Chapter 20
Rani
I felt the tingle of the wards as we passed through them, but kept my foot on the gas until the house came into view. The body of the djinn in the window rocked when I slammed on the brakes, and I fought off a shudder for what exactly that meant. Was he dead?
I didn’t mean to kill him; I only wanted him to stop grabbing me and reaching for the steering wheel.
A hammer to the head was a little much, maybe, but with that thick helmet on, I thought for sure I only knocked him out.
There wasn’t blood leaking all over the seat or anything, so he probably wasn’t dead… right?
My hands shook as I shifted the gear to park.
Fuck, I think I’m going to be sick.
The driver’s door swung open, and all thoughts of the potentially deceased djinn were swept away by the raging fire in my chest. There was Ezra; every furious, powerful, worried inch of him.
He inspected me in almost a blind panic, his hands trembling as they roamed in search of injury.
I tried to return the favor, but he was moving too much for me to get a good look.
Nothing screamed down the bond at me; no pain or sharp echoes. Literally, nothing . At all. It was dead silent.
“Did they touch you?” he demanded. “They had weapons, and I’d bet everything on our bond that they were coated in poison. If they—if it— Did they touch you? ”
His words were right, but his tone… I couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong with it. Perhaps the adrenaline was fucking with my ability to read him. His fingers squeezed painfully into my shoulders the longer I went without answering.
“I think I killed him,” was all I could mumble in response.
There was a swirling vortex of fucked uppery making a mess of my emotions.
Guilt and relief fought front and center, and I really needed the calming touch of Ezra’s side of the bond to get it under control.
I didn’t realize how much I relied on our connection until it wasn’t there. Why wasn’t it there?
The djinn splayed halfway across the passenger seat groaned, his smashed helmet twitching out the corner of my eye.
One of his hands clutched at the leather as he tried and failed to push himself up.
Definitely not dead then. What did we do now?
It wasn’t like we could walk him to the edge of the wards and set him out with the trash cans. Did we get Band-Aids?
“Go inside,” Ezra said, voice and face set in stone.
“What are you gonna do?”
His grip on my shoulders made it easy for him to pull me out of the truck and away from the djinn gaining consciousness by the minute. My legs felt like jelly, but were surprisingly stable as I stumbled up the driveway.
“Now’s not the time for your questions.” Ezra steered me toward the front porch and let go with a light push; he never once took his eyes off the enemy. “Go in the house.”
“Stop trying to manhandle me and answer my question.” I spun back around and stomped my foot for emphasis. It might have been childish, but it got his attention.
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end when Ezra finally looked at me.
Nothing of the sarcastic, annoyingly inappropriate guy I’d come to know was visible.
His mouth, usually easy to smirk, was tight and stiff.
Even the way he held himself was different, off somehow.
More rigid and less likely to reach out and touch or explore in the way he had been lately.
I pushed on that bridge between us and cautiously felt along for any scrap of the real Ezra. Nothing. It was like a black hole at his end of the bond. I couldn’t get a feel for his emotions. I couldn’t feel him .
“I’m going to handle it,” he said. The vibrations in his voice told no lie, but they also revealed what I’d already begun to fear.
Something was very, very wrong.
I took one step and then another. Slowly, I somehow carried myself all the way to the front door without losing sight of Ezra and the truck.
For his part, he turned his back on me the second my feet started moving, and I wasn’t sure what that said about his current mental state that he didn’t watch to make sure I went all the way inside.
The man I knew was downright obsessive when it came to my safety.
I watched from the shadows of the porch as Ezra dragged the limp djinn from the window and tossed him over his shoulder with a surprising amount of ease.
The heavy helmet made the body lean a little further over his back, but Ezra kept walking like it wasn’t a burden. Like this was an everyday chore.
Where the hell was he going?
My silent footsteps trailed them around the side of the house to the detached garage.
A foggy window on the side was just low enough for me to peer in, but I had to stand on my tippy toes to reach over the trim.
Dirt and grime burrowed under my fingernails as I clutched at the wood.
Ezra was chaining the djinn to the wall.
There were actual metal chains built into the wall in the fucking garage of his beach house?
The djinn now secured with unnerving convenience, Ezra pulled the helmet off.
Dark hair and a trail of blood going down his neck were the first things I noticed.
The hate burning in my attacker’s glare was the next.
“You’ve heard of me. You know what I am. So I’m sure you’re already aware of exactly what's about to happen to you.”
The djinn remained silent, but by the way Ezra’s head cocked to the side, I think he got his answer. He casually paced back and forth, arms crossed, like it was normal to have a conversation with a prisoner in your dusty garage. My heart rate kicked up; this was anything but normal.
I watched Ezra lean forward and grab the djinn by a fistful of hair. Pain streaked across the bloody and bruised face, but I couldn’t hear what he said. He was asked a question, I knew that much, because he shook his head. Faint words trickled out to me.
“Touch” and “her” were the only ones I was able to make out.
Ezra let go, and the djinn’s head fell forward. “We’ll learn soon enough what you’re hiding.”
There was a heedy pressure of magick in the air, strong and swift enough to make my stomach flip like the drop on a rollercoaster. The djinn screamed as both his legs were encased in thick slabs of ice. A heartbeat and another stomach lurch later, and the same thing happened to his arms.
Oh my God. Oh my God.
“I’m going to make this quick because there’s more important things I should be tending to.” Ezra’s empty voice was loud enough to carry over the djinn’s whimpers. “But let’s get one thing straight; this is still going to hurt like a bitch.”
With a swift kick, the djinn’s foot shattered into a million pieces.
A red, chunky, frozen leg still hung above the crunchy shards on the floor.
The scream… I’d never heard anyone scream like that.
Not even me when I was tossed overboard.
My vision was blocked by a thick layer of ice over the window, and the shrill scream became muffled behind the filter of magick.
Fuck. Oh, fuck. Ezra was torturing him. I knew this was part of his job, I did, but hearing about it and seeing it first-hand were two completely different things. What was it that one guy had said?
Ezra Alantes is the best at what he does.
A shudder rolled through me at the thought of using my powers to do that to someone, but also…
fuck yeah, he was the best. I wouldn’t still be here if he weren’t.
Neither would Eryn, or Kai. Ezra protected those under his care.
And when his enemies crossed that line, it made sense that sometimes he might have to cross it as well.
I needed to hear what secrets the djinn spilled in there. Would melting some of the ice alert Ezra to me spying on him? More screams trickled out to me as I pondered what to do. When I felt another pull of magick, I risked melting a small corner of the window and hoped Ezra’s focus was elsewhere.
“You better start talking, or I’ll have to complete the happy face.”
Bile burned the back of my throat as I took in the scene.
The djinn still had his arms and legs—mostly—but there were now five fat icicles sticking out of his abdomen in…
yup, that was a smiley face. He was only missing a nose.
Blood ran in rivers down both of them. It was splattered on the wall and the nearby table.
It collected on the floor in a bunch of little pools, and I had a stray thought for how Ezra was going to get the stains out.
“It was Soloman, it was Soloman!” the djinn shouted when Ezra raised another icicle. “The tribunal still demands the sigils, but they didn’t send us after her.”
My body went as cold as the frozen window I crouched under.
The djinn were after me . I mean, I knew that already, but I thought it was because of the new siren laws, not for…
I didn’t know why. They really were trying to kill us on that road.
I missed the rest of the djinn’s confession as I tried to process the fact that someone wanted me dead.
What I didn’t miss was Ezra slicing the djinn’s throat with his last smiley face icicle and the violent spray of blood that arced from the force of that strike.
I didn’t turn away from the view of my bond standing in front of a dying body, hands limp at his sides, with blood dripping from his fingertips.
Time passed; my toes were going numb and my calves screamed in betrayal from holding this position, but Ezra still hadn’t moved.
A darkness remained on his side of the bond.
It was hard to see through it, but I knew he was in there.
Somewhere. Any minute now, he’d shake off whatever this was and come back to me. Any minute.