Grave Beginnings (The Grave Report, Book 1)

by Virdi, R. R

  A seductive smile slid across her mouth just as her small finger slid into the trigger guard next to mine, I closed my eyes a mere second before she whispered, “bang.”

  The gunshot was loud! This was like the bajillionth time a gun had gone off near my head, keyword being near! My arm was savagely wrenched as the shot went off and I was hurled several feet back, opening my eyes as I crashed onto the floor. The Ifrit was howling and holding her left arm with her right hand, blood and steam were billowing out of a long gash in it.

  “I don’t think so bitch!” growled an irate Ortiz, her chest heaving as she held the silver blood encrusted fire stoker I had given her earlier. She stood a few feet in front of me, clutching the thing in both hands like a club.

  I struggled to my feet and asked a bit groggily, “what happened?”

  “I charged her just as she was about to pull the trigger, she saw me, threw you, I hit her and the gun went off,” she rattled off in quick succession, answering my question.

  “Ah,” I said simply as I stood up straighter, “guess that answers whether or not that thing works.”

  “Guess so,” Ortiz replied.

  The Ifrit’s eyes were really blazing now; the intense fiery lines that filled her pupils were actually spreading into her eyelids. The skin around her eyes actually looked like it was beginning to crack, lines ran throughout them like miniature flaming fissures. She was absolutely seething, “YOU DARE!” she roared in a painful voice that was actually reverberating throughout the room, hell the artifacts and doodads on the tables were shaking!

  Ortiz’s face was beginning to lose a bit of color; she was going to lose it again like she did with the Elemental. I reached out and gave her free hand a gentle and reassuring squeeze, “hey,” I said softly, “keep it together, we’ll get this bitch, together.” Ortiz gave me a nervous glance but then I could see her jaw tighten and she gave me a firm and resolute nod.

  Good.

  The Ifrit flung her arms at her sides like an impetuous and angry child, “you touch silver and blood to me! TO ME!” she roared again, her voice giving my ears a serious beating; it was like a boom box inside my ear canal. “Mortal sow!” she hissed at Ortiz.

  “Sow?” Ortiz said casting me a curious glance.

  “It means female swine,” I replied as neutrally as I could.

  Ortiz’s eyebrows shot up in surprise as she said, “pig!?” in pure outrage, “the bitch just called me a pig?!”

  “It seems that way,” I answered still in a carefully neutral tone.

  Ortiz didn’t respond, vocally at least, I did see her eyes narrow dangerously.

  The tension was palpable, seriously, Ortiz cut the Ifrit and the Ifrit called Ortiz a pig…I’m surprised the entire room didn’t spontaneously explode.

  I decided to stick my neck out and break the tension; I’m smart like that, okay maybe suicidal. “So…” I said hesitantly, “uh, why aren’t you dead?” I asked the Ifrit.

  She just cocked a quizzical eyebrow.

  “You’re in the form of a mortal,” I continued, “shouldn’t you be dead? Last time I checked, if a Jinn’s impersonating a human, they play by human rules. Headshot equals dead.” I finished.

  The Ifrit actually threw her head back laughing, “Jinn?” she mocked, “I am Ifrit!”

  Ifrits are big on pride, real egotists, they believe they are the greatest, oldest, best, entitled and all that childish jazz. I figured I’d get to its head; mess with its pride a bit. “Uh what’s the difference, you’re all just glorified magical gofers,” I said with a mild shrug, “go for this, go for that, I snap you get it, right?”

  Apparently that was pushing things a bit too far.

  You know those cartoons where a character gets so mad that they start shooting smoke out of there nostrils, their face lights up bright red and steam’s billowing out of their ears? Yeah, that’s pretty much what started happening here.

  Her entire face began turning a horrendous red, those fire like lines that were just around her eyes began to lengthen, spreading into a bit of her cheeks, forehead and temples. The damn things face looked like a bright red piece of pottery with a helluva lot cracks…chalk it up to bad craftsmanship.

  “Cockroach,” she hissed.

  I turned to Ortiz with an expression of mock indignation on my face, “cockroach?!” I exclaimed, “did the bitch just call me a cockroach?”

  Although her tone was perfectly neutral, just as neutral as my own was a bit earlier, she had a small smirk when she said, “it seems that way.”

  “I am not some slave, something to be bound and used, I am Ifrit!” she repeated angrily, as if saying that explained everything.

  “Yada yada, you still didn’t explain why you’re not dead, I mean a normal Jinn in mortal form wouldn’t be having this conversation with us, you’d be, you know, poof, smoked, get it?” I said with a bit of a chortle.

  “I. AM. IFRIT!” it repeated…again, much louder though, its basso booming voice shaking the room up, it hurt to hear it. Ortiz swayed just a fraction but it was still noticeable to me, I could she her arms fidget a bit, she resisted the urge to drop the fire poker and cover her ears, good thing too. I wouldn’t have been comfortable with her having dropped the only thing that could hurt the Ifrit, maybe even gank it.

  “Broken record much?” I quipped, “repeat repeat repeat,” I said with an exaggerated sigh, “how’s about you answer my question huh? Why aren’t you dead?”

  “I am Ifrit,” she began.

  Oh my God, I groaned, on the inside of course, not wanting to be roasted alive here.

  “The rules of Jinn do not apply to us, to me, I am above them!” she said practically dripping venom and hate at this point, she really didn’t think much of the other Jinns. Her face was all scowly like, her lips peeled back in a really unattractive manner.

  “Look at you bad girl, above the rules and all,” I said in a mocking tone, arching an eyebrow and giving her a sideways look.

  She was fuming now, her entire posture was tense and I could see her chest heaving in her anger, she stood there sneering at me.

  “So bullets,” I began, “they can’t kill you, but they hurt right?” I asked.

  The question caught her off guard; she shot me a confused and unfocused look.

  I unloaded the rest of the revolver into her chest, center mass for the win! Each round tore into her with ease, the impact of the rounds staggering her, jolting her body until she was up against the wall. She fell slowly, her upper body now slumped against the wall and leaving a trail of…well not blood but some viscous looking orangey fluid that was giving off steam but wasn’t setting fire to anything so that was good atleast.

  “Grab him,” I said to Ortiz, nodding towards the weak and emaciated James who was now prone on his back and looked like he was going to pass out. Ortiz rushed forwards with me, helping me pick James up to his feet as we put his arms over both of us, dragging him towards the door.

  I actually made it fully to this door and was stepping out with James and Ortiz when the inevitable happened.

  “Mortal!” she said like a whip crack.

  I sighed, “of fucking course,” I muttered sullenly. I stopped supporting James, leaving the brut of his weight on Ortiz, not that there was much weight on him at the moment, he was a living scarecrow and the living part didn’t seem like it was going to be all that long.

  “Norman, what are you doing?” asked a bewildered Ortiz.

  “Take him and keep going,” I answered him.

  “Take him where, we won’t get far like this,” she replied.

  “That’s why I’m going to stay here and stall her, try to atleast get him to the guards desk, hide him there.”

  “That’ll take some time, it’s going to be a long walk to there and like this,” she said.

  “Then I’ll have to do a good job stalling her,” I said as I turned back to face the Ifrit who was rising shakily to her feet. Guess the bullets did hurt a bit even if the
y didn’t do as much harm as the fire poker did.

  “Norman…” Ortiz began hesitantly, “you want the—”

  “No keep it,” I said, she was talking about the fire stoker, “I figure you might need it, you know in case…” I said, trailing off.

  She understood what I meant, she hobbled off with James slumped heavily against her and I gently shut the door behind her.

  “So…” I said slowly, “just you and me huh hot stuff?”

  “I’m going to enjoying roasting your flesh, slowly, until it crackles, I’ll do my best to keep you alive so you can feel me peeling it off, very slowly.” She said in a very uncharacteristic whisper.

  Most people would’ve been frickin’ terrified after hearing that threat, I’m not a person, not really, so I wasn’t terrified one bit…I was fucking flippin’ out! That was all kinds of nasty!

  I suppressed a shudder when I spoke to her, “wow, that’s an awful lot of work, I thought your kind was more big on the whole killing us with ironic deaths sort of things.”

  “For you, I’m willing to make an exception,” she purred, it was strange and awful hearing that come out of a young girls mouth with a supernatural boom box echoing voice.

  The bullet holes in her chest were healing, I could see it through the torn fabric on her chest, not that there was much there to begin with. Her shirt was more slash with bits of fabric than fabric with bits of slashes in it anyways.

  “It was foolish of you to let the woman leave with the silver weapon, you couldn’t stop me with it anyways, but now…” she said, letting the words hang in the air as she started doing something really unexpected. She slowly slipped her way out of the leather jacket and brought her hands up to her chest, clawing at the scanty fabric and beginning to tear it off.

  “Uh…yeah,” I gulped, “that’s me, foolish.”

  She stood there now naked from the waist up, her taut midsection completely bared and as well as her breasts, a seductive smile playing across her lips. It would’ve been an attractive sight if her face hadn’t looked like a piece of pottery that had been put back together with superglue and then the fact that her eyes were now twin pools of flames.

  Creepy.

  “So…uh, I guess the only way to stop you now is get you back in the bottle, huh?” I said weakly.

  Her smile widened as she leaned forwards, giving me a fantastic view of her chest as she began slipping off her boots. “You won’t find squeezing me back into my vessel an easy task,” her smile widening as she said it.

  “Well you know, if it were easy, ah,” wow I was really ah well you know, taking in the sights.

  She began slipping off her pants then and making quite a show of it and soon she was completely naked before me, like really naked, like wow naked.

  It’s not often that I have an attractive woman give me a strip tease…even if she is a primordial monster that just threatened to filet me and then peel off my skin, okay, maybe I shouldn’t have been entranced by it as much I was.

  I blame my anatomy.

  But then again, so does every guy…

  “Hmm,” she said, putting a finger up to her lips, “how to burn you without killing you?” she mused.

  “Uh, well you know what they say about eating your cake and having it, so uh, maybe we settle with one out of two?”

  She titled her head sideways, her smile widening to an impossible length now, really creepy! “Mmm,” was all that left her mouth.

  “Let’s go with the not killing me part and maybe being a good girl and hopping back into your vessel?” I suggested.

  There was a quick flicker on her face, no sudden movement of her head or anything else, just a quick glance with her eyes to the table on the far left of the room. It was too fast to notice, well for most people I mean, remember I’m not most people. I’ve been inside people trained to notice things like that, people like dead spies.

  I very subtly followed her glance, it was one of the tables I had looked over when I had first met James, what was oblivious to me at first was all but a big glaring neon sign to me now. On the table and hidden in plain sight was the Ifrit’s vessel, the oil lamp that was lying on its side like it had just been discarded or something. I know it was such a cliché but then again, most of these clichés and stereotypes started with a bit of truth in them, Jinn’s are known to be trapped inside brass lamps because that’s really what they were trapped in long ago by the people who knew how to trap them.

  Unfortunately for me, the knowledge on how to trap any form of Jinn was lost, atleast as far as I was concerned. All I had was the knowledge that I had to find a way to get James to make an unselfish wish, a wish that’s sheer contradictory nature clashed with the purpose, the energy that fueled the Ifrit.

  Water and fire if you will. The act of doing that would banish the Ifrit back into it’s vessel, providing of course that I got my hands on it, convinced James to make the wish and oh yeah, managed to find a way to scrawl a seal on it, permanently trapping the bitch. Even if I managed to do most of that, I had no way of actually sealing it, it’s not like I could shove a cork in the hole and certainly didn’t have a sharpie on me to scribble the seal.

  Well one problem at a time.

  “Someone’s found my vessel, oh dear,” she said coyly, which sounded so odd in her freakishly deep and resonating voice.

  “Uh yeah, so,” I said snapping my fingers several times, “you wanna hop back in and call it a day?”

  It seems that snapping your fingers like your giving orders isn’t exactly the smartest thing to do to a creature that’s been bound into servitude and harbors immense resentment towards the human species.

  Her features twisted in to a really ugly, well okay, uglier scowl and she said, “no, now we, what is the expression, we dance!”

  Uh oh.

  She began sauntering forwards, slowly, really slowly, making a big show of it. Her hips swaying and her face well…it was falling to pieces, literally. She was for lack of a better term, shedding, I think. The lines that ran through her face burst into long lengths of flames, her skin began falling off in bits and pieces. Thin long shreds that resembled leaves began slowly and gracefully falling to the floor, swaying and dancing as they did. The pieces that fell looked they had been glued on bits of skin, so paper thin and they were burning up like dried leaves as they fell, cindering around the edges and smoldering. They eventually shriveled up and burned away to nothing as they hit the floor.

  I could see her face, her real face I assumed, as the rest of the skin fell and burned away. Her hair began lengthening and condensing into much thicker locks, shifting into varying hues of reds, oranges, yellows and fell to the small of her back now. The skin beneath her was a burnished red, it shone in certain places even under the dim lighting of the room, her ears had lengthened and tapered near the ends. The twin pools of fire that were her eyes had now become two opaque orbs of solid black jet.

  Her thin black lips spread into a massive shark like smile filled with jagged pointed teeth that looked like shards of razor sharp obsidian, matching the color as well.

  That was seriously disturbing, she was looking at me like a piece of meat and not like when a woman looks at you like she wants to eat you up in the whole sexual nature sort of way, I meant she looked like she wanted to actually eat me!

  A devilishly long and forked tongue snaked its way out of her mouth and slid its way slowly down her still human look neck and ending up near her chest. It hung there for a second before slowly trailing its way back up, taking the well um, scenic route around her breasts and up to her mouth where she made the really noticeable action of licking her lips.

  Normally that would’ve have been a really sensual and arousing thing for many a guy to see, well minus the whole forked tongue thing and the demonic face part. In my case however, it triggered the thought, I’m so gonna get eaten. Not exactly what I’d like to happen if I’m trapped in a room with a naked woman, well two thirds of a naked woman, gloss over
the monstrous head with razor sharp teeth.

  “My, what big teeth you have,” I said with a nervous laugh.

  “Oh, I know this one,” she replied in that booming deep voice, “all the better to eat you with!”

  Yup, so gonna get eaten! I thought. Who knew the Ifrit had time to brush up on her nursery tales.

  No sooner than I had finished that thought, the rest of her body became riddled with those fiery lines I had seen on her face prior to it falling apart and revealing her monstrous nature. A second after that, all of her skin began splitting and violently, shreds of flesh began tearing apart and falling to the ground in the same manner it had with her face.

  I’ve heard of trying to shed some pounds before but that’s taking things to a whole new level.

  All of her human skin had fallen and burned away, revealing that her body wasn’t actually all that different from the mortal form she had taken. Her breasts and torso looked the same only now they were matching the burnished red of her face; her breasts were partially covered in glistening black scales. Her torso looked no different except for the new paint job, just as lean and taut as before. The arms though had become a bit more slender; her forearms were sporting some new long bony protrusions, as were her elbows, they looked like spikes made from volcanic rock. Her fingers had lengthened and become very skeletal looking, the tips tapering into sharp points, there was definitely flesh there but it certainly looked like bone, which was odd.

  She looked at her hands like she hadn’t seen them in a long time; well it was probable that she hadn’t, atleast not in that form. She flexed them several times, holding one up in front of her face for inspection like some women do after a trip to the nail salon.

  Her legs had significantly lengthened, she was now as tall as I was, her kneecaps were now some irregularly shaped rock or bone like lumps that matched the color of her jet eyes. The feet looked more like something out of Jurassic Park, very raptor esque, elongated toes with very sharp talons at the end, one them looked like it was hinged, a curved switchblade.