Day of the Djinn Warriors (3 page)

“What kind of a portal?” asked Philippa.

“An ancient temple,” said Nimrod. “Egyptian, Mayan, Babylonian. That’s really what they were designed for in the first place.”

“I’m thinking Egyptian is best,” said Mr. Rakshasas. “That way we’ll get a Ka servant to take care of any sinister characters that we might meet.”

“Who’s going to do it?” asked John.

“It will have to be someone of her own age, whom Faustina will trust,” said Nimrod.

“Dybbuk,” said John.

“Yes,” said Nimrod. “That’s what I thought.”

“He’ll do it,” said John. “He’ll have to do it. After all, Faustina is his sister.”

“Perhaps.” Mr. Rakshasas sighed. “But I’m thinking he’ll require some careful persuasion. Every foot is slow on an unknown path.”

“Of course he’ll do it,” insisted John. And for once he decided to answer Mr. Rakshasas in kind with a proverb: “After all, blood is thicker than water.”

“Yes,” Mr. Rakshasas said in a way that made John think he wasn’t sure at all. “Honey is sweet, but it takes a brave man to lick it off a beehive.”

“Mr. Rakshasas is right, John,” said Nimrod. “Kid gloves will be required to handle the poor chap. Dybbuk’s still recovering from the shock of learning who and what he is. But there’s not much time. In less than thirty days it will be too late for Faustina to do anything to take your mother’s place. I shall leave tonight and speak to him tomorrow.”

John was about to suggest that it might be best if he went along with Nimrod because he and Dybbuk were friends. But then John remembered his father, and the Methusaleh binding.

“I agree,” said Nimrod, for while he couldn’t read minds, he was very good at reading what was written on a boy’s face. “It might be a good idea to have you along, just to reinforce our case.”

“But how?” he asked Nimrod. “We have to stay here, don’t we? Me and Phil. Otherwise Dad’s going to start aging again.”

“There might be a way,” said Mr. Rakshasas, who, as the author of the
Shorter Baghdad Rules
, was an expert on what djinn could and could not do. “A
Posse Commodata
. That means a loan of power. Most djinn are reluctant to loan their power to another djinn since it requires an uncommon degree of trust. But I’m thinking that shouldn’t be a problem between twins. The binding is only affected by the proximity of djinn power, not your body, John.”

“All right then,” said John. “How do I do it? How do I give Phil all my power?”

“Don’t be a goose in a hurry to a fox’s den, young fellow me lad,” said Mr. Rakshasas. “Giving another djinn all your power is not something done lightly. What’s more,
Posse Commodata
is not always to someone’s taste. Before and after. The only way for one djinn to loan power to another is for that djinn to summon all his internal heat and then breathe into that other djinn’s ear.”

“Breathe into her ear?”

“For about sixty seconds,” said Mr. Rakshasas.

John looked at his sister’s ear and grimaced with disgust. “No way. You cannot be serious. I mean, if it was anyone else but her. That’s disgusting.”

“Believe me, the feeling’s mutual, bro,” Philippa said, coolly. “The thought of having your slobbery mouth on any part of me is totally gross.”

“What’s gross about it?” asked Mr. Rakshasas.

“For one thing, she’s my sister,” protested John.

“And for another, he’s my brother.”

“It’s just not the sort of thing brothers and sisters do,” said John. “Blow in each other’s ears.”

“We’re not doing it.”

Nimrod and Mr. Rakshasas stayed quiet and let the twins make their protestations of revulsion and disgust, knowing, as the children did themselves, that in spite of these spiteful words, they were going to have to do it. And after a while, when John and Philippa had stopped yelling and making faces at each other, they both looked at the two older djinn feeling a little embarrassed at this display of youthful petulance.

“Sorry for sounding off like that,” said John.

“Me, too,” said Philippa. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“As you get older,” said Mr. Rakshasas, “you’ll learn that silence is the fence around the field where the wisdom is stacked.” He smiled calmly. “In life, you must learn to take the little potato with the big potato.”

“What do I have to do?” John asked, not entirely sure he understood what Mr. Rakshasas was talking about.

Nimrod directed Philippa to lie down on the floor and then told John to put his fingers around his sister’s ear. “Now then, John, take a deep breath and press your mouth over her whole ear, just as if you were trying to eat it. Then you must breathe deeply into it, until I tell you to stop.”

“I hope your ears are clean,” said John.

“Cleaner than yours, I bet,” said Philippa.

John looked at Nimrod and raised his eyebrows, as if asking him to recognize this latest provocation.

“Come on, you idiot,” said Philippa, and closed her eyes.

Holding his sister’s ear, John bent forward.

“Ugh,” said Philippa. “His breath. It feels really hot.”

“That’s the whole idea, Philippa,” explained Nimrod.

As soon as John had finished, Philippa rolled quickly away and wiped her ear with her forearm. “Ugh. That was really horrible. Like having a lamprey attached to my ear.”

The distaste John felt at having pressed his mouth against his sister’s ear was quite overtaken by a dreadful feeling of mortal ordinariness. It was as if a small part of him had died. He stood up, sat down again almost immediately, and hung his head in his hands. “What’s a lamprey?” he whispered.

“A jawless fish,” she said cruelly, “with a toothed, funnellike sucking mouth. A little like an eel.”

John smiled wearily.

“How do you feel?” Nimrod asked the boy.

“Wasted,” said John.

“And you, Philippa?” asked Nimrod. “How do you feel?”

“Twice as strong,” she said. “Like I just plugged myself into the electricity and then had a cup of really strong coffee.”

“I think it worked,” said Nimrod.

“Is this what it feels like to be mundane?” said John.

“How
does
it feel?” asked Philippa, placing a concerned, sisterly hand on his shoulder, and already regretting some of the nasty things she’d said to him.

“Like I just came in last in the New York City Marathon and, somewhere along the way, managed to lose something very, very valuable. Like a limb. I feel like I’m coming down with some kind of virus.”

“Sure, you never miss the water until the well runs dry,” said Mr. Rakshasas.

“That’s for sure,” said John. He took a deep breath and stood up. “When do we leave?”

“Now,” said Nimrod. “There’s really no time to lose.”

They went out of the house, and into New York’s Central Park, which, late at night, is mostly deserted. There, in an open patch of ground, Nimrod whipped up a powerful but invisible tornado that was marked only by a discarded newspaper swirling around the base of the vortex. In a matter of a few seconds, he and John started to rise up on top of this column of air as if they had been summoned to appear before some celestial court. Philippa and Mr. Rakshasas watched them until they were almost fifty feet in the air, at which point, Nimrod turned the funnel of wind westward and, at a speed of almost 261 mph — an F5 on the Enhanced Fujita-Pearson Tornado Intensity Scale — they disappeared into the Manhattan night sky.

D
ybbuk wanted to meet his real father.

That’s normal, isn’t it? Iblis might be the wickedest djinn in the world, but I’m still his son. What could be wrong with me wanting to meet the guy? Every kid wants to meet his old man, even if he is a sort of monster
.

At the same time, however, he knew his mother, Jenny Sachertorte, would never permit such a thing. For one thing, she was frightened of Iblis. Most sensible people were. And for another, she would worry that meeting Iblis would only tempt Dybbuk somehow to go bad.

I don’t know what she’s worrying about. It’s not like I’m wicked or anything, like him. Sure, I do something wild now and again. What kid doesn’t? But that doesn’t make me a bad person. Maybe, if he met me, that might help Iblis not to be bad himself anymore. It could be that not having had me around all his life has just made him worse
.

Dybbuk knew where his father was to be found. Every djinn knew that it was the Ifrit who controlled Las Vegas, not the Mafia, like most humans thought. And Vegas wasn’t
actually very far away from Palm Springs where Dybbuk lived. It was just a question of getting there. But how was he ever to persuade his mother to let him go? Since his arrival back from India, she was keeping a pretty close eye on him. What was worse, she’d made him swear an oath that he wouldn’t start any whirlwinds and fly off somewhere on his own. He was grounded.

Dybbuk always laughed when he heard kids at his school use that word, “grounded,” as if it meant something. Unlike them of course, he really was grounded. He could always have caught a bus to Vegas, but Dybbuk was much too lazy ever to do something like that. He hated buses. Was even a little frightened of them, and of the smelly, aggressive people who were often on them. Then there was the claustrophobia he felt on a bus. This is normal for any djinn, who hate all enclosed spaces except their own lamps.

So Dybbuk stayed home and hatched a plan that would get him to Vegas legitimately.

There were times when Dybbuk could play his mother like a guitar. He knew just how to pick her up, tune her a little, and then strum the strings to hear the tune he wanted. He knew exactly what to do to make her say the sort of thing she always said. So he walked around the house with a face like thunder, saying nothing very much and staring into space. Meanwhile, she baked him his favorite kind of curried cake, let him watch unsuitable DVDs, gave him his allowance, and she even gave him a new PlayStation game. But still he kept on with the face. And finally, she cracked. She
snatched a bowl of cereal out of his fingers that he’d chosen to eat instead of her cake, and hurled it against the kitchen wall.

“Dybbuk,” she yelled. Only when she was really angry did she call him by his given name instead of calling him Buck, which was the name he preferred. “You’re trying my patience. I bake you a cake. I get you a game. And still you walk around looking like a long streak of misery. Isn’t there anything that would cheer you up?”

Now I’ve got her
.

“Isn’t there anything I can do that’s going to put a smile on your gloomy face?”

He nodded. “Sure,” he said. “I want to go to Las Vegas.”

Jenny Sachertorte’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Vegas? What do you want to go there for? You’re too young to gamble and too old for the Chocolate Factory tour. Besides, no good djinn ever goes to Vegas without a good deal of caution. You know the place is run by the Ifrit.”

“Forget it,” he groaned like a bassoon, and rolled his eyes in his head.

“No, no, no,” she said. “If it might make you happy, we’ll go to Vegas. Just tell me why you want to go. Is it the lights?”

“I hate the lights,” said Dybbuk. “They look so dumb and tacky.”

“What then?”

“I want to see Adam Apollonius.”

Adam Apollonius was the most famous illusionist and magician in America. He was also the author of several
self-promoting publicity stunts, such as his famous straitjacketed skydiving escape, and his blindfolded climb up the exterior of the Sears Tower in Chicago. Dybbuk had a poster of him on his bedroom wall.

“I don’t understand the fascination,” said his mother. “You know it’s all just an illusion. Any djinn can do that magic stuff for real. So what is it with this guy?”

“I dunno.” Dybbuk yawned. “I guess it’s just that he makes it look cooler than we do. Besides, I like the fact that it’s an illusion. Like you say, we can do it for real. I guess that makes it seem kind of ordinary. And he makes a show out of it, doesn’t keep it all a weird secret the way we do.”

“You know why we keep it a secret,” said Jenny Sachertorte. “It’s to protect ourselves.”

Dybbuk’s yawn grew larger. “Yeah, I know.” He shrugged. “Look, you asked what might make me happy. I told you. But it’s no big deal. Forget about it, okay?”

“No, we’ll go,” she agreed. “It might be fun at that.”

Dybbuk congratulated himself on the success of his plan.

I can hardly be in Las Vegas without my father knowing about it. He’s bound to seek me out. Surely. And it’s not like I want him to do anything. All I want to do is talk to the guy. To hang out with him for a few hours
.

He smiled.

“There, that’s better,” said Dybbuk’s mother. “I just want what’s going to make you happy, honey.”

Iblis had always expected his youngest son to show up in Las Vegas at some time or other. Indeed, for many years he had
been counting on it, although perhaps not quite as soon as this. And it was just good luck for Iblis — which of course is bad luck for the rest of us — that Dybbuk and his mother should have shown up in the gambling capital of the world just a few hours after Iblis had been mauled by a pair of black djinn tigers. Mauled severely enough to necessitate abandoning his previous body and seeking out a new one. He had been going about this tedious process when he felt himself suddenly touched by his son’s presence — the minute Dybbuk got off the plane at McCarran International Airport and stepped onto the desert tarmac. This was also a bit of good luck for Iblis. In his physical human shape, he might never have felt the boy’s presence at all. A physical shape makes a djinn less sensitive to cosmic vibrations. But in his temporary existence as pure spirit it was much easier for him to detect his son’s arrival in Las Vegas — something Jenny Sachertorte could never have supposed.

Moving at the speed of light, Iblis flew through the dry Nevada air like an invisible missile locked onto its unwitting target. He found the boy and his mother at the baggage carousel, recognizing Jenny Sachertorte immediately in her scarlet, rhinestone pantsuit. The boy was tall, good-looking, and obviously charismatic.
Just like his father
, Iblis told himself conceitedly. And it took only a matter of a few brief seconds for him to occupy Dybbuk’s mind and discover the secrets of his young heart. With an ethereal, occult smile, Iblis realized that an ingenious plan he had been waiting for almost thirteen years to act upon was now ready to put into immediate effect.

As quickly as he had taken possession of Dybbuk’s body, Iblis was gone again, before Jenny Sachertorte — or, indeed, Dybbuk himself — was really aware that the spirit shape of the evil djinn had even been near them.

“What’s the matter?” she asked Dybbuk. “You looked blank for a moment.”

“Did I?”

“Yes. I asked you to grab that suitcase and it was like you hadn’t heard me.”

“I didn’t hear you. My ears. I’m still recovering from being in that plane. I hate planes almost as much as I hate buses.”

“It’ll pass. Take another claustrophobia pill.”

“I still don’t know why we took a plane at all, instead of traveling by whirlwind.”

“We’re here, aren’t we? Stop complaining. Besides, I don’t want us drawing attention to ourselves by using djinn power. You hear me, Buck? This town is full of Ifrit and if they sense us using djinn power we might find ourselves in trouble. Okay?”

“Okay, okay.”

They took a taxi to the Winter Palace Hotel and checked into a two-bedroom, rooftop suite with a spectacular view of Las Vegas. After dinner, they went to Adam Apollonius’s show, where they had the best seats in the house. Apollonius himself was a tall, thin man with a little goatee, an earring, and a lot of tattoos. Jenny Sachertorte thought he looked and sounded like an English soccer star.

The show was in two halves. In the first half, Apollonius made a variety of bears — polar bears and grizzly bears — appear and disappear from different parts of the auditorium. He also turned himself into a real silverback gorilla and then back again before having himself beheaded by a man wielding a giant ax who proceeded to walk around the stage carrying the magician’s still-talking head. (For those who disliked Adam Apollonius, this was usually the best bit in the show.)

Dr. Sachertorte tried not to look bored, but of course she was. By contrast, Dybbuk looked like he was entranced. In the intermission they got some drinks, and she asked if Dybbuk minded her not coming back for the second half.

“I don’t mind,” said Dybbuk.

In the second half, Apollonius made an elephant disappear from the stage, which, even to Dybbuk’s djinn eyes, looked pretty impressive. Then Apollonius said he wanted a volunteer from the audience to help him with his signature magic trick: the Magic Bullet Catch. He selected Dybbuk to come up onstage. And Dybbuk was, of course, delighted. He loved guns almost as much as he liked magic.

The Bullet Catch, in which a marked bullet is fired at the magician who catches it in his teeth, is the most dangerous trick in magic and has taken the lives of more than a dozen performers. Apollonius, who did nothing by halves, invited Dybbuk to fire a rifle at his head. Before Dybbuk could decide exactly how Apollonius was going to work the trick, the magician had ordered a loud drumroll from the orchestra, and invited his volunteer assistant to pull the trigger.

A split second later, the magician shouted at Dybbuk to stop. Too late. The gun fired and Adam Apollonius, who must have thought he had been shot, cried aloud and then rolled on the floor. The audience stood up as one. There were shouts and screams. Someone rushed onto the stage. Horrified, Dybbuk threw down the gun and ran forward to the apparently stricken magician.

A moment later, Apollonius jumped up again, grinning triumphantly, with a rifle bullet clearly visible between his teeth. He handed the bullet to Dybbuk, who verified that it was indeed the very same one marked by him earlier, and then bowed to the huge applause that shook the whole auditorium. Taking hold of Dybbuk’s hand, Apollonius invited the excited young djinn first to take a bow himself, and then to join him backstage.

Dybbuk was beside himself with pleasure and delight at meeting with his hero.

“For a minute back there, I thought I’d actually shot you,” confessed Dybbuk when they were alone in the magician’s dressing room.

“All part of the act, old boy,” said Apollonius. “The idea that there’s been some kind of accident gets the audience excited. They love the idea that I might have been killed.”

“Just like the great Houdini, huh?”

“You know about magic, kid?”

“Houdini was the greatest,” said Dybbuk. “But you’re pretty good.”

Apollonius tried to look modest, and failed. “What about you, kid? Do you do any magic yourself?”

“Sure.”

Infected with the bright lights of Las Vegas and the excitement of a lavish stage show, Dybbuk wanted to impress his glamorous host and, despite the warning his mother had given him about using djinn power, he decided to show Apollonius something the magician would probably think was just a bit of close-up magic instead of the real thing. Dybbuk extended his arm, pulled up his sleeve the way real magicians did on TV, and showed Apollonius his open palm and then the back of his hand. Dybbuk whispered his focus word. And when he showed Apollonius his palm again there was a chocolate bar in his hand.

“Pretty good,” said Apollonius.

“May I borrow your handkerchief, sir?” Dybbuk asked politely.

Apollonius tugged his handkerchief out of his breast pocket and, as requested, covered the chocolate bar in Dybbuk’s hand. Dybbuk whispered his focus word again and then lifted the handkerchief away to reveal the chocolate bar had disappeared. Apollonius started to applaud.

“How old are you, sonny?” he asked.

“Nearly thirteen, sir.”

“That’s the best close-up illusion I think I’ve ever seen,” said the man. “And believe me, I’ve seen the best. Show me another.”

“Let me see here,” mumbled Dybbuk, and thought for a moment. “How about a little levitation?”

He’d seen street magicians on TV levitating a few inches off the ground. It was a trick done with a couple of powerful magnets in the heels of their shoes; you just slipped one shoe off, let it stick to the other, and then lifted one foot in the air. Usually the magicians cheated a little with the TV camera so that you only saw one side of the magician’s body. But somehow it always looked impressive.

Maybe if he could make a very small whirlwind underneath his feet he could lift himself that way. He’d never really tried it before but, to his surprise, it worked. What was more, it looked a lot more convincing than anything ever seen on TV; Dybbuk rose all of twelve inches into the air, hovering there for several seconds before slowly coming down to earth again.

“Amazing,” said Apollonius. “I’ve never seen anyone do a levitation trick that’s as good as that. How do you do it?”

Dybbuk shrugged modestly. “Practice,” he said.

“Thirteen years old and you’re doing close-up tricks that take years to perfect. Years.” He shook his head in genuine awe. “What’s your best trick? The climax of your act.”

“The Indian Rope Trick.”

“Did you bring the rope?”

“It’s in the auditorium,” said Dybbuk. “I left it there, under my seat.” Even as he spoke he was putting a long length of thick rope under his seat, with djinn power.

“You came prepared, didn’t you?”

They went back onstage, in front of the now empty auditorium. Dybbuk got the rope and then laid it in a careful coil on the stage, like a sleeping python. Then, at the very moment when Apollonius was examining the rope, Dybbuk conjured a flute from the air.