Father Ursu cleared his throat. His face was tense. “It’s nearing midnight. The police have discovered several bodies recently. We have reason to believe the victims were all murdered during the witching hour.”
Aisling wondered again what abilities he possessed. Fear lurked deep in his eyes, as if he’d seen some of the beings drawn to the dead hours of the night.
She moved to the center of the room and sat on the bare, cold floor. If she’d been at home she would have put Aziel on her lap and enclosed them both in a circle of chalk or ash, or surrounded them with the fetishes she used when she wanted to project her astral self into what most thought of as the ghostlands. Though in truth it was a land of spirits, an ancient place holding much more than human souls. But here, under the watchful eyes of the priest, guided more by intuition than reason, she plucked the ferret from her shoulder and set him away from her.
She dipped her fingers in the salt, uncertain about using it. It was a witch’s protection, not hers. She wondered if other shamans used salt to open a doorway into the spirit world.
Tentatively Aisling enclosed herself in a salt circle. Though her eyes were closed, she was aware of Father Ursu watching her. She was aware of another presence as well, of someone nearby and able to witness what happened.
She tried to still the panic deep inside herself, felt caught in a deadly spider’s web where to struggle was to become more thoroughly entangled. She focused on breathing, on steadying the rhythm of her heart, on clearing her mind of fear.
There were sigils she usually drew, but once again instinct warned her against revealing the most sacred parts of her ritual. She concentrated instead on visualizing them, on making them real in her mind as she silently called the true names of the ones who offered her protection in the spiritlands.
Her heart rate tripled as the heavy gray clouds of the spirit world rushed toward her. She held herself open and the ghost winds blew through her, seeking resistance, weakness, filling her with the terror of endless death even as they welcomed and claimed her. When they calmed and settled, she looked down and saw her body, there and yet not there, naked as she always appeared in the ghostlands, her hair a curtain down her back.
Without warning a man stepped from the gray mist. His face bore the tattoos of a lawbreaker.
He licked his lips as he glanced at her naked body. His own was covered in clothing that looked expensive. He leaned forward slightly, emphasizing the fact that his hands were bound behind him as they had been in the moment of his death. A metal cable served as a hangman’s noose. It twisted around his neck then trailed down his back before disappearing into the mist swirling at their feet.
“I see they’ve sent a sacrificial lamb,” he said in a raspy voice. “Or maybe that’s Elena’s role.” He cocked his head. “Then again, maybe third time’s the charm.”
Aisling resisted the urge to smooth her hands over nonexistent clothing. “You’re here to lead me to Elena?”
“I can find her if I must. Blood calls to blood and all of that.” He tilted his head. “And in a few minutes there’ll be plenty of blood. You might not need me at all by then.”
“What do you want in exchange for your aid?”
“If only it was a matter of what I want. Personally I’d leave Elena to her fate. Once I began collecting the facial artwork, my sister wouldn’t have anything to do with me.”
He smiled and some of the tattoos cataloging his crimes merged. His eyes reflected a cruel enjoyment. “It was only a matter of time before Elena became disposable. When you make your bed in a nest of vipers, you eventually get bitten. But time’s wasting. In exchange for my help you’ll agree to take the good bishop’s offer. Stay in Oakland.” He laughed. “You might as well. They don’t intend for you to leave. This is only the beginning act—if you survive it, of course. You realize that, don’t you?”
Aisling’s heart raced in her chest. His words rang with the same hidden truth she’d heard in the bishop’s voice. “Who do you serve?”
“One whose name you’re not meant to hear at the moment.” He rolled his shoulders, and the cable he’d been hung with shimmered, a long silver leash leading to an unseen master.
Aisling studied him. Good or evil, malicious or beneficial—with no formal training she had only her instinct to rely on when it came to the spirit guides and entities she encountered in the ghostlands. “I will stay in Oakland, for a time.”
The man cocked his head as if listening to an unspoken voice. “Good enough,” he said before turning and walking deeper into the gray landscape.
There was no sense of time or distance in the spiritlands. They may have traveled for seconds or hours, yards or miles. There was a sense of being watched, but Aisling couldn’t be certain which plane it was on given Father Ursu’s presence in the room where her body awaited her return. Heat and cold brushed across her ankles; occasionally there was a phantom touch to the back of her hand.
The gray gave way to pink. The pink darkened and became bloodred. Her guide stopped. “End of tour for me unfortunately.” He kicked at the red mist at his feet. “Too bad. I wouldn’t mind seeing how Elena is faring.” He tilted his head. “She’s not screaming. Could be a good sign—or a bad one. If she escapes this fate, be sure to tell her that her dear brother John hopes to see her soon.” He laughed before taking a step backward and being swallowed by the ghostlands.
Aisling closed her eyes and let herself sink into the physical world as she remained in her astral self. She was greeted by the sound of chanting, by the thick smell of burning incense mixed with blood. Her breath caught in her throat when she opened her eyes and found herself in a nightmare scene of flickering candles mounted on goat heads, of dark-robed figures surrounding an altar where Elena lay naked and spread-eagled. Sigils were painted on her eyelids and lips, on her palms and on the soles of her feet. The steady rise and fall of her chest was the only indication she was still alive.
The gleam of a blade being raised turned Aisling’s attention to a man next to the altar. He wore the headdress of a goat. The chanting stopped when he began to speak in a deep, mesmerizing voice.
The words were unfamiliar to Aisling, but she could guess their meaning, their purpose. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears. She had no true physical presence here. She was only a witness to the events. Even if she left the room and determined where Elena was, by the time she returned to her own body and conveyed the location, it would be too late.
Warm fur brushed against her ankles. She looked down and startled at the sight of Aziel. Always before, he’d touched his physical body to hers and entered the ghostlands with her, or he didn’t appear at all.
The flames of the candles flickered and reflected in his yellow eyes as he met Aisling’s gaze. Their minds touched in a way they did only when they were both in spirit form.
There is a name you can whisper on the spirit winds, a being you can summon.
It was her choice. It always was. But there would be a price to pay.
Tell me
.
The ferret climbed to her shoulder. His face pressed to hers as if to ensure the name he yielded would only be heard by her.
Zurael en Caym. Serpent heir. Son of the one who is The Prince.
A shiver streaked down Aisling’s spine in soul-deep recognition. There was no time to question the reaction or agonize over her decision. The dark priest’s prayer climbed toward a crescendo. When he reached it, the athame in his hand would plunge into Elena’s heart.
“Zurael en Caym. Serpent heir. Son of the one who is The Prince. I summon you,” Aisling said. “I summon you to me and command you to end this ceremony before the sacrifice is made.”
The dark-robed acolytes shrieked as Zurael appeared, black-winged and taloned. With a casual swipe he severed the jugular of the dark priest and sent blood spewing across the altar. In panic the participants tried to escape, only to be grabbed and killed, their bodies tossed casually to the floor as their hearts ceased beating and their souls fled.
Terror and horror filled Aisling at the sight of the demon, at the destruction he wrought with so little effort. His face and naked body were human but his eyes burned like molten gold. When the last of those participating in the black mass was dead, he came to stand before her, coated in blood, his expression promising retribution for being summoned and commanded.
A ring flared to life at her feet, circling her, protecting her. Zurael’s eyes slitted as his gaze traveled the length of her and his cock became engorged. “Savor these few moments when you hold me enslaved, child of mud. They will cost your life,” he said before disappearing as suddenly as he’d arrived.
Two
ZURAEL shimmered into existence in the exact spot he’d abruptly and involuntarily left moments earlier. The wings and talons were gone, as was the blood, but the rage remained, deadly and focused.
Desert winds streamed through windows hung with a thin, gauzy fabric. Rather than soothe and calm him, the breeze made him think of the woman who’d whispered his name on the spirit winds, who’d dared to summon a Djinn prince and command him.
She would pay with her life. Such magic could not be allowed to rise again.
A knock sounded at the door. It was his father’s advisor. Zurael could feel the signature energy. He’d known it wouldn’t take long for the knowledge of what had happened to reach The Prince.
Zurael went to the door and opened it. Miizan en Rumjal stepped back, the tilt of his head indicating Zurael was to follow him. His features gave no hint of his thoughts, and Zurael had no intention of asking for them. Though Miizan was bound to the House of the Scorpion and not the House of the Serpent, his loyalty to The Prince was forged in a time thousands of years earlier, when there were no ghostlands, no Kingdom of the Djinn to serve as both paradise and prison, when there was only the place that had been defiled by the humans and stolen from the Djinn by bloody conquest and foul, enslaving magic.
Zurael stepped into the velvety darkness of the night and followed his father’s advisor in silence as they moved through courtyards and beneath elegant arches. Pastel window coverings made him think of night-blooming flowers, their color revealed by the soft glow of candlelight. Though they could have taken any number of forms and traveled faster, they walked until Miizan stopped in front of a door few entered. “He waits below.”
Zurael’s lips curved in a grim smile as he opened the door and began descending the long staircase to the Hall of History. He didn’t need to wonder what his father’s mood was. It was always at its darkest when The Prince thought of the past.
It was pitch-black, but Zurael navigated the steps with the ease of someone who’d done so for centuries. As was fitting for a people created from fire at the very beginning—when the Earth seethed and boiled, molten rock and unconscious desire to bring forth life—the air around Zurael grew hotter the deeper he went and the closer he came to where his father waited.
At the bottom of the stairs, muted colors began their fight against the blackness in a sardonic metaphor for the history of the Djinn—fire and memory and angel blood. Zurael ducked through an archway and into the Hall itself.
His father stood in front of a mural depicting the first summoning and binding. But unlike the Djinn in the mural, who appeared much as Zurael did—bare-chested and barefooted, a long black braid trailing between his shoulder blades and ending at his hips—The Prince had taken the form of a nightmare, the demon he’d been named when the god cursed him and twisted his shape into something hideous as a lesson to all Djinn.
His fingers were curled talons. Leathery, batlike wings emerged from his back, their edges draped elegantly over his forearms. A snake-like tail coiled around his leg.
The humans believed they were formed in the image of their god. In truth they were formed in the image of the Djinn—not because the Djinn willed it, but because the god who amused himself with an experiment had settled on a form already proven efficient.
“You were summoned,” The Prince said. His voice was barely more than a hiss, but it echoed in the hall. It resonated through Zurael’s mind like a curse hurtled at the past.
“Yes. I will kill her if you’ll grant permission for me to pass through the gates.”
The Prince’s tongue flicked out, forked in keeping with the image he’d chosen to project, though he’d long since broken the curse that had once trapped him into an abomination of Djinn and beast.
Slowly, demon-red eyes turned to fathomless black. The tail uncoiled, and like the wings and talons, it faded as his father turned to study the mural once again.
Zurael looked at the mural and the depiction of the first Djinn not only summoned but bound to a vessel in order to serve one of the creatures created from mud. Though he would never admit to fear, an icy finger traced down his spine as he viewed Jetrel’s fate and flashed to those moments when he himself had been summoned. If the two of them were standing side by side, few would be able to tell the difference between his father’s firstborn son and his father’s eldest living son, so close was the resemblance.
His father had lost dozens of sons and daughters before he, along with the most powerful of the ancients, had created the Kingdom of the Djinn deep within the ghostlands. Afterward there had been few born to any of their race, even The Prince.
Silence reigned, heavy and full of dark memories in the Hall where The Prince was said to have painted the history of the Djinn using angel blood and the colors of the world that had once been theirs to rule.
His father tilted his head as if listening to voices only he could hear, or perhaps he was glimpsing a sliver of the future, as it was said he could do. “There are few old enough to remember, but this is the moment when even those who belonged to the House of the Dove realized there would be no compromise with the god who came here from a place beyond our understanding and claimed our lands as his own playground. We, who were created of Earth’s fire, were ordered to kneel down to the creatures of mud and submit to their will. When we refused, preferring to fight to the death rather than yield, they were given an incantation allowing them to summon and bind us to a vessel so we could be used as unwilling familiars.”