Exquisite Captive (40 page)

Haran struggled to his feet. “This ends now, Aisouri,” he said.

He shed his last skin until he was pure ghoul. Nalia could see the powerful muscles underneath the rotting flesh and the clawlike nails covered in the rusty brown of dried blood. Nalia stood her ground as Haran walked toward her,
chiaan
sparking at her fingertips. She could evanesce, of course, if she wanted to put off this fight. And maybe she should, to give Raif and Zanari more time. But she was tired of running. Besides, she planned to kill Haran slowly. A swift death would be far too kind. And if she ended up being the one to lose her life tonight, she’d make damned certain he worked long and hard to take it from her.

Almost as if he’d read her mind, Haran raised his hands as a ball of deadly crimson
chiaan
began swirling between his palms. For just a moment, Nalia thought she saw two eyes deep in the fire’s heart. Haran’s mouth split in a howl of rage as he hurled the fireball toward her. Before it could find its mark, a cloud of emerald smoke filled the room and Raif was running toward her, his face full of relief and terror and something Nalia was too afraid to name.

Raif sped in her direction as he threw a barrage of
chiaan
toward the ghoul that sent the ball of poisonous fire careering off its path. The flames, in search of flesh, glanced off the wall it had crashed into, leaving it undamaged as it returned to its master. Raif stared at Haran, horror and disbelief mingling on his face. The ghoul threw the ball of fire once again, and Raif grasped Nalia by the waist and threw her onto the ground as it flew past them.

“You okay?” he asked, looking down at her.

“Get the hell out of here!” she yelled. But she couldn’t hide the wild delight on her face.

“So stubborn,” he murmured.

She threw her arms on either side of him to create a wall of smoke that masked them from Haran, then they scrambled up, slipping and sliding over the debris. Nalia grabbed Raif’s hand as she sprinted toward the shattered French double doors that led to the rose garden. She kicked aside the pieces of glass and wood that littered their path as they sprinted out of the death trap the mansion had become.

“You came for me,” she said, dazed. “You could have died and you came.”

He grabbed her hands and pulled her against him. “I had to.”

“Even though I’m a
salfit
?”

He grinned. “Even though you’re a
salfit
.”

Nalia pulled his mouth to hers and Raif gripped her around the waist, their bodies becoming one as her smoke—now a rich violet hue—took them away.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

NALIA AND RAIF EVANESCED ONTO A THIN STRIP OF
white sand, clinging to one another in the soft moonlight. Thick fog drifted toward the shore from the sea: an army of ghosts come to rally around them.

Raif looked behind him, as if Haran had somehow managed to evanesce with them. “What
was
that?”

“A ghoul.”

“That’s
impossible
.”

“I know. At the palace, we had this one tutor who always insisted the ghouls were real, and some of the Ghan Aisouri claimed to have ancestors that battled ghouls, but no one really believed them.”

“Well, this day just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it?”

“He’ll follow us,” Nalia said. Her eyes lingered on the stubborn line of his mouth. She knew he wasn’t going to listen to her, but she had to try, anyway. “You need to go.”

He shook his head. “Just tell me how I can help.”

Nalia’s eyes darted around the deserted beach where she’d spent most of her mornings on Earth doing her
Sha’a Rho
exercises. The ocean had claimed most of the sand, which was exactly what she’d wanted. The water served two purposes: it could put out Haran’s fires and she could use her power with water to dissolve into the sea if she had to. The sand and surrounding rocks and cliffs gave her plenty of earth energy to draw from, and she had no shortage of wind to fashion into destructive gales.

She pointed to the cliff overlooking the beach. It was far enough away that Raif would be out of Haran’s line of fire, but he’d be able to see everything that happened on the beach. “Go up there. You can draw power from the rock and Haran will be too busy down here with me to bother hurting you. If I need help, you can attack him from the cliff. But you have to promise me you’ll evanesce if he tries to fight you.”

“Too far away,” he said. His voice took on the short, clipped tone of a commander. She suddenly felt like one of Raif’s
tavrai.
“By the time my
chiaan
reaches him, he’ll have moved. I’ve seen Haran in action—he’s fast, really fast, and he never uses the same move twice. It’s impossible to find a rhythm when fighting him, so you have to be prepared for anything.” Raif pointed to a large rock formation that stood in the center of the beach. “Why don’t I start over there? I’ll be close enough to see his weak spots, and I can use the arch as another point of attack.”

Over the centuries, the sea had whittled a sizable arch in the center of the rock. Through it, Nalia could see more deserted beach. It’d be easy for Raif to attack Haran above or through the arch, then use the rock itself as a shield. She had to admit, it was a good strategy. But he’d be so close.

“Too dangerous,” she said.

A ghost of a smile played on Raif’s lips. “Give me a little credit. I’ve been leading an army for three years. Other than you, I’m at the top of Calar’s most-wanted list.”

“But—”

He leaned in and pressed his lips against her forehead. “We’re gonna make it through this. He’s strong—but you’re stronger.”

Raif evanesced, landing neatly on the thin surface of the rock. Behind him, the sea was quiet and the waves were small, filling the air with the sounds of their unceasing battle with the shore. Far off, she could see lights twinkling off large ships, like bobbing candles. Behind her, traffic hummed on Pacific Coast Highway. She threw up a glamour to hide the beach from human eyes. No matter what happened on the beach tonight, all any curious humans would see was the ocean crashing against the bases of the surrounding cliffs.

In the few seconds she had before Haran would find her, Nalia held up her hand and whispered Bashil’s true name. A small violet cloud appeared on the palm of her hand, an image in its center. Bashil’s eyes were sunken in his thin face, the bones covered by pale, ashy skin. He looked up at her for a moment before diving into a writhing mass of emaciated children, all fighting over what appeared to be dirty hunks of bread tossed into the mud. Surrounding the jinn, she could see Ifrit guards throwing scraps of bread, jeering. She wished she could reach her hand into the image and strangle every one of them.

Nalia could feel her brother’s desperation, the exhaustion that threatened to overtake his body. She wanted to tell Bashil how hard she was trying to get to him, but the magic didn’t work that way. The images she could send him would make no sense. They’d only confuse and scare him. She tried to send Bashil hope and love, tried to hint that someone would be coming for him soon. But before she could say good-bye or see his face just one more time, an Ifrit guard bashed her brother over the head with a club. Nalia screamed as the connection between them died.

“Nalia, what is it?” Raif called.

Please, gods, please don’t let him be dead. Please, gods. Please.

She turned to look up at him. “It’s my brother,” she said. She didn’t hear Raif’s response; the wind took his words before they could reach her.

Tears pricked her eyes and she let the wind dry their salty tracks down her face. The only way she could save her brother was to kill the bastard who’d sent him to the work camp in the first place so that Raif—or maybe even Nalia herself—could return to Arjinna, alive.

Lucky for her, she’d have the chance to do that any minute now.

Nalia planted her feet in the sand, willing the power of the earth to flow into her. She opened her arms and felt the wind rush around her, as though Grathali, goddess of the wind, were covering Nalia’s body with sacred armor. Every time a wave crashed on the shore, Nalia felt its salty spray against her skin, reminding her of the ocean’s power that was hers for the taking. Nalia’s blood hummed with
chiaan
and she could feel Raif behind her, solid and reassuring.

It was time.

She felt Haran before he arrived: a furious whirlwind of dark energy that sped over the ocean. He evanesced onto the beach in a crimson, sulfuric cloud, sending a stream of fire toward her before the smoke had even cleared. Nalia gathered a gust of wind between her palms and pushed the flames up and away from her, until a fiery pillar shot up between them. She could see it reflected in Haran’s eyes, two vertical red lines that lent him an even more demonic appearance. He wore no glamour—he was pure ghoul, with the body of an absurdly tall cadaver. His fingernails cast sinister shadows on the sand and his teeth were so large, he couldn’t even close his lips over his mouth. He looked like something that had been living in the depths of the deepest cave for all time, or an ancient sea monster finally come to shore.

Haran grinned and sent a stream of red
chiaan
through the flames, so that it became a writhing beast—a dragon—bent on Nalia’s destruction. The monster reared on its hind legs and blew a river of deadly fire toward Nalia. If Haran had been using natural fire, she would have been able to control it. But with his dark magic, Nalia didn’t dare touch the malicious flames. She dove into the water, hurling her body away from the poison that threatened to consume her. As soon as Nalia’s skin touched the ocean, she gathered the water around her, scraping it away from the sandy floor until it was a massive tidal wave suspended above the burning beach, with her in its center, the watery outline of her body shimmering in the light of the flames. Shells and coral, fish and seaweed, littered the ground. The blue bioluminescence of phytoplankton glimmered in the water, oceanic Christmas lights skimming the surface of the giant swell. She held the wave on her back, like Atlas, straining against its power. It blocked out the stars and swiped the moon out of the sky. She could see the lines of cars going up and down the highway, the twinkle of lights inside the homes tucked into Malibu’s hills. Beyond that, Los Angeles glowed, the freeways like clogged arteries in a body of light. She looked down at the beach, now several stories below her. Raif stood on his rock, a tiny pinprick looking up at her in awe. Haran fixed her with a maniacal grin and began to evanesce.

Nalia crashed upon the shore, then smacked against the cliff bordering the beach. Far out at sea, ships were crying out mayday alerts, and cars on the highway swerved as a wall of water toppled onto them. Haran’s dragon disappeared under the force of the wave, though the ghoul himself had managed to evanesce onto a distant cliff, his body drenched in saltwater, while Raif clung to his rock as the water pummeled him. Nalia’s watery body fell apart, then swirled back together as the wave receded, the water calmly going back out to sea as though a god had wiped the highway and beach with a sponge. Nalia stood on the soaked shore, perfectly dry. Her breath came out in strangled bursts and, despite the power the sea had infused into her
chiaan
, her body shook from the exertion. She raised her hands as Haran evanesced before her.

“Haran does not only play with fire,” he said. “He has many ways with which to hurt a Ghan Aisouri.”

“I’m sure you’ll try your best.”

With everything in her, Nalia threw her
chiaan
at his heart, but Haran was fast and evanesced before the full might of her magic could cut him down. She whirled around just as a rope of red
chiaan
bit at her legs and the whole left side of her body and she fell to the sand, gasping in pain as her skin blistered. Nalia gritted her teeth as the poison worked deep into her bones, trying to gather her
chiaan
, to keep her focus. Haran walked toward her, slowly, as though he were approaching a curious object that had washed up on the beach. Jinn driftwood.

Nalia tried to push herself onto her feet, but her legs gave way beneath her. The Ifrit fire he’d shot at her was searing, and she became dizzy as vertigo and nausea set in. Nalia lifted her hands, forcing her palms in front of her, mumbled prayers on her lips. Just before Haran reached her, an emerald whip of
chiaan
lashed his back and he turned toward Raif’s rock, roaring. Raif evanesced from the rock just as Haran hurled a ball of fire at him. He landed lightly on the sand, missing the deadly inferno by a breath. Haran opened his palms and a swarm of
vashtu
—birds born of Ifrit volcanic rock and dark magic—ascended from his palms. Part vulture, part bat, the
vashtu
were relentless killers that focused with vicious intent on whatever prey their master ordered them to hunt.

Haran laughed, a bone-chilling cackle, as Raif battled with the bloodthirsty birds, beating them back with his
chiaan
, then finally manifesting two scimitars to cut them out of the sky. They chased him out of sight, beyond the rock with the arch.

“She’s a tricky jinni, this almost-dead Ghan Aisouri,” Haran said, turning back to Nalia. “Haran did not realize that she brought friends. But Haran will not complain: he has been wanting to try this revolutionary delicacy for quite some time.”

“It will be hard to eat when you’re dead,” she said through gritted teeth.

Haran walked toward her, hands raised for a second volley of
chiaan
, but Nalia placed her palms on the sand, willing the earth to tremble. The ground shook under Haran’s body, throwing him into the cliff face with a violent shove that sent a cascade of sand up to the sky, a golden geyser. Haran was up in an instant, charging across the sand, but something black and metallic was in his hand this time. It glinted in the bright moonlight.

A gun.

Nalia shoved herself onto her feet, biting back a scream of agony as she sprinted toward the water. If she could just melt into the waves, the bullets couldn’t hurt her and her burning skin would forget the pain of the saltwater once it became one with the ocean. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of green and then Raif was on top of Haran, throwing him to the ground, his clothes covered in the blood of slain
vashtu
. They rolled around in the sand, Haran’s mouth opening wide. Raif reached a hand out to the enormous rock behind them and used his
chiaan
to send a piece of it hurling at Haran. It hit the ghoul in the shoulder, giving Raif enough time to scramble away. He was a nimble fighter, quick and intelligent. Nearly as good as a Ghan Aisouri.