Dylan only saw twenty jinn escape, but seeing as they made a desperate beeline for the direction Christa had taken, he decided that was twenty jinn too many. Rising from his crouching position, he began to run along the flat roof of the building, keeping pace with the sprinting jinn below him. As he reached the end of one roof, he jumped onto the next, landing on bent knees like a flying gymnast. He dodged aerials and negotiated the large, angular shapes of air conditioning units, never taking his eyes from the jinn on the ground. Eventually, he could see Christa ahead of him, her pace beginning to slow as she gasped for breath. He almost cried out when he watched her turn into a one-way alley. The jinn also realised her folly and leapt onwards with a fresh burst of speed, the smell of their prey warm in their nostrils. Dylan reached the alley and teetered on a crumbling ledge far above it, frantically searching for a handhold, some platform from which he could reach the ground.
Below him, the jinn crowded into the alley to face Christa, their teeth bared and their eyes wild, threaded with liquid flame. Christa backed herself against the wall at the end of the narrow street. Although she was visibly trembling, her mouth was set in a hard, determined line and her fists were clenched.
"Get away," she shouted at the approaching jinn, "or I'll make you all wish you'd never heard of bloody jinn stones."
The jinn laughed at her, whooping and calling amongst themselves like heckling hyenas.
“You’re ours now, little witch,” one of them said, her voice high and full of excitement.
“We’re going to tear your head off.”
“I want to see what her insides look like.”
Dylan waited, expecting Christa to frighten them with some fearsome display, to use her powers and make them wilt before her. Instead, he watched in amazement as she bent to scrabble around on the floor, eventually producing a length of pipe left to rust in the gutter.
“Come on then,” she screamed, her voice made harsh by false bravado. “Don’t just stand there, you fucking bastards.” She swung the pipe in front of her, gripping it in both shaking hands.
The jinn sprang at her in unison, jostling amongst themselves to get as close as possible to the small girl couched before the wall. Dylan felt the muscles in his arms and legs pull taught as Christa disappeared beneath the writhing sea of jinn, his senses strung tight by the wild panic coursing through him. Without thinking, he jumped from his precarious position on the ledge, landing heavily on the concrete below and crying out as the impact threw painful tremors through his legs and thighs. Quickly regaining his strength, Dylan began to tear through the jinn surrounding Christa, ripping at hair and skin, all fears for his own safety lost in his desperation to reach her.
He ploughed through the group like a whirling bulldozer, twisting the heads and snapping the necks of those with the presence of mind to realise what was happening and turn to face him. One short, ruddy faced woman pounced on him as he caught sight of Christa. She was curled into a ball on the floor, kicking out in an effort to halt the rain of blows descending on every part of her exposed body. The woman screamed at Dylan, her skin slick with blood and sweat. She grabbed his shoulders, flicking a knife from her sleeve when he attempted to dislodge her. She thrust the knife into his chest, her crazed expression faltering when he simply grinned at her, reaching for the blade protruding from his ribs and ripping it free with barely a grimace.
“Knives don’t work on vampires, you stupid bitch,” he said.
He plunged the short blade into the woman’s eye, hard and fast, pushing her aside as she wailed and screeched, bent double with the sudden agony shooting through her skull. He reached Christa in time to see a particularly tall, heavy-set jinn grab her throat, curling his huge, meaty fingers around her neck and lifting her from the floor. Christa twisted and struggled in his grasp, her eyes beginning to bulge, but Dylan could see she was exhausted, her fight all but spent.
“Let her go,” he shouted, launching himself at the man.
The jinn seemed oblivious to the punches aimed at his face and neck. He only took his attention away from Christa, turning to Dylan with a roar of anger, when the vampire tore at the arm holding her with his fangs, ripping away a large piece of skin and spraying the alley with wet, bright blood. The man’s grip loosened and Dylan was able to wrench Christa free, putting himself between her and the jinn, now shaking with rage and pain.
“I’m going to kill you,” the man spat. “I’m going to rip out your stomach, then I’m going to make the witch eat it.”
“That’s really disgusting,” Dylan said.
The man began to reach for him but Dylan was faster. He plunged his fingers into the gaping wound on the man’s forearm, twisting it like a weeping Indian burn until he cried out and sank to his knees. Making sure Christa was still behind him, Dylan kicked the man hard in the head, smiling with grim satisfaction when he fell backwards into the crowd of disorganised jinn, unconscious and broken.
“Does anyone else want to fight me?” Dylan shouted. The jinn were silent and wary. Those who weren’t dead were bowing over the quivering figures of the fallen or nursing their own wounds. “Good,” Dylan continued. “Me and Christa are going to leave now. If any of you try to stop us, I’ll break every one of your ribs before I smash your face into the floor. Do we have an understanding?” No jinn dared break the silence. They turned shamed, bloody faces away as Dylan began to inch forward, one arm around Christa. He had reached the end of the alley before one of them finally spoke.
“We’ll be back,” a broken-voiced female shouted. “We’ll be back with more jinn, then you’ll be sorry. We’ll kill you slow, both of you.”
Dylan turned to stare at them, now little more than slinking shadows at the foot of the narrow street. No one stood to face him. The speaker fell back into silence and Dylan nodded, pulling Christa out onto the brightly lit road and comforting civilisation beyond.
“Wait,” Christa said once they had rounded a corner. “Wait, I can’t walk any more.”
“Okay,” Dylan said, his body still burning with adrenaline. “I’ll find a car.” He began to look up and down the length of the street they were standing on, searching out a likely candidate that could easily be broken into. It took him several seconds to realise that Christa was leaning against a wall, unable to catch her breath and struggling not to cry. “They really hurt you, didn’t they?” he said, turning to look at her properly for the first time. “I’m so sorry, Christa, I should have got there sooner.” He paused, noticing the alien swell beneath her knitted jumper.
Christa looked up, swallowing a sob as she followed his gaze. “What if they hurt the baby?” she said, forcing the words out in a strangled whisper. “I tried to protect it, but there were so many of them.” She shuddered and rocked against the wall, her hands clasped over her stomach. “My chest hurts, Dylan, and I can taste blood in my mouth.”
She began to fall, her eyes rolling back in her head, and Dylan rushed forward to catch her. He gathered her to his chest as they both sank to the floor.
“I feel sick,” Christa said.
“There’s a baby?” Dylan said, unable to take his eyes from her rounded stomach. “Whose baby?”
Christa began to murmur a reply, but it was lost as her eyes fluttered and closed, her consciousness finally giving out.
***
Dylan watched Jenna work in silence as she wound bandages around Christa’s torn skin and swabbed her bruises with alcohol, unvoiced questions thick in the air. When she was finished he sat on the bed, stroking the back of Christa’s hand until Rob was unable to contain himself any longer.
“So what the fuck’s going on?” he said, moving from one foot to the other. “You going to have a baby, man?”
“That’s impossible,” Dylan said. “Vampires can’t have children, you know that.”
“Well, either she swallowed a fucking watermelon, or she’s pregnant.”
“Maybe it’s not his,” Jenna said. Rob glared at his girlfriend and
she looked away, embarrassed. “Sorry, Dylan.”
Dylan didn’t reply. He continued to watch Christa sleep, his face blank, devoid of expression.
***
Christa woke with a start an hour later, her hands immediately flying to her stomach, groping fingers searching for any sign of damage.
“You’re okay,” a voice said beside her. “I mean, you’re both okay. We’re lucky to have a nurse in the building. An ex-nurse, anyway, which was good fortune because we thought she was just a drummer in a band.” The voice attempted to laugh, but the noise was short and forced. “Jenna said there’s no permanent damage, just bruises.”
Christa turned her head slowly, wincing as pain shot through her throat and neck, and saw Dylan staring back at her, his large, azure eyes shining in the dank of the room as though they were lit by some internal, glowing source. Memories of Ramon, of the flood of jinn, the chase and the ensuing onslaught of blows rushed to the forefront of her brain and she gasped, unable to believe she had made it out alive.
“You helped me,” she said. “You saved me.”
“I’m an undead hero,” Dylan said. “They’ll probably write books about this.” He smiled, reaching for her hand.
“Last time we saw each other, I tried to bury you.” She wriggled her fingers beneath his, conflicted between her gratitude and the anger she still harboured. “Is your goddess, Bredia here?”
Dylan sighed. “A lot has happened since New York.” He motioned towards her stomach, rising in a smooth, white arc from the bed sheets. “A lot has happened to you too, it seems.”
“Yes.”
They looked at each other in silence, neither of them willing to begin the necessary explanations. Finally, Dylan took a deep breath and shifted on the bed, his usually smooth face creased.
“Is the baby Darrell’s?” he said.
Christa laughed in surprise. “Of course not. It’s yours, obviously.”
“That’s not possible, Christa. Vampires can’t have children. We’re essentially dead, we can’t create life.”
“Well, impossible or not, that’s what happened.” She shook her head at his expression of disbelief. “Do you think I’m lying? I’m not a slag, Dylan. I wasn’t whoring myself out all over America as soon as I left New York. I’m also not entirely mortal, am I? Or at least, I wasn’t. You might not be able to father a child with a human or even with another vampire, but I’m different.”
As he considered the awesome possibility that he could indeed be expecting a baby, Dylan’s face softened and a small smile bloomed on his bloodless lips. “If this is true, it’s incredible,” he said. He paused, withdrawing his hand from hers as a new thought occurred to him. “You were going to keep this from me, weren’t you? You’ve made no effort to contact me, after all. Were you ever going to tell me?”
Christa looked away, ashamed. “I really hadn’t thought about it. I suppose one day I might have—”
“One day?” Dylan said, cutting her off. “If I was really lucky, you mean? I can’t believe you’d do that to me.”
“I thought you were still slumming it with Bredia,” Christa said, her anger matching his own. She pushed herself up into a sitting position, flinching as her bruised limbs resisted. “You dumped me, remember? You told me you had things to learn from that bitch, that you needed to be with your own kind. I didn’t owe you anything.”
Dylan nodded, his sudden fury receding. “You’re right.” He expelled a long, slow breath. “Can you ever forgive me? I said terrible things and I didn’t mean them. I was so stupid. Bredia turned out to be a raving lunatic. You knew that from the start, but I refused to listen to you.” He leant forward and stroked her cheek. “I really missed you, Christa.”
Christa quelled the rising impulse to pull away from him. She knew she should hate him for abandoning her, but he seemed so earnest. “I can forgive you,” she finally said, “but I don’t know if I can trust you.”
“You don’t think vampires are trustworthy?” Dylan grinned. Christa stared at him pointedly, refusing to look away until his smile faltered and he was serious once more. “I can work on getting you to trust me again,” he said. “Just let me try.”
They gazed at each other for several moments before Christa broke the spell, shifting on the bed and clasping her hands in her lap. “There’s something else I have to tell you,” she said. “Something about where my powers came from, and where they’ve gone.”
***
Everyone was startled from a fitful night’s sleep when a loud knock on the door rumbled through the thin walls of the bed-sit. Rob appeared from the bedroom, dressed only in a T-shirt and a worn pair of cotton pants, while Dylan roused himself from the bed he had shared with Christa.
“Here we go again,” Rob whispered.
Dylan signalled for him to be silent as he crept towards the door, pausing when the insistent knocking sounded again.
“This is Ramon,” an important-sounding voice boomed from the hallway. “Let me in.”
“It’s okay,” Christa said from the bed, sitting up and running her fingers through her hair. “He’s a friend.”
Dylan opened the door and found himself confronted with the tall, dark haired man he had seen with Christa the night before. “It’s you,” he said, “the amazing fire-breathing man.”
“I don’t breathe fire,” Ramon said. He sounded strained and tired. “May I come in?”
“Yes, come in, Ramon,” Christa called out.
Dylan stood aside to let him pass, baulking when Darrell appeared behind him, his hair dishevelled and his clothes crumpled. “Oh joy, you’re here, too.”
“I found him wandering around in the street,” Ramon said.
When Darrell entered the room, Christa’s face lit up. She struggled from the bed and walked towards him, her gait more of a waddle than a stride. “How did you get here?” she said, reaching up to hug him. “How did you even know where I was?”
“Well, after Ramon snatched you away,” Darrell said, glancing at the fae, “I went back down to the beach to see Makaio. He cast some stones on the sand, drew some weird symbols with a stick, and somehow came up with your location.”
“Amazing,” Christa breathed, unable to take her eyes from her friend. “Did he send you here, too?”
“Unfortunately not. As you can see from the state of my clothes, I’ve spent the last twenty hours on a plane.” He looked at Dylan, flinching when he realised the vampire was already staring at him. “So you two are back together, then?”
“Yes,” Dylan said. “What a shame for you.”
Christa narrowed her eyes at him, warning him to be civil. Dylan smiled and turned to Ramon. “And what, pray, can we do for you?”
Ramon was looking around the room, his face blank and impassive. “It’s not really a suitable place for the Deiwo, is it?” he said to Dylan.
“But I’m not the Deiwo anymore,” Christa said. “It’s good to see you again, Ramon. I was worried about leaving you alone with all those jinn.”
Ramon, tall and beautiful, his skin as smooth as newly formed ice in his human form, hid a small smile. “They were a threat to you,” he said, “but parasites don’t scare me easily. Now—” he paused and looked around the room once more, his intense gaze resting on each person: Rob, now more properly attired in a fraying pair of jeans, one arm held protectively around Jenna’s shoulders, and Darrell, hovering on the periphery. “Each of you will have a part to play in what happens next. I think it’s important that you all meet with my brethren. Unfortunately, that meeting has to be now. I may no longer be able to walk among the jinn now they know my true face, but I still have ways of divining their intentions. Bredia is to make her strike against London tomorrow.”
Christa sighed and hung her head. “I really hoped I’d have time to at least have this baby before jumping into a fight.”
“It cannot be helped,” Ramon said. “The fae are waiting for us. I didn’t want to bring them here, I thought they
would find it—” he paused again, “distasteful.” He moved further into the room and spread his arms wide. “I need everyone to hold hands.”
Rob sniggered but did as he asked. “Are we going to do the fucking Hokey Cokey?”
“Just relax,” Ramon said, ignoring him.
As they stood in a silent circle, the room around them began to blur and seep away, spiralling into the ether like water into a plughole until they found themselves standing on rich, green carpet in a room adorned with gold leaf wallpaper and enormous, claw-footed sofas.
***
“Where are we?” Dylan said, looking around. “How the hell did you do that?”
“I am of the fae,” Ramon replied, “this is how we move about your world.”
“It makes you feel a bit sick, doesn’t it?” Christa said, dropping her hands and releasing Dylan and Darrell on either side of her. “I can’t get used to it.”
The shadows at the corners of the room began to glimmer and grow larger, expanding until the translucent shapes of tall, stately beings emerged from them. Christa watched Dylan as the shadowy forms became whole, took on facial features and long, thick hair. He was as stunned and mesmerised as she had been the first time she’d seen the fae.
“Welcome, friends,” Ramon said, turning towards them.
The gathered fae walked into the middle of the room, looking about them with large, inquisitive eyes.
“How quaint,” Virikay said. “What is this place, Ramon?”
“It was a Masonic lodge,” he replied. “Hence the abundance of gilt and the rampant over-indulgence.”
Kelena laughed prettily as she stepped from behind the others and presented herself to Christa. “Hello again,” she said. “I’m so sorry we parted on sour terms the last time we met.”
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