s crawling with Ifrit.”

  Zanari followed him up to the roof. They carried no luggage—they would manifest whatever they needed for the journey.

  She reached out and Raif grabbed her hand. He pressed his fingers to the tattoo on his left arm, just as Nalia had shown him.

  “Lefia,” he whispered. It still pulsed with a dull throb of pain, but the image of the cave appeared, hovering between him and his sister.

  Zanari stared at the unassuming landscape of sand and stars where Solomon’s sigil lay hidden, entranced. Bolts of lightning struck the sand. Raif hated evanescing during bad weather, but they couldn’t wait any longer. “I can’t believe it’s real,” she breathed.

  A part of him wished it wasn’t.

  Raif focused his chiaan and was just about to evanesce when he felt a tug on his arm. He looked over just as Zanari crumpled to the ground.

  “Zan!”

  She was on her knees, pressing her fingertips against her temples. He crouched down, supporting her. Sometimes this happened when she didn’t properly shut off her connection to her targets.

  “He’s close, Raif,” she gasped. “Really close.” A shudder swept through Zanari’s body and she looked up, her eyes wide. “I think Haran’s at Nalia’s house.”

  There’s no choice. There never was.

  Raif pulled away from Zanari, the smoke from his evanescence surging around him like a tornado.

  “Raif! Don’t do this,” Zanari cried. “We need the sigil, you know that.”

  “Stay here.”

  “Raif!” she tried to grab his arm, but he shook her off. He felt the twitch deep in his stomach as his mind and body connected to his destination.

  “I’m not letting her die.”

  “But the sigil—”

  “Screw the sigil.”

  He spun into the air, his body compressed into an infinitesimal speck as it hurled itself toward Malek’s mansion.

  25

  THE MANSION FELT CAVERNOUS WITHOUT MALEK OR any of the servants; Nalia hadn’t realized how much her master’s presence had filled every corner, every niche. Now her earthly prison seemed abandoned and forlorn. Lifeless.

  And yet the house was holding its breath, waiting. Watching. Something was wrong: but what? What? Nalia’s heart quickened and she spun around. “Leilan, I really think—”

  The words died on her lips as a shaft of moonlight struck her friend from the skylight above. Nalia stared at the creature standing in the middle of the room—half monster, where the moonlight skimmed its skin, half Leilan, where the shadows gathered.

  Nalia froze. No, she thought. No.

  The dream. The too-real memory of that night in the palace. A stench so strong it overpowered the smell of blood and torn flesh. It was here, now. In front of her. Hiding in the body of her friend. But what was it?

  The creature stepped out of the moonlight so that it once again appeared as Leilan. This was a dark magic Nalia had never seen before. Was it possessing Leilan? Or just disguised as her? A malevolent smile tugged on Leilan’s lips, the sudden malice on her friend’s face—what looked like her friend’s face—more terrifying than what the moonlight had revealed.

  “Haran has been waiting a long time, Ghan Aisouri,” it said. The voice that came out of Leilan’s mouth was rough and deep, as memorable as a brush with death.

  Nalia’s body worked faster than her mind. She pulled her leg back and thrust it into Leilan’s chest, using the force of the blow to flip herself back and away. Her friend’s body flew into a column, bright, scarlet blood from the back of her head smearing the marble as she slipped to the ground. Nalia winced—if Haran was possessing Leilan, she didn’t want to do any more damage to her friend’s body than she had to. She was hoping Haran would tire of his borrowed body—she knew he’d want to fight her with his own formidable, hulking form.

  Nalia hesitated, watching her enemy. The jinni’s eyes snapped open: the beautiful Marid blue of Leilan’s had been replaced with the evil red of an Ifrit.

  “Get out of her, skag,” Nalia said, her voice low and deadly.

  “Gladly,” he said, in Leilan’s voice. “This jinni fit a bit too tight, anyway.”

  Leilan’s body began to shimmer. Her skin and clothes peeled away to reveal the monster underneath. Haran’s impossibly large frame unfolded from its stolen cocoon: first the long arms, then the torso, and finally the legs that straightened like an awakening spider’s. Haran stepped out of the confining web of the stolen body and stood to his full, towering height. He wasn’t possessing Leilan—he’d consumed her.

  Haran wants to know what an empress tastes like.

  Nalia’s strangled cry split the air as she watched Haran’s form settle and the last of Leilan fade away. The Haran she’d seen in the palace and in her dreams had been a disguise—here was the real fiend. He looked exactly like the illustrations of ghouls that she’d studied in the palace. They’re real. It wasn’t possible and yet: his skin—a corpse’s ashy gray, his teeth—black as obsidian and sharp as knives. Her best friend’s blood in his veins.

  Leilan.

  The beautiful, laughing eyes were gone forever. The artist’s hands. The heart that had fought its way out of grief and despair, into a joyful freedom.

  Nalia’s eyes, filling.
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  Leilan.

  Her heart, crumbling.

  Leilan.

  Her hate, stirring.

  Leilan.

  “I’m going to kill you,” Nalia said, her voice calm. Fire and grief and certainty burned through her. The ghoul smiled and, once again, he was her best friend, wearing the paisley scarf that had brought them together three years ago.

  “Haran doesn’t think so.” He took off the scarf and tore it into strips with his claws. “No, it is time for the jinni to join the other Aisouri trash.”

  Nalia allowed her glamour to fall away—if she had to die, she would die a Ghan Aisouri. And she would drag him to the godlands with her if she had to.

  “Ah.” Haran’s eyes glimmered with delight as they roved over her face, took in the violet eyes and tattoos. “So the Ghan Aisouri doesn’t want to hide anymore, does she?”

  “I see no point in it, do you?”

  “Haran and the Aisouri are the same. They wear other skins to hide their true selves. They hide because the weaker jinn fear them.”

  “I am nothing like you,” she growled.

  Haran was the story in the dark, the shiver down the spine—a monstrous legend come to life. She was an empress risen from the dead.

  “If you’re going to kill me,” Nalia said, “at least have the courage to do it in your own skin.”

  She wouldn’t be able to kill him if he looked like her friend. The ghoul was only a few feet away now, the salivating hunger in his eyes so wrong in Leilan’s once shining blue ones. Haran gave her a mock bow and his body shimmered. With each step toward her his appearance changed. He became a Marid with jade shackles and a small birthmark beside her mouth, then a Djan with leather gloves and a birthmark near her ear. He was a Shaitan wearing a sari—her birthmark was a dark patch of skin that bled onto her neck. Then he was a Djan with a blue-checkered scarf, and a Shaitan with a large, colorful ring that glinted on her finger. Finally, he wore the face of the jinni who had haunted her dreams ever since the night of the coup. The Haran of her nightmares.

  Nalia stared. All that blood shed because she had wanted to live. Why couldn’t she have just let herself die when she’d had the chance? Nalia forced her grief away and channeled the hatred pulsing in her. She took a breath and raised her hands. She had to become the killer she’d been trained to be; it was time to let the fire and darkness in her take over. She could almost feel the Ghan Aisouri standing behind her, silent, ghostly witnesses to the last stand of their sacred line. Nalia took a breath and slapped her hands onto the marble floor at her feet. The earth gave way under the power of her chiaan and the ground shuddered, then began shaking with wild, violent spasms. Haran was thrown off his feet as the ground swelled, a wave of broken marble. He failed to gain his balance as the earth bucked and thrashed under Nalia’s power, his body sliding across the smooth floor. The chandelier in the center of the room shook, a discordant symphony of glass. As deep cracks appeared in the ceiling’s plaster, the fixture fell to the ground below in a cascade of shimmering, fractured light. Haran growled, an animal fury overtaking him as the glass found a home in his decaying skin. Nalia raised her arm to block her face from the thousands of deadly shards that sailed toward her, and the earthquake slowed to a gentle rumble as her hands lost contact with the earth. Spasms shook her body as Nalia struggled to hold on to what little chiaan she had left, and she gritted her teeth against the pain of the tiny knives the chandelier’s remains had dug into her arm.

  Haran struggled to his feet. “This ends now, Aisouri,” he said.

  He shed his last skin until he was pure ghoul. Powerful muscles flexed underneath rotting flesh, and his clawlike nails covered in old blood scraped at the floor. Nalia stood her ground as Haran walked toward her, chiaan sparking at her fingertips. She could evanesce, of course, if she wanted to put off this fight. And maybe she should, to give Raif and Zanari more time. But she was tired of running. Besides, she planned to kill Haran slowly. A swift death would be far too kind. And if she ended up being the one to lose her life tonight, she’d make damned certain he worked long and hard to take it from her.

  Almost as if he’d read her mind, Haran raised his hands and a ball of deadly crimson chiaan began swirling between his palms. For just a moment, Nalia thought she saw two eyes deep in the fire’s heart. Haran’s mouth split in a howl of rage as he hurled the fireball toward her. Before it could find its mark, a cloud of emerald smoke filled the room and Raif was running toward her, his face full of relief and terror and something Nalia was too afraid to name.

  Raif sped in her direction as he threw a barrage of chiaan toward the ghoul that sent the ball of poisonous fire careering off its path. The flames, in search of flesh, glanced off the wall, leaving it undamaged as it returned to its master. Raif stared at Haran, horror and disbelief mingling on his face. The ghoul threw the ball of fire once again, and Raif grasped Nalia by the waist and threw her onto the ground as it flew past them.

  “You okay?” he asked, looking down at her.

  “Get the hell out of here!” she yelled. But she couldn’t hide the wild delight on her face.

  “So stubborn,” he murmured.

  She threw her arms on either side of him to create a wall of smoke that masked them from Haran, then they scrambled up, slipping and sliding over the debris. Nalia grabbed Raif’s hand as she sprinted toward the shattered French double doors that led to the rose garden. She kicked aside the pieces of glass and wood that littered their path as they sprinted out of the death trap the mansion had become.

  “You came for me,” she said, dazed. “You could have died and you came.”

  He grabbed her hands and pulled her against him. “I had to.”

  “Even though I’m a salfit?”

  He grinned. “Even though you’re a salfit.”

  Nalia pulled his mouth to hers and Raif gripped her around the waist, their bodies becoming one as her smoke—now a rich violet hue—took them away.

  26

  NALIA AND RAIF EVANESCED ONTO A THIN STRIP OF sand, holding one another in the soft moonlight. The amber scent of her violet evanescence clung to them. Thick fog drifted toward the shore from the sea: an army of ghosts come to rally around the last Ghan Aisouri and her tavrai.

  Raif looked over his shoulder, as if Haran might have somehow managed to evanesce with them. “What was that?”

  “A ghoul.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “I know. At the palace, we had this one tutor who always insisted the ghouls were real, and some of the Ghan Aisouri claimed to have ancestors that battled ghouls, but no one really believed them.”

  “Well, this day just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it?”

  “He’ll follow us,” Nalia said. Her eyes lingered on the stubborn line of his mouth. She knew Raif wasn’t going to listen to her, but she had to try, anyway. “You need to go.”

  He shook his head. “Just tell me how I can help.”

  Nalia’s eyes darted around the deserted beach where she’d spent most of her mornings on Earth doing her Sha’a Rho exercises. The ocean had claimed most of the sand, which was exactly what she’d wanted. The water served two purposes: it could put out Haran’s fires and she could use her power with water to dissolve into the sea if she had to. The sand and surrounding rocks and cliffs gave her plenty of earth energy to draw from, and she had no shortage of wind to fashion into destructive gales.

  She pointed to the cliff overlooking the beach. It was far enough away that Raif would be out of Haran’s line of fire, but he’d be able to see everything that happened. “Go up there. You can draw power from the rock and Haran will be too busy down here with me to bother hurting you. If I need help, you can attack him from the cliff. But you have to promise me you’ll evanesce if he tries to fight you.”

  “Too far away,” he said. His voice took on the short, clipped tone of a commander. She suddenly felt like one of Raif’s tavrai. “By the time my chiaan reaches him, he’
ll have moved. I’ve seen Haran in action—he’s fast, really fast, and he never uses the same move twice. It’s impossible to find a rhythm when fighting him, so you have to be prepared for anything.” Raif pointed to a large rock formation that stood in the center of the beach. “Why don’t I start over there? I’ll be close enough to see his weak spots, and I can use the arch as a point of attack.”

  Over the centuries, the sea had whittled a sizable arch in the center of the rock. Through it, Nalia could see more deserted beach. It’d be easy for Raif to attack Haran above or through the arch and use the rock itself as a shield. She had to admit, it was a good strategy. But he’d be so close.

  “Too dangerous,” she said.

  A ghost of a smile played on Raif’s lips. “Give me a little credit. I’ve been leading an army for three years. Other than you, I’m at the top of Calar’s execution list.”

  “But—”

  He leaned in and pressed his lips against her forehead. “We’re gonna make it through this. He’s strong—but you’re stronger.”

  Raif evanesced, landing neatly on the thin surface of the rock. Behind him, the sea was quiet and the waves were small, filling the air with the sounds of their unceasing battle with the shore. Far off, Nalia could see lights twinkling off large ships, like bobbing candles. Behind her, traffic hummed on the Pacific Coast Highway. She threw up a glamour to hide the beach from human eyes. No matter what happened tonight, all any curious humans would see was the ocean crashing against the bases of the surrounding cliffs.

  In the few seconds she had before Haran would find her, Nalia held up her hand and whispered Bashil’s true name. A small violet cloud appeared on the palm of her hand, an image in its center. Bashil’s eyes were sunken in his thin face, the bones covered by pale, ashy skin. He looked up at her for a moment before diving into a writhing mass of emaciated children, all fighting over what appeared to be dirty hunks of bread tossed into the mud. Surrounding the jinn, she could see the Ifrit guards throwing scraps of bread, jeering. She wished she could reach her hand into the image and strangle every one of them.