"Eabr 'iina nafsak! Takhudh shakl! 'Ana amaruk! Binbini, you hang on for us. Eabr 'iina nafsak! Takhudh shakl! 'Ana amaruk!"
It went on and on. Noni repeated the same phrase at least five times before Kira felt the tightness around her body start relaxing as if the creature was withdrawing. Whether from the voice itself, or whatever Noni was shouting at it, Kira didn't have a clue. At that point, she didn't much care. The first full breath she took had her coughing, the wracking gasps causing the Djinn to finally release her to crash to the floor.
She heard the sound of leathery wings flapping, an unearthly shriek, and then Andy was standing over her protectively. What in the world was that noise? What happened to the Djinn? Flopping onto her back with some effort, her eyes widened as a huge bat came careening out of nowhere, screeching as it attempted to fly at Andy's face.
He used his hands to shove it away, but the deep scratches it caused told her they weren't going to be able to fight it off that way for long. The thing was massive, it must have weighed at least fifty pounds. For a bat, that was a monstrous size. When it flapped its wings to keep itself airborne, photos on the wall and anything on tables and shelves fell, adding to the general noise and insanity.
Twisting, Kira frantically eyed the lower level, looking for anything they could use as a weapon. Her eyes caught the fireplace, roving over it until she saw the stand next to it. There! The tools!
She prayed for iron as so many creatures seemed to have an aversion to it. Inching out from under Andy, she began to crawl, ignoring Andy's pleas to stay put. Every muscle ached with the movement, but if there was ever a 'grit your teeth and bear it' moment, this was the one.
Advancing slowly, she got to the foot of the stairs before using the banister to pull herself upright. She didn't have long. While whatever Noni had shouted had forced it into a corporeal form, which meant they should be able to kill it, the coin was now at Andy's feet. Her best friend was now the target, and anything he could use was down here. She just had to get something to him.
Inching along, using the tables and couches for balance, she kept her focus solely on her destination. Kira couldn't pause to see what was happening above her. She couldn't stop to think about where Edward had gone. All she had was a single minded focus now. Get to the fireplace. Get the tools. Figure out how to get them to Andy.
Hearing him cry out in pain galvanized her to take the last few feet unaided, summoning the last reserves of her energy. Pulling the wicker container forward, she grabbed for the thickest piece, a heavy cast-iron poker. It would have to do. Heart pounding, she turned, holding onto the fireplace with one hand. They had one shot at this, and it was all they were going to get. If she missed, there was no way she could try again, and he'd be gone.
With nothing else to lose, she risked the noise to shout for him. "Andy!" As he glanced towards her, she reared back with one arm, feet braced against the hard tile, launching the poker like a javelin. The entire time, she silently prayed to whoever might be listening above. Please let her aim be true. If nothing else, let this thing make it to Andy, so he could finish this.
Right then, she could have done an Olympian proud.
Andy caught it with one hand, whirling as the creature came in again. With a squelching noise, he plunged the poker through the Djinn's chest, twisting it for good measure. The shriek it let out had Kira's ears ringing, dropping her to her knees as she clamped her hands over her ears. Glass shattered from somewhere, either from the high-pitched noise or the panicked flapping of its wings as it struggled to pull itself free.
Kira opened her eyes in time to see the Djinn fall backwards, her shout of denial frozen on her lips as the weight of the creature pulled Andy through the railing, dragging him through the air with it.
The pool of blood spread in an arc across the tile, but Kira didn't even notice as it seeped onto her shoes. All she could focus on was the way Andy was sprawled on top of the still struggling bat, and that he hadn't moved.
Crawling to them, Kira yanked the fireplace poker from the creature's chest, lifting it over her head before bringing it down to force the sharp edge directly into the bat's brain. With one final quiver, it went limp, and with it, the fear that gripped her turned to panic.
"Andy! Andy, you have to wake up. Please be alive. You can't leave me. I can't do this myself. I need you. You're my best friend... please don't die on me. I need you to open your eyes. Please."
Chapter Fifteen
Slumped in a chair, Kira stirred as she heard Andy's pained noise from the bed beside her. Sitting up to check on him, she smiled as she saw him awake for the first time after being given pain medicine when they'd come in. She'd been released already, but refused to leave his side. Hers was just bruising for the most part. While the Djinn had broken Andy's fall, the way they'd landed had impaled Andy on the fireplace poker as well.
Thankfully, it'd gone through his side, and missed anything major, it just looked gnarly. They'd cleaned him up and sutured the wound itself, then got him on some high-dose intravenous antibiotics to prevent any infections from the unsanitary tool. Kira told the doctors it'd been a camping trip gone wrong. It was the only thing she could think of on short notice to explain their odd injuries that wouldn't arouse too much suspicion.
She'd called to update Noni, and to ask what the heck the woman had said when she'd been shouting at the Djinn. Turned out, Noni had found some old myths that said if you forced the Djinn into a corporeal form, it could then be killed. She didn't know the specific words from the section of the Quran it said to chant, so she'd simply looked up a few phrases on a translation site and tried those. It amounted to "Reveal yourself! Take form! I command you!"
Kira was flabbergasted. The notion that she'd had no idea if it would work or not was scary, but the fact it had was even more amazing. They'd truly gotten through this by the skin of their teeth. John, it turned out, had gone out through the opened window again. The bedrooms were on the second floor, but the stately home had a Juliet balcony, with a set of stairs leading to a pool area. While they were busy saving his life, he'd fled like a coward. Not that she could blame him, really. Things like this weren't in most people's repertoire.
As Andy struggled to sit up, Kira laid a hand across him to stop him from moving too much. "Don't be trying to get up so fast, Vlad. You impaled yourself, bravo. They've got you sutured up. Good news, you're gonna live. Bad news, you have an unfortunate new nickname."
Peeking under the thin blanket, he let out a groan before sliding back onto the pillow, face twisting in a grimace. "It hurts like a bitch, Kir. That thing better hope it's dead, because next time, we're just cutting its head off first thing. I just wanted a nice, easy life. A Mojito next to a pool, sand in my toes. What’s wrong with that?"
Kira snorted. "What's wrong with that? You have me as a best friend. Clearly, the taste level is lacking. You never had a chance at nice and easy, not with me around. You made your choice, now you get to wallow in it, no matter how much the Djinn guano stinks."
His eyes grew wide as saucers, mouth opening and closing for a moment before he lifted the blanket to check himself over again. "There was guano!??! Ew, Kira! There are at least seventeen ways this could have gone better. Literally. I’m counting them right now."
Kira rolled her eyes, leaning back in the chair as she listened to him mumble under his breath. "You know, I hope the rest of your day is as pleasant as you are right now. Last time I took the gross for you. You owed me one."
Andy turned a glare on her, dropping the blanket back into place. "I didn't realize we were going to start keeping a tally. So that means, next one is on you, right? Oh I hope it's a disgusting one." His grin softened the bitching he was doing, letting her know he wasn't serious in the slightest. Whether she'd wanted this originally or not, he'd decided they were a team, and she was pretty well stuck with him.
"C'mon Vlad. Tell the nice nurse to dope you up again so we can sneak outta here. Place gives me the heebie jeeb
ies. Do you know how many people die in hospitals? It's a ghost factory. If they don't get us, the mutated germs will. There isn't a flamethrower strong enough to save us." He just rolled his eyes, pressing the button to summon the nurse.
"We just took out a giant bat, we've fought an Aswang, and you escaped a Wendigo by yourself without even knowing this world existed. After all that, you're seriously telling me hospitals wig you out? There is such a thing as a glass half full, you know."
She smirked, giving him an exaggerated wink as the nurse came in with a cup and two pills in her hand. "I was born to be a pessimist. My blood type is B Negative. Now chop chop, I can feel the MRSA staring at me, sizing me up. Let's get out of here before they tell me I got a pretty mouth."
Chapter Sixteen
Glancing at the pile of papers sitting in front of her, Kira sighed, wishing she had a cup of something caffeinated. They'd decided after this fiasco to start researching creatures in mythology and lore to bone up on potential cases, so they were never in this type of predicament again. It was simply too dangerous to rush in without a clue what they'd be facing.
It'd now put both of their lives in danger, and while she understood and accepted the risk to herself, putting Andy or Noni in harm's way wasn't something she could condone. So, research. How she hated it. The stacks of books and photocopies didn't seem to be decreasing at all, even after they'd been poring over them for days. If anything, as they found new links, the damn things were actively multiplying.
Smiling over at Andy as he fought with the printer for the sixth time today, she marveled at the friendship they'd formed. She'd been alone, with no one to confide in after suffering through such a terrible experience that no one else could ever understand. He'd reached out a hand, said "I don't know you, but I'll help you deal", and never looked back or seemed to regret it for a second.
Remembering something they'd talked about when this had all begun, she switched from paper copies to the laptop she had precariously balanced on the other side of her. Ignoring the high-pitched whine of something going disastrously wrong with a print cartridge, she typed in her search request, scrolling the results.
For future reference, it's very hard to concentrate on price comparison shopping when your partner sounds like he's trying to exorcise a demon from an electronic appliance. "Andy. Seriously. Just push the button with the green circle. You know if I come over there and hit it after you've done it ten times, the very first time it'll work for me, and then you'll be cranky. Stop chanting curse words at it, you're probably hurting its feelings. I'm nice to the AIs so the AIs won't eventually rise up against me. You? Not so much."
Her 'ignoring' mode was getting a workout today, as he made a rude gesture she pretended not to see, before pressing the button and cursing again when whatever he'd been trying to print started working just fine. Hiding a giggle, she clicked one of the results from her search, scanning the comparisons quickly. Cringing, she hurried to buy the package before she could think better of it and remain hopelessly old-school.
Andy was the genius when it came to online items and software. Hardware? Not so much. So the hosting package and blog software she'd bought, he'd be able to sort in no time. He was right. Having these things itemized in a web database was going to make a difference, possibly save their asses on more than one occasion. She couldn't handle the possibility of losing one of her newly found little family, not when she was the one that had somehow dragged all of them into this with her.
Emailing him the details for logging in and getting started, she leaned back in the chair, stretching the kinks out of her neck and shoulders with a groan as she looked up at the hand-painted sign Andy had bought for their office at Ominous Omens.
"Never fear the darkness as it envelopes our world, for without the dark, we'd never be able to truly appreciate the beauty in the stars."
She supposed it had a ring of truth in it. Darkness and the creatures that lurked within may try to snuff out the light around them, but their true strength lay in how they came together. Their bonds were stronger than their fear. For the first time since her life had been upended, with Andy, she was able to truly appreciate the stars... the little things.
Life wasn't black and white. Good and evil weren't absolutes. Tomorrow wasn't promised to any of them, a sobering thought. Yet, when she'd chosen this path, they'd come of their own free will, walking alongside her, lending her their strength, as she did for them.
Monsters would always exist, that much was a given. The earliest stories came about to teach people warnings, as lessons. But as long as there were still a few willing to stand up against them? The fight would never be lost and there would always be a spark of hope lighting the way. She intended to follow that path for as long as it would carry her, her chosen family at her side.
The boogeymen and his ilk might put fear in the hearts of everyone else, but soon, there would be a new name whispered in the shadows. Her name, and it would mean death for any that chose to harm an innocent person. They had no mercy for their victims, and she'd have no mercy to spare for them.
She was Kira Malone, and she was going hunting.
About The Author
Mandi resides in Ohio, where she shares her workspace with an ornery bassle pup. She's an avid reader and blogger, who adores music. Whenever there is a concert in town, you can bet she's taking the night off and cheering on her favorite bands. She can easily be bribed with peanut butter M&Ms, gemstones, hot lead singers, and gargoyles. :)
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Other Releases
Risque Romance Vol 1
Risque Romance Vol 2
Slaughter, USA Vol 1
Half Past Dread
NovelCraft
Mandi's Metaphysical Gemstones
Mandi's Herbal Handbook
Mandi's Muses
Acknowledgments
Writing a book requires a veritable community. It's not a solo activity as you'd assume, but one that takes its toll on everyone even remotely involved. For everyone who worked with me to get my words where they needed to be- thank you. To my family and friends- I don't know what I would do without you. Your constant support and understanding while I'm knee-deep in deadlines has made all the difference. Knowing I'm not walking this journey of ups and downs alone helps me to see the bigger picture and not get stuck in the weeds. I appreciate you more than you know.
To Megan, Liam, Michelle, Joan, Autumn ... it means so much to me that you guys are there, that if I get stuck or need a break, you're the first ones to volunteer to make things better. Bouncing ideas off of all of you has saved my sanity, and helped me develop my style and niche a thousand times over. You are always willing to lend an ear, to help with research, and to keep my feet solidly on the ground when I start drifting off. I love you all dearly, and couldn't imagine my life without you. As always, thanks to Mae's Wicked Grafix and Sandra LeBlanc for their tireless work in making my work shine. And thanks again to Katie, who brought Kira to life!
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Kira Malone Chronicles: Vol 1 (Slaughter USA) Page 13