“Ready?” asked Oz.
“No,” I said, “but go ahead.”
“Give me your power,” he said, and my jinni responded by tapping into the Node for the second time that day.
The power hurt even more this time as it flooded my already stretched channels. I was going to have to do the magical equivalent of Kegels when all this was over… if I was still alive, of course.
I focused the power toward Oz, who began his Call, this time using Kouros’s name to Call him specifically.
“Te vash anuk a Kouros. Te vash anuk a Kouros…,” he began to chant, his silver eyes beginning to glow. “Te vash anuk a Kouros. Te vash—”
Then his eyes went into full Flare and his Call boomed out like a sonic blast, given legs by the power I was pumping him straight from the Node.
“Te vash anuk a Kouros! Te vash anuk a Kouros! Te vash anuk a Kouros!”
My jinni went even deeper into the Node, pushing more power through me into my Master, answering his need. I felt my knees give way but the power was literally propping me up, filling me like I was a sandbag.
It blasted out of my mouth, my eyes, as Oz’s chant became a shout and the air around us began to swirl.
The swirling continued till there was a veritable mini-cyclone contained in the circle in front of us.
Oz’s Call filled the room, but I could feel it reaching out even farther, through Sideways, echoing everywhere till it caught on… something.
That something caught back, pulling viciously at our connection. I gasped as my jinni reflexively reached for more power, throwing it at Oz, who pulled at what had grasped us, as if he were reeling in some terrible magical sturgeon.
One that threatened to pull us with it, far into a part of Sideways that I could only feel as utterly empty, where not even fodden roamed, where whatever pulled had lived, surrounded by silence, for centuries…
Kouros.
Up to that exact second, I’d truly believed this wasn’t going to work. I imagined thousands of arrogant, powerful Magi had tried to Call Kouros over the centuries, and failed.
I figured we’d try, we’d fail, and then we’d have to fight a roomful of jinn to escape Sideways alive.
I’d been wrong. This damned Node was strong enough to reach Kouros, and Kouros was reaching back.
Through Oz, Kouros pulled again, a mighty effort that almost tore my channels asunder and made his eyes Flare like a nuclear blast. I thought we both might burn out with that last great effort, as whatever he was pulling suddenly came loose of its mooring, rocketing toward us so that we flew backward off of our feet.
I caught my Master as we tumbled ass over teakettle together, he still pulling and I still feeding him the raw, tainted power of Pittsburgh’s Node. We struggled to our feet as the cyclone in the circle became darker, the swirling taking on form.
A form that stared at us with mad red eyes.
Until Kouros was there, just as I remembered him. Huge and imposing, far larger than any of the jinn in the room. And then he stood up, a giant among us, stretching his massive black-smoke limbs.
It was then that I looked down and saw, just as I’d expected, that all the swirling air had swept away the circle of salt, oil, and coal that was supposed to hold Kouros captive. The circle didn’t do anything, after all, except focus your Will. And even Oz’s powerful Will was nothing against that of Kouros.
“Shit,” I said, just as Kouros’s black-smoke foot took a step toward the jinni who’d threatened to kill my friends and stick them in a cage with me.
That jinni died about a second later, and I almost felt bad for her.
Until all hell broke loose.
Chapter Thirty
The jinn fought bravely, but their enemy wasn’t less powerful for his years in captivity. He was even stronger than when I’d last seen him, a millennium ago. His eyes glowed like he housed a nuclear reactor. Not being able to tap the Node wasn’t going to be a problem for Kouros; he was like a Node unto himself.
“Lyla!” Ozan shouted, his arms wrapping around me, pulling me to a corner.
Kouros was everywhere. He grabbed the jinni leader around her smoky throat only to pull her apart, a sundering using both limb and magic that meant the jinni’s smoke didn’t reassemble, but drifted apart like that of a campfire rather than a living being.
The rest of the jinn swarmed Kouros, pulling magical weapons from their pockets of Sideways and screaming their various tribal battle cries.
Kouros swatted them away like they were children, then set upon them, ripping them apart one by one, his terrible red eyes glowing with pleasure.
“We have to get to the portal,” Ozan shouted into my ear, over the din of the jinn’s dying cries. I nodded, and we tried to make our way to the tapestry covering that door.
Only to find it barred by a tail of Kouros’s black Fire that swept us gently back to our corner. When I looked up at Kouros, he winked at me as he threw aside another black-smoke body that drifted into nothingness when he let it go.
“I think he wants us to stay,” I said to Oz, unnecessarily.
He grimaced. “What are our options? If I command you to pull us out of here, could you do it?”
Black shapes were still flinging themselves at Kouros, their red eyes the only light in the smoke-filled room, but their numbers were decreasing. We had to get out, and fast.
“Maybe,” I said. “Let’s try.”
“Lyla, I command you to—” Ozan choked suddenly as a black tendril of smoke wrapped around his neck, cutting off his air supply.
My jinni was roiling at the unfinished command, and I was roiling with her, but I couldn’t pull that much magic without his helping me along. I tried, but it was like trying to suck on a straw with a hole in it.
So I grabbed ahold of Kouros’s black Fire with my own, trying to get enough air to Oz that he could talk. And not die. But I got nowhere.
Kouros let Oz have just enough throat space to stay alive, but not enough to speak, and no matter how hard I pulled that was it.
When I finally gave up and turned around, it was to see my creator dispatching the last of the jinn. It died with a red flash of its internal fire before its smoke drifted up to join its brethren’s at the ceiling.
They might have been the best of the best, but apparently no one had told Kouros that. Under the circumstances, however, I didn’t feel up to saying, “I told you so.”
Kouros stood up to his full height then, his glowing red eyes—all we could see in the miasma of thick smoke—almost at the ceiling of the great throne room. Then, to my horror, he took a huge, deep breath, sucking in all of that black smoke in the jinni version of a cannibalistic ritual.
After a few such long, deep breaths, there was no sign of our shortsighted former allies, except for the small piles of ash that were the only other physical markers of dead jinn.
Still ignoring Oz and me, Kouros turned to Tamina. The girl and her sorcerer had holed up in a far corner as we had, Dmitri shielding Tamina with his body. But Kouros plucked the young man away from her, squeezing like a child might a succulent grape. The sorcerer died with a pulpy squish that made my stomach heave.
“Tamina,” Kouros purred, as the young Magi swayed on her feet. “Sweet little Tamina…”
Tamina might have been foolhardy, but she was brave. She stepped forward, beautiful silver eyes Flaring as she began the chant that would Bind Kouros.
The power wasn’t there, however, her silver Flare stuttering along with her magic. Kouros laughed down at her, a tendril of his black Fire sneaking behind her. It wrapped around her forehead and a second later she was dead, her neck snapped efficiently, almost gracefully.
She looked very young and very frail when she fell, her head at an unnatural angle and the Flare of her eyes dying with her last breath.
“Thank you for your services,” Kouros said to the bodies of Tamina and Dmitri, bowing low in mock salute.
That’s when I decided we might as well get t
his over with.
“Still an asshole, I see!” I shouted, striding forward despite Oz’s muffled protests. But Kouros still had my Master effectively gagged, so he couldn’t force my sense of self-preservation any more than he could save us.
Kouros stood and turned, his red eyes smoldering extra hot as they found my tiny form.
I pointed at Tamina and her sorcerer. “Way to repay the help.”
“Little Lyla,” Kouros rumbled in his smoky bass, the voice I heard in my nightmares. “How good to see you.”
I expected to die then. Speared through the heart by his Fire, or my head popped off like a Pez dispenser’s. But instead he shrank himself down to big-human size, walking toward me, his Fire solidifying until he resembled a human carved from swirling ebony.
Oz came to stand beside me, taking my hand as Kouros approached us. I think he was manning up for a “We’ll die together!” death scene, à la Titanic. But instead we received only a wide red smile from Kouros.
“Young love,” he rumbled. “How sweet. You’re making me a little jealous.”
Kouros walked around us in a slow circle, inspecting us.
“He’s handsome, Lyla. And young. A much more attractive suitor than that rapist Mongol your father wanted to sell you to.” Kouros’s circle ended with him almost nose-to-nose with Oz.
“Yes, very handsome. I can see his affection for you.” Kouros sidled over to me, peering down into my own eyes. “And yours for him.”
He glanced between the two of us. “I would kill him for that… eviscerate him right here, right in front of you, and make you roll in his stinking intestines. But I need my sweet little protégée to be as strong as she can be.” Kouros ran a black finger down my jaw, letting me feel the heat he contained, the power. Then he turned his eyes to Oz. “And so you live, human-excrement. At least for now.”
“What do you want from us?” I asked, forcing my clenched jaw to work.
Kouros stepped away, pacing through the throne room, kicking up little piles of jinni-dust as he went.
“What if I told you I had a way to end all of this?” my creator asked me, kicking at one of the larger piles with his black foot.
“I wouldn’t be all that surprised, since you started it,” I replied.
“Always the comedian, Lyla. You laughed right up until I tore through your heart and replaced it with my Fire.”
That shut me up. Kouros smiled at me in approval. “That’s better. What I meant was, what if I told you I could end the servitude of our kind?”
I cocked my head at him. “I’d say you were crazy. The jinn have been trying for centuries. Even some renegade Magi have tried. We are as we are.”
Kouros rounded on us, his eyes glowing bright. “All lies. I roamed this universe long before man even came into being. We were free, once, before these apes evolved to use us.”
Oz looked at me, his eyes wide. I met his expression with equal concern. “You’re not saying you want to wipe out man, do you?” I asked Kouros. “Because that would be…”
“That would be impossible,” he interrupted.
“I was going to say it would be crazy, but impossible works, too.”
“You are right,” Kouros said. “While ending the human race would be the ideal solution, it’s an impossibility. At least for now.”
“That’s good?” I said, unsure what to make of the “for now.” “So if you’re not planning to destroy mankind, what are you intending?”
Kouros smiled at my Master and me the way you might smile at a pair of barking seals.
“If we can’t deal with the problem that is man, we’ll have to start with the problem that is the jinn. We need to be stronger, obviously.”
“Oh, obviously,” I said, wondering once again how the hell we were going to get out of this mess. Right now all I had in terms of a plan was to keep Kouros talking, mostly so that he wouldn’t kill us. But that wasn’t much to work with.
I looked to my Master for help, but he was looking at the ceiling. Oz’s eyes suddenly flicked across to the far left corner and then shot back down, his face taking on that curious nonchalance I now recognized as his “I see nothing!” expression.
What the hell? I wanted to peer up at where he’d been looking, but I didn’t want to give anything away.
“And how are you going to make the jinn stronger?” I asked.
Kouros grinned at me, a huge red smile, and began pacing energetically. I stole a look into the corner, but it was too dark to see anything. Still, I peered as Kouros talked.
“Isn’t it obvious, darling Lyla? You’re the answer, of course!”
That brought my attention back to him. “What?”
“Do you really think I would have weakened myself to the point of total vulnerability just to fuck with the little girl-child of my former Master? Did that ever make sense to you?”
I frowned. “I didn’t realize what cursing me cost you, until very recently.”
Kouros nodded. “Yes. The jinn kept that a secret. They thought you might seek to free me… they didn’t understand our relationship.”
“You mean our lack of a relationship.”
“Nonsense, child.” Kouros was pacing again, and I risked another glance at that corner. Sure enough, I saw a glimmer of movement. Had one of the jinn survived?
“We most certainly do have a relationship. I am your creator. I gave you a new life—through the power of my Will and the force of my magic. I forged you anew.”
I forced myself to look back at Kouros. “But what does that have to do with helping the jinn?”
“You were told I was the first, no?”
I nodded. Oz was looking at the corner again, but I didn’t dare look, too. Instead I kept my eyes on Kouros.
“Yes. But what does that have to do with me?”
Kouros paced toward me, his eyes locked on mine. “I created you from a piece of myself, as Adam did Eve,” crooned my creator, reaching a hand out as if to brush it through my hair. I shuddered, stepping away from him. He frowned. “You are my creation, Lyla. Mine. And I created you with a purpose.”
I moved away from him, using the opportunity to look at the ceiling. There was definite movement there, a glimmering of something shiny. But it wasn’t jinni Fire, and there was no smoke.
“I don’t see how I can help you,” I said, reminding myself to keep Kouros talking.
“Join with me in a ritual,” Kouros said. “All I need is your power, your unique abilities. But that’s it. You needn’t do anything else.”
“And then what?” I asked. “I have what… thirty minutes before midnight? I’d rather die than spend another thousand years like this.”
“Of course,” Kouros said. “You were never meant to be a jinni for this long. I was betrayed, so my plan couldn’t happen the way I expected and you were left alone. But I can make it up to you now.”
“How?” I asked, turning to Kouros but glancing up again as I did so.
Trip and Trap.
It was the spider wraiths in that corner, crouching low, keeping an eye on Kouros.
My friends had come back for me.
“All you have to do is join with me in a ritual I’ve created. Neither of you will come to harm, but the jinn will be free from the Magi forevermore. And then I’ll let your Master unBind you. You’ll be human again this night.”
I glanced at Oz. His face still bore that nonchalant expression, but he glanced quickly to the throne and back and then to the door and back. It wasn’t just Trip and Trap. The cavalry had arrived.
“What do you think?” I said to my Master. He looked at Kouros, then looked at me. He held out his hand and I took it. Together we took a step backward and together, as if showing our resolve.
Oz nodded. I smiled.
“I think we’re ready,” I said.
“To help me free our people?” Kouros asked.
“No,” I said. “To get our asses out of here.”
Chapter Thirty-One
&n
bsp; Now!” I shouted, waiting to be rescued. For a split second nothing happened, and I managed to conjure up a whole scenario in which I’d imagined Trip and Trap, no one was there to rescue us, and I was shouting like a lunatic at empty air.
But I hadn’t, and they were, and I wasn’t. Trip and Trap had just needed a moment to spring.
They came out of nowhere, enveloping Kouros in a thick net of spider webbing. They were joined, moving faster than I’d ever seen them move, but they’d dart apart and then back together as the spinnerets at the bases of their spines created more silk that they threw around Kouros.
And then Yulia was beside us, her wisps forming paddles that kept batting Kouros back into the webbing. He was trying to escape by channeling his smoke through the fissures in the net holding him, but she kept whacking him back in like they were playing a manic game of squash.
Then Charlie was there, yanking us back toward the throne. “We have to get out of here. Move!”
I looked to my left and Bertha was behind Oz, using an iron crowbar to beat through the Fire Kouros had caused to spring up around Oz. It sizzled as it passed through Kouros’s magic, but it was effective in freeing my Master. He took a huge gulp of air and reached for me.
“You’re all right?” he asked.
I nodded. “You?”
“Yep.”
And then he pulled me toward him and kissed me. It took a single second, just the briefest touch of his lips against mine, but it felt like I’d been walloped by a steel fist.
And then I was shoved by an angry half-troll. “What the hell are you doing?” Bertha said. “We’re in a fight.”
That was fair enough. Oz let me go and I laughed, a manic sound, but I had my shit together enough to grab his hand and we darted toward the throne.
We didn’t get far before another wall of Kouros’s Fire sprang up in front of us. He wasn’t free of the webbing, and Trip and Trap were giving him a run for his money, but they wouldn’t be able to hold him forever.
“Can you put that out?” Oz asked, pointing at the smoking wall. Kouros was letting it burn for real, and its heat flushed our faces.
Jinn and Juice Page 27
