Three Wishes (3 page)

“Hurt me? You think I’m scared of the human?” She cast Andrew a look of scorn but wrapped her arms around herself, protecting herself from his insight. It had been centuries since anyone had read her fears and pain or cared that she had them. She shivered, colder than she’d been from her dunking in the sea. “I’m not scared. I despise David.”

“So why did you stop your game playing, the great seduction scene? Something made you afraid. Sad.”

“Memories.” She flung the word at him.

“Ah.” He looked up at the stars, his weight rocking back on his heels. “Regrets.”

“Pain. Cruelty. Deception.” She refused to accept his understanding. This angel and she had nothing in common. What did angels know of regrets?

“Grief. Guilt. Loneliness.”

She glared at him. How dare he stand there, free and powerful, and infer he shared her experience? “If you’re being devious, thinking to soften me up with sympathy, you’re wasting your time. I’m unsoftenable.”

“Are you, Cali?” He lowered his voice, the question for her alone. The sea lapped against the rocks and curled around his boots.

“Yes!”

He studied her somberly. “Sometimes I fear I’m becoming the same—as hard and cutting as a diamond. No kindness in me.”

She winced at this harsh picture of herself, but the pain was inside where no one could see it. Her hardness was self-protection and she wanted to end the conversation. “Diamond cuts diamond. If I have to go through you to kill David, I will.”

“You may try.”

“I’ll succeed.”

He took a step forward and his shadow fell over her. A moon shadow, cool and secretive, haunted.

Her fingers dug into her upper arms as she held her ground.

“Perhaps there is tenderness in me, after all.” He touched her face lightly. “I am sorry I dunked you.”

She jerked away from his hand. “Didn’t you hear me? I intend to destroy you.”

“I heard you.” He straightened to his full height, modern army fatigues rippling away into the uniform of a Roman legionary captain. Immense wings unfolded, white and tipped with gold. A sword appeared in his right hand. He radiated light, and it showed the auburn of his hair and the blue of his eyes. “This is who I am.”

He stood powerful and uncompromising against the darkness of the sea.

“Am I meant to be impressed?” She was. It had been centuries since she’d encountered a being as powerful as herself. She suspected Andrew was even more powerful—and all that power being wasted protecting a man who made his living from violence and death. Disgust threaded through her anger and forced out fear and doubt.

“Impressed?” Andrew tilted his head. “It would please my ego. But no. This is who I am. When you show me who you are, then you’ll destroy me. Or save me.”

She frowned. She disliked riddles on principle and he seemed to infer an intimacy that frightened her. She’d never trust her true self to anyone. “I’ve changed my mind. Even to kill David, you’re not worth seducing.”

His eyes lost their distant, meditative shine. “I’m worth seducing in my own right. Are you scared, Cali?”

“What, of a spanking?” she asked sarcastically.

“For a moment you leaned on me.”

“I was
seducing
you.”

“It started that way, cold-blooded. But then you wanted to share my warmth. You lay against me.”

She flushed at the memory. She’d all but cuddled him. “It’s been a long time between fu—”

His lips silenced hers, firm and sure. He didn’t touch her in any other way. Only his mouth sought and claimed her response.

And she couldn’t stop her lips from softening and dampening, sliding against his, firming to make their own claim. He tasted so good. Better than brandy fire. Her lips clung as his eased away.

“I think I’d do almost anything to feel again. Anger, passion. Tenderness.” He licked the taste of her on his lips. “What’s between us is real, Cali.”

“No. There’s nothing between us.” She looked up at him, dizzy. His backdrop was all the stars of heaven.

“On the contrary.” He sheathed his sword. “It surprised me too, but there is hope.”

“So much for hope.” Andrew stared at Cali’s footprints on the wet sand. She’d vanished.

Lord, he could taste her on his lips, feel the heated press of her body. She was so passionately alive. He wanted some of that furious energy.

“Some?” He smiled, unamused. He wanted
all
of it. From anger to desire, Cali made him feel alive. It was such a rare feeling. He wanted to meet her in that violent storm of emotion.

He was sick of lukewarm humans. What was it God was recorded as saying in the Bible? Andrew was no scholar, but it struck a chord with him. Something about “the tepid, I will vomit from my mouth.” That was how he felt.

His last charge had refused every invitation to embrace joy and hope. She’d married her verbally abusive, bank-employed boyfriend rather than accept her best friend’s challenge to take her nursing degree to Africa and made a difference. So her best friend went alone, flying out on the wedding day. In time he’d forget his first love, marry someone else, be happy, and Andrew’s charge would be left with financial security and no joy.

These days there were few sinners and no saints. People just wanted to live safe lives. Dull, crippling, miserable, safe lives. He was sick of the waste, sick of his own emptiness.

He watched a wave break against the rocks. Limpets clung there, grimly determined on survival, trading the freedom of the sea for the security of the same, yesterday, today and tomorrow. The sea ran back, leaving the limpets stranded above low tide.

He was a guardian angel to human limpets.

At least you couldn’t accuse David Saqr of limpet-hood. The man fought life.

Andrew’s hands clenched. Much though he wanted Cali, he couldn’t put David at risk. The man had one final chance for redemption. If Cali killed him before he’d chosen a better life, he’d spend eternity with the demons—not that there were any guarantees David would choose life over death, but the probability was high. Andrew had chosen his intervention carefully.

Thoughts of that intervention brought a real smile to Andrew’s face. Sometimes a person didn’t get to choose whether hope invaded their life. It stormed in, wanted or not, and threw the furniture around. Quiet lives became chaotic. Lifetime habits cracked. David would learn.

So would Cali. She might have refused his challenge of hope and that disappointed him. But the potential of what ran between them remained. He could take up the challenge and see how long his fiery djinni ignored the provocation of his presence and his protection of David.

“Sweet Cali.” She was many things—furious, emotional, vengeful, creative, vulnerable, passionate—but not sweetly insipid. Her dark eyes and wide, expressive mouth showed every deeply felt emotion. She flung herself at life. “You are going to be so angry. Every step you take, I’ll be there.” Anticipation tightened the muscles in his gut.

He tipped his head back to study the vertical cliff face with the castle looming at the top. A challenge. He shrugged, folding his wings, then returned to human form in modern fatigues but with climbing shoes instead of boots.

He let gravity claim him and felt the cold spray of the waves. Fully human, he flexed his fingers, then leaped from rock to rock before reaching for a handhold and beginning the climb up the cliff. With Cali in retreat, a physical challenge would have to burn off his mood. He wedged his toes into cracks in the rock face and let his legs take the strain of his weight while he searched for his next handhold. The rhythm of climbing kept him moving upward, finding satisfaction in the burn of straining muscles. The rock was sharp under his fingers, crumbling once and drawing blood.

Everything worth having came at a price. Andrew reached for a more secure hold. The broken rock tumbled down the cliff and splashed into the sea.

The storm came out of nowhere. First a howling wind that tore shrieking up the cliff face and around the castle. The pennants snapped loudly, gunshots on the blast. Windows and doors slammed shut. Then the sea churned. At the foot of the cliff a whirlpool formed, collapsed and gave way to a waterspout that traveled erratically, shooting water meters into the air. Then that too collapsed and the sea gathered itself and flung its fury against the cliff.

Andrew laughed as the wave drenched him.

Such turbulence could only mean Cali. She hadn’t run from his challenge. She’d made a tactical retreat, but her emotions were fully alive—bringing him alive.

Her fury invigorated him. Did she know he was on the cliff face in the middle of the storm?

Lightning cracked, splitting apart the dark sky.

“You don’t scare me, Cali love. And I’m damn glad I didn’t scare you.” He blinked the dazzle of lightning from his eyes and found the next handhold. What he started, he finished. The cliff top was near. So was Cali.

Another wave slammed the cliff, waking echoes like a giant gong. He felt the vibrations through his body and smiled. He knew the violence of hope.

Cali’s heart pounded and her body was flushed with shame and need.

Hell blast the angel.
She sent a second blast of lightning to shatter the night. She didn’t want Andrew’s challenge to hope. He could afford it, but she couldn’t.

Hope destroyed. It hollowed you out from the inside. You bled faith and love and ended by being alone forever.

“Never again!” she screamed into the boom of thunder.

The storm she’d called in from the sea crashed over the land and broke into a deluge. It was rain, not tears. She never cried.

Unbidden she thought of Andrew in army fatigues and then in angel form. He was power and freedom. Yet he spoke of loneliness.

She knew loneliness. It was not having a friend to share the pain in her heart. It was shaking with fear and having no one to hold you. It was the dying of hope.

“I have revenge.” It kept her strong and gave purpose to her loneliness. “I will kill David.”

She regretted tackling Andrew directly. Hadn’t she immediately seen the need to be devious? Seduction had been the wrong tactic. Now she had his attention, he’d watch her every move.

A ripple of desire told her how much her body wanted his attention. She rested a hand on her stomach, feeling its tension. Was that really why she’d attempted seduction? Not to distract Andrew and kill David, but to ease her aching loneliness?

Andrew would be a powerful lover, but the cost was too high. His insight unsettled her. Nor did she like the shimmer of predictive power he’d shown at the end. The cost of being known wasn’t worth the fleeting pleasure of sex. And he’d make demands. Lovers did. It was safer to ignore the attraction and focus on David.

She swept her hands up and closed them. The rain stopped. The wind dropped. The sudden silence seemed to hold its breath.

David had to die. Her vow demanded it.

“I am Cali, the Bringer of Death.”

And the woman who remembered the heat and strength of a soldier’s arms and thought they meant comfort?
Who was she?

Cali grimaced. That woman was a mistake. Andrew was a danger she couldn’t afford. He made her see she wasn’t all-powerful, that she needed others, felt loneliness, ran scared. She would never allow herself to be that vulnerable again.

“Never,” she vowed. She stripped off her wet clothes and showered the salt spray from her clammy skin. She owed Andrew vengeance for that dunking. Later. After she’d killed David. Or perhaps that death would be vengeance enough—David, her hated master, destroyed and Andrew left to live with his failure to save him.

She rubbed rosemary shampoo through her hair, rinsed and wrung it out. She would have to rethink her plans so as to circumvent an interfering, obnoxiously attractive angel. She could do it.

“It’s not possible!” David’s voice.

Outside her bottle, there were loud footsteps and the crash of his bedroom door. A window rattled.

Cali dropped the silver comb and snatched a towel. She wrapped the thick cotton around her to blot the moisture from her skin and plaited her wet hair. In her room she found a red dress and stepped into it. The heavy silk clung and swirled around her. A smoky gray pashmina added warmth. As she materialized from the bottle, she added a final touch of her favorite sandalwood-based perfume, dangling gold earrings and her bangles.

She was ready for war, dressed for power. Just let Andrew try to stop her—she’d melt his wings and set fire to his tunic.

“It’s damn well not possible.” David leaned out the window, staring at the castle. His fist slammed the window ledge. “Djinn don’t exist.”

Cali strolled forward. A wave of her hand lifted the magic that hid the restored castle from other eyes. Let David explain the overnight restoration in the morning, and good luck to him in this age of unbelievers.

Her bangles clashed.

He stiffened and turned with obvious reluctance.

Which did he fear more—that she exist or not exist?

Electric lights spilled from the castle’s windows and the front door he’d left ajar. Cali clicked her fingers, and for the mischief of it a fireworks chrysanthemum burst above the castle.

David flinched. “I can see you.”

She watched the firework drift and fade. Her own emotions settled into the same precarious peace.

“Are you a djinni?” he demanded.

Not used to being ignored, are you?
Cali looked around, her smugness tinged with a question. Just where was Andrew? He ought to be on duty, working against her to protect his charge.

Her gaze returned to David. He was physically attractive, lean where Andrew was broad, but still powerful and, she suspected, fast. The company he kept left no space for softness, physically or mentally. The angled lines of his face suited his ruthlessness. He had the merciless arrogance of a hawk.

He moved abruptly, reaching for her, and she dematerialized on instinct. He grasped empty air, stumbled and swore.

Andrew appeared in the open window.

Cali glared. He was wet, his clothes plastered all too revealingly against his muscular body. Nor did she trust the gleam in his eyes or the satisfied curve to his mouth. She looked away and readjusted her pashmina. “I wasn’t going to push your precious David through.”

“What?” David glanced around the room. He focused on Cali in the far corner. “You vanished.” He crossed over to his bed and took a gun from the bedside drawer. “Who were you talking to?”

She pulled a face. “Your guardian angel.”

The answer dumbfounded David. The muscles of his jaw loosened. “There’s another of you?”

“No!” She repudiated the idea. “I’m not your guardian angel. I don’t wish you well.”

David’s eyes narrowed and his jaw firmed. “You were responsible for the rock that damn near killed me. The Bringer of Death.”

She smiled.

“Hell’s teeth. I’m damned if I’m playing games with you anymore tonight. Get in your bottle and stay there.” He snatched up the bottle and its stopper and fitted the latter back in.

“It doesn’t work that way. You took the stopper out. You released me to await your wishes until the three are complete.” She walked gracefully to a chair and sank into it, crossing her legs. “I’ll wait here and watch you sleep.” A false frown creased her forehead. “I do hope you don’t snore.”

“I don’t sleep with a snake in the room.” He raised the gun, pointed it and shot her.

Cali dematerialized, but Andrew was faster. He caught the bullet. It was an astonishing turn of speed, even for an angel. He pressed it between his fingers and a tiny spurt of magic transformed it into a metal rose. The delicate petals seemed to quiver.

“I don’t accept war jewelry,” she said, seated again on the chair.

Andrew nodded. He threw the rose and it landed at David’s feet.

The man stooped and picked it up.

“He can’t see or hear me,” Andrew said.

“So he thinks I’m strewing roses at his feet?” she asked for Andrew’s ears alone. She had winked out of humans’ hearing and sight.

He grinned. “Better than throwing rocks at his head.”

The door crashed open. David’s bodyguard wore sleep shorts and carried a gun. He focused on David with a gun in his hand and an apparently empty room. Then his eyes widened as he saw the restored and well-lit castle through the window. The firm grip on his own gun wavered.

David slid the metal rose into his pocket. He looked at Eli’s fascination with the castle, and then at Cali’s chair, which appeared empty to him.

“What the hell happened?” Eli managed to wrench his attention from the castle.

“I thought I’d move house,” David said. “The English say a man’s house is his castle. I intend to make that true.”

“But…the castle is…was…a ruin.”

“Yes.”

Eli waved his gun in wild interrogation. “How?”

“Sometimes, Eli, wishes come true.”

Cali snorted.

Andrew, leaning against the wall beside her, shook his head. “You should give David credit. Most men wouldn’t adapt as fast.”

“He’s an opportunist.”

“You should admire that. It’s meant he survived.”

She refused to ask about David’s background. The men who controlled her bottle weren’t people to her—they were “masters,” vile and despised.

“I studied Solomon’s original curse,” Andrew said. “It’s recorded in the heavenly archives.”

Cali shrugged and rewrapped the pashmina, signaling her disinterest.

“It included protection for the human owner of a djinni bottle. The djinni can’t kill him. All you can do is twist David’s wishes against him, setting them up to hurt him. You can’t actually attack him.”

Frustrating but true. “There is an upside,” she countered. “If I’m not an immediate danger to David, you’ve no reason to hang around.”

“Do I unsettle you?”

She didn’t trust the intimate tone. “I just don’t like an audience.”

Andrew laughed. “Think of David. He suspects you’re watching his every move—which you are.”

“Will you tell him the details of Solomon’s curse?” She fidgeted with her bangles as Andrew frowned at her. It would have been easier to accept the quick affirmative she’d expected.

“I seldom reveal my presence to my charges,” he said finally.