Ghostland

CHAPTER 14

ZURAEL worried it was a trap. Twice police cars had pulled alongside the bus. Once a guardsman’s jeep had slowed at an intersection and waved the bus onward when it would have yielded the right of way.

Aisling’s fear washed over him each time the authorities were present, fear so deeply ingrained in her she couldn’t prevent her rapid breathing or the tiny tremors that shook her. And yet she didn’t turn back from the task.

He took her hand as they walked, felt the tension in her slide away. Her courage amazed him. Her trust destroyed him. He couldn’t allow anything to happen to her.

They passed the houses huddled together in worn-down poverty and gritty survival, the vine-controlled wastelands, the burned out, rusted shells of other structures, until eventually they came to the place where ragged orphan children fished on the banks. The Mission followed-a last vestige of civilization before The Barrens.

Zurael thought he caught a glimpse of Davida in an upstairs window. His suspicion that it was a trap set for Aisling grew.

Hidden eyes followed them. He felt the gazes-curious, apathetic, hostile, suspicious. Predatory.

His hand fell away from Aisling’s. He studied their surroundings, looking for danger. Prepared to kill anyone or anything that dared attack.

Having explored The Barrens on wings, Zurael chafed at the pace they were forced into because of the necessity of having to look for the fish symbol. He hated that Aisling was so vulnerable, so very human in a place filled with danger.

She slowed at the first blackened shell beyond The Mission. It stood at an intersection, though nothing remained on three of the corners and the road had long ago cracked and become pocked with holes.

A school of crudely drawn fish was ankle-high on the strongest of the walls still standing. Each swam in the same direction, face pointing forward, through the intersection.

“We’re going to find them,” Aisling said, excitement and anticipation making the blue of her eyes rival the sky.

Without conscious thought, Zurael leaned forward. He was a short breath away before he realized the danger, how close he was to touching his lips to her.

He stood abruptly and turned away. But not before his heart wrenched at the sight of Aisling’s uncertainty.

They continued on in silence, their progress slow. The continued sensation of being watched, considered prey, kept him at her side instead of scouting ahead.

They stopped long enough to eat lunch. Then later, dinner.

The daylight grew into evening light, but neither suggested they turn back toward Oakland. It became harder to locate the symbols of early faith.

Several times they hid as jeeps driven by guardsmen patrolled. A helicopter in the distance, its arrival too sudden and unexpected, caught them out in the open, though it didn’t veer toward them.

Crickets and cicadas came to life. The rumble of car engines purred in the dusk all around them, alternating between growing louder and fading.

Zurael considered shifting to the demon’s form and flying with Aisling to safety but thought of the game he’d witnessed the guardsmen playing each time he’d been in The Barrens. The risk was too great. He couldn’t protect her from bullets, or a fatal fall, if he became formless.

“We need to find shelter,” he said, studying what remained from the time when one city merged into another and another until little was left besides concrete and steel and teeming masses of humans penned in a place that would ultimately make their slaughter easy.

Nature was in the process of reclaiming much of the area they were in. The vines once developed by scientists to leach industrial poison from the soil now covered the horror left by man’s temporary rule of Earth.

Aisling pointed at what might have once been a secure storage shed. “How about there?”

Zurael studied it for a moment. He compared it to the larger structures around them, most with gaping holes, to the cars buried beneath shrouds of thick stems and shiny leaves. He nodded. The walls of the storage building were concrete, the roof solid metal. They’d be trapped, but the narrow doorway allowed for a defensible space.

The wind brought the sound of hounds baying. Next to him Aisling shivered and rubbed her arms. He ushered her into the building and indicated a corner for her to settle into just as the sound of a helicopter reached him.

It was a risk, but this time he deemed it necessary. He crossed to her and knelt in front of her, noting how fragile she was, sitting on the floor with her knees to her chest and her arms wrapped around her legs. The desire to protect her filled him with the primitive, explosive heat of molten rock.

“I won’t be far,” he said, unable to stop himself from stroking her cheek, from brushing his thumb over her lips and losing himself in angelite eyes.

Pride spiked through him when she pulled a long kitchen knife from the burlap sack holding what remained of their food. She laid it on the ground next to her. “I’ll be okay.”

Zurael shed his physical form and moved away from her, motes of dust and dirt, lightly tossed leaves and insect carcasses the only things marking his exit.

The drone of engines assailed him, vibrated through him. Wild-life scattered and darted into hiding places ahead of the rumble announcing the approach of man.

A small swarm of the finger-length fey who feasted on blood raced after a fleeing deer, hoping for a meal before deep nightfall forced them to their nest.

Their wings glittered with the colors of sunset. Their upper bodies and faces were vaguely human though their minds were those of a savage hive insect.

Zurael moved away from Aisling’s shelter cautiously, gauging the distance to ensure he could get back to her if danger threatened. The baying of the hounds grew closer, coming from the same direction as the sound of the helicopter’s rotors. He couldn’t see the helicopter until he reached the end of his self-defined tether to Aisling. Then uneasiness filled him at the spotlight illuminating the ground beneath it.

He’d witnessed the guardsmen carousing in The Barrens, casually slaughtering anything that crossed their path, but tonight was different. They were hunting something specific, and coming toward where Aisling hid.

He shifted his attention to the closest buildings. Reevaluated them. The storage shed was a defensible position against wild animals, humans and supernatural beings, but it wasn’t safe against armed men.

Zurael returned to Aisling. “Let’s find another place.”

She rose to her feet without argument. At the doorway he lifted her in his arms.

With a thought, the wings unfurled, unhindered by the Djinn-created fabric of his shirt and jacket. In two steps he was airborne, her weight negligible, her soft, joyous laugh sending heat cascading into his heart as he flew the short distance necessary to reach a hole in the third floor of a building that looked relatively stable.

“That was wonderful!” she said, eyes sparkling, voice breathless and cheeks flushed, for an instant unafraid of anything.

He wished he could keep her that way. But all too soon the bloodhounds arrived, baying, noses to the ground. They went directly to the place Aisling had been, then circled in confusion at the lost track as guardsmen arrived in jeeps.

Fury filled Zurael. The witches would pay for their part in sending Aisling into a trap. “Stay here,” he said before once again becoming a swirl of air.

In the desert a single Djinn could become a sandstorm deadly enough to bury large caravans of men and machines in a matter of moments. He had less to work with in The Barrens, but Zurael was determined to disrupt the hunt for Aisling.

Leaves and sticks, rocks and small scraps of metal-all gathered in the violent energy of his unformed mass. Men cursed and dogs yelped when he bore down on them, blinding them temporarily, making them bleed when debris struck them. Some ducked into the shelter he and Aisling had abandoned, while others raced toward the building where she was now hidden.

Rage gave the winds more force, but the vines reclaiming the land covered the loose material that would make him deadlier. As the first of the guardsmen neared the building Aisling was in, Zurael shot upward, using all the gathered energy to reach the helicopter.

It rocked, tilted, might have escaped his assault, but the open door where a man with a machine gun sat allowed the gathered debris to distract the pilot in a critical instant. The humans screamed as the helicopter spun out of control before striking the ground.

Zurael returned to Aisling. Beneath them, men rushed to the downed helicopter. Radios squealed. Panicked, angry voices reported the crash and were told additional guardsmen were being dispatched. Already there were too many of them, spread too far apart and too heavily armed, too nervous, for Zurael to attack with Aisling close by-and even if he could buy her time to escape, there were other predators to worry about.

Machine-gun fire exploded, vented in fury or fear at some movement in the shadows. Next to him, Zurael could feel Aisling shiver, could hear the shortness of her breath as she remained completely motionless, not giving in to the primitive instinct to run.

Guardsmen pulled the bodies of the pilot and his passenger from the twisted metal. “There’s nothing we can do for them,” an authoritative voice said. “Newman, get the heat sensor out. Alvarez, get the dogs. Refresh their memories with the scent article. Let’s finish this. These men died because of magic. Anything that moves and isn’t one of us, shoot to kill.”

Two men peeled away from the crash site. One headed toward a jeep, the other to where the bloodhounds milled around the concrete-block storage building.

Zurael turned to Aisling. What he intended was dangerous, but there was no other way.

He gathered her in his arms and lifted her. “Put your legs around my waist,” he whispered.

Returning to Aisling’s home wasn’t an option. Not tonight and not with her.

In his mind’s eye he saw The Barrens as he’d seen it as an owl, considered the abandoned buildings where he’d perched and watched the activity beneath him. He chose one to shelter in, but fixed the roof of another in his mind to transport to-a place he hoped to launch from before the first of the angels arrived, summoned by the sound of him breaching the metaphysical plane.

With a thought, the batlike wings appeared again; only this time he allowed the full demon form to manifest. His fingernails elongated into sharp talons; a deadly barbed tail completed the look. Zurael smiled at the irony of appearing in the image once forced onto The Prince by the alien god-of possibly using it to defeat an angel.

A burst of machine-gun fire, and the seemingly instantaneous impact of bullets against the building, served as a trigger for their departure. He curled an arm around Aisling in a protective gesture, then willed himself to the rooftop fixed in his thoughts.

As he’d feared, no sooner did his feet touch the flat surface of the roof than the night sky opened in a blaze of light. White wings stretched in what the humans saw as a glorious display.

Zurael set Aisling aside then moved to stand between her and the angel, but not before he heard her gasp of awe and saw it in her eyes. A deadly blade formed in the angel’s hand. It glowed like the sun, but despite what the humans believed, it wasn’t a weapon of fiery glory. It was a creation forged in the coldest, deepest realms of space, because only such a thing could prevail against the fire of the Djinn.

Satisfaction moved through Zurael when the angel made small slicing motions with the blade, indicating his intention to fight. An older angel, one from a higher order, would use his voice as a weapon. But by his actions, the angel in front of Zurael had revealed his status, his inexperience when it came to the Djinn.

Zurael moved forward and to the side, wanting to draw the angel away from Aisling before the fight began.

The angel’s eyes flicked briefly to Aisling. He spat the word “Abomination,” then lunged toward Zurael, blade in front of him as though he were fencing.

Zurael easily eluded the thrust. A laugh escaped. He slashed, sending severed wing feathers fluttering to the rooftop.

The angel swung then, eyes glowing, the arc of his swing carrying the blade to where several steps and a lunge were all it would take to reach Aisling.

Zurael launched himself upward and the angel followed, knowing he had the advantage with the extension of the sword.

Pride might keep the angel from summoning others to assist with the kill. But it was no guarantee others wouldn’t soon arrive, alerted by the sound of Zurael’s passing through the barrier, drawn by the trail his energy signature left when he transported between Earthly locations.

He dropped to a far corner of the roof, and waited until the angel was nearly on him to turn into a swirling mass of particles. The ice chill of the blade barely missed him before Zurael reclaimed the demon’s shape. Struck and drew blood this time.

A scream erupted from the angel, the enraged sound of a bird of prey instead of a man. He lunged forward, swinging the sword with savage ferocity as his blood left a trail across the roof.

Zurael retreated, driven backward by the near mindlessness of the assault. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Aisling trying to stay far away from the fighting. But her movement drew the angel’s attention. The sudden gleam in the angel’s eyes was the only warning he gave before halting his wild swings and launching himself toward her.

Too late Zurael realized it was a trap. With the swiftness of a falcon the angel turned, slashed, opened a deep wound across Zurael’s chest.

Cold seeped into Zurael, so pervasive it froze the breath in his chest and filled his mind with the sound of his own scream of agony. Only his training saved him from a death blow. Instinctively he twisted away, used the barbed tip and whiplike strike of the demon tail as a weapon.

The angel screamed. The blinding glow of the blade disappeared as his concentration faltered and his sword arm slickened with blood.

Zurael tried to move in for the kill. But the cold was spreading, making his reactions slow as it seeped deeper into his being in an effort to reach and extinguish the Djinn fire at his core.

Aisling.

The heat she generated in him, the protectiveness he felt for her helped him fight the angel’s icy poison.

His flesh mended, chased out a chill that should have required a visit to the House of the Cardinal in order to heal so quickly. But just as he was mending, so too was the angel.

Zurael lunged forward, talons drawing blood, turning white feathers crimson.

The angel jumped back, knocking Aisling to the ground. Deadly swords appeared and elongated in both of his hands. “Abomination!” he said, slashing downward at Aisling.

“No!” It was wrenched from Zurael, torn from the depths of his soul in the same instant Aisling’s stark face and terrified eyes were seared into his mind.

He flung himself forward and was greeted by a blinding flash, a boom so loud it shook the building and rolled across The Barrens like a shock wave from the human’s destructive bombs.

For a second he was frozen in place, held in a doorway of ice and infinite darkness. And then he returned to find Aisling rubbing her hands over his chest, calling the Djinn fire at his core with her worried touch and angelite blue eyes.

“Are you okay?” she said, her voice quivering, not hiding her fear for him.

He grabbed her wrist, suddenly aware of the sun-shaped charm trapped between her palm and his flesh. The memory that had eluded him earlier returned with clarity.

In his mind he located the book kept with so many others in the House of the Serpent library. Turned its pages and saw the powerful token. “You touched the angel.”

Aisling shivered. “I sent him home, wherever that is.”

Zurael read her face, saw her thoughts as clearly as if they were his own. She was a child of the ghostlands, but she was still human. She still had a human’s instinctive, genetically programmed reaction to the alien god’s warriors-to cower and worship, to prostrate herself in their glorious beauty and accept their judgment.

Fierce emotion gripped him, mixed with pulsing pride. She’d been found in the presence of what she thought was a demon and named an abomination, yet she’d had the strength of will, the presence of mind, to use the charm the witch had given her and cast the angel from the human world. She was as worthy as any Djinn.

Clouds covered the moon, offering some protection. He peeled his bloody shirt off. And because it wasn’t of the human world, he was able to will it to ash so it wouldn’t be used to track him.

Zurael scooped Aisling up in his arms. In three steps they were airborne, flying rapidly to a place where he hoped they’d be safe from both guardsmen and angels.

His emotions churned. A lifetime of belief and teaching was lost to their chaos, in the lava-hot flow of desire coursing through his bloodstream.

Zurael was barely aware of landing on the fifth-story ledge of what might once have been an apartment balcony. He had no conscious thought of entering the darkened space other than a predator’s quick, instinctive searching for the presence of others.

He was feverish, burning from the inside out. He became more so when Aisling whimpered, so attuned to him that she kicked off her shoes so he could strip her from the waist down before pressing her back to a smooth wall.

Her arms went around his neck, her legs around his waist, trapping the hard length of his cloth-covered erection against her fevered, wet folds. “Aisling,” he whispered, glad the clouds no longer obliterated the moonlight so he could see the exquisite beauty of her face.

She was delicate and desirable. Had enslaved him from the first moment she whispered his name on the spirit winds-only now he acknowledged it willingly.

“Aisling,” he whispered again, touching his lips to hers, parting them with his tongue and taking her breath, her spirit, her moan of pleasure-and returning the same.

He’d worried over it, feared it. But as he felt their souls touch, dancing and merging like twin flames, euphoria filled him.

Despair to match the height of his joy would follow if he was separated from her for any length of time. But he couldn’t care in that moment when they were one being.

In heated darkness their tongues rubbed and twined, teased and tormented. It was beyond anything he’d ever experienced. It became something he’d forever crave.

Each of her whimpers lodged itself in his heart, filled him with a satisfaction like no other. He smoothed his hands over her back, felt a renewed surge of primal satisfaction that she accepted him regardless of what form he took.

With a thought, the wings and demon-tail disappeared. His hands left her long enough to free his erection from his pants so he could grasp her hips and lift her until his cock head was positioned at her opening.

They both shuddered with ecstasy when he slid into her hot core. He groaned when she freed his hair, tangled her fingers in it and held him tightly to her as her tongue twisted and mated with his.

Sensation bombarded him. Savage emotion ruled him. An uncontrollable hunger swept through him with the devastating force of molten lava.

Aisling belonged to him. No one-not angel or human, supernatural being or Djinn-would deny his claim or take her from him. No one-not even The Prince would keep them apart.

He freed her hair and reveled in the silky feel of it. He gave her his breath when her lungs screamed for air.

His cock mimicked the thrust of his tongue, plunged deep and hard, with dominating force. And she responded with moans of pleasure. She welcomed his aggression by softening against him, becoming more submissive; she acknowledged by her actions that she belonged to him completely and without question.

Her tight channel clenched and unclenched on his cock, sent waves of raw, nearly painful pleasure up his spine and into his heart. His! She was his. The sureness of it was reinforced each time his penis surged in and out of her.

He wanted to linger, to savor the intimacy of their first kiss, the sharing of breath marking the first true joining of their souls. But the night was still young, too full of predators to be guarded against. And the hunger raged too fiercely. It commanded the jerk of his hips, the tightness of his testicles, the undeniable need to imprint himself so thoroughly on her that every cell would hold his name, answer to his call.

He changed the angle of their bodies, felt her quiver each time he struck her clit. Primal satisfaction filled him when she fought to get closer, to take him deeper, to feel the hot splash of his seed.

Each thrust was a claiming, a declaration of intent. They would be together.

Aisling’s cry of release spilled into him where their lips touched. And like Djinn fire, her ecstasy burned through him, triggered his own, so wave after wave of semen jetted through his cock.

Long minutes later he pulled from her sheath and reluctantly stood her on her feet. Heartbreakingly beautiful eyes met his as she touched her kiss-swollen lips and asked, “Why?”

He knew she was asking why he’d repeatedly refused the intimacy of kissing until now, but he had no answer for her, nothing he could reveal until after they’d found whoever was creating Ghost, until after he’d dealt with Javier and returned to the Kingdom of the Djinn with the tablet, until after he’d fought for and won a future with her.

“Let’s find a more defensible room,” he said, touching her lips lightly with his before taking her hand and leading her deeper into the building, to a windowless area with only a solitary door to guard.

Aisling dressed then settled into a corner, knees hugged to her chest. For a while she was content to puzzle on the question of Zurael, the change that had taken place between them. So many other times he’d turned away from her when she’d thought to touch her mouth to his.

She wet her lips, relived the fire of his kiss, those moments when the only breath he’d allowed her was his own, as if her very life belonged to him. Her nipples and clit pulsed with renewed need, ached for his mouth and hands.

He stiffened in the doorway. His nostrils flared as if he could scent her arousal. Tiny nipples grew tight and the serpent he wore on his forearms rippled.

Their eyes met and held.

Feminine satisfaction curled in her belly and breasts. The fast, rough coupling had left him craving more. It was there in his taut muscles, the tightness of his features, the cock once again pressed huge and hard against the front of his pants.

She wanted to stand and go to him, to lose herself in the pleasure, the safety and peace she found in his arms. She wanted to keep the angel’s judgment-the word abomination- from her mind and avoid the truth of her own demon origins, the worry about her soul that she’d never struggled with until Zurael and then the angel appeared.

But a cougar’s nearby cry urged caution. The sounds of rustling, of movement in other parts of the building, kept her in place. The drone of a helicopter in another part of The Barrens reminded her of the danger if they had to give up this hiding place.

She pulled her attention away from Zurael. The sun-shaped amulet pressed against her palm. She’d thought at first it was meant to protect her against Zurael, then later, when it became obvious the guardsmen were hunting her, she’d wondered if Tamara’s family had sent her into a trap. Now she didn’t believe either was true.

Aisling flexed her wrist, exposed the golden charm. “Would this work on you?”

“No. It’s meant for the heavenly host.”

She trembled at the fury and hatred in his voice. But she didn’t back away from her train of thought. “Levanna knew I might need this. The Wainwright matriarch wouldn’t have given me such a powerful charm if she didn’t want me to find the Fellowship of the Sign and return with Anya. I think she guessed what you are and knew I’d be safe in The Barrens from anything but an angel.”

Zurael nodded. “I thought it was a trap also. Now I think otherwise. The guardsmen wouldn’t need the hounds, not if they knew the trail we were following.”

An icy chill swept into Aisling’s chest. It settled around her heart like a frigid fist as she remembered the guardsmen calling for a scent article.

Fear for Aziel froze the breath in her throat. In her mind’s eye she saw the guardsmen storming into her house so they could get something of hers to present to the bloodhounds, their heavy boots and guns deadly to the ferret trapped inside with them.

She shivered and once again hugged her knees to her chest. She told herself Aziel was clever. He’d find a hiding place.

For long moments the worry and fear crowded in. They only lessened when she accepted that she couldn’t change what had happened, acknowledged that it wouldn’t have been better to bring Aziel into The Barrens.

If he was a lesser demon, as she suspected, then he would have become a target for the angel’s attack. And unlike Zurael, he wouldn’t have been able to defend himself. Aziel was trapped in whatever body he wore.

Aisling turned to the question of the guardsmen and who might have sent them. She and Zurael had witnessed Cassandra going into the building housing the police station and guardsmen shortly after they’d left the library after searching the Internet for information about Ghost and the Fellowship of the Sign.

Twice police cars had pulled alongside the bus, and once she’d seen a guardsman’s jeep. If they’d been after her, watching her, determined to prevent her from entering The Barrens, then wouldn’t they have stopped her sooner? And if they were selling protection, or involved in distributing Ghost-then wouldn’t they know where to find the Fellowship’s compound?

Aisling’s eyebrows drew together. She felt like one of the farm dogs chasing shadows and rustling leaves-until she thought about Father Ursu and Bishop Routledge. The magnetic strip on the back of the transit bus pass would reveal she’d gone to the stop closest to The Barrens for a second time, traveled again with a second person, only this time hadn’t returned home.

She’d slept at the church. Her scent would be on the towel she’d used after her shower, on the sheets and pillow. Annalise Wainwright’s vision had confirmed Father Ursu and Bishop Routledge’s desire to find the Ghost source.

“The Church might have sent the guardsmen, hoping we’d lead them to whoever is responsible for Ghost,” Aisling said, tensing with her next thought. What if the guardsmen had been ordered to bring her back alive? What if it was the helicopter’s crash that changed the nature of their hunt?

A knot formed in her stomach with the added deaths laid at her feet, the ever darkening stain on her soul. She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against her knees.

Almost instantly Zurael was there, his fingers tracing the vertebrae of her spine, already knowing her so well he could guess at her thoughts. His breath was hot against her ear, his lips soft. “The hunted always have a right to defend themselves.”

A soft whimper escaped when his tongue caressed her earlobe. A second followed when it circled the shell of her ear then slipped inside.

His hand pushed between her chest and knees, possessively stroked her breasts, her nipples, forced her to open from her defensive posture. “You need to sleep,” he whispered, palm gliding downward. “We lost ground coming here to escape the guardsmen and reduce the risk of encountering another angel. We’ll have to make it up on foot tomorrow.”

Her cunt lips grew flushed and slick, parted with the same ease as her thighs when Zurael’s hand slipped beneath the waistband of her work pants and her panties. On a moan, she tilted her head backward, welcomed the way he covered her mouth with his and demanded entry with the dominant thrust of his tongue.

The fingers tracing her spine went to her hair, speared through it, making it impossible to escape even if she’d wanted to. His palm burned where it cupped her mound possessively. His fingers slid inside her, and she lifted her hips so he could thrust deeper.

Zurael’s groan fed her desire, her confidence. She wasn’t alone when it came to the shattering intensity of the hunger that flared to life when they touched.

His grip on her hair tightened. His tongue probed, thrust in the same rhythm as his fingers forged in and out of her channel and his palm glided over her hardened clit.

When she would have sought breath, he allowed her to take only his. When she would have let ecstasy consume her, he forced her to wait.

He was relentless, unyielding. He demanded everything from her.

And she yielded.

He became her world. The only reality until sweet oblivion claimed her at his command.