“They were not warriors. Within our society there are castes. Only those with greater magic and a violent nature enter battle. My clansmen are artists, teachers, and tradesmen. One is a lawyer, another is a pediatric nurse. The woman who stabbed me is an elementary school teacher. They had drawn straws to see who would perform the test and she pulled a short one. She was terrified out of her wits, but Shakush scared her more. In a fight with Shakush, they would simply become victims. He would devour their magic. They were so happy when they found me. They thought I would protect them from the mad creature Shakush had become.”

That must’ve been so terrible. To think that you had finally found the answers and help you needed, only to realize everyone was counting on you to save them. “What did you do?”

Bahir leaned back. “I had to protect myself. I had to protect my son, so I began training. I tried dojos and martial arts clubs, but it wasn’t the right kind of training. So I asked my clansmen and they finally found a man who would teach me. He was a killer, and the things I learned from him turned my stomach.”

“But they felt right,” Nick said.

Bahir nodded. “Yes. There were no points and no submission holds.”

“And your wife?” George asked.

“I kept most of it from her. I didn’t want her to have to carry the weight of knowing that an unseen terrible creature was searching for her husband and her son. It was my burden. My clansmen couldn’t help me fight, but they helped in other ways. One of them was a smith. He made my weapons. The rest did research. We dug through folklore and historical accounts, what little there were. Finally through a combination of many hours of study and prophetic dreams, we came on the design for a box.”

He nodded at the box on the table.

“It should contain the ifrit, sealing him in once again.”

“Should?” Mahon asked.

“Should is as certain as we can be. A box of this design was used once by a holy man to contain an enraged desert marid. If it can hold a sandstorm, it should hold Shakush.”

“And your wife?” George asked. “I’m just trying to understand why you were never in Eduardo’s life.”

“It wasn’t by choice. The breaking point came when a husband of one of the teachers at the college where I taught at the time brought a gun into the building. He was a disturbed man. She had left him and he was trying to hunt her down. I took his life. It happened very quickly. I saw the gun. He fired at her. I reacted.”