Djinn Justice (The Collegium Book 2) Read online

  She mightn’t be able to directly magick even an enslaved were, but she had techniques for working around that. But the bigger issue was Tarik’s use of their dream essences. How might he use that energy against Steve?

  The amulet was securely in her pocket as she raced back up the path, drawn by the sounds of combat.

  A mongoose-were leapt at her from the left. Fay didn’t bother with finesse. Her magic lashed out, seized an old tree and swatted the mongoose into unconsciousness. She strengthened her personal ward.

  As she approached the rainforest clearing where Uncle had translocated her and Narelle, Fay choked and dropped to her knees.

  This wasn’t magic. This was despair and evil, a miasma not even demons emanated. Demons were at least true to themselves. This was perversion and it ate through her ward.

  She staggered up, forcing herself forward, even as she fumbled to open her pocket and withdraw the amulet. No mage could translocate a person or even a living thing. The process killed it. But she’d gamble on translocating the amulet with its cargo of dream essences if she had to. Tarik couldn’t be allowed to claim it.

  In the clearing, despite the miasma of evil that overwhelmed Fay, Steve fought with speed and aggression. He fought to disable, though, which ought to have handicapped him. Except, the seven weres circling in front of him were hampered by lack of space in the crowded clearing and, it seemed, by a command to capture rather than kill Steve. A large gray wolf-were bled heavily from his right flank. An elephant-were, monstrously large, stomped and sidled uneasily in the background.

  And all the time, the horrifically wrong energy pulsed at Fay and Steve. Nothing had ever weakened Fay as this did.

  Poison.

  The Ancient Egyptian spell had warned of claws tipped in poison. What if the poison wasn’t physical, but psychical?

  Fay stared at the amulet she held. She dissolved her containment spell and the leaking dream essences poured over her hand and down to pool on the rainforest floor. It was so hard to think.

  If she destroyed the amulet, then surely Tarik’s control of that energy would cease. Wouldn’t it? On the other hand, she could almost guarantee that released so suddenly and catastrophically into this unstable environment, the enslaved weres’ dream essences would never return to them. The channel of their essences had been twisted and eroded. In effect, she’d kill them.

  Barbara had been freed quietly, carefully and with her home territory sustaining her. A violent dissolution of the spell would be very different.

  And what if the perversion of Tarik, the “bloated toad” with the shrunken heart that the ancient spell warned of, remained even after the amulet was destroyed? What if the amulet were no more than an unnecessary prop used by an untrained rogue mage? The containment of Narelle’s magic hadn’t affected it. What if the pattern of the spell truly self-sustained? There were a few rare spells—used only in extremis by reputable mages—that only ceased with the spell caster’s death.

  The elephant-were charged.

  Steve sprang sideways, but the wolf-were was there, forcing him back. Steve twisted and jumped. The elephant-were’s tusk sliced his right side. The wolf-were attacked. Two jaguar-weres pounced.

  Fay was out of options. Her own magic felt pitted, attacked in the way saltwater rusted iron, but faster. She had to use it now before the perverted energy drawn from the weres’ dream essences weakened her further.

  No second chances.

  She called the weather to her. A whirling tornado tore up trees, grass and dirt, filling the clearing with chaos. In the middle of it—and holding her concentration against the perverted energy pulsing at her was as hard as banishing a demon, and at least with that, she’d had practice—Fay shimmered a protective shell around Steve and herself, one that sheltered them from the whirling debris and turned them invisible. She wouldn’t be able to hold it for long.

  Along the mate-bond, which remained amazingly clear amid the chaos, she sent a mental call to Steve, praying that he wouldn’t be stubbornly heroic. “Run. Run with me.”

  They hurtled through the rainforest, Steve running before her, choosing and securing their path, ignoring the plants that tore at his leopard-were form. She flung her magic into intensifying the storm behind her. Its chaos and the damage to the rainforest were terrible, but it blocked pursuit.

  And as they fled down the mountain, the pressure of the twisted energy Tarik commanded lessened. Despite bruises and scrapes, and her worry for the blood Steve was losing, Fay felt better able to cope.

  Steve shifted to human. His clothes were torn and swiftly soaked with blood. He pressed a hand to his side. “There’s a compound. They’ll expect us. A portal exists in the third hut.”

  She nodded. “We’ll be invisible and warded. The bullets will bounce.” She had enough strength for one last major magic.

  “Physical attack?” Blood seeped from between his fingers. He’d fight, but he knew his ability to defend her was compromised.

  “I’ll burn them,” she said grimly. For a demon summoner—and that was her strongest talent, even if she used the reverse of it to banish demons—fire was the easiest element to call.

  She cloaked them as Steve moved off. There was no time to waste. He needed a healer. Her magic couldn’t touch him, a were.

  The compound had razed the rainforest around it. If she hadn’t been able to cloak herself and Steve, they’d have been instantly visible—and dead. Alerted no doubt by radio contact and the storm trailing down the mountain behind her, the compound’s residents raked the mountain-side perimeter with gunfire.

  It was freaky to watch bullets bounce off the air around you. Collegium guardian trainees first experienced paintball attack, then rubber bullets, before advancing to live fire. Fay held her magic under the assault.

  But the bouncing bullets served a purpose for the enemy. They revealed Fay and Steve’s presence. Someone shouted. Smart, very smart. A hose came on, the water hitting the warding and pinpointing them. Nonetheless, Fay held onto the invisible spell.

  The gunfire ceased and weres emerged in animal form from the concrete block buildings of the compound. They ran at Fay and Steve.

  “Third building.” His reminder came from behind gritted teeth. He was weakening despite his steady run. “They’ll be protecting it.”

  “More fool them.” Fay had nothing left to lose. She called fire, and it ringed her and Steve, flaring high despite the hose stream of water.

  The weres recoiled.

  And then, the fire vanished.

  Except, it hadn’t. This was a trick from her teenage years. One practiced in private and safely distant from everyone. She compressed the fire. Slammed it tighter and tighter before releasing it suddenly—inside the third building.

  A muffled boom echoed from within the third building. The fire had exploded. Its sudden release would have rendered everyone waiting inside unconscious, even as it extinguished the flames for lack of oxygen. It would have been a problem if she and Steve needed a porter to help them navigate the in-between, but she had a token.

  She clasped Steve’s hand as they entered the ruin of the third building. They jumped around and over fallen bodies, not slowing as they reached the portal. With weres in pursuit, growling and menacing, they ran into the circle of the portal and the in-between claimed them.

  There was no up or down, no right or left. No direction or path. Everything spiraled.

  Fay hated the in-between. Being handed from porter to porter made traversing it a thing of seconds. Without porters to courier them, they could be lost forever. Although a few portal-less porters did provide retrieval services.

  Conscious that Steve didn’t have time to spare—his wound needed tending now—Fay withdrew the seashell token her stepfather had given her. In the in-between, tokens would bring a non-porter safely to the portal from which the token had been charged. Fay didn’t understand the magic, but she didn’t need to.

  The pull of the shell token brought her
and Steve to Jim’s Australian portal within a minute.

  Jim, himself, was still hurrying down the ladder to his cellar-located portal. “Fay? Bloody hell, Steve.”

  “Explanations later,” Fay said. “We need to get to Alexandria. Can you hand us on to Faroud?” At the fortress there’d be healers for Steve, people who knew how to treat weres. Nor did she want Tarik and his evil coming through to Jim.

  “Of course.” He grasped her hand and shouted into the portal. “Faroud?”

  “What do you want?” Faroud sounded distracted.

  “I have Fay and Steve. Steve’s wounded.”

  “Send them through.”

  “Jim.” Fay stared at him. “Don’t let anyone in.”

  “Don’t worry about us, darl.” The Australian accent was confident. A porter had the power of his portal to draw on for protection.

  It was why Fay had needed to render the porter at the Mountains of the Moon unconscious in the explosion. She gripped Jim’s hand. “Say hi to Mom.”

  Faroud’s hand replaced Jim’s. The in-between whirled only a second before Fay and Steve stepped out into the vaulted chamber beneath the Alexandrian fort.

  People were running down the cellar stairs. A full, and open, medical kit stood beside a stretcher.

  Steve glanced at the preparations, then back at Fay. “I think we’re expected.”

  Chapter 10

  Safe. Stepping out of the portal and into the cool security of the fort flooded Fay with relief. It wasn’t only safe. It was sane. The evil of Tarik’s mountain retreat hadn’t been able to follow them through the portal. Yet. Tarik’s porter was likely unconscious still from the fire explosion. She’d have asked Faroud to guard the portal, but Steve got there first.

  “Let no one through, Faroud. Not even weres.” Steve scanned the assembling crowd. His gaze stopped at the competent middle-aged woman Fay had met two days ago. “Lilith, I want guards here. Minimum of two by the portal. Constant tech surveillance.”

  A medic had scissors and cut off Steve’s shirt. The older man’s breath hissed as the long, deep gash was revealed. “Damn it, Steve. Lie down.”

  But Steve’s gaze went over the medic’s head, finding his grandfather as Tomy descended the stairs. “I’m fine, Granddad.”

  “Gored by an elephant-were,” Fay elaborated.

  Hurried footsteps approached from the direction of the elevator. Mrs. Jekyll. “Steve, my darling.”

  He caught her fluttering hands. “I’m safe, Grand-mère. Fay brought me home.”

  “Your side!”

  He was steadily losing blood even as the medic swabbed his side, muttering.

  “For heaven’s sake, Steve, lie down!” Fay exclaimed.

  Steve scowled at her.

  The medic gave her a wry, sympathetic grin. “I’m Doctor Singh. The problem with us weres is that we have a higher tolerance for pain. So we’ll fight on past reason. I’ve seen the aftermath. People I couldn’t help because they fought on with death wounds rather than having them treated. People who stupidly resisted treatment after the fight ended.”

  Steve winced as the doctor probed the wound. “All right. I’ll lie down.” He climbed gingerly onto the stretcher. “I don’t need an audience.”

  People shuffled but didn’t retreat. They looked from Steve to Fay, and back again.

  “Go!” Lilith snapped and drove them up the stairs ahead of her. A man and woman stayed on guard, their attention nominally for the portal, but sliding sideways to the action around the stretcher.

  Faroud, the porter, pulled up a chair and sat. Whatever his own defensive preparations, he intended to stay on duty.

  Mrs. Jekyll fussed, peering at Doctor Singh’s work and criticizing it.

  Mr. Jekyll stood tall and gaunt, gray-faced at the foot of the stretcher.

  Fay looked around, saw no other chairs, and sat on the ground. She leaned back against the wall. She had her own hurts, minor ones, that were making themselves known as her adrenaline levels tapered off. Grazes and bruises, a couple of deeper scratches.

  “Keep still,” Doctor Singh said.

  Steve had turned his head to find her. “You need medical attention, too.”

  “A hot shower and some antiseptic cream.”

  “I’ll check her after I’ve finished with you,” Doctor Singh said.

  Reassured, Steve relaxed—as much as he could relax with his wound being stitched. At least he stayed still.

  “How bad is it?” Fay asked.

  Doctor Singh answered. “A day for the wound to seal, if he stays in bed. Twenty four hours bed rest. Then another day or two where it’ll tear easily. After that, it’ll be sore but functional.”

  “I don’t have three days,” Steve said.

  The absolute conviction in his voice shocked Fay. He wasn’t simply being tough. What had he seen or what had Tarik done to him? She closed her mouth on the questions. He couldn’t talk freely till they were alone.

  “That wretched meddling djinn.” Mrs. Jekyll burst into tears.

  Doctor Singh put a hand on Steve’s shoulder, holding him down.

  Mr. Jekyll walked around the stretcher and gathered his wife to him. “We’ve been worried about you. You vanished from Faroud’s hold. No one knew where to. So we contacted Fay.”

  “No other stinking goat porter will steal a person from me, again,” Faroud swore. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. You were wrenched away from me and the person was fast. They were gone, lost in the swirling alleys of the in-between before I could follow you.”

  “If it happens again, you’re fired,” Mrs. Jekyll said.

  Faroud stood. He’d seemed a harmless man, with his old hippie vibe, but as shadows swirled from the portal and filled the immense underground chamber, that changed. “The portal is mine.”

  “Yes, it is,” Fay said. “Thank you for accepting our return.”

  He hesitated, his attention distracted from the Jekyll family. They might take a porter for granted, but he wasn’t theirs to control. He could refuse them, or all weres, the use of his portal. “I have heard of the Australian porter by reputation. He is crazy but honest. Very wealthy. Who is he to you?”

  “Jim is my stepfather.” She was aware of Mrs. Jekyll’s sobs ceasing so that the old lady could listen into the conversation.

  “He found you,” Faroud said flatly, evidently envisaging that Jim had succeeded in pursuing Steve’s kidnapper where he’d failed.

  “No. I had a token from Jim. It returned me to his portal in Fremantle.” Fay showed Faroud the seashell.

  Faroud swung on Steve. “This is what I tell you. Take a cord, tie it on you. It will bring you home.”

  “I will in future.” Steve’s voice had lost its usual resonance. “We’ve never been threatened this way before.”

  Doctor Singh finished stitching and began bandaging the wound.

  Fay closed her eyes. Three days before Steve was fit to pursue Tarik. She doubted that Steve would wait that long or that Tarik would be obliging enough to hang fire till they could fight him. She concentrated on the magic coiled within her. Perhaps it was that Faroud’s emotional disturbance had caused the portal’s magic to flare up and spillover, or perhaps, under the influence of the evil miasma of Tarik’s energy, she’d misjudged her own capacity for further magic, but it was there, renewed, within her. It was magic enough and to spare to heal Steve—if he hadn’t been were and immune to magic.

  With her eyes closed, her mage sight flickered and flashed, and coalesced into a golden rope. The mate-bond as she’d seen it while fighting for their lives in the rainforest. Not magic, but dream essence, emotional truth.

  Fay opened her eyes. The mate-bond was still visible to this sight, faint and transparent, kissing the world with opal fire. She pulsed the golden power of her magic along it. Heal, Steve.

  His head snapped around.

  She met his gaze. “It’s worth trying.”

  “What are you doing?” Mr. Jekyll sounded wary. �
��What are you trying? We are grateful to you for Steve’s return, but…”

  The two guards on duty looked away from the portal to Fay. There was mistrust and a readiness to attack in their tense stance.

  Doctor Singh lifted his hands off Steve’s body. He’d been wiping away the blood on a smaller wound, a gash on the outer side of Steve’s right arm. “It’s healed.” He swiped gauze over the spot. “Impossible.”

  “What are you muttering about?” Mrs. Jekyll pushed in.

  Steve sat up. “Fay, is this hurting you?”

  “No. Not at all. No more energy draw than minor magic.”

  “It feels a lot more than minor.” Steve slipped off the stretcher and stood a moment, assessing something.

  For Fay, the mate-bond resisted more power being sent along it. She stopped. For her, this was new. She was being forced to trust her instincts rather than her training in magic.

  Steve walked across to her, grasped her hand and pulled her up from the floor.

  “Be careful!” Mrs. Jekyll shrieked. “Your side.”

  Steve ripped off his bandage. The skin of his wound was pink and healed. Even as they watched, the pink faded to a healthy, normal color.

  Doctor Singh sighed. “I expect you want me to take the stitches out now.”

  “In a minute.” Steve lowered his head and kissed Fay.

  There weren’t words for the kiss. It wasn’t simply passion or need, hunger or claiming. It wasn’t even mere relief or joy at their survival. Nor was it gratitude. It was all of those things and something more fundamental: their mate-bond, the rightness of being together. The promise that this was them, now and forever.

  It was the sort of kiss that set the bells pealing, sealing a marriage ceremony.

  “How did you do this?” Mr. Jekyll interrupted. “How did you heal him? He shouldn’t be touched by magic. Has that changed? Are weres vulnerable?”

  “Fay healed me through our mate-bond. Not by magic. By love.” Steve’s smile was in his eyes; his hands on her face, cherishing.

  “That is metaphysical nonsense,” Mrs. Jekyll snapped.