Dark Oasis Read online

  Dark Oasis

  Jenny Schwartz

  Magic, human evil, and an everlasting love.

  Alexa and Theron are old friends—or should that be foes? Alexa is a guardian angel, Theron a trickster djinni cursed to serve human masters. When Theron’s djinni bottle is stolen by a dark mage, Alexa sets out to save him. She should have known nothing involving Theron would be straightforward—not even loving him.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Epilogue

  Want More?

  Prologue

  “Not you again.” Alexa materialized in a market in northern Oman, tugging her burkha into place.

  The gorgeous, dark-haired man lounging against a stall and supervising an impromptu performance flashed her a wicked grin. “Why, angel, long time, no see.”

  “Three months.” She regretted the correction when his grin widened. “I remember because of the crater you left in the road, which I had to fill in.”

  “The boy wished for kaboom!” Laughter lurked in his smooth voice. “I delivered.” He held out a small basket. “Date?”

  She accepted a sticky, sweet fruit and chewed. “What are you up to, now?”

  “Amusing myself and others.” He nodded at the increasing crowd which gathered in a rough circle. From the center came intriguing music, pops, bangs and a wave of laughter.

  The crowd shifted, allowing her to glimpse the performance. Smoke drifted from a djinni bottle and formed a swaying cloud.

  “Who dares to steal a wish from the djinni of the lamp?” A sonorous voice demanded.

  There was good-natured shuffling before a young man swaggered forward. He’d discarded traditional clothes for a Western shirt, jeans and aviator sunglasses. “I’ll steal a wish, djinni.”

  “Then grasp the lamp—if you dare!”

  Alexa rolled her eyes. “Theron, you are so corny.”

  “My audience loves me. Ssh, I need to hear the boy’s wish.”

  The young man looked around at the crowd, saw a group of girls giggling in a corner, smirked and picked up the bottle. “Djinni, make me irresistible to beautiful women.”

  “To hear is to obey, oh master.”

  Theron clicked his fingers and the young man vanished. In his place on the sand, a diamond glittered.

  The audience roared its approval of the joke. In the amusement, no one noticed a street mutt dash in, grab the bottle and run out. Plenty of people, though, dived for the diamond.

  The dog brought the bottle to Theron’s feet and dropped it. Theron rewarded the animal with a chunk of cheese.

  “It’s a waste of your talent,” Alexa said.

  “So you’ve told me.”

  “How long will the transformation last?”

  He shrugged. “Till sunset. Even my power can’t hold it longer.”

  But most angels couldn’t transform a living being into an inanimate object at all. She ate another date, moodily. “You could do so much good with your power—if you cared.”

  “I leave the caring to you, angel. Which reminds me, why are you here? To lecture me?”

  She snorted. “That would be as effective as watering the Sahara.”

  “True.”

  “That boy you turned into a diamond, he’s my charge. I knew he was about to do something foolish. I just didn’t know what.”

  “Instead he suffered nothing worse than ridicule-by-djinni. It’ll be character building for him.”

  “Being a diamond?”

  “All that glitters isn’t gold,” he murmured.

  “You know what I’d like to know.” She turned on him with sudden decision. “How can you be outside your bottle without anyone calling you out to deliver a wish?”

  “Talent.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “Oh, all right. It was centuries ago. An old woman owned my bottle and wished that someone would always listen to her and amuse her. Poor Ema. She held her family together through war and worse, but the price was their fear of her. She was lonely. I used her wish to pinprick a hole in Solomon’s curse. I can leave the bottle to entertain humans, but I’m still bound to it and to serving their wishes.”

  “So that’s why you play tricks. It gets you out of the bottle.”

  “No. Singing or dancing would get me out of the bottle. I play tricks because I enjoy them. I always have. It’s more fun to steal pleasure than to—” He pulled her into his arms and kissed her, his lips clever, assured and tasting faintly of coffee. “Ow.”

  She stamped on his foot a second time.

  “I was demonstrating a point.” He hopped, clutching his injured foot. “You have a tread like an elephant.”

  “And just what point were you demonstrating?”

  “The pleasure of stealing a kiss. I could have played on your sympathies. Did you know your blue eyes give away your every emotion? You were pitying me, tied to my bottle, cursed to serve humans for millennia. You’d have kissed me if I’d asked.”

  “In your dreams.”

  “No, in them you do more than kiss.”

  “Ooooh!”

  He vanished into his bottle.

  “Coward.” She kicked it.

  The bottle rolled in a circle.

  The dog yipped, chased the bottle, picked it up and departed for the shadowed market entrance.

  “The djinni and his talented performing dog.” She glanced around the market. Her charge, currently in diamond form, was the subject of fisticuffs. “Oh well.” Old rivalries seemed to be getting a hearing, but they wouldn’t hurt him. Diamonds could survive anything.

  A tiny smile curved the corners of her mouth. Come sunset, the victor of the fisticuffs would be in for an unwelcome surprise. He’d be minus a diamond, but he’d have a young man in his pocket.

  She laughed softly at Theron’s mischief and vanished.

  Chapter One

  Alexa stretched out on a cloud and hummed the chorus from last night’s performance of Elysian Stars. It was going to be a good day. One of her favorite charges was getting married. Kimi had earned her happiness, caring for elderly parents, and then, training as a teacher when they died.

  After Kimi’s wedding, Alexa decided she would pop down to Dubai. A certain hotel groundskeeper would, with a little more encouragement, administer a very salutary lesson to a spoilt princess. Alexa would have to contain the damage.

  “Remember to turn the cameras off,” she noted. “Maybe add hot chilies to the dinner menu?” If the princess’s father was dealing with heartburn, he’d be less inclined to indulge his daughter’s tantrums, especially if there was no evidence to support her claims of a spanking. After all, what groundskeeper (except the older brother of seven sisters) would dare to spank a princess? “That’ll teach her.”

  Princess-details dealt with, Alexa considered personal plans. Dubai was awfully close to Oman, where she’d last seen Theron.

  Anticipation sparkled through her veins. She could drop in on him. His crazy sense of humor would be a perfect end to the day.

  She sat up and crossed her legs under her as the sun quit thinking about rising and simply burst over the horizon to blast the world in gold. The cloud beneath her glimmered with the warm yellows and reds of new beginnings.

  The emotion she felt was unexpected, but the more she thought of Theron’s situation, the more she respected him. Cursed to serve humanity till freed by a human’s wish, he’d found a way to survive with dignity and without bitterness.

  “And he makes me laugh.” He provoked and teased and…she missed him. He’d become a friend and sin
ce he wasn’t free to visit her, she’d visit him.

  Decision made, she leapt up—and forgot to retain her lightened corporeal form. Both feet tore through the cloud and she tumbled in disarray through the clear, cold upper atmosphere.

  “Idiot.” She concentrated and rematerialized in her chambers in heaven. A quick bath, then she’d pin up her blonde hair and work out the intricacies of the kimono she’d chosen for Kimi’s wedding. Kimi wouldn’t see her, but Alexa liked to make the effort. She had a tendency—according to the Guardian Council—to become too emotionally involved in her charges’ lives.

  “Phooey to them.” She chose a cherry blossom soap and lathered up.

  The blue kimono, with its intricately embroidered pattern of dragons, felt awkward when she put it on, but two hours later, when Kimi smiled at her new husband, Alexa forgot all about her own discomfort. “Bless you, sweetie. Be happy.”

  She left the wedding party celebrating and popped back to heaven to shed the kimono and shrug into her familiar, comfortable clothes: silk shirt, tailored trousers, boots and her hair tied back in a ponytail.

  “Just in time.” She hitched herself onto a high concrete fence and contemplated the drama in the small courtyard garden. She checked quickly. Yup, the hose was prominently coiled, temptingly near the princess who was fast working herself into a state as Yusef ignored her and continued raking. “Four, three, two, one.”

  The princess squirted Yusef with the hose.

  Alexa grinned and slammed a noise containment spell around the courtyard as Yusef spanked and the princess shrieked. The two of them needed to learn that money and social class were less important than the indefinable rightness of being together.

  To Alexa’s surprise and satisfaction, the princess didn’t run tattling to daddy. She glared at Yusef, muttered something about “I’ll get you” and walked inside rubbing her butt.

  Yusef whistled and went back to raking.

  Next year they would both get a surprise if things stayed on track. Yusef would have his PhD in History and he’d be the princess’s tutor in her first year at university.

  “Changes, changes.” Life was forever changing. There was joy for the asking, if you had the courage to reach for it.

  Alexa flew down to Oman. She concentrated, trying to find Theron, but he was a djinni. It wasn’t like she could just call up his location on the angelic register. She scouted out from the market in northern Oman where she’d last seen him, and finally, tracked him to another market on the edge of the Empty Quarter Desert.

  “Ugh.” Her shudder wasn’t for the desert. It had rules. Respect them and you lived.

  No, the problem lay deeper in Dhofar, higher in the mountains, on the boundary of the Khareef, the local monsoon. The Dark Oasis was the one place she’d been defeated. It was owned by a dark mage, a clever, ruthless man whose only son was Alexa’s charge.

  “Sadiq.” Alexa sighed. Thirty one years old and behaving like a tabloid journalist’s notion of a playboy sheikh. He was on the Riviera at the moment, probably racing boats or cars or anything else that let him risk his life at high speed.

  When the boy was born, it hadn’t been too bad. Then Abbas, his father, was still learning what it meant to be a dark mage. The mage had rejected angelic guardianship for himself, but he hadn’t warded his home against the angels. Alexa had visited to check on Sadiq. But as the years passed and Abbas grew confident both in his dark magic and in the control he wielded over the oasis that had been his wife’s dowry, he set wards to keep angels from his home, from the town, and finally, from the whole oasis.

  For Sadiq, escape from the blight came through his father’s disinterest. When his mother died, he’d been sent to boarding school, and then, to university. He only rarely and briefly visited the oasis. Still, Alexa would have given a lot to be able to accompany him into that hellhole. With each visit, she feared he’d not return.

  “Enough.” She shook off the memories. Dhofar was a pleasant region, cooler than the arid north of Oman, with fishing and agriculture and a friendly, melting pot of peoples. The African, and particularly, Zanzibarian influence was clear, as was the Indian. Theron would have fun amusing the locals.

  She couldn’t be bothered changing costume or disguising her blonde hair, so she stayed invisible to humans and simply walked into the market. The old suq smelled of frankincense. Dhofar had long been famous for the resin. Omanis used it to scent their clothes and burned it to keep away mosquitoes. They even drank the incense-infused water.

  A goat, thoughtfully chewing someone’s lost scarf, dropped it to maa-aa a panicked bleat before head-butting Alexa’s knee in its panicked departure.

  She rubbed the knee and looked around for an irate, scarf-less man in hot pursuit. Instead, she saw Abbas.

  “Out here?” She didn’t believe it.

  The dark mage never left his stronghold. He had money and power enough that anything he wanted was brought to him. People included.

  The stench of dark magic rolled towards her, dampening the crowd’s happy chatter. They wouldn’t smell it—the copper of blood and the hellish brimstone—but on an unconscious level it made them uncomfortable.

  “Smart goat.” Their sensitivity to evil was one of the reasons goats were so often sacrificed. Dark mages didn’t like animals spooking the oblivious humans.

  The strength of the dark magic stench suggested Abbas had increased his personal wards for this rare venture beyond his territory.

  Times like these, I regret the Guardian Council. A rain of fire on Abbas’s unkempt head or a lightning strike would save the world a lot of—

  “Merde!”

  Only one thing would be worth Abbas leaving his dark oasis. There was only one thing he wouldn’t trust another to acquire for him: a djinni bottle.

  Theron, you idiot. She pushed through the crowd, bumping and bruising people who couldn’t see her and so gave their neighbors dirty looks.

  She thought of all the attention Theron had drawn. The Omanis were natural storytellers. They would have told of the amazing conjuror and his djinni act. They’d have smoked their skinny cigarettes and embellished tales of his hilarious tricks.

  Only Abbas, with his knowledge of magic and myth, would have believed the stories. If he’d studied the old legends he’d know of Solomon’s curse and the power of the djinn. A dark mage in command of a djinni was a recipe for disaster. Look what had happened to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon—it was a wasteland, now.

  She reached the center of the crowd and the small space where Theron performed. The bottle was there with the false smoke djinni billowing from it. Nearby sat the street mutt she’d seen before. It scratched an ear and looked bored—dogs were nowhere near as sensitive as goats to dark magic.

  “Thunder and storms,” she swore. Abbas was crossing the space and reaching for Theron’s bottle. “Theron!”

  She ran three steps and kicked at Abbas. Hitting his wards felt like slamming into a concrete barrier.

  His hand closed convulsively on the bottle. He fumbled for the stopper beside it.

  “Look after Mutt,” Theron said beside her. “He likes cheese.”

  She reached for him, but Abbas pushed the stopper into the bottle and Theron vanished.

  “Hey, mister, you can’t take—” The boy’s voice cut out as Abbas glared at him.

  Belatedly aware of danger, the crowd backed away. Abbas was one of those anomalies smart people worked around. His hair and beard were grey and straggly, but his clothes were rich and elaborate. Rich men made their own rules.

  Abbas walked to his car and the crowd parted for him.

  “I can take him.” The wards might protect him, but she could booby-trap the road. Or there was always a meteorite strike.

  “No.”

  She glanced around and saw Michael, a senior member of the Guardian Council.

  “We have rules for a reason,” he said.

  “That bastard has Theron.”

  “Rules, Alexa.”
Michael vanished.

  Rules, rules, rules. Free will, the laws of physics, non-interference. She knew why they existed. Humans had to command their own world and achieve salvation or damnation through their own choices.

  And the worse the human, the more an angel had to follow the rules. Because if she bent them, then the balance in the universe meant demons could bend them, too.

  “There are times I hate being a grown up.” The dog nudged her hand. She looked down at it. “You should have bitten Abbas.”

  The dog yipped.

  “Yeah. I expect he would have tasted bad. Come on.” The dog couldn’t accompany her to heaven, but then, she wasn’t going to heaven yet. Not till she had a plan for convincing the Guardian Council to let her take out Abbas. “We’re not leaving Theron with that bastard.”

  Chapter Two

  “No,” Michael said.

  The other six members of the Guardian Council echoed him.

  Alexa looked at the notes spread out before her, gathering her self-control. She understood their point of view, but she didn’t accept it. She would force them to see that Theron couldn’t be left in Abbas’s possession. As a djinni, his powers were simply too strong for a dark mage to be allowed to command them.

  “Guardian Alexa, your petition is dismissed.”

  “One nova strike,” she said. “It wouldn’t even have to kill Abbas, just break the wards on his home long enough for me to extract Theron.”

  “You are dismissed.” Michael stood.

  Her training held. She clamped her mouth closed on furious words and picked up her papers. She nodded in the briefest display of respect and walked out.

  Heaven was as peaceful and joyous as ever. From the opera forum came a glorious chorus of angelic voices. Sun shone on green spring grass starred with apple blossom petals.

  She scowled at the useless papers in her arms and used a touch of magic to turn them into butterflies which whirled up in a rainbow cloud before vanishing.

  And there went her plans for freeing Theron.