veins of underwater streams that were spikes of power and pulsing life and the springs in the rocky cliffs eager to burst their stony prison.
His fingers curved around the hilt of his khanjar. The ghouls surrounding him suddenly seemed insubstantial smoky nothings, the Daevas not much more. They were fire-blooded, true, burning bright.
But fire could be extinguished.
Ali screamed into the night, and the moisture in the air burst around him, pouring down as rain that licked his wounds, soothing and healing his battered body. With a snap of his fingers, he raised a fog to shroud the beach. He heard the archer cry out, surprised by her sudden blindness.
But Ali wasn’t blind. He lunged for his zulfiqar, yanking it from the dead man’s body just as the ghouls attacked.
With the zulfiqar in one hand and the khanjar in the other, droplets of water spinning off their wet blades, he cut through the crowd of undead. They kept coming, relentless, two new ghouls pushing through for every one he decapitated. A furious flurry of snapping teeth and bony hands, seaweed wrapping their decayed limbs.
The Daevas on the wall above him ran, the heat from their fire-blooded bodies vanishing. There were others; Ali could sense another trio rushing to join them and five already in the remains of the Citadel. Ten in total, that he knew.
Ali could kill ten men. He cut off the head of the ghoul blocking his path, kicked another in the chest, and then raced after the Daevas.
He stopped to fling his khanjar at the closest, catching the man in the back. Ali plunged it deeper when he caught up, twisting the dagger until the man stopped screaming before yanking it free.
Pounding caught his attention. He glanced back through the gloom he’d conjured to see two archers on smoky horseback racing along the water’s edge. One drew back his bowstring.
Ali hissed, calling to the lake. Watery fingers snaked around the horses’ legs, dragging the archers into the depths as their enchanted mounts disappeared in a spray of mist. He kept running. Two of the fleeing Daevas stopped, perhaps inspired by a burst of courage to stand their ground and defend their fellows.
Ali put his zulfiqar through the heart of the first, his dagger opening the throat of the second.
Seven men left.
But the ghouls caught up with him as he lunged for the wrecked outer wall of the Citadel, snatching him back as he attempted to climb it. There was a blur of bone, the scent of rot and blood overwhelming as they tore into him. Ali screamed as one bit deeply into his already wounded shoulder. They were everywhere, and his hold on the powerful water magic dipped as panic seized him.
Daevabad, Alizayd, his father’s voice whispered. Daevabad comes first. Bleeding badly, Ali gave more of himself up, embracing the raw magic coursing so wildly within him that it felt like his body would burst.
He was given a gift in return. The sudden awareness of a rich vein of water beneath him, a hidden stream snaking deep, deep under the sand. Ali called to it, yanking it up like a whip.
Stone and sand and water went flying. Ali lashed it at the ghouls, taking out enough to escape the horde. He scrambled over the ruined Citadel wall.
Another pair of Daevas had been left to deal with him, their bravery rewarded with two swift strikes of his zulfiqar that took their heads. Blood was running down his face, torn patches of flesh burning under his tattered dishdasha.
It didn’t matter. Ali dashed toward the breach, arrows raining down on him as he navigated the broken courtyard where he’d first learned to fight. The bodies of his fellow djinn were everywhere, some pierced with arrows, some torn apart by ghouls, others simply crushed in the violent mayhem the lake-beast had unleashed upon the complex. Grief and rage flooded his veins, pushing him on. And though the archers might have been able to see in the summoned fog, one nearly struck true, an arrow tearing past his thigh. Ali gasped.
But he didn’t stop.
He vaulted over a ruined pile of sandstone, what he dimly recognized as the sunny diwan in which he’d attempted to teach economics to a bored group of cadets. The swordsman who’d mocked him stood there now, shaking as he raised his blade.
“Demon!” the Daeva screamed. “What the hell are y—”
Ali silenced him with his khanjar.
Four left. He inhaled, taking a moment to survey his surroundings. A glance revealed two