Marked (The Secrets of the Djinn #1)

by Lamer, Bonnie

“Your hobby is to look for hidden stairwells in hospitals?” I ask snidely.

  She stops and turns to look up at me from five stairs down. “Have I mentioned yet that I’m here to save your ass? Mocking me is not a good motivator. It makes me want to leave you on the steps and get the fuck out of here by myself.”

  I don’t believe her. For some reason, she’s too vested in this. “But I have your scent all over me, remember. How will you escape the ‘big uglies’ if they come after you?”

  I’m still having trouble with the whole reason for this mad escape from unknown predators. I’m starting to feel like a lame gazelle being rescued from lions by a crazy Meer cat. A red-headed Meer cat. It just seems inevitable that the lions will win. If the threat is even real that is.

  “Ladies, could we cut the chatter and just get down the damn stairs?”

  What a dick. We both have a new target for our growing snarkiness now. “What’s the matter? Is she too heavy for you muscle man?” Brielle asks but then starts moving again.

  It’s been a long time since someone carried me like a baby. As a matter of fact, I have no memory of ever being carried like a baby. I have to say, it’s a lot more unnerving than I ever would have guessed. One wrong step on his part and we’ll both go splat at the bottom of the stairs. I tighten my hold on his neck and try not to look down.

  “Choking,” he rasps.

  Oops. Maybe a bit too tight. I loosen my grip slightly, just enough so his Adam’s apple can move up and down to ensure he can still breathe. I’m not letting go any more than that.

  I try to block out my fear of falling which leads me to start obsessing over the fact that my ass is hanging out of my hospital gown. Whoever put it on me apparently didn’t tie the little strings in the back. I think back to everyone we passed in the hall on my floor and the fact that every time Brielle stops and looks up, my ass is right there to say hello. Not that I’m overly modest, but I’m not looking forward to being carried down the street like this. I think people will get the wrong idea. Not to mention that I’m fairly confident that my ass is cute enough to draw at least a small crowd of eager onlookers. I think that would hamper our escape a bit. If this all turns out to be the work of a hallucinating paranoid schizophrenic with ugly red hair, I’m going to kill Brielle with my own bare hands.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Brielle gets her little dagger out again and pushes it between the door and the frame and slides it along the door in a straight line. I can hear the wallpaper on the other side of the door rip easily. That must be one sharp knife she has.

  “What’s on the other side?” Dr. Palis asks.

  Brielle finishes picking the lock on the door before answering. When she has it unlocked, she stands up and says, “It leads to an area of the hospital that’s used primarily for storage of old, outdated equipment. It’s where old machinery goes to die. There’s some old ass shit in there.”

  “How do you know all this?” I ask. It seems that she’s spent a lot of time studying this hospital. It brings me back to the whole hallucinating paranoid schizophrenic theory. “Have you been planning this in your head for a while? Do you hear voices when you’re alone?”

  She glowers at me. “You’re an ungrateful bitch. Did you know that?”

  “So far all you’ve done is take me out of my hospital room on the theory that ‘there are people after me.’ I haven’t seen any actual proof yet.”

  “You want proof? Fine.” Brielle puts her backpack on the floor and takes out a laptop. Cuing it up to something, she turns it around so the doctor and I can see it. “Is this proof enough?”

  “Did you hack into the hospital security cameras?” the doctor asks her.

  She shrugs. “Another hobby of mine.” She has a lot of weird hobbies.

  My face goes pale when I look at the screen. I see two large men walking down one of the hallways in the hospital. These guys are huge. Massive. I think they’re almost as wide as they are tall. It looks like they were born in a gym and suckled on steroids. One has greasy brown hair and his lips are so thin he looks like a muppet. But even on this hazy security footage, his blue eyes are dark and vibrant. If they could be plucked out of his head and put in someone else’s they would be beautiful. The other I can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman. Not like it matters. I think either one of them would be successful at killing me regardless of gender.

  They are stopping and opening every door and peeking in every room, looking for someone. Me. Though they don’t have them in their hands, their guns are clearly visible in holsters on their sides, so no one is giving them a hard time about it.

  Brielle crosses her arms over her chest. “Are you convinced now or should we sit here and go over more physical proof until they find us in this dingy stairwell and use our limbs to wipe their asses with?”

  “That was graphic, thank you,” the doctor says drily.

  “Talking about limbs, I think I am able to support myself now. You can probably put me down,” I say to the doctor.

  “But you’re probably not stable enough to walk out of here on your own.”

  “Someone’s got a crush,” Brielle mumbles as she packs her laptop away again.

  “I am simply concerned that we will not make good time if she walks on her own.”

  “Make good time? You’re really getting into this, aren’t you?” I tease him. Flirt with him I should say. I am so back and forth with my feelings towards this guy. Head injury. I’m blaming it all on the head injury.

  The doctor looks mildly uncomfortable and he ignores my comment. “Where to?” he asks Brielle.

  “On the other side of this room, another door leads to a narrow tunnel that goes under the hospital and over to the next building. Again, not on the hospital blueprints. Way back in the day, it was used as a bomb shelter and then a passageway to the morgue. When they put up the newer part of the hospital they didn’t need it anymore and it was sealed off. Now it’s just a home for spiders.” she says, standing and slinging her zipped up backpack over her shoulder.

  Great. Dirt, dust and spider bites. A trifecta of infection causing ingredients. I’m also bare foot. I don’t want to feel the squash of spiders under my feet. “Okay, you can carry me.”

  He chuckles. “Not a fan of spiders?”

  “Spiders are fine. As long as they maintain their distance. A hundred yards or so is usually sufficient.” He chuckles again.

  We’ve started walking through the room. Brielle is right. This is where old machinery goes to die. Some of the things in here I’ve only seen in text books because they don’t make them anymore. Is that really an iron lung over in the corner?

  Brielle and the doctor pick their way through the broken metal and plastic and we find ourselves in front of yet another hidden door. How long did Brielle study the plans of this hospital? It’s insane that she knows all of this.

  When she gets this door open, Brielle pulls a small flashlight out of a front pocket of her bag. She shines it through the doorway and the light is reflected back to us from a myriad of silk spider webs sparkling with their first exposure to anything besides complete darkness. I swear I hear a million spiders running for cover. Better than banding together to attack us I guess. “Well, this is going to suck titties,” Brielle says.

  “Look at you, master of speaking the obvious,” I gripe.

  She offers me the flashlight. “Care to go first Miss About-To-Have-a-Spider-Shoved-Up-Her-Ass?” I respond with a glare, which she responds to with a smirk.

  “Why don’t I set you down and clear the way for us,” the doctor says, starting towards a desk chair with two wheels missing. Does he really expect me to put my bare ass on that? It has at least an inch of dust on it.

  “I got this,” Brielle says, saving me from the chair. She takes yet another thing out of her bag. It’s like she’s a Goth Mary Poppins. Now she has a can of something in her hand.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “Compressed air.” She points it towards th
e spider webs and presses down on the top of the can. A blast of air clears a bunch of the webs out of the way. She sprays again and then again. When enough of the webbing is down so my dangling hair won’t get tangled with it, the doctor follows Brielle into the tunnel.

  “Close the door behind you,” she instructs, continuing to squirt her compressed air. I sure hope she has a whole tunnel’s worth of the stuff. I would hate to get halfway through and then have to use our hands to clear it.

  The doctor turns around and I reach for the door handle, pulling it closed. I take deep breaths and try to lessen the sudden panic I feel caused by both the complete darkness, since Brielle’s light isn’t reaching us back here, and my claustrophobia.

  “Just concentrate on breathing normally,” the doctor says in his deep, soothing voice. Sure, easy for him to say. “Not a fan of small spaces?”

  “Only if they’re surrounded by fresh air and light.”

  “Why don’t you find more to gripe about,” Brielle says as her voice echoes in front of us. “It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside when you do.”

  I hate her. “Where are we going now?”

  “Once we’re in the other building, we’re going to head for the nearest exit to the parking garage where my car is.”

  It takes about five minutes and three thousand spider webs to find the other side of the tunnel. My breathing is so hard and fast now you’d think I was having mind blowing sex. Brielle does her thing slowly with the lock as I hyperventilate. I want to push her aside and kick the door down just to get out of here half a second faster.

  As soon as the door pushes open, I scramble out of the doctor’s arms and nearly fall to the floor. A steadying hand around my arm saves me. “You’re not quite ready for a hike yet,” he says.

  “Just give me a minute,” I say, trying to catch my breath. The space we came out in isn’t a whole lot bigger than the tunnel, but it’s big enough to give me some relief. That’s the important thing.

  Brielle flicks on the light so we can see where we are. The room is a large supply closet. There are buckets and brooms lined up against the wall and the air reeks with the scent of chemicals and cleaners.

  “Yes, please, let’s wait for the princess to finish having her panic attack so we can move on towards the next one,” Brielle says, putting her lock picking tools back in her backpack.

  If she hates me so much then why is she supposedly saving me? “Did your parents raise you to be a bitch or did you strive for it all on your own?” I ask.

  She smirks. “My parents raised me that way. Every night at dinner my sister and I had to name at least three bitchy things we did that day or we didn’t get dessert. This way.” She turns towards the door and opens it without having to unlock it. Apparently there’s no perceived threat to the brooms that would make someone lock them in.

  Finally able to cover my ass with the hospital gown, I take a step to follow her. It’s a little unsteady, but I stay upright. The doctor still has his hand on my good arm though.

  The closet opens up into a narrow dark hallway. At the end of it is a door with a bright red exit sign above it and a sign that says ‘parking garage’. I sigh in relief. This nightmare is almost over.

  Chapter 7 – The Chase

  With her hand on the door handle, Brielle stops short as she looks through the small glass window. “Fucking genies. How the hell did they get here first? I hope you’re ready for this.”

  When she opens the door, our eyes follow hers and I have to stifle a scream. I think she’s mixing up her mythology. Those aren’t genies. Those are demons. Big, black, grotesque demons with blue eyes. Just like the one I hit with my car. She expects us to go out there with them?

  “I knew parking where there weren’t any security cameras was going to bite me in the ass,” Brielle mumbles as she pulls something from her shirt.

  “What in god’s name are they,” the doctor asks looking at the demon beings. His face is the picture of horrified awe.

  “Fucking genies are what they are,” Brielle says and puts a whistle to her lips.

  “A rape whistle? You think a rape whistle is going to save us from those…things?” I ask her. They’re only about ten yards away from us now.

  She pauses before blowing. “Not a rape whistle, a dog whistle.”

  “You’re going to blow a whistle that humans can’t hear and expect it to do something?”

  She shakes her head and looks at us like we just fell off the ‘your mom hated you because you’re so freakin’ stupid’ truck. “Humans don’t need to hear it. They do.”

  She fills her cheeks with air and blows on the whistle like she’s trying to blow up an inner tube. Instantly, the genies as she called them are covering their ears and falling to their knees. Is that blood squirting from their eyes? Gross. I really wish I didn’t see that.

  Brielle continues to blow into her whistle as she points to a camouflage painted jeep with black writing on the back that says, ‘Ha ha, I can see you but you can’t see me’. It seems exactly like the type of vehicle Brielle would drive. But it’s not exactly inconspicuous for a getaway.

  The genies are struggling back to their feet as we make a mad dash for the jeep. If these demon-like things really are genies, then whoever wrote Arabian Nights got it all wrong. There’s no way anyone would get close enough to these things to ask for three wishes.

  Brielle clicks the doors open and the doctor opens the back door for me. I scramble in as fast as my drugged up body will let me. I fall to my side once I’m in the jeep and I can’t help crying out in pain as my road rash collides with the leather seat. There’s hesitation on the doctor’s face before he slams the door closed and climbs into the front passenger seat. Right now, big ass genies must outweigh my pain. I can’t say that I blame him. I suppose I agree with him. Getting away from those things trumps my pain any day. Brielle is behind the wheel and has the jeep in motion before she even closes her own door. The tires squeal as she whips the wheel to the right and floors it.

  She’s already got the speedometer to fifty, but since she is no longer blowing her whistle, the genies are now sprinting after us and catching up. There’s a tight corner coming up and Brielle will have to slow down to turn. I’m worried that may be the edge they need to be on top of us. Until Brielle whips around the corner on two wheels and almost hits a person crossing our path to get to his car. I’m pretty sure the guy just peed his pants.

  Oddly, as soon as the genies see him, they change. I mean that literally. They really change. They become human. It’s not like my accident when I saw it in slow motion, this is instantaneous.

  “What the hell?” the doctor says looking in the door mirror.

  “It’s against djinn law to expose themselves to humans. They’d be impaled and set on fire for eternity if any of the other djinn found out,” Brielle says. The exit to the parking garage is just up ahead now.

  “The mental imagery you inspire is far from fascinating. The djinn? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m a little busy driving here. Can we talk about this later?” Brielle says as she floors it again.

  There’s a scary looking dude with black greasy hair and a beard blocking our path at the exit, and Brielle seems to have every intention of running him over as she accelerates more. His black leather coat and black riding boots make him look like a stereotypical biker but the menace on his face makes him look anything but human. There’s an aura around this guy that gives me the heebie geebies. I feel like he would do things that even the vilest human being would never do. He probably already has on multiple occasions. I’m kind of hoping Brielle does hit him because I don’t want him coming after us. Kill or be killed I guess.

  “I didn’t sign up for murder,” the doctor says as if reading my mind. He’s holding the panic bar above the door and bracing himself for impact. I don’t know what he’s so worried about. The guy in front of us has to top out at over three hundred and fifty pounds so the impact
would definitely be popping the airbags; the doc would be just fine. Well, until the biker guy’s friends showed up anyway. I can’t see the genies behind us anymore in either their human or demonic form, but I don’t believe they have given up the chase.

  To prove me right, a silver car squeals around a corner and advances on us from behind. Brielle has no choice now but to keep going forward. I make sure my seat belt is secure and close my eyes.

  The sound of horns and the jeep suddenly turning to the right forces me to open my eyes. Biker dude apparently moved out of the way since I didn’t feel a collision. I crane my head around even though it pulls on my wounds to see if we’re being followed by the silver car. Of course we are. I feel like I’m in a bad chase movie.

  The street Brielle turned onto is normally a lot busier, but being mid-morning the traffic is light and there are not many pedestrians on the sidewalk. She’s able to swerve in between cars and run red lights without lessening her speed, though she is making me feel like I’m going to die in yet another car accident. Every time the car veers, I have to brace myself so I don’t fall on my left side. I think my adrenaline rush helped my body metabolize the remainder of the meds, because I am moving much better and am in excruciating pain. It’s still hard to keep myself upright, but that’s from being injured, not from being sedated.