“We’ll save time if we go incorporeal,” he said.
Incorporeally, there were no walls and no human observers. Once, as at the Isfahan bazaar, she’d have resisted the suggestion, afraid of her own insubstantiality. Now, she simply flickered out of body. She’d reclaimed confidence in her own powers.
Hugh’s spirit brushed hers and merged at the edges—the incorporeal equivalent of holding hands.
Stubborn angel. Even mad with her, even given her own protests, he still acted protective.
The small bubble of affectionate amusement surprised her.
It flattened as they flowed up the tower into a thickening cloud. The dark magic stung her spirit as it had in the mandala. It recognized her demon heritage and was attracted by it.
She did the incorporeal equivalent of hunching her shoulders: curving her energy slightly so it streamed back, strengthening her.
And then Hugh was there, his own spirit a protective barrier around her.
This cloud was the memory of dark magic, not an active spell, and it recoiled from his angelic energy.
Okay, so perhaps some protectiveness is useful.
They dived through a final wall to the heart of the evil.
“Hell-blasted devils,” Hugh swore, slamming back into his solid body.
Niki shifted into her familiar corporeal state and dropped into a chair. She doubled over, struggling with nausea.
On the floor, a maid stared blindly at the ceiling. A dead stare. Blood stained the front of her uniform where her murderer had pulled the knife from her heart.
“A sacrifice,” Niki said numbly. “That’s how the dark mage pushed me out. The violence of death.”
“…be at peace.” Hugh glanced up from where he knelt beside the body. “Farhoud’s gone.”
“Yes.” The pain of death magic stabbed her. She staggered up from the chair, wild-eyed. “I can’t stay here.” The violence, hate and panic were too fresh.
Panic?
Not the maid’s. The poor woman hadn’t known what was happening. The white towels she’d carried into the room lay tumbled on the floor, splashed with scarlet.
“Oh, God. The dark mage sensed me. He panicked.”
“She.”
“Pardon?”
“She,” Hugh repeated grimly. He strode from the living room of the suite through the open door of the bedroom. Through it, just visible, were a pair of high heel shoes.
Niki followed him. The bedroom held two layers of scent: the brimstone stench of dark magic and a heavy Parisian perfume. Cloying sweetness hung on the air.
“Ugh.” She ran for the bathroom and heaved.
Demonstrating that he could control his protective instincts, Hugh didn’t follow.
Niki rinsed her mouth with mouthwash, scowled at the weak woman in the mirror and returned, reluctant but determined, to the bedroom.
Clothes filled the wardrobe to overflowing. A discarded burkha lay across the bed. Drawers stood open, mute evidence of Hugh’s ruthless search.
He jerked open a final bedside drawer. Empty. “Who in hades is she?”
Silent and ominously angry, he dematerialized.
Niki stayed a moment in the room. Perhaps it was the hated smell of brimstone, but she’d swear the perfume mixed with it was somehow familiar. She sniffed, but couldn’t pin down the memory.
She abandoned the effort, glad to leave the suite and tracked Hugh to the reception desk.
He’d blinked out of humans’ sight and hearing, and sat at a hotel computer, searching its database. “Malih Tehrani,” he said to her. “The room’s occupant.”
Data flicked up on the screen. She read over his shoulder. “Malih hired a helicopter.”
“It seems a habit of hers.” The data flickered faster and faster, reaching beyond the hotel database, as he searched. “I want the flight path. Five hells. None filed. You would think…What about the pilot’s name? Elvis Blake. Has she hidden him?”
He pushed back from the computer.
“Finally.” The hotel receptionist sighed with relief as the computer returned to her control. “I am sorry, sir.” She resumed checking in an impatient guest. “Certainly, we can arrange transportation.”
“Elvis Blake, Elvis Blake.”
Niki guessed she was watching a traditional angelic search. Although presumably other angels didn’t balance on the back legs of their chairs as they tapped the Heavenly Record. She wondered that none of the humans had noticed the chair.
“Where are you, Elvis? Greedy, aren’t you?” The chair toppled forward onto four legs as Hugh stood. “Got you! Southern edge of the Dasht-e Lut.”
“The mountains.” Niki gripped his arm as dread chilled her blood. “It’s Nowruz, tomorrow, the Persian New Year. Tonight is Chahar-Shanbe Souri, the Fire Festival. The ancient night of sacrifice.”
Chapter Eight
“We’ll save Farhoud.” Hugh put his arm around Niki and held her tight even as he translocated them to the foothills of the Dasht-e Lut.
She felt his strength, knew he would do everything in his power to save the boy—but failure was so close. Human sacrifice was wickedness of the direst kind. The dark mage, Malih, had to have planned to withstand an angelic counter-attack.
Would her plans have included a contract with a demon?
Dimly, Niki heard the thwacking whirr of helicopter blades. The pilot, Elvis Blake, was flying west, back to the hotel. In the immensity of the landscape, the helicopter appeared a dragonfly.
“He’s alone,” Hugh said. “That means he’s already dropped off Malih and Farhoud.”
“She won’t want a witness.” Niki watched the last ray of sunlight fade from the horizon. “Not for the phoenix fire.” She pulled away from his hold. “You look for her and Farhoud. Be careful. There is something I must do.”
“What?” Urgency made the demand blunt.
Frustration danced under her skin. “You need to find Farhoud.”
“And you?”
“Can’t you just go?” But that wasn’t her angel. He stayed. He cared. And she had to save him. “My father. He would find it amusing to cooperate in the sacrifice of the boy who’d freed me. I should have checked earlier. If Father has a contract with Malih…I won’t let him hurt you.”
Two of Hugh’s long strides closed the distance between them. Then she was in his arms, being kissed fierce and fast, and released. “I’ll deal with your father—if he’s involved.”
“I can—”
“You are not going to hell for me.” His tone was final. His hold on her arm equally unrelenting.
“Stubborn.” Fireworks bursting like cannon fire caught her by surprise. She jumped.
“We’ll be better together.”
You mean, where you can protect me. But another thought cut across her rebellion.
The fireworks came from a nearby village, along with shouts, laughter and gunfire. Across the valley, a bonfire glowed. Figures danced around it. People were celebrating Chahar-Shanbe Souri. Fire night.
Folk memory had amazing durability. Fire burnt out the old year and the cold of winter. It signaled new beginnings; that was what the myth of the phoenix recalled. From the ashes of the old…
“Malih will be on a mountain top,” Niki said. She looked back over centuries. “I remember the dark years when wizards perverted the fire festival with sacrifices.”
“There is power in feast days.” He whisked them from mountain top to mountain top, searching for the darkest of magics, for Farhoud. “That’s why they became feast days.”
They were the times of year when the natural power of the earth surged. She could feel it now, having dropped all barriers in her concern for Hugh and Farhoud. Her human heritage, the blood of her mother, Lilith, was linked into the earth. Like a tree after summer rains, her body drank the gift. It dizzied her. For so long she’d shut herself away, now it poured in, intoxicating.
She tightened her grip on Hugh’s hand as she forced the power in her to sett
le. It wanted to leap from mountain top to mountain top, the wildfire of spring. Phoenix fire.
“Wait.” The darkness of the next mountain top grated against her earth-enhanced senses. “I think she’s there.”
“I can’t sense anything.” Starlight was sufficient to show his scowl of concentration. “It feels empty to me.”
She shook her head. “Someone has coiled the earth magic. She’s not letting it leap on to the next mountaintop. The power is building. She’s using it to hide her presence.”
“Is Farhoud there?”
“He’d have to be. He’s her sacrifice. Hugh, no!” She halted him as he tensed to jump. “Two things first. Is my father there? or any demon?”
He was strung tight with the need to rescue Farhoud, but he listened. Muscles flexed under her hand as he forced himself to wait and to concentrate. “No. No demon. Not even masked.”
That agreed with what her senses told her. Malih had twisted earth magic rather than risk a fatal contract with a demon. But Niki didn’t have time to feel relief that her father wasn’t involved. “Hugh, Malih is using dark magic and earth magic—my magic. They have their own rules.”
“So?”
“Dark magic is greedy and possessive. You can’t simply pull Farhoud out.”
“I’m not letting him die.”
“Nor am I, but if Malih has started a dark magic sacrifice, she’ll have marked him. And the Earth knows its creatures. He’ll need to be untangled from the spell.”
“Fine. We’ll do that when he’s safe.” Hugh translocated.
“Buffle-headed angel. You didn’t listen.” She landed beside him on the mountain top just as the fire caught and flared high and hungry against the night sky. “Oh, damn.”
She frowned as she realized there were three, not two, humans outlined by the flames. Malih, Farhoud and…Amin. “That’s the shopkeeper from Isfahan. What is he doing here on Chahar-Shanbe Souri? Unless…did he steal Farhoud, not Malih? He knows the boy.”
“You’re wrong. He’s trying to save Farhoud.” Hugh started towards the boy. “As am I.”
Niki grabbed the back of his jacket and dug in her heels, literally and magically.
Her angel swung around with an expression of unforgiving anger.
She flinched, but her voice was steady. “If you touch Farhoud now, you’ll condemn him to death.”
“I won’t stand aside.”
The wild earth magic sung in her veins. It was clean, vital and renewing, but not when a dark mage twisted it in vile ways. It was hers and she could reclaim it. If Hugh gave her time.
She reached for her own strength, the strength that wasn’t magic or power, but the simple, complex, unbreakable strength that was spirit. And then she asked the impossible. “Trust me.”
Looking into his eyes, dark in the star and firelight, she saw his spirit. Its courage, pride and generosity, the protectiveness that was the heart of his guardian role and the pure strength of his love.
In asking for his trust, she’d given her own. She wouldn’t evade the responsibilities of caring and being cared for.
“Niki.” The muscles of his jaw tensed and his spirit brushed hers, powerful, furious and barely leashed. Yet he gave her his trust. “Save Farhoud.”
“Thank you.” She answered the touch of his spirit, then gathered herself for this final battle for the boy.
Amin was talking, pleading. “Malih, please don’t. Please. I didn’t want to believe this of you. But the books you bought, all about sorcery and curses, the darkest magics. You tried to hide them among Gnostic texts, but darkness can’t be hidden, not forever. I just didn’t want to see.”
He leaned heavily on a walking stick. “We grew up near here and I guessed, if you were truly to do this, you would return to where you were young. I underestimated how long it would take me to climb the mountain. My legs are old, now. I should have been here waiting for you. But it’s not too late. It’s never too late.”
“The ceremony is underway.” Firelight and shadows hollowed out the contours of Malih’s face. Her haut couture trouser suit should have looked incongruous. Instead, she looked like a high fashion devil. She wore black.
Farhoud stood bound, his hands behind him and his weight on his good foot. Tears rolled down his face. Whatever lies, drugs or threats had kept him quiet in the hotel, now he faced true terror.
Malih was crazy.
“Let the boy go,” Amin said.
“No. I need him.”
“Malih, you are beautiful as you are.”
Niki closed her eyes a moment, grieving, as she finally understood. All this pain, death, perversion, and for what? For youth.
Malih was a courtesan, a perfumed slave. She wore the manacles of slavery in her mind, her spirit twisted and perverted so she chased the very thing that had destroyed her life: treating her body as a thing, a marketable good.
Niki shifted into her visible form and stepped out of the shadows. “You’re going to call the phoenix fire.”
“I’ve already lit it.” The older woman was too caught up in her drama to question Niki’s entrance. She simply turned away from Amin towards another woman. “Can’t you smell the frankincense? The confectioner’s gold leaf will melt in the heart of it. This time I will win enduring youth.”
“The street children must have disappointed you.” Niki moved closer to Farhoud, studying not just his bonds but the arrangement of the spell Malih had set. She was conscious of Hugh walking, invisible to humans, beside her, his attention on Farhoud. His rage was deadly. “How long did their youth last?”
“A week,” Malih spat. “It wasn’t worth killing them.”
“Malih,” Amin groaned.
“But I learned. I realized I needed the phoenix fire. The sacrifice must be at the right time, in the right place. All I needed was a child.”
“And no conscience,” Hugh said, appearing. He’d promised Niki he wouldn’t tear Farhoud away, and he wouldn’t, though the boy’s terror ate at his control. But confronting a human with truth and challenging them to see the consequences of their actions, that was his training and skill as a guardian—and he’d use it. “When did you kill your conscience?”
“When I realized no one would rescue me. When I realized I was on my own.”
He heard the echo of Niki’s suffering in the woman’s statement, but Nikki had refused to hate. Beneath his fierce concentration, pride in her courage glowed.
Malih laughed, high and angry. “I should have guessed people would try to save a boy. Boys are important. Men are valued.”
“All souls are,” Hugh said.
“Liar.” Malih backed towards the fire. By its light, her face was a mask of ugliness, her torment obvious. “I was abandoned. But that’s all right because I learned. I learned about power and violence and winning. You won’t stop me.”
“No, we can’t.” Niki said to Hugh. She touched Farhoud’s face and the boy turned into the caress. Her breath caught audibly before she continued, determination strengthening her voice. “The dark magic has been promised a life. Malih called it into the fire with the pattern she drew around the fire pit.” She looked at the woman. “Did you weave Farhoud’s hair into the pattern?”
“Of course.”
Amin collapsed onto a rock. “Malih, I know they stole your youth from you. Your uncle and the men he sold you, too.”
“I survived,” she said fiercely. “I grew strong. Stronger than them.”
“But just as cruel. Malih, I always loved you. I was so glad when you found my shop and came, as I thought, to drink tea and talk. You are the beautiful woman of my life. Now, as you are. Not the wild, scared girl. But the woman of grace and generosity—but it was all a lie.”
“Amin, my friend.” For the first time her harsh voice faltered.
He held out his hands. “I give you my life, Malih. Willingly. My heart, you already have. The wrong you have done…” He looked at Hugh. “I would pay the recompense, the suffering due. I a
lready do. The suspicions of my old friend have eaten at my soul.”
The anguished honesty of the man’s plea silenced them all.
It forced Hugh to relinquish his anger. A woman loved with such passion had to be saved. “You don’t deserve such love,” he said to Malih.
“Love is a gift, given where the heart wills,” Amin answered. He straightened his bowed shoulders, ready to make his sacrifice, to bear any pain. “I love you, Malih.”
“I want my youth back,” she whispered. “I hate who I am.”
Hugh looked beyond the tortured woman to Niki. Did she see the power of love to save? Malih had betrayed Amin’s love, but not broken it. The man suffered, but would cling to that suffering while it meant Malih might be redeemed. Far from destroying him, the vulnerability of love had become his strength and Malih’s last hope.
Niki met Hugh’s gaze. He’d trusted her to save Farhoud and she would. Whatever the outcome of the battle for Malih’s soul, Farhoud had to be freed from the magic that entangled him. She was awed by the force of Amin’s love and how it changed him from quiet scholar to hero. She knew he would fight to keep that love and its bitter pain, and finally, from the depths of her spirit, she understood that the vulnerability of love was its grace. Caring and accepting care, made you whole.
She smiled at Hugh and put her hands on Farhoud’s skinny shoulders.
The boy cuddled into her, seeking comfort.
“Hush, baby. Be brave a little longer.” She sent her spirit into the pattern Malih had drawn.
A maze of hunger and blind desire for life engulfed her. Flames were everywhere, consuming everything.
She screamed silently, hanging on precariously to consciousness. The light of Farhoud’s spirit was familiar to her and she was close to him, close enough to close her spirit around his within the pattern.
But lord how it hurt.
With the earth magic surging, every breath was an inhalation of fire. Every heartbeat shook her bones. She struggled to see through the fog of pain.
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