by Jean, Rima
Guy stiffened. “What are you doing here? What do you want?”
“I want you,” she said. Her voice was soft, feminine, lusty. Deadly.
His eyes widened. “You… You’re the whore from the Desert Rose. Jasmine.”
She smiled. “Yes. Yes. Who else?” She continued to step toward him; he continued to step back.
“Do not come any closer.” He raised the dagger once again.
One moment she looked contrite, but the next, she lashed out. She struck his wrist with such force that the dagger flew from his hand and clattered to the ground. He did not even have time to move. She raised her leg and kicked him squarely in the chest. The impact threw him back onto the bed, and Zayn wasted no time. She pounced on him, straddled him, and drew the Assassin blades from each of her sleeves. She crossed the blades and pressed them lightly against his throat, smiling into his face. “Think, Guy. Think. Where else have you seen me?”
She could see the fury building in his eyes, his desire to mutilate her burning in his pupils. He began to curse at her, but she pushed the razor edges against his windpipe hard enough to draw blood, and he stopped. She smiled. “Let me see if I can remind you, hmm?” Slowly, she moved her hands from his throat and began tugging at the bedsheets. She slashed a sheet with a knife and looped a wide strip of it around the bed frame. “Such high quality cotton sheets, messire. They are from Antioch, no? They will come in handy.”
As she began to bind his wrist, he bucked, grabbing for the knife in her sleeve. It was almost comical, how much stronger she was than him. With minimal effort, she slashed his palm with the blade and pinned his arms and legs to the bed with her hands and knees. He grimaced and gasped at the pain. “By God, you are a demon bitch!”
Zayn grinned. “You are remembering me, then?”
His eyes darted over her face, seeking, as she bound each of his wrists in strips of the cotton sheets to the bed’s solid frame. It was then that he recognized her. She saw it dawn on him—his brow cleared of furrows, his eyes widened, and his lips parted. “Earic’s Saracen girl. From Rafaniya. Zayn.”
“That’s right,” she said, nodding, speaking to him as though he were a child. “The one whose mother you murdered. The one you raped and left for dead in a sheep’s pen. I am honored that you remember.”
He gritted his fine teeth. “She was a witch. There was plenty of proof.”
“That is a lie,” Zayn snarled, clamping her hand around his throat. “And even if it was true, there is no justification for what you did, you dog. To her. To me.”
“God wills it.” He coughed as she released her grip. His lips were almost blue.
“You truly believe that, don’t you?” Zayn mused in disgust. “That God would have you torture and kill people simply because they are different than you, because they believe different things.”
“People?” He choked on a laugh. “You are no person. You are a demon. Only a demon could have such strength. And we all know what God says of demons.”
Zayn clicked her teeth together. “Very well. We are done with our theological debate.”
She bound his legs firmly to the bed and climbed off. Taking the candle in her hand, she pulled a small leather pouch from her breeches and emptied the contents on Guy’s supine body. A yellow, pungent substance. “What do you Franks call it? ‘Brimstone’?” Zayn looked innocently at Guy.
Guy struggled fiercely against his bindings, panting and sweating. “You are mad!”
Zayn touched the candle’s flame to the mattress. “This is how you murdered my mother, is it not? I think it is only fair that you die in the same manner, Guy de Molay.”
She held the knife against him to ensure he did not scream until the flames had kindled. It did not take long. She slipped back into her cloak and climbed to the window. She looked back once more at the pitiful man bound to the bed, the flames creeping toward his feet. She said to him, “If you think you are headed for anywhere other than Hell, then you are in for a surprise, my fine Templar Knight.”
He twisted his head to look at her, his black curls plastered to the sweat on his face and neck. “I will see you there, then, you demon bitch!” he cried.
She smiled at him one last time and leaped from the glowing window into the night.
Chapter Eighteen
Earic did, indeed, leave a horse for her—except he was on it.
“Get on,” he ordered, offering her his hand.
There was no time to argue. She leaped onto the horse without taking his hand and barely had time to wind her arms about his waist before they were off. Behind them, a fire crackled, and voices began to shout. The charger galloped hard, its hooves clattering against the cobbled streets and through the gates of the city. They rode swiftly by moonlight, beyond the quiet hamlets and into the rugged hills. They were a fair distance northeast of Jerusalem when they stopped to rest.
Zayn fairly tumbled to the ground, turning to glare at Earic. “What are you doing?”
He eased himself off the horse slowly. “I thought for sure the long ride would have cooled your anger.” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Apparently, I was wrong.”
“I’m not angry,” Zayn protested. “I just don’t understand why you’re coming with me. Certainly you need to leave Jerusalem, but you cannot come with me to Saladin.”
“I am not going to Saladin. I simply want to talk.” He pulled a tinderbox from his satchel. “Let’s make a fire first.”
They settled around the small fire and ate the bread, meat, and wine Earic had brought with him. Silence. Earic stared into the crackling fire, shadows dancing across his face. “You could have driven a knife into his heart and been done with it.”
She set aside her meal, her appetite suddenly gone. “I wanted him to die as my mother died. Burned alive.” Looking at him now, her voice rose. Had he come here to find out how heartless she could be? “Why are you here, Messire Saxon?”
He lifted his good eye to hers. “I told you. So we can talk. Something we’ve been unable to do in Jerusalem, what with all that Assassin business.”
“You’ve travelled a long way only to have a conversation,” Zayn mumbled, rubbing her arms against the cool breeze. She would not admit to him that she was glad he was here, away from Bashar, and most importantly, with her.
His smile glistened in the firelight. “It’s an important conversation. You know, about life and death, good and evil…and magic.”
They regarded each other for a moment, until Zayn asked, “What are we?”
He let out an uncomfortable chuckle. “I was hoping you could tell me.” He frowned at his hands. “I can tell you that we were chosen by the Templars and Assassins because of what we are, of what we can do.”
Zayn tilted her head curiously at him. “What can you do? Other than kill lions with your bare hands?”
There was a hint of a challenge in her voice, and Earic immediately detected it. He sat up and folded his arms across his chest. “Can you kill a lion with your bare hands, demoiselle?”
“I’m sure I can,” she said with a dismissive wave. “I’ve just never had reason to.”
With his unbandaged eye firmly on Zayn, Earic stood and removed his swordbelt. He moved to the side and crooked his finger at her. “Come now. Strike me.”
Zayn didn’t move. “Don’t be stupid. I’ll hurt you.”
He rolled his shoulders, loosened his arms. “You can try.”
She turned her back to him with a disdainful look. “I would crush you, Saxon. Besides, you’re injured.”
Clearly, she hadn’t anticipated that Earic would scoop her up into his arms and throw her. She soared through the air, her arms and legs flailing, and landed in a mound of bushes no fewer than thirty paces away. As she crawled to her feet and plucked thorns from her skin, she felt her body swell with strength.
Dammit, Fair Boy.
Like a whistling arrow, she flew back and crashed into him at full force. The impact sent them both to the ground, where
they grappled for control. Zayn wanted to laugh. She’d wanted to wrestle Earic as a child, but she hadn’t expected to tussle with him as an adult. This was highly inappropriate. After all, she was a woman and he… The thought flustered her, and her strength waned just a fraction. Flicker. It was enough for Earic to gain the upper hand, whereupon he rolled her to her back and pinned her to the ground.
He panted, looking down victoriously at her, his blond locks hanging in his face. “You must not think with your heart, Zayn,” he said between breaths. “A single misplaced thought, and the strength dissipates.”
“I know that,” she snapped, angry that he understood her weakness. Then her voice softened. “It is the same for you?” she asked.
“Yes, of course.” He let go of her wrists. “But I have had much practice controlling it.”
She lay still. “How did you learn to control it?”
“I imagine the same way you did,” he replied, his breath coming steadily now. “With minimal guidance from people who have no idea what it’s like to have such power.”
Zayn swallowed, her cheeks warming. His proximity, and the fact that he hovered over her on the ground, was more than she could bear. “Can you let me up now?”
He brushed his hair back with his hand, grinning. “To be perfectly honest, I’d rather not.” His breath caressed her cheek, and she stopped breathing altogether. He bent his head and ran his mouth along her cheekbone.
She closed her eyes. “Earic. Don’t.” Her voice was choked, her body alive with sensation.
“As my lady wishes.” It was spoken against her jaw, just below her ear, and she gasped. Casually, he rose and again offered her his hand.
Frustrated, she again refused to take it. What was he doing to her? She lost all control around him, and it was infuriating. As if reading her mind, he chuckled beneath his breath.
Dusting herself off and trying to regain her composure, she asked, “Have you heard of The Testament of Solomon?”
Earic drank deeply of the weak wine, watching her as he did so. When he finished, he said, “I know of it, but not because the Templars let me read it. In fact, they did everything in their power to keep it from me.”
“I’ve read a bit,” Zayn confessed, sitting down on the ground and crossing her legs. “My Assassin mentor told me to read it.”
“And?” He sat beside her. “Do you believe it is true? That Solomon harnessed the power of demons to build his temple?”
Zayn sighed. “I don’t know. Everything I once believed has been turned on its head. I only wish I knew how any of it related to me.” She looked at him. “To us.”
His gaze was steady, betraying no emotion. “Do you think we are demons?”
She flinched. “If not demons, then what?”
“I don’t know. But I can tell you that I certainly don’t feel…evil. I have my faults and vices, like any other man.” He flushed a little and averted his gaze to the fire. “But I have seen evil done, Zayn, and neither you nor I is capable of such atrocities.”
“Junaid—my mentor—said that not all jinn are evil, but that full-blooded ones can become slaves to their power,” she said softly.
Earic grinned and slapped his thigh. “There you have it, then. We cannot be demons, or else surely we would be slaves to the men who trained us.”
Zayn slumped. “Then what are we?”
“Half bloods, I suppose,” Earic answered solemnly.
Yes. It all made sense. She’d never wanted to admit to herself, but she’d known it all the long. “We are half-blood jinn, half-blood demons. We are not as powerful as full bloods, but we cannot be enslaved by our powers.”
“I’ve heard that they can shape-shift, too.” He looked into the branches of the trees. “Full bloods can change form, from human to animal.”
“My God,” Zayn murmured.
Stretching his long legs before him, Earic leaned back on his arms and said, “Back in England, I never heard anyone call me a demon. They called me other things, of course.”
She leaned toward him in interest. “Tell me.”
…
It was an accident. Just an accident.
He was seven years old, playing in his father’s garden with his brother, Walter.
“Let me try,” Earic pleaded, his small face upturned, strands of white-gold hair hanging in his eyes.
“You’re too little,” Walter insisted, scowling. “The bow is bigger than you are.” It was a beautiful longbow of polished yew, and it was, in fact, nearly as tall as Walter, who was well into his tenth year. Earic was, unfortunately, unperturbed by this; even at seven, he knew he could manage it better than Walter could. Walter knew it, too, and resented Earic with a fierceness that was almost unnatural.
“Just let me hold it,” Earic begged, his grubby hands outstretched. “Just for a moment.”
“No,” Walter growled, “and that’s final. So piss off.” He leaned the longbow against the trunk of a tree ever so carefully, then turned to his little brother with purpose. Using both his hands, he shoved Earic hard in the chest, sending the younger boy into the rosebushes with a grunt.
The thorns snagged his shirt, his skin. As he tried to stand, they dragged, leaving tears and welts that beaded with blood. He cried a little, salty tears mingling with blood on his lips, and he heard Walter laugh. “Poor baby. Go back to suckling teat, little baby.”
White-hot rage, the kind of little boys yearning to prove their strength, made Earic pull himself from the rosebush with little care as to how the thorns shredded his clothes or skin. Streaked with slivers of red, he charged from the bush and directly into Walter, who stood a few yards away. The beautiful bow clattered against stone, and Walter was thrown off his feet by the impact. He, too, landed against stone. Earic panted furiously, waiting for his brother to rise and chase him, but it never happened.
Walter lay motionless near a tree, his foot twisted at an awkward angle. Earic said, “Walter,” softly, then not so softly. He ran and knelt beside his brother, finally seeing his brother’s anguished expression, the leg that was most certainly shattered to pieces.
Something happened to Earic then: he began to believe all he’d heard about himself, all the whispers of wide-eyed nursemaids and washer women, the hushed, frightened exclamations of changeling and fae. Walter had been the one to tell him what those things were, with a certain malicious glee in his voice. A creature…not quite human…left in place of a human child. Earic knew of a child in the village whom the villagers also called a changeling, and that child was born with a flat, broad face, a humped back, and no wit to speak of.
Earic’s deformities, Walter insisted, were invisible to the naked eye, for they were inside his soul.
…
“With Walter’s grievous injury, even my father began to believe the whispers,” Earic said, examining his hands. “He could hardly look at me afterward, except in shame. It did not help that my mother had died giving birth to me—Edmund Goodwin already had more than enough reason to resent me. He remarried a third time, of course, and had more strapping sons to be proud of, none of whom carried the burden of otherworldliness about his neck. And when our Norman overlord Gerard de Molay asked to take me for ransom, my father hesitated not a moment. Good riddance to a changeling and a curse.” He looked at Zayn and smiled without humor. “Of course, since I suffered from terrible guilt, I was quick to accept my fate. I thought that pledging myself to the Templars would help me atone for what I’d done to Walter.”
Zayn was at a loss for words. I’m sorry seemed woefully inadequate. What’s more, she was ashamed to feel a flood of relief, of…joy. She was not alone in this world after all, not alone in her pain or her confusion. She said, “At least you aren’t a murderer, like me.”
“Ah, but my dear Zayn, that will change in just weeks,” he said, “when I go to battle with the armies of Jerusalem against Saladin and his—as Guy calls them—hordes of Allah.”
“What?” Zayn startled. “So soon?
”
“Haven’t you heard?” Earic scowled, as though the very talk of war disagreed with him. “Reynald de Châtillon, the lord of Outrejordain, has broken the two-year truce between Saladin and the king by continuing to attack the rich Muslim caravans that pass through his lands. The peace between the Franks and the Saracens is ended.”
“God,” Zayn wailed, rocking her head between her hands. “What will we do?”
Earic looked as though he wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words. He licked his lips, opened his mouth, closed it again. Finally, he said, “I think we should stay together.”
“Stay together?” Zayn echoed. “What do you mean?”
He reached out and poked the fire with a stick. “Men will always see us as weapons. The Templars, the Assassins. And if we choose not to serve them, they will try to eliminate us. Together, we are stronger. We can survive.”
He’d puzzled her. “You said yourself that I should go to Saladin. You can’t follow me. They’ll kill you, powerful Templar that you are.”
His good eye was bright, hopeful, as he edged closer to her. “But didn’t you say the Assassins would kill me if I returned to Jerusalem? I was thinking…we could leave it all behind. Escape.”
Zayn shook her head, unable—unwilling—to understand. “Escape? Where would we go? And we would be…alone?”
“No,” he said softly, touching her hand with his fingertips. He scanned her face eagerly, his gaze resting on her mouth. “We would be together.”
A feeling unlike any other she’d ever experience bloomed in her chest. The strangeness of it thrilled her, terrified her. When his mouth found hers, she once again felt that melting sensation, so soft and warm and yet utterly earth shattering. He slipped an arm around her waist, holding her tightly against him. He cradled her head; stroked her jawline with his thumb. Her body tingled from his touch, and this time she didn’t resist it. And yet…
She pulled away, stepped back. “I can’t,” she stammered. “If you stay with me, your life will be in danger. I am hunted, Earic.”
