Djinn: Cursed (10 page)

The man above stopped shooting.  And Dori grabbed a trash can lid and tossed it at Baldy like a Frisbee as he approached.  He knocked it aside, barely slowing.  She said to me, “Run, Angel.  I got the man mountain here.”

I squinted at her, I snapped in anger, “I'm not leaving you here alone.”

She yelled back at me, a growl in her voice, “I'm not alone, remember?  I'm harder to catch than you think.  So... RUN!”

I stared at her incredulously as she grabbed another trash can lid.  She had no fear.  I huffed, “Graaaah!”  Then I turned away from her, laying a hand on her shoulder momentarily and then I started running the opposite way down the alley, spreading my wings.

With two great flaps, my feet missed the ground in mid-stride, and I was airborne.  My instincts taking over as two other men appeared behind Baldy, firing their guns at me as I flapped and swooped upward, twisting in the air.

I couldn't let the police see me so I twisted up and over the roofs, heading away.  I caught a glimpse of Hailey on her knees in front of the club with her hands behind her head as the police swarmed the place.  Some heading toward the alley, drawn by the shooting.

I banked hard to get a view of Dorian.  She was ducking under a swing of Baldy's baton and then she jammed the metal lid into his gut and rolled away.  It barely slowed him, but she was quicker that any of us had anticipated, and she vaulted over a can, pulling it down behind her to slow the men.  The police would get her as soon as they rounded the corner, but she would be safe.

I should have known better than to jinx it with that thought.  Just as I had finished thinking it, Baldy tossed his baton cross-hand, sending it spinning toward Dori and striking her legs, and her feet got tangled up, and she went down.

I hissed in frustration as Baldy reached her and yanked her to her feet by her arm, twisting it behind her back as he scanned the sky, looking for me.

I banked sharply to keep the walls of the alley blocking his view of me.  I couldn't let them take her, they didn't care if she lived or died, Stacy and Billie were proof of that.  My heart ached at my decision.  I growled out to myself as I swooped low to the roof, gaining speed as I headed back to the alley, “It's Dor, Angelina.”  Just how the hell had I become so attached to the... Mouse, in such a short time?

I spun in the air as I pulled my wings in tight to myself as I barrel rolled.  My forward momentum converting into a downward drop as my angle of attack sharpened almost exponentially.  Just before I struck the wall, I snapped my wings out fully as I twisted in the air.

They again sounded like a canvas sail whupping as it caught the wind and I ran my feet along the wall for two steps to absorb the last of my momentum and pushing off with my feet in the opposite direction.

I curled my wings in, adjust my fall slightly to come down directly at Baldy as his cronies spotted me and started firing.  I realized they couldn't be that bad of shots, then I realized they were shooting at my wings as I cringed when a feather was torn out after being struck.  They didn't want to kill me, they wanted me to make a wish.

Everything seemed to slow down as Baldy started to crane his neck around to look up in the direction his men were shooting.  His eyes went wide as I saw a smirk forming on Dorian's face as she just dropped, dangling by her arm in his hands.

If I hit at that speed, I'd kill him and me, so I unfurled my wings once again and could feel one wingtip brushing the wall as I slowed marginally right before I tucked them back in, whipping my feet forward and slamming into Baldy's face in another spectacular crash landing.

I twisted an ankle as it was wrenched to the side, glancing off his upturned face, but my left heel planted squarely on his nose, and we tumbled down in a heap.  He lost his grip on Dorian, and she quickly rolled away.  I yelled, “Run Dori!”

She complied as I rolled to my feet and took a couple limping steps and flapped hard as Baldy tried to scramble to his feet, blood covering his face and streaming out of his flattened nose.  I felt proud I had broken it so well.

I took to the air as I glanced back to see Dori dive into the cycle coral as the police rounded the corner.  How had she known they were coming.  Oh... I sent out a silent thanks to Stacy.  Then I glurked and squawked as something grabbed my injured ankle and yanked me down.  My face met the pavement with extreme prejudice, I heard a hollow thunk as my skull bounced off of the unforgiving surface, causing my head to feel as if it was about to explode.

I had been careless and misjudged, one of Baldy's men had managed to snag me before I could fly off.

I could barely hear the gunshots that followed as the men exchanged fire with the police.  The world was tunneling around me as I felt my conciseness fading while motes of light seemed to float around in my vision.

I was dimly aware of Baldy throwing me over a shoulder and heading away from the firefight.

Well fuck.  At least Dori would be safe now, and I knew where Hailey was.  I absently apologized to her for pulling her into this mess as the darkness folded around me and took the pain away.

I don't know how long I was out, and when I started coming to, I decided I would rather have still been unconscious.  My migraine made the lights wherever I was, feel like icepicks to my brain as I tried to open my eyes.

I blinked an inordinate amount, trying to get used to the light and push away the pain in my head.  As I slowly succeeded, I thought again, maybe I shouldn't have since I could feel all the aches and pains in my body.  I felt stiff.  My entire body ached, and my muscles all felt knotted.  My back and wings hurt bad, but not as bad as my face and head.

I had black hair hanging in my eyes, was there someone else here with me?  Oh wait, I had black hair now.  Then everything came rushing back to me when I tried to raise my hand to brush the errant hair from my eyes but found that my hands were bound.

I glanced around in a panic.  I was in a plain white room that reminded me oddly of a hospital room.  It was sterile and white.  My wings ached so much it was almost debilitating.  I looked to my sides to see I was laying on a table, and my wings were spread out on two matching tables with a spike through each wing!  Railroad spikes.  The bastards had me pinned like a butterfly in some sort of sick parody of an entomologist's bug collection.

My hands were bound in front of me, and the thin, rough rope was tied to another loop that wrapped around my back so I couldn't raise my arms.

My feet were free, but I couldn't get off the table, as I was held firmly by the spikes through the flesh of my wings leading edges.  Or were they through the light but strong bones in them?  That thought scared me more than anything.  They were... my wings.  They didn't have the right to desecrate them like that.

I strained my wings, trying to pull them forward and pull the metal spikes out.  I bit back a scream from the new fire that threatened to consume me, radiating from my wings when the spikes that held me down didn't move, but my wings slipped a little higher on the spikes, causing them to saw at me as the irregular surface of the metal slid along the bone.

I gasped and tried not to hyperventilate as I relaxed to catch my breath.  At least one question had been answered, the spikes were through the flesh and muscle, not the bone.  That was actually good.  If they had gone through the bone, it could cause fat embolus, where the bone marrow seeps into the blood and could cause various serious complications, such as severe lung problems, and seizures.

Sometimes I hate being a nursing student and knowing that stuff.

I stopped to reason that through.  They wanted me alive so they could use me like a wishing slot machine slave until I was used up and dead.  So they were making sure not to terminally damage me.

I thought about using one of my wishes to just get myself out of there and doing to Baldy what he had done to Stacy.  But I couldn't bring myself to do it for a couple reasons.

The fact that I wasn't a cold-blooded killer came to mind, and using my wishes is what they wanted me to do.  I just don't think Baldy knows that if I didn't actually have a conscience, his life would have already been forfeit.  I'd lay money on the fact that the Xerxes family didn't brief him on my powers.  He seemed to think his employer was simply a nut case.

The other reason that it would be so very easy for me to make another wish using a third of the ten I could grant myself.  Bringing myself one step closer to enslavement and death.  It would get easier and easier to make... 'just one more' wish.

No, I needed to get myself out of here some way.  I glanced around trying to see if there was anything around that could help me.  But the room was pretty spartan.  A closed cabinet by the door painted white like the rest of the room.  A drop tile ceiling with those glaring fluorescent lights that just aggravated my headache.  I was so tired of that damn headache.

Set high in the wall farthest from the plain white door, there was a thin strip of windows running the length of the room.  They were only about four inches tall, not big enough for a person to slip out of.  I could see a concrete curb just a few inches from them.  Ok, so I knew I was in some sort of basement then.  How does that help me?  The answer, it didn't.  I was so screwed there.

I tried manipulating the ropes, twisting my hands to try to get to the knots, but every motion just seemed to tighten them.  Did they have some sort of fricking sailor on the payroll doing these damn knots?  My panic was rising.  I hated that my fight or flight sense had been heightened since this started, it was just making it that much harder to think.

Every motion set a new wave of pains though my stiff and sore muscles but I tried twisting this way and that, trying to get the ropes to loosen or to feel out any weaknesses.  I exhaled in exasperation, they had me pretty much dead to rights.

I tried pulling my wings up again and let out a whimpering gasp in pain when I was rewarded with that burning agony once again.  I had been so distracted by that pain and the sound of my anguished outburst that I hadn't heard the door.

I almost jumped when a familiar deep voice said, “Good, you're awake.”  I whipped my head over to the sound of Baldy's voice and immediately regretted it as the stabbing pain went through my head.  I closed my eyes for a moment and cursed myself as I felt a tear rolling down my cheek.  This bastard didn't need to see me crying.

I opened my eyes and focused on the man.  I tried not to smile at his crooked and obviously broken nose, and the bruises that accompanied it.  He was studying me in a detached, clinical manner as he lifted a plastic toolbox he was carrying and dropped it unceremoniously on the table beside me.  He asked, “Let's get to work then shall we?”

I hissed at him, “What, you're seriously that cliché?  You're going to unveil your array of torture devices now?”  I attempted to hide the waver in my voice as my panic started to rise.

He smiled almost cruelly, his dark grey eyes darkening even more as he said in a voice someone uses with a misbehaving child, “Nothing so literary.  This is just the tool box from the car.”  He opened the lid and pulled out a pair of pliers.

He tested them and smiled at me. “It is amazing just how many everyday items can inflict staggering pain. A pity really, those wings of yours are fascinating.”

He turned his eyes back to me and said like it was perfectly reasonable as he took a step over to one of my wings and reached out a hand to caress the leading edge.  I tried to pull back from his touch as he said, “Now make a wish Miss Drake.”

I screamed when a white hot, debilitating pain shot through me, as I heard a cracking sound of bone as he grabbed the tip of my wing with the pliers and twisted violently.

Tears were flowing down my cheeks freely as my scream ended with me out of breath, my mouth still forming the scream as I tried to inhale.  I was afraid I wasn't going to succeed when I finally was able to suck in a ragged breath.

I growled out in anger, frustration, and pain as I swung my legs up and kicked him in the back of the head.  He stumbled forward and onto the table, across my wing.  He looked at my legs as I got ready to strike out again.  He just reached down and jammed the pliers into the flesh of my wing, and I screamed again.  My legs dropping as I tried to twist away from the pain.

He growled at me, “That, was unpleasant.  Don't do that again.  I've never had such problems with any of my contracts, and that makes me a little agitated.”

He pulled out some rope from the box.  It was like the type which had my hands bound, and he went about roughly binding my legs and tying them back to connect with the other at my back, ropes cutting into my ankles.  I was hobbled.

He looked satisfied then grabbed the pliers again and started back to my wing.  “I don't know how you are able to change yourself like this with a wish.  It is something out of a science fiction show, and I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't witnessed it myself.”  He touched my wing, and I flinched it back as far as I could.

Then he grabbed the wing roughly to stop me from twitching it. “But my employer wants you to keep doing whatever you did.  I don't enjoy hurting you, so why don't you make it easy on yourself and make a wish?”  There was a lie in his voice, I could tell that he enjoyed visiting pain on those he saw as weaker than him.  I saw people just like that all the time as I grew up without my mom.

I tried to sound strong as I hissed, “Fuck you!”  But it sounded more like it came from a scared child.  Shaky and pathetic.

He sighed, shook his head, and I was again screaming.  I felt panicked and helpless, I could actually feel my heart thudding in my chest like it was trying to escape.  I found it harder and harder to hold my head up and my vision was tunneling.  He stopped what he was doing, shifted over and patted my cheek. “No, don't pass out yet Miss Drake.  First, make a wish.  Change yourself again.”

I chuckled through my tears and asked in a wavering voice, “You don't know what is happening, do you?  Your 'employer' is keeping you in the dark.  The wishes don't just change me.  I could wish for anything, even your death.  Or did he fail to mention that?”

He paused a moment, squinting his eyes, considering my words.  A mix of disbelief and suspicion on his furrowed brow.  He looked at my wings then back at me.  I had him questioning things.  He finally slowly started to turn back to his work with the now bloody pliers.

I had had enough, I couldn't take that kind of pain again.  I started to yell, “I wish...”  And his hand clamped over my mouth.  I saw a glint of fear in them.  Now he believed me, and he knew I was at a breaking point.  It seems the cold and calculating mercenary had a strong survival instinct after all.

The tremors inside me that had started as I began my wish subsided along with the echoes of the various voices that were all the various versions of me.  I felt a need inside that gnawed at me to finish the wish, it was an almost overwhelming compulsion that faded as the many whispers of my own voice faded.

Then I felt a wave of nausea as I heard Baldy's voice in my head, “I wish I knew what that old fuck has gotten me into.  Can the girl really kill me with a wish?”  I stopped struggling and smiled into his hand as I locked eyes with him and I nodded once.  His eyes widened a bit before he schooled his expression.  He knew I had heard his unspoken wish and responded.

I could see a million calculations going through his head in his eyes.  He held the pliers toward my face and warned, “Just one peep, Miss Drake.  Things could get very unpleasant.”

He pulled his hand from my mouth and grabbed a dirty shop rag from the toolbox and stuffed it into my mouth.  I just breathed through my nose, ignoring the awful taste of oil and grease, clearing my head from the new pains he had introduced me to.  And I felt like... less... I had thought that I'd be brave and strong through something like this, but he and I knew the truth, he had broken me in less than a minute with the pain.  I was going to make a wish, anything, to make the pain stop.  I felt like less than nothing with that realization.

He just stood there looking at my wings, then me, then the door.  Calculating.  I knew he was most likely weighing the money he had been paid for the contract against the possibility I could visit something on him worse than death with just a word.

Then his eyes narrowed as someone entered the room.  I couldn't see who it was as Baldy's bulk was in the way.  The man asked in his low baritone, “Is it true?  Could she have...”

Then a voice that chilled me to the very core of my being cut him off, “Mr. Kanton, I will take it from here.  I'll need you and your men to make sure I am not disturbed.”

Kanton hesitated a moment, then set the pliers down on the table and stepped past the man who couldn't possibly be here.  I swallowed as the mercenary closed the door behind him after he left, leaving me lying there staring in stunned silence at Xerxes.

He was older than the middle-aged man in the memories my inadvertent wish had forced upon me, but it was the same man, not a distant relative, I was positive of that, his voice had struck a tone within me that scared me more than the torture Baldy had visited on me.

He removed the rag from my mouth and turned his attention to my wings.  Of course, he wasn't afraid of me making a wish since they couldn't harm him.

I finally found my voice as the man continued to study me with detached curiosity, and I whispered, “Xerxes?  How?”

He cocked an eyebrow at my recognition, his middle eastern features showing more wrinkles than in my memories and his long dark hair now had more grey than anything.  I'd say he was more like sixty or so than forty.  How was he still alive?

He rubbed hid chin with hands which had knobby knuckles that showed classic signs of advanced arthritis.  But even so, I could still see the dangerous and formidable warlord in his posture and movements.  He was still someone you didn't turn your back on unless you were supremely stupid.

Then he nodded and said in his accented English, “So, you made another wish then.”  He seemed amused at that.  Then he nodded. “Yes.  As you say, in the flesh?”  He held a hand in front of himself, studying it as he flexed his fingers. “Such as it is.”

Then he sighed and looked back toward me and said like it was perfectly reasonable, “Your mother cost me so much.”

I was still shocked that a man who lived thousands of years ago was standing there in front of me before the comment about my mother could sink in.  I asked before I could stop myself.  “But how?  How are you still alive?”