Djinn & Tonic (The Houri Legends: Book 2), page 23
Carson dropped the pistol, the useless weapon of modernity, stalked forward toward Hassan with that most ancient of weapons, his own fists. He heard his name called as if from a great distance, felt adrenaline slowing his sight, turned to see Ibrahim tossing the sword from the study wall, the ancient, priceless blade. Carson caught it, drew the sheath free, and tossed it aside, marveling at the perfect weight, the feather-light balance of the blade.
A dozen feet separated Hassan from Carson, but they flashed underneath Carson’s feet in a single impossible bound, blade slicing down to split Hassan’s arm from his shoulder, the disembodied limb dropping to the ground still flaming, still flexing fiery fingers, still grasping for Carson. A sidestep and a swipe of the sword, barely missing Hassan’s head, and then Carson felt a fist impact his chest to hurtle him across the now charred sward of once-grass, skin sizzling and smoking, branded with a fist-mark. He rolled to a stop, gasping, heaving, agony shooting through him, sword still clutched in white-knuckled fingers.
The crowd was wild now, yelling for it to stop, but no one heeded, not Ibrahim and Leena holding their still screaming daughter back, not one-armed Hassan bellowing and clawing for Carson, and not the lone human wielding a sword and facing an ifrit twice his size. Fear was stamped on Carson’s features, it pumped through his veins with his blood, but he refused to give in to it. He took the fear and transformed it into fury, charged at Hassan with the sword stabbing forward for the wide, heaving chest.
Hassan pivoted aside at the last moment, plunged his claws into Carson’s back, grinning evil glee as a scream of pain burst from Carson’s lips. Hassan withdrew his talons and stepped back, evidently assuming he’d won.
Carson stumbled, used the sword to prop himself up, feeling fire and blood leak from his back, feeling his strength sap. He cursed, marshaled his strength, turned to face Hassan once more. He pushed the sight of the hysterical, weeping Leila from his mind, knowing he couldn’t spare a thought for anything but a final, fatal strike.
A single, tremulous step, a second and third, pretending to a deceptive frailty. Hassan stood his ground, not seeing a threat.
“You are a fool, little human,” Hassan sneered.
“Perhaps,” Carson answered, lifting the sword to rest the dull edge on his shoulder and taking another step. “But I know something you never will.”
“What’s that, then?”
“The taste of Leila on my lips.”
Hassan roared in fury, charged at Carson, who expected this, backed up, and kept Hassan from seeing the portal being summoned just behind him by Nadira. Carson let Hassan crash into him, accepting the torment of flames licking at his skin and hair and face, using the proximity to plunge the sword to the hilt into Hassan’s chest.
The ifrit stumbled back in surprise and Carson kicked him, using the last of his strength to push Hassan through the portal. The world on the other side was one of fire, an ancient vision of hell, a lake of blue-white-yellow-orange fire, the sky blood-red, jagged black claws of mountains skewering the sky, bat-winged demons soaring through curtains of flame.
Falling backward, arms pinwheeling, Hassan screamed, flailed, grabbed for the edge of the portal and caught it with desperate claws. Carson approached the portal, sliced at Hassan’s remaining arm, severing it.
Even as he fell away, Hassan spouted a spume of flame at Carson, enveloping him.
The portal closed, and Carson fell to the blackened earth. Nadira fell upon him in elemental form, dousing the flames, then returned to her human shape and ran blue-glowing hands over him, water sinking into charred flesh and healing it.
Leila broke free from her parents and rushed to his side, weeping, sobbing, kissing his cracked lips. Carson’s eyes were slitted open, and he saw Leila above him, a white-gowned angel with tender lips.
“His lungs are scorched,” Nadira said. “I can heal them, but they won’t work on their own.” Leila nodded, seeming to understand what Nadira was suggesting.
Carson gasped, struggling for breath, each pulse of his lungs searing pain through him. His vision was fading, his body no longer blackened meat but still throbbing. He clutched for Leila’s hand, feeling his breath fail him.
Her eyes were locked on his, and he heard her whisper his name, heard her whisper the three words that made it all worthwhile:
“I love you.”
Darkness consumed him.
Chapter 20: Words of Sealing
Leila watched him fall, and something inside her broke, died. Her parents let her go, finally, and she was at his side, kissing him, desperate and pleading with him to live, to breathe, to be okay. She didn’t think he heard her, but he was looking at her with fading brown eyes full of love. He’d done all this for her. He fought Hassan and won, for her.
He did the impossible, for her.
And now he was dying, for her.
Leila denied it. Refused it.
No.
Nadira ran watery hands over him, magic-laced liquid drunk by charred flesh. His skin healed at her touch, his hairless scalp pinking and sprouting brown follicles, muscles regaining their mass. His eyes, however, retained their dying, fading listlessness, the encroaching darkness clouding his gaze. Leila couldn’t even speak, couldn’t make words form. All she could do was kiss him, weeping, as Nadira healed him to the best of her abilities.
Finally, she leaned back on her knees, shrugged her shoulders, and brushed flyaway hair from her sweating face. Nadira had exhausted herself today, pushed herself beyond capacity. She was near to fainting herself, and Leila knew the djinni woman could do no more.
Carson wasn’t breathing right, gasping for breath and shuddering with every lungful. His eyes latched onto her, and she refused to look away from the death in them.
Nadira was talking, saying something about scorched lungs that Leila barely registered. Sound was a buzz hovering around me.
Then Nadira shook Leila, forced their eyes to meet. “I can heal his lungs,” she said. “But he doesn’t have enough strength to make them work. Look at me, Leila. You have to help him. You have to be his breath.”
Shock ran through Leila as she realized what Nadira was suggesting. It was possible, but she wasn’t sure if it had ever been done or if it would work. Nadira closed her eyes, touched her index and middle finger to his nostrils and her thumb to his parted lips, sending a rivulet of her essence into him through the contact, sighing as her strength faded. Nadira collapsed, unconscious, and now Leila was alone with Carson.
She looked down at him, and her heart broke into even smaller pieces.
He was still breathing, but barely, his breath coming in slow, long-spaced puffs. His heart still beat, but barely. Carson’s fingers clutched Leila’s weakly, as if holding to her was synonymous with holding to life. Carson was slipping away from her.
She had to summon the power to save him.
“I love you,” she whispered.
His eyes fluttered, met hers once more, then rolled back. His breathing stopped.
No, no, no. Pleasegodno.
She took his face in her hands, pressed her forehead to his, and delved down within to the sea of magic. It surged to her command, but she knew it wouldn’t be enough. Not for this. Desperation ripped through her. It had to be enough. This had to work. She couldn’t lose him.
A whimper escaped from her lips, the sound of abject desperation.
A swish of skirts, and then Leila felt a presence beside her, the cool hardness of her mother. Leena put a hand to her daughter’s shoulder, and a surge of power ebbed from mother to child, and thence into Carson.
It wasn’t enough.
Leila drew deeper from herself, pulled harder at the siphon from her mother; she hoarded the power, wrapped herself into it, curled it around her soul like a shimmering cloak.
Carson’s breath shuddered, ragged and fading. Time was nearly out. Leila clutched the power and dredged up the strength to turn incorporeal. She felt the edges of her body fade and meld with the gentle breeze. The fading spread through her, and she matched her breathing to the rhythm of the wind. Between one moment and the next she transitioned from woman to zephyr, and as a breath of wind she clutched in slippery fingers a ball of thrumming magic.
Before she could question the wisdom of the act, Leila forced herself into Carson’s nostrils and mouth and down into his lungs, where she let the magic burgeon and expand, filling in the spaces and pushing against the walls of his lungs. The wounds had been healed by Nadira’s ministrations, but too late. Carson’s lungs were still and deflated, and now Leila had to force them back into motion.
She swelled and pushed against the walls of his lungs, spreading herself in every direction, darting through bronchi and bronchioles and alveoli, splitting her form smaller still to enter his bloodstream and into cells, pushing, pushing, forcing his body to resume motion, forcing his blood to pump, forcing his lungs to bellow open and closed. In weary, desperate circles she flowed within him, willing his body to work, willing him to live.
If Leila could have sobbed, she would. If she could have begged, she would. But wind, motion, and air had no words, no identity. This was the danger in her action: She risked losing herself inside him; she risked becoming mere air, spreading too thin until there was no I, until there was no way to re-gather into a single, discrete entity.
The strain of retaining her sense of self was beginning to tell. She had a few moments more before she lost herself entirely. Leila pulsed the circuit once more and felt his body respond, the various systems beginning to churn on their own with sluggish but growing life. Leila withdrew from the smallest particles, slowly and carefully, until she was once again a breath of wind in his now-pumping lungs.
Out into the sunlight she flurried, and it took the last dregs of her strength to regain human form.
Carson gasped, sitting up and heaving in desperate lungfuls.
Leila was limp and swooning on the ground, but she took joy in his life. He regained his senses after a fit of coughing. He saw both Nadira and Leila on the ground, turned to look around himself at the stunned crowd, at Ibrahim and Leena, and finally back to Leila. Hassan was gone and the portal closed.
He knelt beside Leila, scooped her up, and sat cross-legged with her in his arms. “You are my breath,” he murmured in her ear.
She didn’t know he’d heard that. Maybe he hadn’t—maybe he’d come to that understanding on his own. She didn’t know, didn’t care. All she knew was his arms around her, the tender, impassioned touch of his lips on hers.
“I love you, Leila,” he said, and she knew he’d heard her whisper those words to him just before he died.
* * *
A crackling, rasping voice broke the silence. “There must be a Sealing.” It was the officiant, insistent and hunched. “The magic demands a Sealing. The groom is absent, so the burden must be passed.”
He looked to Carson, and Leila’s heart clenched as she realized what he was saying.
There had to be a marriage. The nature of the Sealed Contract was such that the terms must be fulfilled immediately, or the penalty for breaching it would occur at midnight.
There had to be a marriage.
Everyone was looking to Leila, to Carson, expectant. Panic filled her. It was too soon. She loved him, and they’d both saved each other’s lives, and so much more, but…marriage? An ifrit marriage, especially a Sealed one, was not merely a legal agreement. It was permanent, magically binding.
Her eyes found Carson’s, and she expected to see equal panic in his eyes when he realized what the officiant was saying.
Instead, she saw…acceptance. Love. Knowledge. He’d known this would happen. She looked at her father, who was nodding and smiling, and at her mother, who seemed as confused as Leila.
Her strength returned gradually and she sat up. “You…knew?” Leila searched his eyes, felt his hands tangle in her hair and fingers. “This was the plan all along? Banish Hassan and marry me?”
Carson nodded. “The Contract must be fulfilled. There has to be a Sealing.” He smiled and kissed her. “But if we’re going to do this, we should do it right, shouldn’t we?”
His eyes twinkled and shone as he stood up with Leila still in his arms, lifting her effortlessly. He kissed her again, deeply, and set her down. He looked at Leila, then the crowd gathered around, only the Najafi clan now that Aida had vanished with hers.
He lowered himself to a knee and took Leila’s hands in his. Her heart throbbed in her chest as she realized what he was doing. Father handed Carson a ring, one Leila recognized: It sat in a glass case in her father’s study, a relic and family heirloom. It was Ibrahim’s mother’s ring, and it was even older than he was. It wasn’t a diamond, but rather a huge sapphire set in a slim gold band. Leila’s breath caught as he showed it to her.
“Leila Najafi…” He hesitated, licked his lips, took a deep breath, and continued. “Will you marry me?”
Leila was sure she’d wept all her tears over the last few days and weeks, but she was wrong. Her vision blurred as she nodded, unable to speak.
“Yes, my love. Yes.” Her words were stuttered and cracked, but Carson obviously heard them.
He slipped the ring onto her finger, where it fit as if made for her. Leila laughed and sobbed and hiccupped, lifting him up to his feet and throwing her arms around him.
“Are you sure?” she asked, whispering in his ear. She pulled back, searching his eyes for doubt or hesitation. She saw none. “This isn’t—”
“I know,” Carson interrupted. “Your dad explained it. I know what it means. I know it’s permanent, magically binding and forever. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love you, Leila. It’s crazy…but right. Everything between us, it all happened so quickly, but it’s just…perfect and natural and right. I can’t remember what my life was like before you, and I can’t picture my life without you. I don’t want to. Not ever.”
Carson took Leila’s face in his strong, gentle hands, kissed her with furious, trembling passion. She felt her soul rise up to meet his, felt the essence of all she was, natural, magical and elemental, all tangling about him. When she healed him, forcing his lungs to breathe, she’d left a portion of herself inside him. When they made love back in Detroit—what felt like weeks ago but was only days, not even that much—she knew part of her essence was imbued in him then as well. She felt him inside her, tangled in her heart and mind and soul. A new kind of power surged through Carson, a glowing fragment of ifriti power in his veins.
Leila looked closely at him and saw his eyes glowing slightly, white with ifriti magic. He had absorbed some of her nature. He knew it, too. He was smiling and laughing as he felt the wind skirling around and blowing through them, teasing and tangling and twining with semi-sentient playfulness.
She wasn’t sure how they got there, but they were both standing in front of the officiant, the arch rising above them, the flowers somehow changed from lilies to irises, a few violets here and there. Leila knew that was her mother’s touch, lending color and hints of herself to everything. She looked around and saw the same touch everywhere, hints of purple touching everything. Leena herself stood a few feet away, smiling for once, a genuine, loving smile, and her father, too, his arm wrapped around his wife’s waist in a rare gesture of affection.
Leila saw the strangeness of it all in their faces, but they were happy enough that they’d escaped the specter of forced alliance to the al-Jabiri clan. Leila pushed those thoughts away, as well as the knowledge that they’d started a war on several fronts, most likely.
She turned back to Carson, who hadn’t taken his eyes off her. Leila’s dress was smudged and filthy from kneeling in the ash next to Carson, who was clad in only a pair of Levis and scuffed combat boots. All of the al-Jabiri clan had left. Leila’s family and her extended clan sat on the bride’s side, filling the chairs. The groom’s side was totally empty. That was apropos, Leila realized: He had no one.
Nadira was awake and smiling. She sat on the groom’s side. “I’ll fill in for your family,” she said. Carson nodded, and Leila could tell that knowing he had no family to attend his wedding, abrupt or not, was still painful.
The officiant looked around at everyone.
“Who offers the bride in marriage?” he asked, voice reedy and weak and heavily accented.
“We do,” Ibrahim and Leena said together.
“Who stands in witness for the groom?”
Nadira rose and came up to the dais. “I guess I will,” she said.
“Very well,” the officiant intoned. “Let the bride be offered and the groom be witnessed.”
Mother and father spoke in unison: “We offer this bride, pure and willing, into the Seal of Wedlock.”
Leila saw confusion cross Carson’s face. He’d expected the typical American church ceremony wedding, and this was definitely not that. She squeezed his hands and smiled at him.
Nadira recited her part flawlessly: “I stand in witness for this man, bearing testimony to the purity of his troth.”
The officiant nodded in approval, waving a purple-veined hand; Leila’s parents and Nadira took their seats. Now it was only Carson and Leila standing face to face. She felt the magic of the Sealing swirling and coiling around them, pushing through them, preparing to bind them.
“Repeat my words, groom,” the officiant commanded. He spoke the words of Sealing, echoed by Carson. “Under the light of the sun, in the sight of these witnesses…I pledge my troth of my own free will…I offer my life from this day until the ending of my breath…In love and loyalty…I Seal myself, heart and mind and body and soul…to this my bride for all of time…may the thread of my life be cut …if my pledge be broken in word or deed.”
Carson’s voice was strong and confident as he repeated the words. Leila heard the promise in his voice. She knew he understood what he was agreeing to, knew he offered himself to her wholeheartedly. There were no reservations or doubts in his eyes burning into hers, no hesitation in his voice as he Sealed himself to Leila. When the last word was spoken, the letters rose up from the pages of the officiant’s book, glowing cursive script floating with semi-sentient purpose to surround Carson in a skein of words, in a train of binding. Burrowing into his skin, into his temples and his chest, the magic entered Carson and tangled with the essence of his being, residing there and waiting for the Seal to be completed.
