Rain dribbled down his nose. His nostrils flared as he scowled at me, hatred like an electric current traveling from his eyes to mine.
“I’ll be the one enjoying myself when Akeelah gets a hold of you. You’re not worth my time. I can have whatever I want, now. You’re nothing, and next time anyone bothers to look, you’ll be less than nothing.”
Cold water slid down my back. I shivered.
If I’d been able to, I would have told him there wasn’t much he could have from inside the prison of his tiny bottle. As it was, I doubted my throat would be capable of handling words for the next few hours, if I even managed to stay alive that long.
I was on the verge of passing out when the world around me shimmered, sending my head swimming. Eyes shut tight, I gasped for air and told myself the ground wasn’t tilting, the Earth wasn’t spinning out of orbit.
The colors of the night melted into paleness and remolded themselves into shapes I couldn’t put a name to. Shards of pain pierced my knees. A voice sounded in the distance.
I blinked furiously, trying to understand what was happening. It took me several desperate moments and gulps of air to understand that Mack had let me go, and I had fallen to my knees. It took even longer to realize I had almost passed out from the lack of oxygen at the exact time he’d transported me to a different place.
I struggled to focus on my trembling hands before me. I made out the half-moons at the base of my nails, the small wrinkles on top of my fingers, the blue-green veins and tendons in the back of my hands.
“I found her for you,” Mack was saying. “I found her and brought her to you as you wished.”
My head cleared. The world stopped tumbling. I found that I was on kneeling on a concrete floor, clothes dripping, flesh brimming with goose bumps.
Suddenly, a frosty current seemed to rise from the floor. It twisted itself around me like cold-blooded snakes. I hugged myself and shut my eyes. My stomach felt as if I was free falling, and I wanted to crawl under a tiny pebble.
At first, I was too overtaken by the cowering feeling to realize what was happening. But, slowly, the depth of my state became familiar. I’d felt this way before, several times. I opened my eyes. A pair of long, naked legs stood before me. They shone like polished, black gems.
“Oh, how I’ve looked forward to this moment,” Akeelah said.
I refused to look up and curled up tighter into a ball.
35
Faris
I was trapped again. I didn’t know how it had happened, but I was back inside the stone, and, this time, I had no idea what it would take to get free from it.
God, Marielle was alone. She needed me.
I couldn’t be trapped. I had to get out, get out, get out.
I pushed outward, an explosion of essence meant to test the strength of the prison that surrounded me. I knew it was futile. I’d tried to set myself free of the stone many times. It never worked. But I couldn’t just sit here and . . .
I stopped and quickly gathered my essence, pulling it back to one central spot. This was not the stone . . . not the stone . . . not the stone.
This prison was infinity. I had felt it, vast and dangerous, prepared to pull me into nothing or . . . or . . . into something else, something that wouldn’t be me anymore. I had actually just felt it try, tugging at the threads of my being, attempting to weave me into something else.
No. I refused to be unmade.
But if this was not the stone? Then what? Where?
The answer came to me some time later. It could have been minutes, hours, days. God, not days! Please, not days!
It was the demon.
The demon had taken me and I was . . .
I was where? Underground? Inside the demon?
In hell?
Marielle Marielle Marielle.
I screamed her name with no voice. It thrilled through my essence. I felt it as if it were part of me. Each letter, each syllable etched deeply in my core.
I was too afraid to remember what had happened, afraid to think of a way to get out. Because I had no idea where to begin. I had nothing to go by, no experience, no knowledge that could help my situation.
Something tugged at me, inviting, but too insistent to be a gentle host.
I refused again.
If I accepted this invitation, I would never escape. Of that, I was sure. So I wound up tighter and I waited for something to happen, for an idea to spark within me and show me the way out.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
Time slipped and rose and twisted. It ate itself to a pinprick, then exploded into forever.
No ideas came. Only despair.
I was lost, a drop of water refusing to become part of the ocean. How much longer would I be able to keep my shape? How much longer before I was . . . diluted?
The tugging around my edges was becoming more than I could bear, and I didn’t know if I’d been fighting for a second or a lifetime. And without that knowledge, how could I tell myself to hold on for a little longer?
There was no reference, just this insidious force gnawing at me, trying to get to my marrow.
I begged for help. It was a silent cry. I knew help wouldn’t come. I knew help was impossible.
36
Marielle
I felt like shrinking into nothing, like flying away, but I’d come here to fight, not to shrink in Akeelah’s presence—no matter how sickening, how charged with coldness and hatred.
With everything I was, I fought my way to a standing position. My knees and hands shook, but, once I was on my feet, a measure of courage seeped into my veins.
I took a deep breath and met Akeelah’s eyes. They were a satisfied emerald green, a shade that hid the vicious red of her fury.
“I found her for you. I found her and brought her to you as you wished,” Mack repeated again.
Reluctantly, Akeelah’s eyes left mine and went to Mack. “I heard you the first time.” She enunciated each other with care. “What is it you want? A reward?” The question was charged with a threatening double meaning that was impossible to miss.
Mack lowered his head in submission, took a step back, then another. When Akeelah looked away and refocused her attention back on me, he rushed out of sight, throwing glances over his shoulder like a chastised dog.
The Djinn regarded me as if I was a curious bug that had suddenly fallen on her lap. I held her gaze, though not without effort.
“Where is my father?” I asked, my voice little more than a whisper.
“Your father?!” She exclaimed in a tone so loud and abrupt that it made me jump. Her eyes drifted upward very slowly. “I knew he would come in handy.”
I followed her gaze. She was looking at something that hung overhead. A cage?
“Marielle?!” My father exclaimed from above.
“Dad!”
He was inside the cage, dangling many feet above the floor, his narrow face squeezed between two thick iron bars.
“Dad!” I ran closer, head thrown back as I desperately searched his eyes for an answer to my unspoken question: Are you alright?
He gave me a smile, then demanded, “What are you doing here? Where is Faris?”
“Yessss,” Akeelah said, stretching the word. “Where is Faris? Again, it seems I have gotten only half of the prize. Although he can’t be far—not when his precious pet stands before me.” She looked around, her dark face genuinely confused.
“He’s not here,” I said. If those words could ever give me any amount of pleasure, this was it. At least, Akeelah wouldn’t get her way in every respect.
“No matter. I’m sure he’ll arrive soon. Unless . . .” Her eyes lit to a radiant green. She even smiled, her horrendous chin jutting out even more.
Hatred flooded me like poison raging through my veins. I wanted to kill her with my own two hands, right then and right there, but not without making her suffer first.
“Did something go wrong with—what should I call it?—your pathetic plan to d
estroy me?” She cackled.
She knew about our plan. Damn Gallardo! He must have told her. I clenched my teeth, hoping fervently there was—somewhere out in the world—another person who knew how to stop her.
She flipped a hand in a dismissive gesture. “And to believe I worried. I must be losing my touch. Maybe that’s what being amongst Dross has done to me. Oh, but it is a shame,” she said in mock regret. “I had such . . . entertaining plans for him.”
“At least I don’t have to worry about you two plotting against me anymore.” She laughed her rusty, hideous laugh. “So what happened to him? Pray tell.”
“Screw you.” My voice dripped with contempt.
“I doubt he’s better off now. We, at least, had fun together. I’m not sure . . . a demon—that’s what happened to him, right? A demon—would not be entertaining in the least.”
“Shut up!”
“I actually feel sorry for him,” she went on, ignoring me. “Demons are so—what should I call them?—primal, all hunger and greed, always in search of something or someone to devour.” She pronounced the word with relish and even licked her lips afterward.
No no no!
I shook my head, wishing I could tear my ears off. I didn’t want to hear any more. The fact that Faris was gone was painful enough. The details of what had happened to him were too awful to bear. Besides, I hadn’t come here for this. I’d come for a different type of pain.
“They dissolve whatever they consume,” Akeelah went on. “That’s how they get bigger and meaner, you know?”
“I said shut up!”
Suddenly there was an enormous face in front of mine, all glowing red eyes and bared teeth. “You are nothing but a plague upon the Earth, a transient insect that needs to be stomped on. So you shut up. You keep your little mouth shut tight.”
“Leave me alone, Djinn! Your magic holds no sway over me,” I said stupidly.
Akeelah let out a loud hoot of amusement. “Magic? What makes you think I’m using magic? Is it because you feel cold inside, because your insides shrivel in my presence? That is not magic. That is nothing but my charming personality.” She pulled away, straightening to her full height, and walked away.
Enough of this. I swallowed and took a deep breath. “Faris said you wanted to find me.”
She gave me a contemptuous glare over her shoulder but said nothing.
“Well, I came.”
Slowly, she turned and faced me. “You came?”
“I came. Mack just happened to find me before I located the right warehouse.”
“And here I thought I had seen the height of human stupidity.” She walked to a gigantic, jeweled throne I hadn’t noticed before. My mouth hung open. Faris had mentioned the thing, but what I’d imagined paled in comparison to the garish thing before me. She sat and steepled her fingers.
“Please,” I almost choked on the word, “let my father go. I came. It’s me you want. Let him go.”
“Marielle, no!” Dad exclaimed.
I ignored him and took a few steps toward Akeelah. I stopped at the edge of one of the many Persian rugs that were layered at her feet.
“And you seriously thought this bargain of yours would work?” There was jest in her tone. “You said to yourself ‘I’ll give myself up in exchange for my father’ and you actually believed I would do what you asked?”
My chin shook in answer.
She sighed, looking puzzled. “I don’t think I will ever understand Dross. That simply makes no sense, but your little brain seems to be a fantastical world where anything can happen. Even the impossible.”
Oh, God!
I shut my eyes and lowered my head.
What drove me to think I’d be able to control this situation? Why was I here?
But the answer was simple. I hadn’t been thinking clearly. I’d made my decision out of despair. I’d come here seeking a way out of my raw grief. Deep down, I’d known I wouldn’t be able to control this situation. And that was exactly the level of recklessness my pain had devised for me.
I’d made my way here with the subconscious desire to forfeit my life.
The realization shook me to the core and stripped me naked of my fear.
Slowly, I opened my eyes. My gaze traveled from my feet, over the Persian rugs, and up Akeelah’s bare legs to her face. I considered her for a long moment, seeing her clearly for the first time. Without the burden of my fear, I saw her for what she really was, a sad creature that had never known happiness, tenderness, love.
Of course she couldn’t understand what had brought me to this place. Of course she couldn’t comprehend someone willing to sacrifice everything for someone they loved. She had no concept of anything but contempt, fear, and hatred.
I met her gaze and held it like I’d never done before. As her eyes bore into mine, I could feel that strange sensation trying to creep over me, the one that always overtook me in her presence. I figured it was her hatred, her very essence attempting to corrupt me.
Suddenly, I found myself smiling, realizing how easy it was to push her away and see through her attempts to make me feel inferior when, in truth, I was so much more than she was and she would ever be.
I took two more steps forward and dug my shoes into the plush rug, enjoying its luxurious surface.
“I know dignity and morality have no meaning to you,” I said, my gaze still locked with hers. “I know you are an empty creature capable of only one emotion. Of course you can’t understand us. The depth of what we’re capable of will always escape you. I’m here because I love my father, because I love Faris, because I would do anything for them, even sacrifice myself. Something no one will ever do for you. My father is everything I have left. I belong with him. Do as you will.”
A strange rumble began under my feet. At first, I didn’t know where it was coming from, then I realized Akeelah’s massive throne was shaking. I looked down at her hands. She had lowered them and was now gripping the armrests as if she meant to crush them. She, herself, was trembling with fury. The intensity of her emotion was overwhelming her control over her own body and confirming the veracity of my words. No one capable of a rainbow of emotions could ever be so completely overpowered by one alone, the way she was now.
She had no balance, no sides and edges. She was but a core of hatred, surrounded by nothing else.
“I would say I feel sorry for you,” I said, “but I don’t. Because I hate you. And the fact that I’m capable of feeling so much more, of loving, makes my contempt for you all the more meaningful than all the hate that you are.”
She stood very slowly, still gripping her throne. It was clear it wasn’t easy for her to appear calm, to not blow up in some infantile outburst that would prove me right. She was too proud to let that happen.
When she was completely erect, she said, “I will wipe that little satisfied grin off your face and show you how truly valuable all your righteous emotions are.”
I should have been afraid, but I was tired. I just wanted it all to end.
“Gallardo,” she called in a singsong voice. “Come out, come out, come out.”
Like a shimmering heat wave, the man that I once sought, hoping he would help me destroy Akeelah, materialized by her side.
“You called?” he asked in a weak voice. He looked so different from the man I remembered that, for a moment, I doubted this was the same person. The drive and intensity his blue eyes had possessed were gone. His shoulders sagged and his jaw hung slack, highlighting his dejected posture. His gaze was slow to turn to mine and make the connection. His expression changed in slow motion as he recognized me. And if I hadn’t known better, I would have said he was sorry to find me there, dreading what Akeelah would ask him to do next.
I looked down, resigned to my fate, but what Akeelah said next shook my confidence to the bone and made me realize that, indeed, I was nothing but a fool girl.
“Gallardo, ready the table and bring the man down from the cage. I’m in a Djinn-making mood,
and we will begin with her father. She will be next.”
37
Faris
I woke as if from an eternal dream. It had started in the shape of a vivid nightmare, pulling at my boundaries, stretching me thin. Slowly, as my strength dwindled, everything became an obscuring haze, a torture of darkness and semi-clarity that made me forget who I was.
Only one thing remained.
One name.
Marielle. Marielle. Marielle.
So I held on to that. I held on and didn’t let go.
For millennia I was trapped in a stone. For millennia I was trapped inside a demon. Or so it seemed, until something changed.
Like a drop of blood that had dispersed in a sea of tears, I’d drifted away in fading tendrils. I had lost my shape, had diluted to a color that had once been red and was now but a feeble wisp of pink.
But somehow, the color was returning. Like time rewinding, everything moved backward. What had drifted away slowly found its way back, what had dissolved gradually coiled back into place.
Suddenly I was fighting, not drifting hopelessly.
I became aware of turmoil, an earthquake, the end of the world all around me. Even if it was still dark, the gloom that had covered me lessened, and I could see again. With my sight, so returned my other senses. The smell of sulfur burned me. The sound of rain and muffled voices infused my ever-strengthening essence.
Someone was out there!
Suddenly there was an inside and an outside and I had to get out.
With Marielle’s name as my sword, I fought. I tore at the insistent force that fought to break me down. I reached for my magic, desperately trying to gather it in one place—even as the demon doubled its grip on it. When the creature first captured me, my magic had been the first thing it had stolen, but I wasn’t going down without a fight. My magic was all I had to help me escape this hell.
In a tug of war, I pulled on my magic. The demon’s attention was split between fighting me and whatever else was outside, so I gained a few inches, but it wasn’t enough. I kept wishing to be released and back with Marielle, but nothing happened. I was still entombed within the monster without the benefit of my magic.
One Wish Away: Djinn Empire Complete Series Page 67
