Blood Passage (Dark Caravan Cycle #2) (29 page)

“But he's so . . . so . . .” Nalia trembled.

“He put you in a bottle for months, Nal,” Raif said. “He refused to free you, even when you told him about . . .”

But he wouldn't say Bashil's name. It would cut her open, hearing it said aloud.

Malek fell to his knees and began laughing hysterically. Phara rushed to him, her medical bag at hand. He looked up, his eyes clearing momentarily as he looked beyond Phara to where Nalia stood.

“Hayati?”
he whispered, grabbing for her.

“Get off her,
skag
,” Raif growled.

Malek didn't seem to hear him. He stared at Nalia and a look of pure horror spread across his face. He grabbed at the air with his hands, screaming Nalia's name again and again. Phara pulled a powder out of her bag and poured some onto her palm, then blew it in Malek's face. He swayed from left to right, then fell onto his back in a dead sleep. The cavern was silent, but Raif could still feel the echo of Malek's cries.

“You're too kind,” Raif said to Phara.

She returned the powder to her bag. “I can't watch someone suffer.”

Raif glanced at the jinn gathered around them. “Nalia and I found the next star. I know none of us will sleep tonight, but a little rest won't do us any harm. Should we stay here or press on?”

Samar frowned, considering. “I think it would be wise to rest. Everyone is tired from searching the caverns. If we do encounter Haraja again, I want to make sure we're strong enough to fight her. She's never attacked twice in one night.”

With Haraja on the loose and the only cure for her madness currently incapacitated, sleep seemed like a death wish, but Raif nodded. It'd been a long day.

“All right,” Raif said. “Everyone who can manage to stay awake, keep your eyes open.”

The Dhoma nodded their assent and, after a few last backward glances toward Malek, returned to their makeshift beds.

Raif clapped Samar on the back. “You want first or second watch?” he asked.

“First,” Samar said. “It'll be a while before sleep comes to me this night.”

Raif nodded. “Wake me when it's my turn.”

He left the Dhoma leader at his post and began setting up a pallet for him and Nalia near the fire, as far away as possible from Malek. Zanari gave him a curious look and when he smiled, his sister gave him a thumbs-up. Nalia was drinking a cup of wine, her hand shaking slightly. There was nothing he could say. Malek Alzahabi would never get his pity. And he certainly didn't deserve Nalia's.

Raif stole behind her and pressed his lips against her shoulder. “C'mon. You need to rest.”

He manifested several thick blankets and kicked off his shoes before crawling under them. Nalia set her jade dagger within reach before settling against him.

He pulled her close and whispered, “Just so you know, you're never sleeping alone again.”

“What if I steal all the blankets?” she teased.

“Then I'll manifest more.”

Across the cavern, Malek cried out
.
Nalia buried her head against Raif's chest and he wrapped his arms around her.

“Tell me our story again,” she whispered.

“Our story?”

“When I was asleep for so long, you told me about our future. Tell me again.”

He looked down at her. “You heard me?”

She nodded. “You brought me back again, I think.”

“We'll always bring each other back,” Raif said. He played
with the short strands of her hair as he spoke. “After the war is over,” he began, “we'll have a house and some land. We'll make love in our field under the Three Widows, as much as we want, whenever we want. Our two children will look exactly like you . . .”

Soon, Nalia's breath became deep and even. He kept telling her their story. He would tell it to her until it was no longer a story. Raif could almost see the moonlight on her bare skin and smell the wildflowers that would grow around their home.

A SMALL PART OF MALEK WASN'T SURE IF WHAT WAS happening was really happening.

Every now and then, the prison cell would shiver and he'd see another place: the cave where he thought he'd been, Nalia's face, the Dhoma. But all of that would disappear in a second. A mirage. Maybe he'd dreamed it all—taking Nalia from this cell after Calar killed her brother, running with her through the streets of Marrakech, saving her life in the sandstorm.

Maybe
this
,
right now, this horror movie, was reality.

“You thought you could get away from me so quickly?” Calar said.

She was not talking to Malek.

Nalia sat in an iron chair, her hands tied roughly to the chair's back. He could smell her flesh, slowly burning as it made contact
with the metal. Nalia mumbled something, but Malek couldn't hear her.

Calar produced a whip and lashed Nalia across the chest and she cried out, an agonized growl.

“You'll kill her!” he screamed. Malek reached for the whip, but he couldn't move. It was as if he were encased in cement.

Calar glanced at him and her bloodred lips turned up. “That's the point.”

She ran a finger along Nalia's cheek in mock tenderness. Nalia's hair was matted with blood and one side of her face was purple, nearly the same shade as her eyes. A red line had appeared over the chest of the thin chemise she was wearing.

“Please,” Malek begged as blood began to drip from Nalia's lips. “I'll do anything. Anything, I swear, just let her go. Please.”

“You have nothing to give me,
pardjinn
,” Calar said.

“I do,” he whispered. Some part of him had known it would always come to this. “I can give you the sigil. Solomon's sigil for Nalia's life.”

The room disappeared. Then: a pair of jade eyes. Rock everywhere. An endless dark he couldn't see his way out of.

Zanari leaned closer to Malek.

“What's he saying?” she said to Noqril.

“Hell if I know.” The jinni roughly set Malek down on the floor and poured a canteen of water over his face, then held it out to Nalia.

She touched her hand to a drop of water on the outer rim of the canteen, then held her finger over the opening. Her hand turned violet with
chiaan
and then a stream of water issued from her palm. As soon as the canteen bubbled over, she closed her fist. He began chugging the water.

“Noqril, I believe the words you're looking for are
thank you
,” Zanari said.

Noqril grunted, then threw back his head and drank until the canteen was empty.

“What can you do?” Zanari said. “A brute is a brute.”

Nalia smiled and, once again, Zanari felt grateful to no longer be consumed by that anger that had driven a wedge between them. Raif was right: Nalia's heart was good. How many people had Zanari been forced to kill? They were all victims of this endless war.

Malek's body suddenly became rigid and he jerked as though he were trying to free himself from imaginary bonds. His arms were flat at his sides, two wooden boards.

“I can give you the sigil,” he gasped. “Solomon's sigil for Nalia's life.”

Nalia stared at her former master, a hand over her lips.

“Phara, he's waking,” Zanari called. She reached out and clasped Nalia's free hand. “Sister, it isn't real. None of it is.”

“I know,” Nalia said. “But whatever's happening to Malek must be excruciating. He'd never give up the sigil.”

“Whatever's happening in his mind is happening to the
you
in his mind. He's fine.” Zanari frowned. “As usual.”

Malek's eyelids fluttered and Zanari got a glimpse of his onyx
eyes just before Phara blew her powder in his face again. Immediately, he slumped back into a fitful sleep.

It had been a challenge getting Malek through the glowworm star in the roof of the cavern Nalia and Raif had discovered. They'd had to devise a pulley system to transport Malek's body, and then there had been a long walk down a tunnel black as coal. All the while Malek had screamed and thrashed.

“Gods, I hope we don't have to deal with this for too much longer,” Zanari said.

“One more star.” Nalia's voice betrayed her exhaustion. She wiped a hand over her face. It glistened with sweat. In the past few hours the tunnels had become unbearably hot, and steam floated along the passage, stifling them.

Phara hugged herself and worried lines cut into her face. Her eyes glazed over with a faraway look that Zanari had come to recognize. She knew Phara was thinking about her family and the other Dhoma outside the cave. It was so frustrating, not being able to use her
voiqhif.
If Antharoe hadn't spelled the cave, Zanari could have told Phara what had happened to the Dhoma they'd left behind in seconds.

Maybe it's better this way.

They'd entered the cave just as the Dhoma were being attacked by the Ifrit. Calar's army wasn't known for its mercy. Zanari had heard Phara and the other Dhoma listing all the possible outcomes of the attack, none of them very good. Zanari knew how distressed they were; it was what she and Raif had been living with since they'd abandoned the
tavrai
to come to Earth in search of the sigil.

Raif jogged over to them from the front of the column. “The tunnel opens up into a large cavern. I'm hoping we can rest there for the night. I'll take him if you want,” he said to Noqril, nodding his head toward Malek.

“Fine by me.” Noqril walked away, whistling a human song Zanari had heard in Marrakech.

Raif grunted as he picked up Malek and threw him unceremoniously over his shoulder.

“Bet you didn't know this was how you were going to fulfill Malek's wish, did you, sister?” Zanari said to Nalia.

Nalia shook her head. “Tell me about it.”

They trudged through what remained of the dark tunnel, but the cavern proved to be even more miserable than the enclosed space they'd just come out of. It felt as if they'd hit a wall of solid heat.

The landscape of this cavern was nothing like the one that had come before it. It was a huge landmass, with what looked like a mountain on her left followed by a forest of stalagmites. The ceiling was impossibly high. So high that the cavern had its own weather system. Thick clouds masked the roof of the cave, which was at least a thousand feet above them. Gusts of wind whipped the air and whistled against the rock like a crazed banshee.

Raif was just leaning down to drop Malek on the ground when a low rumble began under their feet.

Zanari swayed and grabbed onto Phara. “What was
that
?”

“Fire and blood,” Anso cursed as she pointed to the mountain Zanari had noticed when they'd entered the cavern. Only it wasn't a mountain.

Nalia threw her hands against the base of the volcano as the
rumbling intensified. She looked at the jinn, her eyes filled with panic.

“Run!” she screamed.

The top of the volcano exploded, sending a geyser of crimson lava into the sky. Zanari was desperate to evanesce, but the smoke spilling from the volcano's top made it impossible to see even a few feet in front of her.

Nalia raised her hands above her and violet
chiaan
shot up to meet the lava just as it began its downward journey to the cave's floor.

“Nalia!” Raif yelled as the lava threatened to rain down on her. Malek fell from his shoulders, hitting the ground with a thud. The
pardjinn
groaned.

“Go, Raif.
Go
,” Nalia yelled. She kicked her bag of brass bottles to him. “Keep the bottles from melting.
Go
.”

“I'm not leaving without you,” he said.

“Raif, she's part Ifrit—the fire can't hurt her,” Zanari said. The roar of the erupting volcano was deafening. She grabbed Phara's hand and pulled the healer toward Raif. “Pick up the
pardjinn
and let's get out of here!”

“I can't hold it much longer,” Nalia shouted. The lava was a slow-moving wave, hungry for the cave's floor and the jinn on it.

Noqril moved to help her, but Nalia shook her head. “It's too strong,” she said. “Help the others—they'll need an Ifrit on hand.”

He glanced at the volcano and then moved away. “I'll find a place for us to go.”

Raif wavered and Zanari punched him in the arm, as hard
as she could. “If you don't move, this fire will kill you and you'll never see her again.”

He nodded, once, and grabbed Malek. Nalia chanced a look at him. “I'll be okay.”

Phara's hand trembled and Zanari turned to her. “Nalia will get us through this. She always does.”

Zanari pulled Phara along, following Raif as he sprinted through the thick gray smoke. As they entered the stalagmite forest, the lava spilled down the face of the volcano and covered Nalia completely. Nalia flailed, her mouth open in a scream, and then she went under and didn't come up again. Zanari's heart stopped and she prayed to all the gods that Nalia knew what she was doing, that she'd be able to survive a lake of fire.

“Oh gods,” Phara cried. “Is she . . . ?”

“I don't know,” Zanari gasped. “We have to keep going.” A molten river surged toward them with unbelievable speed.

Please gods, please gods . . .

They wove through the stalagmites, flying over the rock below their feet.

She could see Raif's back, not too far ahead of her. The other jinn were clustered on a high ledge just beyond where her brother ran for his life.

“We're almost there,” Zanari cried. “We can evanesce!” Now that she had a destination, there was no need to run.

Phara tripped and Zanari felt a sharp tug on her arm and she heard, then felt, her shoulder joint pop as it got pulled out of its socket. They both screamed as Phara fell to the floor. The lava had become a rapids and it was only a few feet away. Phara
motioned for Zanari to leave her.

“It's broken.” She pointed to her ankle. “I can't—”

Zanari reached down and pulled Phara up with her good arm, screaming as white-hot pain ripped through her injured shoulder. Her arms shook, her legs were made of rubber, and the lava's spray singed the thin material of her shirt, peppering her back with burning arrows of fire. Zanari pushed on at a crawl and her muscles burned and she couldn't, no she
had to
—she stumbled forward and they crashed to the floor.

“Go, you stupid girl, go!” Phara was sobbing, but Zanari shook her head and wrapped her arms around the healer. She'd never make it.

We're going to die,
she thought. Surprised. She'd really thought she had more time.

The lava was inches away now. She gripped Phara and they stared death in the face. Zanari blinked. It was looking right back at them. The lava seemed to stop, as though an arm were holding it back. Zanari's eyes widened as she made out the faintest hint of Nalia's features in the flames. Then Noqril and Raif were there, pulling Zanari and Phara into clouds of evanescence. Seconds later, they were standing on the ledge overlooking the lake, gripping one another as a heavy wind gusted past the rock face.

The part of the lava that was Nalia dove forward and all Zanari could see was a boiling river of fire blocking their only exit from the cavern.

Nalia was gone.