Burn For Him

by Kristan Belle

  “Why? Why me?”

  It was almost like Harper didn’t hear my pitiful question as he carried on, “They can manipulate the minds and actions of others. They can bend and break the will of others.”

  “Why would he want to do that to me?” I knew that it was a pretty stupid question. Who could ever really explain why evil did what it did? Evil was a motive all of its own.

  “Because the Shaitan are still Djinn. They feed off of emotions, just like the rest of us. But, they feed off of negative, harmful energies and emotions. Fear, stress, lust. Any negative energy that can make you feel out of control.” He glared at the wall as he spoke, like he even hated to just think of them.

  But, Milligan? How could that be? How could evil come in such an attractive package? Then, it dawned on me what Harper was saying. Lust. I had wanted him so badly. I wanted him so much that it was almost a physical ache. I had wanted him even when I was scared of him and frightened by his actions. I had to laugh ruefully when I thought of all that he would have gained from me and my emotions.

  “Why didn’t I see it from the beginning? I should have been able to see that there was something off about him.” But, I knew the answer to that. I didn’t know so I couldn’t see. He had me where he wanted from me. Right from the start. All I had felt from the very first time I met him was fear that was over-taken by lust. Lust had been at the centre of it all. How could I have been so blind? How could I have been so stupid?

  “You wouldn’t have known anything. All you saw was a man that you wanted and a man that wanted you. Lust is as simple as that. He called to you. You were powerless to stop it.”

  “But, I’m not stupid. How could I have let great sex cloud my judgement like that? I’ve always been so careful with men. Why did I let my emotions rule my head? I knew that he wasn’t the man for me, but I still wanted him.”

  “Milligan would have been able to throw all of that good sense in your head out of the window. He would have done anything to get what he wanted from you. That’s what they do.”

  “But, even after those awful dead flowers and everything else, I still wanted him. Even when I talked myself out of wanting him, as soon as I saw him, I wanted him. Even when he stood there in front of me and I hated him with every single part of me, I still wanted him.” My voice sounded strangled, but it portrayed pretty well what I was feeling.

  “Don’t beat yourself up about it. It’s how they work. You wouldn’t have been able to fight it, no matter what you did or wanted.” He replied, trying to reassure me, but it didn’t work, though. I still thought that it was my fault. I should have been stronger.

  “Would I be able to do anything to stop it? Now that I know?”

  Harper sighed. “Probably not. He’s strong. He has to be to have been able to hide his true self from me.”

  “Are you stronger?”

  “No. I’m not.”

  “Will he know what you are?”

  “Yes.”

  Well, wasn’t that just brilliant? Fucking brilliant. Even though I knew that Milligan wasn’t human and that I didn’t really deep down want him, I knew that the next time I saw him, I’d want to jump his bones just like every other time I’d seen him. How warped was that? And there was nothing I could do to stop it.

  “So, what happens now?”

  “I don’t know really. I haven’t figured it out yet. I wanted to make sure that you were fully aware of the situation before I thought about it.” Harper shrugged helplessly.

  “Well, let me know when you work it out.” I snapped as I stormed out of the lounge. This had all gotten too much for me. I stomped into the kitchen. I needed a drink. Opening up the fridge, it was oddly bare. There was nothing in there that I fancied. No beer, no Jaeger, nothing alcoholic whatsoever. You could tell that Dee hadn’t been around here lately. She was the one who kept the fridge nicely stocked up with goodies. All that was in there was Pepsi. I cracked open a can.

  As I took a swig, another thought occurred to me. Milligan was also a Djinn. I couldn’t remember exactly what Harper had actually called him, but that didn’t really matter to me. He was a supernatural or spiritual being and a powerful one at that. Harper had said that he could manipulate people and their actions. What if everything that had been happening lately hadn’t all just been coincidence? I’d been having a run of bad luck. Bad things had been happening to me and others around me.

  I raced back into the living room. Harper was standing over by the windows, looking out at the clear night sky.

  “You said that Milligan could do things, manipulate people. This all started happening the first night that we went down to the nightclub. That was the night that I first met Milligan. That was the night that Dee had her fall.”

  I was met with silence. I didn’t say anything else. I waited impatiently for Harper to talk to me.

  “I wondered when you would figure that out.”

  I raised my eyebrows at him and threw my hands up in the air. “Are you kidding me? On top of everything else, you think that I’ve got the presence of mind to work things like that out for myself? You should have told me.”

  He glanced back at me over his shoulder. “There are some things that you need to be able to figure out for yourself. I’ve told you all that I can. The rest kind of depends on you.”

  “Depends on me? What can I do?”

  “You need to be able to resist him. You need to try to resist Milligan.”

  “How? How the hell am I supposed to do that?” I asked him. It seemed to me that he was asking me the impossible. I couldn’t control what I felt when I was around him. How was I supposed to resist him? Was there some trick to it?

  “You just have to try.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he is not going to give up on you now. He’s on a roll. He wants you. You feed him well. I need you to try and keep hold of yourself and your emotions when you next see him. I need you to try and buy us some time while I try to work out what I need to do next. I need to try and find a way to get him away from you. I need to get rid of him.”

  “Do you mean that you are going to kill him?” I should have sounded a little more outraged at the fact that he was standing there and possibly talking about ‘offing’ someone.

  “No. We can’t kill him.”

  “Why not?”

  “There are many things that you still don’t know about my kind. It would take an eternity for me to be able to tell you everything that you need to know about us. You need to think about everything that has happened lately and see what can be linked back to Milligan.”

  I didn’t like this. Harper sounded so stressed and down, more so than I had ever known before. I realised with a start that it was probably a direct reflection of how I was feeling. It made sense. If he was energised by my positive feelings then no wonder he was feeling as he was right now. I had nothing to smile about. The only thing that I was feeling was negative. Milligan would be having a field day if he were here right now.

  “Carrie.” Harper said suddenly, grabbing hold of my shoulders and pushing me to face the window. I didn’t know what the hell he thought he was doing at first, but then I noticed the car that was parked over the other side of the road. Milligan’s car. As soon as I saw it, I felt that familiar pull low down in my stomach, cramping and tightening with anticipation.

  I blinked and lowered my head. Trying to pull away from him, Harper kept his hands on my shoulders, keeping me in place.

  “What do you feel?” His voice was stone cold.

  “Harp, don’t. Please, don’t do this.”

  “Carrie! What do you feel?”

  I wrenched myself out of his grasp and spun around to face him. “I want him. Are you happy now? I want him more than I have ever wanted anything before. Is that what you wanted to hear?” I shouted in his face, feeling a failure and tears pricked at my eyes.

  “Carrie, I just wanted you to realise that you can’t stand up against him just with will power alone. He c
an tear that apart to get to what he wants.”

  “But, how does he do that? I didn’t even see him. Just his car. What the hell is wrong with me?” I could feel my throat tightening.

  “There’s nothing wrong with you. You associate that car with Milligan and that sparks the memory of his touch. He’s got to you and you need to find the strength to resist him.”

  I glanced back over my shoulder out the window and stared at the car for a moment. “How? I don’t see how I can do this. If he’s going to tear my will power apart, what am I left with?”

  “That’s the problem. I don’t know.”

  “Well, you’re not a lot of help, are you?” I shook my head at him and shoved my way past, going to walk back over to the sofa. I was going to do what he asked and think about everything that he’d told me. It was a little bit much to take in, but I was at least going to try. So much bad stuff had happened lately in such a short space of time that it was difficult for me to think what could have just been bad luck and what could have been down took to Milligan.

  I took in a deep breath and decided to take my own piece of advice and start from the beginning. But, I couldn’t do it on my own. “Would you help me, please?”

  Luckily Harper knew what I meant and he didn’t leave me stranded. “Of course I will.”

  Right. Let’s start from the very beginning, when I had met Milligan. “Milligan was responsible for Destiny’s fall?” I started. I didn’t want to believe it, really. Not because I didn’t want to think badly of Milligan, because I hated him, but I also hated the thought that Dee had been caught up in the middle of this mess. All because of me.

  “I fear yes.”

  “How did he do that?”

  Harper glanced back at me with pain clearly in his eyes. He hated the thought of Dee being injured because of all of this, too. “I actually think that he got Michelle to push her down the stairs.”

  Well, I didn’t expect to hear that. “Michelle?” I sounded shocked, but I really was. Sure, I’d though that she was a bit of a fake Barbie doll wannabe when I first met her in the club, but the second time I saw her at the hospital, I’d thought she’d seemed quite sweet. Then, it dawned on me that I hadn’t actually seen her again after that time in the hospital. I had been so wrapped up in everything that was happening to me in my life that I hadn’t even thought to ask Harper what was going on with him.

  “Yes. Michelle. I didn’t see it at first, but there was something about her that was a little bit ‘off’. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. I could kick myself now. I should have been able to see it. She was under his influence. I think that she was being manipulated by Milligan. I think that he got her to push Dee down the stairs and then got her to worm her way into my life, without her even knowing it. That’s the thing. She thought that she genuinely wanted to be with me, but I knew that there was something that wasn’t quite right. I think that it was his plan from the very beginning. He knew what I was. Well, he should of, anyway. I don’t ever try to hide what I am. To be honest, I wouldn’t even know how to do that. It’s just not in my nature. But, if that had been his plan, then it backfired on him. There was something about her that swung from intense to vacant. It wasn’t normal. I told her that I didn’t want to see her again. She even cried. I didn’t understand why she would have been quite so upset when I had only seen her a couple times. Now, I know that she was meant to distract me so that I didn’t notice so much what was going on with you.”

  He fell silent again. I didn’t know what to say to him. I was just sad, angry and confused that this was happening to all of us. We’d all been dragged into the madness. And, it was all about us. It wasn’t just about me. We were all being affected by what Milligan was doing. He was hitting us all with his evil ways.

  “What about the problems that I was having with my car?” It had suddenly stopped working the day that we were going to the club. I was still at the mechanics, which was why Harper was having to take me everywhere I needed to go.

  Harper chuckled and I felt the mood in the room rise several degrees. “ No, Carrie. Your car is just a pile of junk. It was on its last legs as it was. It didn’t need any help from Milligan.” I stood up next to him and smacked him playfully on the arm. Sure, my car was ancient, but I loved that pile of rust and feared that there was going to be nothing more to do than to scrap it.

  “What about my job?”

  “I would have to say yes to that one. That is pure Milligan. He made sure that you went through hell at work and then he got you fired. I don’t know how he got in contact with Steve before he tried to commission you for the club, but he did. Even I thought that it was out of character for Steve to be riding you so hard. The amount of stress that goes with something like that would have left him glowing.”

  “What an asshole.”

  Harper laughed again. “That’s putting it mildly.”

  “Is he ever going to leave me alone?” I asked him, my voice small and timid.

  “No.”

  I didn’t want to hear that. I had wanted Harper to tell me that Milligan would soon get bored of me and move on. I knew that deep down he wasn’t going to say that. I guess that it was just human nature, looking for the good in the situation. Hope. We all have hope when we have nothing else left.

  “How do we stop him?”

  “I don’t know yet.” Harper sounded defeated again. I could understand that. He had always been the role of protector in my life, but he didn’t know how to protect me from this.

  “Can we stop him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And, we can’t kill him?” I didn’t think that I would be talking about killing someone quite so lightly if we had been talking about a human. But, then I had to remember that Harper wasn’t human, either. I wouldn’t ever want anything to happen to him. But, Milligan was an evil bastard and he wasn’t going to stop this. We had to find a way to stop him or I would never be free of him.

  “No, we can’t. We shouldn’t be fighting him, either. We should be negotiating with him. That is our way. But, I fear that the time for talking has passed. I don’t think that he would now listen to reason. We cannot harm him, though. His clan would take revenge on all of us.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “A clan? He has a clan?”

  “Yes, we all belong to a clan. That is like our family. If we hurt Milligan, they could come after us and hurt us and possibly take it out on my clan.”

  “You have a clan!?” I said, sounding shocked once again.

  “Of course I do. I am the leader of my clan.”

  “Wow.” What else could I say to that? I had no idea what all of this meant and I was finding out things about Harper that I had never known. I was going to have to shelve the questions that I had running through my mind and come back to them another time.

  “I know that this all sounds totally crazy to you.” He held up a hand when I started to protest. “It is a lot for you to try and understand, but you have got to try.”

  “I am trying, Harp.”

  He turned to look at me again. I thought for a moment that his eyes flashed yellow, but then after everything else that was happening, I wasn’t too sure if I was imagining things. It may have happened or it may have been a trick of the light. I didn’t want to think about it. I had enough on my plate without thinking about Harper’s mystical eyes.

  “How hard are you trying?”

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked him, clearly puzzled.

  “How hard are you trying to prepare yourself for seeing Milligan again? You saw what happened a moment ago.” There was something in his voice that made a chill crawl up my spine.

  “I’m trying.”

  “Really?”

  “What’s going on, Harper?”

  He didn’t answer me. He grabbed hold of my shoulders again and turned me back towards the window. I wanted to close my eyes and hide for a moment. I didn’t want to look out there and feel that failure running through
me. I cracked open my eyes and saw Milligan had got out of the car and was now standing under the street light across the road. I gasped and felt my legs start to buckle beneath me.

  “What’s he doing? I thought that he would have left.” I whispered, as if Milligan could hear me.

  “I don’t care what he’s doing. What are you feeling? I need to know, Carrie.”

  I could feel Harper’s eyes boring into the back of my head, just as Milligan’s eyes were staring up into my face from the street below.

  “Tell me, Carrie. What do you feel?”

  I didn’t want to put it into words, but I knew that I had to. Harper wouldn’t be satisfied until I’d told him. “I hate him.”

  “I know that you hate him. But, what do you feel? What do you feel right now?”

  “I want him.” I whispered. As soon as I had said that for the first time, it was easier to say more. “I want him so badly. I want him like last time. I want him to touch-“

  “Okay, okay. I get the picture.” Harper cut me off and spun me back away from the window. I could have gone on forever. There was something in Milligan’s eyes that made me remember the feel of his touch. I hated that I wanted him so very much. I hated that I had to admit to Harper how much I wanted him.

  It was easier when I couldn’t see him, but just knowing he was out there, waiting for me, I could feel the pull.

  “I think that it proves no matter how hard you try, you aren’t going to be able to say no to him if you run into him.”

  “But, I really was trying! Honestly! I don’t want to want him like this. It makes me feel sick that I am drawn to him like this. I hate him and I want him.” I protested. “But, I was trying. And I’ll try harder next time. I didn’t expect him to still be out there. I’ll be more prepared next time.”

  “Since when have you ever been prepared for seeing him? Since when did you actually know that you were going to run into him? You know that he can just spring up on you when you least expect it.”

  Well, he was right. I couldn’t argue with that. I would never be ready for seeing Milligan, because I never knew when to expect him. Hell, he even popped up when I was in the shower! That had been the last thing I had expected. But, with Milligan, you had to expect the unexpected. Which was why this was going to be so hard.