Her limp hands slowly curled into fists, her wings shuddered a little then snapped into shape, the gracefulness of them missing, however, as they stood straight and stiff.
“Of course,” she said, slowly gaining her feet. “You’re right.”
She turned sharply away from him and he had to pull back in order to avoid getting smacked with the energy of her wings. He was disconcerted enough without the radical sensations coming in contact with her wings caused. “The Djynn was toying with us for a reason. This was a very intricate thing, and he no doubt expended a lot of energy. There must be a reason he would—”
She was whipped out of existence right before his eyes and he felt the shock of it, as if she had been connected to his solar plexus and then was suddenly yanked free of the connection. The feeling infuriated him and he balled his fists tightly.
“I swear to God, if you do this to us again,” he shouted into the sudden darkness, “I’ll rip your fucking heart out!”
And see how you like it, he thought viciously.
That same instant he felt himself get yanked aside, as if he was about to be thrown over the back of a sparring partner. He hit the ground and light exploded all around him, as though someone had suddenly thrown on every light in the world. Of course, that could just be because he’d been in darkness up until then. Not liking being blinded and on the ground, two craptastic defensible positions to be in, he rolled up onto his feet and narrowed his eyes to try to defray the power of the light. The first thing he saw was Faith. It was impossible to miss her, since she was the darkest thing in the room. That and she was standing in front of him. He swept the room for enemy bodies, but was so shocked by what he was looking at that it took him a minute to get his head right.
Gold. Everywhere everything was made of gold. Treasure. Coins in trunks that were overflowing, lamps and jewelry and boxes all made of gold and encrusted with jewels. The walls were covered in beaten gold, the floor tiled with it.
“You gotta be fucking kidding me,” he uttered.
“I hardly think this could be conceived as a source of humor, seeing as how it’s my home.”
Leo’s head whipped hard to the right as he turned his gaze face-front. There was an elaborate throne of gold before them, the back high and curved at the edges like a wing chair. Its seat, a plush red velvet cushion, had been empty mere seconds ago, but now a man was sitting there, lounging indolently, a knee hooked up over the right arm of the chair. He was tall…very tall. Tall enough that Leo could see it in spite of his slouching posture. Also, the muscular build of the man belied the projected image of laziness he was trying to exude as he filed a nail gently and with care for detail, using a file that was, of course, made of gold.
Even his clothing and his hair were as gleamingly rich as all the treasures around them. Leo had never seen anyone with hair color so akin to true gold. Not even out of a bottle…though many women had no doubt tried.
But the matching gold of his brows and lashes and beard attested to the fact that no bottle had come into play. He was not clean-shaven, but his beard had no significant length to it, maybe one to two weeks’ worth. It was neatly trimmed, the line of it perfection, accentuating the strong angles of his face. Leo couldn’t guess at the Djynn’s age, not knowing exactly how or if his species even aged at all. But in appearance he looked no more or less mature than Leo’s own age. The Djynn’s eyes were not the same gleaming gold as the rest of him, but rather a dark honey color.
But Leo couldn’t care less about his appearance.
“Listen Midas, if you’re behind what just happened to us—”
“Of course I am,” he cut Leo off, pausing in his manicure to wave a dismissive hand at him. “Let’s not start this off by lying to each other.”
“And what do you call what you just did to us, you manipulative son of a—”
“How do you know it’s a lie?” the man of gold interrupted once again, punctuating the query with a single raised brow. He tossed the file aside, a little click, like coin against coin, sounding as it hit the nearest pile of the precious metal.
“Because I would never even think of touching someone like her,” he pointed at Faith, “never mind become her lover! Believe me when I say I will be happy the day I excise all of you sick, deceptive sons of bitches from my life!”
“Well, we both know that’s not true,” his opponent said as he got to his feet, delicately brushing an invisible piece of lint from his shoulder. “No matter what you do, we will still be here. And no matter what you do, you will never be able to forget that we are here and could possibly be in any one of the faces you look into in the future.” He came to face Leo, standing about six feet away from him.
Fine. I can do a six-foot leap for the bastard’s throat no problem, Leo thought heatedly.
“And as for being sick and deceptive, we Nightwalkers, as races in general, are no more or less sick and deceptive as members of the human race might be. We have our liars and our truth speakers. We have our saviors and prophets and we have our psychopaths.” He leaned forward a little, “but you already know about that last one, now, don’t you?”
Leo stiffened, ice and rage clawing down his spine. He forgot why he was there, forgot what he was dealing with…he forgot everything but the white hot blinding rage that smacked into him. He leapt those six feet in a single instant, punching up into the Nightwalker’s chin with the meat of his palm.
Only by the time he would have struck, he found himself striking through a cloud of gold with the fineness of sand and glitter. He whirled around to search for the object of his rage, but instead found himself crashing bodily into Faith.
“Leo, stop!” she commanded on a hiss as she grabbed him by both wrists, bringing his angry eyes to hers. “What we’ve been through will be for nothing if you anger him! Do you think he will grant us any favors if you attack him?”
Leo didn’t know why, maybe it was his own logic centers coming forward because of what she’d said to him, but the touch of her hands and the lean of her body into his calmed him. Focused him. He realized the truth in her words and was forced to remember why he had come there in the first place. He looked down into her creamy chartreuse-colored eyes and found himself unable to resist touching his knuckles to her face, running them along her jawline from the tip of her chin to the touch of her hair.
The caress brought them both into feelings and memories shared, false though they may have been. He found himself seeking solace in her soft eyes and was shocked when he found it there. The rage and turbulence that had been his steady partner for all of the days and nights since his return from captive hell just dissolved away. He took a deep, clean breath, feeling her rest a hand onto his chest. Instead of feeling the revulsion that he had felt whenever Jackson or Marissa or any self-proclaimed Nightwalker had touched him since he’d learned of their existence, he warmed, as though she were transmitting a balm of heat and letting it range throughout him, spreading from that focal point where she touched him.
He tried to stir his anger back up, to remind himself that the reaction was in response to the falseness of the Djynn’s manipulations, but it didn’t work. The shape of her lips as she formed a silent “please,” her eyes imploring and worried, filled him with an inexplicable impulse to run his thumb over the extreme fullness of her bottom lip. He drew back before he gave in to it, but he left her gently, rather than with the harshness of the rejections he had been subjecting her to. He reminded himself that she had been just as used and abused by the Djynn. Maybe even more so. After all, he had not been made to feel a child slide from his laboring body and into the world. He couldn’t imagine how that must have felt for her. And here he was, only focusing on himself.
When had he become so selfish? he wondered.
Right about the time that sick fuck was using you like a pincushion.
He took another breath and looked for the Djynn. He was standing, once again, about six feet away from Faith’s back. It made Leo think. Th
at specific distance had to mean something, though he doubted he could figure it out logically. Normal logic was completely suspended in these circumstances. But what it could all boil down to was response time. He needed those six feet of warning in order to move or react in time to thwart any type of attack they could muster up.
Faith turned to face the Marid, but her fingers gently touched the inside of Leo’s wrist, a silent, staying gesture.
“Why have you done this to us? Why have you abused us?” she asked, her tone hard.
“Abused you?” The Djynn chuckled. “Sweet girl, what I’ve given you is a gift. A very generous gift at that.”
“A generous gift?” she hissed through suddenly clenched teeth. “You gave me a child, made me feel what it meant to birth that precious life into the world, and then you ripped it away from me! Ripped it away along with my soul! How is that a gift?”
Faith’s surge of emotion made her start to shake and Leo could feel her hurt and anger radiating into him. He reached to slide comforting hands over her shoulders, rubbing her gently against her collarbone. Truth or not, her pain was fierce and bright and he had to do whatever he could to defray the blinding agony of it.
The Djynn leaned forward a little, making sure Faith was looking him in the eyes. “Because what you have seen is the future you will know unless I do what it is you are here to ask me to do. I wanted to make it very clear to you just how crucial this favor will be so that you can understand how deep your debt to me will be in return.”
“You…you know why we’re here?” she asked.
“I know the Djynn that sent you to me, the one who owns that scarf,” he pointed to the fabric tied to Leo’s belt loop. “She isn’t as weak as she likes to let others believe. If she sent you to me then it means you need a magic she couldn’t provide. And sending you to me while in possession of one of her most powerful niks tells me that the need is so great she was willing to trade away the nik for the favor. She knew that all I had to do was touch that scarf and that would make it and its power mine.
“But as lovely as the gesture of the nik is on her part, I don’t need anymore niknaks. I have them aplenty. In a nutshell, you need me far more than I need anything from you.”
“That isn’t true,” Faith said softly. “You do need something. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be standing here at all. You would have slammed the door in our faces and that would have been the end of it.”
“Hmm.” The Djynn turned to pace away from them and the room of gold dissolved around them, bleeding away until they found themselves standing in the middle of a vast, elegant private library. There were literally thousands of books in the hand-carved wooden shelves. Wooden rails were polished to a shine, bracketing a sweeping staircase leading from the lower level of the library to the upper…and then again to a third floor. The room was circular, floor to ceiling windows on the eastern side. They could see the inky night sky beyond them and they realized that a great deal of time had passed. How much was anyone’s guess. From Faith and Leo’s perspective they had lived at least a year and a half since starting out that morning.
“Forgive the theatrics,” the Djynn said as he threw himself into an actual wing chair, settling down into it comfortably. “This is much better, isn’t it? Much more real.” He took a breath then said, “All Djynns need the same thing. We need others to make wishes. We need to grant those wishes. It’s like eating or breathing. If you neglect either you die pretty quickly.”
“Are you saying you will die without being able to grant wishes?” Leo asked incredulously.
“Something like that,” the Djynn said with a nod. “Please sit down for a minute.” He indicated the small, cozy-looking sofa across the way from him. Leo and Faith exchanged wary looks, but then mutually, silently agreed to humor the Djynn. “Let’s do a proper introduction. I am Grey. You are Faith, the Night Angel. And you are Leo, the very special human. There now, we’re all familiar and friends now. So tell me what is this favor you wish to ask of me? I only gleaned an impression of it from watching your future with you. Let’s work in specifics.” Grey crossed his long legs, beringed fingers drumming thoughtfully on his thigh.
“The Pharaoh of the Bodywalkers has been severely injured by Apep, the imp god, come to earth in a mortal body.”
“Apep!” The Djynn sat up sharply. “Who the devil let that beast out of its cage?”
“Does it matter?” Leo asked darkly. “It’s done and people are paying for the ramifications of it.”
“True. But this is a very deadly development. Whenever a god awakens in a mortal body cataclysmic events can take place. Especially a god as destructive as Apep is. He is the psychopath of the Egyptian gods. There’s always one in every pantheon, but he is particularly dangerous because he can see beyond his impulses. Not that he isn’t victim to them, because he is, but he is also quite capable of weaving a web and waiting very patiently for things to get caught in it, watching them struggle until they die. He draws his power from the destruction he causes. Take your Pharaoh friend, for instance.”
“He’s not my friend anymore,” Leo said coldly.
“Oh, but that’s not true now, is it? If you really believed your friend was not a part of this you would not feel the sense of loyalty to him that drove you to volunteer for this duty.” He smiled thoughtfully. “And for whatever my word is worth to you, I can assure you that the man you know and love is very much intact inside the new man he has now become. Or at least he was before Apep got his hands on him. But we should, perhaps, focus on that a bit.”
Grey seemed to get lost in thought for a moment, allowing Leo a small opportunity to see how he felt about the information Grey had just imparted. Shouldn’t he feel a sense of relief? Or should he even believe yet another untrustworthy Nightwalker? Wasn’t that what it boiled down to? He was being toyed with and there was no one he could trust.
Except perhaps…
Leo looked down at his hands, surprised to find himself caressing Faith gently. Even more surprising was the sense of comfort that came with the touches. Even though it was based on a tremendous falsehood, it still felt nice.
“It boils down to this,” Grey said after a moment. “In order to repair Jackson’s souls it will take a great deal of very powerful magic. I cannot access that magic without a wish. So one of you is going to have to wish for what you need.” He looked at Leo a moment. “It should be you, Night Angel,” he said. “Our special human should save his wish. There is something he wants very much that would require another powerful draw on magical resources.”
“I don’t have a wish,” Leo bit out.
Grey merely chuckled. “Oh, you do, you just haven’t come to it yet. You’ll leave here and you’ll start thinking and eventually you will realize what you want. And I’ll be right here waiting.” He looked to Faith. “So will you do it?”
Faith frowned. “If there was one thing my father taught me it was to never make a wish from a Djynn.”
Grey laughed, a deeply rich and rolling sound. “Wise advice…for most Djynn. Don’t be fooled by what just happened, which, I remind you, is not a falsehood at this point. It is very much the future ahead of you. But despite what you think I have no need for trickery and deceptions. Firstly, I am much too old for such childish amusements. Secondly, I would much rather have you indebted to me. If I have learned anything in my 888 years on this earthly plane, it is that I will one day be in need of something and I will know exactly who to get it from. And if that someone is already indebted to me, that will make it all the more easier for me. I rather like things to be no fuss no muss.”
Grey stood up, brushing his hands down the front of his pants. He chuckled at himself, then his golden clothing melted away into an Armani suit with crisp well-tailored lines and fashionable elegance. Then he shook his head in negation and the suit dissolved into jeans and an oxford shirt.
“I sometimes forget to discard the whole genie in a bottle guise. The tourists expect the whole Aladdin’s
lamp and golden treasure room effect. I never know whom to take seriously. Clearly you are no tourists.”
“Thanks, I think,” Leo said dryly. But then he turned to Faith, a strange trepidation writhing into him. “Faith, you don’t have to—”
“No. It’s fine,” Faith cut him off. “I’ll make the wish. But if you trick me,” she said darkly to Grey, “you better believe I will find a way to rain hell down on you.” She rose to her feet and Leo stood next to her. Before he could check the impulse, he caught her hand into his and gave it a comforting squeeze.
The Djynn watched him do this. He smiled.
“You know, it truly wasn’t a fabrication,” he said to Leo.
“It?”
“The future that makes you lovers. But, of course, if you make your wish it will change everything.”
“You can try and lord it over me all you like,” Leo said in a clipped tone, “but you’re not going to get to me.”
“Very well,” Faith spoke up abruptly. “Will you give me a moment to construct the wish?”
“Take your time. Have a bite.” He indicated the coffee table and a tray of food appeared. It wasn’t until he saw the tray that Leo realized how hungry he was. But he hesitated, looking at the food suspiciously.
Grey laughed at him.
“The tea was never drugged. It was what you expected so it allowed me to make the magical transition into the precog experience that much more easily. You should be careful with the thoughts you think. This world has stranger things than I in it, and your thoughts can be your downfall should you meet up with them.”
“One more question,” Leo said with a frown as he once again dismissed Grey’s explanation of things.
Grey raised a permissive brow.
“You keep calling me a special human. How am I special?”
Grey leaned in and gave Leo a slow smile. “Don’t you think you are special, as far as humans go?”