The Azar Omnibus: The Complete Azar Trilogy (The Azar Trilogy Book 0)

by Grace McGinty

  She got out of bed and pulled on some sweats and a ratty T-shirt from the laundry hamper in the corner of her bedroom, too furious to be embarrassed by her nudity. “Get dressed. I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”

  With that she stormed out of the room, closing the door softly even though she wanted to slam it like a teenager. Actually, what she wanted to do was set something on fire, but that would hardly fix the situation.

  In the kitchen, she put some water and a teabag in a mug and used her abilities to heat the water. It was only a small outlet, but it helped to quell some of her boiling anger. Her fear was making the fire churn under her skin. She had to tell him what she really was, even though it could mean the end of her life as she knew it. There was a reason the Djinn were nothing more than fodder for Disney movies in the human world. Telling a human about the existence of the Djinn was considered treason and punishable by death. If this went badly, and Keenan told his superiors, she would have to run again.

  Azar looked around her little apartment; it wasn't much, but it had been her safe haven for so many years. It didn't have a nice view, unless you liked looking at Mrs Lewkowski, in the apartment across the street, doing Zumba in bike shorts. Quite frankly, Azar was pretty impressed that she could still shake her hips like that without doing damage, because the woman had to be at least seventy.

  It wasn’t the aesthetics that made the little apartment her sanctuary. It was the things that Azar wouldn't be able to take with her that made it home. Like the dinette setting that Lieutenant Ryan had given her when she had first moved in and started at the firehouse. Or the huge framed photo of her running out of a burning building that the guys had gotten from a press photographer to give to her for her birthday. It was hung over a hole in the wall above the TV, where Joe had accidentally put a Wii remote through the wall when the guys had came around for a Whiskey and Wii night. It was the burn mark on the bench where Azar had tried to cook roast beef for Joe's family, and when it wasn't quite cooked enough, she tried to nuke it with her abilities and set the thing on fire instead. Leaving these memories behind would be heartbreaking. She would just have to have faith that Keenan would see the bigger picture.

  Keenan emerged from the entrance hall. He was dressed again, his shirt undone because all the buttons had flown off in their haste. His face was grim and Azar didn’t wait around for him to insult her again.

  “It really is a birthmark. Well, sort of. It’s actually probably more like a brand but I’ve had it since birth. And I really don’t know who is lighting the fires but I know what is lighting the fires. It’s a rogue Ifrit.” There, it was out now, and there was no going back.

  “What the hell is an Ifrit? Look, if you've gotten mixed up in some weird gang or cult, you can tell me and I can help.” He obviously thought Azar was giving him bogus answers. She smiled, because it was actually kind of sweet, if somewhat misguided. It wasn’t going to get any better either, Azar acknowledged with a sigh.

  “No, an Ifrit is a kind of Djinn. Westerners call them Genies.” It sounded crazy even to her ears. “An Ifrit is a fire Djinn and I think it’s doing a fire pledge by burning the Djinn emblem onto all the representations of the Djinn. Fire pledges are kind of hard to explain.” Ugh, this whole thing was hard to explain. She felt like she was speaking another language.

  Keenan pulled out a stool from the breakfast bar and the look of concern on his face was not a good sign. Anger, incredulity or flat out disbelief she could understand and deal with. But concern wasn’t a response she had ever encountered before when she told someone what she was.

  “So a fire genie is pledging itself to something all over the city and burning things down.” His eyes got soft, and he gentled his voice. “Azar, do you think you might be suffering from post-traumatic stress or something? Maybe you hit your head when you passed out?” He studied her face, probably looking for dilated pupils. Azar slapped her palm against her forehead and sighed. Damn these modern humans and their ‘seeing is believing’ motto.

  She held out her hand, palm up, and focused her energy, balling her fire under the skin of her palm until it burst to the surface. A perfect little flame flickered in her palm. “I’m not crazy or suffering from PTSD. I’m Ifrit too.”

  Keenan shot off the stool and backed away across the room. His hand went to his gun automatically.

  Azar just shook her head with exasperation. “Don’t be ridiculous, Reilly. I am the same person you have known for years with a few cool party tricks that you didn’t know about. As if I would ever hurt you, no matter how much you piss me off at times.” Azar closed her hand and extinguished the little flame. “So now we’ve established I’m not insane, can we talk about the real issue here? I think this Ifrit is going to light three more fires.” She sipped her tea. “Where are my manners, would you like some tea? Or I have a nice twenty-five year old scotch in the cupboard if that’s more your style. Maybe it will help with the shock.” Keenan edged back towards the counter top but remained standing, probably so he could make a quick escape.

  “Scotch, please.” His voice was flat.

  “Good choice. I might have one too.” She pulled two tumblers from the top cupboard. “I got this bottle from London when I was over there in 1983. It was a great time to be in London; the music scene was alive and there were lots of fires.” Keenan threw back his drink in one mouthful and Azar tutted. “I’ll give you that one because you’ve had a bit of a shock but I didn’t keep it for over twenty-five years so you could throw it down the hatch like a frat boy.” Azar poured him another one and motioned him into the living room. If they were going to have to talk the whole thing out like a touchy-feely couple in a therapist’s office, then they may as well be comfortable while they did it.

  “Okay, so I’ll tell you a little about myself and then I’ll tell you what I know about the Djinn and the Ifrit in particular, which isn’t much I’m afraid.” She grimaced as he swallowed the rest of his scotch in a single mouthful. Philistine.

  Sighing, she began at the beginning. “I was born in Persia one hundred and twenty five years ago. My mother was a human and my father was a full Ifrit. That makes me a half blood. The Djinn do that sometimes, change form to get it on with a mortal woman; more often than not it’s how the Djinn manage to reproduce. There are not many Djinn left.

  “So giving birth to me basically killed my mother, but she had enough strength left to move us to Europe. My mother told me what I was, as a cautionary tale I guess. The same way you teach children not to stick a fork in the electrical socket, she taught me not to ignite. She also taught me to avoid the Djinn at all costs. She died in Spain when I was five and even at that age I was relieved not to have to watch her suffer any longer. I was put in an orphanage but never adopted. I guess people could tell I was different somehow even at that young of an age.”

  She could still imagine her mother after all this time. She didn’t look much like her. Her mother had been a smallish woman, with bright brown eyes and long nut brown hair that she always braided into a long plait down her back. She had a beautiful laugh, and a smile that was full of straight, white teeth, which was rarer than it sounded back then. But she’d already been dying by the time Azar was old enough to commit her image to memory, so she never knew her when she wasn’t wasting away. Azar smiled a sad smile; she always did when she thought about her mother.

  “Anyway, they kicked me out of the orphanage at twenty; they only let me stay that long because I looked young for my age and no one really knew how old I was. It was probably the first time I was thankful for my heritage, because it let me keep a roof over my head for a couple of more years. When I left, I floated around Spain, working when I could and begging when I couldn’t. I travelled around Europe, never staying in one spot too long in case I came to the attention of any of the local Djinn. I was in Ireland when World War One broke out and that’s when I became a firefighter. There was a shortage of men to fight the fires so it was down to the local women. I mastered
my skills during the bombings of London in World War Two though. But by the end of the forties, the Djinn were moving away from the Middle East and spreading into Europe. I decided to come to America in 1948 and I’ve been here ever since. Sometimes I go back, like in the eighties, but the States is where I intended to stay.” Intended. Past tense. She just hoped she wouldn’t have to run again.

  Azar sat back on the couch and sipped her drink. It was actually kind of nice to tell someone her life story. She’d told so few people, and none in the last half century. And never a human. That was the ultimate sin, even she knew that.

  They sat in silence. Before tonight, she’d relished the moments when Keenan wasn’t opening his big opinionated mouth. But after everything that had happened, his silence was making her a little anxious. She watched him digest her story, the little lines between his brows creasing and relaxing at intervals.

  Keenan finally nodded to himself and turned to her. “Okay.”

  Azar raised her eyebrows in surprise. “That’s it? Just okay? No questions, no calling the men in white coats to send me to the funny farm?”

  Keenan shook his head. “We’ll get to that later. Now I want to know everything you know about the arsonist.”

  She nodded. She was far more comfortable with the Keenan Reilly who was all work and no play. But when he decided to play, he really knew how to play. A vivid recollection of the feel of Keenan’s hard chest pressed against her back had Azar’s cheeks turning pink. She cleared the lump from her throat.

  “I can only tell you what I know. I know the arsonist is a Djinn because the mark was there, the six point sun; a point for every race of the Djinn. I know it was an Ifrit in particular because they are the only Djinn who control fire like that. The other Djinn are generally quite fearful of fire, being creatures of air. Mostly air anyway. Fire consumes air. Rock beats scissors, so on and so forth.” Keenan nodded again, not even laughing at her joke.

  “If you have had nothing to do with the Djinn, why do you have that mark on your back?” Less suspicion tainted his voice, but it was still there.

  Azar really couldn’t blame him. In his position she’d be suspicious too. Hell, who was she kidding? If she was in his position, she would have politely excused herself to go to the bathroom and then escaped through the window.

  “It’s a slave mark. Every Djinn of full or half blood is born with one. You are meant to do one hundred years of slavery upon your twenty fifth birthday and the mark is removed once you're done. It’s the main reason I kept running for so long. I’m in no hurry to get conscripted into slavery and as far as I know, none of the ruling Council know I exist. I’d like to keep it that way.” She’d heard stories about Djinn slavery from other supes. Females were usually sold into sexual slavery, the good looking ones anyway. The more unfortunate ones did hard labor for powerful supes or in very rare cases, very powerful mortals.

  “What’s the Djinn Council?” Keenan looked like he was desperate for a notepad and pen. Azar was thankful he didn’t have one. Physical evidence didn’t need to be floating around in the world. The written word was a powerful tool.

  “The Djinn Council is the governing body of the Djinn. They manage the compulsory servitude and they punish the Djinn who break the covenants, such as revealing our true natures to unsanctioned humans.” Azar grimaced. If the Council found out she was spilling millennia old secrets to a mortal, instant death would be the happy way out; for both her and Keenan. “That’s why you can never speak about any of this outside these four walls. We’ll both be dead if you decide to open your big mouth.” Keenan looked skeptical but nodded.

  Azar got a piece of paper and drew the six point sun on it. It was a pattern that came naturally to her, basically encoded in her DNA. She could probably draw it blindfolded with her left hand.

  “So the Djinn have six different races. Each has a spot on the emblem and on the Djinn Council. Our placement on the star is important because the race opposite us is our natural contrast. Our fail-safe, I guess. If one race tries to overrun the Council, the contrasting race can put them down.” I took a deep breath. This next bit got a little complicated.

  “The races that hold the top half of the sun are the good Djinn. Okay, maybe good is not the right word; we’ll say benevolent Djinn. The lower half is the malevolent Djinn. It’s not really that black and white. You can’t say any individual is good and bad by their race. There are plenty of shades of grey in this scenario. All Djinn have free will, and it’s even less clear cut when you had the half bloods into the mix. Halfies get some traits from their human side.

  “Anyway, the benevolent races are the Jann, who live in the desert mostly and create oases for those they consider worthy. They also have quite a green thumb, they can make violets grow in the Sahara if they wish it. Then there's the Sila; they are an all female race and extremely smart, if a little wily. They are also big fans of lightning. They could strike you down with a bolt of lightning from halfway across the world on a clear day. The last of the benevolent races are the Marid, who are very old and powerful and have an affinity with water in all its forms, solid, liquid or gas. Some say they can control the sea, but if they do, they’ve kept that fact very much to themselves.”

  She downed the rest of her drink and placed the glass on the coffee table. She needed another one, or ten, to get the rest of this explanation out, but she didn’t want to stop. She tucked her feet under her body, and continued.

  “The Malevolent races are the Ghul, who contrast with the Jann. The Ghul are nasty cannibals who like to hang around graveyards and eat newly buried corpses. They also like to lick blood out of the living, through the soles of their feet. It’s pretty damn weird. The Shaitan is the contrast of the Sila. The Shaitan are the worst form of Djinn. They are what mortals call Demons. They are to be avoided at all costs. Are you following Keenan?” Azar had been writing them into their positions on the Sun Symbol as they spoke, to give him a clearer idea. She’d make sure she burnt it later. Keenan nodded but his eyes had glazed over. Azar was tempted to stop but she was almost finished and didn’t want to have this conversation again.

  “Lastly, there is the Ifrit. We have fiery tempers, to say the least, and when we get all worked up we light up like a bonfire. We are the most destructive of the Djinn and probably the least forgiving, but I don’t think we are as bad as the Shaitan or the Ghul. Like I said, these aren’t hard and fast rules. We have free will and some bad ones choose to be good, like me, and vice versa.”

  She stood up and stretched, her eyes darting down to the man still studying the emblem in front of him. She was nervous, waiting for him to call her evil, or still get her committed to the funny farm or something. But he just kept studying that damn piece of paper until she thought she’d go mad. She clicked her fingers, and the piece of paper went up in flames like a tiny bonfire. Keenan pulled his fingers away quickly.

  “So, that’s the crash course in Djinn culture. If you don’t have any more questions, you should go. I’ve had a long day.” Keenan looked hesitant, still sitting on the couch. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to do a middle of the night runner. Too many people depend on me to show up every day. Besides, it’s not like you are going to tell anyone right? You’d sound stark raving mad.” Azar laughed but Keenan didn’t join in.

  Finally, he stood and Azar got a good look at the long line of flesh gaping out at her through the front of his button up shirt.

  “We need to talk about the arsonist and this fire pledge,” he insisted. “We need to talk about what happened tonight.”

  Her heart pounding in her chest, she faked a yawn and pushed him down the hall towards the door. “We can talk about it tomorrow. There’s nothing we can do about it now. Fuentes gave me the day off, so come over about lunch time.” She gave him one last shove through the door and locked it.

  Turning out the lights, Azar shuffled through the house and collapsed face down onto her bed.

  Chapter 3

  Azar sl
ammed her hand on the alarm clock the next morning and got in the shower before she remembered that she didn’t have to go to her shift. She rested her head against the tiles as the hot water pounded down on her body. Full blooded Ifrit didn’t actually shower and she considered the ability to stand under the stinging spray one of the benefits of being a half blood.

  The previous night’s events kept going around and around inside her head, especially the sex. That’s how screwed up her priorities were. She’d just told a human a millennia old secret that had the potential to get her killed if anyone ever found out, and she couldn’t stop thinking about the hot sex she had with Keenan Reilly. She smacked her forehead against the tiles. She was such an idiot.

  She opened her eyes and noticed a soap spot on the tile next to her nose. She pulled back and scrubbed at it with her finger. Then she noticed more. She turned off the shower, threw on her favorite pair of denim cutoffs that made her ass look great but were so indecent she never left the house in them, and a tank top that had more holes than fabric, and went to get her cleaning supplies. Housework was the one thing guaranteed to keep her mind off Keenan and his delicious body.

  A knock at the door interrupted Azar’s cleaning spree. She glanced at the clock on the wall and noticed it was noon. That would be Keenan and she wasn’t even dressed yet. She’d cleaned so furiously that time had slipped away from her and now she was running late. On the plus side, the house sparkled so brightly that Keenan would have to wear his shades inside.

  She pulled open the door and was satisfied when Keenan’s eyes went straight to her long legs and then slowly devoured their way up her body. Let him see what he was missing. She cleared her throat and his eyes shot to hers. She turned and let him into her apartment, making sure he got a good view of her ass, putting a little more sway in her stride than was strictly necessary.