Exquisite Captive by Heather Demetrios
Zanari settled into the armchair outside the circle and pulled a blanket around her as she searched her brother’s worn face. “So what’s she like?”
He pictured the bewitching birthmark next to Nalia’s left ear and her secretive golden eyes. The look on her face when she thought no one was watching—a piercing lonesomeness that replaced her ferocity with a vulnerability that would shame her, if she knew he’d seen it.
“Arrogant,” he said. “Looks like a ghoul.”
It was said that when ghouls hadn’t fed in a long time, they looked like emaciated corpses. Ghouls were the jinn’s cautionary tale against channeling dark magic—tainted energy released through suffering and pain, used for the express purpose of causing more suffering and pain. In order to keep their young jinn from experimenting with the forbidden arts, grandmothers and parents would tell stories near the hearth late at night, after the day’s backbreaking work in their overlords’ fields. According to legend, thousands and thousands of summers ago, the first ghouls had once been normal jinn, but they’d trafficked with dark gods who’d stolen their souls. That was why the ghouls ate their victims—they were always searching for souls to replace the ones they had lost. It used to keep Raif up at night, imagining all the things ghouls could do.
“A ghoul?” Zanari looked at her brother, eyes narrowing. He knew she was thinking of the book they’d had as children—their only book—with horrifying illustrations that jumped off the pages. “She’s gorgeous, isn’t she?”
Raif swatted at the air, as though his sister were a pesky fly. “Does it matter? She’s the enemy. Goes on and on about how hard her life is, living in a fancy mansion with a master who’s obviously in love with her.” He kicked off his shoes. “Disgusting salfit.”
“Hating her won’t bring them back,” Zanari said quietly.
And even though they’d both lost so many in the past few years, he knew who she was talking about—their father and Kir. This war had been so much easier to fight with his father and best friend at his side.
“Liking her won’t, either,” he said.
Raif started toward the kitchen, but Zanari’s voice stopped him. “What’d she say about the sigil ring?”
“We didn’t get into it.” He’d been grateful there hadn’t been time to tell Nalia what he was asking in exchange for her freedom. He wasn’t looking forward to that conversation. Or maybe he was. He wanted to see the look on her face when he told Nalia what the resistance required of her.
“What do you mean, you didn’t get into it?”
He shrugged. “It never came up. I think she’d do anything to get out and I’m the only person who can help her. She’ll pay the price, I’m not worried about that.”
Zanari stood, her blanket dropping to the floor. “Don’t be so sure. The Ghan Aisouri take their vows seriously. You’re asking her to break the biggest one.”
A ghost of a smile skitted across Raif’s face. “That’s what makes this all the more sweet.”
Zanari took off her slipper and threw it at him. Raif dodged it, but gave her an injured look. “What was that for?”
“I think you know.” Her voice grew soft. “Don’t turn into them, Raif. You’re better than that. We should fight on our own terms, not the enemy’s.”
She didn’t understand. The part of him that thought there could be honest, peaceful dialogue between all the peoples of Arjinna had died with his father and Kir.
“If we did it your way,” he said, “we’d still be in Arjinna, trying to pick off the Ifrit one by one.”
Zanari’s eyes flashed. “We might not even make it back to do that much. Raif, this plan is insane. If Haran catches up to us before you free this Ghan Aisouri . . . there’s no way we’d make it home alive. You know that.”
“And what do we have to go back to? We’re failing, Zan. This is it—the Ifrit have already rooted out half our cells. Even if I get hundreds of new recruits while we’re here on Earth, that’ll only buy us a little time before the Ifrit cut every last one of us down. If we don’t get the sigil . . . then all the death and blood—it would have meant nothing.”
“Gods, Raif, I’m on your side. You know I always am. But this sigil—it’s an evil thing. No good can come of using it.”
Raif sighed. “Let’s just get the godsdamn thing and then we can decide what to do with it, okay?”
Raif turned on his heel and stormed into the kitchen, not waiting for an answer. He needed a beer. It was one of the first human things Jordif had introduced him to, and Raif enjoyed the strange beverage’s heavy taste and the bubbles that slid across his tongue. He tipped the bottle back, staring out the window over the sink.
What a miserable realm, he thought.
Just after dawn, downtown LA was a ghost town, apocalyptic. Bright early-morning sun glinted off skyscrapers that glared at the freeway snaking over the empty streets. Its rays streamed over the carved stone buildings, so different from the rest of the city’s squat pastel-colored apartments and strip malls. The shops below were still closed, heavy metal shutters pulled over their windows and doors. Strange paint covered the metal—letters that looked vaguely English. Graffiti—it was the same in Arjinna, but in his land the letters glowed and shifted according to the spell cast by the jinni who’d written them. Ever since the beginning of the Discords, Raif’s fellow revolutionaries had relied on these secret messages to the serfs, carved in rocks and the trunks of trees.
The homeless still owned downtown’s streets at this hour, holding court on empty corners and front stoops. He could hear the clink of bottles as an old man in rags pushed an overflowing cart up the sidewalk. The only other sound was the lonely rumble of a transportation machine filled with garbage several blocks away and an industrious entrepreneur who drove slowly by in a motorized cart shouting, Tamales, tamales!
Earth was not as menacing as the stories from his childhood made it seem, but he could understand why the jinn had been afraid to come to this land of dirty skies and trash-filled streets. He wondered what the humans would think of Arjinna, if they could see it as it had been before the coup. They’d probably think it was a paradise.
He felt Zanari’s arms around him. She rested her head on his back, between his shoulder blades. “Sorry, okay? I’m just worried, that’s all. I can’t lose anyone else.”
He squeezed her hands, where they pressed against his heart. “Everything’s gonna be fine, Zan. Just trust me. This is the only way we can win.”
He wanted to believe his words, but all he felt was a deep heaviness in his chest. Nothing was certain. Even now, Haran was out there, intent on destroying the only hope Arjinna had of ever being free.
ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA
“ZDRAVSTVUYTYE! HELLO, HELLO! PRETTY LADY, BUY one of Valentine’s pictures. Is art! Is most fantastic art in all of Russia, no?”
Black-and-white photographs pasted into paper-collaged frames cover the stall, but the real item of note is the artist himself. His thick gray beard frames a wide, almost manic smile, while his clothing is a jumble of vintage items—an old Soviet cap, a thick wool sweater, a pair of purple bell-bottom pants.
The Djan jinni flashes a demure smile and hurries away from the artist’s stall, pushing past the locals and tourists strolling along the banks of the Neva. Her hair, the glittering white of Russian snow, waves behind her like the ends of a scarf.
“Dasvidanya, pretty lady!” he shouts after her, waving good-bye. “Some other time, yes?”
It’s early still, but the sky has already darkened. There’s a chill in the air, and the Djan looks longingly at the warm restaurants she passes where plates of bliny and bowls of borscht cover marble-topped tables. No time. If she’s not back at her master’s flat to serve him his evening glass of vodka, he’ll get angry.
She shoves her hands in the deep pockets of her coat, her fingers frozen despite the wool-lined leather gloves she wears. As she passes the familiar sunrise-colored buildings, she stops for a moment to look at her
The Djan continues on her way, following the dark waters of the Neva. It laps at the concrete wall that contains it, hungry. Soon, it will freeze over and humans will dance on the ice. The Djan has always wanted to try it and maybe this year she will.
She’s halfway down Nevsky Prospekt when she hears a woman’s scream come from a darkened alley to her left.
Fire and blood, she thinks.
She’s only a Djan, but she has enough magic to take on a few human attackers, even if they are probably Russian thugs twice her size. She hopes her master won’t put her in the bottle as a punishment for being late. The Djan slips into the alley and blends into the shadows. The only light comes from a window high above it. As she draws closer to the hunched figure on the ground, a shower of goose bumps covers the Djan’s skin. There’s another jinni close by. Very close.
A match flares and the shadow on the ground stands up and turns around—a pretty face and bright blue eyes surrounded by feathery darkness. The Marid jinni smiles at the Djan. The Djan slowly steps out of the shadows, and she returns the smile, relieved.
“Privet,” the blue-eyed Marid says in Russian. Hello.
“Jahal’alund,” the Djan says, using the traditional jinn greeting: gods be with you. It’s not often she gets to speak Kada on Earth. “Are you all right? I heard a scream—”
The Marid lights a cigarette and waves a hand in the air. “Yes, thank you. They stole the jinni’s bag, but at least she has her cigarettes.”
The Djan looks around the deserted alley. “They?”
The Marid draws closer and as she does, a slight breeze sends a sour, rank stench toward the Djan.
“Gods, what’s that smell?” says the Djan.
The Marid takes a long drag of her cigarette. She wears a pair of jade shackles, like a Chinese human. “The jinni doesn’t smell anything unusual.”
The Djan pulls her coat tighter around her thin body. “Well, I guess this is an alley,” she says, eyeing a nearby dumpster. “Probably just some old cabbage or sausages.”
“Da, the jinni is sure that’s what it is.”
The hairs on the back of the Djan’s neck rise up. Something isn’t right. It isn’t just this jinni’s strange way of speaking—Earth had made eccentrics of them all. But the night has suddenly become dangerous, as though it wears a cloak of raven’s wings, and the Djan knows in the very core of her being that she is no longer safe. She has to get away.
Now.
“Well, my master’s waiting. Dasvidanya . . .”
The Marid’s eyes glow. “What’s that on your face—that dark spot on your cheek?”
The Djan blushes and rubs her birthmark self-consciously. “Nothing.”
The Marid draws closer, studying the Djan’s face for a long moment. The Djan, for her part, doesn’t move. She stares, transfixed, as the Marid’s eyes turn a bright shade of red.
The moon comes out, its cold light filtering past the tall apartment buildings that border the alley. It falls on the Marid and, instantly, the Djan sees the ghoul hiding underneath the Marid’s skin: massive, hulking, corpselike. The Djan screams and the ghoul’s mouth widens while its borrowed features slip off. The long black hair becomes coarse strings, like oily weeds. The skin turns gray. The teeth. The teeth.
As the first notes of the Djan’s startled cry ring out, the monster slaps his hand over her mouth, the force of his bony fingers pushing the Djan’s teeth into her lips. She tastes blood on her tongue, salty and warm.
“The Ghan Aisouri has been running from the Ifrit for a long time,” whispers her attacker.
“Ghan Aisouri?” she gasps, pushing the words through the hand that covers her mouth. “No, I’m—”
He bites her ear, just a nip, and she tries to fight him off, but her arms and hands suddenly feel heavy, as though they are encased in cement.
Understanding dawns as her frozen limbs refuse to move. She knows the stories told around peasant campfires. One bite and it’s over. She realizes the ghoul can do whatever he wants to her and she will feel every inch of the countless miles of pain. But she won’t be able to move. Or scream.
Or cry.
The ghoul roughly pulls off the Djan’s clothes. He sets her leather gloves on top of the pile of clothing, as though he’s trying to keep them clean. She wants them back. Cold. She’s so cold. He looks down at her body. She hears his stomach growl.
As his poisonous teeth bite into her arm, the Djan’s chiaan becomes acid, burning through her veins. Her skin turns blue in the cold, but the small chunk out of her shoulder bleeds bright red. The ghoul chews. Swallows.
“This jinni is the wrong jinni,” he says. His voice is colder than the long Russian winters, when the snow tumbles from the sky and covers the whole world.
The ghoul’s eyes blaze and he utters guttural curses as he gnashes his teeth against her skin. Even after she loses consciousness, even after she dies, the ghoul fills his mouth with her. When he’s finished, all that is left are her bones.
They glisten in the moonlight, tiny drifts of snow in the darkness.
7
CARAMEL CLOUDS LACED WITH ROSE AND LAVENDER traveled across the Pacific as the dark blue of the sea turned a soft gray. A glimmering amber path from the east shot through the churning expanse, bathing Nalia’s bare feet in its warmth. She stood on the damp sand, her arms spread wide, a priestess come to pay homage to the newborn day. Gusts of wind swirled around her, and Nalia opened her mouth to taste its salt and melancholy, swallowing the listless dreams of humans from across the sea and drinking in the vast emptiness that throbbed against the shore. She shivered in the chill morning air as the wind held her in its salt-tinged embrace. A cleansing breeze from the south whipped by her and peeled away the long sleepless night, and the next wave that crashed on the shore sent its spray to wash Malek’s scent off her skin.
“Shundai,” she whispered to Grathali, goddess of the wind, and Lathor, goddess of water. Thank you.
El Matador Beach was Nalia’s for the next few hours, the perfect place for her dawn training. Its remote location—accessible only from a steep staircase cut into the side of a cliff—dissuaded Malibu’s usual morning traffic, and its scattering of large rocks made it dangerous for surfers. To further discourage curious dog walkers and shell collectors, Nalia had created a simple illusion: though the tide had already gone out, it appeared to anyone gazing down from the cliff’s top that the sea still covered the pristine beach. Illusions such as these fed on her energy, but only a little. The daily effort to keep her tattoos and the true violet color of her eyes and smoke hidden required a constant trickle of chiaan, not enough to affect her powers but sufficiently taxing over time. These mornings spent greeting the dawn replenished that energy.
Nalia stood in the very center of the beach. To her right, the hill above her jutted out into the sea, blocking her view of the coast as it zigzagged north toward San Francisco. Fog still blanketed the area, setting a protective shroud over the beach and clear waters that hugged its shore. To her left, a huge rock with a natural arch towered over her, its top invisible; through the arch Nalia could see the other side of the beach and the ocean beyond it. The tiny strip of sand had come to feel like a second home to her, a private sanctuary far from Malek. The exercises she performed there were an offering to the gods and a requiem for the slain Ghan Aisouri. Sha’a Rho was an ancient martial art; only the royal knights of Arjinna and their gryphon trainers knew its secrets. The graceful movements harnessed energy, connecting body, mind, and chiaan in each slice, kick, and flip through the air. The series of poses anchored her magical and defensive abilities, the only way to access her chiaan with control and intention. Without it, she would be as unpredictable as the elements she served.
The magic burned inside
The sun rose as Nalia performed her ancient dance, each pose flowing without pause into the next. A thin sheen of sweat glistened on her skin, but her face remained relaxed, her eyes alert. It never failed to surprise her that she missed the dawn exercises in Arjinna, standing on the polished floor in the training room, one of many in the rows of Ghan Aisouri. Each morning had been an exhausting trial, a daily exercise in failing to reach perfection. The gryphons had towered over them, their eagle eyes aware of every mistake, every slip of focus. In the ocean’s tide on Earth, she could almost hear the soft swish of forty pairs of arms and legs moving in unison and the gentle padding of the gryphon’s lion paws as they made their way down the lines of knights. The waves bashing the boulders that broke through the ocean’s surface could easily be the harsh smack of the wooden pole the gryphons held in their claws, which they used to force a Ghan Aisouri’s leg or arm into perfect alignment. If she closed her eyes, she could almost smell the sweat and incense.