Blood Passage Read online

  Nalia turned, startled. Zanari wrapped her arms around her and pressed her lips to Nalia’s. Raif’s eyes widened. He hadn’t been expecting that, but then, neither had the Ifrit. The jinni stopped just a foot away, confused.

  Zanari pulled away. “I thought I’d lost you,” she said, her voice soft and seductive. She’d turned more than a few heads, but all that mattered were those precious seconds that distracted the Ifrit.

  Nalia swallowed. “N-no. I’m . . . here.” She smiled and dipped her head toward Zanari, whispering something in her ear.

  His sister laughed, but from where Raif was standing, he saw her flex her fingers, ready to use her chiaan. Nalia dove to her left, the jade dagger winking as it sliced into the Ifrit’s skin. One cut of the charmed blade and he was paralyzed. The humans nearby screamed. Zanari manifested a shadowy barrier around them to put some distance between the humans and the body on the ground.

  “So much for flying under the radar,” Malek said.

  “You need to get us out of here,” Raif ordered. “I don’t care how, but make it happen, pardjinn.” He rushed over to where Nalia kneeled over the Ifrit. The jinni’s eyes were wide with terror.

  She held the blade over the Ifrit’s chest, her face pale. Raif took the knife out of her hand and drove it into the jinni’s heart, pulled the blade out, then wiped the blood on his pant leg before giving it back to her.

  “Let’s go,” Raif said. He pulled Nalia up with him.

  “They’re coming.” Zanari was clutching at her head. “They don’t know it’s us, but they know something happened here.”

  They raced toward the dark, twisting streets of the medina. Malek grabbed a Moroccan man who stood on the fringes of a circle surrounding a cobra that swayed back and forth to his charmer’s hypnotic tune.

  “I’ll give you five hundred dirhams to take me to Riad Melhoun,” he said in rapid-fire Arabic.

  “Eight hundred,” the man responded, his eyes no doubt taking in the cut of Malek’s wool coat and the expensive watch on his wrist.

  Malek glared. “Seven hundred. That’s too damn much and you know it.”

  “This isn’t exactly the time to be bargaining, Malek,” Nalia growled.

  “Yalla,” the man said, waving his hand with weary resignation. Let’s go.

  Raif grabbed Malek’s arm. “Why didn’t we do this from the start?”

  “I hate being cheated” was Malek’s reply. He shrugged off Raif’s hand and followed the guide.

  “Humans,” Raif muttered.

  They plunged into the medina as the square behind them filled with the sound of police sirens.

  2

  THEIR GUIDE LED THE WAY OUT OF THE SQUARE, WITH Malek on his heels. Raif motioned for Nalia and Zanari to walk ahead of him while he took up the rear. He glanced over his shoulder every few minutes. Someone was following them—he could feel it. The skin on the back of his neck prickled and the air shivered with the unmistakable pulse of jinn energy. But every time his eyes passed over the faces surrounding them, all he saw were humans.

  They turned into one of the narrow streets off the square, hardly wide enough for the motorbikes that zipped through them. Women in colorful head scarves and men on rickety bicycles crowded the neighborhood. A blast of sound behind him sent Raif halfway into one of the tiny shops selling supple leather slippers dyed every color of the rainbow. A motorcyclist wove in and out of the crowd thronging up and down the street, shouting for people to get out of his way. The space was barely wide enough for two people to walk abreast, yet the driver somehow managed not to hit anyone.

  Raif shook his head. “Fire and blood.”

  “Bonjour! Ça va?” said the owner of the shoe shop.

  “Oui, ça va,” Raif muttered. The jinn ability to understand all languages was the only advantage he seemed to have tonight. His magic couldn’t make their hotel instantly appear or root out whoever was following them, but random pleasantries were easy enough.

  There it was again—that prickle.

  He turned, his eyes sharpening as he shifted from prey to predator. The medina was full of shadowed alcoves and tiny, hidden alleyways, and in the chaos of people, stray cats, donkey carts, and motorbikes, it was all too easy for a jinni to remain out of reach. He heard a familiar, piercing whistle up ahead—two high notes and one low—an old signal he and Zanari had come up with when they were children in order to find each other in the dense Forest of Sighs. He whistled back, then stepped into the street. He had to get this jinni off their trail or they’d lead him right to the riad that was supposed to act as a safe house.

  Zanari and the others were already half a block away. Nalia looked over her shoulder and Raif’s breath caught as lamps of every shape and size from a nearby shop bathed her in a momentary glow. Just then, with the light painting her skin, she seemed paper thin, a fantasy wrought in light and shadow. A creature from the legends his mother used to tell him after a long day of working in their overlord’s field. Nalia’s eyes grew anxious and he stepped into her sightline. The worry slipped from her face as he hurried to catch up.

  “Raif, someone’s following—”

  “I know,” he said. He put his arm around Nalia, drawing her close to him. Even though there was no one in all the realms who could protect Nalia as well as she could protect herself, he still couldn’t shake that endless night of calling her back from the shadowlands. After her battle with Haran, the only thing that had kept her in the land of the living was his refusal to let her go.

  “I need to deal with this jinni behind us,” Raif said. “I’ll meet you at the riad—Zanari will tell me where it is.” Only his sister and his mother knew his true name, which allowed them to contact him any time of the day or night, communicating in images. Once Zanari reached the riad, she’d be able to show him how to navigate the tricky medina streets using hahm’alah, the magic of true names.

  “No,” Nalia said.

  He bristled at the tinge of authority in her voice, that bit of Ghan Aisouri that would always be a part of her. She cares about you, that’s all, he told himself.

  “It’s too dangerous,” she added.

  He jumped aside as another motorbike zipped through the crowd. “No more than walking through this street,” he said. “I’ll be fine. Stay close to Zan.”

  Before she could say anything else, he pressed his lips against her forehead and slipped out of the flow of pedestrians into an empty alley. Signs in Arabic, French, and English advertised Moroccan wares, but the shop fronts were closed here, their metal gates pulled down except for a lone tailor who sat in the fluorescent light of his cramped closet of a shop, sewing kaftans as he watched a soccer game on an old television. The sport was similar to the jinn game of hado, only in hado, the ball was made of fire and players could evanesce across the field.

  Other than the tailor, the street was empty, dark except for puddles of wan light from a few streetlamps. Raif glanced up at the low roofs. All he could see was a patch of black sky and the distant light of Earth’s stars, pale imitations of Arjinna’s chartreuse constellations.

  Footsteps—close. Boots scuffing across cobblestones, a heavy tread. Raif suddenly wondered if Haran was the only ghoul who had been in Calar’s employment. Muscles tense, he stepped into the nearest patch of light, his eyes piercing the shadows. Waiting.

  “Let’s stop the games, brother,” Raif called as the steps got closer. He raised his hands, palms out, ready. Green chiaan poured from them, a cascade of energy.

  “Kajastriya vidim, tavrai,” called a voice from the darkness.

  Light to the revolution: the Arjinnan resistance’s traditional greeting.

  “My soldiers do not hide in the shadows when challenged,” Raif said.

  An unfamiliar Marid stepped into the light. He wore human clothes: jeans, those hooded short robes they called sweatshirts. “We have not had the honor to meet, sir,” the jinni said as he placed a fist over his heart in the revolutionary twist on the jinn greeting.
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  “Your name?” Raif kept his hands raised.

  “Elorou, sir. I was born on Earth and my parents head the resistance cell here in Marrakech,” he said.

  “Come into the light.”

  The boy stepped forward. There hadn’t been much time for Raif to learn how to lead from his father. Those first years of the resistance were a blur of whispered conversations and late-night meetings at which Dthar Djan’Urbi would meet with his most trusted friends to plot an end to the feudal system that had been in place for thousands of years. Raif had witnessed a few skirmishes, but his first real battle had been the one his father had died in. Just days later, Raif was named his successor. One thing Dthar said had never left him, though: If a jinni won’t look you in the eye, he’s not worth the piss in the bottom of a latrine.

  This jinni looked him in the eye. Raif lowered his hands.

  “I thought you were an Ifrit tracker,” Raif said. “A bad one—I knew you were following me the whole time.”

  The boy reddened. “You were not alone, sir. My orders—”

  “Don’t call me sir.” Raif wasn’t stupid: he knew it was impossible to avoid all power structures entirely. But he’d had to call his overlord “sir,” and Raif would be damned if he’d make anyone do the same for him.

  “Oh. Uh. Right.” Elorou coughed slightly. “My orders were to speak to you and you only. I didn’t want to draw needless attention. As you know, the Ifrit are being especially systematic in their search for you. They’ve more than tripled their presence in Marrakech alone.”

  “How did you find me?” If this boy could track Raif so easily, there wasn’t any hope for evading the Ifrit.

  “I’m stationed at the airport, so my parents told me to keep an eye out for you. My usual job is to intercept the slave traders. Sometimes they try to ship bottles overseas.”

  Raif shook his head, disgusted. That had been Nalia three years ago. Only fifteen summers old, drugged so she couldn’t use her powers to defend herself or escape, then sold to Malek.

  “What do you do when you find bottles?” he asked.

  “I take them and free the jinn inside. If they don’t have a master yet, it’s easy enough. If they have a master traveling with them, I kill the master, then free the jinni.”

  Yet another child forced to kill because of the Ifrit and their ruthless hold over the jinn.

  “Do you kill the traders, too?”

  “When I can. They’re very good at running away. Cowards.” Elorou spit on the ground.

  Raif nodded, satisfied. “All right. What’s your message?”

  “We’ve captured Jordif Mahar, sir.”

  Finally some good news.

  Raif smiled. “Excellent. How are things on Earth’s side of the portal? Safe enough for a meet there?”

  Elorou nodded. “Huge battles on the Arjinnan side and Ifrit coming through to Earth all the time. But we control Earth’s side for now. It’s safest on the western portion—the Ifrit can’t spare enough soldiers to guard the whole thing.”

  The politics of the portal were complicated, in large part because the territory between the two realms resembled a border more than a portal. Jordif had found a way to navigate the delicate balance between the government in Arjinna and the free jinn on Earth, but that had included turning a blind eye while thousands of jinn were trafficked on the dark caravan and sold to human masters in exchange for human weapons. Slaves for arms. Now the resistance had taken over Jordif’s responsibilities and cut ties with the traders. And thanks to Nalia’s negotiations with one of the human leaders of the slave trade ring, it would be nearly impossible for the Ifrit to continue receiving arms in payment for their slaves.

  “Bring him to our post on the west portal at dawn. I’ll get there when I can.” Raif started walking back toward the main street, then stopped. “Until then, show him the hospitality of the tavrai.”

  “Sir? I don’t understand. Um. I mean, being from Earth and all.”

  “No food. No water. Iron shackles. Use a whip if necessary. But I want him alive when I see him tomorrow. Jahal’alund.”

  Elorou paled, but quickly recovered as he placed a fist over his heart. “Jahal’alund.”

  In seconds the young revolutionary was gone, leaving nothing behind but a few wisps of sapphire evanescence.

  3

  ZANARI FOLLOWED NALIA AS THE GUIDE PUSHED DEEPER into the medina, where the streets were empty, every door shut tight against the darkness. Other than the occasional stray cat and the drunken man who followed them for a few blocks singing love songs in Arabic and French, Zanari and her companions were alone. After fifteen minutes of walking, Raif’s sister was well and truly lost. She had no idea what direction they were going in or where they’d come from. She’d tried to pay attention, but the serpentine streets made it impossible to keep a map of the neighborhood in her head. Finally, the Moroccan leading them stopped in front of an ornate wooden door cut into a nondescript mud-brick wall. Like so many of the doorways in Morocco, it was surrounded by colorful tiles and inlaid with brass flourishes.

  “Shukran,” Nalia said, thanking the man in Arabic.

  A tiny plaque on the wall read RIAD MELHOUN. After traipsing through the deserted, narrow streets of the medina, Zanari hadn’t expected much from their riad. Still, after seeing Malek’s lavish mansion, she was surprised the pardjinn deigned to stay at such a humble establishment.

  Malek reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of dirhams. He handed over the money, then waved the guide away. Walking into the darkness, the man whispered, “Bismillah.”

  Immediately, Zanari’s body contracted and she clutched at her throat as it began closing up. Her chiaan froze, as though it had been dipped in a vat of ice water. Beside her, Nalia fell against the wall, gasping. Malek stared at them for a moment, and then understanding dawned in his eyes.

  “Oh. Right,” he said, looking from Nalia to Zanari. “The bis—well. It’ll pass.”

  Almost as soon as the pain had Zanari in its grip, it was gone. “What in all hells was that?” Zanari said.

  In those few terrifying seconds, Zanari felt like she understood what the slaves on the dark caravan went through, being stuffed into bottles by traders and masters. She glanced at Nalia. The other jinni was leaning over, hands on her knees, face pale.

  “That word our illustrious guide said when he walked away is a powerful protective spell,” Malek said. “It keeps humans safe from jinn, but it can’t hurt you permanently.”

  He reached for Nalia, as though to comfort her, but she jerked away. Malek’s hand fell to his thigh and his jaw tightened.

  “Was that human a mage?” Nalia asked.

  “No,” Malek said. “He was simply a Muslim whose belief in the word was real. It’s quite effective, isn’t it?”

  “It doesn’t bother you?” Zanari asked.

  “I’ve built up a bit of a tolerance for it—I grew up hearing the word all my life. It’s very common for people in cultures like mine to utter it as a prayer before any kind of journey, especially at night or in deserted places.” A cold smile played on his face. “In this case, being a pardjinn does have its advantages.”

  Malek grasped the brass door knocker and banged it against the door. It swung open to reveal a small man in a sweater vest and pressed slacks. He gave them a wide smile.

  “Monsieur Alzahabi! Madame Alzahabi! What a pleasant surprise—we weren’t expecting you.”

  “Salam aleikum, Fareed.” Malek stepped out of the deserted street and Zanari murmured under her breath, “Madame Alzahabi?”

  Nalia shook her head. “My passport has Malek’s last name. He tells people I’m his wife when we’re traveling because it makes things less complicated.”

  “Oh, my brother’s gonna love that,” Zanari said.

  The door shut behind them and Zanari stood in the foyer, staring. It was like entering another world. There had been no hint of the opulence that hid behind the dirty, cracked walls in the alleywa
y. The riad was built in the traditional Moroccan style with smooth-as-porcelain tadelekt walls and an inner courtyard with a central splash pool, its ceiling open to the stars. The balcony overlooking the courtyard was covered with swaths of linen that guests could pull across the railing for more privacy. Potted palms stood beside marble columns carved in a repeating teardrop motif and lamps like metal balls of lace hung in shallow alcoves, their delicate designs reflected on the floors and walls.

  “Like it?” Malek asked.

  Zanari nodded, turning to Nalia. “Is this what the palace is like?”

  “A little.” She paused, blushing. “This would be the servant’s quarters, though.”

  “Well, I’m just a simple country girl. This place is amazing,” Zanari said. The arches surrounding the courtyard curved in keyhole shapes and the doors to the first-floor rooms had been painted in intricate detail.

  “Malek doesn’t have many good qualities, but I can never argue with his taste in hotels,” Nalia said.

  “Thank you, darling,” Malek purred. “Your vote of confidence means so much.”

  “Did you not hear the part where I said you don’t have many good qualities?” Nalia said.

  “Not many is a far cry from none.”

  Malek ignored her scowl as, up ahead, Fareed ushered them through one of the keyhole-shaped arches into a private alcove that acted as a small sitting room. The night had grown cold, but a fire crackled in a fireplace and a pot of mint tea sat on a tray beside an assortment of cookies.

  “There will be four of us in total, Fareed,” Malek said. “How many rooms do you have?”

  The manager’s face fell. “Just two, monsieur. I’m terribly sorry, if I’d known—”

  “That’s fine,” Malek said. “My wife and I will take one and you can put her brother and sister in the other.”

  Zanari felt Nalia stiffen beside her. “Maybe I should stay with . . . my sister,” Nalia said, glancing at Zanari. “Make it a girl’s night.”