Ring of Aandaleeb: The Hidden Ones (The Djinn Chronicles Book 1)

by Hutchins, S. S.

  Some djinn, the Marid, arguably the most powerful, removed themselves to a different plane to live, Mount Jebel Qaf. An emerald mountain that connects all points on the earth, but cannot be seen. They wait for the end of days to stand before God once again.

  There are other djinn. Djinn that roam the earth—the aamar. They are many different tribes, with different abilities. Some live amongst the humans many live in places long since abandoned, but in thriving communities of their own, living the old ways as if humans did not exist. In these tribes some are for the humans, but many are not, particularly the ifrit and the ghuls.”

  Henry raised an eyebrow. He knew what ghouls were or at least he thought he did. Wally saw the look of recognition on Henry’s face. “You’re right, the English word ghoul comes from the name of that tribe, but they are far worse than you can imagine.”

  “Amongst the djinn, since they are long living, they were content to wait out humanity until Armageddon and then God would see how wrongly He had chosen.

  Two things happened, a prophecy and you and your brother’s birth.

  The prophecy said:

  “From one of them will be born two of us.

  Like us, but not like us. Greater than, but less than

  The mountain of pain will pour forth to consume all

  Except for the children of the smokeless fire.”

  “From two there is one

  One that will unite

  One that will divide

  One that will save

  From one of them will be born one of us

  Like us, but not like us.

  To the one the book, the ring, and judgment will come.”

  The second thing that happened you and your brother were born, sons of a Silas priestess and a descendant of the last Suleyman—only human master of the djinns—djanns with potential powers not seen for thousands of years. “

  Henry stood up. This was a lot to take in. Angels and Genie—actually djinn—and Armageddon… Basically, he was a part of the end of world. He felt sick to his stomach; he rushed into the bathroom and threw up.

  As he had listened to the story, the warmth in his chest had pulsated as if keeping time to every word Wally said, but the butterflies did not go away, they had gotten worse. As he knelt over the toilet, part of him wanted to run but another part realized there was nowhere to run to. He was in over his head yet, for him, there was nothing to go back to. At least in the Matrix Neo had had a choice between blissful ignorance or being ripped from his reality. Blue pill, red pill. Henry could tell it wasn’t going to be that easy for him. He understood that he was just a pawn in some cosmic joke.

  “You alright?” Wally called from the front room.

  “Give me a minute!” Henry shouted. He walked to the sink and the mirror, looked at himself and began to wash up. The cool water felt good. He could swear a little steam came off of his skin. He looked at himself in the mirror and, as throughout his entire life, he saw Sam. Being mirror twins he had always imagined that Sam was looking at him from the other side of the mirror. “What am I supposed to do, Sam?”

  His image smiled back at him—even though Henry knew his face hadn’t moved a muscle.

  Chapter Five: Angels dream too

  “Wake up, wake up, wakeup!”

  Sarah opened her eyes and jumped up. She had fallen asleep in her bed, but now she was somewhere else. It was pitch black with no sound and no light, except for her own soft glow. She realized where she was now. In the darkness she could hear a slithering sound, just out of her reach. The sound was nearby, then far; behind her, then in front of her, then all around her.

  “You sleep while I suffer?” The slithering sound slowed to a stop only two feet in front her, her sense told her that, but she could not see it and she dared not increase her light lest she be afraid of what she saw.

  “The boy has awakened?” She could smell the rot and disease in the question that was little more than a statement in disguise. “Yes, Father,” Sarah said with a slight tremble.

  “Good, we lost our chance to obtain him and his brother years ago. In fact, I thought he was dead until tonight. Until I felt the folding, old Sihr—old magic of the Muqarribun—the old Arab mages. Strong and as crude as ever, huh Armoni.”

  Sarah heard something that amounted to a skitter and a screech. She had to assume it was a laugh from one of her Uncles.

  “We need the boy. We need the book. We need the ring,” a legion of voices said in unison.

  Sarah involuntarily flinched and her glow shrunk in close to her body. She did not understand why her. There were many Grigori; why was this her task? Why was she being tortured?

  “I am working on it,” Sarah mumbled.

  “Work harder!” the faceless voice hissed. “Find him. Find this djinn. He will use his Sihr again—his magic. When you leave this place your sense will be attuned to it. Go, until I summon you again!”

  Sarah’s light winked out.

  “Wake up, wake up, wake up!”

  Sarah opened her eyes.

  “It’s time for your shift.” The owner looked at her watch. “I know you’re a good person, but I can’t have you sleeping at work like this. It makes the homeless people think that it’s okay.”

  “I’m sorry, Karen. I’ve been under a lot stress.” Sarah smiled sheepishly. She really liked Karen; she’d given her a break working here even though she didn’t have any experience working in a coffee house. She really didn’t want to let her down.

  “That’s okay, just get to work. If you need a different shift, talk to the shift leader, maybe you can get some more rest.”

  “Thanks, Karen, it won’t happen again.” Sarah threw on her barista apron and hopped behind the coffee bar. An early evening crowd had just begun; a lot of new faces besides the regulars. Sarah was happy with the distraction as she began to make lattes, cappuccinos and triple shot espressos. Then her sense felt it. A brief flash of Sihr and then it was gone.

  Chapter Six: Down the rabbit hole

  Henry hadn’t meant to blast the mirror with flames, it had been reflexive. His image smiling at him was trigger enough. Maybe he had smiled or the light had been playing tricks with his eyes. Regardless, he now saw fifteen different versions of himself in the broken glass.

  “What the hell’s going on in here?” Wally rushed to the door in full stone form—human, but stone now covered his skin and his pupils had gone white. The sandy brown hair was replaced by a smooth, bald head of stone and, oddly enough, he gained a little more height.

  “Nothing probably. I got spooked at my reflection.” Henry pushed past Wally, still burning up inside his chest.

  Wally turned towards Henry and the stone sloughed off like a snake’s outer skin. He was now normal Wally. “You have got to control yourself, Henry. You are not just a djann; your lineage is also that of a Muqarribun—a magician, from your Suleyman heritage. One feeds the other and, unless you are careful, they will all consume.”

  More mumbo jumbo, Henry thought. Speaking to my dead aunt, teleporting, setting things on fire… Where was his Hogwarts? At least Harry Potter had friends to aid him. He had nothing but a weird stone guy who had failed his family. Lucky him.

  “I’m sick of this. None of it makes much sense to me and, up until moments ago, I thought you were the bogeyman who killed my family. I found you and you feed me a bunch of stuff that I can’t even verify. Look this is my life. You are telling me about books and rings and genies—excuse me, ‘djinn’. My only reference is Christina Aguilera’s “I’m a genie in a bottle”, some re-runs of I dream of Jeannie on TV Land, and “Open sesame,” from some Aladdin movies.” Wally stared at Henry, mixed parts fear and concern.

  Henry had engulfed the outer edges of himself in small flames. They licked and danced around his body, doing neither him nor the environment harm, but, nevertheless, Henry looked down and around himself and saw he was floating above the ground. Henry quickly began to internally mirror the fear and concern on Walte
r’s face in his heart. Henry looked at Wally and mouthed the words, “Help me.”

  Even Wally did not know what to do, but just as quickly as it came, the flames were gone and Henry landed safely on the floor.

  “Henry, I’m not going to pretend to know all the answers. I am a grotesque—a type of gargoyle, one of the distant grand-children of the Nephilim. This building is my seat of power. Your mother helped me, ages ago, to control my talents. The least I can do is to return the favor; but we can’t do it here.” Wally walked over to Henry and helped him up.

  Henry clasped Wally’s arm, realizing that this was the only life line he had to getting answers.

  “I’ll trust you … for now. I have too many questions and not enough answers to do otherwise.”

  They both felt it and saw it simultaneously, an intense light. Henry and Wally looked to the balcony as an angel of light descended down onto the balcony. Without hesitation, Wally was already in one of his stone forms, a huge wolf, at least five feet high at the shoulder. Henry’s left hand already had a fireball in it. Henry recognized the angel from the debris at his home.

  “Wait; I come as a friend,” Sarah said as she landed on the balcony. The wings disappeared and the glow simply surrounded her, ever so slightly, like a haze in the desert heat.

  “Henry, I’m Sarah, I knew your family. I’m here to help.” Henry looked at Wally and Wally shook his head.

  “Your mother, the priestess, knew many and helped many. While I do not know her, I cannot say either way.”

  Henry looked her up and down. It was definitely the girl he’d seen in the burned building. She was quite pretty in a bookish sort of way. Plus she was an angel. He knew he needed all the help he could get. He reached his hand out to Sarah to shake; she looked at. Henry realized that it was still in flames. He mentally extinguished it and she reached out to shake his hand and the building shook. Then it shook again. Henry thought to himself that this must be the big one, because the building shook again. Wally stumbled to the balcony and looked down.

  “Dammit.” Wally glanced over his shoulder at Sarah and Henry. “We’ve got a problem. The ifrit and the al ghuls—Ghilans—djinn sorcerers—have sent their foot soldiers, “The Marj”, after us.”

  Henry and Sarah rushed over to the balcony to see what Wally was talking about. 16 stories below them, they saw huge vines wrapping around the building. Some of the vines were on fire, burning and then dropping off. Other vines simply wrapped tighter and shook the building more. Up the side of the building, plant like creatures were climbing, shooting vines, like Spiderman, pulling themselves up and racing against one another to the 16th floor. Each one held huge scimitars in their teeth.

  “There goes my place of power.” Wally looked at Henry and Sarah and turned into the horned demon of Henry’s nightmares.

  Chapter Seven: The battle of the minds

  The vines snaked around the building, driving up to the penthouse. Hordes of the Marj pulled themselves up the side of the building. As they got closer, Henry was shocked to see that they had heads similar to Venus Fly Traps, but larger. On the edges they were a blend of green, orange and red. With no visible eyes, Henry wondered how they knew where to go, but dozens of them where shooting vines up the side of the building and pulling themselves up, two flights at a time.

  Wally had already dropped amongst them and began swiping at them with his huge claws. His hooved feet stamped on the head of one of the Marj with a loud squish that knocked it back off of the building. A vine shot out and caught it in midair and almost cocooned it into a pod, shrinking back into the body of the vine. Other Marj whipped at Wally, to little affect. Wally grabbed two Marj and clashed their heads together. Henry watched as they fell back off the building into the arms of the vines. Everything had a hazy, surreal quality about it; Henry began to notice that his green eye was throbbing.

  Thinking that something was in it, he closed it and the scene below vanished, as if there was nothing there. He opened it again and he saw Sarah flying around the vines slashing with what seemed to be a scimitar, hacking away at the Marjs’ vines, each falling back. He closed his green eye again and all he could see was the cool night, cars passing by and some tenants beginning to exit the building, since the fire alarm had already gone off earlier due to the shaking.

  He opened his green eye only to see a slathering Marj staring him in the face about to chomp down on his head. Instinctively, Henry shot a fireball at the Marj and, instead of going up in flames, the Marj swallowed it, then doubled in size. Whatever was going on, the Marj could not be consumed by fire. Henry jumped back into the penthouse just as a second Marj climbed over the balcony. Both Marjs writhed over to Henry on vine-like legs. Slithering back and forth underneath them, their legs had them moving quickly, to Henry’s surprise. Their vine-like arms shot out and gripped Henry, pinning his arms to his side.

  Just as Henry suspected, he was not up to this task, then the warmth welled up into his stomach and he burst into flame, just as he had earlier with Wally. But instead of falling back, the Marj’s shot more vines around Henry and began to realize that they were sapping his flames and getting stronger. He could feel the flame going cold inside his stomach and he felt the will begin to drain from him. If these plant-headed creatures could smile, then they had come to the closest thing resembling a smile as possible. Henry surrendered to the emptiness of his will, a kind of weightlessness overcame him, and the vines slipped off. If a Venus Fly Trap could look surprised, these two did. They looked at each other, almost confused, and before it could register, Sarah’s scimitar cut their heads off and they turned to dust.

  “Henry!? Henry!?” Sarah looked around frantic although Henry was sitting in right in front of her, almost nose to nose. But Sarah couldn’t see him; in fact she stepped through Henry. Henry felt a static, like electricity, ripple through his body, but he stayed where he was. “Henry!? Where are you?” Henry felt the familiar warmth in his stomach and it began to spread across his body filling in the weightlessness rapidly. Henry fell to the floor with a thud. Sarah whipped her head around and grabbed Henry. “Where were you?”

  “I was right here. It was like I was invisible and intangible; I couldn’t speak or really move.” Henry’s voice sounded raspy as if it was dry sand paper. Sarah’s worried face turned into concern. “I saw this haze, like sand, but I didn’t realize that it was you, it was like a flat 2d image. I thought it was a trick of the Marj.”

  “That’s okay, where is Wally?” Henry stood, poised to fight. He could hear a roar and slapping sounds. “We have to go. You can’t open a portal here; we have to get you outside, away from the copper roof.”

  Henry wanted to accommodate Wally, but he had no idea how he could open a portal and he feared that his friends may die because he was clueless. Sarah grabbed Henry under the arms and dragged him out of the window, carrying him as she flew. Wally looked up and saw them both, waving towards them as he kicked another Marj to its death.

  “Henry you have to get us out of here!” Wally’s stone skin exhibited hairline cracks in various places. The Marj whips had been more effective than Henry had thought.

  “I don’t know how!” Henry screamed back. Sarah and Henry could see that more of the Marj were climbing the building, taking the place of the ones Sarah and Henry had sent to their vine cocoons or had turned to dust. “Find the green mandala in your mind, Henry, or we are doomed; we have to go to Qaf now. That’s where the answers will be, that’s the only way to get from these creatures.” Wally seemed to conjure a double headed axe from his stone body. “The sun will be coming up shortly. If you don’t do something soon, I will be stuck like this and you will be facing these nasties alone.” Wally swung his double headed axe and two more Marj turned to dust.

  Images ran through his mind and, instinctively, the mandala jumped at him. Stars and triangles began to swim in his vision, very different from the last mandala. In fact, he could sense that this was the doorway to Jebel Qaf—Mount Q
af. He realized that Aunt Sadie was not as crazy as he had thought. Then he found it, the flaw in the mandala, and, right before his eyes, the sky folded and opened up. The mandala glowed an emerald green. He could see a green mountain with a valley. Wally jumped through the fold in the sky; Sarah flew Henry into the mandala. It folded up after them—leaving the Marj and the vines behind them.

  In the crowd of milling people, a woman in the crowd slowly walked away on to Ocean Blvd. She got into a Ferrari beside a man dressed impeccably. His skin was an amazing shade of ebony. He wore an impeccably pressed Armani suit, with a Rolex on his wrist. In contrast, his head was covered by a white turban. Through his Rayban sunglasses, he looked at the woman and smiled.

  “Is it done?”

  “Yes, Asmodeus. They have gone to Mount Qaf, just as you knew they would.”

  “Good, Lilith. Good. As a child of the last Suleyman, they will give him the book.” Asmodeus shifted the Ferrari into gear and pulled away from the curb headed towards Naples Island.

  “What if they don’t? What then?” Lilith murmured, looking uncomfortably at Asmodeus.

  “Your children have done well tonight, Lilith; you have done your part, now you must trust my part will be done. Armageddon is upon us and we will show the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve that they truly are nothing.”

  As the car raced down Ocean, each light stayed green, until a similar mandala opened up on the street and the Ferrari drove straight into the mandala into the desert on the other side, folded into itself and disappeared as the sun rose above the horizon.

  Chapter Eight: The prince of Mount Qaf

  Wally awoke first. The sheets were Egyptian cotton; after having been alive for almost 5,000 years in one form or another, he could appreciate fine bedding—particularly since he’d once been stuck in grotesque form for almost a millennium. The light was the soft light of perpetual night as if they were in space. Wally stood and looked out the window and the familiar constellations were in the sky, but in reverse, as if they were looking down upon the Earth. God’s eye view.