Fire Water (Black Magic Outlaw Book 5) Page 24

"It doesn't have to come to this," I urged. "We were allies once."

  "That ended the moment you laid the Horn at Connor's feet."

  "I'm here to get it back. I'm here to free you."

  The Spaniard raised his sword to my face. "That is not the will of my master."

  He swiped across my neck. I jolted backward with heightened speed. The maneuver was easy, actually, but the Spaniard wasn't rebuffed. He dashed forward with me, slashing several times in quick succession. I dodged each one but the last. A well-timed blow came down hard toward my head at the end of my stride. I held up my left forearm and the side-sword struck the tattoo. The marking flared to life and the clang of metal echoed through the valley.

  But the wraith, ever familiar with my technique, slid the blade down my arm and caught the end of my shoulder. His spiritual sword cut into a black wing before I could pull away. Pain shot through me. The wound threatened to dislodge my magic. The Spaniard was attempting to clip my wings.

  As I had done in the Aether, I folded the darkness into a blade that extended from my hand. Purple and black energy throbbed into my own shimmering sword. I brought the point into the air and held it firm against my opponent. If the Spaniard's barren skull had eyelids, they'd have been wide open right now. We measured each other for a long moment.

  He feinted to one side and then spun away and attacked the other. My shadow blade deflected his strike. I pulled him to the side, using his momentum to draw him off balance. The maneuver was executed well enough, but it was difficult to unseat ghostly apparitions who had no need to stand on the ground.

  For my part, I had reflexes like never before. Slash, thrust, parry—I matched the Spaniard in a well-choreographed bout. Our weapons clashed and scraped in beautiful staccato. All the while, I kept watchful attention on Connor Hatch.

  He listed on his hands and knees as he surveyed the battleground. His cartel was decimated, the zombies torn asunder. The arbiters strafed and struck at the Bone Saints, but the wights still possessed the power of the Spaniard. Their curses weren't so easy to wash away. They fended off the natives with ease.

  And then there were the Taíno. Without the army bending them to mercy, some scrambled to their feet and made for the safety of their cave. Jean-Louis Chevalier rounded up some unfortunates and herded them back in place, but they were slipping through the cracks.

  Connor was witnessing his power shaken.

  Then there was me going toe to toe with his secret weapon. Swords clashed in the rain, each deflection a reminder of my own power.

  The jinn started laughing like a madman.

  "You think all my planning undone?" he raved. "You think I care for the human lives you destroy?" Connor pulled himself out of the water and balled his hands into fists. The moisture steamed off him as he burst into flames. The sudden fire reminded me of the vision of the Spaniard being burned at the stake.

  Except, I knew, ifrits couldn't burn.

  Connor screamed and yelled as the flames grew around him. Not just up his arms but down his whole body. The water boiled. His hair and beard pulsed with energy. He was going full Super Saiyan.

  "Let them all die," he screamed. His voice raked through his throat. "Let them all burn in this Taíno hell. I can buy a new boat. I can hire new help and find new necromancers." Connor paused, madness in his eyes. "And I can kill you as many times as it takes, Cisco Suarez."

  Fire pulsed in his hands. A sword of his own extended, this one pure flames. It was a large two-handed number. It looked like a holy weapon from the crusades bathed in hellfire. A beautiful paradox.

  I batted the Spaniard's side-sword away and rolled to meet Connor's incoming blow. The heavy overhead strike attempted to cleave me in two, but shadow met fire in full force. The entire valley flashed.

  As we held our blades together, the wraith advanced on me. I erected a wall of darkness but he passed through it with barely a hand wave.

  I clenched my jaw and sapped more of Opiyel's power. Here, in his world, it was plentiful. My sword grew another blade, downward, like a staff with blades on either end. I kicked Connor in the stomach to buy some room and spun the weapon horizontally around me to keep them both at bay.

  The two of them organized and fought me as partners. Their first strategy was standing at opposite sides of me and closing in unison. I blocked the jinn's claymore with my arm and jutted my staff at the wraith. He knocked the end away. I spun and faced him, swiping him with the far blade. It glanced off the side of his breastplate, leaving a deep scar. When Connor recovered his slow weapon, I pulled my staff straight back past me and forced him away.

  My new power was a temporary advantage, but both my enemies were tacticians. They protected themselves first and foremost and had the endurance to match mine. Their attacks grew more coordinated. Each time we traded strikes, they advanced closer past my guard.

  I was mostly afraid of Connor's heavy weapon so I made sure to keep away from it. That framed their next strategy. The Spaniard became a quick study at guessing where and how I would dodge Connor's blows. The trade-off for not receiving a back-breaking strike was allowing several cuts and slashes into my armory wings. The shadow armor, the arbiters, even Opiyel—none of us could easily shrug off the jinn and the wraith. Alone they were strong. Together they were... winning.

  Despite being an open valley, the battlefield quickly grew claustrophobic. I ducked the wraith's sword and spun my staff in an arc. At the end of my twirl, I feinted at Connor with a thrust. Instead of going for a stab, I pulled back and swiped the strap around his neck. The Horn leaped through the air and into my hands. Then I spread my wings tall and wide and shot into the sky.

  "It will do you no good, Cisco!" yelled the jinn, staring up at me. The distance between us grew. A jinn, stripped from the sky. It was like he'd said. He must've hated not being able to fly.

  The wraith was a different story. He ascended after me, leading with his side-sword.

  "This isn't you!" I called after him. "You hate forcing souls into service. That's against everything you learned in your prison."

  "What do you know?" he snapped.

  Our blades clashed. Thunder cracked in unison. The roiling clouds all around us lit up with electricity.

  "The soul catcher. You hated what he did. What he represented. Connor seeks to steal power the same way. Instead of a glass jar, he's entrapping the entire island."

  The Spaniard alternated strikes. High, low. Left, right. "You forget, brujo. I have no choice but to comply."

  "Only as long as you lack free will."

  I batted the wraith's sword to the side and kicked my boots off his breastplate, creating distance between us. Then I gripped the gold plating that sealed the Horn's end caps. The Spaniard's ashes were inside the artifact. All I had to do was get them out. I clawed at the seal with shadow, but the Taíno gold was impervious.

  The Spaniard closed the distance between us and slashed. I dove below and swooped around him at breakneck speed. He could take to the sky, perhaps, but I was the only one that could fly.

  Below, Connor growled and let his claymore disintegrate to sparks. "Give me your magic!" he screamed to the marked Taíno shamans.

  Connor held his arms outstretched and the fire roared around him. It tinted a harsh red. An unnatural hue. A foreign sun. Hellfire. The jinn's feet lifted from the water as he drew slowly skyward, like his shah master.

  "Yes!" he growled. "Give it all to me!"

  I worriedly parried another of the Spaniard's strikes. As our swords pushed past our faces, I washed my hand through the blood in my gut and caught the wraith's throat. His skull snapped back and his eyes flickered. My blood sizzled as I tightened my grip around the Spaniard's neck bone.

  "Ahh!" he rasped.

  My knee shot up, bolstered by shadow. It dented the bottom of his breastplate. The wraith doubled over in the sky. I dissipated the bottom half of my weapon so I could spin my sword around quickly and swipe it upward. The shadow tore through the conquistador
's leather gauntlet. He released his side-sword. The blade fell through the sky and embedded itself into the rocky lake floor.

  With my opponent still reeling, I rolled the sword in my hand and brought the tip to the center of his breastplate. The Spaniard's red eyes grew full and bright.

  I held the pose for a long second.

  I released his throat and decked him with my sword hand. The wraith flew backward through the growing mist.

  "Cisco!" bellowed Connor.

  I spun and saw him below me, floating ten feet off the ground. He was glowing crimson now. Channeling Taíno magic, joining it to his. The powered-up jinn was so hot the raindrops sizzled before they touched him.

  "It's time you witnessed the power you helped me get," he said.

  He clapped his hands together and a supernova exploded from his palms.

  All my hairs stood on end. I immediately dismissed the shadow sword and positioned a barrier of darkness between us. I fired up my shield of brilliant turquoise. I even folded my wings around my body and face.

  A red beam of light, eight-feet in diameter, struck me. It was a laser, touching his hands and the clouds all at once.

  The hell beam completely engulfed me. It obliterated my defenses. Raw Intrinsics bowled through me like a freight train riding a shockwave. My shadow wall evaporated. My shield sparked out uselessly. And my Wings of Night burned.

  I, too, fell from the sky. A comet, beaten and battered from traveling millions of miles through space and time, worn out from collision after collision, burnt up by the atmosphere, and flailing, my last seconds of life spinning and out of control, my last act of note forming a crater in the ground.

  This time when I landed, I shook with the earth.

  Chapter 46

  Tossed under the encroaching waves, I would've been swept away if not for the embedded side-sword protruding from the surface. I clutched the hilt for stability.

  My wings rested at my sides, frayed and smoking, the water a comforting reprieve. I shook my head, feeling the shadow slip in and out of my grasp. Dazed and down.

  That had been a hell of a blast.

  Connor Hatch laughed and floated above me. "Get them ready," he ordered Chevalier. Some wights had managed to break away from the arbiters. The Taíno were forced into place again. Silently, the Spaniard drifted back to his master's side.

  I looked down at my hands, no longer gripping a shadow sword but holding something much more powerful. The Horn of Subjugation.

  "It's no matter," said Connor. "You may hold the Horn, but I own its undeniable power." His hands glowed crimson again as he readied another debilitating strike.

  I didn't raise my defenses this time. Instead I held the Horn up to shield my body. "Would you risk destroying the source of such power?"

  The jinn paused. He realized his predicament. If he immolated me, scorched me from existence, I would take the Horn with me. Without the Spaniard, without control of the wights and protection from the arbiters, he would lose his hold here. He already had twenty shamans in his service, but many more potential subjects surrounded him.

  Even if Connor could cut and run, make it out alive and take those twenty with him, was he willing to limit his potential by destroying the Horn early?

  The jinn laughed. "Well played, Cisco. But you hold an impotent piece." He signaled for the bag of guavas. Chevalier scooped it from the water. "The Horn can never be taken from me now." He turned to the Spaniard. "Dispatch him."

  The wraith drifted my way.

  I panted in the water, all but defeated. The rain stung against my face. A single branch drifted by on the rushing current. The hog plum washed into my lap. Several jobo leaves swayed in the water.

  Opiyel's vision came to me again. I imagined the other great powers I'd encountered. The ashy-faced owl in the jungle. The black cat in the Aether. The dragons and the Celestials. Malik had shown me what I needed to see. Not just the greater picture, but the symbol for victory.

  As the wraith drew closer, a tropical storm brewed around us.

  "You're wrong," I spat back at the jinn. "You showed me how."

  Connor's eyes darted to the knife in my hands. No more shadow. No more spellcraft. I held the small bronze blade, useful only for ceremony. I located the pictograph cluster Dr. Trinidad had translated for me. A sun, a man, a bat. A man trapped between life and death. The wraith.

  I took the knife to the soft metal and made a scratch across the symbol of man. I shredded the jobo leaves and steeped them in the water with a fistful of blood. A bridge between life and death. I painted the symbol with the magical tribute and pried at the seal.

  This time, the gold bent away and the cap opened.

  "No!" screamed the jinn.

  The Spaniard came upon me and effortlessly pulled his side-sword from the rock with a thunderous scrape. He lifted it above his head in preparation of a lethal blow.

  I upturned the powder horn. Chunky ash poured out and was swept into the strengthening wind. We watched the ashes of the Spaniard spread into the sky. They drifted over the hills. They flew into the swirling clouds. They fell into the lake and dispersed.

  The wraith paused, sword in hand. He stretched his jaw and locked eyes on me. "Freedom," he said dumbly, confused.

  I washed the Horn in the current, making sure no traces of ash remained within. "I keep my promises," I said.

  The Spaniard, still stunned, looked down at an open hand. The wind buffeted his tattered rags and he faded into nothing. His armor, his weapons—they all simply vanished.

  "No!" yelled Connor again.

  The earth rumbled. Rain battered our skin. The wights clutched their temples and fell to their knees. Connor's red fire blazed. He contorted in anger.

  In pain.

  He'd lost the Spaniard's protection from the underworld. His newfound power, the hellfire—it was burning him alive.

  The jinn convulsed and lost his place in the sky. Like a lead weight, he hit the water and landed unceremoniously on his ass. The skin on his face peeled as he twisted in overbearing agony.

  "Now you know how it feels," I said, rising to shaky legs. "I wouldn't wish it on any man. Or any jinn. Not even you."

  I tucked the Horn into the small of my back and approached Connor, a hog plum branch in one hand and a knife in the other. The ifrit swiped at his face and arms, desperate to free himself from the smothering flames.

  "Fire, then water," I said, stopping above Connor. "That's the ritual. Immolation, then dousing."

  I curled my fingers into his mane of red hair and forced his head underwater. I submerged his whole body. He shook and struggled against me. The thrashing water kicked up blood and ground jobo leaves.

  I stabbed my knife into his back. Bright red blood washed over my fingers. I released the jinn and plucked the hog plum from the branch. I bathed it in Connor's blood and mashed it to pulp in my hands. Connor resurfaced and gasped. He lifted a weak hand and flames sputtered to life in defiance.

  "You can't kill me," he rasped.

  "Maybe you're right," I admitted. "You don't drown. You don't immolate. Like you said, you're made of magic. You don't have a physical body so I need to give you an analog. An effigy."

  I thought of what Opiyel had taught me. I needed death for life. The Spaniard had been death. The jinn was life, forever and everlasting, at least from the perspective of a human.

  "You were smart to utilize the guava here. It's an important symbol to the Taíno. Its sweetness is desired by the dead. It represents death. But the hog plum is sour and represents life. Think of this fruit as your body. Eternal life, trapped for all time."

  I clutched Connor's burning hand to mine. The hog plum within our grasp charred before I lowered it into the water. The mashed fruit was a paste now, made up of soot and blood and pulp and seeds. Close enough to ashes, I figured. I stuffed the concoction into the Horn and drew shadow magic into it.

  The earth rumbled again. We rocked from side to side with another aftershock. T
he rain bit into us sideways. The wights, ignoring the rising weather, had ceased their struggle and calmed themselves.

  "You forget," gloated Connor above the din of the storm. "The Horn is meant to trap a man. I may be exiled, but I'm still a jinn. I'm immune to the artifact's snare."

  I smiled coldly and showed Connor my new marking. A human with a line drawn to connect his two legs into a triangle. I hadn't just scratched out the symbol, I'd modified it. Changed it from one meaning to another. It was the same symbol Malik had shown me in the Aether tea house. The same symbol I'd seen on the warning sign in High Valley, banning jinnkind. I'd changed the symbol from a man to a jinn.

  The Horn of Subjugation was now a cage for Connor Hatch.

  I folded the cap closed. I set the gold wrapping in place and forced it into Connor's still fiery hand. The heat melted and finalized the seal. When I cooled the artifact in the water, the jinn's eyes widened in sudden surprise.

  The heavy rumbling in the distance roared closer. A towering flood crashed over the hillside. A tidal wave, caused by the recent seismic activity. The entire valley of the dead was invaded by an avalanche of water. With all our power, we were nothing more than ants against it. Every single person in Coaybay—the Taíno, the arbiters, the Bone Saints, Connor, and myself—were heaved off our feet by the deluge.

  I spun and tumbled, losing hold of the world. Losing perspective and place. I gripped the Horn tightly, determined not to lose it, not to leave my business undone. I twisted and rocked and rolled to the ground. The flood was, thankfully, only momentary. The water drained, leaving me on the edge of the hill. The outskirts of the valley. The Horn was nestled in my hand. Connor wasn't in sight.

  A hand reached down to assist me. A Taíno inhabitant with a blurry face. His chest carried Connor's brand. The water had washed the fire away. There was only a dull mark now. Like the man's face, it was indistinct.

  "Thank you," I said.

  The native spoke words I didn't understand. Our languages were foreign. The sentiment wasn't. We understood each other just fine.