by S. Young
“Yes,” he whispered, stroking her hair back from her face, seeming oblivious to the fact that she was in agony and bleeding all over the place. “Child. It is your father.”
Ari’s heart stopped. “M-my what?”
Slowly her thoughts swam up out of the murky waters they’d been drowning in and Ari gulped, drinking in the air of consciousness. It took her a minute to remember the dream. The nightmare. The pain.
She groaned, feeling achy all over.
And then her body caught up with her mind.
The floor was still cold and hard beneath her body, except for her shoulders and back. They seemed encased in inexplicable warmth. When she gasped at the feel of wet licks across her forearm, she gulped down the overwhelming scent of spices and jasmine.
Her eyes flew open and met the belligerent one-eyed gaze of the monster who had attacked her and was now licking her arm. She jerked, choking down a scream.
“Stop,” a soft, commanding voice whispered in her ear, stilling her movements. It was then she realized there were arms wrapped around her, that the heat behind her belonged to a person, to a ‘he.’ “Vadit is a nisnas. His saliva is the only cure to a wound made by him. I am his master, but even I cannot control him if you incur his wrath while he saves what he would rather destroy.”
The wet slide of the nisnas’ (what the effing eff was a nisnas?) tongue across her flesh was nauseating. Ari’s whole body was a live wire, vibrating under the creature’s attempts to heal what he had ravaged. She watched in silent terror and amazement as her flesh crawled toward itself, fusing the torn skin together under the swipes of the nisnas’ tongue. Finally, it grunted and backed away on its sliding, malformed body.
“Vadit, leave us,” the man at her back said quietly. He hadn’t spoken above the low register and yet there was a chill, as icy as the room they lay in, in his voice. A treacherous black ice that you dared not ignore. The nisnas did not. It left the room with screeching whines across the glass floor.
“What the hell is a nisnas?” Ari asked hoarsely. It wasn’t some weird, misshapen dog. It was too intelligent. There was human intelligence in its eyes that scared the utter crap out of her.
Suddenly lifted to her feet by the stranger, Ari swayed back from him and tried to center herself, rubbing her wet, healed arm against her T-shirt. She was no longer in shock, but her body still felt weak from the attack.
“A nisnas is one of the jinn,” the man replied, coming around to face her.
Ari gulped, her neck arching back as she stared up at the strangely dressed guy who must have stood at well over six and a half feet tall. “Jinn?”
He nodded. Those emotionless eyes, so deep and penetrating, snared her. “Like me. Like you. Like your mother.”
Suddenly, the air felt thin and Ari pressed a hand to her chest, breathing deep. The pink skin of her healed arm caught her attention and she shook her head, disbelieving that this was actually real and happening. “This is a dream. I’m dreaming. I’m dreaming. I have to be dreaming because if I’m not dreaming you’re telling me I was actually attacked by some monster and you’re claiming that monster is jinn and that you’re jinn and I’m jinn and the mother that I don’t know is jinn and from everything I’ve read I can only assume by jinn you mean frickin’ mythological genies but the frickin’ scary kind and I can—”
“Breathe,” he interrupted, his features harsh and impatient as he placed one huge hand on her shoulder. “I do not deal well with hysterical women.”
Ari blinked owlishly, her cheeks blazing red at the insinuation she was some prissy idiot who couldn’t handle an unpleasant situation. This wasn’t an unpleasant situation. This was an EPIC situation. “I’m not your daughter,” she responded softly. “I’m Ari Johnson. Derek Johnson’s daughter. And this is a dream I would really like to wake up from now.”
The man cocked his head, studying her, his jaw unclenching. “You may ramble incoherently like a fool, but the only tears you shed are ones of physical pain. Interesting.”
Her patience snapped. She didn’t care how huge or sociopathic this guy was. “Who. The. Hell. Are. You?”
He leveled her with that careful, expressionless gaze of his. “I am the White King.”
“What?”
“The White King. You are in my home on Mount Qaf, the realm of the jinn. And you, Ari Johnson of the mortal realm, are my daughter.”
Chapter 7
I found me in a cold promise
Her teeth chattered and Ari retreated from the insane man, rubbing her arms. “It’s c-c-c-cold. Don’t you think it’s c-c-old?” She shook her head, refusing to believe anything he said, refusing to believe what she could see and touch and hear and smell. “This is too real for a dream,” she whispered, shaking her head, feeling her chest tighten again. Did this mean she’d become unhinged? Oh god. Oh god, she was crazy.
“It is winter on Mount Qaf but the jinn do not feel the cold,” the guy who called himself the White King explained. “You only feel it because you have never used the magic within you. Your body is waiting for your mind to catch up with the truth.”
When Ari continued to look at him blankly, shivering, and hiccupping down little gasps of oxygen, he shook his head. There was no annoyance on his face, but she got the feeling she was irritating him. “Rabir.”
Before Ari could speak, flames burst to life in the air in front of her, and as they swam toward the ground, their flickering tails revealed a familiar face and torso until all of Rabir stood before her. The last sparks of the flames hissed before they extinguished. “You?”
Rabir gave her a charming little bow and smiled. “Ms. Johnson.” He held out a hand, a jacket with fur-lining dangling from his fingers.
In shock, Ari reached out and took it, pulling the jacket on and shivering at the warmth of the silky soft fur against her chilled skin. The White King nodded at Rabir and the ‘genie’ went up in flames. She squeaked on a scream, the heat of the flames licking her face before they disappeared. There was no evidence of him ever having been there, not even the scent of lingering smoke.
He’d gone up in smokeless fire.
Ari gulped, shaking. “That was Rabir. The guy from my party.”
“Rabir is a shaitan. A servant jinn. I sent him to the party to bring you here.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There are rules. No being may be forced into the realm of Mount Qaf unless to be tried by the jinn courts. I feared coming to you would bring you to the attention of those I’d rather keep away from you. So I had Rabir haunt your feelings with the thought of your mother.”
That still made no sense. Ari snorted. Like any of this made sense. She was probably in a padded cell somewhere, gazing blankly at a man in a white coat, saliva dripping down her chin. “Still… not getting it.” She shrugged, burrowing deeper into the jacket, and studied the White King’s form. He was truly a magnificent creature, imposing and arrogant, and utterly terrifying. Those eyes of his. They were so black. So soulless.
“I wanted you to wish to see your mother so that it would bring you here. Of your own free will.”
“It’s not exactly my free will if you manipulated me into missing my mom.”
The White King smiled and Ari flinched. It was the strangest smile she had ever seen. He stretched his lips into an approximation of a smile, but it was more a bearing of teeth. There were no lines to crinkle the corner of his eyes, no spark to make the black of his irises glitter. It was a dead smile. “You are clever. I am glad.”
She shook her head. It was like he wasn’t human. Wait, she reminded herself; he said he isn’t. “I really want to wake up now.”
“This is not a dream. Please stop trying to convince yourself otherwise.”
The sheet beneath her was chilled from the winter air and lack of heating, the mattress firm, contouring under her butt. The candlelight flickered when wind blew into the room from the door she’d left open, casting threatening shadows over the very real man
in front of her. Jasmine still danced in the air and Ari doubted she would ever smell the floral scent again without thinking about this alien room. Ari pressed a palm to the velvet blanket at the end of the bed, smoothing over the plush fabric, and its softness tickled. Her arm didn’t hurt but it still felt raw from the nisnas’ bite and the fur inside the jacket made the sensitive skin tingle. Oh God, it had attacked her. She really had been attacked! Ari glanced behind her to make sure the thing was definitely gone, fear prickling her spine and making her check once more before she turned to the White King. She laughed a little hysterically inside. The White King? It was like something out of Narnia. Inhaling deeply, Ari let the bitter air flood her lungs, opening up her airwaves. Although her heart slammed in her chest and the blood rushed in her ears, she felt calmer, knowing she wasn’t crazy.
This was real.
She locked gazes with the White King and tried not to shudder. “You were right earlier. I’m not the girl who cries easily anymore. But I am scared. I thought maybe I was going crazy but weird has already entered my life. I have a poltergeist, you know. And I’m pretty sure a poltergeist stalker. And at the party when Rabir took my hand, I knew there was something off about him. Like really off. Like poltergeist living in my house off. This isn’t a dream. And I’m not crazy. So what am I?”
He nodded at her and then turned, snapping his fingers over the air beside him. A glass chair appeared out of an explosion of fire.
No wait. A throne.
He settled down into the high-backed chair, arranging his colorful robes just so. “How would you like me to explain? From your beginning or from the beginning?”
“I think this is one of those occasions where the long version is preferable to the short version.”
His opaque eyes remained trained on hers. “How much do you know of the jinn?”
She shrugged, sucking in a shuddering breath, her stomach muscles clenching and choking the life out of the butterflies that had awakened in her belly. Her foot bounced on the floor and she had to press a trembling hand to her knee to stop it. “Not much. Just that Disney was apparently way off the mark.”
“You know nothing of your heritage?”
“Why don’t we lead up to the part where you explain how it is my heritage?”
“Your tone is disrespectful. Do all children speak to their parents this way where you come from?” his voice had grown calmer. It had a rumbling, icicle-laden edge to it that stopped her from rebutting with a smartass comment. This wasn’t a dream. If the White King over there wanted to take her out with a snap of his fire-breathing fingers, there was no waking up from that.
At her continued silence, he blinked those dead eyes and straightened up in the ‘chair.’ “Then we shall begin at the beginning.” He curled his fingers elegantly in the air and little flames danced into the darkness, transforming into the outline of a man. “In your world, this, and the others, exists jinn. A diverse race of many colors spawned by Azazil.” The figure pulsed more vividly in the air, so Ari assumed it represented this Azazil person. “Azazil is the sultan of all jinn, created from Chaos; he is as powerful as time and a lover of destruction. Power like Azazil’s leads to fear, betrayal and death. Over the centuries Sultan Azazil bore children—the Seven Kings of Jinn, each a ruler of one day in the mortal realm. The Gilder King, ruler of Sunday. The Glass King, ruler of Monday. The Red King, ruler of Tuesday. The Gleaming King, ruler of Wednesday. Myself, the White King, ruler of Thursday. The Shadow King, ruler of Friday. And the Lucky King, ruler of Saturday.”
Ari gaped at him, trying to process all the information. “Okay, okay. Sultan guy is Azazil. And then there are you and your brothers, who are sons of Azazil. Have you got a notepad, because I already can’t remember their names?”
The White King made a low humming noise from the back of her throat that creeped her out. “Try to keep up. I won’t repeat this. We live between realms, my brothers and I, interfering in the lives of importants on the days we ruled—”
“Importants?” Ari interrupted, frowning.
“People with destinies that matter to humans. We helped shape those destinies, but only on the days we ruled over. However, my brothers betrayed one another. They interfered on days that were not their own.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was told the Gilder King interfered with a very special important on a Thursday when he should only have traversed into the important’s world on a Sunday.”
“The Gilder King is the ruler of Sunday, right?”
“Exactly.”
“Okay, so you each started trespassing on one another’s turf. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Exactly.”
“So what happened?” And am I really sure I’m just not crazy?
The White King looked at the dancing fire figures that had multiplied from one to eight. “Chaos. War. Distrust between the Seven Kings of Jinn. The order fell apart. We no longer control as many of the jinn as we once did. And new half-breed races have sprung up in the human world, deliberately seeking to interfere with us.” He sighed and wiped a hand over the fire figures, extinguishing them. “Only Azazil has the power to undo what has happened, but my father enjoys chaos. So we exist without order, without structure, once great… now… empty of purpose. Life seems meaningless.”
Ari’s stomach roiled, her chest rising and falling in fast waves, feeling as if a million birds had been let loose inside it, as he gazed over her shoulder into a world she could not see. “You’re not kidding, are you? This is real?”
He cocked his head. “What gave it away? The nisnas attack or the fire spirits that keep appearing before you?”
“Fire Spirits?”
“Colloquial name for jinn.”
Her fingers bit into the velvet blanket beside her. “So… jinn… there are different kinds? Some like you and Rabir and some like the nisnas?”
He nodded. “There are many kinds. With many talents.”
“Good or evil?”
If it was possible, his dark eyes grew even blacker. “Why are humans so obsessed with that distinction?”
Ari snorted. “Because we like to know what we’re dealing with.”
“Good people have been known to do evil things, child.”
She sucked in a deep breath, her nerves twanging as she found the courage to ask, “Are you a good person?”
The soft tap of his fingers against the glass arm of the throne made Ari jump, and she watched his face twitch at her reaction. She cursed herself for revealing how much he unnerved her. “I am not a person. I am jinn.”
She shivered at his evasive response, somehow inherently knowing that this man — this jinn — was not good. Was not right. He couldn’t be her father. There was no way. “Why am I here?”
“Because I willed it so.”
“Can you maybe explain?”
“My brothers and I are powerful. Powerful enough even to control whether we leave seed for a child to grow in the womb of a woman.”
Okay, too much information.
“Nineteen years ago, I decided I wanted a child. Perhaps a child would bring some connection to the world for me again. At the time, I had gained the servitude of a powerful ifrit—”
“Ifrit?”
“A strong species of jinn who have almost all our basic powers, including a gift specific to the individual. Sala’s gift was the power of seduction.”
At the name, Ari’s heart seemed to unhitch itself and drop into her stomach, splashing up acidic bile that lodged at the back of her throat. “Sala?” she whispered, disbelieving.
The White King studied her reaction, apparently fascinated but unmoved by it. “Your mother. If I were to have a child, I wished the child to be strong. Sala was the strongest and most desirable of my people. She conceived you because I willed it.”
Her face suddenly felt numb and she pressed the icy tips of her fingers to it, reassuring herself that she was still there, she was still her. But she wasn’t.
She wasn’t Ari Johnson. She was… she wasn’t even human.
“I feel sick,” she mumbled, leaning into a bedpost.
“I have never understood the human reaction of uploading bodily waste at news you find discomfiting.”
Not caring that he was scary, Ari jerked her head up, her eyes flashing angrily. “Discomfiting news? You not only tell me I’m not… that my dad isn’t my dad… but that I’m not even human and you think that’s discomfiting? How about mind-fucking-altering!”
“I think you should calm yourself.”
“I think you should go fuc—”
He held up a hand, cutting her off. “I think you should calm yourself before you insult me and do something you regret.”
She gaped and then laughed bitterly. “Are you threatening me? Your own daughter?”
“I am the White King.”
That’s his answer? I am the White King? He had no feelings. None. Ari shook. “You’re not my father. You can’t be.”
“I am.” He cocked his head to the other side and Ari shivered in revulsion. She remembered watching this sci-fi movie with Charlie where these aliens body snatched people. They looked like the humans they’d stolen the bodies from (obviously) but their features and eyes lacked total expression and when something aroused their interest they’d cock their heads to the side, studying it as if it were some kind of ... well… alien. That’s what this guy who claimed to be her father reminded her of. A sociopathic alien. “Sala and I argued during her pregnancy. To punish me, she disappeared into the mortal realm and returned a month later. Alone. She told me she had hidden you from me to punish me. Ifrits are powerful and Sala’s powers of seduction are greater than any jinn I have ever met, but her use of enchantments is basic. The enchantment she used to keep you hidden with one of her mortal ex-lovers, Derek Johnson, waned after sixteen years. I could feel you, but I couldn’t find you. It took me two years.”
Ari gripped the bed post tighter, trying to digest this news. This truth?
“If you were honest with yourself, child, you’d know that I speak the truth. From what I’ve seen, the elders in your life have abandoned you. People you care about have been abandoned by their elders. You feel disconnected from that world, Ari. You know you do. Your only connection is a troubled boy upon whom you cling to in desperation like a life float.” He sat forward, his robes whispering against the glass of the throne. “You have come home, child. You have come home and I will not abandon you.”