All Your Wishes (31 page)

I fought for control, tried to use my fear and pain to my advantage. I stopped him in his tracks for a moment, but only a moment. Then we moved inexorably forward again.

The mouth of another cavern was only a yard in front of me, the golden light of magic illuminating the way. Each word of the chant, clearly audible, struck Hasan like a small hailstone. I felt them hammering hard against my skin. When each struck, a wisp of smoke and the scent of myrrh rose from my body, covering the increasingly strong smell of spilled blood.

The trail of blood marked my passage like slime behind a snail. Something … some
one
was behind me, following that trail. I was pretty sure I knew who. I tried not to think too much about it, lest Hasan overhear the thought. Instead, I focused on the pain and my continuing battle for control.

I might be losing, but by damn I wasn't giving up. It was costing him, too. I knew that because I could feel both his frustration and eagerness building. Success and freedom were mere heartbeats away.

We stepped into the doorway and I had to blink several times to adjust to the brilliant scene in the next space. Before me was a casting circle, with a mage holding a gemstone at each compass point and a djinn jar set at the exact center. It stood, a barrier, between Hasan and the elaborate altar at the opposite side of the cave, which was set between huge stalagmite columns that had been carved in the shapes of towering nude figures. One male and one female, they must have been a hundred feet tall.

The chanting grew, building toward a crescendo, and each mage raised the vosta he held over his head: To the north, Ujala, with a diamond; the south, one of his uncles, holding the sapphire; on the east, Cox, with a topaz; and in the west, another soldier, whose name I didn't remember, grasping an emerald.

Hasan pulled a spell disk and cracked it as he stepped away from the wall, intending to throw it directly at Ujala. I pulled back, not fighting until the crucial instant, when I used my concentrated will to foul his aim, so that the full-body bind hit a column three feet to the boy's left, far enough away to do no harm at all.

Something about one of the shadows caught my attention, tugging at the edge of my consciousness as Hasan grabbed another spell ball. A blur of motion from behind ended with a huge, fur-covered body slamming into my injured leg and bowling me over sideways. The magical flame ignited by the spell ball streamed off course, a good eighteen inches to Ujala's right.

I fell, my newly empty hands grabbing deep into the fur of a huge golden wolf who dug his claws into my belly and chest. I wouldn't have thought I had enough strength left in me to do it, but adrenaline can let you do amazing things. Hasan flung Kevin aside, hard. The wolf hit the cavern wall with a bone-cracking impact that left him crumpled on the ground at the foot of the altar, neck twisted at an impossible angle.

Hasan tried to make me stand, but couldn't. My body had taken too much punishment. I had lost too much blood. He looked around the cave, trying to figure out his next move, while I tried to see if anyone else had been hurt. The magical blow Hasan had loosed had missed Ujala, but found another target. On the far side of the room, perhaps a half-inch away from the circle, was a body so badly burned that it no longer looked human. I thought it a corpse … until it moved.

I shuddered. She wasn't dead. She, because the body was too small to be any of the men. Morales then, it had to be, but her uniform and flesh were charred beyond recognition. The pain I felt had to be nothing compared to what she was going through. Yet she still fought, trying to move an arm that was so badly damaged it shouldn't be able to move at all. Why?

My own memories supplied the answer. If she touched the circle, she'd become part of the magic, and her death by magic would activate the node. The spell Ujala and the others were working was powerful, but it wasn't powerful enough. Hasan was still free, still strong enough to inhabit my body. But weakened as he was, with my body failing beneath him, he would not be able to resist the power of the node.

Hasan either heard my thought or came to the same conclusion. Whichever, it didn't matter. He knew, and with a hiss of fury he tried to dig in my pouch for another spell.

I didn't let him. Ujala and the others might not have freed me yet, but their spell was working. The ifrit was weakening.

I called on my vampire strength, but more than that, I embraced my siren heritage.

I should have done it sooner. Reaching out with my mind, I sought help from my aunt, my cousin, from everyone I knew, everyone I loved, from the men and women fighting with me in the cavern.

And they were there: Three soldiers besides those in the circle; Kevin his neck broken, but alive, human essence determined, his wolf furious; Emma and Dawna, steadfast and loyal; Gran; my aunt; Isaac and Gilda Levy; John Creede; El Jefe; all there, all willingly giving me their strength of mind and will. I reached for Bruno and found … nothing. Just a vast, echoing void where his presence would normally be. I sought and found Matty, felt his pain, his sorrow, and his determination to exact revenge—revenge for the loss of his brother.

Bruno was dead.

The knowledge hit me like a sledgehammer to the gut. “
No!
” I howled as pain ripped through my heart and soul. The agony of my loss, combined with the strength given by my loved ones, became a weapon. I struck Hasan with all its power.

The blow staggered him and in that instant my body and mind belonged only to me. Grabbing Cooper's knife from its sheath, I slammed it into my injured thigh.

Hasan screamed in agony, but not through my lips. He was out of me.

He was out of me.

He was out of me and he looked like
hell.
If I'd had the energy, I'd have cheered. Hasan was mostly incorporeal by nature, but while he'd been beautiful, all smoky and glimmering, on the beach in Florida, now he looked a lot more like smog, yellow, dull, shot through with darker streaks, like cuts and bruises. It made him seem more substantial, almost solid.

The burned, bloody hand of the dying mage touched the edge of the circle. As she breathed her last, power, light, and sound exploded through the circle with an intensity that beggared the imagination. I was blinded and deafened, lifted off my feet and sent airborne for several yards. When I hit the floor, I rolled, from pure instinct, coming to an abrupt, jarring stop against a stone wall. The knife in my thigh slammed into the floor, causing me an indescribable amount of pain, and I screamed in agony.

When I was able to move, and to see, I pulled the knife from my leg; blood poured from the wound. Thanks to my vampire abilities, the place where I'd been stabbed earlier was already healing—slower than usual—but I'd lost so much blood that I was growing weaker with each moment.

Cleaning the knife on my tattered shirttail, I slid it into the sheath. I needed both hands to steady myself.

The floor of the cavern began to shake. I hadn't thought I could be any more afraid than I had been in the last few hours. I was wrong. Adrenaline coursed through my body at the realization that we were underground—in the midst of an earthquake.

I'm from California. I know about earthquakes. If we stayed where we were, chances were good we'd be buried alive. Heading for the cave entrance right now might save my life … but Kevin and the others were still down here, and I could hear Hasan's bellows of rage. An earthquake might not be enough to stop him.

When I glanced over my shoulder, in the dim light of the cave entrance I could see stones bouncing across the ever-narrowing gap. Saying a prayer for strength, I turned toward the burning brightness of the spell circle.

I couldn't stand, so I didn't even try. Stripping off my belt, I tightened it around my wounded leg, just tight enough to slow the bleeding. Using my good leg, I pushed myself across the stony floor. Pebbles and larger stones rained down on me. Sharp, jagged bits of golden brown rock dug into my hands as I dragged myself forward, the already-damaged muscles in my arms and back screaming in pained protest.

It was slow going, and I was treated the whole time to human screams and inhuman bellows. Beneath me, the stone floor was growing uncomfortably warm from the heat of magic—the battle was still going strong. Reaching the altar room, I found that Hasan had his back to me. Semi-corporeal, he was gathering power to his fingertips and trying to make his way to the corpse of the downed mage. At the same time, the magic from the node, concentrated through the stone in Ujala's hands, pulled him inexorably toward the mouth of the djinn jar.

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When all you have is a throwing knife, everything becomes a target. Hasan's broad, muscular back was directly in front of me. I had no idea if the knife could harm him in his current state, but since it was a magical artifact, it might. I didn't take time to think it out—there was no time. If he loosed a blow at Ujala from that distance he wouldn't miss and the child, the Guardian, would die. I struggled until I was in a sitting position, drew the knife, said a quick prayer, and threw.

I put everything I had into that throw: All my remaining strength, all the years spent honing my skills, all the rage and grief I felt at Bruno's loss. The blade flew through the air with a slight hiss, then sank with a meaty thunk into the ifrit's spine. I collapsed onto my side, incapable of anything more.

Hasan's scream could have shattered glass. His arms flew wide, the blow he'd prepared for Ujala flying into the statue to the right of the altar. As I watched, his body melted to a fine mist the dark red of heart's blood. The vapor was sucked slowly into the mouth of the jar. When the last of it was inside, the power of the circle died. Most of the light died with it: Most, but not all.

Ujala set the still-glowing vosta he was holding onto the ground and stepped forward. Pulling another stone from his pocket, he slammed it into the mouth of the djinn jar. Using a black candle, lit by magic, he created a new seal, muttering a spell I couldn't make out, scratching sigils into the molten wax.

I heard the sound of stone scraping on stone, coming from the column next to the altar, the one shaped like a woman. The one Hasan's blow had damaged.

It was … moving … and not from the earthquake.

“Holy shit.” Cooper's awed comment came from a corner of the room where I'd noticed something wrong with the shadows. He stood in opened-mouthed wonder, the camo spell that had hidden him expended.

Holy shit was right. The brown stone resolved itself into a living being of incredible beauty, her skin shining like polished brass, her eyes and hair black and gleaming, like obsidian.

She was a hundred feet tall if she was an inch, but before our eyes she shrank. As she did, a thin, iridescent dress materialized around her, sheer as a cobweb and held at the shoulder by a brooch in the shape of a
sujay
. When she was down to nine or ten feet tall, she stepped forward and down onto the floor of the cave. There was no rock-on-rock sound when she moved.

Inclining her head slightly, she addressed Ujala, who held Hasan's jar with both hands, offering it to her. In the background, Cox gestured to his people to hold fire, because battered as they were, when she first manifested, they had prepared themselves to fight.

The djinn's voice rang through the cavern like an enormous gong. “You have done well, Guardian. We are proud of you, and of your father before you. Take Hasan away for safekeeping.”

Ujala bowed at the waist, but not before I saw tears gleaming in his eyes, which were now the clear gray and white of the sparkling diamond vosta he'd used during the ceremony. His hair was still dark brown, and he otherwise seemed to show no ill effects from the enormous power he had wielded.

He is the Guardian
, the giant djinn said in my mind, answering the question I hadn't voiced.

She glided forward another few steps until she stood directly over me. I looked up, and up, into unreadable, inhuman eyes of total black. Her expression was totally alien as she regarded me for a seemingly endless moment. When she finally spoke, her voice was soft and intimate, pitched so that I, and only I, would hear.

“You, too, have done well. They would not have succeeded without you.” She regarded me for another long moment, those unsettling eyes seeming to bore into my very soul. “I will give you three things you wish.” A small smile played at the corner of her lovely mouth. “Without strings.”

She gestured at Kevin. The golden light of magic surrounded him and his body straightened into its normal, human form. He lay on the stone, naked, beautiful, and whole.

“Give me your hand,” she said.

I struggled to sit up. It wasn't happening. My body simply would not move. Exhaustion, my injuries, and blood loss combined to leave me helpless at the djinn's feet. I was too tired to even be frightened. Intellectually, I knew that I really didn't want to piss her off. I'd had enough of angry djinn for one day … hell, for a lifetime. But I simply could not comply.

She squatted gracefully and set her hand on my forehead. Her hand was warm but hard, like the brass it resembled. I felt strength flow into me, strength and comfort. My breath caught in a sharp sob as I remembered. Bruno was gone. I'd never see him again. Never hold him. Never tell him how much I loved him. Never get to say good-bye.

Time stopped. Everything around me froze in place. Falling stones hovered in midair; Cox stood balanced in midstep. Then, in less time than it took me to blink, I was standing, in my dirty, bloody uniform, in a hospital emergency room.

The scene was one of controlled chaos. Doctors and nurses in bloodied scrubs were working full out. EMTs came running through the automatic doors, pushing a gurney with a still and mangled form on it, the face covered by an oxygen mask. Another EMT was perched atop the body, doing heart compressions. With every push, blood pumped out of the bullet wounds that riddled the victim.