by Emma Holly
“Can you rouse her?” he asked.
A sharp spattering sound wrenched both their heads around. The men gasped in unison. Still stuck fast to the crystal boulder, the magic-filled pipe was shooting sparks. Georgie, it seemed, had keeled over after the bomb’s fuse was lit.
Had Iksander truly told her seven minutes would be enough? More to the point, how many of those minutes had they eaten up already?
“Pick her up,” Connor advised not quite steadily. “We’ll have to try waking her later.”
“Right,” he said and scooped her into his arms. Before they could dash madly to their goal, the ordinary door beside it burst open. Georgie’s actions must have triggered an alarm. Black-uniformed guards poured in, blocking their path to the desired hatch.
The soldiers had caught them in plain view.
“Halt right there!” the lead guard ordered as the men behind him shouldered their weaponized staffs and aimed. “Drop the girl and put up your hands!”
Well, that wasn’t going to happen.
“We were taking a tour,” Connor said placatingly. Hands raised, he stepped forward. “Our friend got sick and we couldn’t find the health center.”
This was among the stupider lies Iksander had ever heard. It was three in the morning. Why would there be a tour? Connor must be hoping to use his angelic eye-mojo on the security force. Sadly, Iksander didn’t think he was close enough to the soldiers for that to work.
“We’re from court,” Connor added, nodding toward his outfit. This was a better ploy. Iksander suspected their appearance was the main reason they hadn’t been lightning-jolted yet. “Henri and Eleanor approved it.”
Behind them on the rock, the pipe began spitting sparks more briskly.
“Step aside!” the guard barked. “What’s going on back there?”
Iksander was concerned about that himself. The precise nature of the charm Georgie had activated was uncertain. Connor seemed unalarmed that they were mere feet from the blast zone. Was this because he knew something Iksander didn’t, or because—as he’d recently admitted—he was rarely as afraid as he ought to be?
“Everything’s fine,” the angel continued soothingly. “We’re favorites of the regents. Surely you saw us at the banquet.”
“Step aside or I’ll shoot!”
Connor made calming motions with his raised hands. “Get ready to drop,” he said in an undertone to Iksander. “Shut your eyes and pull your power as close as possible to your core.”
Iksander felt something then, an ominous sucking back of the atmosphere like an undertow. The pull came from the pipe behind them. It was drawing in more magic, the supply of which was plentiful here.
Crap, he thought, his alarm rising. How big was this bang going to be?
“Now,” Connor said sharply.
Iksander gave up on worrying. Connor was flinging the floor already. Iksander dropped as swiftly as he was able with Georgie unconscious in his arms. To me, he ordered his normally expansive aura. Close, close, close. Fortunately, fear strengthened his concentration. His magic snapped inward with no delay. To his surprise, Georgie’s contracted too. Holding her must have linked up their energy.
Incited by their actions, the soldiers opened fire.
Iksander winced. Lightning bounced off the floor by his right elbow. He curled himself tighter over Georgie.
Luna and Georgie’s bomb went off.
The pulses it sent out alternated high-noon brilliance and stygian black. He saw both despite screwing his eyelids closed. Low thumping booms shook his skeleton, faster and faster, as the disruptive phasing intensified. His skin was quivering, his hair waving wildly in the electro-magic storm. One of his eardrums burst and began trickling blood. His heart drummed so hard it seemed about to follow the same example. Caught without a strategy, he said a prayer his mother taught him when he was young.
I am with you, said an almost-voice. No matter what, my arms always surround you.
It wasn’t his mother’s voice, but he didn’t have time to wonder whose it was. With his one good ear, he heard the sound of sugar panes shattering. The shards fell like rain from every direction. He braced for them to hit him but nothing did.
Luna’s formulas, he realized. The blast of opposing magic had broken them.
When the spellwork finished tinkling off the dome, an equally stunning silence fell. He opened his eyes cautiously. Connor lay beside him, staring back at him through hair that no longer had corkscrew curls.
The angel jerked his head to indicate they should rise.
Iksander scrambled up as quickly as he could. The guards were dazed but stirring. Most of them rubbed their eyes, their night vision spoiled by the strobing light. Georgie was still unconscious. He and Connor shouldered her between them.
Since they couldn’t reach the hatch to the palace, the second regular door seemed the obvious target to head for . . . at least it did until they heard more booted feet pounding up the corridor to it.
“Hatch,” Iksander said. “Whichever’s closest, we’ll yank it open and fly down.”
They didn’t have leisure to debate if this was a good idea.
“Stop them!” someone cried as they reached a hatch stamped SIBERIA WOODS. “Fire, fire, fire!”
Either this conduit cover had no lock or the blast had destroyed it. It swung open at a hard tug. The guards had recovered enough to shoot but luckily not to aim. Iksander tossed Georgie’s limp form across the threshold to Connor. He was just in time. His hand stung as a bolt struck the wall three inches from where her head had been.
“Hurry,” Connor urged.
Iksander hurried and pulled the hatch shut again. The tunnel behind it was bare and shadowy. He spared ten nerve-wracking seconds to cobble together a magical bar against entry. How long the charm would hold against the confused soldiers he didn’t know. He hadn’t dared get fancy.
“Let’s go,” he said, already shifting to his smoke form.
As he did, he realized why Connor had advised him to pull his aura close. His magic hadn’t been disrupted by Luna and Georgie’s pulse weapon. Quite possibly the soldiers’ had been. As he and Connor flew down the tunnel carrying Georgie, they met no trouble and no pursuit. Maybe, under the circumstances, his quick and dirty door lock was sufficient.
This conduit was longer than the one between the power plant and the palace. Ten minutes later, still with no end in sight, they spotted stairs to a maintenance hatch.
“Shall we exit here?” Connor asked. “Maybe figure out where we’ve got to?”
This seemed a reasonable suggestion. Iksander snapped back to physical to follow it. He might have been premature in this. The moment they stepped outside, frost swept over his exposed skin.
They’d emerged into a silent, snow-coated forest, perhaps the Siberia Woods of the hatch’s stamp. A waning but brilliant moon glowed like a spotlight over the pines’ tall peaks. Relieved no people were around but cursing at the cold, Iksander hugged Georgie’s body close. The temperature was brutal. His nostril hairs crackled as he inhaled, the tears that squeezed from his eyes freezing halfway down his cheeks.
On the bright side, his burst eardrum was now healed.
“I’ll take Georgie,” Connor said. “You’ll be warmer in your smoke form, plus you can fly up and see if you can tell where we are.”
He didn’t argue. His shivers were too violent. Entrusting Georgie to the angel, he changed shape and soared up through the pine branches. Once he was above them, he stopped and hung. The scene was foreign but beautiful. Forest extended in all directions, ground and trees rolling in frozen waves. The moon was so bright it glittered like diamonds on the snow coat. Iksander performed the smoke equivalent of squinting, hoping to find a landmark he recognized.
To the west, he spotted a difference. Those domes and spires belonged to Luna’s capital. He jerked as a new revelation hit. The city’s lights were out. Early morning hour aside, that shouldn’t have been the case. He turned his smoke form a
few degrees and found the Hodensk plant—also dark at present. He had his bearings then. There was the palace not far away, rising from an opening in the trees. It, too, was lit only by moonlight.
Georgie’s spell must have caused a gigantic power outage.
No, he thought. It had done more than that. Even if municipal power was disrupted, individual djinni had personal magic to draw on. Those who were awake would be calling up glow lights. Unless they couldn’t. Did Luna’s system of stealing energy and then doling it back out make her citizens vulnerable to having their magic cut?
He didn’t know, but this struck him as a stroke of luck.
Setting the various locations in his mind, he descended thoughtfully.
Chapter Fifteen
GEORGIE WOKE IN A COTTON-headed state, icy cold, with a low grade pounding at her temples. Connor cradled her in his arms. He smiled as her eyes opened.
“Where are we?” she croaked.
“A place called Siberia Woods. Would you like to put your feet down?”
She put them down in a foot of snow. Once again she gave thanks for her trusty leather pants and work boots. “I guess we got away. Where’s Iksander?”
“Reconnoitering above the trees. What happened, Georgie? Why did you have that seizure?”
Before she could answer, the sultan’s smoke form streaked down and solidified. She guessed she was getting used to that. The main thing she noted was how grave his expression was.
And that he seemed reluctant to meet her gaze.
“You’re awake,” he said. “Good. We can reach the palace from here. Your spell caused a big blackout. We should take advantage while we’re able.”
“I was asking Georgie why she passed out.”
Something in Connor’s tone told Georgie he already knew the answer.
Okay, Georgie thought. I guess we’re getting into this now.
“Luna showed me where she was. Made me feel what she was feeling.” She turned her gaze to Iksander. His green eyes tensed warily. The look in them confirmed her suspicions. Where Luna had been and why was no mystery to him. “Taytoch wanted her to suffer, didn't he? Because she enslaved him and his crew. He had Pink maneuver me into cursing her with my wish.”
“Yes,” Iksander admitted. He sighed briefly and went on. “I realized what the ifrit intended ahead of time. I wanted him to help us get to the djinn dimension, but I confess the thought of Luna’s agony didn’t bother me overmuch. She’d harmed so many innocents. I concealed that knowledge from you even after he aided us.”
Georgie nodded. She didn’t approve of him making her an unwitting accomplice, but she supposed she understood. Sort of, anyway. It took a damn hard person to condemn another living being to what Luna had gone through. Yes, Luna murdered his wife by similar means, but Najat’s torment had ended a lot sooner.
She thrust her tangled thoughts away. She couldn’t sort them out right then. Luna was still suffering. She had a choice to make.
“If I use my final wish to kill her, will it cause trouble between you and Taytoch?”
Iksander shook his head. “I didn’t promise the demon captain I’d keep the secret forever.”
“Then I do wish it.” She drew breath and squared her shoulders. “I wish Luna Praetorius dead. I don't want her torment to continue.”
Connor’s head lifted as the icy air blew a message only he understood.
“She’s gone,” he said, his hand tightening around hers.
Relief coursed through her, followed by a strange sadness. Luna had played more tricks with Georgie’s existence than she could count—all to further her thirst for power and her vendetta against Iksander. She’d been cruel and self-serving beyond belief, but she’d also been a person Georgie knew. For six not-miserable years, she’d been Georgie’s guardian.
My deadly dangerous guardian, she reminded. I had no choice but to play judge and jury and executioner. She couldn’t have been trusted loose for two minutes.
She had these thoughts while studying the snow her boots were swallowed by. When she raised her head, Iksander’s gaze waited. She had a feeling his eyes revealed substantially less than hers.
“Are you ready to try to break into the palace?” he inquired carefully. “Our prospects are better while the power is down.”
Was she ready? She guessed she had to be.
“Uh oh,” Connor broke in, drawing their eyes to him. “Okay, you two better let me handle this.”
She didn’t know what he meant until he pointed. Between the pine trunks, where spindly saplings poked through the crusted snow, darkness too thick for shadow had collected. With a shudder, she recognized what the darkness was. The demon cloud had found them. Two baleful, pale yellow eyes shone within the seething black that formed its miasmic face. Georgie’s hand flew to the medal around her neck. As her thumb rubbed its golden surface, fresh fear burst in her chest. The coin was smooth, no longer engraved with charms.
Breaking Luna’s magic at the plant had undone the protection.
Had Connor picked up on this already? Was that the reason he stepped in front of her and Iksander? To shield them from danger?
“Connor,” Iksander said, his arm jostling Georgie’s as he moved to her side. He caught her wrist in cold fingers. “Be careful.”
Though Connor must have heard the warning, he didn’t alter his behavior. Without the least evidence of fear, he stared calmly into the demon’s eyes. “Have you come to say goodbye?”
The demon didn’t like the question. Its smoke pulsed and contracted. “I am hungry,” it rasped. It formed an arm that pointed exactly like Connor’s had. “That one must feed me. She is connected to the one who created me.”
“Luna wasn’t the only one who created you,” Connor said.
The demon’s booming laugh made Georgie jump. “You’re right. Lots of people helped. I am the greedy ones’ darkness. Now I shall swallow them.”
“I don’t think so. In any case, you’ll have to get to them through me.”
The demon’s shadow face turned surly. “I’m not interested in you. I don’t think you taste good.”
“Nevertheless, I won’t let you pass.”
The demon surged up into a monster shape: an apelike body with clawed hands. The seeming loomed over their serene friend. “You are alien. You don’t belong in my world.”
“I belong anywhere I choose to go.”
The demon pressed even closer—too close for Georgie’s nerves. The pair was practically nose-to-nose. Their eyes beamed dueling glows, sickly yellow to heaven blue. Though Connor appeared unmoved by the demon’s threat, Georgie’s throat constricted. When she tried to go to Connor, Iksander gripped her wrist tighter.
“Wait,” he said, so low she barely heard. “The angel knows what he’s doing.”
“I understand what’s happening to you,” Connor said gently. “Don’t you want me to explain it?”
“No, I don’t,” the demon snarled.
Connor’s celestial eyes shone brighter. The demon seemed fascinated, unable to look away any more than a light djinni. “I think you do. I think you’re tired of being angry and confused. You feel yourself getting smaller, which worsens your bewilderment. The machine that formed your essence has been destroyed. No more of you can be created by that means. You’re weakening and dissipating. That can’t help but frighten you.”
“I am the monster! I will feed. I will grow. I will frighten the others.”
“You won’t be able to. You’re dying already.”
The ape form puffed up and crossed its arms. “I am forever. I cannot die.”
“All things die,” Connor said. “Or, rather, they move from one state of being to another. Allow me to help you transition. I promise it will be peaceful and involve no pain at all.”
“I have just begun to be!”
As if it were a child and not a monster, Connor clasped the protesting demon’s face. Georgie twitched with panic, but the contact didn’t turn him into a mummy.<
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“You will still be,” Connor said. “Simply not in this reality.”
The demon’s eyes blinked at him. “I will still be?” it asked in a plaintive voice.
“You decided to Become. My Father doesn’t lightly erase that.”
The demon’s mouth twisted skeptically. It stared at Connor a moment longer then shook itself. “Very well. I accept your offer.”
THE ANGEL HAD A KNACK for astonishing Iksander. Scarcely a second passed between the cloud accepting Connor’s offer and it disappearing in a literal puff of smoke. Iksander couldn’t doubt it was gone. The atmosphere in the woods felt more wholesome, the tension that gripped his muscles relaxing. He let his breath explode in relief.
He hadn’t been quite as confident as he pretended for Georgie’s sake.
He wagged his head in Connor’s direction. “You’re not short of courage, are you? Was the demon really dying, or did you hypnotize it to think so?”
“I am capable of deception, but in this instance, I told the truth. I do prefer that. As does my other half. I believe it prompted me what to say.”
“Thank you,” Georgie said. “I hardly dared hope we could destroy that thing. I wasn’t looking forward to leaving it to prey on people while we got away scot-free.”
They hadn’t got away scot-free yet. Rather than mention this, Iksander rubbed his bristly jawline with cold knuckles. “We really ought to move along. Shall we carry Georgie between us?”
“Oh yes,” Connor said, his smile breaking out. “I enjoy doing that with you.”
Georgie and Iksander both laughed beneath their breath. Connor truly was a happy soul.
They took to the air without delay. No one being around to stop them, the flight was short. Because they’d never seen Mordent Palace from the outside, they circled it curiously. The prison, where they’d initially been housed, was concealed underground. Aboveground, the royal residence was imposing, though its snow-covered grounds weren’t huge. Forest bordered the open acreage, a smooth, two-lane road curving through the trees toward the capital. To Iksander’s surprise, both grounds and road were empty.
