“More will be coming soon,” one of the rebel djinn said. “Alara, we need to get out of here now.”
Alara wasn’t listening though. She was staring at the piles of ash on the ground. Mira strode up to her and slapped her hard across the face. The sound echoed in the silent corridor. “Pull it together.”
Alara tore her gaze away from the gray particles floating across the ground, and caught her bottom lip between her teeth. Her eyes brimmed with tears and she nodded. Sod her and her hysteria. Vritra began to morph until he was in human form again. He fell to the ground, braced on hands and knees. His naked body was a mass of wounds that glowed and leaked what looked like green-tinged puss. Someone threw a cloak over his body.
My dragon wanted to hurt and maim. Her wrath was a deadly tsunami. They’d hurt her mate and her mate was dying. But there was no time for that. We had to get him home. The world expanded and my vision snapped back to normal. I hit the ground beside Vritra and hauled him up.
It was time to get the heck out of here.
***
Vritra was convulsing on the floor. His body was soaked in sweat and impossible to pin down. The rebel djinn were gathered at the far end of the room, as if being too close to the poisoned dragon asura might contaminate them somehow. Why had I agreed to help Alara? Why?
Paimon was still unconscious and the asura I’d left behind had moved him to the benches at the edge of the room. Alara made to walk away toward him, but I grabbed her elbow and yanked her back.
“What poison is it? How do we counter it?” I shook her to knock the dazed expression off her stupid face.
Alara pressed a hand to her mouth. “I don’t know.”
“You’re supposed to be a warrior princess, pull your shit together and think, dammit!”
Amon pulled her from my grasp, his face grim. “She will be of no help to you right now.”
Mira shoved Alara out the way, and then placed a hand on my shoulder. “Let me see?”
I nodded. Kiran tore off his tunic and handed it to me. My nakedness hadn’t even registered to me. I pulled it on quickly.
Mira straddled Vritra’s cloaked torso in an attempt to pin him down. “Grab his shoulders and his legs. Someone hold his head.”
The asura looked to me for confirmation.
“Do it.” I shuffled forward to clasp Vritra’s head between my hands. Nina held down one shoulder, Mani held down the other and Amon and Kiran helped with the legs. Finally, we had him semi immobilized. But, shit, he was burning up. Mira grasped his chin and peeled back his lids. His pupils were dilated and the whites of his eyes were veined with silver.
“Mercuron,” she said. “They poisoned him with Mercuron. It’s similar to the element mercury in your world, but even more deadly in ours.”
“What do we do? There has to be something we can do.” I looked to Mani. “He’s a god so he can’t die, can he?” But then they shouldn’t have been able to cut through his dragon scales with Mercuron. Their world was different and its rules were alien.
“They shouldn’t have been able to penetrate his armor,” Mani said, echoing my thoughts. His tone was grave. “I don’t know. I just…I don’t.”
No. This couldn’t be happening. “How do we get it out of his system?”
Mira shook her head. “With this amount of Mercuron in his system, he should be dead already.”
Ice flooded my veins. I was not losing him. Not now, not ever. “We need to clean his system. We need to push the poison out.”
My mind was whirring. We were connected, him and me, but we were also connected to the asura. It was evident in their pale faces and the sheen of perspiration on their brows, that they too were feeling the residual effects to the poison in Vritra’s system. My stomach rolled with nausea. So, if we could feel its effects, we could in turn affect it.
“What are you thinking?” Mira asked.
“I’m thinking we expel this shit out of his wounds. I’m thinking we do it together.” I raised my head and met Laila’s gaze, then Kiran’s and Mani’s. I locked eyes with them all, one by one. “We are a fist. Together we are strong. Together we can save him.”
A murmur of agreement flitted across the room.
“You feel it, don’t you? You can feel the poison.”
“I feel it,” Laila said through a clenched jaw.
“I feel it,” Mani said.
“Me too,” Kiran said.
A chorus of and I and me too filled the room.
“Then we can do something about this. Find the connection, tap into it and push. We do it together and we do it fast.” I scanned them again. “You ready?” The united assent was a sharp stab to my brain. “Now!”
Every ounce of power I had was channeled into Vritra. My heat washed through his veins, finding the poison and obliterating it, pushing the excess out through the wounds that refused to heal. Other levels of heat joined mine as my asura gave me all that they had. Beneath Mira, Vritra began to spasm, his back arched and it took everything we had to hold him still, and then silver puss began to seep from his wound.
“It’s working,” Mira said excitedly. “Keep going.”
I closed my eyes and reached out to him. I’m here. You’re okay. I’m here.
Hear you...
The sob trapped in my throat exploded from my lips. “He can hear us. He’s fighting.”
The heat intensified around me and, with a mental fizz, the last of the mercury was obliterated.
“Carmella, look,” Mira said.
I opened my eyes and stared at his wounds as they knit together leaving his skin smooth and unmarred.
Vritra opened his lids. His eyes rolled around in his head as he got his bearings and then they locked on to my face.
“Carmella…”
The asura released him and shuffled back.
Vritra reached up and caressed my face.
Mira sat back, her hands on my mate’s chest. “You did it. You actually did it.”
Vritra frowned and looked up at her. “Why is there a hinn straddling me?”
Kiran let out a choked laugh. I glanced sharply at him and he clapped a hand over his mouth. Gita made a strangled sound and then all the asura burst into laughter. It was a beautiful sound—an expulsion of stress. It rose up into the air and filled the room. My chest ached with it and then my laughter turned into sobs. I crawled onto my mate and held him close. His heart beat against mine as I laughed and cried into the crook of his neck.
***
“I want to hurt her.” I paced Vritra’s bedroom, still clothed only in Kiran’s tunic. The carpet was soft and soothing against the soles of my feet, grounding me and preventing me from going all medieval on the lying djinn’s arse.
Vritra was sitting up against the headboard. The color was back in his cheeks and all traces of the silver shit had left his system, but there was no way I was letting him out of my sight for the foreseeable future.
She needed to understand what she’d almost done. “You could have been killed.”
“And if you had gone, it would have been you on the other end of those swords,” he said.
“Rather me than you.”
“I beg to differ.” He held out his arms. “Now, come here and give your husband a kiss.”
My anger melted like butter beneath his warm, inviting gaze. “Fine. But then I need to go interrogate liar, liar pants on fire some more.” I climbed up onto the bed and straddled him. “Find out what else the djinn have cooked up against us.”
He cupped my face and stared deep into my eyes. “You came back for me.”
I rolled my eyes. “Duh, of course I did.”
The corner of his mouth lifted in a smile. “Mani told me you ordered him to slit Paimon’s throat if Alara came back without us.”
The impact of my decision hit home. What it meant was a blow to the chest. Nothing and no one was above my love for Vritra. Not Paimon, the djinn who’d freed my heart and taught me to believe in myself, and not Alara,
who’d saved my life. When it came to the dragon bond, all other life was dispensable. “I would have killed them all.”
He sighed. “I know. I’ve been there. The asura had to lock me in the vault to prevent me from doing just that.”
I leaned my forehead against him. “I can’t lose you. I can’t be without you.”
He was under my skin, in my blood, woven into the fabric of my soul. He tilted his face up and kissed me, feather soft, a brush here, and a swipe of the tongue there. There was so much to do. A world to save, and yet, right now, right here, there was only this moment, because tomorrow it could all be gone. All that mattered were his lips beneath mine. His hardness pressed against my heat.
There was no waiting for tomorrow.
***
While Vritra slept and regained his strength, I slipped from the bed, pulled on his robe, and grabbed my phone. Ten missed calls from Melody Parker. Shit. The damn thing had been on silent. I called her back and waited five rings before she answered.
“Dammit Carmella. Do you not keep your phone on you?” she snapped.
She was pissed, which meant something had gone wrong. “I’m sorry, we had drama here, but we’re all good now. What’s happened?”
“The broadcast never went through.”
I glanced at my watch. It was almost eight in the evening. The evacuation should have begun. “What do you mean? I though Kevin had it all sorted.”
“He did but, damn it, speak to Kev, he explains it better.”
There was a rustle as the phone was passed over.
“Carmella, hey. We fucked up, man. We should have made the connection sooner. Malachi used the net to find his victims, right?”
“Yeah. He had some sort of darknet that picked up on certain patterns of activity.”
“Yes. But it’s more than that, so much more. I think he’s upgraded. No. I know he has. When the broadcast failed to air, I did some digging. It’s been wiped, as if someone hacked into our system and wiped it.”
“Our snitch?”
“No, there is no snitch. Malachi doesn’t need a snitch out here, because he has one inside the system. In the net. Carmella, he is controlling the world wide web and the internet.”
Had he just said Malachi was controlling the internet?
“It’s how he knew about The Circle meeting. He must have seen the Night Owl’s call to action, even with the encryption. He has control and we can’t do anything. We’re locked out.”
Another rustle and then Melody came on. “Carmella, we believe he’s going to use the net in the purge.”
My scalp prickled in horrific comprehension. All he’d need to do to take over the minds of the humans in the underground facility was speak to them and show them his light.
And, suddenly, his plan was crystal clear. “He’s going to give a sermon. He’s going to broadcast it into every home, every device and he’s going to do it tomorrow.”
“And there is nothing we can do to stop it.” Melody sighed. “We’ve done everything we can. All we can do now is wait.”
I hung up the phone, my mind reeling. We knew how Malachi was going to reach everyone. We knew what he intended to do to those that resisted his allure—that’s what his army was for, and what the djinn were for. What had Yule said again? Oh, yes: those that resisted were incinerated. There was no room in his utopia for strong minds, only the easily manipulated. We had all this information and could do nothing but wait for the purge to begin and react. There was no preemptive action, no first defense. We couldn’t even cut power to the city because every bloody thing was computerized and the kill switches no longer worked.
Malachi had thought of everything, and while we’d been scrambling around trying to pull together an army, he’d been sitting back and biding his time, laughing at our feeble evacuation attempts and blowing up our recruitment plan with a preemptive strike, using his newly minted djinn alliance.
The fucker was sly. But one thing was bugging me. A question, the answer to which may give us the edge we needed in this purge.
Why the eclipse?
Why that particular day?
He had what he needed. He had the net and he had the manpower, so why wait to claim what he wanted? Aaron was in a coma, and he’d already said he didn’t know. If Malachi had shared the reason for his attack date with anyone, it would have been his allies, the djinn.
It was time to question our guests.
14
Mira was loitering outside my door. In the euphoria of having Vritra back I’d completely blanked everyone else. Once again, the single minded devotion of the dragon bond. But she was here now and there was no way she was getting out of a hug. I reached for her, fully expecting her to tell me to back off—Mira did not do hugs—but instead of evading me, she stepped into my arms and gripped me hard.
“I thought I’d never see you again,” she said.
My eyes pricked. “I thought you’d left me.”
She pulled back to stare at me with a frown. “You thought I left of my own free will?”
I winced. “Yes. Then I thought, wait a second, she would have just told me she was leaving. Not just run off.”
She pressed her lip together. “I’m glad you came to your senses.”
“So, what happened?”
Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Paimon happened, that’s what.”
“He just grabbed you and carted you off?”
“I was in the shower when he took me.”
The indignant look on her face was almost too much. “Naked?”
“No, I was fully clothed. What do you think? Of course, I was naked.” She sniffed. “I was not impressed. It happened so fast I was in a cage before I realized and then I couldn’t shift.”
“The alloy?”
“Yes. The dungeons are made of a special alloy. I swear to you, if I’d had my abilities, I would have forgotten he’d once been my lord and ripped out his throat then and there.”
“Why did he take you? He knew you wanted to stay in this realm.”
“At first, I believed it was arrogance.” She leaned up against the wall behind her. “Paimon does not like to lose. He has been my lord all my life. It was all right for him to relieve me of my duty to him, but not for me to choose not to return to him when given the chance. But then, I heard things. About the purge to come and I realized he was trying to protect me. If I fought alongside you, he believed I was doomed.”
So he’d been trying to save her. Could I fault him for that? No. But he had no right to make other people’s decisions for them, no matter how noble his intentions.
“I’m actually about to go see him.”
Mira’s expression sobered. “They were hardest on him. I could hear his screams from my cell down the hall from his. A lord in the dungeon master’s hands. A lord to torture, they said, and they played hard.” She swallowed. “It’s a miracle he survived. One more afternoon in that torture chamber and he would have died. If Alara had not returned when she did…”
And I’d been insanely angry with her for leaving Vritra behind. Wouldn’t I have done the same in her shoes? Could I really say I’d have put others above my mate? Fuck.
“I was a total bitch to her when she came back without my asura.”
“Without Vritra you mean?” Mira nodded. “I can imagine. But you can’t blame yourself for your heightened emotions. You’re mated. Your asura, Gita, explained it to me.” She shot me a wicked smile. “Seems like I missed a lot.” She pushed off the wall. “So, you finally fucked.”
“Gutter brain.”
She shrugged. “Oh, come on, give a girl something. I’ve been locked away in a dungeon for days with nothing better to do than listen to the symphony of pain.”
She was making jokes but the tightness around her eyes belied her nonchalance.
“Do you want to come see Paimon with me?”
“Do you want me to?”
“Yes.”
“Then I will.”
***
We’d housed the djinn on the floor below ours. I took the lift down and found several of them wandering the hallways looking lost. For the first time since they’d landed on my doorstep, I felt a pang of empathy for them. Now that Vritra was safe. Now that we were home, my emotions seemed to have been reset and my conscience switched back on.
Mira leaned in. “Most of them were tortured. They were going to be executed anyway, so what did it matter if they died publically or in a cell?”
Oh, God. “Are you all right?” I asked the nearest djinn. “Are you hungry? There are kitchens down the corridor, first door on the left.”
The djinn smiled and the haze over his expression dissipated somewhat. “Thank you. Food would be most welcome.”
These were the djinn that had been held prisoner. I glanced at his wrists, noting the shackles that still clung to his flesh. Fucking hell, I needed to help these creatures who’d stood up for what was right.
I yanked out my phone and dialed Gita. She answered on the first ring.
“Carmella?”
“Hey, can you get Kiran or Mani, or Laila, someone to come down with something to cut off the shackles on the djinn.”
“No problem,” Gita said. “There must be something in the upper level training room.”
“Thank you.”
I tucked the phone away and placed a hand on the djinns forearm. “Go find some food. An asura will be along shortly to take off those shackles. You’ll find hot water and fresh clothes in the rooms. Tell the others.”
He inclined his head. “We are grateful.”
I wanted to say more, but there were no words for everything that had happened. We were enemies turned allies, and who knew what the future would bring.
“Do you know which room Paimon and Alara are in?”
He pointed at the door behind me.
Unleashing Magick: an Urban Fantasy Novel (The Witch Blood Chronicles Book 4) Page 11
