I wished and wished and wished, but my powers weren’t fully mine. I had to try something else, so I focused on the voices. They weren’t as muffled anymore, and I could almost make out what they were saying. I strained to listen and, catching the cadence, I realized it was familiar. I didn’t perceive each word, but, before the next was spoken, I knew what it would be. They were the words to the incantation Ma’ Gee and I had performed.
Someone was summoning the demon back out of the earth.
My essence pulsed with the knowledge. I didn’t know if it would work or not, but as soon as I realized what was happening, I joined in the spell. I had no voice, no mouth to speak the words, but I didn’t let that get in the way. With all that I was, I became the words. I throbbed with their energy and meaning, keeping the same tempo of whoever was outside, beckoning the beast.
My energy rose and fell with the words, pounding with intent. As the spell progressed, I gradually began feeling . . . separate, unconnected to the force that had devoured me. It was only then that I dared hope I would actually break free of the demon.
Free to go back to Marielle.
The thought had just materialized when, abruptly, fear replaced the joy the idea had brought me. What if I didn’t find Marielle? What if millennia had truly passed and she was gone out of existence?
No no no!
I refused to believe that.
“No!” My voice filled my ears as I screamed the word.
The demon’s grasp loosened. I shook and finally broke free! The demon reached for my essence again, trying to suck me back in, but I was out. Out!
I stood on wet grass several yards from where the demon writhed in fury. Rain splattered my face, but through the haze of melting dirt I could see . . .
My brother!
He was standing before me.
Oh, but it was a dream—a cruel, dying dream.
“Help send him back, you idiot,” he said. “Don’t stop.”
Zet’s face was twisted in an awful grimace as he fought to hold back the demon, risking taking my place inside of the monster. Was it a nightmare? Or was Zet really free from the stone? Had he—
Ma’ Gee was there, too, off to one side, lending her power in the effort, our combined forces woefully inadequate to the task.
With a grunt, Zet slid forward. His shoes skidding over the grass as the demon tried to take him in my stead. Jumping to action, I joined him in the incantation once more. Our words came together and resonated through the wide open yard. They intertwined into one, the way they had when we were children.
My brother was here, with me, working toward a common goal—working to save me, not condemn me.
It took all of our will to push the beast back down to its realm. Our chant pounded on the unwieldy creature as its tentacles thrashed and groped for something to take in my place. It found nothing but dirt.
The ground trembled. Zet and I took a few steps closer to the beast and issued the last words of the spell as if they were hammer blows, hitting in succession to bury the demon deep into the ground.
With a deafening rumble, the hole finally closed shut, swallowing the creature along with its thrashing appendages and otherworldly shrieks.
Spent, Zet and I fell to our knees. We panted and trembled, struggling to regain our senses and strength. When the shaking subsided, I sat back and tried to grasp the meaning of what had happened. My gaze lifted to my brother. I expected him to disappear, to go up in smoke and prove it had all been a hallucination. He didn’t. Instead, his eyes met mine, and we looked at each other for a long moment.
I got to my feet, shakily. Zet did the same. Mud fell from my tattered clothes in clumps. Slowly, we walked toward each other and stopped when there were only a few yards between us.
Staring at his face, I realized it had been too long since I’d seen his gaze this clear, this unencumbered by animosity and anger.
“I’m—”
I don’t know what he was going to say, but I didn’t let him finish. I was too happy to see him, overjoyed to discover that forgiveness had taken root in his heart, even enough to risk his life to save me. I wrapped him in a tight hug, thumped on his back, felt the prickle of tears in my eyes for the first time since I was a young child.
“Brother,” I said, my chest swelling with happiness and pride. I still had a brother. I hadn’t lost him as I had feared.
He thumped my back in turn, and I felt his warmth, the brotherhood he had denied me for so long. I pulled away and held him at arm’s length. A huge smile stretched my lips, the happiness I couldn’t contain. He wore his own smile for short moment, but it was gone too quickly.
A thought occurred to me as I sensed his aura for the first time. I frowned. Zet was free, but still a Djinn? How was that possible? I opened my mouth to ask, but he spoke first, erasing the question from my mind completely.
“I’m sorry.” Something in the tone of his voice told me he wasn’t apologizing for the many centuries of bad blood between us.
“What is it?” I asked.
My mind shifted—past the happiness of seeing my brother, past the fact that he was still a Djinn—and moved into more practical thoughts. My attention drifted questioningly to Ma’ Gee. She looked weak, ready to collapse, but she was still on her feet, unlike the last time. How had she managed to recover and regain the strength to do this again? Unless a long time had actually passed since I was taken. Panic seized my essence.
I looked toward the house just as the front door opened. Abby, Maven, Samuel, Helen, Anita, Javier and Benito walked out. They were still wearing the same clothes they’d been wearing when I disappeared, so it had to be the same day.
My eyes remained locked on the large, oak door, waiting for Marielle to come out. It seemed odd that she hadn’t been the first one to exit the house.
Helen and Anita smiled at me before they rushed over to assist Ma’ Gee. Abby and Maven also looked glad to see me, but now that I thought about it, everyone’s smiles were forced, regretful.
“W-where is Marielle?” I asked.
No one spoke, but their expressions told me something I wasn’t willing to believe.
“Where is Marielle?!” I demanded.
Abby walked to me and put a hand on my forearm. The rain had flattened her hair to her forehead. I stared at her pale fingers on my dirty-covered skin, then looked into her sad, brown eyes.
“I’m sorry, Faris,” she said in a frail voice. “After you . . .” she looked at the ground where the hole had been, “after that thing took you, she thought you were gone. For good. She was so upset.”
“Where. Is. She?!” I couldn’t stand the suspense of Abby’s slow words and wanted to run into the house screaming Marielle’s name, though I already knew I would not find her there.
“I’m sorry, but we don’t know where she is. She left. A few hours after you disappeared, she took one of the cars and didn’t tell anyone where she was going. We thought you might have an idea.”
I stepped back, away from Abby. Her hand fell away and hung limply at her side. I shook my head, denying the only possibility that shaped itself before me. There was only one place where she could have gone.
Slowly, I raised my eyes to the sky. It was dark, a nighttime sky. It had been morning when we started the spell, now it seemed to be midnight. The rain subsided, leaving behind a heavy silence. The happiness that I’d felt just moments ago scattered into a million shards of panic, agony, denial.
Marielle had gone to Akeelah.
38
Marielle
I wanted to shut my eyes, curl tightly on the floor and cry, but I couldn’t move a muscle. Only what Akeelah wanted mattered, and she was determined I should watch my father die. My eyelids were frozen in place, immobile like two plastic attachments good for nothing. A spell from Gallardo kept them so, making sure I wouldn’t miss a single second of the cruel spectacle.
Dad lay silently on a metal table, his face pinched in concentration, his breathing od
dly deep and exaggerated. He was trying to stay calm, to be brave. For me.
“Dad.” The word was but a weak regret, a useless desire to reach out and ask for forgiveness. If I hadn’t come, he would still be in the cage, not on that table, waiting to die and be turned into one of Akeelah’s helpless victims.
Hand shaking, Gallardo picked up a knife from a table full of sharp instruments. He looked at Akeelah, then at me. His gaze was full of the same regret I felt. He didn’t want to kill my father, but he had no choice. He was Akeelah’s slave, devoid of his free will.
He pressed the blade to my father’s wrist.
“No,” Akeelah said, “have a little fun first.”
Gallardo shook his head. “This would never be fun.”
Akeelah growled in disappointment. “Cut him, give him pain,” she said, giving Gallardo a clearer directive, a command.
Dad’s body tensed even further, his fists clenching tightly, shaking with tension.
Gallardo began. He slid the knife across Dad’s arms, legs, abdomen, cutting through his clothes down to his skin. Blood from each wound seeped into the fabric of his jeans and shirt, slowly turning them crimson. Dad groaned in the back of his throat, but didn’t scream. He was being brave for me while I yelled at Akeelah to stop, to let him go.
“Dad!” I tried to move, to rush to his side, but my feet were glued to the floor, and no matter how hard I fought, I couldn’t move. My eyes burned from their inability to blink and from the tears that fell on my face and carved paths of misery and guilt down to my very soul.
Once my father went limp on the gurney, Akeelah began a low chant that was suddenly familiar. In the midst of my despair, I realized it sounded like Faris’s conjuring spell. Revolted, I stared at the concrete floor as it began to crack open.
Dad?! What would happen to him now? What if the demon took him the way it had taken Faris?
With two flicks of his hand, Gallardo made a deep wound on Dad’s wrist. He positioned his bleeding arm above a deep stone basin and allowed the blood, Dad’s life, to collect there. What little color was left on my father’s face washed away, barely leaving behind but a ghostly apparition.
The floor erupted in an explosion of concrete and black earth. A cloud of sulfurous smoke hissed into the air, concealing the creature Akeelah had conjured. Before the smoke cleared, her voice rose in an undeniable command. Something stirred behind the haze, then, from its center, a column of throbbing light shot into the stone basin. There, it collected Dad’s blood and shot back up into the air. After hovering for a moment, it plummeted back down in a collision path with my father.
“No!” With all the strength I had left, I reached for him, but I fell flat on my face. From the floor, I looked up and reached a hand toward Dad’s immobile shape. Then the column of light crashed into him and his body started to convulse.
“Dad, please forgive me.” I don’t think I could have torn my eyes off him even if I wasn’t being forced to watch. It was the most horrible thing I had ever witnessed, but I had to bear it. I had to hold on to those last instants while Dad was still human. I had to face the consequences of my actions.
“Bound by blood. Bound by my wishes,” Akeelah finished.
His body twitched in an unnatural way, his skin rising and falling as if small creatures had burrowed under it and were crawling through every inch of him. After a few horrific minutes, thin columns of light seeped from his every wound and gathered above him into a single ball of energy. As the light rose, Dad’s back arched, separating from the table. Only the straps around his wrists and ankles kept him in place.
Abruptly, he collapsed with a crash.
He didn’t move, didn’t make a sound.
He was dead.
I looked up at the floating mass of energy, thinking my father was in there, lingering with a demon, his very soul torn from his body and sentenced to an eternity of slavery. He was gone. The man I loved was gone, and he would never be the same. I wanted, needed, so much from him for so long, and he hadn’t been there. Now, I had lost him again and what little we had built between us wouldn’t matter anymore—not when Akeelah was in control, determined to make us suffer.
As the evil Djinn finished the spell, she held a glass bottle toward the hovering light. It bobbed for a moment, as if resisting the incantation’s beckoning force. But, in the end, it obeyed and made its way into the glass container. An instant later, a smaller current of light left the bottle and rushed to the crack in the ground as if it couldn’t leave this place fast enough.
The tears, the grief, the pain felt like an eternity, but it had all happened in a matter of minutes. Much faster than I could have imagined. It seemed impossible that this was all it took to condemn a soul.
I got to my feet, shaking, shivering. I stared at the bottle in Akeelah’s hand, and tried to imagine how Dad must feel, trapped in such a tiny space, without any idea of when he might come out again, or for what purpose.
“Doing this has become child’s play.” Akeelah held the bottle between two fingers and swayed it from side to side. “Practice makes perfect and . . . bores me.” She tossed the bottle over her shoulder.
I gasped and staggered forward to catch it, but I wasn’t close enough to reach it—not even remotely. The bottle clattered to the floor and, of course, didn’t break. I should have realized it was like Faris and Zet’s stones: indestructible. Akeelah laughed, finding this terribly amusing. She went on cackling for too long, then snapped her fingers as if calling for a dog.
“Robert, heel!” Dad appeared at her side in the blink of an eye.
“Dad!” I ran to him and crashed into his arms.
“Marielle.” He hugged me back.
His voice was the same. His scent was the same. I even felt his heart thumping inside his chest, afraid and desperate.
“Oh, that is simply disgusting,” Akeelah said. “Stop it!”
With a grimace, Dad pushed me away. I staggered backward, feeling the pain of his rejection like a knife in my heart. I knew he couldn’t help it. I knew he had to do whatever Akeelah told him to do, but I couldn’t help feeling hurt. Dad stared at his hands in disgust. They shook as he clenched them into fists.
“Gallardo, be gone.”
After killing my father, Gallardo had been standing back, his eyes on his shoes, the bloody knife still in his hand. At his master’s command, he disappeared. The knife clattered to the floor.
“We don’t need him anymore—not when we have you.” Akeelah put a hand on Dad’s shoulder and smiled down at him. “This is almost as sweet as I imagined. It could only be sweeter if Faris were here to watch it all happen. It’s now your daughter’s turn,” she added in a gentle tone. Her face hardened then and, in the coldest possible voice, she said, “She really needs to die.”
39
Marielle
The metal table was cold against my back as my father pressed me on top of it, his gaze locked to mine, tears spilling from the corners of his eyes. The straps buckled themselves to my ankles and wrists. His attention snapped to them. He looked surprised to see his wishes come true so easily.
I read his face like a book as he went through an array of emotions. He glanced at Akeelah with a scowl, his lower lip caught between his teeth. I figured he was trying to use his magic on her, even though he knew well it wouldn’t work. Her curse had been simple and clear. He was bound to her.
His movements stiff like those of a robot, Dad picked up the knife Gallardo had used on him and lifted it to my arm. His teeth ground as the blade inched closer to me. Hand shaking, he visibly fought not to harm me.
“I know you can’t help it,” I said, squeezing my eyes shut and turning my face to the other side. “I know it’s not your fault.”
My heartbeat boomed in my ears. Cold sweat slid down my temples.
The blade touched the crook of my elbow, cold and slimy. Every molecule in my body seemed to curl in tightly, retreating from the knife, trying to meld as one with the table.<
br />
“I’m sorry,” Dad said, his words charged with a million regrets and immeasurable pain.
A burning fire seemed to come to life at the edge of the knife. It seared me and gave life to an involuntary scream I was unable to bite down. Warm blood slid down my arm. In horror, I turned my head and stared at the crimson life as it spilled out of me and streamed into the same stone basin that had captured Dad’s blood.
I bucked, fighting my restraints, causing the blood to spurt with more force.
“No use in fighting,” Akeelah said as if she was explaining the futility of fighting bath time to a child. “You’ll only make it harder for yourself and your dear father.”
Her words sounded reasonable until she added, “Oh, just die and be gone for good. I don’t think you even deserve to be a Djinn.”
“No!” Dad screamed. “You have to change her. You can’t let her die.”
“I can do whatever I please.”
“You—”
“Be gone!”
Dad disappeared, gone. No trace of him left behind, only the ghost of his haunted green eyes imprinted in my mind.
Akeelah moved closer and looked down at me, her emerald eyes following the path of the blood from my arm to the basin. She regarded me with contempt.
“A slow death is all you deserve. Consider yourself lucky. It could have been much worse, but I become bored quickly, and you have ceased to entertain me.” She turned and slowly walked away, headed for her jeweled throne.
I watched her leave, wondering if I was just imagining her despondent attitude. She had won. What else could she want?
My throat felt parched as I swallowed. I licked my lips, struggling to keep my eyes opened, but they kept closing of their own accord. I turned my face to look down at my bleeding arm and the basin. Vaguely, I wondered if the container would be large enough to hold all my blood.
One Wish Away: Djinn Empire Complete Series Page 68
