Ghostland

by Jory Strong

  Aisling unlocked the door and stepped into the hallway. Movement had her turning. Her breath caught in fear when she saw Elena’s driver come out of the room at the end of the hall. He was crossing himself, mumbling to himself, his fingers tight around a short club.

  His eyes widened when he saw her. He stopped and took a step backward then quickly recovered. “I knew Elena was bad news the first time I drove her. You look like you’ve lived through a nightmare, but that’s not surprising. The red zone is the devil’s playground.”

  The driver hurried toward her. “Time to get out of here,” he said, and Aisling relaxed, felt almost faint with relief.

  At the car he opened the door for her. But before she could get in, pain screamed through her as the club struck her head. Blackness overtook her before she could speak a name on the spirit winds.

  ZURAEL let a prince’s training serve him. Irial might enjoy baiting him, but his arrival at the gate wouldn’t be for that sole purpose.

  “Did you know she summoned me?” Irial asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I would have killed her. I tried to get to her but her circle held.”

  “Aisling told me as much. She told me you chose to help her.”

  “Yes.” Irial cocked his head. This time his smile was masculine and appreciative. “She is alluring. In more ways than one. I can see how you came to ignore my advice. You continued to couple with the little shamaness. You shared breath and spirit. Now she’s like a potent drug coursing through your bloodstream and commanding your cock. And if I’m correct, she’ll soon cost you a kingdom. But you were meant to be enslaved by her. And what we stand to gain—Did she tell you her pet showed himself to me?”

  At the mention of the ferret, Zurael gave up trying to parse through Irial’s other words. A fist tightened on his heart at Aisling’s loss and her grief. “She told me you saw Aziel.”

  “Is that the name you know him by?”

  Zurael stilled. “You know him by another?”

  “I know him for what he is.” Irial moved closer, as if afraid to speak the word too loudly. “Ifrit.”

  Cold fear blossomed in Zurael’s chest. Horror made worse by having so recently been bound to Javier. “You’re sure?”

  Irial stroked the stylized raven on his cheek. “I’m sure. It’s the work of my house to keep the books bearing the names of those who’ve been lost, to grieve over each Djinn whose spirit we will never guide back for rebirth. He was once of my house, that much I know. And if I were to guess? For some, a father’s love never dies.”

  Zurael heard the ring of truth in Irial’s words, remembered feeling like he was ensnared, caught in a spider’s web with Aisling, by powerful, unseen forces. “You see your father’s hand in this?”

  “Not only his hand, but The Prince’s and Malahel’s.”

  Unbidden, Zurael saw himself standing in the Hall of History with The Prince, the two of them in front of the mural of Jetrel—the son whose loss was a deep scar on his father’s heart. “What game do they play?”

  Irial laughed. “A good question. And since I am as much a pawn as you, I’ll make the move expected of me. Did you know there is a way for the Djinn to willingly bind themselves to a human? To join souls so that both are equally enslaved and neither becomes the other’s familiar?”

  Zurael’s heart beat so loudly that the only words he could form in the midst of its roar were “Tell me.”

  “Your desperation doesn’t bode well for my own chances of avoiding an entanglement. If you do this thing, Zurael, I doubt you’ll be able to pass through the gate and return to this place. It will cost you a kingdom. Do you really want the shamaness enough to pay such a high price?”

  “Yes.”

  Irial touched the stylized raven on his cheek again, one that took on significance as he seldom wore it, just as Zurael rarely displayed the mark of his house and the nature of his spirit when he was in the Kingdom of the Djinn. There was no need to. Its appearance was optional—unlike when he was in the world now held by humans.

  “Share breath and will your soul into her keeping,” Irial said. “And now I’ll tell you how I came to learn it was possible. Then you’ll know why I believe The Prince and Malahel have their hands in this game, too.”

  Zurael felt hope rise in his chest. “I’m listening.”

  Irial said, “When I told my father about the figurine you’d seen in the occult shop, he sent me to the library of our house to research the matter further. Oddly enough, a book I’d thought there couldn’t be found, and so he arranged for me to use the library in the House of the Spider.

  “While I was in the Spider’s library, I was shown a collection of books that might hold the information I was after, then left unattended. A Spider’s account of history is not the same as a Raven’s or Serpent’s. I was curious, as I imagined they knew I would be, and so I browsed those in the section I’d been given free rein to explore.”

  Green eyes grew somber. “There was a tale of The Prince’s first son, the one whose name is no longer found in The Book of the Djinn. By the Spider’s account, he came to their house seeking a way to bind himself to the human woman he loved above all others. He wanted to extend her life beyond the few years the children of mud possess, even if it meant shortening his own.

  “There was no summoning in those days. There were no incantations forcing us to a human’s will. The Djinn who could be taken alive were fitted with spelled bands and given to the children of mud as if they were animals. No knowledge existed of what it meant to be ifrit because no one had yet experienced the horror the Prince’s first son would soon know.” Irial shook his head. “The Prince’s words were law then, just as they are now. His thoughts aren’t written in the Spider’s account of history. What is written is that The Prince forbade them from sharing the knowledge of how a Djinn could bind himself to a human. And in the end his son was lost in a way none of us could have conceived—and in a way that could have been avoided if he’d already been bound to the woman.”

  Zurael’s mind raced with the implications. It was no coincidence that Irial stumbled upon the story of Jetrel—and played the part of pawn by sharing it. It was no coincidence he himself had been sent for the tablet.

  His thoughts spun to his visit to the House of the Spider, to the words he’d spoken and Malahel’s response.

  The House of the Scorpion is full of assassins capable of doing what you ask.

  What you say is true, but none of them was summoned as you were. None of them was brought to the House of the Spider by their destinies.

  A raven and a spider, a serpent and an ifrit? What game did they play?

  Unbidden, the image of Aisling’s circle of fetishes came to him—a raven, a spider, a serpent and a bear linked by her blood. Why would the Djinn seek an alliance with a human who could summon by speaking a name on the spirit winds? One whose spirit guardian was ifrit?

  The answer came in a rush that left him breathless. Excitement rose and crested, fell sharply when he thought he must be wrong. And yet he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “If Aisling can summon an ifrit, what is to say another couldn’t decipher the tablet and undo the curse creating one? That in working together, a shamaness and a sorceress couldn’t find and free those whose names we can no longer speak?”

  “Your thoughts mirror mine—and why I suspect a child of mud will be my fate. Such a plan would appeal to my father, and yours, as well as to Malahel—though whether or not they thought we would stop to figure it out will remain an unanswered question until this plays out.”

  Pain and worry slid through Zurael. He rubbed at the place over his heart. “She has an enemy still alive. If we’re right, why have I been forbidden to return to her?”

  “Unless summoned. Weren’t those the words I overheard Miizan say?”

  Hope flared in Zurael then died as quickly. How well he remembered Aisling’s fear-shadowed eyes when he warned her against summoning him. How easily he remembered the guil
t and anguish he’d read in them when Javier had bound him. “She won’t call my name on the spirit winds.”

  “Perhaps not,” Irial said. “Or perhaps she’ll be given a choice as you’ve been given.”

  Zurael looked at the gate separating his world from Aisling’s and saw a test instead of a barrier—a delicate weave of threads leading up to this moment in time. A son who dishonored his father couldn’t be trusted. A love that wasn’t strong enough to bridge the gap between Djinn and child of mud couldn’t be fostered. She would summon him or there would be no future for the two of them.

  CONSCIOUSNESS returned slowly, with a disorienting swirl of sensation and vision. Nausea threatened. It washed over Aisling and brought a wild panic that she’d choke on her own vomit and die before she could force it down.

  She was bound to a chair, hands and feet made useless. Gagged tightly, savagely, as if whoever had tied her was terrified she might speak.

  A small, heavy table was placed in front of the chair. The hammer resting on top of it seemed out of place, sinister, threatening.

  Slowly the tiny piles of crushed bone came into focus, the broken onyx pentacle, the shattered stone—her fetish pouch tossed to the floor. Too late she realized Elena’s chauffeured car probably belonged to Luther Germaine, and the driver, by association, was Peter’s as well.

  As if thinking about Peter Germaine had conjured him, he claimed the chair on the other side of the table. “I’ve gone to quite a bit of trouble to arrange for your death, but you’ve managed to avoid it. The man I spared from the fate of a third strike and hasty execution in exchange for paying you a visit, was found dead. The guardsmen, who tend to get carried away and turn searches into hunts, failed to find you in The Barrens, after Father Ursu was made aware of your failure to catch the bus and return home.

  “The Church is wrong in compromising. My brother and the rest of them are mistaken if they think by forcing the humans who’ve been touched by the devil into one area of town they can limit their influence and keep them from taking over and turning God’s attention away from us once and for all. Your kind is a disease that will spread until no place on Earth is free of it. You’re a filthy perversion of what God intended when he created us.”

  Peter reached into his pocket. When his hand emerged, it held a familiar, casketlike container. His eyes filled with rapture as he stroked the thin metal. “I don’t understand why you’ve been chosen to serve a higher power, but you have been. It’s not my place to question the divine. If you’re to be the tool that will open the gates of hell and flood this world with demons in order to bring about the apocalypse and Final Judgment, then so be it.”

  He opened the container and dipped his fingers into the gray substance. A malevolent presence swept in, this one more powerful than any Aisling had ever encountered in the spiritlands.

  She recoiled when Peter leaned across the table, hand outstretched. She mentally summoned the only being not limited by the boundaries of the ghostlands—her father, though the price for calling his name would be high.

  He arrived like a bolt of lightning, illuminating the room with blinding white and filling it with mindless, instinctive terror. Angel wings extended in full glory, his sword lifted and fell, meting out swift, uncompromising justice marked by a scream that continued long past Peter’s death, as if vengeance followed the Ghost pathway deep into the spiritlands where it originated.

  When he turned and looked at her, it took all of Aisling’s courage not to tremble and cower in his presence. Her breath came hard and fast. Her heart raced and memories of the angel in The Barrens crowded in, merged with the vision of the being that stood before her.

  His sword arm extended toward her and a whimper escaped despite her resolve to show only bravery. She jerked when the sword’s tip touched the ropes, and cold lashed at her wrists before her bindings fell away, shattered as though the fibers were made of thin strands of ice.

  He freed her ankles the same way, then knelt before she could stand, trapping her in the chair with the sheer force of his presence.

  The sword disappeared from his hand and he leaned forward, gently untied the gag and pulled it away. Their eyes met, held. And Aisling was lost in a silent, endless darkness filled with a glittering galaxy of stars.

  He called her back from the place that held her transfixed by saying, “You’ve done well. You’ve accomplished all I hoped you would. You’ve become what I dreamed you might be when your mother met my price.”

  Sharp pain slid past Aisling’s ribs and into her heart. It replaced the dull ache that had never completely disappeared over being abandoned, left on a doorstep as an infant. Somehow it was worse knowing she was the end result of a ghostland bargain, and yet she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Who is she?”

  “What does it matter? She chose a vampire’s life.”

  He stood, elegant wings resettling as he offered his hand.

  Aisling took it, allowed him to pull her to her feet. When he released her, she fought the urge to sink to her knees, to duck her head in the presence of his terrible beauty. She made herself meet his eyes again, and though her voice was little more than a shaky whisper, she still managed to ask, “And the price I owe you?”

  “I will finish what needs to be done here first, then we will discuss what my aid has cost you.”

  Massive wings spread out to form a shield around her. He lifted his arms, and two gleaming swords appeared in his hands. A crack of thunder sounding in the room was her only warning. Then bolt after bolt of lightning struck, ripped through the house as if pulled from the sky and directed by an angel’s wrath.

  Flames erupted around them, destroying any evidence of her presence or Peter Germaine’s death. Waves of shimmering heat were held at bay by a coldness deeper than any Aisling had ever known.

  Only when the ceiling and walls began falling did he lower his arms. He tucked her against him in a surprisingly protective gesture.

  Blinding white filled her vision. And when it cleared, she was standing amid the familiar destruction of her own living room.

  “Summon your Djinn,” her father said and Aisling knew he meant Zurael. Her gaze strayed to her wrist, where the sun-shaped amulet she’d gotten from Levanna Wainwright still rested against her skin.

  Her father’s fingers circled her wrist so the golden sun was caught between his flesh and hers. “Your Djinn means so much to you? That you’d risk my wrath even after witnessing only a fraction of what I’m capable of?”

  “He means that much to me,” Aisling said, knowing she would let her father sever the cords binding spirit to physical body and take her into the spiritlands with him before she’d betray Zurael.

  “Your courage pleases me. But take care you don’t become overconfident. The charm won’t work on the higher hosts. The sight of it is reason enough for them to strike you down.”

  He changed his grip, stroked his thumb over the tiny sun. “A struggle is brewing, not unlike the one fought at the dawn of human creation. There are angels who would openly claim humans as their mates and acknowledge the children they’ve already created. But there are plenty who patrol this world and view its inhabitants as little more than a captive experiment. Who consider lying with humans a sacrilege, and the children of such unions abominations. There was a time in the past when cities were razed and entire populations slaughtered to wipe out any trace of angel blood among those created from mud.”

  “And now?” Aisling asked, shivering as she remembered the look the angel in The Barrens had given her, the way he’d spat the word abomination at her. She’d thought he saw her as part demon, or cursed her for being with Zurael, but given her father’s revelation she wondered if he’d sensed her angel heritage.

  “Now is the time for building alliances, for strengthening them with blood ties.”

  Aisling experienced a stab of pain to echo the one she’d felt when she learned her mother had carried her for gain. This was her father’s reason for her bi
rth. “You want to use me to form an alliance with the Djinn.”

  He released her wrist. “It is one possible use. But there are others.”

  They might have been discussing what to plant in the fields, which animals to breed and which to sell or slaughter—the practical decisions of farming. She blinked back tears, refused to let him hurt her with his coldness. With his failure to acknowledge even her name. She swallowed her pride, her pain, thought instead of Aziel, whose voice held such longing when he spoke of the Djinn, of Zurael, who’d come to mean so much to her.

  Aisling’s hands curled into fists. She met her father’s eyes boldly. “What will you do if I summon him?”

  The sword appeared in her father’s hand from nowhere. The sight of it made Aisling’s breath grow short and her lungs fill with ice, but she stood her ground.

  Approval shone in her father’s face. “Aisling,” he said, and the sound of her name was a symphony, a beautiful chorus that brought tears to her eyes along with a terrible knowledge.

  His voice was as much a weapon as his sword. With it he could offer praise so glorious she might do anything to bask in it. Or he could deliver tortured visions of damnation so horrible her mind might shatter.

  When the effects of his voice faded, he said, “You owe a debt, but I won’t take your free will as part of my price. This moment has long been in the making. It’s no accident Aziel has been your companion since birth. Summon The Prince’s son. You are willing to risk my wrath and surrender your soul in order to protect him; give him the chance to show he returns your feelings, that he is willing to give up a kingdom for you.”

  A hundred different images crowded in. A hundred remembered touches.

  Hope warred with fear.

  Memories competed.

  Zurael’s fury over being summoned the first time. The promise of retribution she’d seen in his eyes. His acknowledgment later that he’d come to kill her.

  Rest easy, child of mud. You’re safe from me unless you summon me again.