Ghostland

by Jory Strong

  Zurael gripped Aisling’s wrist as soon as Annalise left. He studied the charm.

  A memory stirred, an image from one of the books in the library of his father’s house, but it remained elusive. Finally he lifted his eyes and met Aisling’s. He saw her determination—not only to go for the child, but to find the Ghost source.

  “Gather food and we’ll leave now,” he said, willing to put off his hunt for Javier in order to keep her safe.

  Fourteen

  ZURAEL worried it was a trap. Twice police cars had pulled alongside the bus. Once a guardsman’s jeep had slowed at an intersection and waved the bus onward when it would have yielded the right of way.

  Aisling’s fear washed over him each time the authorities were present, fear so deeply ingrained in her she couldn’t prevent her rapid breathing or the tiny tremors that shook her. And yet she didn’t turn back from the task.

  He took her hand as they walked, felt the tension in her slide away. Her courage amazed him. Her trust destroyed him. He couldn’t allow anything to happen to her.

  They passed the houses huddled together in worn-down poverty and gritty survival, the vine-controlled wastelands, the burned out, rusted shells of other structures, until eventually they came to the place where ragged orphan children fished on the banks. The Mission followed—a last vestige of civilization before The Barrens.

  Zurael thought he caught a glimpse of Davida in an upstairs window. His suspicion that it was a trap set for Aisling grew.

  Hidden eyes followed them. He felt the gazes—curious, apathetic, hostile, suspicious. Predatory.

  His hand fell away from Aisling’s. He studied their surroundings, looking for danger. Prepared to kill anyone or anything that dared attack.

  Having explored The Barrens on wings, Zurael chafed at the pace they were forced into because of the necessity of having to look for the fish symbol. He hated that Aisling was so vulnerable, so very human in a place filled with danger.

  She slowed at the first blackened shell beyond The Mission. It stood at an intersection, though nothing remained on three of the corners and the road had long ago cracked and become pocked with holes.

  A school of crudely drawn fish was ankle-high on the strongest of the walls still standing. Each swam in the same direction, face pointing forward, through the intersection.

  “We’re going to find them,” Aisling said, excitement and anticipation making the blue of her eyes rival the sky.

  Without conscious thought, Zurael leaned forward. He was a short breath away before he realized the danger, how close he was to touching his lips to her.

  He stood abruptly and turned away. But not before his heart wrenched at the sight of Aisling’s uncertainty.

  They continued on in silence, their progress slow. The continued sensation of being watched, considered prey, kept him at her side instead of scouting ahead.

  They stopped long enough to eat lunch. Then later, dinner.

  The daylight grew into evening light, but neither suggested they turn back toward Oakland. It became harder to locate the symbols of early faith.

  Several times they hid as jeeps driven by guardsmen patrolled. A helicopter in the distance, its arrival too sudden and unexpected, caught them out in the open, though it didn’t veer toward them.

  Crickets and cicadas came to life. The rumble of car engines purred in the dusk all around them, alternating between growing louder and fading.

  Zurael considered shifting to the demon’s form and flying with Aisling to safety but thought of the game he’d witnessed the guardsmen playing each time he’d been in The Barrens. The risk was too great. He couldn’t protect her from bullets, or a fatal fall, if he became formless.

  “We need to find shelter,” he said, studying what remained from the time when one city merged into another and another until little was left besides concrete and steel and teeming masses of humans penned in a place that would ultimately make their slaughter easy.

  Nature was in the process of reclaiming much of the area they were in. The vines once developed by scientists to leach industrial poison from the soil now covered the horror left by man’s temporary rule of Earth.

  Aisling pointed at what might have once been a secure storage shed. “How about there?”

  Zurael studied it for a moment. He compared it to the larger structures around them, most with gaping holes, to the cars buried beneath shrouds of thick stems and shiny leaves. He nodded. The walls of the storage building were concrete, the roof solid metal. They’d be trapped, but the narrow doorway allowed for a defensible space.

  The wind brought the sound of hounds baying. Next to him Aisling shivered and rubbed her arms. He ushered her into the building and indicated a corner for her to settle into just as the sound of a helicopter reached him.

  It was a risk, but this time he deemed it necessary. He crossed to her and knelt in front of her, noting how fragile she was, sitting on the floor with her knees to her chest and her arms wrapped around her legs. The desire to protect her filled him with the primitive, explosive heat of molten rock.

  “I won’t be far,” he said, unable to stop himself from stroking her cheek, from brushing his thumb over her lips and losing himself in angelite eyes.

  Pride spiked through him when she pulled a long kitchen knife from the burlap sack holding what remained of their food. She laid it on the ground next to her. “I’ll be okay.”

  Zurael shed his physical form and moved away from her, motes of dust and dirt, lightly tossed leaves and insect carcasses the only things marking his exit.

  The drone of engines assailed him, vibrated through him. Wild-life scattered and darted into hiding places ahead of the rumble announcing the approach of man.

  A small swarm of the finger-length fey who feasted on blood raced after a fleeing deer, hoping for a meal before deep nightfall forced them to their nest.

  Their wings glittered with the colors of sunset. Their upper bodies and faces were vaguely human though their minds were those of a savage hive insect.

  Zurael moved away from Aisling’s shelter cautiously, gauging the distance to ensure he could get back to her if danger threatened. The baying of the hounds grew closer, coming from the same direction as the sound of the helicopter’s rotors. He couldn’t see the helicopter until he reached the end of his self-defined tether to Aisling. Then uneasiness filled him at the spotlight illuminating the ground beneath it.

  He’d witnessed the guardsmen carousing in The Barrens, casually slaughtering anything that crossed their path, but tonight was different. They were hunting something specific, and coming toward where Aisling hid.

  He shifted his attention to the closest buildings. Reevaluated them. The storage shed was a defensible position against wild animals, humans and supernatural beings, but it wasn’t safe against armed men.

  Zurael returned to Aisling. “Let’s find another place.”

  She rose to her feet without argument. At the doorway he lifted her in his arms.

  With a thought, the wings unfurled, unhindered by the Djinn-created fabric of his shirt and jacket. In two steps he was airborne, her weight negligible, her soft, joyous laugh sending heat cascading into his heart as he flew the short distance necessary to reach a hole in the third floor of a building that looked relatively stable.

  “That was wonderful!” she said, eyes sparkling, voice breathless and cheeks flushed, for an instant unafraid of anything.

  He wished he could keep her that way. But all too soon the bloodhounds arrived, baying, noses to the ground. They went directly to the place Aisling had been, then circled in confusion at the lost track as guardsmen arrived in jeeps.

  Fury filled Zurael. The witches would pay for their part in sending Aisling into a trap. “Stay here,” he said before once again becoming a swirl of air.

  In the desert a single Djinn could become a sandstorm deadly enough to bury large caravans of men and machines in a matter of moments. He had less to work with in The Barrens, but Zu
rael was determined to disrupt the hunt for Aisling.

  Leaves and sticks, rocks and small scraps of metal—all gathered in the violent energy of his unformed mass. Men cursed and dogs yelped when he bore down on them, blinding them temporarily, making them bleed when debris struck them. Some ducked into the shelter he and Aisling had abandoned, while others raced toward the building where she was now hidden.

  Rage gave the winds more force, but the vines reclaiming the land covered the loose material that would make him deadlier. As the first of the guardsmen neared the building Aisling was in, Zurael shot upward, using all the gathered energy to reach the helicopter.

  It rocked, tilted, might have escaped his assault, but the open door where a man with a machine gun sat allowed the gathered debris to distract the pilot in a critical instant. The humans screamed as the helicopter spun out of control before striking the ground.

  Zurael returned to Aisling. Beneath them, men rushed to the downed helicopter. Radios squealed. Panicked, angry voices reported the crash and were told additional guardsmen were being dispatched. Already there were too many of them, spread too far apart and too heavily armed, too nervous, for Zurael to attack with Aisling close by—and even if he could buy her time to escape, there were other predators to worry about.

  Machine-gun fire exploded, vented in fury or fear at some movement in the shadows. Next to him, Zurael could feel Aisling shiver, could hear the shortness of her breath as she remained completely motionless, not giving in to the primitive instinct to run.

  Guardsmen pulled the bodies of the pilot and his passenger from the twisted metal. “There’s nothing we can do for them,” an authoritative voice said. “Newman, get the heat sensor out. Alvarez, get the dogs. Refresh their memories with the scent article. Let’s finish this. These men died because of magic. Anything that moves and isn’t one of us, shoot to kill.”

  Two men peeled away from the crash site. One headed toward a jeep, the other to where the bloodhounds milled around the concrete-block storage building.

  Zurael turned to Aisling. What he intended was dangerous, but there was no other way.

  He gathered her in his arms and lifted her. “Put your legs around my waist,” he whispered.

  Returning to Aisling’s home wasn’t an option. Not tonight and not with her.

  In his mind’s eye he saw The Barrens as he’d seen it as an owl, considered the abandoned buildings where he’d perched and watched the activity beneath him. He chose one to shelter in, but fixed the roof of another in his mind to transport to—a place he hoped to launch from before the first of the angels arrived, summoned by the sound of him breaching the metaphysical plane.

  With a thought, the batlike wings appeared again; only this time he allowed the full demon form to manifest. His fingernails elongated into sharp talons; a deadly barbed tail completed the look. Zurael smiled at the irony of appearing in the image once forced onto The Prince by the alien god—of possibly using it to defeat an angel.

  A burst of machine-gun fire, and the seemingly instantaneous impact of bullets against the building, served as a trigger for their departure. He curled an arm around Aisling in a protective gesture, then willed himself to the rooftop fixed in his thoughts.

  As he’d feared, no sooner did his feet touch the flat surface of the roof than the night sky opened in a blaze of light. White wings stretched in what the humans saw as a glorious display.

  Zurael set Aisling aside then moved to stand between her and the angel, but not before he heard her gasp of awe and saw it in her eyes. A deadly blade formed in the angel’s hand. It glowed like the sun, but despite what the humans believed, it wasn’t a weapon of fiery glory. It was a creation forged in the coldest, deepest realms of space, because only such a thing could prevail against the fire of the Djinn.

  Satisfaction moved through Zurael when the angel made small slicing motions with the blade, indicating his intention to fight. An older angel, one from a higher order, would use his voice as a weapon. But by his actions, the angel in front of Zurael had revealed his status, his inexperience when it came to the Djinn.

  Zurael moved forward and to the side, wanting to draw the angel away from Aisling before the fight began.

  The angel’s eyes flicked briefly to Aisling. He spat the word “Abomination,” then lunged toward Zurael, blade in front of him as though he were fencing.

  Zurael easily eluded the thrust. A laugh escaped. He slashed, sending severed wing feathers fluttering to the rooftop.

  The angel swung then, eyes glowing, the arc of his swing carrying the blade to where several steps and a lunge were all it would take to reach Aisling.

  Zurael launched himself upward and the angel followed, knowing he had the advantage with the extension of the sword.

  Pride might keep the angel from summoning others to assist with the kill. But it was no guarantee others wouldn’t soon arrive, alerted by the sound of Zurael’s passing through the barrier, drawn by the trail his energy signature left when he transported between Earthly locations.

  He dropped to a far corner of the roof, and waited until the angel was nearly on him to turn into a swirling mass of particles. The ice chill of the blade barely missed him before Zurael reclaimed the demon’s shape. Struck and drew blood this time.

  A scream erupted from the angel, the enraged sound of a bird of prey instead of a man. He lunged forward, swinging the sword with savage ferocity as his blood left a trail across the roof.

  Zurael retreated, driven backward by the near mindlessness of the assault. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Aisling trying to stay far away from the fighting. But her movement drew the angel’s attention. The sudden gleam in the angel’s eyes was the only warning he gave before halting his wild swings and launching himself toward her.

  Too late Zurael realized it was a trap. With the swiftness of a falcon the angel turned, slashed, opened a deep wound across Zurael’s chest.

  Cold seeped into Zurael, so pervasive it froze the breath in his chest and filled his mind with the sound of his own scream of agony. Only his training saved him from a death blow. Instinctively he twisted away, used the barbed tip and whiplike strike of the demon tail as a weapon.

  The angel screamed. The blinding glow of the blade disappeared as his concentration faltered and his sword arm slickened with blood.

  Zurael tried to move in for the kill. But the cold was spreading, making his reactions slow as it seeped deeper into his being in an effort to reach and extinguish the Djinn fire at his core.

  Aisling.

  The heat she generated in him, the protectiveness he felt for her helped him fight the angel’s icy poison.

  His flesh mended, chased out a chill that should have required a visit to the House of the Cardinal in order to heal so quickly. But just as he was mending, so too was the angel.

  Zurael lunged forward, talons drawing blood, turning white feathers crimson.

  The angel jumped back, knocking Aisling to the ground. Deadly swords appeared and elongated in both of his hands. “Abomination!” he said, slashing downward at Aisling.

  “No!” It was wrenched from Zurael, torn from the depths of his soul in the same instant Aisling’s stark face and terrified eyes were seared into his mind.

  He flung himself forward and was greeted by a blinding flash, a boom so loud it shook the building and rolled across The Barrens like a shock wave from the human’s destructive bombs.

  For a second he was frozen in place, held in a doorway of ice and infinite darkness. And then he returned to find Aisling rubbing her hands over his chest, calling the Djinn fire at his core with her worried touch and angelite blue eyes.

  “Are you okay?” she said, her voice quivering, not hiding her fear for him.

  He grabbed her wrist, suddenly aware of the sun-shaped charm trapped between her palm and his flesh. The memory that had eluded him earlier returned with clarity.

  In his mind he located the book kept with so many others in the House of the Serpen
t library. Turned its pages and saw the powerful token. “You touched the angel.”

  Aisling shivered. “I sent him home, wherever that is.”

  Zurael read her face, saw her thoughts as clearly as if they were his own. She was a child of the ghostlands, but she was still human. She still had a human’s instinctive, genetically programmed reaction to the alien god’s warriors—to cower and worship, to prostrate herself in their glorious beauty and accept their judgment.

  Fierce emotion gripped him, mixed with pulsing pride. She’d been found in the presence of what she thought was a demon and named an abomination, yet she’d had the strength of will, the presence of mind, to use the charm the witch had given her and cast the angel from the human world. She was as worthy as any Djinn.

  Clouds covered the moon, offering some protection. He peeled his bloody shirt off. And because it wasn’t of the human world, he was able to will it to ash so it wouldn’t be used to track him.

  Zurael scooped Aisling up in his arms. In three steps they were airborne, flying rapidly to a place where he hoped they’d be safe from both guardsmen and angels.

  His emotions churned. A lifetime of belief and teaching was lost to their chaos, in the lava-hot flow of desire coursing through his bloodstream.

  Zurael was barely aware of landing on the fifth-story ledge of what might once have been an apartment balcony. He had no conscious thought of entering the darkened space other than a predator’s quick, instinctive searching for the presence of others.

  He was feverish, burning from the inside out. He became more so when Aisling whimpered, so attuned to him that she kicked off her shoes so he could strip her from the waist down before pressing her back to a smooth wall.

  Her arms went around his neck, her legs around his waist, trapping the hard length of his cloth-covered erection against her fevered, wet folds. “Aisling,” he whispered, glad the clouds no longer obliterated the moonlight so he could see the exquisite beauty of her face.