She saw three large shadows in the darkness. Massive beasts covered in rough fur, their eyes glowing gold in the night. Werewolves.
Brandon.
Two were attacking the powerful Razia, coming back again and again though he tossed them off his body as if they weren’t covered in muscle and snarling teeth. But though he was obviously strong enough to fight them, he couldn’t quite seem to escape them.
The creature—the Jinn-turned-Jiniyr Harash—was attempting to leave the water, its strange malformed tentacles splashing threateningly, but from the edge the third werewolf was following his every move, trapping him inside.
She saw it all in a heartbeat and felt the heat building inside her.
Anger, he’d said.
Hate, he’d said.
Those were the gifts Razia had given her. All these years, he’d orchestrated her life. Had he meant to make her weak? Did he truly believe that all she’d gone through would break her? Turn her soft? Make her easy prey for whatever it was he’d planned?
They didn’t understand humanity at all. And she was human in every way that mattered.
And not human in a way that should scare them.
Aziza set her body ablaze with a thought, seeing the world as it slowed down for her through the blue-white fire that was the only weapon she needed. Her hand and forehead began to burn beneath the skin, and she looked down without surprise to see the circle form. The images inside gave her pause. The writing again, symbols that she still didn’t understand.
And they weren’t confined to the circle. She watched the writing leave its frame and form a moving line around her wrist and up her arm. She heard chanting inside her head, felt the power of it. The blood in the sand. The sand inside her.
It burned.
She placed her hand in front of her, palm down and watched a line of fire blaze a path straight to the water. Straight to the coward Harash. To the one she knew had followed Razia’s lead and done his dirty work, all the while fearing her. Fearing what they had decided to create. She sensed the truth of what he was. All that he’d done.
Her blood was boiling and her soul burned with it.
Burn
, she thought, and watched the glowing liquid erupt with the concussive force that came from the bomb-like explosion.
She lifted her face to the water as it fell on her skin like rain. It sizzled when it landed on her cheeks and shoulders, turning to steam. She was the fire. She was justice. But justice wasn’t done.
“Harash!” Razia shouted for his partner as he heard the screams, and the wolves backed away as she turned to him. They seemed stunned. By her? What she’d done?
Razia shook his head. “You killed him. I wasn’t expecting that. I should have expected…but it doesn’t matter. He was your first sacrifice. Your first blood. It begins now.”
“You killed them all.” She could hear her voice, but it sounded nothing like her. Hollow. Emotionless. “So many, Razia. You should suffer as much as they did. Die, as they did. Now is when it ends.”
“You weren’t ready,” he moaned, glancing around frantically, as if searching for the answer to where it had all gone wrong. “I came too soon. You weren’t ready to see the truth. But you will be. And you’ll be more powerful than this. So much more. You’ll join us because it is willed by the spirit of the Jinn’s mother. Because you are justice and our cause
is
just.”
“Your cause is a lie.” She started to raise her hand toward him, a sense of calm clearing her mind of every other thought as she realized she was going to kill him without regret. The way he killed everyone she loved. An eye for an eye.
“Joseph,” Razia cried out in desperation. “He is still alive, Aziza. There was no body to find because he isn’t dead.
Your brother isn’t dead.
”
The words broke through her wall of flame and Aziza lowered her hand, her brow furrowing in confusion.
It was all the time Razia needed to walk backward and into—nothing. Disappearing as if he’d never been. The thing who’d destroyed her family had escaped.
Still alive. For now.
“Well, I’ll be damned. Hill was right.” A male voice, low with awe, drew Aziza’s flame-blurred gaze. “The Vessel
is
here.”
“I told you, her name is Aziza.” Brandon moved into her line of vision and walked toward her cautiously. She studied him, feeling her blood heating for reasons that had nothing to do with hate. “Baby, can you hear me? Can you turn it off?”
She nodded and licked her lips, focusing on lowering the flames. Her blood, however, was still hot. “You’re naked.”
“And you’re on fire.” He grinned. But his eyes were still watchful. “Now that you’ve blown up Penn’s pond in a truly spectacular fashion, do you think maybe we can call it a night?”
“Penn.” She turned to seek her out in the darkness, panicking for a moment before she heard the familiar, if shaky, voice nearby.
Penn walked toward her and held out her hand, fascination, worry and shock fighting for dominance on her beloved face. Her damp curls dripped with water and she was trembling with cold. Or was it fear? “I’m here, Aziza. It’s all right now. I’m here.”
Penn was here. Safe. Alive.
Joseph.
Had Razia lied? No. She’d known it was the truth from the moment he’d said it. Felt the truth.
“There we go,” Brandon whispered as the fire completely died around her. He continued to move closer, until he could pull her into his arms. “It’s over. They’re gone.”
“For now,” the other man said, causing Aziza to look around the warm body pressed against her to study him.
She blushed and whispered into Brandon’s chest, “He’s naked too.”
The female voice had Aziza holding her breath. “Devil, would you please find a branch or something before you scar the child for life?”
“I think I’d need more than a branch,” Devil remarked, offended. “If you’d said mighty oak I would have been in complete agreement.”
“Hill?” Penn began to cry and Aziza pulled away from Brandon in time to see the two women embrace. One flawless, even naked, and one sopping wet and shivering and beautiful.
“I’m here, my love.” Hillary sounded a little shaky herself. “I couldn’t stay away. When Brandon came to get Devil I had to—I was so scared I would be too late.”
“I thought about you,” Penn cried into Hillary’s neck. “Before Ram pulled me out I thought I would die and you would never know that I—”
“I know,” Hillary shushed. “Hush now, I know. I love you too.”
Aziza gasped. “Ram.”
Brandon grimaced. “He’s Jinn, Aziza. I’m sure he’s fine.”
“I beg to differ, Bran.” Devil was walking in the direction Penn had come from. “I smell blood. And it’s not human.”
Blood? She pulled out of Brandon’s arms and followed the handsome man swiftly, trying not to notice his muscular back covered in tribal tattoos. He had twice the ink Brandon did. And a tight rear end.
Brandon’s uncle
, she reminded herself sternly. Uncle Devil.
Damn, this was one sexy family.
She heard a moan and started running. How could he have been hurt? And if he was, why hadn’t Shev come to find him? “Ram?”
He was lying facedown in the grass, his body still damp from the water he’d dived into to save Penn. There was blood gushing from a wound below his left rib cage. A lot of blood. “He
is
hurt.”
Aziza knelt down to study the wound, reaching up to the hem of her tank top to tear off a piece of fabric. “Brandon, he’s bleeding.”
Penn knelt down beside Aziza, helping her apply pressure. “He’s also naked. He wasn’t naked when he pulled me away from that water Jinn,” she mumbled. “Maybe it’s contagious.”
“Oh my,” Hillary breathed. “Brandon, you should see this. It’s rare. In fact it’s been over a century since I’ve seen one of these.”
A century?
Aziza looked up from tending the wound. “What is it? One of what?”
Hillary knelt down on the other side of Ram’s unconscious body and lifted his arm up for everyone to see. “This isn’t his traveling tag,” she informed Aziza, meeting her family’s gazes with an enigmatic expression. “This is the cuff of the exile. It looks like Aziza’s guardian is trapped here for the foreseeable future.”
Aziza leaned closer. The chain that had held the small, single tag was now a thick bracelet without a clasp. “Trapped,” she repeated numbly. “Because he saved Penn?”
Devil sighed, reaching up to run a hand through his thick, dark hair. He and Brandon looked so much alike for a moment they could have been brothers. “Without his powers, I assume. It’s not much of a punishment otherwise.”
She remembered Shev’s fear. Her unwillingness to risk this fate. “Shev left him here. She would know how to help him but I’m not sure she’s coming back.” And if she did,
Aziza
wasn’t sure that she wouldn’t punch her for abandoning them both. “Penn, we have to get him back to the house. We can’t just leave him like this. Not after he saved your life.”
“
Damn it
,” Brandon swore, pushing past them to lift the dead weight of the Jinn. “Fine. I’ve got him. But only because you ask. And Devil? If you ever tell anyone this particular story…”
“What? That once the brave son of the Alpha fought a great, though unsatisfying and overly swift, battle alongside the Vessel of Fire, then celebrated his victory by carrying a naked boy-Jinn off into the sunset? That story? I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Aziza wrapped one arm around Penn’s waist, smiling slightly in relief when Hillary gripped her hand from Penn’s other side.
The last of her family was safe.
Not the last.
She took a deep, calming breath. For tonight, she would focus on what she knew. Penn was alive.
A howl stopped them all in their tracks. Brandon swore. “Bloody hell.”
“What now?”
Hillary shook her head. “You should have been more careful, Brandon. You knew he would be suspicious when you didn’t answer his calls. You knew he would send her.”
Aziza frowned.
Her?
“Who are we talking about? Brandon’s father?”
“It’s Natalie,” Brandon sounded grim. “Which is the same thing. I suppose she got tired of waiting for my call. And what she knows, the Alpha knows. That howl was a heads up, telling us she witnessed it all. He’ll know what happened here soon enough. He’ll know about you.”
And that was bad. Apparently. “So it’s too early for a victory dance? That’s okay, Greg is the one with all the mov—”
Greg.
Oh God
,
Where was Greg? Had Razia lied about him being missing? Had they hurt him? Had she been so focused on saving one life that she’d lost another?
Aziza released Penn and, without another word to the others, ran past Brandon and the unconscious bundle in his arms. Her bare feet hardly touched the ground as she raced to the house and flung open the door, calling his name.
“Greg!”
She ran up the stairs, her heart pounding, thinking of how strained things had been between them the last few days. How much he’d already done for her. If he was hurt she’d never forgive herself. She burst through his bedroom door, holding her breath.
He was lying sprawled across the bed, his sandy hair mussed and his breathing slow and deep. Sleeping? She frowned, forcing her racing heart to slow. Greg had slept through the whole thing? Impossible. Razia knew how much he meant to her. He never would have let him remain behind. Not willingly.
A little girl came out of the shadows, her hair in pigtails and her small body clothed in a white dress decorated with a pink sash around the waist.
“Te?”
The girl nodded. “I took him, hid him before they knew he was here. It seemed like the logical thing to do, considering the options. The likelihood of a human sacrifice was too great to be ignored, particularly with
their
involvement. And Gregory is necessary. He needed to survive.”
Aziza crossed her arms and glared at the child with the platinum hair and large black eyes. “First of all, again with the creepy? If you think I won’t hit you just because you’re in a child’s body, think again, Te.”
The Niyr sighed, her small hands clasped serenely in front of her. “I cannot apologize to you for doing my duty to my people. I
will
not apologize for telling you the truth.” She paused. “But Gregory Prophet did not ask to have his feelings used as a tool to convince you to obey the treaty. I felt…I
realized
I was indebted to him. So I hid him in a place none of the others could detect him until I sensed the threat was gone.”
Aziza moved past her to sit on the bed beside her friend. She reached up to brush the hair away from his eyes, studying his features with a tender expression. “He’s not this heavy a sleeper,” she said in a hushed tone, pressing her fingers to his forehead and inhaling sharply at how cold his skin was. “Where did you take him?”
Te joined her on the other side of the bed, watching Greg intently. “It is difficult to explain. There are places, pockets on my side where extreme conditions confuse the senses. I protected him from the effects as well as I could.”
Aziza narrowed her gaze on the new platinum threads peppering his thick, short hair. “But was that enough? Will he be okay?”
“I believe so,” the young girl murmured. “He should wake by morning and then we can be certain. But he is alive.”
Aziza kept her voice soft. “Te? You know what I am—what I have inside me?”
“Yes?”
She looked up to meet the girl’s gaze, allowing her intention to show through. The Fireborne to show through. She lifted her hand to reveal the black circle, the symbol of concealment that had responded to her thoughts swifter than it ever had before. They were, for all intents and purposes, alone. “Then wouldn’t the more
logical
approach be to stop lying to me?”
The young girl appeared startled. And there was something in her eyes that might have been fear. And the Niyr felt fear. Razia was proof of that. “Aziza, I’m not sure what you mean.”
“You knew what was after me. Knew what killed my family. You said you knew their intentions. The Jiniyr’s intentions. Are you spying for them? Or do you play for both sides, to protect yourself regardless of the outcome?”