Djinnx'd (The Tamar Black Saga #1)

by Nicola Rhodes

  ‘So,’ Kelon spoke sharply, ‘what have you discovered?’

  ‘Well my liege, they are not attempting to decipher the clue at all – I cannot explain it. But soon it will not matter. “It” is after her.’

  ‘It?’ Kelon turned white.

  ‘Yes, luminous one. My men have seen it, soon it will catch up with her; it must.’

  ‘What can she have done to draw it to her?’

  ‘I do not know, but she has, and we both know that once it has you in its grasp, there is no escape.’

  ‘You are sure of this?’

  ‘There can be no doubt.’

  ‘Then she is finished,’ said Kelon with horrible satisfaction.

  * * *

  ‘So,’ Denny was asking, ‘what about vampires?’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘Do they exist?’

  ‘Well, put it this way, I’ve never seen one. Think about it, walking corpses that feed on the blood of the living and can only be held in their graves by a stake through the heart, it’s ludicrous.’

  ‘Well, okay– werewolves then?’

  ‘Nope, that would come under the heading of the un-dead also. Same goes for zombies. Once a human is dead they tend to stay that way. As far as I know they do not rise up from their graves and start wandering about. Probably can’t be bothered, after all you can’t be bothered to get out of bed most days and you’re alive. What would it take to get you out of a nice, comfy grave, when nobody’s expecting you to get up and go to work anymore?’

  ‘Good point. I’d probably get up for you though.’

  ‘Nah, there’s not enough magic in the world.’

  ‘Ghosts, what about them?’ pursued Denny, ‘or other things, the Beast of Bodmin, the Jersey Devil, the Loch Ness Monster?’

  It was Sunday afternoon, and they were in the “Press Gang Arms” (for not so jolly sailors) having one of those conversations that only occur after several pints of Ecclestons Old Peculiar. (All beer should be called this, by the way, in order to warn patrons of the effect imbibing will have on their brain functions.)

  Actually, it was only Denny who was three parts drunk, alcohol having no effect on Djinn. (Just another reason to feel sorry for her as far as Denny was concerned). Tamar had spent the last hour nursing the same Gin & Tonic, it being a waste of money – not to mention good booze – to buy her another “Djinn and Tonic”, as Denny had inevitably quipped after his third pint. ‘I knew I should have ordered vodka.’

  But that is beer humour and Tamar was inclined to let it go. She had never experienced drunkenness herself but had witnessed plenty of it. Particularly during her time with “Hogswill the hairy backed” and his band of marauding Viking raiders. Denny was a model of sobriety by comparison and would probably only throw up once.

  They were wrapped in a cosy fug of companionship and security. It was them against the world, and the world had better watch out. They were feeling completely invulnerable. Tamar admittedly because, to all intents and purposes, she was, and Denny, because he was experiencing the (entirely imaginary) sense of invincibility engendered by seven pints of beer.

  ‘Ghosts,’ she was saying, ‘are a manifestation of the subconscious mind of the bereaved or otherwise susceptible mortal investigator. The conscious spirit of the deceased uses the expectations of the living to ...’

  Denny stood up, looking slightly unfocussed. ‘Needa pee,’ he slurred. ‘Won’ be a minute.’ And he lurched off to the Gents.

  There was a large man sitting at the table nearest the door of the Gents. As Denny passed him, he called out ‘Poof,’ probably alluding to Denny’s longish hair. This man was of the shaven headed and tattooed variety and undoubtedly possessed less than a quarter of an inch of brain-matter, even when sober. Having more pressing matters on his mind, (not to mention his bladder) Denny ignored him. But once he was relieved of his burden, he decided not to ignore the ape when the remark was repeated as Denny exited the men’s room.

  ‘What did you say?’ he enquired in what he fondly hoped was a low menacing tone.

  The gorilla was unimpressed, but Denny was inhabiting an alcohol induced artificial reality in which he was, in fact, Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Bond all rolled into one, and was, accordingly, very impressed with himself.

  The man stood up; he towered over Denny by a good foot and a half, but Denny was leaning nonchalantly against a handy pillar. ‘Say that again,’ he hissed.

  ‘I called you a poof,’ snarled the man, ‘and what are you going to do about it?’

  ‘Hey, Tamar,’ called Denny. ‘This git just called me a poof. What do you think about that?’

  ‘What moron said that?’ she enquired lightly.

  ‘I called him a poof,’ said the man, ‘and now I’m telling you to stay out of it, you little tart.’

  Tamar raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh really?’

  She smiled as Denny brought a chair crashing down on the man’s skull. When this had no discernible effect, other than to break the chair, Denny sobered up instantly, and, as the man raised a boulder sized fist he prudently reverted to his normal behaviour during a fight. That is he ducked and covered, he was not strong, but he was fast. He dived under a table, which was, unfortunately, occupied, dislodging bottles and glasses as he did so.

  Tamar, meanwhile, had risen gracefully, taken the bully by the shoulders and thrown him lazily through the window. The landlord was phoning the police.

  The men who had been occupying the table that Denny had crashed into were understandably upset at the interruption of their drinking. They picked up the table, flung it aside and made a grab at Denny. He scrambled, but not fast enough, he was caught by the collar and held up for inspection. Tamar moved fast; seconds later both men were flying across the bar into other tables and Denny was straightening his collar as if nothing had happened. Nobody had had a chance to see exactly what she had done, and nobody cared since everybody was now hitting everybody else with bottles, chairs and glasses or whatever else came to hand.

  ‘I did that,’ smiled Tamar, ‘with my little hatchet.’

  Then the police arrived.

  Against all known laws of reason, there had actually been a patrol car in the area that was not too busy chasing down innocent motorists, whose only crime was to be in the driving seat of a moving car whilst under the age of fifty. So they turned up with unprecedented promptitude.

  ‘Leg it!’ yelled Tamar. They ran, and the police chased, on the basic assumption that if you run away from the police you must be guilty of something. (Policemen are not often noted for their complex thinking.) They chase because you run, and you run because they are chasing you.

  The fight at the pub was left in full swing. No policeman worth his helmet is going to choose to fight over a good chase. They could always come back later and arrest anyone recumbent – if the place was still standing.

  Outside were a gleaming motorcycle and a comatose bully. They assessed their options and stole the bike.

  ‘No keys,’ said Denny.

  ‘No problem,’ said Tamar and clicked her fingers – she really very good at that – and the bike roared to life. The bike, by the way, belonged to the landlord who really was having a lousy day – which is what mortals can usually expect when there is a Djinn in the vicinity.

  The police jumped in their car and gave chase.

  ‘Put your foot down,’ screamed Denny. Tamar grinned, and they shot away like an overdressed fool out of a cannon. The other vehicles seemed to be going backwards as they passed, the world became a blur, and the G forces pulled painfully at Denny’s face.

  Abruptly, they screeched to a halt at the end of an alley.

  ‘I think we lost them,’ Tamar said, with evident satisfaction.

  Denny was furious. ‘Put your foot down – does not mean light speed!’ he raged. ‘I think I swallowed a filling.’

  ‘You do look a bit sick,’ she
said. ‘How’s your stomach?’

  ‘I’ll let you know when it catches up with me.’

  Then, to their dismay they saw a police car draw up across the end of the alley.

  * * *

  ‘Speeding?’ said Denny, disgustedly as they sat in the back of a police van, which had turned up after the officer in the car had firstly ascertained that they did not have a license, and then, on radioing the license plate number, discovered that the bike was stolen. This led to his finding out about the fracas in the pub and the officer decided, to his great excitement, that he had stumbled on a pair of dangerous criminals and called for backup.

  Tamar had been for teleporting the hell out of there, but of course, Denny would not let her.

  ‘They’d be bound to notice,’ he said.

  ‘Ha!’ said Tamar. ‘Most humans wouldn’t notice if I turned into a hippopotamus right in front of them. They’d make up some explanation for it, or pretend it didn’t happen. People have some pretty sophisticated shielding in their heads to stop them from seeing what’s really going on around them. It’s to stop their tiny brains from imploding – no offence.’

  ‘Bound to notice,’ repeated Denny, ignoring this, ‘then we’d not only have the police after us, but we’d have reporters camping out on the doorstep twenty four hours a day and government types in big shiny cars with blacked out windows, stalking us.’

  ‘It’ll never happen I’m telling you. Never,’ Tamar frowned. ‘You don’t even have a doorstep – you live in a flat.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  Since her arguments had no effect on Denny, Tamar submitted docilely to being charged with assault, criminal damage and theft, not to mention the speeding charge.

  Then it was Denny’s turn, and they were carted off to separate cells.

  * * *

  Tamar felt lonely, which just goes to show how much she had changed. She was also bored – burning graffiti into the walls with her eyes palled after a while. If only Denny were not so stubborn they could have been anywhere by now – what did it matter where?’

  Instead, she was kicking her heels in a cold, damp, narrow cell with nothing to do. And no chance of bail either.

  The cell door opened, and a burly officer entered. She looked up hopefully, but he closed the door behind him and looked at her, his mean little eyes gleaming with an unmistakable expression. She sighed; she had been half expecting something like this. Many of the policemen had stared at her or given her sidelong glances when she had been brought in; some of them had been openly leering. Oh well, it was nothing she could not handle. Perhaps he had come to offer her a “deal”.

  She stood up – and froze. Oh no! Not again. The now familiar terror twisted inside her as the “policeman” advanced on her swinging his nightstick and slapping it against his palm. There was no way Denny could rescue her this time, locked, as he was, in another cell. This time she was well and truly caught, and she only had herself to blame. There was no time for self-recrimination. The menacing figure raised the night-stick silently (what no mocking last words?) and brought it down on her head with a sickening crack. Her last thought was that she would never know who or what had killed her, or why. Then everything went black.

  * * *

  Denny was livid; they had finally released him with a warning and a large fine after questioning him for hours about Tamar’s mysterious disappearance. He felt certain that they had let him off so lightly because of this. It was uncanny, they said, and they kept watching him nervously as if they expected him to suddenly vanish in a puff of smoke.

  He stalked home, intending to tear strips off her for escaping in such an unorthodox manner, and leaving him to face the music, and when he had expressly told her not to. Just because she had turned out to be right, was no excuse. The police had decided in the end, that there had to be some rational explanation. He watched them gradually convince themselves that she could not have mysteriously disappeared at all. By the time he left, they were all behaving as if the whole thing had never happened.

  And the reporters on his doorstep were conspicuously absent, but still ... How could she? ‘Of all the rotten ...’ words failed him. He marched into the flat and slammed the door – she was not there, and neither was all the swanky furniture she had provided. But this time, this did not surprise Denny. The bottle stood on the mantelpiece; it looked different, no longer opaque and cloudy but perfectly clear – he could see the clock face through it, but he never noticed.

  ‘Out?’ he thought. ‘She’s gone out – swanning about somewhere no doubt. Thinking how clever she is – just wait!’

  ‘TAMAR!’ he yelled, ‘TAMAR BLACK GET BACK HERE RIGHT NOW.’ He was hitting decibels that made dead spiders fall out of the light shade and caused Mr. Whinger, whose real name Denny did not know, to bang on the ceiling of the flat below with what was presumably a mop or broom handle. ‘You shut up you little beggar, or I’ll get the plod onto you.’

  Denny groaned. Anything but that, he thought. But when Tamar did not appear he felt a prickle of fear as he realized what must have happened to her. Of course! He saw now; she would not have just gone off without him, even if she could have – which she could not (how could he have forgotten that?) How could he have thought she would? No, he realized that she could not have disobeyed him. Which only left one possibility and it made sense; she had been trapped in that cell – all alone without him. He finally noticed the bottle; it looked different – so ordinary, yet the implication of that was so macabre.

  He glanced around the flat; it felt different. He felt a shiver run through him. The flat, the bottle – everything, it was as if she had never existed at all.

  * * *

  Tamar was – nowhere, literally nowhere. It was not dark because that would have been something, would have meant that she was somewhere, and she was not. There was just nothing, and nobody. She was not afraid because she had no feelings. She was not bored or tired or lonely; she was just there, a tiny sliver of consciousness – fast-slipping away as she ceased to exist. She had no body, no name, no identity, no future and no past, she was almost gone – almost ...

  * * *

  As the full horror of the situation hit Denny, he did, what was probably the most useless thing he could have done, and also the most natural. He lay down on the bed and sobbed.

  In normal circumstances, this is the obvious and even healthy thing to do. But these were not normal circumstances, a fact that would not hit Denny until later – perhaps too late, because Denny was forgetting her already. After a while, he sat up sharply and dried his eyes, for a moment he wondered what he was so upset about and he became afraid when he realized what was happening. Soon, he realized, he would forget about her altogether. He could feel it happening already. He clutched desperately at his memories of her, they were fading. The world was healing over; the gap she had filled was closing. He grabbed some paper and a pencil and wrote her name, then watched in horror as it began to fade from the paper. When it was gone, he knew, so would she be – forever. Wiped from existence as if she had never been. Something clicked. She was not gone yet then? Not yet, but soon and what could he do about it? Nothing it seemed. Clapping his hands and declaring ‘I do believe in Djinn,’ was probably not going to work. Click, went his brain again – that was not it, but it was on the right lines. He concentrated. The Djinn – magic – belief. Oh damn! Think! I wish ... And it came to him. He grabbed the plastic bottle off the shelf, pulled out the rag of shirt. BANG!!!

  Slammer appeared dramatically in a puff of smoke. ‘O’ My Master ... oh it’s you. Well you know the drill, what can I do you for?’ (It was probably a Djinn who first coined this phrase – if you think about it).

  Downstairs, Mr. Whinger was objecting vociferously to the noise again. Denny could not think. Tamar’s name had disappeared from the paper.

  ‘I wish ... I wish ...’ he said desperately; he knew
it was important but ... ‘I wish I could remember.’

  ‘Remember what?’ asked Slammer courteously.

  ‘I wish I could remember what I was going to wish for,’ said Denny lamely. It did not seem important now.

  ‘Your wish is my command,’ said Slammer, giving Denny a curious look.

  And Denny remembered, but was it too late? Here goes nothing ‘I wish that Tamar, AKA Askphrit the Djinn of this bottle,’ he held it up, ‘were here with me now in this room.’ He felt he had to pretty specific or the loophole would get him. ‘Alive and well,’ he added threateningly to the universe in general and Slammer in particular, as a nasty thought struck him.

  ‘Good job you added that last bit,’ said a voice behind him.

  ‘Tamar,’ cried Denny, spinning around. ‘Thank God – are you all right? Are you ...?’

  ‘I’m fine, full of vigour – so I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ she said as he moved to put his arms around her. His face fell, and there was an awkward silence.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, and there was a world of meaning in her voice, it was enough. So it rather spoiled the pathos when she added. ‘I wouldn’t want to ruin this beautiful moment by accidentally killing you.’

  ‘Ahem,’ said Slammer, ‘and for your third wish?’

  ‘Later,’ said Denny. ‘Much later,’ he muttered. Slammer retired to his bottle, offended. Neither of them noticed him go.

  ~ Chapter Sixteen ~

  Tamar did not want to talk about it. Indeed, she said that she could not really remember anything, except that she had almost lost herself and that Denny had somehow found her and pulled her back. She was full of gratitude – wasn’t that enough?

  But Denny thought it was important. ‘We need to figure out what it is,’ he said. ‘Maybe we can stop it.’

  ‘We need to get on with the quest,’ said Tamar. ‘I don’t know why, but I think the answer’s there. We mustn’t get distracted anymore. Whatever it is, you can defeat it for some reason, that’s all we need to know.’

  ‘And if it happens again? I have a total of three wishes left; it’s not enough.’

  ‘Three?’

  ‘Two from you and one from Slammer – remember?’