Of Wish and Fury (Seven Kings of Jinn)

“Give me the harmal!” a gruff voice shouted above her head.

No. She squirmed and concentrated her magic on the man behind him. She heard him wheeze as he struggled to breathe. She syphoned all the oxygen out of the surrounding air. Would that have consequences? The worry over that made her fumble and her magic dissipated.

“Quick! She’s trying to kill me!”

Charlie? Where was Charlie?

“Oh shit!

As if she’d conjured him, a leg swung above her head and the hands fell away from her arms. A familiar hand wrapped around her wrist and pulled her to her feet. She stumbled against Charlie’s wide chest. He looked down at her, his face strained with worry and exhaustion. His eyebrow was cut and he was covered in sweat and dirt. “You okay?”

She shook her head. “I need to learn how to fight.”

He glanced around at the bodies around them. “You did alright.”

“Alright isn’t good enough.”

Relief washed through Ari at the sound of Jai’s voice and she pulled away from Charlie to see Jai striding to them. Four other bodies lay on the ground, including Jai’s original attacker. “Are you okay?” she stumbled toward him on adrenaline-shaky legs.

His stern expression stopped her in her tracks. “I’m fine. A little dizzy, but fine. Their concoction needs tweaking. There wasn’t nearly enough strength in it to keep me placid for long.” He looked around. “I don’t know what happened here, but we’ve got to get back and call on the Red King. This was…”

“Weird?” Charlie offered, kicking aside one of the guy’s legs. “These guys were human. What were they doing coming after Ari?”

“One of them said something.” Ari peered down at the man whose nose she’d broken. Charlie must have rendered him unconscious, too. Oh, swell… didn’t that make her feel useless. “He said, ‘Master Dalí can’t wait to meet you.’”

Jai’s face darkened. “I’ve never heard of him. But the Master part, the fog…”

“Jinn?”

“Definitely. Charlie, give me a hand to get these guys off the road.”

Ari glowered as Charlie bent to toss an unconscious guy over his shoulder, heading for the thick woodland to dump him there. “Hey, I can help.”

Striding by her with his own unconscious attacker, Jai pointed at the SUV. “Get in the car. I’m pissed at you for getting out of it in the first place.”

Outrage lit through her. “Hey, I’m a big girl, I can make my own decisions.”

“Get in the car, Ari!” Charlie yelled now, his own eyes dark with anger.

Her mouth fell open, her cheeks blazing with indignation as the two men in her life stared at her, their expressions implacable. She made a ‘pfft’ sound and whirled around, stomping to the car. “Too much testosterone, infuriating cavemen, need someone else to boss around, stupid jerks…” she kept muttering insults under her breath until Charlie and Jai cleared the road. Charlie jumped into the passenger seat as Jai pressed a hand to the bonnet of the SUV. The engine started and he walked around, pulling the driver’s door open, bristling with aggression. He was probably pissed because he let himself get incapacitated.

Neither of them said a word to one another. The drive back to the house was awkward and Ari had to shake herself when she remembered she’d buried her dad today. It already felt like days ago. Time had been moving in a blurry mass of nothingness. Not anymore, Ari mused, thinking about her attackers and this new threat.

Chapter

Eight

RAIN IS NOT ENOUGH. I WANT THE LIGHTNING

Okay, so his father had been right about where the seal was and about the guardian jinn covering her ass. But he had mentioned nothing about the unpracticed sorcerer. Unless the Gleaming King knew nothing about him. Dalí sighed, shaking the liquid harmal concoction in its test tube. He leaned back in his office chair and fought the urge to throw the damn thing against the wall. He thought he’d perfected the jinn poison. Instead of repelling, it was supposed to drug them, paralyze their system so they couldn’t move and couldn’t think. But that ginnaye had come out of the dose too quickly. Back to the drawing board. The phone on his desk sat too quietly, taunting him into deeper exasperation. As soon as his team had come back from their failed ‘kidnap the seal’ mission, he commanded his healer and scientist return to the lab to experiment on two human-living jinn. Patience had never been Dalí’s forte and the thought of someone like Ari Johnson just walking around out there with all that power filled him with restless agitation and maddening avariciousness. He had to have her.

The White King seemed to believe that controlling Ari was the only way to have use of the seal. His uncle had his own reasons for wanting the seal, and Dalí had to wonder if it was more than what everyone else assumed. Yeah, yeah, there was a ‘war’ going on and all, but life for the jinn kings wasn’t so bad. Surely the White King could see that. And to brutalize and manipulate his own daughter for a chance at using her power? Dalí shook his head. He had to remember that not all the kings were like his own father. His father was affectionate with him. Loving. Even when he was a bastard to everyone else. A jinn king had to really want a child in order for one to be created. As far as Dalí was aware, he had only a handful of half-brothers and sisters out there, none of whom he had ever met. But he knew the Gleaming King loved all his children, that’s why he kept having them every century or so, and Dalí had to believe his father would not punish him for what he was attempting to do. And if he succeeded, his father would be too afraid to question him.