“That’s okay,” Christa said. “I’m sorry I threw your gifts away. Now I can’t fight Bredia.”
A disquiet rippled through the fae, a silent wave of disappointment.
“We are not here to discuss that,” Ramon said. He turned to Christa and her group of friends. “My brethren and I have been talking, and we have reached a decision. We can give you your powers again, if only for a time. Unfortunately, our gifts are only permanent when granted to an unborn baby. You are now a grown adult and so the magick will be fleeting.”
“Why does Christa have to use this power?” Dylan said, interrupting Ramon and drawing a weary glare from the taller man. “She’s carrying my child, why would you put them both in danger? Can’t you give your powers to someone else? I’ll use them, I’ll bring down Bredia for you. Believe me, I would enjoy it.”
“No,” Ramon shook his head. “Christa lived with these gifts for years; she knows how to use them, how to harbour them within herself. We couldn’t hope to teach another person these things in the time we have left. It has to be Christa.”
“I’ll do it,” Christa said. She put her hand on Dylan’s arm. “We’ll be okay, both of us. You’ve seen what I can do when I have my powers.”
“I’ve also seen what Bredia can do,” Dylan said, sinking back into silence as Ramon began to speak once more.
“We will grant you these powers now, Christa,” he said, “while we’re all assembled. Tomorrow, we will head Bredia off. She plans to march against Westminster, to take Britain’s seat of power. Once she has destroyed the government and torn London apart, this land will belong to her and her jinn. The United Kingdom will only be the first country to fall in a long line of countries. Obviously, we cannot allow this to happen. We will be there to meet her. You know our reasons for not taking on Bredia directly. We do not, however, have a problem with taking on her jinn. That will be our job while you, Christa, tackle Bredia.” He broke off, looking towards the enormous double doors at the head of the room. “Where is Thad?”
“Here, here,” a small voice said. Thad crept from his hiding place against the wide, carpeted stairs. “I didn’t want to interrupt.”
Christa stared at him, trying to decide what, exactly, he was doing there. “So you know the truth?” she asked him. “You don’t look surprised to see your jinn god standing here.”
“Yes, I know the truth,” Thad said. He seemed particularly depressed at this notion. He flexed his hands at his sides as if wishing to put them into his pockets but deciding the casual gesture would be impolite. “Ramon has told me everything. It seems I have been a ridiculous fool.”
“No, do not think that,” Ramon said. “You may have killed and you may have lied, but you did it all because I asked it of you.”
“We certainly didn’t ask him to kill,” Virikay said, appraising Thad beneath one perfectly sculpted, raised eyebrow.
“That is true,” Ramon resumed, “but everything Thad did, he did in my honour, whether he knew exactly what I was or not. For that reason, we can’t punish this man. He served our ends and he deserves our gratitude.”
“I just can’t believe I’ve spent my life desperate to be a half-breed,” Thad said. He shook his head. “Half-bred fae. That’s all the jinn are, that’s all they ever were.” His voice held the dejected sadness of a spurned lover.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Ramon said. “We aim to reward you for your work. You are to be an ambassador of sorts, a link between our kingdoms. There are few mortals who know the whole truth about our kind. Who know of the existence of the Inbetween. If you desire it, you may still serve us. We need a voice in your world, we are too often ignored.”
Thad’s face brightened. He looked up at Ramon for the first time, hope shining in his eyes. “Really? An ambassador? Why yes, I would be honoured.”
“Then it is settled,” Ramon said. He clapped his hands, drawing everyone in the room closer to him. “Are you ready, Christa? It is time to receive our gifts for the last time.”
Christa nodded. “As ready as I’ll ever be, I suppose.”
The fae crowded around her, pressing in on all sides until Christa could no longer see her friends or the richly furnished room they stood in. All she could see was the shining faces of Ramon and his kin, their luminescent eyes and impossibly lustrous hair. They each placed a hand on her body. There were so many hands, the fae began to want for space and Christa began to pant shallowly, the first pangs of claustrophobia threatening to overwhelm her. She felt as if she was encased in some glowing, fleshy coffin. A jolt of warm, golden electricity suddenly surged through her, culminating in her chest and heating her ribs from the inside. It wasn’t a painful or unpleasant sensation and Christa breathed deeply, willing the essence of the fae to relax into her body. In an instant it was over and the fae stepped away from her, nodding their approval and smiling at each other.
“It is done,” Ramon said.
“I have to test this out,” Christa said, a grin of delight spreading across her face. She turned to Dylan, punching her way into his mind before he had a chance to erect his mental defences. “Dance for me,” she commanded.
Dylan began to move his hips, lifting his arms above his head and swaying even as his face darkened with disgust. “Why are you doing this to me?” he said through gritted teeth.
Christa laughed while Rob and Jenna whooped and clapped, joining the dance and moving around him like drunken revellers at a wedding.
“You got so used to being alone, you forgot to shut your mind to me, didn’t you?” Christa said, finally relinquishing her hold on his faculties. She withdrew slowly, so as not to shock him.
Dylan clamped his arms to his sides, seething with indignation. “Are you quite finished?” he said. “Have you had your fun for the day?”
“Yes, I’m finished,” Christa said. She turned back to Ramon and the fae who were watching them in bemusement. “I suppose I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
“Tomorrow it is,” Ramon said. “We will come to you when it is time.”
He motioned for the group to join hands once more and as they did, the green carpeted room began to lengthen and turn, the deep colours of the paintings and the wallpaper bleeding into a darkness that finally led them back to the vampires’ bed-sit.
Twenty Five
The morning the jinn marched towards Westminster and the Houses of Parliament was cold and clear. Tourists and business men and women, hurrying to work in grey suits and polished leather shoes, stopped as the marching band of monsters passed them, falling back into doorways and the shadows of marble statues to look on aghast. The troop of wild haired, fierce eyed jinn cut a swathe down the centre of Parliament Street, forcing impatient cars to a halt. The drivers began to sound their horns and curse before realising there was something not quite human in the faces of these persistent passers-by. Only the blank eyes of Prince George stared the jinn down, cold and imposing upon his eternal, smooth-flanked horse.
As the first of the jinn turned towards the gates of Downing Street, they were surprised to find there were no policemen guarding the entrance to the Prime Minister’s home. In fact, the gates stood open, the narrow street beyond yawning before them, thick with uneasy silence. One tall, red haired woman broke from the group swelling before the gates and stepped tentatively inside, her entire body braced, expecting an attack at any moment from some unseen foe. When that foe failed to appear she turned back to the others, a wide smile on her face.
“Come on, then,” she shouted, “what are you waiting for?”
The army of jinn began to surge through the black gates, filling the street until those on the periphery were crushed against the ornate brickwork on either side. When they glimpsed the shining, high gloss of the door leading to Number Ten, their speed quickened and small ripples of excitement could be heard amongst the throng.
Standing directly before the Prime Minister’s door, Christa stiffened as the mounting torrent of jinn marched towards th
em. Beside her were Dylan and her friends, and Ramon and his brethren, but all were hidden from the eyes of the jinn, masked with a thick sheen of invisibility cast about them by Christa that morning. The jinn were almost upon them when Ramon shrugged off the group’s concealment to blaze before the raging army, making them pause and shrink away from the flames licking across his chest and biceps.
“We won’t let you go any further,” he boomed, his unnaturally deep voice stretching to reach the entire crowd. “You are, however, to be offered a very simple choice.”
Hushed whispers spread through the jinn.
“What is he?” someone said. “Is he a jinn god? I’ve never seen him before. Is he one of us?”
Then a louder voice sounded, cutting through the muted chatter: “Beside him, it’s the little witch; the one Bredia’s been after!”
Again the jinn began to surge forward, their faces twisted with hate.
“Stop right there,” Virikay shouted, stepping in front of Christa and Ramon. Her deep red skirts flared about her feet and her skin sparkled like emeralds beneath the clear, sunlit skies of a London cast into the first chilling throes of autumn. “Look at me,” she commanded, swaying before the crowd of jinn. Every face was upturned, each mouth in the thousand-strong crowd suddenly slack, completely in her thrall. “Look into my eyes and see the truth of what you are.”
A thousand jinn thoughts drifted back to Christa, a thousand minds being expanded by Virikay, being filled with images of the Inbetween and a fast-moving, violet river crashing over pearlescent stones. Bredia appeared, standing tall and proud amid the water and creating a murmur of awe amongst the jinn. She was stooping and searching for something, hauling dripping stones from the water and laying them to dry on a riverbank studded with sky-blue daisies.
“This is the source of your power,” Virikay said. “These are your jinn stones. They come from our lands, woven from our magicks. You are not jinn, you are part of us. Bredia has been fooling you; she is not a jinn goddess.”
As the crowd continued to look on, the image surging through their united minds rippled and darkened. Bredia’s face began to change. Her jaw grew longer, her cruel mouth elongating until sharp rows of teeth were visible.
“Here is your goddess,” Virikay continued, “in her true form. She is nothing but a bitter, twisted fae and she has been using you, lying to you. There is no such thing as the jinn, you are all children of the fae.” Virikay straightened and the unnatural wind riffling her skirts and velvet cape dropped.
The jinn shuffled amongst themselves, looking silently from one to the other.
“Will you fight for us?” Ramon said. “Will you join the side you were always meant to be on? Will you help us to stop Bredia before she weaves her lies, her malice throughout the world?”
One by one, the army of jinn nodded, even as confusion crossed some of their faces. They were still entranced by the spectacle Virikay had provided, were still infused with her disorientating fae magicks.
“Then we will show you what it is to be fae,” Ramon said.
He held out his hands and the fae stepped forward to grasp them, standing in a linked line before the jinn. There were a scant twenty of them in all, Kelena and Mamur among them. They each closed their eyes while Christa and her companions looked on, humming a tuneless song that grew steadily louder until it became a buzzing sound, like a great swarm of angry bees. The noise took on form, substance, creating a dense, glowing cloud that drifted up from the fae and over the jinn, finally settling on their upturned faces and dissipating amongst them. When the fae opened their eyes and lowered their hands, the jinn’s eyes, once burning with the orange flames of Bredia’s cruelty and madness, had softened to a deep violet.
“Now we have a chance,” Ramon said to Christa.
***
Christa held her hands behind her back, willing herself not to fidget like an impatient child. She yearned for the day to be done with, for the sun to fall and set and for all the bloody and inevitable horror still to come to be finished. Darrell stepped forward and put an arm around her shoulders, briefly holding her while his eyes wandered the sea of jinn stretching out before them.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“I just wish the rest of them would hurry up and get here.” Deep in her belly, her baby murmured and turned, as if sensing their mother’s trepidation.
The usual din of thronging pedestrians and crawling cars before the grey stone of the Houses of Parliament had given way to a silence so deep, even the violet-eyed jinn were afraid to whisper and shatter the peace. Those civilians who hadn’t been scared away by the jinn’s initial march through the capital had been forcefully expelled from the immediate area before the Thames, made sleepy and disorientated by the constant bursts of subtle power Christa threw over the scene. It was an exhausting task, but she was determined to keep as many people away as possible, safe from the line of fire. Even the few stoic policemen who had broken through her net of calm had eventually felt an overwhelming desire to sleep. They hunkered down in doorways and behind parked cars, resting their heads on bundled jackets.
Christa saw Dylan making his way towards her and smiled. “Any news?”
“Yes, the jinn are on their way. They’re just turning down the street.”
Anxiety spread through Christa’s body, turning her stomach over and shortening her breath. “I need to see what’s happening,” she said, turning to find a vantage point.
As she edged between the tense, towering forms of Virikay and Ramon, closely followed by Dylan and Darrell, a statue loomed into view, the cold, serene face at odds with the terse electricity rippling through the poised jinn armies. Dylan jumped up onto the pedestal and extended his hand towards her.
“Come on,” he urged, “I can see Bredia coming.”
Christa grasped Dylan’s hand and hauled herself up to stand beside him. At the very back of a thousand-strong army, winding her slow way towards them in a gleaming black coach pulled by an enormous shire horse, was Bredia. She was standing with her head thrust from the window, her long, dark hair catching the breeze and strewing the myriad flowers woven through it onto the pavement behind her. Christa pointed her out to Darrell as he made it to the top of the pedestal, his hands flailing for handholds against the statue’s smooth surface.
“There she is, in the coach.”
“That’s her?” Darrell said, cocking his head as he studied the approaching jinn leader.
“What did you expect?” Christa said.
“I’m not sure, really. You said she was insane; maybe I expected her to be wearing a clown costume, or something.”
“She really is quite mad,” Dylan said. His eyes were fixed on the coach, small against the expansive cityscape beyond. “Don’t let her appearance fool you. There’s a seething maniac beneath that neat package of hair and lips who would love to tear you apart and spit out your heart.”
“Nice.” Christa said. She shook her head, attempting to ignore the long stares of the two men standing beside her, both aimed directly at Bredia.
When the two armies met they paused, the fiery-eyed jinn gaping at their violet-eyed brethren, before rushing at each other with a roar that seemed to rebound from the entire city, shaking windows in their frames and scattering birds from rooftops.
“Here we go,” Dylan said, springing from the statue and landing neatly several feet away.
Christa watched him enviously, wishing she could follow suit but resigned to lowering herself to the ground, leaning on Darrell for support.
“It’s really inconsiderate of Bredia to want to take over the world before my baby’s born,” she said. “I’m hardly at the peak of physical fitness.”
Darrell attempted to smile even though the fear swelling between them was palpable. “Maybe it will make you stronger, you’ll be fighting for two.”
Before Christa could reply, a large, vibrating ball of burning light swooped over their heads, making them both duck. Christa wat
ched open-mouthed as it rushed above the crowd of violet-eyed jinn and launched itself into the screaming mass of their fiery-eyed contemporaries, searing and melting the skin of those it touched before finally flying into the cold depths of the Thames. Turning to find the source of the deadly orb, Christa saw a fae standing behind her, her eyes closed and her expression serene even as her tightly curled hair, a riot of glossy black and shimmering blues, blazed about her head as if she was standing in a wind tunnel. The woman took a deep breath in and out, expelling two more immense balls of light. They seemed to rise from her chest, materialising before her and pausing for a brief moment before being violently ejected towards the battling jinn.
Suddenly desperate to join the fray and reach Bredia, Christa began to run, pushing past fae and jinn alike as she made a beeline for the would-be goddess. She jumped over two jinn clawing at each other on the pavement and narrowly dodged a man set ablaze by a ball of fae-light. He careened into her path, stumbling as though he was drunk, his blackening mouth open in a scream.
It took Christa a full five minutes to reach the edge of the frantic battle. She moved amongst the jinn for so long, she ceased to see the blood running from the cuts and slashes of those around her, became blind to the tormented howls and the multitude of eyes made huge and unblinking by adrenaline and terror.
“Watch out!” Dylan suddenly cried from behind her. He dived forward to wrestle a grunting jinn to the ground, so frenzied he had begun to foam at the mouth. The assailant took Christa by surprise and she jumped backwards, falling against Darrell. She smiled at him gratefully, her stubborn desire to reach Bredia having made her fail to realise her friends had remained at her side. Dylan punched the flailing jinn hard in the stomach and wrenched him to his knees, one large hand wrapped around his throat. Christa glared at the raving jinn with distaste before sending her will out, quick and sharp, to rip through his mind and tear his senses apart. The man gurgled, choking on a sudden glut of blood rushing from his mouth, and slumped forward.
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