One Wish Away: Djinn Empire Complete Series

by Ingrid Seymour

  I paused, my hand on the tent flap. Oh, but she was more than vile. I held back the urge to look over my shoulder and search her gaze for the veracity of her statement. But I had seen enough of her manipulative nature, and I desired no more proof.

  So, with one quick flick of my wrist, I threw the tent flap aside and walked away.

  10

  With a bundle tightly strapped to my back, I walked out into the night and set my sights toward Babylon. There was a tremor in my heart at the thought of leaving without telling Mother farewell, but it was better this way.

  The few items I carried, the sword strapped to my side, and my horse alone would accompany me in the journey. I needed nothing else—not even a fresh memory of Mother’s sweet, gentle face.

  As I walked away from my childhood home in search of my horse, my steps grew gradually firmer. The sense of adventure already fluttered in my stomach. I was not a weakling who should be afraid of the world—not when it had so much to offer.

  Slowly, the weight that had settled upon my shoulders since the day Father told me I was to be married shrank from a heavy boulder to the lightest feather. A smile spread over my lips.

  The stable stood silhouetted against the darkening sky. It would be a grand night to travel. As I approached, I noticed three dark figures blocking the large doors that lead to the stalls. I stopped, narrowing my eyes to recognize their faces in the dim light. They were clad in leather armor, swords at their hips, and General Medes’s seal at their breasts. I had seen them before. They belong to the general’s personal guard.

  “Faris Nasser,” one of them said. They walked in my direction and stood a mere pace away.

  “Yes,” I responded, standing straighter. I would not be bullied by these men or the general.

  “You must come with us.” Two of the men stepped to either side of me and clasped their large hands around my elbows. The third one, their leader, removed my sword before I had time to react.

  “Let me go,” I ordered.

  They ignored me, forced me to turn the way I’d come and pushed me along.

  I struggled to free myself from their grip.

  “I never figured you for a coward,” the leader said.

  “I am no coward,” I spat.

  “Then tell me why you squirm and try to escape when the girl’s whose heart you broke lays dead atop a cold slab of stone?”

  11

  General Medes circled around me. My legs and arms were bound as I lay on a stone as cold as that given to Cala and my brother. They were to either side. Cala pale and bloodless. Zet as quiet and still as death itself. Tears spilled down the side of his face as he stared at the darkness above us. We had been taken to a secluded room, deep in the General’s house.

  “She was the loveliest creature to ever live.” General Medes voice was broken, ragged with pain. “And you, the most callous monster. I thought you would protect her, keep her safe from harm. And instead . . .” He broke off, not attempting to hide his pain.

  Stupid, stupid girl!

  What had she done? What had I done?

  “All you had to do was love her!” General Medes came nearer, a curved dagger in his hand. “Are you so cold that her lovely beauty could not pierce your hardened heart? She was to be yours! What better gift could a man ask for?”

  He pressed the blade to my bare chest and flicked with vicious speed. I growled in pain through clenched teeth. Warm blood seeped from the wound and slid down my side.

  A robed man stepped from the shadows and into the light of the torches set on the back wall. He wore a wicked smile and licked his lips at the sight of my blood. He held a stone basin in his cupped hands, wearing an expectant expression.

  “Now, your gift shall be quite different,” General Medes assured me. “Pain and slow death.”

  Perhaps I had earned this. Perhaps I had been callous, stubborn, proud and more. Would it have been so hard to do what Father required of me?

  I looked toward Cala. Her expression was serene, her beauty paralyzed forever. She had threatened to do this, and I had chosen to ignore her.

  “And after death,” General Medes continued, “an eternity of imprisonment.”

  Imprisonment? I figured he meant Barzakh, but purgatory was not eternal.

  “But first,” he moved toward Zet’s table. “Your brother will suffer and die before your eyes. And both will share the same fate in the end.” He sliced his knife across Zet’s chest to give him a wound parallel mine.

  “No, please!” I begged. “He’s innocent.” I had always felt indestructible, unafraid of anything. But today I was terrified. I didn’t want Zet to die. I didn’t want to die. “Let him go.”

  At my plea, Zet awoke from his stupor and turned a hateful gaze on me. “It is my fault as much as it is yours. I am no coward and welcome death. Life is a misery without her. I will die with the pleasure of knowing you also suffered. I will never forgive you. You are no brother of mine anymore.”

  “I am sorry,” I mouthed to him.

  He turned his face away as if deciding I did not exist anymore.

  General Medes nodded to the robed man. He nodded back still wearing his wicked smile. He seemed quite satisfied for some reason—perhaps by my brother’s hatred toward me and his promise to never forgive me.

  My brother, that sweet boy with a sparkling dream in his eyes, made no sound as General Medes crisscrossed his body with the edge of his knife. He bled until he was pale and his legs and arms were limp. Heavy with horror and pain, I was the unwilling witness to his torture because the thought of Zet going through this nightmare alone was more terrible than watching him die.

  The robed man placed his stone basin at the corner of my brother’s table. There, he gathered his blood as it ran from his body in small rivers of loss and agony. His eyes would never open again.

  Forgive me, brother.

  General Medes abandoned Zet’s wasted body and moved to repeat his deed on me. Pain pierced through my skin down to my very bones, licking me like tongues of fire. I may have cried out once, though I tried to be as brave as my brother, even if my death was not as willing as his. As the agony undid me, the robed man spoke a string of words that I did not understand.

  In a strange daze on my dying mind, I imagined the ground splitting open before Zet’s death bed. A dark, hideous figure rose from the hole, dirt crumbling off its back. The creature roared, baring a thick row of black teeth. A shudder thrilled through my entire body as I realized what must have happened. I had skipped purgatory and gone straight to the deepest levels of hell from which a demon had risen to torture me further.

  Except, the demon attacked my brother’s body instead. It turned liquid and seeped into his wounds. The robed man finished his rant and punctuated it with words that I could suddenly understand.

  “Blood to bind. Blood to release,” he said in near ecstasy, lifting a stone tablet toward the heavens, the significance of which was wasted on me. “Curse and greed a prison. Once human, though never again, unless forgiveness is found.” He pronounced the last bit reluctantly, giving General Medes a sideways glance of displeasure as if he prefer to leave that part out.

  My eyes rolled into the back of my head, the pain no more than a distant nightmare. Slowly, I slipped away, welcoming the dense fog that enveloped me. Perhaps there would be some respite in this hell, a moment or two of unconsciousness to help me endure the relentless torture that awaited.

  Death, for an instant, was a blessing.

  12

  The robed man’s voice echoed inside my head.

  Blood to bind.

  Blood to release.

  Curse and greed a prison.

  Once human, though never again,

  Unless what was once denied is clearly requited.

  My consciousness sprang open, away from the beautiful oblivion that had briefly enveloped it. A feeling of infinite vastness sent me into a disoriented tailspin. As if caught in a whirlwind, I spun in endless circles as I fought t
o find my shape.

  But I had none.

  I had become nothing but a wisp of consciousness aware of the passage of every instant, each one stretching into infinity. Time moved forward but it did not matter. It might as well have been standing still.

  Eternal imprisonment General Medes had said. And so it was.

  Insanity tore me apart, fraying the edges of the ghost I had become.

  Then for a moment—weeks, months, years down the road—I was free, and I finally realized what they had turned me into.

  That’s when the real torture began.

  Zet

  Ingrid Seymour

  PenDreams • BIRMINGHAM

  1

  I’d been commanded to strike people dead many times, but this time there was a twist to it.

  My new master wanted his cheating, betraying ex-wife dead.

  I wholly understood the sentiment. Such traitorous people shouldn’t be allowed to live. They are a curse upon the earth and all of those around them.

  Like my brother, Faris.

  Still, the insignificant man—Boris was his name—and his wish were making me feel filthier than usual.

  He wanted to murder his wife during broad daylight in the same place where he discovered her infidelity: the Gorky Central Park in Moscow.

  A couple of months ago, his ex had been taking a stroll with her new lover on a day when Boris was feeling particularly lonely and wretched. He’d been sitting on a bench still nursing his wounds after their recent divorce when he spotted her walking hand in hand with one of his amateur hockey league teammates.

  “I introduced them for God’s sake!” Boris complained and complained to me as if I cared about his petty affairs. “And I never knew. I’m so stupid!”

  I didn’t argue the fact. I just wanted to know how I’d gone all the way from Spain to Moscow in the short span of three years. To some, it may seem like a long time, but to someone who has lived a couple of millennia, three years feels like nothing more than an extended weekend.

  My last master had been a lonely, old widow in the small town of Ronda, Spain. She’d had no relatives and was practically on her dying bed when she accidentally released me. She’d had no idea the ancient stone tablet that had sat on her mantel for over fifty years hosted a powerful Djinn capable of making her wishes come true. If she had, she wouldn’t have lived in poverty all of her life, yearning for a visit from her ingrate children.

  The old woman served me only as a sad reminder of the cruelness of the world, the worst of which was delivered by those who were supposed to love you.

  There wasn’t much I could do for her at that point. I simply made her comfortable and watched her die with two of her wishes left unclaimed. Her only desire was to die in peace and without pain. I granted her that much, at least.

  I went back into the stone hoping to be left unmolested, the torture of living inside the stone a lesser evil than the pain the outside world had to offer.

  Instead, I found myself in a ratty Moscow apartment, subject to a petty man with the self-esteem of a bloated toad.

  He sat at his small kitchen table now, nursing a vodka bottle, the smell of borscht heavy in the air.

  “So how do I do this?” Boris asked, his eyes bugging out from his red face. “I say I wish, then the rest, and that’s it?”

  I bit my tongue, trying to overpower the sickening compulsion to answer him truthfully. As a slave Djinn, I could not lie. It was one of the built-in disadvantages pressed on me since that fateful day Cala’s father turned into what I am.

  Cala . . .

  I shook my head to dispel the image of her lovely face as it materialized in my mind, unbidden.

  “Yes, that is it.” I blurted out. Why did I try to fight it? It never worked.

  “All right.” Boris squared his shoulders, wiped his upper lip and set down his vodka shot glass. The scent of alcohol drifted from him. “I wish to be able kill that bitch of my ex-wife without any consequences. No one should know I did it, and I should never go to jail for it.” Some wicked evil sparkled in his eye as he finished his wish.

  Enraged by this insignificant coward, I imagined his trachea snapping in two while he gasped and begged to be spared. Nothing happened. If he was anyone else besides my master, he would have fallen to the ground in an instant, but no such luck.

  During my short life, the stories I heard by the campfire told me that Djinn shouldn’t be able to hurt humans. I had found out otherwise. Many had died at my whim in the last two thousand years—even if only those I’d been commanded to kill.

  Maybe I’d been able to do it because I wasn’t a true Djinn, only a human who had been transformed into one by a wicked magus. I really wasn’t sure. I’d looked for the answer many times, even if I wasn’t often given a chance. Some masters were too eager to use their wishes, and I was out and back into the stone faster than magic. Regardless, I had never found an explanation to my ability to hurt humans.

  I stood from the chair, my head inclined in mock respect. “It shall be so,” I said. “For now, I will retire.” I wanted badly to go, to explore the street in anonymity, to see the sky and the moon.

  Boris licked his lips, the tip of his tongue lingering in one corner of his large mouth. “No, not so fast. I’m not stupid. Yeah sure, you just popped out of that stone.” He pointed at the tablet which laid discarded to one side, a smear of blood marring its surface. “That was spooky enough. But if I was any more drunk, I’d think I imagined it. I need more proof. I won’t kill the bitch until I’m sure I can get away with it, can fly back home like a little free pigeon.” He fluttered his hands over his head. “Do something magical,” he ordered.

  I laughed a single sharp laugh. “You must say I wish.”

  “I’m not wasting one of my wishes!” He swayed on his chair, looking outraged.

  I didn’t have to perform magic for him. My compulsion to obey didn’t go that far. Gratefully. So I shrugged and turned away from him. I didn’t care to ask him how he’d come by the stone tablet anymore. It turned out I was in Moscow with a monster. How I’d gotten there was suddenly irrelevant.

  “Okay, a wish then,” Boris pronounced.

  Lowering my head, I stopped and stared at my shoes. They were of a peculiar style I had copied from a man in Ronda, colorful with words on the side. I didn’t know if they were still fashionable. It was reasonable to assume so, since not long had passed from my time in Spain. I stared and stared at them, feeling the usual mixture of sadness and rage descend on me—the ecstasy of freedom lasting shorter than usual.

  Damn you, Faris. This is all your fault.

  Fists clenched, I turned and faced Boris. He wore the sort of slanted grin that is common in men who have never been in command of anything and suddenly find the immeasurable power of a Djinn at their disposal.

  “Your wish is my command,” I said, not even fighting the compulsion to answer in this manner.

  “Oh, I love this!” Boris exclaimed, rubbing his stout hands together. “Are you sure I can only ask for three wishes.”

  “Certain.”

  “Too bad!” He stood and walked into his cramped living room, rubbing a hand over his balding head. “Clearly, it has to be money. I mean, look at this dump.”

  I followed him into the next room. The apartment was small, but it wasn’t terrible. The problem was the filth and disarray. Boris was a slob. He could buy a new place and, eventually, it would turn into a dump. What he needed was an army of people to pick up after him. Unfortunately, money also bought that.

  “Wish away,” I said, trying to accept the fact that this would be one of those quick outings hardly worth remembering. Boris was ready to issue his second wish, and not even an hour had passed since my release. I’d be trapped in the stone again in record time, and then who knew how long it would be before I got another chance to be free. A claustrophobic feeling settled all around me. Suddenly, the apartment appeared smaller, its gray walls looming closer like prison guards.
>
  Pushing away a pile of crumpled newspaper, Boris sat at the edge of a shabby couch, a glint of pleasure in his mousy eyes. Something about his expression told me that his third and last wish wouldn’t be far off after he got his money. Once again, I would have no chance to track Faris down and make him pay for his cruelty.

  Damn it!

  With a sudden jerk, Boris swiped an arm over the coffee table in front of him. Beer bottles, cups, old magazines, and remote controls landed on the dirty carpet with a muffled thud.

  “All right, I’ve thought about it.” He stood and hiked up his pants over his protruding gut. “See this table here? I want you to stack it with twenty-four karat gold bars.” He got on the tips of his toes and held a hand over his head as tall as it would go. “This high! Is that clear?”

  I made no answer and simply stared at him with disinterest, making it clear nothing would happen unless he said the magic words.

  He rolled his eyes in aggravation. “Fine! I . . . WISH . . . for a stack of 24-karat gold to fill this table corner to corner, going all the way to . . .” he put his hand up again and, in the end, brought it down with a dismissive gesture. “All the way up to the ceiling,” he amended.

  I didn’t point out the flaw in his wish, but that was not my job. Instead, I gave him exactly what he asked for.

  2

  A veritable mountain of gold appeared in front of Boris. His eyes opened wide and his jaw went slack at the sight of the sparkling tower before him. He seemed ready to start whooping for joy, but he’d barely managed a small whimper before the coffee table gave a loud crack and broke, raining down heavy bars of gold.

  Instead, he cried in terror and covered his head with both arms, the look in his eyes full of betrayal as it flashed in my direction.