82. The Color of Power, The Shape of . . .

{Naya}

Usher and I left the elevator behind and stepped into a clean foyer. Before going any further, Usher made me face her and said, "No matter what, leave all of the fighting to me. Your job is to talk to Uriel. Be on your guard. We can't afford to get separated."

I bit my lip as I thought of Ritsu.

I'm not losing any more friends. Including you, Uri.

Usher and I held hands as we tentatively made our way through the silent foyer. When we rounded the corner, a mini bar came into view. Someone was perched at the counter, the top half of their body stretched sloppily along the surface. Dirty tumblers were scattered everywhere. The person's hand loosely gripped a half empty handle of Jack Daniel's.

I stepped forward to get a better look at the unconscious drunk and gasped when I recognized his face.

"Janus?"

I could feel Usher tense behind me. "Is this the collector?"

When the passed out sorcerer didn't respond, I strode over, kicked him hard in the thigh and roared his name again.

Janus snorted back to reality. "What's that? Who's there?" His unfocused, watery gray eyes fell on me and Usher. Then he blinked a few times and cleared his throat.

"A marid. Oh how delightful. And you, djinniyah. Never thought I'd see you again." He hiccuped and wiped the dribble from his lips. "Care for a drink?"

I knocked the handle of whiskey out of his limp hand. "Tell me where Uriel is right now!"

The amusement dissolved from Janus's eyes as the bottle crashed to the floor. He stumbled to his feet and grabbed my wrist. "That was the last of it! Now I have nothing!"

"Let go of me!" I easily slipped out of his grip and backed into the safety of Usher's arms. It was clear that Janus was no threat because he could barely stand on his own.

"You have nothing?" I sneered, my voice cracking. "You have more djinn than you can probably count, more wealth than anyone in this city, and power far beyond the supernatural and the modern realms. You have everything!" He made me so sick I wanted to spit on him.

I thought of the marid from Nastarajan dying overhead while Janus smiled. I thought of Ritsu becoming a block of ice just so I wouldn't burn to death. I thought of Uriel fighting with everything he could to separate himself from his own fire.

"You have it all, Janus," I said. "And yet all you do is try to take people from me!"

"I have nothing," he repeated in a mournful wail. Usher and I watched on as the drunk collector started to sob and occasionally puke into his bar stool. The next cohesive phrase that came out of his mouth was, "Your changeling took everything from me. My Sabur. My dark jewel, my precious shadow, my companion . . . of seventy years. What have I done?"

As Janus spoke, the lines in his face grew. In a matter of seconds, he went from looking like a Hollywood celebrity, to a brittle old man.

Does this mean Sabur is dead?

"Looks like Uriel did all the hard work for us," Usher whispered into my ear. "Without his ifrit sustaining his life force, the collector loses the ability to command the rest of his djinn."

With more confidence, I approached Janus again. Making sure to avoid the growing puddles of vomitus, I said, "Tell us where Uri is or the marid behind me will burn this whole building to the ground. Then you really won't have anything to live for."

Janus paused in his blubbering and stared at me as if he hadn't just spoken to me literally seconds ago.

"Ah yes, you've come for the changeling. Go on, take him if you like. I thought I wanted to latch myself to the stronger of the two, but I was wrong. Sabur, for all his faults, was my friend. That beast that ate him and sapped him of his beauty and power . . . that's nothing but a monster."

I knew that he was nothing more than a fragile old man, but I had had enough of this guy. I unhooked my guitar from my back and asked, "Which way?"

Janus pointed to the right and managed to slur out some instructions. Once I got the information, I nodded and positioned my guitar like I was holding onto a baseball bat. With one powerful swing, I slapped the collector upside the head and watched him roll to the floor. There was no way a hit like that could kill him, but I needed to bang up the one responsible for stealing Uri's joy and forcing him to fight that overgrown ifrit.

I looked at the collector one last time and spat near his head.

"Come on, Usher."

It wasn't hard to locate Uri. The further we moved in one direction, the warmer the air around us became. The walls steadily gave off more and more heat until they were bathed in a pulsing film of controlled fire. A dark, blood-red fire. Uri's fire.

I hugged my guitar against my chest in an effort to shield it from the flames. Part of me wanted to chase the growing heat down the hall and confront Uri. I imagined myself opening my arms wide to him and telling him that everything was going to be fine. He could leave this shitty prison and return to Zayn's estate with me and the rest of our friends.

But the more I studied his fire, the more I noticed that it wasn't quite the same. There was blackness that bubbled up occasionally through the shades of red. I could tell right away that it didn't belong to Uri.

As if reading my thoughts, Usher bent down and said, "What the collector said was true. Uriel must have devoured the other ifrit. He won't be himself, Naya. You need to tread cautiously."

"We're here," I announced. What must have once been a closed off room now had no doors due to clear lines of severance in the walls and ceiling. Chains littered the floor. There were also heavy, expensive curtains that were covered in bloodstains.

I scanned the room and nearly missed Uri. For a split second, I thought that I was looking into the eyes of Janus's terrifying ifrit, but there was no mistaking those deep, grenadine irises. Those eyes belonged to Uri.

"Welcome, great marid and young sila." He greeted with a velvety smile as he rose to his feet. This wasn't the first time I had seen him with three sets of arms and ruminant horns curling away from his temples and around his ears. But even after hearing him speaking, I was having a hard time recognizing him. There was something in the way that he moved and in the twist of his smile that said monster.

"Uri, do you know who I am?" I took a tentative step forward.

Uri winked at me. "Of course I know who you are. And I know why you're here."

He turned to the side and walked parallel to us, as if he were strolling through an art gallery. The dismantled walls and burning tapestries were the exhibits and he was the curator.

"The collector must have heard that I was hungry, so he brought me food."

Before I could properly register Uri's words, a cloud of smoke formed where he once stood. He was surging at the speed of light in my direction.

A wave of blue eclipsed my view of him.

I thanked God for Usher.

She said, "I'll do my best to weaken him. You need to come up with a way to get through to him. Absorbing the collector's ifrit is probably blocking his memory of you."

I heard Uri snarl on the other side of her. "Weaken me?" Then he laughed a cruel un-Uri laugh. Usher groaned as she shoved against him with all of her might. Though he was much smaller than her, he must have weighed as much as Sabur did when he was alive.

Frozen in uncertainty, I watched as wave after wave of glittery blue fire crested and crashed onto Uri. Sometimes Usher's attacks hit their target; sometimes they didn't. Uri was adept at utilizing his six arms to block and break through Usher's flaming cascades. Then he made an awful retching sound and sent what appeared to be molten boulders in her direction.

Usher simply called her waves to shield her from his molten missiles. I could tell that Uri was starting to get frustrated. Thanks to Usher's long ranged attacks, he couldn't get too close to her. He danced backward a few steps, his jaw working as he thought of a new strategy.

I used the moment to call out to him.

"Uri, come on! Can we just talk? If you would calm down for a second and hear us out, I know that you'll remember something."

My ifrit boyfriend glanced at me warily and nearly dismissed me when something caught his eye. His gaze shot back and forth between me and Usher.

"Yes. I remember. I remember."

He swallowed what I assumed was a molten rock that had been building up in his throat. Then he bent slightly and concentrated on his six hands. His fingertips began to glow.

Oh, no.

The playing field was even now. Wine-colored whips snaked out from under Uri's glowing finger nails. That was my technique – my way of calling upon my fire when I was a marid. And now he was using it against Usher.

Uri laughed and with a deft snap of his wrist, the whips bypassed Usher's ocean of fire and tightened around her ankles. He jerked his six arms back. Usher hit the stone floor hard. Her waves dissolved all around her. She was completely vulnerable now. Uri's eyes were red and crazy with bloodlust.

He wound the fiery threads around his wrists and gave another fierce tug. As Usher slid across the room, another molten boulder built up in Uri's throat.

"Stop!"

I ran as fast as I could and threw myself on top of Usher as soon as she slid to a stop, right under Uri. I didn't expect him to hesitate before exploding all over the both of us. But he did.

Judging by the look in Uri's face and the quivering bulge in his throat, he was equally confused by his actions. I got off Usher and stood before him. If I wasn't half sila, being so close to him would have probably melted my face off.

"We met at a nightclub, over drinks and hookah. Don't you remember that?"

Uri sneered. "I planned on eating the marid first and saving you for later, but if you insist on dying now, sweet kitten . . ."

In spite of Uri's threat, there was still uncertainty in his eyes. So I swallowed my fear and focused on that rather than the impending possibility of being cannibalized.

"Banana pancakes. Cuddling while we watched movies. The fights we had and the inevitable make-ups that followed." I lowered my eyes. "That time we almost kissed at the Georgia Aquarium."

I regained eye contact and added some heat to my words. "Don't you dare tell me that you don't remember."

Uri swallowed his rock and blinked slowly. "I have no problem remembering, kitten. But I don't wish to return to that. Maybe that was a life that I once craved, but no more. I've changed. Wanting to be human is a dream of the weak. And I am not weak."

I pulled my guitar forward. "Don't you still at least want to be with me?"

Two gusts of black smoke puffed from his nostrils. "No."

I sighed. "How about this? Just let go of Usher and listen to me play for you one last time. Then . . . then you can do whatever you want to us."

"Naomi, no!" Usher gasped from the floor.

I ignored her. "What's it going to be? Djinn like making deals, right? Or are you too weak for that?"

Usher continued to protest behind me. Uri, on the other hand, let his whips dissipate and folded one set of arms over his chest. He angled another two arms behind his head. The last he set akimbo.

He smirked. "Deal."

Once the fire and chains had been cleared away, Uri and I sat across from each other on the floor. He leaned against the wall and lazily propped up his knee for his arms to rest on. Then he yawned indifferently while I tuned up the guitar. Though his body language told me that this deal was nothing more than entertainment for him, whenever I caught his eyes, I couldn't help but wonder if what I saw was a trace of yearning.

I didn't wait for Uri to give me his full attention. Once I got my guitar tuned, I just closed my eyes, and focused on the lyrics:

When I look into your eyes, I see the color of power, the shape of love

Every time we touch, I feel just how hot your soul gets

It burns and it doesn't. Does that make sense?

If you love me, let me burn. If you don't, let me go out

If you love me, let me live. If you don't, please kill me now

Because I can't live without you. That is the truth somehow.

If you love me, let me burn. If you don't, I'll go out.

Oh, God, I'm on fire right now.

If this is all just a dream, make it stop. Make it stop.

Or kiss me and keep it going

'Cause this fire is all I've got.

"Naomi!"

I stopped abruptly at the sound of my name. Usher put her hand on my shoulder and pointed ahead. Uri was on the ground, writhing and gripping his horns.

"Uriel's in there. He's trying to detach himself from his inner fire," she whispered in awe.

Both of us flinched when Uri ripped one of his own horns from his temple. The wound flooded with blood in seconds. Uri howled and rolled, still gripping the severed horn. Then he turned the sharpened end on himself.

Usher helped me to my feet. "Quick, Naya. Make a wish. I have just enough power left to grant it."

I shook my head. "No. We don't know what that will do to you. Zayn said that all I would have to do is convince Uri. And I did."

"But his inner fire won't let him go. Look at him. Right now his fire is trying to wound him into unconsciousness so that he can regain control. This is our only chance."

I shut my eyes and held my guitar against me. I had no idea if Zayn and Sinbad were alive or dead. Ritsu was most definitely gone forever. If Usher granted me this wish, it could use up all of the power that Vishmar gave us. Usher was still new to the marid form. There was no telling what would happen to her if she short-circuited.

Uri snarled from across the chamber. I turned my head and nearly dropped my guitar. At the last moment, he diverted the horn from puncturing his neck. Instead, he let the curved point catch onto his right eye.

"Let. Me. GO!"

The words sounded strangled as they left his mouth.

Usher grabbed my shoulders and leveled her head with mine. Her eyes were big, blue and desperate. "Protect your love before you lose it forever."

She's right.

I took a deep breath, bowed my head, and made a wish. I thought back to the time Uri and I spent in the desert. The promise he made to me. That he would always choose me over his power – his suit of fire. My wish was for him to be granted the chance to completely fulfill that promise.

After speaking the words aloud, I prayed that they would be the right ones to set him free.