Lamp Riders: A Jinn Motorcycle Gang Novella (5 page)

“So, what, you just hang around, doing magic? Burning down perfectly good bars?” she sneered dismissively, ignoring his muscles and perfect teeth.

“There you go, making it sound boring again. No, we’re usually on our own plane of existence enjoying our awesome jinn land where everything is much better than here!”

Celia laughed at this, picturing a variety of ‘genie lands’ in her head. She stopped short when he gave her a dark look. “Oh, that wasn’t a joke?”

“Djinnestan is not a joke!”

“Djinnestan? That can’t be its name,” Celia said incredulously. She thought she might start laughing again but figured it probably wasn’t best to test the temperament of this self-professed all-powerful creature just yet, just on the off-chance that he was indeed all-powerful. She choked back a snort and kept her face straight. “So, why are you here then?”

“We came here most unwillingly and will be leaving as soon as possible. Something, quite important has been lost, and we must recover it. For the good of all the planes of existence.”

Celia stared hard at him, starting to feel like she was in a bad sci-fi movie. “So, how many planes of existence are there exactly?”

Abdul sighed with exasperation, as if she had just asked him how many states there were in the U.S. “Listen, there are three planes, for three very different beings. There are the creatures of light; I’m pretty sure you call them angels. They have unlimited power but no free will. They just take the commands of fate. Then there are you guys, the humans. You have no powers but unlimited free will. Last, come my people, Jinn. We are somewhere between the two. Nearly unlimited power, but with free will.”

“That sounds like a terrible idea.”

“To you, yes. There are reasons why humans didn’t get the ability to shoot lightning and control time. Luckily, Jinn have a greater taste for humor and mischief than humans, so our meddling tends to be all in good fun and harmless.”

“Usually?”

“No promises,” he said while giving her one of those scorching looks.

“Right. This is all...very reasonable,” Celia said, beginning to back away.

The shock was starting to wear off, and the first tendrils of fear were beginning to grab at her. Angels, Jinn, Fate. This was the mumbo jumbo people who spent too much time in the desert started to talk about when they stumbled back into civilization. In fact, Celia was beginning to wonder if perhaps she was suffering from hallucinations. She quickly looked up at the sky. How long had she been out in the sun again?

“You are starting to doubt what you saw last night, aren’t you?”

“Well, it is pretty fantastical,” Celia continued, feeling her forehead to see if she was indeed overheating and experiencing heatstroke.

Abdul nodded knowingly, then raised his left hand up and beckoned once with his pointer finger. A large rock lifted into the air next to Celia and began to orbit her head like a moon. Abdul then flicked his wrist, and the rock began to shoot off sparks, becoming a blazing, hazardous comet that was much too close to Celia’s long hair for her comfort.

“Stop with the flames! This is not convincing me I’m not becoming a crazy person,” Celia yelled, trying to duck out of the way of the zooming rock. She fell to her knees on the ground.

“Yes it is,” Abdul replied calmly, flicking his wrist again. “Those sparks actually hurt.”

“Ouch! Stop it! What are you doing in my house anyway? Are you here to throw rocks at me, or is this a bonus?”

The rock fell to the ground with a small thump, looking as normal as ever. Abdul smirked at her, offering her his hand to help her up. She shook her head and continued to kneel in the dirt of her front yard.

“Well, we have a problem. Most people who see us are addled old folks who no one would believe anyway. I mean, that bar last night was filled with people who could talk all day about our power and not a single normal person would think twice about it. The rest of the time, when a functioning, intelligent human sees us they tend to uh...lose their mind. Then they go right back into the first group.”

“That is...not comforting.”

“Exactly. But here you are, completely fine! You watched everything and seem completely unfazed. On a scale of one through ten, your surprise registered only a three. Seriously? What is wrong with you?”

“What is wrong with me? What is wrong with YOU?!” Celia was angry now, her face becoming flushed and hot.

“We just can’t have you going around talking about us or the things you’ve seen. It is important we finish the job that we were sent here to do.”

“Right, but you had time to do a little dancing?” Celia considered picking up the rock and hurling it at Abdul’s foot.

He threw his hands up in exasperation. “So I flirt with the prettiest girl around. Listen, you have no idea how important this is. I need you to cooperate, and we will make all these memories go away.”

“Excuse me? You are not touching me,” she growled, scooting backward over the ground to distance herself from him.

Abdul looked slightly pained. “Listen, I didn’t mean we will hurt you.”

“I said don’t touch me! I don’t trust your magic. You got your ass kicked last night!”

Abdul froze and narrowed his eyes. Looking intently at her, he took a large breath. His hands were completely still at his sides with his fists clenched. He held his breath for five long seconds, and the entire desert seemed to be still too, waiting for him to move next. Celia realized that she was also holding her breath in anticipation. Then he released the air in a noisy rush, throwing his arms out dramatically as he did so.

Off in the far distance stood a single mountain, lonely in the shimmering heat. As Abdul exhaled, the mountain began to shake, its top blowing off in a plume of smoke that was visible for miles. Celia could just barely make out flashes of red as the volcano erupted, and then dark billowing clouds of smoke rose up and obscured it from her view.

“Holy. Crap,” she whispered, feeling the rolling rumble of the explosion in her feet as the shockwave moved through the earth.

“Powerful enough for you?” he asked, his eyes taking on an inscrutable, sphinx-like appearance.

Before Celia could answer, the door to her trailer slammed open, and genies began pouring out of it like a horrible clown car. Their eyes danced with the fire she knew all too well. Hints of colorful auras were beginning to show as well. The men all ignored the plumes of smoke in the distance, and only briefly gave Celia a glance where she sat huddled on the ground.

“He and his crew have taken off into the desert. Four black cars left the main road,” reported a man with a long black ponytail breathlessly, staring intently at Abdul.

“Where is he heading?” Abdul was obviously in his element, taking on the commanding tone that rubbed Celia the wrong way.

“It was hard to catch. So far away and with the sound vibrations...”

“Say it.”

“The sparrow? That’s all we got.” The man looked embarrassed. “But I’m sure it is code for something. Sparrows is the name of that gang in Oakland. Maybe they are heading north towards the coast? To get back up now that he knows we are here?”

“Sparrow Mine,” Celia said softly, surprising even herself by speaking out loud.

All eyes turned towards her, and she could feel her skin begin to heat up. The genies seemed to have microwave gazes or something; it was annoying when Abdul looked at her like that, but unbearable when they all joined forces.

“It’s north of here. Off road, off map, and well out of sight. It’s a good place to get in trouble, as my younger self could attest.” She looked at each of the grim faces staring at her. “Juan Reyes has something of yours, doesn't he? And if he controls it, it would be very bad for everyone?”

Slow nods met her words. The genies did not attempt to speak or enlighten her as to what would be so important. She remembered the flash from the night before, as the whole bar had fallen apart, and twelve all-powerful genies disappeared. Juan Reyes made normal people disappear all the time, but if he could extrapolate that to taking on demi-god creatures, then Celia knew something had to be done.

“Then I guess we had better go. I’ll grab my keys,” she said at last, turning back towards the trailer.

She pushed past the wall of muscle and made her way to the front door. She could feel their microwave eyes on her as she calmly opened the door and reached inside to grab her keys off the hook just inside. She then turned back around and jangled them in the air.

“Ready to go?”

Abdul spoke up; his normal seductive tone replaced with appreciation. “You could ride with me, on the back of my bike.”

Celia smirked and flashed a rare grin. “Nah, I’ve got a sweet ride of my own. Besides, you need me to show you the way. For the price of not messing with my mind with your magic mumbo jumbo.”

C
elia’s ‘sweet ride’ was a 1982 Oldsmobile with a musty interior and a chipped, pale blue paint job. It was twice as long as a car should be, and it drove like a tank. However, on this occasion a tank seemed fitting, as she was fairly sure she had just volunteered for war. She was the commander, the Queen Bee, leading the way down the lonely highway with her drones carefully following behind her.

She wasn’t nearly as calm and cool as she had pretended to be back at the trailer. She didn’t like driving off into the desert to confront a psycho cartel leader who was going to do something so bad that even genies felt worried. How she got wrapped up in this wasn’t even clear.
I knew I shouldn’t have danced with a stranger,
she thought sullenly.

For all her worries and doubts, however, she also felt thrilled. She had stuck to her normal routine for so long that she was bored out of her mind; her parents had been right about that, at least. When the chance for adventure had come, she had leapt for it. It remained to be seen if that was going to get her killed or not.

After an hour of driving, she came to mile marker sixty-seven, and a barely perceptible dirt track that led from the highway off into the desert. She slowed down her car and carefully rolled off onto the rocky, badly maintained service road. It traversed a dusty plain for about two miles, and then dipped down into a gorge where the old mine stood. Putting a mine in a gorge was dangerous business, for flash floods could come anytime it rained. It also made quite the death trap if a bunch of men with guns were waiting at the bottom to ambush newcomers.

She pulled off to the side of the road and got out of the car. The motorcycles followed her off the highway and swarmed around her. The dust from their wheels made the air thick, and she only avoided coughing with much effort. Eventually, everything calmed down, and the dirt settled, leaving her standing in the middle of the guys.

“We are walking now. It is only about two miles across this flat plane, then down into a wash,” she said, expecting them to agree readily.

“Walk? It is really hot out. And what about escape vehicles?” one of the men grumbled from the back.

“Yeah, this is horrible advice,” Baktan agreed.

The other men murmured in agreement, and even Abdul seemed inclined to ignore her and barge right into his doom. Celia couldn’t keep her shocked look from her face. They were expecting to go in with guns blazing for a high noon shootout at the old mine.

“You can’t do that! They will hear you coming and be prepared for you well before you drive up. We need to sneak up the back!”

“So it is just over that ridge?” Abdul asked, pointing towards the distance where the mine was tucked away from their eyes.

“Yeah, and I really thin-,“ she tried to warn him, but was quickly cut off.

“It’s ok. We get that you are scared. You just wait here by the car and let us take care of it. Trust us. Things are much easier when you have magic,” he said reassuringly, flashing her a cheeky grin.

Celia’s began to burn in anger. “You can’t leave me behind! Besides, didn’t Juan Reyes have magic last time? How did he make you disappear? He can do it again!”

“It was a simple trick, and we won’t be fooled again. Don’t worry. An easy spell wielded by a simpleton isn’t a threat to us without the element of surprise.”

The guys all chuckled together and restarted their bikes in unison. Giving Celia friendly waves, they started to pull off, leaving her spurting in their wake. She was furious.

“Idiots! You take nothing for granted in the desert!” she screamed after them, waving her arms for them to come back.

They didn’t come back. They didn't even turn around as they roared away. Their motorcycles brought a hum to the hot air that could be heard for miles.
Cocky bastards are going to get themselves killed,
she silently fumed.
Maybe get us all killed,
she added on reconsideration.

Celia looked up at the sky where the sun rose ever closer to its zenith.  It was already roasting, and it would only get worse soon. She would have to brave a trek across the rocky terrain, where the heat would make the ground shimmer like cool water every few feet, just to tempt her. It’d have to be a fast walk too if she wanted to get to the showdown before everything went horribly wrong. She set her shoulders in determination and grabbed a bottle of water from the car. Ready or not, she was committed to this bizarre show.

She made good time across the desert, having spent much of her youth scrambling over rocks and learning to avoid numerous types of spiny plants that tried to stab hikers. It was silent as she walked, with only her labored breathing and the occasional breeze making any noise. She usually liked the relative quiet of the desert during the peak of day, when everything collapsed into a well-earned nap to avoid the heat. Today, though, the silence only made her uncomfortable.

Eventually, she made her way to the edge of the canyon, keeping her body low and behind the scraggly shrubs that dotted the land. Down below she thought she could hear some faint talking, but the wind was beginning to pick up and drowned out any chance she had to pick up individual words. Grumbling, she got down onto her stomach and began to crawl out to the edge slowly, allowing her to look below without being seen.