Dark Oasis

by Jenny Schwartz

  She’d known her petition for a nova strike would be a difficult sell. The prohibition against evil entering a home or soul without invitation was one of humanity’s strongest protections. Breaching it in reverse—an angel invading a dark mage’s home when he had specifically barred them—could provide a sliver of opportunity for a demon to trespass. And demons were swift at sniffing opportunity.

  If she were fair, she’d admit the Guardian Council had no choice but to rule as they had. But she didn’t want to be fair. Her gut twisted when she thought of Theron under Abbas’s control.

  She’d hurt whenever Sadiq had been lost to her within his father’s wardings. But that loss was nothing to the cold fear—and anger—that raged within her at the thought of Theron losing his laughter, tortured and despairing, in service to a dark mage.

  Worst of all was her own helplessness.

  She returned to her chamber and shed the uniform of a guardian: the short tunic, high lacing sandals and sword belt that the Roman legions had copied from the angelic legion. Her wings vanished as she reached for her everyday clothes.

  Dressed, she consulted the Angelic Record for which of her charges needed her.

  “Sadiq.” His name leapt out. “What have you done?” She translocated immediately.

  Hospitals were familiar ground for guardian angels.

  Sadiq lay in a pristinely white bed in a private room. His eyes were shut. Bandages covered his various scrapes and the chart at the end of his bed indicated severe bruising and two cracked ribs.

  He’d survived this crash, but one day his recklessness would catch up with him.

  “All I want is for you to be happy,” she said. “To grow and love and realize all that potential you’re squandering.” Her fists clenched. “Abbas has ruined too many lives.”

  She remembered Sadiq at four, happy and loving.

  Abbas really was a monster. He’d destroyed something in Sadiq, taken the heart out of him and left him a perpetual adolescent, chasing thrills.

  Anger propelled her at a swift pace from wall to wall in the small room. “I tried to keep you safe.” But human free will and Abbas’s wards had stolen the child Sadiq from her. Each time he emerged from Abbas’s stronghold to return to school or university, there had been a new brittleness and an unhealthy recklessness in the young man.

  “I can’t imagine how much damage Abbas will do now he commands Theron.” She kept bracing herself for news of atrocities. But it seemed the dark mage was still considering his options or planning an unimaginable destruction. “God, I’m so mad.” She paused at the foot of Sadiq’s bed and grasped the railing.

  “I can see you,” he said.

  She glanced up and saw his eyes were open. He seemed to be looking at her. But she checked and she was definitely invisible to humans. He had to be hallucinating.

  “And hear you,” he added. He tried painfully to hitch himself up on his pillows. “What has Dad done, now?”

  She blinked and walked across the room.

  He continued to track her.

  “You can see me.”

  He smiled, then grimaced as the action split his cut lip. “I always could. Why do you think I prefer blondes?”

  She shook her head, dumbfounded, and collapsed onto a visitor’s chair. “You shouldn’t be able to see me. No other human does.”

  “Perhaps no other human has a dark mage for a father?”

  That was possible. But…“Why haven’t you ever said anything or shown that you can see me?”

  “I didn’t want to lose you.” It was the stark desperation of the traumatized boy he’d been.

  She clasped his hand. “That will never happen.”

  He looked at her hand, holding his. All the humor faded from his face. Pain-lightened skin stretched tight over the arrogant bone structure. “You’re there in all my good memories of childhood—oh not at school. I could cope there. But…at the oasis. I’d walk in there and I could feel the wards shut me in and you out. God, that’s loneliness. Scared. Powerless.” He took a deep breath, cutting off his words. “You were always there waiting when I got out. Always. I’d see my golden angel and know everything was okay—that I still had my soul.”

  “Your soul? What the blue hades was your father doing?”

  He squeezed her hand and released it. “He didn’t use me in his magic, but the cold stink of it was everywhere…and the people…the villagers were my grandfather’s traditional responsibility, my mother’s father. Dad should have continued to look after them when he gained the oasis. Instead, they’re like grey ghosts within the ward. No joy. No children born for seven years.”

  “It’s worse than I thought.” She slumped back in her chair. “No children.” No new life and hope. What are the Guardian Council thinking? Something must be done about Abbas and his dark magic.

  “What eats at me.” Sadiq stared at the ceiling. “Is how pathetic I am. Those villagers are stuck. Dad doesn’t let them out. But me, I’m free to come and go, and I’m always so bloody relieved to escape.”

  “That’s natural. Dark magic is a perversion. You ought to be glad to leave it behind.”

  “Except I leave the people behind, too.” He slammed his fist on the bed. “Ten years I’ve spent trying to outrun my cowardice.”

  I should have realized. She sat up. The risks he takes are self-destructive, self-loathing. And I dismissed him as a playboy and forgave him because of his childhood. Idiot.

  “Sadiq, you’re not responsible for your father’s sins.”

  “Who was it that said that to do nothing in the face of evil is not a neutral act?”

  “Edmund Burke. Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.”

  “He’s right. Not that I’m saying I’m a good man.” His mask of easy humor slid back into place. “So what’s Dad done, now, and how can I help my angel kick his butt?”

  “I shouldn’t tell you.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “It’s not your problem.”

  “I thought I’d established that it is. Cough it up, darling. The full story.”

  “My name’s Alexa.

  “Alexa, darling, tell me who Theron is and why Dad commands him.”

  She studied the man in the bed and her professional and personal instincts reached the same conclusion: he needed to challenge his father. If he didn’t, his sense of impotence would, as he’d said, eat him alive. But did she have the right to involve him in Theron’s situation?

  “If you’re trying to keep me safe,” he said quietly. “Some things are more important than safety.”

  “Yes, they are.” And the courage and wisdom of that statement decided her. “Let me tell you about the djinn. You’ve heard of Adam and Eve, but Adam had a wife before her. Lilith was beautiful and wild. She was more than Adam could cope with and he repudiated her. In revenge (and perhaps because she was hurt and insecure), she went looking for men to sleep with.”

  “But if Adam was the first man.” Sadiq screwed up his face. “She didn’t—not with her sons.”

  “No. At that point she had no children. But there were demons.”

  “I think I see where this is going.”

  “Lilith had seventy seven children, all of whom were half human and half demon. They are the djinn. Like angels, they can take corporeal form.” She indicated her own body. “Or exist as spirits, and they have power, some more than others. For a long time they used their power to amuse themselves. Unlike demons, the djinn haven’t chosen damnation. Like humans, they have the potential for good or evil. Then Solomon got involved.”

  “King Solomon?”

  “It wasn’t one of his better moments. He wanted to demonstrate his own power. He summoned the djinn, calling them from the desert and mountains, from their homes and lives, and he bound them in seventy seven separate glass bottles. He cursed them to serve humanity until freed by a human’s free wish.”

  She sighed. “To be fair to Solomon, he didn’t expect humans to be as selfish as
they proved.”

  “No one wished the djinn free?”

  “There have been a couple of cases recently, but on the whole, having a djinni at your command for the count of three wishes is too much temptation for most people.”

  “So much for Solomon being wise. I could have told him power corrupts.”

  “He discovered that for himself.” Alexa stood and paced the length of the room. “The djinn adjusted to their imprisonment in various ways. Some became bitter and vengeful. Some withdrew, hiding their bottles. Theron, my friend, tricked his way to a tied freedom. He can leave his bottle for as long as he’s entertaining humans. He travels Arabia pretending to be a conjuror. In the twenty first century, no one believes his magic is real.”

  “Except Dad,” Sadiq said bitterly. “Of course he’d recognize power—and crave it.”

  She nodded. “He stole Theron and his bottle five days ago.”

  “How powerful is a djinni?”

  “Theron is powerful enough to grow roses in Antarctica. Or less positively, create a new plague or plunge the world into darkness—all the latter would take are a few well-placed volcanoes.”

  “And Dad has three wishes.”

  “Yes.” She gripped the back of her chair and hastily released it when she heard the plastic crack. A smudge of magic restored it.

  “A world in which Dad has unlimited power doesn’t bear thinking of.”

  Nonetheless, there was silence for several minutes as they both contemplated it.

  “I never studied dark magic,” Sadiq said finally. “But I noticed some patterns in the way Dad worked. There was a lot of blood.”

  Alexa winced. “Sacrifice and suffering.”

  “Hmm, but also his own blood.” He pushed back the light blanket and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “Particularly when he created his wards.”

  “What are you doing?” She steadied him with a hand at his shoulder.

  “I’m my father’s son. His blood runs in my veins. I should be able to crack his wards, enough at least for you to slip in. Then you can rescue your friend, the djinni.”

  “Abbas will be furious.”

  “So we’ll have to be fast.”

  They stared at one another.

  “Are you sure?” she asked.

  “It’s now or never.” His mouth twisted in a painful smile. “After all, I’m injured. What could be more natural than that I return to my father’s house to recuperate.”

  Chapter Three

  Alexa remembered the oasis thirty years ago, when Sadiq was born. Then it had been a green place of rejoicing. The villagers had smiled easily, stood straight and had the healthy look of people well fed, secure and hopeful for the future.

  The date palms were still there and the water bubbled as sweetly from the spring, but the village had an air of sullenness. The clay houses huddled forlornly. Two more years of summer rains and they’d return to the dirt from which they’d sprung. Elsewhere in Oman they’d have long since been replaced with concrete houses, modern, stormproof and air-conditioned.

  Only Abbas’s house had changed for the better. Made of steel, glass and concrete, it loomed over the village and from the flat roof, commanded the view for miles around.

  “The wards start a few meters from here,” Sadiq said. “I can feel them.”

  “So can I.” They gave Alexa the chills. Dark magic drew its power from death and suffering. Abbas had strengthened his wards with death. She switched off the SUV’s engine and air conditioning.

  She had translocated Sadiq and herself to Salalah and they’d driven from there. She didn’t know what warnings Abbas had woven into the wards and she didn’t want to trigger them by using her power anywhere near them—not until she was inside and able to free Theron.

  Sadiq opened the passenger door. Hot air rushed in like an oven blast. Welcome to the desert. He moved gingerly, protecting his fractured ribs and bruising.

  Alexa frowned. She’d wanted to heal him, but that was against Guardian Council rules, too. What Michael would say about involving Sadiq in—

  She cut off that useless train of thought. She was committed, now, and so was Sadiq. He needed to act against his father.

  Dirt crunched under her feet, the heat shimmering up as she walked around the car, all too conscious of the wards.

  Sunglasses hid Sadiq’s eyes, but his mouth was thin.

  Pain, determination, fear? She could only guess.

  He drew the dagger he’d bought in Salalah from its sheath. Sunlight glinted off the sharp blade. “I don’t know how long we’ll have from me breaking the ward to Dad reacting.”

  “I’ll be as quick as I can.” The challenge was twofold: to find Theron; and to escape with him and Sadiq before Abbas closed the wards and locked them in.

  A human ward oughtn’t to be able to hold an angel—but Abbas’s wards had kept angels out for years.

  She looked at the oasis. It could be a deadly trap. “Sadiq, when you’ve broken the ward, go back to the car and start driving out.” He glanced at her. It wasn’t what they’d agreed. “I’ll catch up with you and translocate you from there.”

  “If Dad closes the ward, you’ll need me to reopen it. I’m staying.” He slashed his wrist.

  The shallow cut oozed pearls of blood.

  Sadiq stuck his wrist in the ward. “Open.” The desert heat intensified as the raw power of the ward writhed. “Open for me and mine.” He turned and smeared the blood on his dagger onto the back of Alexa’s hand.

  They walked through the invisible barrier. A wind that smelled as if it had blown across a charnel house wailed around them, and then they were through.

  The ordinary dust-dry scent and heat of the desert returned.

  With no time to waste on walking, Alexa translocated herself and Sadiq to Abbas’s house. If Sadiq insisted on staying, he’d be safest with her.

  The heavy wooden door was shut, but not bolted. It opened when Sadiq pushed it. A puff of foul air suggested it, too, had been warded—and broken at his blood.

  How many more traps lurked in the damned house?

  Inside, the room was sparsely furnished: cool tiled floors, white walls and carved wooden furniture. A reception room in a house where the host never entertained. There were no ornaments, no djinni bottle hidden in plain sight.

  Sadiq didn’t spare it a glance. His footsteps rang against the tiles as he strode through it, but neither Abbas nor servants appeared.

  Beyond the reception room lay a smaller room, owning only high narrow windows and a second door.

  “The antechamber to hell,” Sadiq said.

  Alexa pushed open the door. She’d braced herself for the stench of black magic. Instead, cool air carried the scent of freshwater. Apparently, Abbas had diverted some of the spring to his private quarters.

  She descended the circular stairs, her senses straining past the physical to anticipate any attack from Abbas and to detect the pulse of magic that was Theron’s signature.

  Light came from solar tubes, revealing an underground space of vaulted arches and shadowed corners. Water burbled on the edge of hearing.

  She started counting arches, remembering Sadiq’s advice. He’d seldom ventured down here, but he thought Abbas kept his treasures in the seventh space, behind grills and locks, but hopefully, not behind yet more wards—or at least, not behind wards aimed at keeping out angels.

  After the fourth arch, she encountered the spring. It bubbled into a low pool before draining away beneath the flagstones. She paused a moment because water not only cleansed, it hid. The spring could muffle the signature of Theron’s power.

  She dipped her hand in the water. It stung with the chill of its sunless depths, but there was no echo of Theron.

  Sadiq, impatient, had gone on before her.

  She wiped her hand on her trousers and hurried after him. The fifth alcove held dead bodies—stuffed animals. Light glinted off their glass eyeballs.

  Yuk. Abbas was experi
menting with animating the dead.

  The sixth alcove was surprisingly cozy. A wide table served as a desk. A comfortable chair was positioned for reading beneath a solar tube. Books were stacked on steel shelves.

  No hint of Theron, but from the next archway she could sense a muddled and powerful pulse of magics.

  Abbas’s treasure room.

  She glanced up, just before she walked in and saw a grille that could lower from the roof. She shrugged. If Abbas caught her here, a physical barrier would be the least of her problems.

  But Sadiq hesitated, too. His cut hand rested on the wall beside the arch. His other hand toyed with the hilt of his dagger.

  She touched his arm in a silent command to wait there.

  He jerked his head in agreement.

  Abbas’s “treasures” likely included some of the worst products of dark magic through the ages. Such objects could carry curses. Worse, they could be enchanted to whisper darkness into a person’s soul or suck that very soul from them, killing them breath by breath, from heartbeat to heartbeat.

  The shadows in the treasure room shifted, deepening, moving, despite the steady light from the solar tubes. A light switch by the archway showed it was also wired for electric light.

  Alexa didn’t flick the switch. The shadows weren’t natural, and therefore, weren’t something human science could dispel. These were shadows of dark magic and her skin crawled that she’d have to walk among them.

  Theron, if you’re in here…She shuddered. I won’t leave you here.

  The ward on the archway hadn’t been set against angels. Clearly, Abbas trusted his outer wards. Or else, he knew no angel would willingly search out objects of dark magic.

  The ward parted around her like sticky, greedy cobwebs. The stink of brimstone and rotting blood stirred in the heavy shadows.

  She walked three steps and stopped. Relief welled up. There! She could sense Theron’s presence. Somewhere in this tangle of darkness there was a clean freshness, like a sea breeze on a summer’s day. She caught the hope of it and simply followed, stepping warily around a bloodstained spear. The carved mask beside it grinned in imbecilic hate.