Tales of the Djinn: The Double (33 page)

She’d retrieved the implements so quickly she came back breathless. She handed Leo the tape, which he accepted without comment, and then she waited for instructions.

“Okay,” her dad said. “Snip off a lock of each of your fella’s hair and tie it to one of yours with the twine.”

The tall djinn leaned down so she could reach. Both their hair was silky against her fingers, both their compliance suggesting trust of her. The only difference between them was that Arcadius was a little stiff.

“I’m not familiar with this spell,” he said.

“It’s no-fail,” her dad assured. “You say the chant and you’re good to go. All it needs is genuine affection to charge it.”

Elyse thought she could she could handle that. She clipped a curl from her own head, bundling all three together and tying them.

“What are the words?” she asked.

She never got an answer. The most terrible sound she’d ever heard split the air. It was a moan and a wail and a tortured person begging
please, please, no
. . . with every note and syllable doubled. Elyse broke out in goosebumps at the hopelessness of the cry. She didn’t know who made it, only that her heart ached for them.

“They’re killing them,” Balu gasped.

“Follow me,” Cade said, low and sharp. “Watch your head on the pipes.”

He sprang off through the boiler room. The other men followed—including her father.

“Sorry, Elyse,” Leo threw over his shoulder. “Just wing it the best you can.”

Elyse didn’t
wing
things. Whenever possible, she practiced them to death. She didn’t have a choice right then. She had to scramble after her
fellas
. If she didn’t, Mario and Cara would have magical free reign over them.

She knew the cellar but couldn’t see as well as the males in front of her. To make matters worse, she was wearing heels. She tried not to stumble over the contents of the various storage areas: the cardboard boxes and castoff furniture, the jumble of Christmas stuff, the mazelike pathways through all of it. She tripped on a crack in the cement floor, only just swallowing her curse as she skinned her palms when she caught herself. She got up frantically patting her coat pocket. Thankfully, the twine-tied bundle remained in it.

She’d reached the janitor’s bathroom and paintbrush washing sink. For once, its filthy condition seemed friendly. It had a window, and some light from outside came in. She caught her breath and peered around the next corner. The cinderblock walls her dad had installed to surround and shield the nexus were up ahead. She gritted her teeth. More waves of Mario’s black magic rolled out from it, along with the flickering glow she recognized as portal energy. She didn’t see the men. They must be inside the enclosure. No sounds of fighting came to her. Was that a good sign or a bad one?

Crap,
she thought, edging forward cautiously. Her heart thudded in her chest. She was sweating so much she was tempted to pull off her coat. She wished she’d reminded Cade to leave the tiny Aladdin’s lamps behind. Elyse couldn’t use them. She had no experience shrinking things. If Mario somehow discerned they were nearby and shot the djinn into them, she’d never forgive herself.

Her father’s voice was the first she heard as she neared the opening.

“Let’s none of us do anything crazy,” he advised. “We’ve each got control of something the other is interested in.”

Cara let out a muffled angry noise. Elyse guessed her father had put the duct tape to its intended use.

“You wouldn’t kill your own niece,” Mario asserted.

His voice sounded odd. Its belligerence was what she’d expect, but its timbre had more smokiness than she remembered—as if he were a djinni speaking in nonphysical form. As far as she knew, humans couldn’t change state that way. Maybe the ifrit spirit in his tattoo was adding its two cents to his vocal chords.

“I wouldn’t
want
to kill her,” her dad admitted. “Then again, you and she almost killed Elyse. Maybe I’d get over my reluctance. Or I could just let my friend here do it. I don’t think he’s fond of either of you.”

“We could work a trade,” Cade suggested. “Arcadius and I for the two youngsters.”

Sheesh,
Elyse thought. But at least Cade’s offer meant the last missing djinn were alive.

“Like I’d fall for that,” Mario sneered. “I’ve been in your ‘Glorious’ city. I heard what happened to its commander. You aren’t twins. You’re two halves of the same person—and inferior halves at that. I need whole spirits like these kids’ to power my twinned nexuses. Plus, I’ve almost finished separating their spirits from their bodies. Even if you two were good enough, why should I start again at the beginning?”

“You know,” Arcadius said in his coolest tone. “If you’re not willing to negotiate, there’s no reason we
shouldn’t
kill your woman. I have a feeling you can’t finish your ritual without her.”

Elyse couldn’t stand it. She had to know what was going on. She went to her elbows and knees on the floor, where her enemies would be less likely to spot her. She edged her head around the opening in time to see Balu punch his smoke fist wrist-deep into Cara’s midsection.

The blow made a sound like a mallet driven through sawdust.

It must have hurt. Cara cried out hoarsely behind her gag. Leo hadn’t simply plastered the silver adhesive across her mouth. He’d also taped it around her head. His thoroughness was smart. His flinch at Cara’s cry of pain: not so much. No wonder Mario didn’t believe he’d kill her.

Not that Mario enjoyed seeing his lover hurt. The tattooed goliath growled in reaction to Balu’s blow. The sound snapped Elyse’s eyes across the room to him. What she saw behind him completely distracted her.

The last two kids he’d abducted looked terrible.

The djinn twins were female—coltish girls aged about sixteen with long red hair and blue eyes. Probably they were pretty, normally. Most djinn she’d met were attractive. At the moment, they resembled the famous Edvard Munch painting of the screaming man. They were on their knees in front of the nexus’s floating glow, gasping and trembling and barely able to hold themselves upright. Though their eyes were panicked, they also seemed to have trouble keeping them open. Their sweat-slicked skin was sucked close against their skulls and their discount clothes hung on them—as if not just their life force but also their flesh were being drawn from them.

Elyse had read descriptions of metaphysical silver cords: the umbilicus-like connector between a person’s astral and physical bodies. She thought that might be what she was seeing extending back from the girls’ solar plexuses.

One girl’s cord stretched from her center to the surface of the nexus behind her. The other’s had a vanishing point deep within the semi-transparent orb. Elyse assumed her cord had been feeding energy to the nexus’s mirror space copy. As far as she could tell, Mario wasn’t actively draining either girl.

Presumably, her friends’ arrival had interrupted him.

“Please,” one girl rasped. “Just kill us.”

Mario spun to her in a rage. He pointed his finger at each sister. The hand he used was his right, the same from which Cade had severed the tattoo. Was it more effective because the ifrit’s spirit no longer tainted it?

“You may
not
die,” he ordered the girls. “Your spirits need to live for as long as I have a use for them. That’s my wish and you must obey it!”

If the twins owed Mario wishes, he must have stored them in lamps too. Their bodies jerked like puppets whose strings had been yanked taut. They knelt more upright then, but their eyes rolled back in their heads. Elyse wondered if it were a mercy that they were unconscious.

“Bastard,” Balu cried. “Release them or my next punch rips through her heart!”

He cocked his smoke fist in front of Cara’s chest. She struggled in Leo’s hold but Elyse’s dad had a good grip on her upper arms. Good grip notwithstanding, he didn’t look happy about the prospect of Balu killing her.

“Wait,” her dad advised the djinni in a low voice. “We haven’t run out of chess moves yet.”

Mario must have decided he couldn’t bet on the boy obeying. He threw back his head and roared a word she didn’t understand . . . or maybe it was a name. His slab-like chest strained the seams of his black T-shirt, his legs planted as thick as trees in his leather pants. Suddenly his thorn tattoo separated from his skin, blurring across the room to attack Balu. His regular body, which was formidable enough, went for Cade. The force of his rush knocked Cade to the ground, stunning him. Before he could recover, Mario grabbed his throat and began squeezing. Arcadius moved to help.

To her dismay, she noticed neither commander held his dagger. Had Mario spelled them away somehow?

“In the name of God, you serve me,” Mario barked.

Elyse thought he was trying to freeze Arcadius like before. A second later, she realized this would have been preferable. Arcadius’s feet weren’t stuck to the ground. Instead, a seven-inch silver railroad spike slipped itself from Mario’s pants pocket. The weapon flashed up into the air, its deadly point swerving around to target the startled commander.

Elyse didn’t think she imagined the spike’s wriggle of eagerness.

“Pierce his heart and he’s yours to drink,” Mario promised the artifact.

Crap,
Elyse thought. Was the spike possessed like Mario’s tattoo—and by a vampire djinni? When he said
drink
, did he mean literally?

Arcadius acted as if he did. He ducked and weaved while the spike darted at him quick as a wasp.

Elyse didn’t understand how Mario was pulling off attacking three djinn at once. He was holding his own as he straddled and strangled Cade, and Cade was no pushover. She assumed Mario’s tattoo and the spike had some autonomy, but Mario supplied the energy and will behind them. To make the sorcerer’s multi-tasking more impressive, Elyse’s dad was helping Balu fight his thorny attacker. Though Leo wasn’t releasing Cara, he whispered spells to assist the boy.

What the hell had happened to Mario’s power being on the wane?

It didn’t matter. Elyse had to figure out a protective spell and get it working fast. Because watching was too upsetting, she ducked back out of the portal room’s opening. She pressed her spine to the wall of cinderblock, the twine-tied bundle of locks clutched tight against her breast.

Think,
she ordered. Arcadius and Cade couldn’t hold her hand for this. She had to find her own way. Djinn always asked for things
in the name of God
, and
if it please the Creator
. Those weren’t empty words to them. They wanted a higher power to take charge because they believed unquestioningly in one. As a human, Elyse was more comfortable with questions than she was in unswerving faith. All the same, she knew she must have faith inside her. If she hadn’t, she couldn’t have pulled off spells before.

How did Mario do this so easily anyway? Did he just not think about the deity he was praying to? Maybe belief in his own arrogant self was all he required.

God, she was overthinking this. She needed to concentrate.

“In the name of God,” she mouthed as firmly as she could with only her lips moving. She didn’t want to alert the sorcerer that she was trying to help. “Father in Heaven, please protect Cade and Arcadius. Let there be no favorites between djinn and human when You watch over Your children.”

Nothing happened that she could tell. The grunts and growls of the men continued as alarmingly before. Arcadius cried out, forcing her to wonder if the bloodthirsty spike had succeeded in reaching him. She would have cursed, but the first rule of successful spelling came back to her.

If at first you don’t succeed, repeat and repeat again
.

She reprised her impromptu prayer, whispering the words this time. Leo said the spell needed affection to charge it, so she tried drawing her feelings for Cade and Arcadius up into her heart. They were good men, who’d dedicated their lives to caring for their people. Surely whatever power ran the Universe couldn’t consider them less than Mario or her just because they were djinn. They deserved whatever protection He had to give. Elyse had to believe that. To her mind, any deity worth the name loved all its children equally.

For that matter, the Almighty ought to love Mario and Cara too.

Something clicked inside her, some fragmentary understanding of what universal love must be. Her spirit seemed to expand in sunlit ripples from her center.

Help them,
she thought.
If it’s Your will, help the men I love.

She couldn’t pray beyond that. She’d asked in accordance with her belief. If it weren’t good enough, she’d have to accept failure.

Okay, that possibility wasn’t so appealing. Elyse looked around her desperately. She hadn’t noticed it before, but she spotted a rusty shovel lying on the floor a few feet away. She leaped up and grabbed it. So what if her spellwork sucked? Her arms worked fine, thank you very much. She ran with the shovel into the nexus room. The back of Mario’s shaven head was within bashing range.

The old garden implement was heavier than she expected, made of wood and iron rather than aluminum or plastic. Before Elyse could swing it up and connect, Cara yelled a warning through the duct tape. Mario rolled out of reach, taking Cade with him. Cade’s face was red from Mario’s efforts to throttle him.

“Shove—” he choked out unhelpfully.

Arcadius seemed to understand the shorthand.

“Get the tattoo demon!” he cried. He gripped the spike that was attacking him in both hands. How long he could hold it off Elyse didn’t want to guess. “That shovel head is iron!”

So it was. Probably ifrits didn’t like iron any better than light djinn.

The tattoo demon was wrestling with Balu. Elyse ran over and jabbed the shovel’s sharp end at it. To her great satisfaction, the thorny swirls shattered like bone china and clattered to the floor.

“
Yes,
” Balu crowed. Freed, he bounded off to help Cade . . . and was stopped short by an invisible wall of force.