Kissed by Smoke (12 page)

Then something else hit me. “They could have
killed Trevor. Easily. But they didn’t. Instead they, whoever
‘they’ are, sent a couple of bumbling rednecks after him. Why? I
mean, they killed Agent Vega with a djinni, made good and sure he
was dead. Obviously the two attacks are connected somehow.”

Tommy Waheneka gave me a look of approval,
but remained silent. Obviously I was on to something. Though why he
didn’t just tell me, I had no idea.

“Okay, so if they weren’t actually worried
about killing Trevor and there was no obvious reason for beating
him up, like say interrogation or something, there has to be a less
obvious reason.” I mulled that over for awhile.

“Who was the first person Trevor called when
he got to the hospital?” Tommy’s voice was peaceful,
nonchalant.

“Me. But that’s natural, I’m his sister … ”
my voice trailed off. I was his sister. I also worked with him. He
was my SRA contact. My “handler” if you will. And I was the only
Hunter within hundreds of miles, the first person the SRA would
send even if I hadn’t come on my own.

“Me? They want me?”

A slight smile quirked the shaman’s lips.
“Yes, Morgan. You.”

“But who are they? And why me?”

Tommy heaved himself out of his chair and
went to tinker at his stove. “As to the who and why, I have no
idea. The spirits are silent on the matter.”

Oh, shit. Spirits again. First Cordy and her
damn guides or whatever, and now Tommy and his spirits. What was
with the Other Side mucking in my business all the time?

“I don’t suppose you could, you know, give
them a little jog?”

He chuckled. “Doesn’t work like that.”

Of course not. “So now what?”

“No idea.” He turned from the stove, a
silver pot in his hand. “Cappuccino?”

***

“Tommy, have you ever heard of the djinn?”
It was such a mad, crazy question, but I supposed if anyone would
know about them, Tommy would.

Bright eyes twinkled at me out of an ancient
face. “Now you are asking the right questions.”

As he calmly sipped at his coffee, Tommy
told me how the djinn appeared on tribal lands decades before the
white man came. “They just appeared. Out of thin air,” Tommy waved
his cappuccino cup around, nearly sloshing his drink over the side.
“Some people believed they were gods we should worship, but my
ancestor was a shaman like me. He knew better.”

“He knew what the djinn were?” I was
completely enraptured by Tommy’s tale.

“Oh, yes, he knew. He had seen them in his
visions and he knew they were powerful, but not without weakness.
So,” Tommy shrugged, “he did what any good shaman would do.”

“What was that?” Inigo asked.

“Why, exploited that weakness, of course. He
used the power of the earth and the sun and nature all around him
to trap one of the most powerful of the djinn: A Marid. He forced
it to admit that it had fled with its people to avoid being
captured and enslaved by powerful magi.”

“What did your ancestor do then?”

“Let it go. With an oath to never again
trouble our people.” Tommy drained the last of his cappuccino and
began clearing up. “They vanished into the high desert, never to be
heard from again.” He glanced over to me. “Until now.”

A djinni had killed Agent Vega. A djinni
enslaved by powerful magic. Magic which had also bound together a
nest of vampires and demons and had immolated a vamp from a
distance. Talk about bad juju.

“Can you trap a djinni, Tommy?”

“A minor djinni, maybe,” he said, “but not a
Marid. I am not nearly as powerful as my ancestor was. There is no
human left who can trap a Marid. In fact, I know of only one
creature alive today who can trap a Marid.”

“Which creature?”

“The Fairy Queen.”

I sighed. Who else? Eddie had been wrong,
after all. “Of course it had to be the frigging Fairy Queen. I
guess there’s only one thing to do.”

Tommy just smiled knowingly, but Inigo gave
me a baffled look. “What is that?”

“We’re going into the desert to look for the
djinn.”

“One thing I should tell you before you go,”
Tommy spoke up.

I turned to look at the old man. “Yeah?”

“When you see your mother tonight, ask her
about Alister Jones.”

I winced as the Mustang hit yet another
pothole. Poor thing just wasn’t made for this kind of abuse.

“What the hell was that crack about my
mother and Alister Jones?” It was a rhetorical question. Obviously,
Inigo had no more of a clue than I did. But I couldn’t get my mind
off Tommy’s last words. Why would my mother know Kabita’s father,
the former leader of MI8 and a genocidal maniac?

I pulled the car off to the side of the poor
excuse for a road and killed the engine. The potholes were getting
too thick to dodge, and I didn’t want to break an axle.

“That’s it. We walk.”

Inigo raised an eyebrow. “It’s freezing cold
out there. We have no idea where we’re going, and you want us to
walk?”

“Yeah. Pretty much.”

He shrugged and flashed a grin. “Let’s get
going then.”

I was glad I’d brought my puffy winter coat.
It was possibly the ugliest coat I’d ever seen, but it was warm.
Two steps from the car and I wished I had a second one. The wind
hit me, cutting through my jeans and chilling me to the bone.

Inigo moved closer and wrapped an arm around
me. Suddenly it was as though the wind died down and the air around
us warmed up. Except that the wind was definitely still blowing.
The whipping branches of a stubby juniper tree proved that.

Have I mentioned how good it is to have a
boyfriend with dragon magic?

The frozen ground crunched under our feet as
we made our way toward … well, frankly, I had no idea. My plan
didn’t go any further than hitting the desert and hoping for a
miracle. According to Eddie, the djinn didn’t like humans intruding
on their territory. I wasn’t sure pissing off a supernatural was a
good idea, but it was the only one I had.

“You sure this is the right place?”

Inigo’s question grated on my nerves. “How
would I know?” There was an edge of a snap to my voice. It wasn’t
fair, but I was feeling frayed and I couldn’t help myself. “Sorry.”
I glanced up at him. “I know I’m being a bitch. I’m just … ”

“Scared? Worried? Freaking out?”

I gave him a wry grin. “Something like that,
yeah.” Trust Inigo to understand.

“Well,” he tugged me a little closer, “why
don’t you try using your new superpower.”

“What?”

“Eddie said that the djinn were creatures of
air. And you were able to see the one that killed Vega. Maybe you
can sense them now.”

He had a point. I was sort of embarrassed I
hadn’t thought of it. “Okay. I’ll give it a try.”

I stepped out from the circle of his arm,
and was immediately overwhelmed with the icy cold of the wind. It
whipped against me as though trying to throw me to the ground and
bury me in cold. Suddenly I was sure it wasn’t a natural wind.

Instead of turning my back to it, which was
probably the natural reaction, I faced it. Tears streamed down my
face from the whip of the wind and my lips turned numb from the
cold. Still, I faced it. And from within the depths of my soul,
something uncoiled.

My own wind rushed out of me, its silver
strands sparkling in the winter sunlight like so much glitter.
Instead of the usual wispiness, it was like a giant wall, pushing
against the other wind. Like two waves crashing together.

I had zero control over my Air. It just
poured out of me, raging against that cold wall of “other” air.
Blue and white sparks flew where the winds met. I staggered under
the pressure. I could feel it like it was my own body beating
against the icy wall.

Morgan! Morgan!

Inigo’s voice was faint. Distant. I wasn’t
even sure if he was speaking aloud or in my head. He was a fuzzy
shape outside the wall of wind.

Within the wall of wind, other voices called
to me. Faces, haunted faces, begging me to join them. It was like
that painting, The Scream, come to life.

I fell to my knees, the Air still pouring
out of me. The edges of my vision were darkening. Like an old photo
when it first catches fire. I knew without a doubt if I didn’t rein
in the Air, it would kill me. Unfortunately, I no longer had the
strength.

So I did the only thing I had left to do. I
dove down into that place where my powers lived, and I opened the
cage and let out the Fire.

Like opening the door to a blast furnace,
the Fire flashed out of me. It wrapped around my own Air and then
smashed into the icy-cold wall in front of me. For a second the
other wall shivered, then it flashed into so much mist, spattering
the ground with water droplets.

I hadn’t the strength the pull the Fire and
Air back, but oddly enough they came anyway, winding their
leisurely way into my body. Almost as though satisfied with a job
well done.

It took a moment to realize Inigo was
kneeling beside me, cradling me against his chest. I must have been
worse off than I realized, because he sounded truly panicked.

“Here, allow me.” I didn’t recognize the new
voice. It was female and a little breathy. It reminded me a bit of
Marilyn Monroe.

I opened one eye. Dammit. She
looked
like Marilyn
Monroe. I must have hit my head on something. Maybe I was
hallucinating.

“Inigo, is Marilyn Monroe here?”

A laugh rumbled through his chest. “No,
sweetie. I’m pretty sure she’s a djinni.”

“Yes,” the breathy voice said. “I am one of
the djinn.”

“Then why do you look like Marilyn
Monroe?”

Her pretty face screwed up in a pout. “Is
she not the epitome of human female beauty?”

“I wish.” I managed to get myself into a
sitting position, but I still felt ridiculously weak. “But I’m
afraid curves went out of fashion about forty years ago.”

She gave me a baffled look. “You humans are
so strange.”

“Tell me about it.” With the help of Inigo
and pseudo Marilyn, I managed to stagger to my feet. “Now who are
you and why did you try and blast me with that wind?”

“Oh, it wasn’t me,” fake Marilyn assured me.
“That’s just one of the barriers we put up ages ago to keep humans
from wandering into our territory.”

I just stared at the djinni. Not only did
she look like Marilyn right down to the glamorous curves and glossy
blond hair, she was dressed like Marilyn in a skimpy white frock
and strappy heels. She appeared completely unaffected by the cold.
Holy hell.

“Um, sorry, who are you?”

“Oh, right,” she giggled and fluttered her
hands around. “My name is Zipporah. But you can call me Zip.
Everyone does.” She beamed at me like a young child who’d won first
prize in a spelling bee.

A djinni named Zip. Right.

“Okay, Zip.” I stepped away from Inigo. I
didn’t want to appear weak in front of the djinni. “So, what are
you? Why are you here?”

“I told you. I’m a djinni.” She crossed her
arms over her chest.

“Uh huh.”

“And I’m here to help you.” More
beaming.

I didn’t trust that sunny smile for a split
second.

I glanced over at Inigo. He shrugged so I
turned back to Zip. “So, you know why we’re here?”

“Of course.”

Her voice was so ridiculously perky it was
starting to get on my nerves. I narrowed my eyes. “How do you
know?”

She pointed at my chest. Right to where the
amulet lay under layers of clothing. “I can feel it. It calls to
me.”

“Feel what?”

She gave me a coy look. “Don’t play that
game with me, Morgan Bailey. I know you wear the lost amulet of
Atlantis around your neck.”

“How do you know my name?”

She blinked. “I don’t understand.”

Was she stupid? “I never told you my name.
How do you know who I am?”

Her laugh danced in the air like a living
thing. “Because,” she shook her head, sending her blond ringlets
bouncing, “you are the Key. We have been waiting for you for
centuries.”

***

“What is it with people?” I snarked at Inigo
under my breath. “Royal freaking princess. Stupid ass Atlantean
Key. Are they all drinking the same Kool-Aid?”

Laughter danced in his eyes as he pulled me
to his side and kissed me. It was a pretty thorough kiss and left
me more than a little breathless. “Morgan, you are quite possibly
the most stubborn person I know.”

Somehow I didn’t think he meant that
entirely as a compliment.

“Fine,” I sighed. “So, I’m the Key and a
freaking Atlantean Princess. But why does everyone have to get so
bloody worked up about it? Every time I turn around people go all
cryptic on me. It’s getting old.”

My tirade was interrupted by a shriek from
Zip who was a little ways ahead of us. We both took off at a
run.

“What is it?” Inigo asked, his eyes scanning
the flat countryside, nostrils flaring. I couldn’t see a damn thing
that would have made the djinni freak out, but it looked like he
sensed something.

“Oh, no,” Zip whispered in her breathy
Marilyn voice. “You have to run.” She pointed for a low mount in
the distance. “There. Fast as you can. It’s coming.”

“What’s coming?” I demanded. I was damn
tired of cryptic.

She turned to me, eyes wide with terror.
“You have to run,” she pleaded. “I can’t stop it.”

I was about to demand why when Inigo grabbed
my arm. His voice was low and tense. “Run, Morgan. It’s got our
scent.”

My feet took off, but my mouth was still
running. “What is it?”

“Death Worm.”

“You have got to be kidding me.”

The ground heaved and rolled under my feet,
nearly knocking me on my ass. “Holy shit, what is that thing?”

Inigo grabbed my arm and yanked me up
against him, practically carrying me as he hauled ass toward the
low mound of rocks. Zip had disappeared and something was
definitely coming. Something really big.