And thorns shall come up in her places, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof: and it shall be an habitation for dragons, and a court for owls. The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; Lilith also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest.

I slept in a kind of canvas lean to in my boat which was why I couldn’t see who was rummaging in my provisions, but I could hear them. Their footsteps were light on the planks and their fingers were deft at breaking and resealing my watertight containers. I could just hear their breath over the lapping water as they quietly muttered to themselves. I wanted to peek past my covering but any movement would give me away. I hadn’t had occasion to use my powers for some time but thought that now might be a good time to test them.

I began humming and causing the water around the boat to tremble. The vessel began to shake and rock in the water. The visitor stumbled to keep their balance and I sprang up whipping away my covering. A woman fell over clinging to the side of the boat, desperate not to fall overboard. I drew my knife and had it pointed at her before she had collected her wits.

“Who are you?” I demanded and let the water around us fall still. The rocking stopped and her eyes grew less wild before she answered.

“I am Lamya. I was only looking for food.”

I could see, even with her lying on the deck, that she was taller than I was. She had tan skin and auburn hair. She was a bit old for me but still beautiful to the point of distraction. She was really only twelve years my senior, but when you are young such small differences seem enormous. “What happened here?” I asked, still pointing the knife at her.

“Everyone went mad,” she said, growing more frantic. “Take me with you. Let’s get out of here before she finds us and kills us.”

“Who?”

“Lilith,” Lamya shuddered. She stood and locked her deep brown eyes on mine. Her lips trembled. “She killed everyone. We have to go before she finds us.”

I lowered my knife, seeing fear in her eyes. “You don’t mean the same Lilith from the garden,” I said. “She would be more than a thousand years old.”

“The same,” Lamya said, taking a step closer to me. “She killed them all one by one and consumed them.” Lamya somehow managed to fall and weep on my shoulder in spite of her superior height. I don’t know how she fit so well in my arms but I held her as she wept. “I need to get away before she finds me,” she sobbed. “While she’s busy with you.”

Lamya slipped from my grasp and pushed me into the sea.

The cold water was a shock.In the early autumn it wasn’t cold enough to be dangerous, but I was stunned enough that Lamya had the boat in motion before I could get to it. Instinctively I listened and could hear her sound. All I had to do was shout the counter resonance. It would be so easy and she was stealing my boat. She was trying to leave me for dead. I called out and the bindings on the rudder snapped. Lamya quickly found the oars and began to paddle the ship to steer it true. She was determined but I couldn’t let myself be stranded. I sang out once more, though it pained me, and heard timbers crack and rend. I swam to her as water filled my ship. I sincerely hoped she wouldn’t let my boat sink. I really did not want to have to kill her.

She growled in frustration and turned my ship around. “You win for now,” she muttered as she threw a rope to me. I climbed aboard and began rowing my waterlogged ship to shore. Together we managed to get the craft up onto the sand. As soon as we released the boat I had my knife pointed at her once more.

“You tried to steal my ship,” I yelled.

“And you sank our only way off this island and doomed us,” she answered with no fear or remorse.

“I should have just killed you,” I said taking a few steps closer, my blade pointed at her throat.

“Killed me?” she asked, furrowing her brow in anger. She stalked forward. “Killed me!” She slapped my knife away and struck with a backhanded blow that sent me sprawling on the sand. It took a moment and the taste of blood for me to understand what had just happened. The hilt of my knife stuck from the sand beyond reach, but I knew I didn’t need it. “I should have killed you,” Lamya snarled, looming over me. I found her vibration and, still showing some restraint, I started small enough that I should have rattled her bones and only threatened a few hemorrhages. She merely hesitated and put a hand to her head then looked more angry than before.

I scrambled to my feet and the two of us stared at each other in shock. It should have worked. She started toward me again and I called out, this time with enough force that she should have instantly fell down dead. She yelped and growled like she had been whipped but continued forward. Her hair began to rise like a cloud around her. The air around me grew crisp and sharp as she reached out. A light flashed and I felt a jolt though she never touched me. I couldn’t move. My arms and legs twitched and for a few seconds I even stopped breathing.

“Stupid incubus,” Lamya snarled, then held out a hand to me. I felt weak as I looked up at her with suspicion. “Come on,” she snapped. “You getting up or not?”

I hesitated for a moment more then took her hand and she hauled me to my feet. I instantly snatched up my knife again and held it between us.

“Oh, please,” she said. “Haven’t you had enough yet?”

It was obvious that I was outmatched but that was no reason not to fight at all. “What are you?” I asked.

“Excuse me,” she huffed. “This is my island. You are the alien from across the sea. Who are you and how did you find this place?”

That was fair enough. “I am Namir, son of Roulan and Kiara.”

She shook her head. “No. Try it without the lies this time, and put that knife away before you hurt yourself.”

I grudgingly replaced my knife in its sheath and began again. “My name is Namir and I suppose I have no family nor people.”

Lamya nodded. “That’s better. I am Lamya, sílat of Ardjanna and what I told you before is true. Lilith lurks here and if she finds us we will both wish we had never been born. Come on.” She waved for me to follow and walked away toward the dead city.

Lamya kept a home in the city that looked like every other abandoned building and would be impossible to distinguish if you didn’t already know where it was. The windows were covered to prevent any light from escaping and the flue divided the smoke among a dozen chimneys to disperse it enough that it was invisible. We ate a hot meal together and shared our stories, finding an ally in one another if not a friend.

“So, you were fifteen years in Eden?” Lamya asked.

“Yes,” I replied. “I washed up on the shore in the very boat you tried to steal, thank you very much. I was just a child and barely alive. My mother was long dead.”

“Fifteen years,” Lamya repeated. “That adds up. I was younger than you are now when it happened, only twelve, but I will never forget.”

“What happened here?” I asked.

She took a deep breath and poured each of us a drink. “You’d better get comfortable. I have to start this story from the beginning. You said you know the story of Lilith, right?”

I nodded.

“Well, after she was cast out, a seraph named Samael was commanded to bring her here. In the process he developed feelings for her and stayed. I’m unclear on the practicality and logistics of it, but they had twenty-four children, twelve boys and twelve girls. After that Samael remembered his duty and left Lilith to her own devices. Not long after that she met Iblis, the greatest of the djinn.”

“I have heard of him,” I said. “He was the one who refused to acknowledge that man was created in the image of God.”

Lamya nodded. “That’s him. Together they had twenty-four more children, twelve boys and twelve girls. That made two kinds of people on this island, the archons and the sílats. The patriarchs of the two clans intermarried almost immediately but there were factions of each that were more purist. My family was one of them. As the centuries passed Lilith grew old. She saw death approaching and she saw the light of the seraphs and the smokeless fire of the djinn that seemed to burn endlessly. It was beyond her reach until she found a connection. Her children.”

Lamya shook her head and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Keep in mind I was a little puke smaller than you when these things happened.”

I bristled at the attack on my age but held my tongue and nodded.

“My family was purist,” Lamya continued, “and thought that the djinn line should be kept separate from the seraph line. That was one of the reasons that the feuds started. The sílats fought with the archons and the archons fought with the matriarchs and the matriarchs wanted to keep the peace. They were all fools. They had their petty squabbles while Lilith found a way to extend her life through absorbing the flames of others.

“She couldn’t simply assimilate a seraph or djinn. They were too different, but her children who carried some of that flame she already had a tie to. She started with the matriarchal line that had both seraph and djinn blood. You seem to be more on the archon side of things but I think you have a bit of both. Me, I’m from a sílat family.

“The mixed ones, like you, were the tastiest ones. Lilith targeted them first. One by one people began to disappear and with each flame that she consumed Lilith grew more powerful until by the time anyone put the pieces together it was too late.

“There was a rumor that the last matriarch escaped with her child, but I think she just disappeared like all the others. My family was glad to see tragedy falling on the matriarchs, but soon enough no one was safe. Some people tried to fight but they died. Some tried to run but no one could make it across the sea. My family went into hiding. For years I said I was going to try my luck on the sea, but no one who tried that ever came back. Until now.” Lamya looked at me and said, “Now I will get my chance.”

“She killed her own children to get immortality,” I muttered. That part of the story was too familiar and sent a chill down my spine. Something about the story didn’t sit right with me though. “Fifteen years,” I mused. “All of that happened in fifteen years?”

Lamya nodded.

“That is a lot of people. If she killed a hundred people per day it would take…” I tried to do the math in my head. How many millions of people had there been? There was no way that One person could have killed so many, no matter how powerful she was. And how was there just one left that I happened to find? Then again, there is always a last one just like there always has to be a first. It didn’t add up, but it wasn’t impossible.

“It was a lot more complicated than that,” Lamya said, “but it would take months to explain it and, like I said, I was young and don’t know most of it anyway. Besides, Lilith might know you’re here. She could be searching for us right now.”

“What’s your plan then?” I asked.

“We fix your ship and get out of here.”

“How do I know you won’t betray me and steal my ship again?”

“Because, without my help,” Lamya said, sticking a finger in my chest, “you will get caught by Lilith and get your soul sucked out.”

I looked at her skeptically.

“You don’t get eaten, and I get off this island,” she said. “We both win.”

I didn’t trust her but she was right that if we wanted to survive then we needed each other. “Deal,” I said.

Since the city was watched more closely than the countryside and the boat was too large for the two of us to move without fixing it first, we decided to repair it where it was. Lamya explained what to watch for so we wouldn’t get caught in the open. “Look for harpies particularly,” she warned. “Hide if you see one. Be careful of owls too, they could report us to her. If you see a fury then I will remember your sacrifice that allowed me to escape.”

When I asked for tools to work with she just looked at me sideways and said, “Just use sonic blades.” Then I looked at her sideways. She explained to me that my power could be used as a wave of sound that cut like a knife. Her powers were different, but she assured me that she had seen it done. The instruction she could give was minimal at best so I was forced to muddle through it myself. It took me a week before I could split a piece of wood and a week more before I could shape the cuts into something useful. I had my knife with me but there were no axes nor saws to be found. Anything more than whittling would have to be done with sound.

As I practiced I learned that Lamya’s abilities were quite different. She said that they were related, but I couldn’t see how. She could create electrical charges and shocks and I had to admit that her powers were much more intimidating than mine. When the mood took her she could put on quite the light show. Between the two of us I was confident in our abilities to defend us, even from Lilith if need be. Lamya assured me that I knew no more than an infant messing its own drawers. She was right.