One Wish Away: Djinn Empire Complete Series by Ingrid Seymour

Author:Ingrid Seymour [Seymour, Ingrid]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: PenDreams
Published: 2017-07-12T04:00:00+00:00

26

Faris

Akeelah: vengeful, savage, cruel.

The most evil creature I’ve encountered in my twenty-five hundred years of existence.

What have I done?

What have I delivered into her evil hands to keep one human girl from harm?

My hands trembled with impotence at the sight of her twisted pleasure.

What have I done?

The question rang in my ears like a bell predicting doom.

Akeelah stood before me, her grotesque face twisted in rapture as she held the bottle to the heavens, in either offering or challenge to the Creator. Which? I couldn’t tell.

She cackled, throat working up and down. “Beauty, beauty itself!”

I prayed silently for her failure, for this first Djinn she’d created, and any subsequent one, to be incapable of hurting anyone.

Abruptly, her laughter stopped. “Let us waste no more time.” She rubbed the side of the bottle, stroking it in small circles, her ruby-colored nails twinkling against the blue glass.

Please, please, please, I prayed more vehemently, wishing my magic were strong enough to defeat hers. But I was weak and selfish, and there was nothing I could do. So I watched, guilt pinning me to the spot, punishing me with the ghastly spectacle, while all I could do was appeal to an indifferent Creator who allowed these horrors to unfold.

As Akeelah rubbed one last, lazy circle against the glass, smoke rose into the air and formed a black cloud overhead. It hung there for an instant, then curled into a spiral and descended to the floor. When it touched the cold concrete, the haze twitched and shifted, slowly taking the shape of a human body. For a few seconds, the figure stood there, a see-through, rippling mist that gradually solidified into an exact copy of the man who still lay dead on the metal table.

My heart, my whole essence, shrank at the scene. My own imprisonment had been wretched, but what I had done to this man was unpardonable. He was forever bound to Akeelah.

The newborn Djinn looked around, disoriented, reminding me of how it had felt to know myself dead and not dead, robbed of my every physical attachment to this world, overwhelmed by the need to be solid again, a need so great that it instinctively drove me to collect particles from the air to fashion a body that was nothing but a husk.

Akeelah laughed again, startling her new pet. “Just as I promised you, Jabar,” she said.

Jabar blinked, looking uncertain of his choice. Slowly, he looked back at his inert body and staggered backward.

“Just an empty vessel,” Akeelah said, her voice ringing with a sweet, comforting tone that made me despise her even more. “Don’t fret about it. You’re more now, my pet.” She approached the Eritrean and put a hand on his shoulder. “You are a Djinn.”

Jabar looked up at Akeelah and nodded, slowly at first, then vigorously, as the truth of what he’d become registered in his confused mind.

“We did it. Woohoo!” Andy exclaimed, clapping excitedly in his deranged fashion. Akeelah’s emerald eyes flicked toward him, flashing with distaste.

Andy stopped, his hands freezing in midair.

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