“No, I don’t carry weapons. What’s attacking us? Is it Al Uddin’s men?”
“They are not men. Ah, this will do.”
He’d found a silver letter-opener on the desk, a small thing, but the way he handled it told me he was an expert with blades. He turned to me, his eyes flashing.
“When they come, Samira, it is very important you don’t let them bite you. Their venom is poison, and I have no antidote.”
“They? Who’s they?”
“Do you have anything else that’s silver? Silver repels them.”
“I don’t underst…”
He grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me.
“There’s no time! Do you have any silver?”
“I… yes, there’s jewellery in the dressing room.”
“Get it. Put it on.”
Something scratched at the glass door and I shrieked. A monster was standing outside.
It looked like the carcass of a man which had lain decomposing for weeks. Fetid strings of tissue and cartilage hung off its body, and as it moved I could see naked joints and muscles working.
It had no eyes or ears, but the decaying meaty skull turned in my direction as I screamed. Its mouth opened wide, exposing dripping teeth.
“Is it a zombie?” I said hysterically.
“Samira. The silver. Now.”
The thing started hurling itself against the glass door, but Dhav stood motionless, his eyes never leaving the disgusting apparition. I stumbled to the dressing room, grabbing a handful of silver chains from the ornate chest. Slipping a couple over my head, I took one out to Dhav.
Without taking his eyes off the monster, he wrapped the chain round his wrist.
“Why don’t we just go to another room?” I asked tremulously.
“Because they travel in packs. If there’s one here, the palace will be swarming with them.”
As if to prove his point, two more abominations slid over the balcony. The glass smashed.
They leapt and snarled, pushing at each other, mindless of the shards that pierced their ruined legs as they climbed through the shattered door. Before they could fully enter the room, Dhav moved.
He plunged the blade into the skull of one creature, and it dropped to the floor. The two others charged forward, howling, and Dhav showed them the silver on his wrist.
They halted, weaving sullenly, looking for an opportunity. Dhav put his booted foot on the head of the monster on the ground and extracted his blade. A sickening stench filled the air as black goop spurted from the wound. Dhav jerked back but a drop landed on his hand and he hissed in pain. I saw his skin burn, as if it had been touched by acid.
“Are you alright, Samira?” he asked, without looking round.
“Still here,” I quavered. The strange stand-off continued, with the beasts held at bay by the silver.
Surely Dhav’s soldiers would come looking for him? But then I heard the sounds from outside, and my heart sank. There was a full-blown battle going on, and the palace guards were occupied.
“They won’t attack us while we are wearing silver,” he said reassuringly. “And they can’t stay here all night. Light kills them.”
“So, haha, when I said an army of zombies was marching towards us…” my voice faltered.
“They’re ghuls. They belong to Al Uddin.”
“Belong?”
“My father told me stories about them. In the first days and weeks after Al Uddin was trapped, he sent them daily to attack Ashfahaan, much good that it did him.”
“Why do they look like that? Like they’re dead?”
“They normally live underground. When they leave the earth, they start to decay. But for some reason, they bear the pain to serve Al Uddin.”
As if its master’s name was a trigger, one of the ghuls broke ranks and lunged forward. Dhav hurled the letter opener and it buried itself blade first in the creature’s chest. But its momentum carried it forward and it landed on Dhav, pushing him backwards to the floor. He desperately turned his head to avoid the venom-filled fangs which were still dripping, even in death.
The last ghul turned its eyeless head towards me.
“Samira, run. The soldiers will protect you,” Dhav said, trying to heave the corpse off him. But my back was against the wall and I had nowhere to go.
The creature was in front of me, and to the right was the dressing table. I summoned a wind in the palm of my hand, and used it to throw the table across the room.
It slammed into the ghul, and smashed it against the broken glass door. Jagged shards pierced its rotting flesh and it howled, though whether in pain or anger I couldn’t tell. The table tipped over and the drawers fell out, spilling their contents all over the floor.
Including my ring.
It glinted in the middle of the room, the ruby seemingly lit from within. The creature saw it at the same time I did.
“Shit.”
It pushed the table away and dropped to the floor, scuttling towards my ring on bent arms and legs like a horrific insect. I called up another wind, a whirlwind this time, ready to hurl the thing off the balcony. It was flung backwards but managed to grip the door at the last second, bracing itself against the air I was directing at it.
From the corner of my eye I saw Dhav push himself free of the dead ghul. I cursed under my breath. I hadn’t wanted to reveal my secret to him, but it couldn’t be helped.
My hair whipped around my face as I redoubled my efforts to dislodge the ghul. Strips of the its skin started to peel away in gruesome slow motion, but still it wouldn’t let go. I edged slowly towards my ring, careful to make sure I didn’t inadvertently let it get caught up in the maelstrom.
The creature shifted its grip, holding onto the frame of the door by its prehensile feet. It grasped its left arm in its right, and pulled. There was a sickening sound, the sound of tearing bone and cartilage. I grimaced in horror as I realised it was ripping its own arm off.
The mutilated limb dropped onto the floor beneath the edge of the whirlwind and scuttled crab-like towards the ring. I made a grab for my precious jewellery as the disembodied arm reached it, recoiling in disgust as I touched rancid cold meat. Its fingers closed over the ring.
“No!” I screamed.
The one-armed creature clinging to the doorway grinned at me. Then its arm leapt into the vortex I was creating, and both it and its owner allowed themselves to be carried backwards into the night.
I fell to the floor, panting, sick to my stomach. I hadn’t exerted this much power in years, and I wasn’t used to sustaining it. But right now, it wasn’t my physical weakness I was worried about.
Gran’s ring was gone. The only thing I had left of her, the gift she had given me for my eighteenth birthday just before she died, had been taken.
I became aware Dhav was standing over me. His voice, when he finally spoke, was icy.
“How did you do that?”
I shook my head, trying to stop my hands from trembling.
“I honestly don’t know. Not that it did any good. They’ve got my ring.”
“Your ring?”
I looked at him wearily.
“You may as well know. It’s one of those totem things. I saw its picture in your book. It belonged to my gran, and I have a really strong feeling that she’s the girl in the painting. The one you call a djinn.”
He pulled back, his nostrils flaring.
“So Al Uddin was right. You are one of those infernal creatures. You brought those ghuls to my city. My home.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“You are as unnatural as those abominations.” His lips were white with anger. He grabbed me by the wrist and jerked me painfully to my feet. “I want you gone. Tonight. And you can forget about any money.”
“Get off me,” I warned.
I raised my hand, but the truth was I had very little left in the tank. I’d been too lazy for too long, only using my power to lift wallets and watches. But he wasn’t to know that.
He backed away, his eyes full of contempt, and brought his own hand up. It held the letter-opener by the blade, ready to throw.
We glared at each other in mutual loathing, and I don’t know what would have happened next if there hadn’t been the sound of running footsteps from the courtyard outside.
“Your Highness?”
“In here,” Dhav called, his eyes never leaving mine. A soldier burst through the door, taking in the destruction and the dead ghuls lying among it.
“Your Highness, the creatures are gone. But your brother…”
“Raj? Is he alright?”
“No, your Highness. He was bitten.”
Chapter Nine
They hadn’t just bitten him, they had violated his body. It made me sick to see his beautiful form lying crumpled, claw marks streaking his face and arms.
He was in a coma, his eyes staring up sightlessly, the bite mark on his shoulder bloodied and pustulant.
“Is he alive?” I ventured.
Dhav slid his arms under his brother’s motionless body and lifted him onto his bed. A phalanx of doctors had gathered by the door, but Dhav made them wait.
“Alive and not alive. He will stay like this until he’s given an antidote. Only one person has it.”
“Al Uddin?”
“Yes. He is sending me a message.”
“What message?”
Dhav drew the edges of Raj’s shirt away from his body. Slashed into the flesh of his stomach were two words.
BRING HER
“He means me, doesn’t he?” I said. “How did he find me so fast?”
Without saying a word, Dhav strode to the door and slammed it shut on the hovering doctors. My face drained as I saw what had been hung on the back of it.
It was a decapitated head, impaled by a rod of metal rammed through the skull and into the wood behind. Even in death, the features were familiar.
A scarred eye stared at me, blood caked a matted and filthy beard, and a painful grimace revealed teeth stained brown with paan.
Lurch.
“This was the man who was supposed to hand you over, wasn’t it?” Dhav demanded.
“Yes,” I said dully. “Al Uddin must have tracked me down through him.”
“He wants to make a trade. You for the antidote.”
“But why? Why go to all this trouble for me?”
“Isn’t it obvious? He has the totem. Now he just needs someone from the djinn tribe to complete the ritual and create a wish-giver.”
“A genie? To do what?”
“At a guess, I’d say he wants to escape his prison. He’s been trapped for a century. Nothing can undo a djinn’s wish, except another wish.”
“But none of this can be true,” I said desperately. “Genies don’t exist. And even if they did, how can this guy possibly be the same one your ancestor trapped in the tower? He must be long dead by now.”
“My great, great grandfather wished him trapped forever. Sometimes wishes are too literal.”
“That’s bullshit.” I didn’t know who I was trying to convince – him or me. “My gran wasn’t a genie. None of this is real.”
“Did she have magic? Like you do?”
“Stop calling it magic. It’s a power. An ability.”
“Fine. Did she have an ability?”
“Yes. Different to mine, but yes.”
“Then she was a djinn. And so are you. That mark proves it.”
His voice was cold, and I turned away from the disdain in his eyes. But a part of me knew he was right.
I looked at Raj, his vitality leeched away, and guilt churned in my stomach.
“So what do we do?” I said at last.
“’We’ don’t do anything. I must prepare for war.”
“War?” I was startled. “You’d really go to war over this? Why not just hand me over?”
“Believe me, I would if I could.” His rage hit me like a whiplash. “It would give me great pleasure to throw you out of my country and let you take your chances with Al Uddin. But if he does manage to bind you to a totem, the first thing he will do is wish for the destruction of Ashfahaan. I cannot let that happen.”
“But I would never…”
“You think you’d have your own will?” He spat the words out furiously. “You think you could resist? That is the power and the curse of the binding spell. You would become the strongest magical creature alive. But you would be a slave.”
Suddenly, gran’s obsession with free will, her fear of being trapped, began to make sense.
“But war,” I faltered. “He has those ghuls, he could kill hundreds. Thousands.”
“It is the only option.”
“No.” He raised his eyebrows. I looked over at Raj, at his frozen face and poor mutilated body. I hoped he wasn’t suffering. “Take me. I’ll go with you. I want to help Raj, and I also want my ring back.”
“You? You want to go up against Al Uddin and his ghuls?” He laughed disparagingly and I flushed.
“Just take me to him and bring back the antidote for Raj.”
“And what will you do?”
“What I do best. I’m a thief. I’ll steal my ring back and get the hell out of dodge. He won’t expect that. And he won’t expect this.” I raised my hand and gathered a micro whirlwind in my palm. I let it pick up speed until my hair was flying. “I’ll tear his tower down.”
“You love Raj enough to do that?” he asked softly. I snapped my fist closed and let the whirlwind dissipate.
“I just hate bullies.”
Dhav held my gaze for a long moment, his black eyes glittering. I stood my ground, horribly aware I must look ridiculous in my pink cocktail dress and smudged make-up.
Abruptly he turned away as if he couldn’t bear to look at me anymore. He knelt by his brother’s bed, taking his hand gently.
“Get some sleep, Samira. We will leave when day breaks.”
I stumbled back to my room.
The servants, what remained of them, had cleared the ghuls and the broken glass. Dawn was still a few hours away, but soldiers were moving through the palace and its gardens searching for victims of the attack.
I drew the heavy damask curtains over the gaping doorway to the balcony, shutting out the world beyond.
I was still trying to make sense of it all. Gran was a djinn. She had lived for centuries granting wishes, cut off from her tribe, before she was rescued. By the time she was freed, her people had all gone. So she had run away to England to make a new life.
Dhav was right. I was starting to believe. At least I finally knew where our power came from.
Gran had always encouraged me to see it as a positive thing. Yes, I had to keep it hidden for obvious reasons – no-one likes to be dissected in a government laboratory – but she had taught me it wasn’t something to be scared of.
My mother had taken a different view. Did she know gran’s history? If so, it would make sense. My mother had hated her power.
I could barely remember her now, she and dad had been dead for so long. Dad had been a comforting figure in my memory; the type who swings you round in the air, slips you cookies when mum’s not looking, pretends to be a bear or a horse and tickles your tummy till you nearly puke with laughter. I loved my dad. But he wasn’t like me and mum. He was comfortingly ordinary.
Mum saw the power as dangerous, a curse that marked us out as different. She barely used hers. And maybe, given the situation I was now in, she had been right.
I looked in the mirror and examined my birthmark.
Its outline was so symmetrical, so precise, people always assumed it was a tattoo. I slowly traced the blemish with my fingers. The skin was smooth but almost imperceptibly raised, the contour as familiar to me as my own face.
A sinuous curve. A snake-like undulation. The mark of a djinn.
Suddenly I was exhausted to the bone. I unfastened my dress and let it fall to the floor. Then I slid into bed miserably, not even bothering to take off my make-up
.
It was because of me Raj had been hurt. And it was because of me that Ashfahaan had been attacked.
If I hadn’t been picking pockets in that bar, I would never have been caught. Al Uddin would never have heard of me. Raj would be safe.
I had to make it right. Even if it meant working with a man who despised me.
Sleep crept over me, and my dreams were haunted by rotting ghuls and the screams of their victims.
Chapter Ten
Dhav’s eyes flickered over me but he didn’t say anything. I was dressed more or less like him; khaki combats and a dark vest.
I had asked the girl who cleaned my room to fetch them for me, confident that somewhere in the palace there had to be a supply of clothing more suitable than cocktail dresses. She had brought them to me within fifteen minutes.
My own clothes had been lost in the carnage. It wasn’t a big deal. My jeans and T-shirt had been filthy and beyond rescue. Luckily the only things I cared about, my doc martens, had survived.
Dhav still hadn’t spoken and I felt the urge to break the silence.
“How’s Raj?”
“The same. Are you ready to do this? It’s going to be dangerous.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not exactly helpless. Why are you doing this? You’re the ruler. Shouldn’t you stay here?”
“I can’t ask anyone else to put themselves in danger.” We were in the library and he glanced at the portrait of Amal. “In any case, this all started with my great, great grandfather and your grandmother. It seems fitting that we have to end it.”
“Al Uddin must have the ring by now. What if he finds another djinn to bind to it before we get to him?”
“That is most unlikely. People with magic in their veins are extremely rare. Samira…” Dhav looked at me as if having an internal debate. “I am deeply grateful you are doing this.”
I was taken aback.
“Wow. That must have really hurt you to say that.”
“I’m trying to thank you.”
“Don’t bother. It’s not for you, it’s for Raj.”
Mark of the Djinn: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Romance Page 6