Shadow's End (Elder Races, #9)(75)

All his planning fell away. All the talk, the preparations. He had lived the very best of his life in a single moment. The only thing that remained was the sound of his breath as he released it. It vaporized into the endless winter’s night.

Injecting Power into his voice, he called out, “Malphas.”

The pariah took his time answering the summons.

As Graydon sensed Malphas’s leisurely approach, he realized that for all of their caution and extreme effort in laying the trap, the Djinn wasn’t acting like he was suspicious.

He was acting contemptuous.

Angling his jaw out, Graydon crossed his arms as he waited.

The Djinn poured onto the scene without materializing. Like an oil slick, his presence smeared the fresh night air.

“I get no Christmas cards, you don’t write.” Malphas circled around Graydon. “Now, after all this time, you decide to pick up the phone. One wonders why one even bothers to respond.”

Hatred clogged his throat. Curling his lip, he growled, “And yet, I see one does.”

“Curiosity does sometimes get the better of me.” Like a devil riding his shoulder, Malphas sighed in Graydon’s ear. “And oh look at what a dismal setting. You couldn’t even invite me to a nice restaurant.”

The Djinn was toying with him, like a cat with a mouse.

He refused to flinch, and said between his teeth, “I would rather be caught dead than be seen in public with you.”

Truth.

If he stuck to the truth, he couldn’t go too far wrong.

Malphas laughed. “My feelings, they are wounded. If I had a heart, it would be broken. What do you want, gryphon?”

“I want to change our agreement.”

Come on, *. Show your face.

“No, I don’t think I want to do that. I’m perfectly content with our bargain as it is.” As leisurely as he had arrived, the Djinn’s presence began to fade.

Graydon raised his voice, and injected a note of scorn. “Coward. Don’t you even want to hear the terms of the wager I want to propose?”

Malphas paused, just as Graydon had felt sure he would. Pouring back, the Djinn said, “You want to propose a wager to me? You surprise me, gryphon. You’re not a gambling man.”

He snapped, “I am when I’ve got nothing left to lose.”

Again, truth. He would gamble everything to get a chance at another moment with Bel.

The frigid air around him boiled as Malphas snapped back, like a shark gnashing invisible teeth. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. Because believe me, sentinel, you have got a great deal you could lose. Friends. Coworkers. Even a fledgling dragon.”

He did not just go there. Renewed rage set Graydon’s body on fire.

Come on, you bastard. Materialize.

“If you don’t want to hear my wager, fine,” he whispered. “Fuck off. I’ll find some other way to be rid of you.”

“And risk the so lovely Beluviel, and her son?” Contemptuous shining eyes appeared in front of Graydon. “You won’t get rid of me unless I say you can.”

“A wager,” said Graydon. His talons had emerged, and he could feel that his teeth had lengthened. He hid his fists underneath his crossed arms. “All or nothing. Or maybe you don’t have the balls.” He barked out an angry laugh. “Listen to me, what am I saying? Of course you don’t have the balls. Not really.”

Malphas slammed into his physical form in front of Graydon, wearing, as he always did, the same golden hair and angelically handsome face.

And as he faced Graydon, he set his back to the ocean.

The Djinn told him, “You don’t have the damned guts for an all-or-nothing wager.”

Julian, Graydon said. Aloud, he spat, “Try me. I’m sick to death of this arbitrary barrier you shoved between me and Beluviel. Do you hear me—I am f*cking done.”

“You don’t get to say when you’re done,” Malphas enunciated, stabbing at the air with one finger. “I own you.”

Behind the furious Djinn, a dark, powerful figure rose out of the water and slipped over the edge of the ice. It crawled toward them, its helmeted head featureless in the moonlight, at once silent and so predatory that, even though he knew it was really a friend, Graydon’s hackles rose.

He growled, “You’ll never own me, Djinn.”

“I own the piece of you that you want the most,” Malphas sneered. “The chance to be with Beluviel again. How have the last two hundred years been for you—watching her at public functions, talking to her, never being able to copulate again without killing the one person she loves the most?”

“You are the most vindictive * I have ever met,” Graydon told him. “And I’m done arguing with you. Do you want to gamble for a bigger piece of me or not?”

“Oh, I will love putting a bigger noose around your thug neck.” Malphas gestured angrily.

Crouched on the ground behind his knees, Julian snaked both bare hands around one of the Djinn’s ankles and said, Got him.

Astonishment bolted across Malphas’s face. The Djinn’s Power rippled, but his physical form didn’t dissipate. He tugged at his leg, but he couldn’t dislodge the shackle on his ankle.

Son of a bitch. Part of Graydon had been too skeptical to believe it could happen, but the Vampyre had done it. He had really trapped Malphas.