Djinn and Tonic (29 page)

The two women face off now with Hassan between them. I watch, helpless, as they clash. The tornado vanishes, only to reappear as a horizontal spear of wind, crashing into the older woman and knocking her flying. The sky above darkens, gray-black thunderheads materializing out of nowhere to cover the blue of the sky and the bright orb of the sun. The glow of magic fills the air around Leila, and I realize the storm appeared at Leila’s behest. Lightning flashes blue-white, filling the air with the thick tang of electricity, thunder crashing all around, shivering my bones.
 

A wall of fire sears the air between the women, and my heart leaps into my throat. The flames are diverted by a gust of wind, blasting past Leila to either side, leaving her unharmed. Leila retaliates with a raised fist descending like a hammer, and the other woman is smashed to the ground by a wall of air that breaks bone.

The older woman coughs, gags, and goes still.
 

I rush to Leila’s side and gather her in my arms. She’s wind now, barely substantial, shifting and fading in my arms, eyes white, edges bleeding into nothingness, becoming storm, becoming wind.
 

She looks up at me with inhuman eyes, kisses me, and puts her lips to my ear. “This isn’t over,” she whispers. “It’s not that easy.”

“I know,” I murmur in response.

“We’ve started a war.”

“I know that, too.” I smile and kiss her again. “You’re worth it.”

“That was a
huge
mistake.” Hassan’s voice echoes from behind me, tolling with awful power, reverberating endlessly.

Turning, I see Hassan in full elemental form, a pyre of red flame a dozen feet tall with clawed fingers and eyes like dying suns. The rules of the duel have clearly been tossed aside. I bend and retrieve the Walther PPK bound to my ankle, the one hideout pistol I didn’t give up, because I’m no fool. I crack off three shots—
BANGBANGBANG!
—each one impacting dead-center between Hassan’s demon eyes. The hell-thing doesn’t flinch, only bleeds bright yellow flame from fiery red flesh and keeps approaching me, each step shaking the ground and scorching the grass black. I empty the clip, and the apparition soaks the ground in blood-flame, which spreads like lava. The empty clip drops to the ground and I back up, slamming my one spare into the handle, dragging the slide to chamber a round. I fire again and again and again, backing away, the crowd widening the circle around Hassan, Leila, the mother, and me, all of them watching and waiting in complete silence. There will be no interference.

I know I can’t win this way, but I feel the fear freezing my blood. I refuse to succumb to its paralyzing hold. I see Nadira slinking, unnoticed, a hundred feet away. She’s a barely-visible figure of sky-colored liquid slipping between blades of grass to rise up behind Hassan, translucent hands waving and circling in a bizarre dance, body jerking and coiling, magic sizzling and sparking and crackling, visible as golden particles of energy that pop and snap and flare, coalescing into a shimmering veil of raw power, which twists and spins in synch with Nadira’s motions, circling like a whirlpool. The maelstrom rages silently, growing in size and violence, a dot of blackness appearing at its center. The dot grows, stretches, spreads, and becomes an expanding hole in the golden veil of magic.
 

Nadira needs more time,
I realize. She needs Hassan distracted long enough to allow the portal to fully form. Leila shrieks behind me, her voice feminine thunder, all rushing winds and hurricane rage.
 

I drop the useless pistol, and stalk forward toward Hassan with no other weapon but my fists. I have no chance against a force like him. I know this, now. I never did. But I can’t give up. I won’t.

I hear my name called as if from a great distance, and I turn to see Ibrahim tossing me the sword from the study, the ancient, priceless Damascus blade. I catch it, draw the sheath free and toss it aside, marveling at its featherlight weight and perfect balance.
 

A dozen feet separate Hassan and me, but they flash beneath my feet in a single impossible bound, the blade slicing down to split Hassan’s arm from his shoulder, the disembodied limb dropping to the ground still flaming and flexing fiery fingers, still grasping at me. A sidestep and a swipe of the sword, barely missing Hassan’s head, and then I feel a blow smash against my chest and I’m hurtled across the charred lawn, my skin sizzling and smoking. I roll to a stop, gasping, heaving, agony shooting through me, the sword still clutched in my white-knuckled fingers.
 

The crowd has become wild now but no one heeds their noise, not Ibrahim, nor his wife holding their still-screaming and thrashing daughter back, not one-armed Hassan bellowing and clawing for me, and certainly not me, the lone foolish human wielding an ancient sword, facing an enraged ifrit twice my size.
 

Fear pumps through my veins, but I refuse to give in to it. I take the fear and transform it into fury. I charge at Hassan with the sword stabbing forward, aiming for the wide, heaving red-flame chest.
 

Hassan pivots aside at the last moment and plunges his claws into my back, grinning evil glee as a scream of pain bursts from my lips. Hassan withdraws his talons and steps back, evidently assuming victory as I stumble backward, consumed by agony, using the sword to prop myself up, feeling fire and blood leaking down my back, carving a path of agony through my flesh. I feel my strength begin to ebb away. I marshal the last dregs of my strength and turn to face Hassan once last time.
 

I push the sight of hysterical, weeping Leila from my mind, knowing I can’t spare a thought for anything but a final, fatal strike.
 

I take a single, tremulous step, and then a second and third, pretending to be weaker than I actually am, although it’s not much of a farce, now. I’m dying, and I know it.

But I’m not dead yet.

Hassan stands his ground. “You are a fool, human,” he sneers. His voice echoes, causes the earth to tremble under my feet.

“Perhaps,” I answer, lifting the sword to rest the back edge on my shoulder, taking another step forward. “But I know something you never will.”

“What?” Hassan demands.

“The taste of Leila on my lips.”

Hassan roars in fury, and I lunge forward, crashing into Hassan and knocking him backward, toward the portal Nadira has finished summoning behind him. I accept the torment of flames licking at my skin and hair and face, stagger backward a single step and then throw myself forward and plunge the sword up to the hilt into Hassan’s chest. He stumbles backward, surprised, and I slam my heel into his stomach, feeling the rubber and leather and cloth of my boot flash-burnt into ashes, feeling my skin sear and bubble. Hassan staggers a step closer to the portal, and I use the last shred of strength I possess to kick him one last time, my foot slamming into the pommel of the sword protruding from Hassan’s chest, forcing him off-balance. He topples backward through the portal.
 

The world beyond the gap in the shimmering golden circle is one of fire and brimstone, an ancient vision of hell, a lake of blue-white-yellow-orange-red fire, the sky blood-red, jagged black claws of mountains skewering the sky, bat-winged demons soaring through curtains of flame, hundred-foot-tall giants lumbering past the opening, small darting creatures flicking and fluttering like sparks, horned beasts with gaping, toothy maws roaring.
 

Falling backward, arms pinwheeling, Hassan screams, flails, grabs for the edge of the portal and catches it with desperate claws. I lurch forward, dizzy and seeing double, afire with agony, weak, collapsing. I knock away his hand and he falls, spouting a spume of flame at me in a final act of hate, enveloping me in heat and hell and horror and pain.
 

Nadira brings her fists together, and the portal closes on Hassan’s roar of futile rage. I tumble to the blackened earth, my skin and clothes and hair burning. Nadira douses the flames consuming my flesh, but then she too collapses, still in elemental form.

Leila finally breaks free from her parents and rushes to my side, weeping, sobbing, kissing my charred lips. My eyes are barely open and I see Leila above me, a white-gowned angel with tender lips. I gasp, struggling for breath, each gasp of oxygen causing a searing pain to rip through me. It feels like a building is sitting on my chest, making it impossible to breathe. My vision fades, my body no longer blackened meat but still throbbing with agony. I clutch for Leila’s hand, feeling my breath fail me.
 

Her eyes are locked on me. I hear her whisper my name, hear her whisper the three words that make it all worthwhile: “I love you.”

Darkness subsumes me.

Chapter 20: Words of Sealing

Leila

I watch him fall, and something inside me breaks, dies. My parents let me go, finally, and I’m at his side, kissing him, desperate and pleading with him to live, to breathe, to be okay. I don’t think he hears me, but he’s looking at me, and I know he did all this for me. He fought Hassan and won, for me.
 

He did the impossible, for me.

And now he’s dying, for me.

I deny it. Refuse it.
 

No.

Nadira, weakened to the brink of collapse from summoning the portal, is somehow still upright and running water-blue hands on him, magic-laced liquid soaking into charred flesh. His skin heals at her touch, his hairless scalp pinking and sprouting brown follicles, muscles returning to their heavy, rounded perfection. His eyes, however, retain their dying, fading listlessness, the encroaching darkness clouding his gaze. I can’t even speak, can’t make the words form. All I can do is kiss him, weeping, as Nadira heals him to the best of her abilities.
 

Finally, she topples to her back beside him, and I know she can do no more. It will be days before she can resume her human form.
 

“Lungs,” Nadira murmurs. “He…can’t—can’t breathe. I’m too weak. Can’t do…anything else.” Her eyes meet mine. “Leila…you have to help him. You have to be—you have to be his breath.”

Shock runs through me as I realize what she’s suggesting. It’s possible, but I’m not sure it’s ever been done, or if it will work.

I look back at Carson, and my heart cracks further. He’s gasping for breath, shuddering with every lungful. His eyes are latched on mine, and I refuse to look away.
 

He’s still breathing, but barely, his breaths coming in slow, long-spaced gasps. His heart still beats, but barely. Carson’s fingers clutch mine weakly, as if holding on to me is synonymous with holding to life. I am so tired, so sapped of all strength. But Carson is slipping away from me, and I have to summon the power to save him.

“I love you,” I whisper. His eyes flutter closed, open again and search for me, then roll back into his head.
 

His breathing slows, a ragged gasp every second or two.
 

No, no, no. Pleasegodno.

I take his face in my hands, press my forehead to his and delve down within to the sea of magic. It surges to my command, but I know it won’t be enough. Not for this. Desperation rips through me. It has to be enough. This has to work. I can’t lose him. I can’t. I hear a whimper escape from my lips, followed by the swish of skirts.
 

I feel a presence beside me, and I recognize the cool hardness of Mother. She puts a hand to my shoulder, and a surge of power ebbs from her into me, then from me into Carson.
 

It’s not enough.
 

I draw deeper from myself, pull harder at the siphon from Mother; I hoard the power, wrap myself into it, curl it around myself like a shimmering cloak.
 

Carson’s breath shudders. Time is nearly out. I clutch the power to myself and dredge up the strength to turn incorporeal, feel the edges of my body fade and meld with the gentle breeze. I let the fading spread through me, match my breathing to the rhythm of the wind. Between one moment and the next I have transitioned from woman to zephyr, and as a breath of wind I clutch in my slippery fingers a ball of thrumming blue-white magic.
 

Before I can question the wisdom of the act, I force myself into Carson’s nostrils and mouth and down into his lungs, where I let the orb of power burgeon and expand, filling in the spaces and pushing against the walls of his lungs. The wounds have been healed by Nadira’s ministrations, but too late. Carson’s lungs still and deflate, and now I must force them back into motion.
 

I swell and push against the walls of his lungs, spreading myself in every direction, darting through bronchi and bronchioles and alveoli, splitting my essence smaller still to enter his bloodstream and into cells, pushing, pushing, forcing his body to resume motion, forcing his blood to pump, forcing his lungs to bellow open and closed. In weary, desperate circles I flow within him, willing his body to work, willing him to live.
 

If I could sob, I would. If I could beg, I would. But wind, motion, and air have no words, no identity. This is the danger in my action: I risk losing myself in him, I risk becoming mere air, spreading myself too thin until there is no
I
, until there will be no way to become a single, discrete entity once more.

The strain of retaining my identity is beginning to take its toll on me. I have a few moments more before I will lose myself entirely. I pulse the circuit once more, and feel his body respond, the various systems beginning to churn on their own with sluggish but growing life. I withdraw from the smallest particles, slowly and carefully, until I am once again a breath of wind in his now-pumping lungs.
 

Finally I am able to emerge out into the sunlight, and it takes the last dregs of my strength to regain human form.

Carson is now gasping, sitting up and heaving in desperate lungfuls of air.
 

I’m limp and exhausted, collapsing to the ground, but I take joy in his life. He regains his senses after a fit of coughing, sees both Nadira and me on the ground, turns to look around himself at the stunned crowd, at Father and Mother, and finally back to me. I fade, now, weakened, dizzy.