Blood of Egypt (Witch Fairy Book 8) (16 page)

The fire stops just short of the men.  If they move at all, their clothes will likely catch on fire.  “It’s funny how fire can just pop up anywhere,” Josh says with an amused glint in his eye.  “Especially when you least expect it.”

“There are worse things than prison or death,” I add to the threat.  Then I give them their voices back.  I want to know how seriously they’re taking this.  They seem a little irrational at the moment and may not be paying attention like they should.

To prove my point, the main guy starts ranting something in Arabic.  I turn to Kallen with a questioning look.  He translates, but I don’t think he tells me everything the guy is saying.  “He is threatening revenge, eye for an eye, and wishing us all into the deepest level of Jahannam.”  I’m assuming that’s hell in his religion.

My brow crinkles and I turn back to the man who Agent Amman assured us earlier understands English.  “An eye for an eye?  You really think you could do something like this?”  I sweep my arm out indicating the fire.  “Or this?” I ask and then I let a little bit of my magic trickle into him.  I am oh so careful not to let too much go.

The man begins to writhe around, oblivious now to the dangers of the fire threatening to consume him.  My magic is burning inside him, boiling his blood and turning his mind to mush.  I have to take his voice away again so no one outside of the room is aware of his torture.  After a moment, Kallen puts his hand on my shoulder.  “Careful,” he says quietly.

I nod and pull back my magic.  “I’m pretty sure you can’t do that,” I tell the man as he struggles to recover from the shock and pain of my attack.  Eliana has carefully kept the fire from him but it’s right back where it was now.

All the fight seems to have left him.  The man is lying in a heap, almost in a fetal position.  I think he got the message; I don’t think he’s going to hurt anyone anymore. 

Why do I always underestimate evil?  Seriously, you’d think I’d learn.  The reason the man has curled into a fetal position is that he has a gun tucked into his socks.  Which he pulls out and points at me.  Now, that’s just rude.

And now he has the audacity to fire the trigger.  Fine, he wants eye for eye?  I’ll give it to him.  I stop the bullet mid-air and I turn it around.  It rushes towards the man’s heart and buries itself in his skin, prying his ribs apart, just touching his heart.  Then I stop it. 

I kneel down in front of him again.  “You can’t win this.  You can’t harm us.  You can’t harm Agent Amman or his family.  You can’t even save yourself if we want you dead.  You are completely at our mercy and right now; I can’t think of any reason at all to have mercy on you.”

Eliana kneels down next to me.  Raising the flames higher, she says, “Mercy is for the repentant.  I see no one here that matches that description.”  She lets the flame touch their clothes and their screams are deafening as they lick their skin beneath.  After a couple of seconds, Eliana draws the fire back.  I notice Josh has a hand on her shoulder.  I’m assuming for the same reason Kallen does that to me when I’m starting to lose control.

The men’s voices quiet as the flames retreat.  I don’t even have to take their voices away this time.  But I’m still not convinced that they get it.  I’m sure this is their first experience with the supernatural; they probably think this is all smoke and mirrors kind of tricks.  I have to prove to them that they’re not.  But how do I do that without actually killing them, because that’s becoming more and more reasonable in my mind.

As if reading my mind, Kallen says to me quietly, “Perhaps this situation warrants your charming sense of humor.”  Oh, nice tactic on his part.  Instead of trying to calm me down because I’m sure he can feel my magic growing as my anger does, he’s trying to redirect it by giving me a different path to follow.  I guess we’re both growing in this relationship.

After a few deep breaths, I nod.  “Maybe you’re right.”   I stand up and take a few more deep breaths.  Eliana follows suit, but I can tell she has no idea what Kallen and I are talking about.

Looking down at the men, I say, “Maybe you don’t understand the power that we have.  These aren’t tricks.”  I move the bullet in the man’s chest the tiniest bit and he cries out.  “We hold your lives in our hands right now and if you ever do anything to harm our friends again, there will be nothing in this realm that stops us from tracking you down and doing things way worse than death.”  My magic is rising again, beginning to boil, and Kallen does the hand on the shoulder thing to try to ground me. 

Taking yet another deep breath, I say, “I’m going to give you an example of how we can control things.”  Ask quickly as I put it there, I rip the bullet from his chest, making him cry out again, and pull it towards me until it sits in the middle between us.  “As you have already seen, we can shield ourselves and others from your poor excuses for weapons.  But, perhaps that isn’t impressive enough for you.  So, I’ll show you how I can manipulate metal like it’s dough.” 

Kallen suggested humor so here goes.  Little arms and legs poke out of the bullet.  Putting itself upright, it begins to dance disco style in front of the men.  For added affect, I create a little strobe light flashing to the beat of the only disco song I know, the hustle.  The men rub their eyes and look again.  Yep, the bullet is disco dancing.  I hear a laugh covered by a cough coming from the direction of Josh.

Getting into the spirit of things, Eliana pulls water from the rusty old pipes in the building.  A stream comes through the wall and dumps onto the men.  And it stays there.  Just on them.  Not seeping through the floor or spreading through the department; it covers the men who are starting to panic as it fills their lungs.  Not wanting them to drown, at least not at the moment, Eliana pulls the water from them, leaving them trying to refill their lungs oxygen as they try to expel the water. 

The water is hanging suspended in the air now.  Feeling that my little dancing bullet needs company, she turns the water into little disco dancers.  I love her.

Unplanned, we let our magic go at the same moment when we hear sirens in the distance.  The bullet drops to the floor and the water returns to the pipes.  The men have seen enough of what we can do if we want.  Back to the threats now.

I make eye contact with the main guy.  “We can snap your bones like they’re nothing more than twigs.”  Eliana grabs his ankle and crushes it with her bare hands.  Wow, she is strong.  Not having that much physical strength, I break his wrist with my magic.  “We can set you on fire, drown you at will, make your blood boil inside of you until your skin melts from the inside out.  We can strangle you from a distance,” I wrap magical hands around their necks and start to choke them before pulling my magic back.  “We can get to you no matter where you are; there is no where you would be safe.” 

Wanting to prove my point, I reach out and touch both Eliana and the main guy, teleporting us out of the room.  Actually, teleporting us thousands of miles away to cracked gray ground. 

I thought the man was scared before.  Now he’s petrified as he looks around trying to figure out where he is and how he got here.  Eliana is a little disconcerted, but she quickly hides that.

“Where am I,” the man asks, using English in our presence for the first time.

“Hawaii,” I say.  “On an active volcano.”  I teleported us near the top, but was careful this time not to put us on the very edge.

“How did I get here?” he asks. 

I smile.  “Magic.  Now, I’m going to show you a little bit more magic.”  I tie a magical rope to his ankle that isn’t broken and flip him upside down so he’s dangling.  Then, I move him over the lip of the volcano.  “How are you with lava?” I ask Eliana.

She shrugs.  “Earth, water, and fire.  I bet I’m pretty good with it.  Let’s see.”

The temperature on the volcano rises quickly as molten lava splashes around inside of it as it rises towards the surface.  Wow.  It’s getting really hot.  Maybe this wasn’t the best plan.  But Eliana’s having fun proving that even lava will do her bidding.  The man hanging upside down watching it rise towards him is not.  His screams become so deafening again, I have to take his voice away.

“It’s getting pretty hot, want to head back?” I ask Eliana.

“Sure,” she says, but I can tell she would love to play with the lava more.

“I’ll bring you back here another time,” I promise and she smiles.

In an instant, we’re back in the grungy apartment in Cairo.  I drop the man still dangling from my magical rope and he immediately scooches away from me until he hits the wall.  I look down at him and give him my best evil smile, “As you can see, there is no place you can go; nowhere you can hide from us.  We can track you like bloodhounds just like we found you today.  If you ever leave prison again and go after anyone, or if you ever tell anyone about us, you will find yourself nothing but a sack of bones lying in the street.  Maybe I’ll even put you straight into hell, where you really belong.” 

Leaning in closer to the now terrified men, I say in a low voice, “I’ve reducedan Archangel to a sack of bones; I would have no problem doing it to a mere human.”  Okay, I’m not comfortable with the fact I said that last part, but it definitely gets my point across.

The sirens are getting closer and I think there’s actually some relief on the men’s faces.  Funny how they’re now eager to be taken back into custody.  All three men are rambling on in Arabic and I don’t need Kallen to translate.  They are begging for their lives.

Agent Amman’s wife looks up at him.  “Yes, we will be having a long conversation this evening and you will explain to me exactly what just happened here.”

Chapter 27

“I need to call this in,” Agent Amman says pointedly, still holding his wife and daughter close. 

“Which means we need to make ourselves scarce,” Josh says and the agent nods.

“How would you prefer us to leave?” Kallen asks.  Meaning on foot or by magic.

Sirens getting closer confirm how we’re going to need to leave.  Surprisingly, someone in the building must have called the police.  “You should go back to your home.  I will arrange to have your vehicle delivered to you later,” Agent Amman says in a voice that says leave sooner as opposed to later.  I guess magic it is then.

“Okay, let’s get outta here,” I say to the other three.  They gather around me and I make sure I’m touching all of them.  Looking at Agent Amman and his family, I say, “It was nice to meet you.”  For some reason, my politeness is followed by a round of chuckles.  Even from the agent himself.  Rolling my eyes, I imagine us back in the foyer of the house and we’re there. 

Shaking his head, Josh says, “I don’t know that I’d ever get used to that.”

“Sure you would,” I say and add with a grin, “It becomes addictive.  Soon, I’ll never walk anywhere.”

Kallen wraps his arms around me.  “Then we will have to think of other ways for you to get exercise.”

“Too much information.  Get a room you guys,” Eliana laughs and my cheeks turn pink.

Walking through the living room towards the kitchen, Josh says over his shoulder, “If you guys are hungry, I thought I’d make some pasta.  But we’ll understand if you’d rather turn in.”  He gives us a wink and my cheeks turn a brighter red.

“What is pasta?” Kallen asks.

“We had it at my house,” I remind him.  “The noodle things.”

“I remember now.  I liked that.”

“We’re in for dinner,” I tell Josh and he gives a thumbs up before heading off to the kitchen to start cooking.

Eliana goes to one of the couches and plops down.  “What a day.  Do you think it will always be like this?” she asks.

I know what she’s asking.  I sit down on the other couch and curl my feet up under me.  Kallen sits next to me.  “I think it will.”  Not what she wanted to hear, I’m sure.  “I think these powers come with a clause in the contract that says we will be followed by trouble wherever we go.”  Did that sound whiny?  Yeah, I think it did.  Hastily, I add, “I’m not trying to sound ungrateful.  I like helping people, but it would just be nice to have a break every now and then.”

Eliana smiles.  “I know what you mean and I agree with you.  We have these powers for this very reason:  to help people.  We reunited a family today who may have died if we weren’t involved.  It’s hard to get used to it, though, I really do feel like a magnet for trouble.”

I nod in understanding.  “I definitely agree.  It’s hard coming to the realization that you will never again be able to use the word ‘normal’ to describe any part of your life, but suddenly dangerous becomes an appropriate adjective.”

“It’s nice to meet someone who truly gets it.  I have really good friends who I love to death, and Josh of course, but you are living it just like I am.  It’s selfishly nice to know I’m not the only one.”

I laugh.  “Again, I know what you mean.”  I lean my head on Kallen’s shoulder.  “I didn’t have friends growing up because I was so isolated, but the ones I have now are wonderful.  And Kallen’s okay.”  I laugh when he glowers down at me.  “Fine, you’re perfect.  Better?”

“Much,” he says and kisses my forehead.

“You know, I have to admit, I can’t help but wonder why you got married so young.  Josh and I talk about getting married, of course, and we know it’s going to happen someday, but what made you go ahead and do it?  I hope that’s not too personal of a question,” Eliana adds.

I feel my face turning magenta.  This is going to sound as strange to her as it did to me.  “Because you can’t have sex in the Fairy realm unless you’re married.  We were half married for a while, but when we had sex…” my voice trails off in embarrassment.  I don’t miss Kallen’s chuckle that he tries to cover with a cough.

“Oh, I see,” Eliana says, a little embarrassed she asked now.

I rush to add, “But we were planning on it anyway.  That just sped things up a little.”

“What am I missing that has Xandra’s face so red?” Josh asks, coming back into the living room.

“We are discussing the difference in marital customs between our two realms,” Kallen says, still amused.

“Ah, I probably don’t want to know, do I?”

Kallen shakes his head.  “Probably not.”

“Works for me.  The water’s boiling and the pasta is in the pot.  I came to ask what kind of sauce you’d like.”

“Oh, do you have alfredo sauce?  It’s my favorite,” I say, glad to be talking about something besides my sex life.  It is amazing how often that conversation comes up.

“Alfredo it is, then.  We’ll eat in about fifteen minutes,” Josh says and heads back into the kitchen.

“I’ll help,” Eliana says, rising from the couch and joining him.

I look up at Kallen.  “Maybe our real honeymoon can start now.”  I seriously doubt that considering Belial is not the type to give up.  But I can hope, can’t I?