Stone Chameleon (Ironhill Jinn #1) (32 page)

Just sleeping. Virtual stranger. Might die tomorrow. Right.

When I exited, he held the covers up for me, his head already nestled into his pillow, lids heavy over his eyes.

I laid down with my back to him. “Good night, Amun.”

He wiggled his arm under my neck, and his other looped around my waist, tugging me tight against him as naturally as if he’d done it a million times before. “Good night, my Baylou.”

Basking in his presence, I let myself drift in the mild pulse of power emanating from him. It wasn’t sexual, not in that moment, but cozy and just plain right. All tightness unfurled from my shoulders, along my back, radiating from every point his body touched mine. His warm breath in my hair lulled me better than a bedtime melody.

I could get used to this.
Bloody hell.

“
W
here is she?” My watch read 5:57pm, one minute after the last time I’d looked. I’d done little else since we’d arrived in Colony Park an hour ago. That parcel of land hadn’t been rebuilt after the city’s destruction, so nature claimed the entire place. Wildflowers waved in the evening breeze, shifting the glorious colors like a living painting, filling my nose with fresh scents.

The sun made a slow descent toward the tree line, casting ever-lengthening shadows from the dense forest that surrounded us. “It’s nearly six. What if she doesn’t come?”

“She’ll come,” Amun said, trying to take my hand, but I couldn’t keep still long enough to let him. “She has to.”

I didn’t want to die. Everyone else seemed to believe I’d save us all, and I’d never failed in a task once I set my mind to it. Arrogant as that sounded, it was true. As the time of the trial drew nearer, I’d begun to believe Celeste had me outsmarted from the beginning, and I never stood a chance. “Maybe we should go back to her pool, try something else.”

“I know her kind,” Romiel said. His platinum hair, streaked with bright red, had been spun into dreadlocks, which fit his hippie vibe. “She’ll have very little of her people, and will have a fierce loyalty to her mother’s memory. She won’t let you take all she has left, even if she risks her life and her claim on your territory to do it. She’ll be pissed off worse than a prickle cat caught in a noose, but she’ll come.” He shrugged, lay back against a fallen log, and crossed his loafer-clad feet. “More chance she’ll make mistakes.”

“My territory?” I squinted at him, but he linked his fingers behind his head and shut his eyes. “How is it mine and not Amun’s? I didn’t even know you all existed until a few days ago.”

“Why do you think you wanted to tear her head off back at the aquarium?” Connor asked, squatting in the grass a few feet away. “Your jinn spirit has already claimed the Ironhill pod, even if you don’t realize it. It will drive you to defend what’s yours as strongly as we’re driven to preserve both of your lives.”

“Okay.” I nodded, but my confidence waned. Testing the structure of bedrock beneath my feet again, I confirmed I had its rapt attention, which I’d spent the previous half hour gaining. It was an old place, the earth undisturbed. Whatever had previously stood there had no foundation, only existed on the surface. I ached to dig myself a hole and bury myself so it would sing me to sleep with ancient melodies.

“That purple-haired hag better show up soon.” Harper patted her guns again and licked powdered sugar from her lips after swallowing the last of her dozen donuts. “If she doesn’t, I’ll have to redo the circle. Blood magic is strong, but it doesn’t last worth a piss.”

My arm stung where she’d cut me. It wasn’t bad, but I didn’t fancy feeling her elven blade burn through me again. She’d sprinkled all of our blood in a circle thirty feet in radius while speaking words in Elvish.

“Remember, we need to lure her inside the ward, or I won’t be able to use this spell on her.” Harper’s cell gave a shrill shout.

My heart did its best to explode out of my throat.

“Yeah, this is Harper. What?” She dug fingers into her hair, dislodging a few strands from her pony tail. “When? Shit on a freakin’ stick. Is he okay? Yeah, yeah, I’ll let her know.”

“What? What is it?” I stood in her path.

Her hand dropped away from her ear, and her face remained tilted forward. “We have a problem.”

Something like a growl rumbled in Amun’s chest. “We got that much, now tell us why.”

Harper shot stared daggers at him. “Little Miss Blonde Bimbo beaned James with a chair at the reservation and took off. When Blake couldn’t raise him, he went down a few minutes ago to check. James’ll be fine, but according to the security footage, it didn’t look like Olivia wanted to go. Blake said she was screaming for someone to help her as she ran out the door and tried to grab the frame to keep from leaving.”

“Meaning what?” Connor came to his feet.

“Oh, no.” I’d promised her she’d be safe. “Celeste is controlling her like she did Amun and me the other night. Her reach when calling water must be longer than I anticipated.”

“How does that change anything?” Romiel asked, bouncing his foot to inaudible music.

“It means the lake at the mouth of the park is in play, even though it’s a good half-mile away,” I said, “And it’s possible she’ll use Olivia—”

“As a hostage?” Harper gave a subtle head nod toward the tree line, where shadow had begun to spread. “Yep, I think it’s safe to say she’s gone that route, that stupid, itchy bee.” Her eyes must have been better than mine, because I saw nothing other than grass and the triangular silhouettes of spruce trees.

Amun took a subtle look. “What do you see?”

“Olivia’s standing there by herself, and I can’t be sure, but I think she’s crying.”

“What about Celeste?” I milled around with feigned nonchalance.

Harper squinted, her gaze sweeping the whole area before she answered. “Nope. Could be anywhere though.”

“What is she waiting for? Why does she have Olivia just standing there?” To make me squirm? To prepare for some grand entrance? When I scanned the others for ideas, they all remained as they were, but their tight expressions conveyed their state of readiness. I wanted to stomp and scream and throw my fists into the air to expel my utter frustration, but I didn’t want that hag to know she’d gotten to me.

I was willing to kill her to save myself, but I wouldn’t allow an innocent to be murdered so I’d live. Which left us where? Totally bamboozled, that’s where. Not that I intended to go down without a fight.

“Amun.” I lowered my voice when certain I had his attention. “How invisible can you make yourself as a wind chameleon?”

He cupped a hand over his brow and stared at the sky, I assumed so Celeste wouldn’t see his lips moving if she happened to be looking. “You want me to find her?”

“If you can do it without being seen, then yes.” Last night had more effect on me than I thought, increasing my protectiveness of him tenfold. I wanted him to hold me again as he’d done all night. Finding the will to leave his embrace in the morning had been difficult. He may never have the chance to do it again. The thought left a sickening knot in my stomach.

He must have seen something in my face that betrayed my inner workings. “This is far from over.” Fierce determination stared back at me from his dark eyes. “Ask Harper if she can cause a distraction. Celeste might notice I’m missing eventually, but if you can keep her eyes trained elsewhere for even a few seconds, I can do a full sweep in that time.”

“Be careful.”

His stunning smile seemed to brighten the sky as he moved away. “Always.”

“What’s the plan, boss?” Harper asked, keeping her gaze pointed toward the trees. She shifted from foot to foot, hopped up on enough sugar to send me to the moon.

“Can you fire close enough to Olivia to scare her, but not close enough to hurt her?”

“I can shoot the arsehole out of a skunk from a hundred yards. Why am I shooting at her?”

“If Celeste is busy trying to control Olivia, she won’t be looking when Amun goes to find her.”

“Ah, you are one sneaky lady, Lou. When?”

A nod from Amun, and I said, “Now.”

H
and cupped over her eyes, Harper made a show of staring right at Olivia. “She’s there!” The Sig came out of nowhere, simply appeared in her hand.

Three shots boomed in rapid succession. The concussion of them echoed from the distant hills. Dirt flew up and rained down. Olivia screamed, and only when she waved her arms around did I pinpoint her location amongst the shadows.

“Come out where we can see you,” I bellowed, aching to search for Amun, but keeping my focus on the blonde girl.

Olivia came forward, her walk choppy, as if she fought the forward movement. “Please don’t kill me. You promised! You promised I’d be safe there!”

“I’m sorry,” I said to her even though she wouldn’t hear me.

A small taste of magic prickled the bottoms of my feet. No. How could I have been so stupid? Olivia was only a distraction while Celeste moved into place.

Laughter erupted from what sounded like everywhere at once. “Those who steal from water will drown for their trespasses.”

One moment Olivia stood twenty feet away, and the next, gone, sucked underground. Her wailing only lasted for a moment before it halted.

“Now, hand over my property, or you’ll all join that stupid girl!”

I ground my teeth together.

“Where is she?” Harper asked, right before a blast of water broke through the ground and thrust her into the air. Her scream cut short when she slammed chest first onto the grass.

“She’s in the water table!” Connor stared skyward, mist gathering around his extended arms. “We have to get her to come out. I can’t do what I need to do if she’s spread all over the damn place.”

Nor could I imprison her easily. Splendid.

I squeezed my ebony and groaned as my body hardened. Another surge of prickling heat from beneath warned of another attack. Before I reacted, a massive whirlwind picked me up and tossed me to the side as a thick tentacle broke out of the ground where I’d been standing.

Unlike Harper, I managed to get my elbows down to break my fall, though the jolt still expelled the air from my lungs.

The temperature dropped as Connor hummed to the sky, and the scent of sulfur stung my nose. Gasping to recover my air, I blinked in time to see Romiel inhale the flames from a match and ignite with the speed of dry tinder. He launched up, arching out, and plowed into the ground like a bolt of lightning.

A hiss sounded. Steam erupted in a fifty foot geyser where he’d disappeared. Amun’s wind carried away the water that escaped Celeste’s control. She screeched, and the ground rumbled with her power, inducing a sense of vertigo.

Having already made friends with the old bedrock, I pushed my senses through the soil and rock, hoping to find where Celeste ended and non-enchanted water began. Forty feet from the center of the circle in every direction, the burn of her power dwindled.

Romiel exploded from the crater he’d made, a tentacle wrapped around his blackened middle. She slammed him into the ground, roaring a deranged battle cry. With part of her above the surface, her power drew in upon itself, narrowing her reach underground. I extended my magic and thrust my hands to the sky, pulling on invisible tethers.

A stone wall burst free from the bedrock, fifty feet in diameter and ten feet high, sealing off her escape and access to the rest of the water table.

Amun tugged a bleeding Romiel to where Harper had recovered and proceeded to pinch dried herbs between her thumbs. “Keep doing that,” Amun said. “Box her in whenever she gives up ground. Force her to surface.”

“So forceful, Amun,” Celeste sang. “I have so many uses for you.” Her voice came as a watery rumble from everywhere. “Since the useless blood sucker didn’t do his duty, I suppose I’ll have to find a way to kill Baylou myself and be done with this.”

I shed my weapons harnesses and tossed them to Harper, then squeezed my ebony. The rest of my transformation happened instantly. Hauling stone upon myself, I tripled my size and roared my response, exploding my jeans and shirt into shreds of fabric. “Then come and kill me, you blinkered bitch.”

My marking teeth punched through my gums, made of stone instead of enamel. Apparently they were for shows of bravado and not just for biting potential boyfriends. How lovely.

I bared them and plunged my boulder-sized fist into the dirt, causing a crater to yawn open with the force of it. A column of water shot up and broke across my head. Only slightly dazed, I shook it off and drew up the wall a few feet closer before she returned underground. “Come out, come out, little mouse. There’s nowhere left to run.”

Flaring bright enough to burn circles onto my retinas, Romiel made another dive into the hole Celeste had come through. Another wail shattered the evening. The ground heaved with such force I went airborne, landing on my back beside Harper, who didn’t seem to notice. Her form wavered, as if lost behind a veil of heat. She spoke low and fast in Elvish.

Celeste gushed upward all at once toward the top of my wall. I rushed forward, but Connor exhaled a frigid wind at her. Although she didn’t freeze solid, the topmost part of her hardened enough to shift her balance. She toppled to the ground and disappeared beneath the surface again—all but the frozen part, which I tossed over the wall with a thrust of stone.

“Can you raise the bedrock everywhere?” Amun stooped to help Romiel pull himself out of the soil. Blood poured out of his blackened ears.

“I can try,” I said, “but even a tiny imperfection, and she’s gone.”

“We can help you.” Amun turned Romiel over and put his forehead down against the other man’s. Energy sparked in the air.

I drank it up, somehow knowing how to take what they offered without being taught. Another came from Connor, and I consumed that, too.

The singing in the earth rose in volume until I thought the vibrations would tear me apart. I spun in a circle, arms extended, calling the entire underground surface to attention. My hands clapped together over my head. The abrupt upheaval flattened all of us, including Celeste, who’d been forced to surface with the stone as the soil split and heaved.

We stood in a small rock arena, five conscious and Romiel out cold. I clambered up and ran at Celeste over the upturned sod. She spread out like a tidal wave and raced to meet me.

Before we connected, a concussion wave slammed us both onto the ground again. A glance at my hands let me know I’d reverted to flesh and blood, naked and cold.

Harper’s mouth formed into a startled “O”. She shrugged, tossing a handful of Skittles into her mouth. “Shit. Sorry. It was just supposed to hit her.”

“Harper!” Up like a shot, I sped back to her and caught my katana as she threw it to me, along with an oversized T-shirt from pile of supplies we’d brought. Celeste struggled to her feet, stumbling sideways and shaking her head. My initial panic waned as I pulled the shirt on. The water jinn would be easier to fight in her flesh form, no matter what form I was in.

Instead of coming at me as I expected, Celeste made a beeline for Romiel.

“Connor!” I shouted. I needn’t have bothered, because I no more than finished his name when a bolt of lightning streaked from the sky and hit the ground between her and the unconscious flame. It threw Amun back, who’d been advancing on her along with me.

She snarled, baring her marking teeth, and jumped at Connor before he lowered his sight from the clouds gathering above. Her teeth ripped at his shoulder while he screamed. She grabbed him by the throat and cracked her fist across his cheek. He grunted and went still.

One of my daggers must have dropped by Connor. When she turned, a familiar green glow extended from her fist. She swung it around with too much skill for someone unfamiliar with wielding one. Her lavender hair spilled over her slender shoulders, swaying with her movements, as did her bare breasts.

Katana gripped with both hands, I edged closer to her, my own mouth of barbs on display.

She smiled at me, one of pure malice. “Come, Baylou,” she said in her sultry tone, urging me forward with a curl of her finger. “Let’s see if you’re worthy of your jinn name.”

A click sounded behind me. A shot ricocheted off the stone, wide of Celeste’s head.

“Have you lost your fucking mind, Amun?” Harper asked as metal projectiles flew over the wall above my head, which, by her tone, I imagined were her guns.

Amun and Harper’s enraged voices tangled. I didn’t dare move my focus away from the woman before me. Hopefully, Amun would overcome his protective urges before we all died. Deep down I knew it wasn’t his fault, but while staring down the face of the one who wanted to kill me, I found it difficult to remember that.

I rushed Celeste. Shrieking with effort, I ducked her jab and sliced across her thigh, then rolled to the side. Her foot caught me in the left temple before I righted myself. When my brain stopped rattling against my skull, the double image of her hopping backward returned to a solid, singular image. She clutched the weeping gash I’d opened on her leg, cursing.

Launching at me with inhuman speed, she threw the dagger right at my head. I barely raised the katana fast enough to deflect it. Metal clinked against metal, and the elven blade struck the wall just above the ground behind me, sinking in a few inches. Her momentum sent her into a roll that stood her up beside the dagger. She must have hit me harder than I thought, because a spell of dizziness rocked me sideways.

Amun slammed Celeste against the wall with his body while Harper continued complaining about her guns in between bouts of profanity. I exhaled my relief when I realized Celeste hadn’t yet freed the blade from the wall.

Hand gripping her throat, Amun shouted in her face, “Stop this! The old ways had their uses, but they do no longer. I belong to Baylou.” He directed her to the tiny black dots on his shoulder, like a tattoo, the form my mark had taken when it healed, the same as mine. “There are five other males here for you to choose from, all of them if they’ll have you. You don’t need to do this.”

Connor’s disgruntled gasp accompanied a similar one from Romiel, who must have regained consciousness. Clearly they didn’t appreciate being offered up as Celeste bait.

My vision stopped spinning in circles, so I drew up the katana and contemplated our options. “She’s too great a danger to put in the reservation, Amun. You have to know that.”

“No.” He held a finger up to me. “She’ll listen, and she’ll adapt to our new reality. We don’t have to kill her.”

“That’s your instinct talking. Start thinking with your head for mercy’s sake!”

The way she stared at my bite mark on his shoulder made me think she hadn’t heard anything else he’d said. Throwing a hissy fit in his grasp, she kicked and thrashed while cursing at me some more. “How dare you steal my claim!”

“Know what they say, bitch,” Harper said, once again rubbing herbs together. “Snooze, you lose.”

Celeste stared deeply into Amun’s eyes and curled her lips in a cruel smile. “If you’ve been claimed, then I guess I needn’t try so hard not to harm you.”

He grunted. Too late, I noticed the elven blade no longer stuck out of the wall. His hand slipped from her throat as he staggered backwards, holding his stomach. Blood spilled down his front beneath the handle of my dagger.

“Amun!” A piteous wail burst free of my throat. Lost in rage, I came at Celeste, katana blade slicing through the air. From my training, I knew never to attack in anger, but I couldn’t stop myself, caught in another of those primal urges that seemed to come along with being jinn. “You’re dead.”

She ducked my attack, laughing, a lunatic sound that grated on my last nerve. I pursued her to the middle of the arena. Breaths huffed out of me, fueling my adrenaline high. The next time I swung, my blade sailed right through. Apparently Harper’s spell had worn off.

I reached out with power to the stone beneath my feet, but nothing happened. “Why is she able to change and not me?”

Celeste circled me in her water form, wearing a victorious grin.

“You were closer when I cast it?” Harper shrugged.

“You don’t know?”

“I told you I’m only half elf.” She hovered her glowing hands around the dagger in Amun’s stomach. “I’m doing the best I can.”

“Poor Baylou,” Celeste cooed in mock sincerity. “Be a good girl and accept that you’ve lost with dignity. Once I drown you and your little half-breed over there, I’ll own the Ironhill jinn, and my first order of business will be to go back to Mayvern and kill your bitch of a mother. Then I’ll finish off the rest of Isaac’s hive for what he did to my people. I’ll save him for last and draw it out for weeks before I finally kill him.”