Djinn Justice (The Collegium Book 2) (23 page)

Steve halted at the edge of the rainforest. He swore silently as the stink of fresh blood reached him. He’d expected to have to extract Tarik from the cave. Instead, the bastard sat on a rock outside the entrance. The ground around Tarik was red with blood and strewn with bodies. A carnage site, just visible through the flimsy barrier of a few low trees and shrubs.

Tarik whistled. Confident, crazy or taunting them to recklessness? The torn corpses wore the combat clothes of mercenaries.

“What has he done?” Fay’s murmur barely disturbed the air beside Steve. “There is no energy in death. This doesn’t feed him. He’s not a demon.”

Maybe not tangibly, but psychologically…in his crazed mind, Tarik had feasted.

“Are any ours?” Steve asked urgently. Were any marshals?

“None wear my tag,” Fay said.

Tarik had killed his own people.

Steve put a hand on Fay’s shoulder. She worried him. Always strong, her strength remained, but she was suffering. Her skin was pale, marked with sweat and yet cold to the touch. He felt the pressure of the energy Tarik commanded, but it didn’t disable him. Fay, however, looked as if she was barely holding onto consciousness.

He stretched out his senses, but over that distance and the smell of blood and death, he couldn’t be sure. He whispered in her ear. “Is it mined?”

Seven heartbeats as she sent out her magic to scan the land between them and Tarik. “No.”

“Can you maintain our warding as we approach him?”

“I will.”

She had to, or they’d both die trying.

Steve considered the situation, then slid off his kit. He shifted. Clothes always shifted with a were’s transformation, but objects in the clothes didn’t. The cord-token Faroud had given him to get him home through the in-between, fell off.

Fay picked it up, looked at his massive leopard legs, and unbelievably, smiled faintly. She caught his tail and tied the cord around it, tied it in a bow.

He swatted her butt with his tail and launched himself across the space to Tarik.

Tarik stood. “I knew it would be you and I.” He shifted.

Steve skidded to a stop.

There had never, ever been any transformation like this. Tarik wasn’t a jackal-were any longer. He wasn’t any one animal. He had shifted into an amalgam of creatures; undoubtedly that of the weres whose dream essences he’d stolen. His head was a lion’s, but his ears were jackal. He was the size of an elephant-were, but with the body a grotesquerie of gorilla and tiger. It should have been impossible, unworkable, but instead there was a bulky, muscular power to the monster.

Tarik opened his lion’s mouth and roared.

Steve raced towards him. No gunfire. That didn’t mean a sniper didn’t wait in the trees. He hoped Fay stayed safe and he had to keep her safe from this monster. But he didn’t know how to judge the likely distance of Tarik’s leap. The fight would be over before it started if Tarik broke Steve’s spine in the first strike. Looking at the front legs of that thing, they could also crush. There was bear somewhere in that mix.

Don’t engage. No close combat.

Steve leapt at Tarik, but twisted in mid-air to land on the rock that half hid the cave’s entrance. Tarik should have moved to the center of the clearing. Now, Steve had height on him. Steve dropped onto Tarik’s back, rolling off as the monster moved, but still scoring its side. A twist and Steve was away. First blood to him.

Then the fight started in earnest.

Pain and time ceased to matter. There was only the clarity where the air itself seemed to freeze while they danced with lethal intent, among the dead.

For Fay, the fight was horrendous. Tarik’s misshapen form ought to be impossible, yet he moved it ponderously, unleashing a physical power devastating in its impact. The wrong hit, if it landed, could crush Steve. That Steve was agile and clever gave him a fighting chance, but it wasn’t as if he could wear Tarik down.

Tarik was clearly drawing on the dream essences he’d stolen. He maintained the flow of negative energy even as he fought. It sucked at her spirit and tried to drown her, but she had her lifeline, the mate-bond, and she was damned if Tarik would take Steve from her. Steve fought so that she had time to free the enslaved, and she would.

He fought with ruthless focus. Tarik was heavier, with a greater reach, longer fangs and ten inch claws, but he was clumsy. Whereas Steve moved lithely, no motion wasted: attack, retreat, feint and slash.

Fay squinted in mage-sight, but still the perverted dream energy muddied the air around Tarik. She couldn’t see how he used it, couldn’t see the pattern and pulse of it.

A tiger-were ran up to her and she absently recognized her own tag on its shoulder, drawing back before her blade spun. The tiger paced restlessly on high alert, guarding her even as it cast divided attention at the fight raging in front of them. At least one marshal had survived.

Fay frowned at the fight. Steve dove for Tarik’s right hind leg, clearly aiming to rend the muscle. Tarik kicked out, missing Steve by a hairsbreadth. If the kick had connected, Steve would be dead. “I need to be closer.”

The marshal went first.

Fay followed, but it was hard. The nearer she got to Tarik, the worse his energy seemed to affect her. She released the invisibility spell on the amulet and bumped into the tiger, who gave a low grumble. Apparently it was this far and no further. She accepted the marshal’s judgement. He had more experience than her in how weres fought.

She tugged at the locket and its thin silver chain snapped. She studied the way the energy pulsed from it to Tarik. The amulet vibrated, not physically, but magically. The channels from the amulet to Tarik were stretched as he demanded everything. Narelle’s original spell fretted under this new, reckless demand. Would it break?

Two more tiger-weres approached, both limping, and one leaning on the other. The other two marshals who’d ensured her and Steve’s safe passage had survived. That they were here meant the enslaved weres were no longer a threat. Fay shivered. Tarik’s demands had probably driven the enslaved to their knees, perhaps into unconsciousness.

That still left those who followed him willingly—those he hadn’t killed.

She had to trust the three marshals to guard her against that threat, while she made a decision.

The tiger-weres melted backwards, returning to the rainforest where they were camouflaged.

Pain stabbed her through the mate-bond, echoed by Steve’s snarl. She looked across the clearing. Blood dripped from his throat.

After all this, after all they’d risked, she’d have to destroy the amulet and risk separating the enslaved weres irrevocably from their dream essences. Tarik was already compromising their survival by the energy he drained from them. Even the leaks that her spell collected to return to the enslaved wouldn’t be enough to sustain them against this reckless draw.

Half-breath, half-prayer, Fay exhaled and tried to crush the amulet. It refused to crumple. With her mage-sight, she saw the dream essences pouring through it to Tarik. He was sustaining it.

Despair thundered over her, as if she stood beneath Niagara Falls. It seemed the spell had centered itself on Tarik. She couldn’t weaken him. She had to attack him some other way.

Fay attempted to ready her magic to strike. It was like slamming face forward into wet cement. Blood dripped from her nose.

Oh, God.
She’d heard of this, but never encountered it. This was when you’d hit the limits of your power. Somehow, Tarik had contained her energy…no, not contained.

“No,” she whimpered. She’d done this. The warding she maintained against bullets and other threats was being eroded by Tarik’s energy, and not noticing, she’d simply spent more and more of her magic to protect Steve and herself.

He now fought without her protection.

So would she. She released her personal ward. She’d never gone naked into battle before, but had no time to judge the feeling. The little magic she freed up had to be used. If she attacked Tarik directly, it would be futile. He remained a were, immune to magic, and now she lacked the power to freeze the air around him or lock him in a bubble.

Steve had wounded him. Tarik bled and limped, but even as she watched, his massive left front paw hit Steve’s right shoulder, scraping deep before sending Steve somersaulting away, head over tail. He’d be dazed, vulnerable.

She could see the dream essences channeling to Tarik; feel her last bit of magic. This had to be the place to attack. In her right hand, she held her blade, which had tasted demon blood. A last stand. She focused all her attention on the energy pulsing out of the amulet.

An enraged leopard’s snarl, composed of protest and fury, broke her concentration. Fear for her pulsed along their mate-bond.

Run!
Steve commanded.

She looked up.

Unstoppable as a tank, Tarik pounded down the mountain. Two tiger-weres flowed around her and launched themselves at Tarik. He swatted them aside. The snap of bones cracked the silence. He was nearly on her.

She couldn’t outrun him and she lacked the magic to reform her warding.

She did what she could and wrenched at the dream energy channeling to him. It protested her violent attack, pouring over her hands and arms like molten gold. She screamed. Her hands spasmed, dropping the knife.

The earth under her feet trembled. The cloud forest was silent. There was only Tarik and death.

Tarik went down, his big body driving hard into the dirt, digging it up as gravity finally halted him at her feet. Steve had torn the monster’s right hind leg off.

It was incredible that Steve had caught up with Tarik’s fast charge. Near impossible that at that speed he’d bitten true and caught the leg. He spat it out and walked to Fay, shifting to human in the few steps.

Arterial blood sprayed out of Tarik, saturating the ground around him. The negative energy he commanded faltered.

The relief of it had her almost dropping, but Steve was there, hugging her close, and her own arms—no burning pain, now—closed around him.

Behind Steve, Tarik shivered to human. Blood continued to pump out of him. In a minute, without treatment, he’d die.

Steve knelt and clamped the artery.

“Medic!” Steve shouted. He knelt on the ground, ignoring the blood, feeling a grim kind of determination as he studied the jackal-were. “You’ll not escape this easily.”

Tarik stared back at him. “I would have enslaved you. The rest were practice runs.”

“Nice.” But not enough for Steve to take his hand away from Tarik’s wound and let the man bleed out.

Tarik’s gaze slipped to Fay. “You should have been mine. Narelle was weak.”

“You were lucky,” Fay said. “I’d have killed you.”

Steve smiled. That was his woman.

She put a hand on his shoulder. Her other hand held the amulet.

“Can you free the enslaved?” he asked.

A strange expression crossed her face.

“You want a medic?” Miguel trotted along the edge of the snowline to them. “You want me to fix him?”

“He has to stand judgement,” Steve said.

“Huh.” Miguel snapped open the medical kit and extracted clamps and bandages. He moved swiftly, competently. “I saw him. Fancied himself King of the Beasts. More like King of the Nightmares.”

The three spelunker marshals walked out of Tarik’s hideout and into the thin sunshine. They walked circumspectly through the scene of carnage. “There are bodies in the cave, stuffed and mounted. And skins.”

“Sick bastard.” Miguel bandaged Tarik with swift efficiency.

Steve strode over to a clump of snow and roughly scrubbed his hands clean of blood.

Fay uncapped her water bottle and tipped it over his hands. “I can’t heal you, yet,” she said softly.

“I’m good.” Good enough. Cracked ribs, blood and bruising. His left knee was wrenched rather than dislocated or he wouldn’t be walking. “What’s with you?”

“I burned out my magic. Not irrevocably. Not like Narelle or Lewis Bennett. But I need a few hours, some rest.”

He wiped his hands on his trousers before putting an arm around her.

She whispered her confession into his throat. “I was so scared for you, I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“I know the feeling.” Too well. He squeezed her tight, nuzzling his face into her hair. He hadn’t thought he’d reach Tarik in time to stop the monstrous bastard killing Fay. That race across the clearing had been lung-burning, heart-freezing terror—and if he’d mistimed his lunge for Tarik’s leg… “We’re safe.”

“Indeed you are.” Uncle popped into view. The djinn wore his middle-aged, respectable Frenchman’s persona.

Steve wasn’t even aware of releasing Fay and grabbing Uncle by the front of his shirt.

The djinn dangled a foot off the ground. He looked down at Steve and quirked an eyebrow.

Steve shook him. “You set us up.”

“Did you expect anything different?”

Around them, the marshals watched. Somewhere in the rainforest, the enslaved waited. Steve didn’t open his hand to release Uncle, but the djinn was suddenly on the ground beside Tarik. One knee of his impeccable gray business suit touched the blood-soaked earth. It grew a creeping red stain.

Uncle held out his hand to Fay. “The amulet.”

She looked at Uncle, and then, to Steve. She couldn’t have conveyed her weary uncertainty more clearly if she’d tried. At her best, she’d struggle to defy Uncle, and right now, none of them were at their best.

Steve strode across to Tarik, pushed Miguel aside and took his place, staring at Uncle over the wounded man. “Give it to him,” he said to Fay.

Uncle didn’t help. “You had your chance to kill the bastard and you didn’t take it. So now it’s my turn.”

“I was going to take him to Granddad for judgement,” Steve ground out.

Uncle nodded. “Anything else and you’d have failed the test.”

Fay’s fingers convulsed around the amulet, three inches above Uncle’s hand, twelve inches above Tarik’s chest. “That was the test?”

“What test?” Tarik demanded.

Uncle gave him a somber look. “Finding you and your idiocy was never the challenge. What Steve did about it…”

“You didn’t want him to be marshal, judge and executioner.” Fay dropped the amulet into the djinn’s hand.

“He can be. But not this time.” The rainforest went still, again. The bird calls and rustles of small creatures that had slowly returned, were silenced. Uncle’s expression was terrible as he looked at Tarik. “You enslaved people. You sought to rule.”

“It went wrong!” Tarik stared into the djinn’s pitiless, ancient eyes. “It was Narelle’s fault. That stupid witch.”

“No.” Uncle placed the amulet gently on Tarik’s chest, over his heart. “In fact, the woman you abused is the reason you’re not dead, yet. She slowed the leak of poison in you.”

“What poison?”

Uncle touched Tarik’s forehead. “The madness of many people, their futures and their pain. One person cannot carry multiple essences. So, now, we destroy the locket that filtered and delayed the impact. Do you wish to ask God for mercy?”

“No!”

The djinn bowed his head. “So be it.”

Bright light exploded, too bright to see the amulet break.

Steve pulled Fay into him, shutting his eyes. He was angry with the djinn, but Steve trusted him. He waited out the silence. Waited for his dazzled retinas to function. When he opened his eyes, Tarik was dead.

The man’s eyes bulged, his mouth gaped in horror and his body…the ribs were torn open. Tarnished silver coated the shattered bones and minced organs.

No blood had splattered Fay or Uncle.

“It is done.” Uncle vanished.

Miguel broke the shocked silence. “Ten minutes earlier and he’d have saved me bandaging the bastard.” He raised his voice. “Who needs a medic?”

Out of the rainforest, the formerly enslaved emerged. They were in human form. Their expressions…a wolf-were spoke for them all. She approached Tarik’s mutilated body. “We remember. Everything. Burn him. The earth shouldn’t hold such as he.”

“It shall be done,” Steve said. He ached from the fight. Every breath stabbed, courtesy of his broken ribs. He bled, too, weakening him. Doctor Singh was right, though. Weres could ignore pain. “I want everything here documented, photos taken, names recorded. There are bodies.” His voice faltered despite himself. “In the cave, Tarik had people stuffed or skinned in their animal form. We need to identify them and return them to their families. If anyone has injuries, let Miguel see them. The portal is open and we’ll send for assistance, returning first those who need healing.”

“Starting with you,” Miguel said.

“Yes,” Fay interrupted before Steve could protest.

He wanted to argue. He needed to stay. It was about honoring the suffering here. Then he looked at everyone: the marshals and the enslaved. They all felt the same. They shared his need to eradicate the horror of Tarik’s nightmare reign.

A deep sigh welled up and his ribs stabbed. He hid a wince, but the way his breath cut short was a giveaway.

He had passed Uncle’s test. He was Suzerain now, even if the formal ceremony hadn’t been held. The knowledge was part of him. He felt the power of it; that he could remove a person’s animal self. It was enough—too much. He had to let others take responsibility. He wouldn’t be the Suzerain in the way his granddad had been.

He released Fay, but kept a hand on her hip. He needed the connection to her. “Fine. Can someone locate the all-terrain vehicles Tarik’s people used? I need a ride to the portal.” It would bounce like hell, killing his ribs, but trekking down the mountain was even less appealing. “And I want those who served Tarik rounded up and brought to the fort for judgement.”