Blood Ex Libris Read online

  I looked around. We were alone together. Well, except for the pleasingly wrecked corpse of Bat-Bitch and the people-shaped charcoal piles.

  There were several exits from the cavern. “Sandu was here? He was fighting Iblis? Which way did they go?”

  Dragoș laughed, “You’ve been around these nenorociți nebuni too long! We still call him Mehmet. And shall as we kill him.” He wiped his knife on his pant leg and re-sheathed it on a scabbard that hung under his armpit.

  “Fine, but which way did they go?”

  “Can you not smell him?” he asked. I closed my eyes and took a deep whiff of acrid smoke, explosive chemicals, burned rock, burned flesh, and Bat-Bitch’s blood. I could even, since he was next to me, smell Dragoș, but otherwise, my senses had been seriously impaired by the smoke, and I could get nothing more. I shook my head, ashamed I could not smell my patar.

  “You are still am’r-nafsh,” Dragoș said kindly. “And despite your prodigal advancement, there is still much for you to learn and skills you cannot yet possess. But now, come!” He set off across the cavern at speed—not running, but moving fast in that am’r way. I could barely manage to keep up, but extreme motivation helped.

  What is happening with Sandu? What will the Mad Genie do, with his evil plans falling down around him?

  Down one passageway we went, then another, and I didn’t care that I was utterly lost again. I could hear fighting echoing from various distances, and once, another huge explosion that made the world shake for a long moment. We didn’t stop.

  Until, that is, we got to a room that was still on fire. There had been a setup much like the Rave Cave, and what was left of the long table and chairs was still burning. The walls flickered as if illuminated by light through water, except this was more like shadows through fire.

  Just ahead of us, larger shadows were flickering as well: Iblis and Sandu, Mehmet and Vlad, old enemies playing out their ancient deadly game.

  They were fighting with swords. Mehmet had his long curved one. Sandu had the sword I remembered from the last time I saw him, except now it was out of the scabbard, flashing and glinting in the firelight. They were going at it hard and fast. I could hardly make out the movements until one sword clashed against another, then there was a pause before they sprang apart and started all over again. They were not pressing each other so hard they could not talk, and although it was in Turkish, it had the feel of being the sort of witty insults meant to raise tempers, a sort of foreplay to killing.

  “I understand it,” Dragoș remarked, reading my mind. “Vlad is asking about Mehmet’s leg—I think he said gout?—and the reply is, how is the Impaler’s back these days? Is there a knife still in it?

  “Now they are speaking of old battles. Vlad has brought up Târgovişte. He mentions forests of Turks. Mehmet says the Impaler failed to kill him then, as he always will. They are now arguing about who won. Vlad says he has a great fondness for ruining the plans of a sultan who relies upon superior numbers; obviously, he is not the superior strategist. Mehmet replies, he always achieved his objectives, no matter how many lives the Impaler wasted to try to stop him, and Vlad failed every time. That his every so-called-victory was propaganda to cover defeat.

  “Vlad mentions that Mehmet was not the only one who could use gunpowder. He says at Giurgiu, he turned Hamza Pasha and his cavalry into bloody mud. Not one man walked away. He wonders how that could be called defeat?

  “Mehmet says that indeed, he must thank the Dracul—that’s Vlad’s father—for teaching him about gunpowder. In exchange, he says the Ottomans taught Vlad his trademark, didn’t they? Where would the Impaler be without what he learned at their hands after his father left him without a backward look? Băga-mi-aş pula! And he must thank a Transylvanian, his crafty Master Orban, for the good cannon he used to blow down the walls of Constantinople, and—ah, nu!—now Mehmet brings up Poenari—pizda mă-sii! He says the impenetrable fortress was not so impenetrable when he, the Conqueror, came to it. He is saying the Impaler was only good at impaling his own people and his enemies had no trouble bringing him down every time.”

  Mehmet had obviously pissed Sandu off pretty effectively. I knew nothing about sword fighting, but it was clearly not going well for Sandu right now. When I could see his face, he was scowling. Mehmet was not done, either.

  “Now he says that Vlad was only ever an ısrarcı kimse, a—what do you call it, ‘gadfly?’ That he was a little bloodsucker insect before he became am’r, never more than an annoyance buzzing around battlefields. He says that Vlad only came to power thanks to his—Mehmet’s—father. He says when Vlad was cast down by his own people, he ran to the Turks for help. He says that he—Mehmet—took in battle the greatest city of Christendom while Vlad was hiding in the skirts of his teenage cousin, licking the hand of the man who killed his father—Aoleu! Now he calls Vlad ‘an insect that makes you like flies better’—I think he means mosquito—and it is time for him to finally squash him.”

  Now I was worried about Sandu. It had never occurred to me that he could not best the Mad Genie easily and without problems. But he was having problems. Mehmet was winning, both the verbal sparring and the sword fighting. I was frozen, watching with mounting anxiety, as Sandu’s movements became more frenzied, less graceful and controlled. Mehmet’s smile glittered from his mouth and from his eyes, which glowed red as they caught the firelight. He knew he had won. All had not gone according to his plans today, but now…now he was winning. I could read it in his every movement as they danced and swung in the flickering light.

  Dragoș, however, was not frozen, and he shoved me hard to get my attention. “Over there. Do you see?” I looked and there was a dead jinnī, still strapped into his flamethrower although missing his head. And another beside him, who was just a torso under the backpack frame of the flamethrower. It made sense—this room was not as full of smoke, the walls not blackened, so the fire here must have come from something other than the explosions, and thus the jinn had died by the sword, their flamethrowers unused. “Go get the-the...aruncătoarea de flăcări. I’ll distract Mehmet. Bring them to Vlad. Acum! NOW!” And he was off, yelling as he ran to attack the Mad Genie with his sword, which he pulled from its scabbard as he ran.

  I ran to the bodies and started hauling the flamethrowers off them. Pulling the one off the torso was easiest. I didn’t even think about it being a bit of body that went from neck to bellybutton; it was simply the easiest to deal with.

  Flamethrowers are unwieldy things. I needed both hands to get the second, so I had to drop the first and then detangle the other from the body to which it was strapped by shoulders and waist. There followed an awkward few minutes while I tried to figure out how to carry both. I could hear a lot of yelling in various languages from the fight. I think Mehmet and Sandu were both yelling at Dragoș, but I didn’t dare take the time to look up. I had figured it out: I strapped on the flamethrower that was in my hands, then reached down and grabbed the other one and ran to join the fight.

  Dragoș was going at it with Mehmet fast and furious. Sandu was circling with impotent rage—so he had been shouting at Dragoș. I ran to Sandu and thrust the flamethrower at him. He glared at me for a second with naked rage on his face, and I knew I was seeing the face of Vlad Ţepeş, not the man Sandu said he had become. I recoiled, and some change played out inside him, washing outward over his face. While it was still full of fury, in some subtle way, it was the face I knew. He grabbed the flamethrower and pulled it over his shoulders.

  This left me with my own immediate problem of how I planned to operate my flamethrower. I remembered seeing Iblis working the nozzle over Neplach’s headless corpse, and—with an Impaler-like fury in my own breast—I turned the nozzle towards the Genocidal Genie, pulled one lever with one hand, and pulled another lever with the other.

  The machine coughed, choked...and died. I stood there in shock. It hadn’t occurred to me the damned thing might be damaged or even just out of fuel.

  S
andu had his flamethrower aimed, but Mehmet and Dragoș now were dancing around too fast for him to shoot and not end up with two charbroiled swordfighters where we wanted only one. Sandu and I shouted his name at the same moment, and his eyes flicked to us. Mehmet took that moment to swing the blade across his neck. Dragoș fell back, a terrible line of red across his throat—but he fell back far enough to be out of the line of fire.

  And it was a line of fire. Sandu’s flamethrower still had fuel, and it burst out emphatically, as if given extra ferocity by Sandu’s hatred of his old enemy, catching Mehmet’s head and pouring down his body, in a long, blazing line of flame.

  Mehmet turned to face us, and for a brief moment, he was Iblis, a perfect being of fire, his eyes glittering madness and reflected flames from his burning body—and something else. Something like completion, or maybe revelation.

  But his clothing was on fire, and his skin turned brown and peeled back in black curls like burning paper as the underlying flesh caught. Then it was as if he caught from the inside, and burned faster and hotter. Right before our eyes, he charred, and his flesh desiccated over his bones. His metallic eyes took longer than his flesh, and he seemed to be watching us right back, until they too—finally, finally— seemed to sink into their sockets. By then, the ears and nose had shrunk to half of their size and the lips had somehow expanded around the mouth, exposing the front teeth in a terrible grin. The eyes burned, leaving only small lumps of ashen tissue in each open socket of the wizened skull. The exposed bones turned whitish-gray before they too succumbed to the flame.

  Except for the whoosh of the flamethrower and then the crackle of the flames consuming the flesh and bone, all had been silent. For some moments after the ashen remains collapsed into an untidy heap on the floor we stayed silent, just staring at the smoking mound of ashes and charred bone.

  I had just looked at Sandu and he at me in a wordless outpouring of pure intensity when Dragoș made a sound: a gurgling, desperate sound. Sandu was at his side faster than I could see, and I was not far behind. Sandu was examining Dragoș’ neck, which had been…well, half-severed was the best way to describe it. Not a killing wound for an am’r, but not a pleasant or convenient one.

  “I must attend to this, Noosh,” Sandu said. With his words, a flush of resentment coursed through me. I was not a squeamish kee anymore who wouldn’t understand about things. “Of course!” I replied, trying not to let my peevishness show in my voice. “How can I help?”

  It was the right answer because Sandu’s face, without noticeably altering expression, looked less tense. “Keep your senses on alert while I am busy,” he suggested simply. No pat on the back for being a good little am’r-nafsh, but being someone Sandu and Dragoș could count on was the real reward for me now.

  I shed my useless flamethrower and wandered around the periphery, standing in each of the entrances to the room in turn and stretching my senses. They were better than they had been but still felt pathetic compared to what an am’r could have perceived. I felt nothing coming toward any of the doorways and risked glances backward.

  Sandu had sliced his wrist open and applied the blood to Dragoș’ throat wound. To be honest, I didn’t look too closely at that part since it seemed he was, well, really working it in. It looked even less comfortable to endure than to watch, and I was happy to turn away.

  The next time I turned around, Sandu had re-slashed his wrist, and Dragoș was drinking thirstily from it. Am’r first aid was all about blood. That’s handy for them. I found myself idly wondering if Dragoș would manage to have an erection at this point if Sandu did as well, but put the thought aside and focused all my senses intently out of the entranceway in which I was currently standing.

  When I went to do another circuit of the room, Sandu called me over. “I’ve sensed nothing for what that’s worth,” I told him.

  “Thank you, draga mea,” he said solemnly, and I knew it was for more than the dubious lookout.

  “Da, surată mea,” Dragoș said in a huskier voice than usual. I couldn’t tell if it was from having just had his throat hacked in half and healed or from arousal from the blood-drinking. Maybe both. “You are my dear sister, and I am proud to be so joined to you.”

  I looked at Dragoș. His English was usually way less archaic and formally cumbersome than Sandu’s. I abruptly understood what was going on. Sandu was his patar, too. How had I not noticed that before?

  “I am proud to have you as a brother, dear Dragoș,” I said, and felt my eyes tearing up. Dragoș put an arm up to Sandu, then more tentatively reached out to me. Suddenly we were all three in an embrace, and I was savoring the connection to people I cared about and trusted—who were family. It was needed. It was healing. I sniffed and smelled the scent of Sandu, the scent of Dragoș, and wondered how I had not known before.

  Never mind. Here in the midst of chaos and terror, flame, and destruction was pure, tangible comfort. I soaked it in and tried to pour it back out to my…my family.

  I could have stood for a good deal more of it, but Dragoș and Sandu pulled away at the same moment and were abruptly all business again.

  Well, we were still in the middle of a burning, exploding battlefield.

  “You are injured as well, dragă Anushka. Your vhoon-smell is filling the air.”

  Oh. I had totally forgotten about that. Now, of course, my thighs started throbbing with pain that seemed to be trying to make up for all the time I’d not paid attention to it. Suddenly, Sandu and Dragoș had sat me down and were pulling apart the shreds of the fabric from my dress and the under-trousers. I suddenly felt strangely shy about the men inspecting my inner thighs.

  After some uncomfortable probing, Sandu announced that I was very lucky—just surface lacerations. No deep damage to muscles that would keep me from walking and no sliced veins. “These can heal on their own, draga mea. We have much to do without delay.” I nodded. These sorts of injuries were paper cuts to the am’r, and Sandu probably shouldn’t lose any more blood. I just had to pull up my big-girl panties and deal.

  Sandu continued, “We must find Bagamil immediately, yet equally importantly, we should let the jinn know their leader is dead, and they have the option of running away and pretending it never happened.”

  “Or fighting to the death,” Dragoș put in, grinning.

  “I do not think many will choose that,” Sandu replied. “If any do, it will be the ones he has made since he started this madness, who have known no other way.”

  “Um, why not?” I had to ask. “Didn’t we just make a martyr of Mehmet? This might make them fight harder in his memory. They seemed pretty fucking devoted to him.”

  “They are am’r,” Sandu said with a smile. “There are a few leaders charismatic enough to bring groups of am’r together for a little while, but without their leader, they will wander off. Go lick their wounds somewhere private. They will be embarrassed when they realize how stupid they have been, and they will see his failure as proof that he was a fool—a foolish leader they should never have followed. They will denounce him and pretend they never truly believed they were genies.”

  “Hmmm,” was my reply because that seemed simplistic. But we didn’t have time to stand there talking. “Oh! Wait!” I cried out and went back to the bits of ex-jinn.

  Rooting around in what I could only call “rather hurriedly tossed-about body parts” was not the most pleasant thing ever, but the way my evening had been going, this was just fine. I was happy that A.) these jinn were no longer a threat, and B.) I didn’t have to stand around and watch them burn to death. Focusing on the positive, I found what I’d hoped to find.

  For once in this whole great clusterfuck of events, I could be useful in a timely manner.

  “Here!” I said proudly, handing Sandu a walkie-talkie.

  He looked at it. Dragoș looked at it. They both looked at me. Sandu seemed not to be able to process any emotions, so he showed none. Dragoș raised an eyebrow of approval at me. I felt like I had won a me
dal.

  The walkie-talkie came to life with a constant stream of chatter. That stopped immediately when Sandu pressed the button and asked in Arabic for Mehmet’s second-in-command. There were some confused replies. Then, after Dragoș told him Bat-Bitch was dead—I got a quick, proud glance from my patar when he gave me the not-entirely deserved credit for killing her—Sandu got back on the horn and made an announcement, which Dragoș quietly translated for me.

  “He’s saying that Mehmet was killed by his hand and that the one known as the Qarînah was killed by his frithaputhra. Now he says that the choice of those who remain is to die at the hands of Bagamil, Vlad the Impaler, and their...‘irate’ is I think the best translation, followers—that’s us—or they can, eh, exit very quickly and hope we do not remember their faces or their scents. There is more in that vein.”

  After Sandu stopped talking, the walkie-talkie was dead quiet. Maybe he was right, and the rest of the genies would magically transform back into am’r—saving their skins, abandoning their supposed brothers and sisters, and running off to sulk and lick their ruffled fur back into order like it had never happened.

  At any rate, off we went to find Bagamil. Well, after I admitted to and took care of my humiliating need to use the bathroom and met the little rodent-thing.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Sandu spoke very quietly to me as we walked. Dragoș took point, staying a bit ahead of us. He was looking out for any remaining enemies who might still be willing to fight about whether they were jinn or not, and for dangers from the damaged caves we were combing. He sniffed a lot.

  Sandu was sniffing too, in between words. “We were in council. We were discussing—”

  “Arguing!” floated back from Dragoș.

  “Ei bine, da, we were arguing about the best way to deal with Mehmet and his followers. Whether they all needed to die, or if just killing the leaders was sufficient. There was some...difference of opinion...on the best way to accomplish this. We had just come up with a plan to which all agreed when the explosions began.