Alone, with only Ms. Maggie to keep her company, Ari paced back and forth in her hotel room. The gremlins in her stomach were fighting worse than when she’d asked Charlie to their ninth grade dance. She’d left asking him to go with her so late he’d already said yes to Macy McGuire, a pretty girl in their grade who had moved back to Columbus a few weeks after the dance. Ari had wanted to hate Macy, but really she’d just been mad at herself for taking so long to get the courage up to ask him out. She’d stayed home that night instead of going to the dance even though she’d been asked by three different guys. But Ari hadn’t wanted to go unless it had been with Charlie. Ari smiled through her worry, remembering how Charlie had turned up at her house the next day with a corsage, asking her if she’d go to Homecoming Dance with him the next semester. They hadn’t gone because Charlie caught the flu. Then somehow they danced around one another that whole year up until Ari’s 16th birthday. By then it was too late. Life would have been so much easier these last two years if she had come to that realization much sooner.
And now Jai. Ari didn’t even want to believe that he wanted to talk about what she wanted talk about. And if he did want to talk about what she wanted to talk about, Ari wanted to know what had changed his mind. Had he finally seen the light? Was he finally leaving the State of Denial? And of course there was Charlie to think about if Jai had indeed left the State of Denial. Ari was so worried she’d end up hurting Charlie.
But none of that mattered when both Jai and Charlie were out there somewhere without her, possibly being pulverized by that asshat Dalí.
A shuffling noise caught her attention and Ari followed it, her gaze narrowing in on a leaflet that was being shoved forward by invisible hands on the bedside table. Frowning, Ari dived across the bed to see what Ms. Maggie was trying to show her. She smirked when she read it.
Room service.
Wow, her poltergeist really kept a watch on her. She hadn’t eaten all day because she’d been too nervous to, but Ari guessed Ms. Maggie was right. She had to keep her energy levels up.
“Thanks, Ms. Maggie.”
After ordering some food to be brought up, Ari flicked on the TV, knowing that nothing would take her mind off of it but hoping the noise from a movie or TV show would at least be better than the thick silence and nervous pall she’d cast around the room.
When the knock at the door finally sounded, Ari was glad. She was actually starting to feel hungry. “Room Service,” a soft female voice called before Ari had to embarrassingly ask who was there through the door. Jai had drilled that precaution through her before he’d left.
“Coming!” Ari called and strode barefoot across the plush carpet, pulling the door open with hungry anticipation. The smell of food wafted up her nose and Ari almost fainted. She smiled at the prim older woman and opened the door wider to let her in. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” the hotel employee told her cheerfully.
Ooh tip, Ari remembered and hurried towards her purse, her back turned to the room.
As she rifled through her purse for change, Ari never even heard the footsteps behind her. No warning alerted her to attack until she felt the painful prick on her neck.
“What?” she cried out, her hand lifting to the pain as she whirled around, the room blurring. Her arm felt suddenly heavy and limp and her legs appeared to have melted out of existence. The floor rose up to meet her and the woman’s face zoomed in on her, her voice deep and echoing.
“I’m Dr. Cremer, Ari. You’ve been given harmal. Try to relax.”
Relax! Was she nuts?
Yes, Ari, she is insane, clearly!
Suddenly Ari realized she couldn’t feel anything anymore. Her eyes seemed to be staring out at the world from a place of nothingness. It was terrifying. She wanted to whimper but there appeared to be nowhere for it to escape from.
Oh God, she began to cry inwardly. He’d found her. He’d found her.
Heavy footsteps sounded and Ari wondered how she could hear with no ears.
You have ears, she told herself frantically, trying to calm her racing panic. Jai told you this stuff causes paralysis.
Oh God, I’m paralyzed!
Her brain began to feel tingly, her thoughts growing fuzzy, diluted.
The panic disappeared.
Everything disappeared.
She just… was.
“Ari,” a rumbling voice said and another face appeared above hers. A young man with steel blue eyes stared down at her, and if Ari had been in her right mind she would have thought he stared at her as if she were a large chip of diamond. “Finally.”
The room dropped or she was lifted. Whispers. Movement. Wallpaper blurring. A breeze ruffled her hair. A car engine purred. Trees, buildings, sky passed by fast.
Air stung her eyes. The world dipped within a metal box. White everywhere. Chemicals. Woman’s face.
“Just strapping you down, Ari.”
Man’s face. “I’m sorry it had to be this way, Ari. But with the harmal you won’t care. I just need your power, Ari. I’ve deduced it’s all in the blood. If I can keep you here under harmal I can siphon your blood and fuel my talismans with it. With continual blood transfusions there is a possibility of taking enough blood to last me a lifetime. I want to thank you for giving me this, Ari. You precious girl you.”
Copper. Blood. Woman’s face. “You’re doing wonderfully, Ari.”
White everywhere.
White.
White.
White.
“NO!” deep voice roared. Man’s face. Anger? “Why isn’t it working?!”
Soft voice. “She can’t tell you. She’s deep under the harmal. We did discuss the possibility of this not working. Or perhaps the Jinn you tried to command isn’t coherent enough. She is recovering from a bout of harmal herself.”
“You’re right of course. Thank you, Dr. Cremer. Keep her under.”
White.
White everywhere.
27 - The Wrath of Two Kings
“What are you doing here?” Red blazed, slamming the doors behind him as he strode into his private rooms. Fear churned in his gut to see her there, taking such chances. She wasn’t supposed to come to Mount Qaf. Ever! He had a home on earth that she was allowed to visit for no one knew of it except him… and of course her.
She hurried towards him, wringing her hands. He stilled immediately. She wasn’t a ‘wringing her hands’ kind of female. “He has her, Red.” She shook her head, fury etched in her features. “Dalí took Ari from the hotel and I couldn’t follow. He used some kind of blocking enchantment. It was powerful. But not powerful enough to stop you. He can’t have gotten far. You’ll be able to find him won’t you?”
Disbelief coursed through him and he turned away from her fretful gaze. He shook his head. “He’s still a hybrid. It could take longer than we have.” Red’s blue eyes burned as he turned back to her, his hand brushing her cheek gently. “I’ll get her back. I promise. There’s someone who’ll tell me where that little piece of maggot shit is. He’ll tell me even if I have to kill him.” Turning on his heel, Red stormed towards the double doors. “And get the hell out of here! Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
“You can’t go in there, Sire!” the Shaitan cried in horror as The Red King blasted past him. At a tug of the Shaitan’s insistent energy, Red waved a hand as if he were batting away a bug and splattered the Shaitan against the corridor wall. The others cowered and Red threw open the doors to The Gleaming King’s bedroom without interference.
“What in blazing glory do you think you’re doing?” Gleaming roared, jumping from the bed he shared with more women than Red cared to count. There were just some things a brother didn’t need to see.
“Out!” The Red King snarled at the harem and turned a gentlemanly eye away as they gathered their things and skittered from the room in terror.
Gleaming stared in disbelief before pulling himself together. Wearing his robes and leather pants now, he stormed towards Red. “What is the meaning of this?”
Without a word, Red backhanded him and Gleaming soared through the air, crashing through one of the posts of the four poster bed. Hopping high like a jumping spider, Red came down on top of Gleaming, his hand aflame as he punched his stunned brother before he even had time to defend himself.
“Where is he?” The Red King growled. “He has Ari! Where is he?”
Gleaming coughed, blood trickling from his nose as he turned his head to stare him directly in the eyes. He smirked. “Kiss my magical ass, brother.”
Roaring with frustration, Red pounded into him again only to find himself flying backwards as Gleaming finally joined the fight. With real flames blazing now, glass melted, curtains blazed, wood caught fire as they exchanged punch for punch, dealing in Jinn fisticuffs like they hadn’t done in hundreds of years.
And it was getting Red nowhere. They were too evenly matched.
“Just tell me,” Red breathed after twenty minutes, blood trickling from his cut eyebrow, his head smelling of the sickly stench of singed hair.
“Never. When I found Dalí it took all of my persuasive powers to get him to trust in me again. Do you really think I’d jeopardize that by telling you where he’s keeping the girl? A proud father would never.” Gleaming shook his head still grinning.
Before Red could respond by slicing his brother open with a large splinter of wood he’d been eyeing, for the second time that day Gleaming’s doors were burst open. To both of their surprise The White King floated in on a bed of boiling fury. He turned his black eyes on The Gleaming King.
“Red,” White said calmly, “Pin him.”
Shocked understanding flooded The Red King but he shook it off, instantly joining his power with White’s as they lifted Gleaming with invisible hands and pinned him to the wall. He struggled, but braced under attack from both brothers, his struggle was futile and by the way his eyes dimmed, he knew it.
“It seems I have a soldier misbehaving.” The White King strode towards Gleaming and the air glimmered beside him, a greenish blue fire licking the air. The fire of a Nisnas. Vadit, The White King’s pet. A particularly vicious Nisnas. But of course he’d been trained that way by his master. “Vadit here is going to chew on you, brother, until you tell me where Ari is. Is your half-breed really worth the months of enduring the agony of growing back limbs?”
The Red King had to hand it to his brother. His calm control was oftentimes scarier than Azazil’s angry threats.
Gleaming licked his lips, eyeing Vadit nervously. “You wouldn’t. I am on your side.”
White cocked his head, his large hand stroking Vadit’s. “Really? You call being on my side letting your poisonous, spurious example of a Jinn, kidnap my daughter to drain the gifts I went to great pains to instill in her?”
“He’s my son, White!” Gleaming shouted now. “I want what’s best for him. Surely you can understand my pride? It was an entertaining plan he came up with, but there’s no harm in it. We all know he won’t succeed.”