“No.” Jaw clenched, he struggled to one knee and got on his feet. “Let’s go. I feel great. We’ll run a marathon.”
She blinked back tears and grabbed his hand. “You’re a lousy liar, Donatti.”
“Yep. Right this way, lady.”
He led her off the porch, across a small lawn towards the beginnings of a thin forest. A worn dirt path, barely visible through dead leaves and browned pine needles, trickled between skinny pines and young maples. Donatti limped along at first, but managed to gain an almost normal walking pace.
Just as they set foot on the path, laughter rumbled and echoed through the air around them, as though it came from the mountain itself.
“That’s Seth,” Jazz whispered. “The crazy guy. How. .”
“You survived,” the rolling voice said. “How entertaining. Let the games begin.”
A chill drizzled down her spine. “Oh, fuck,” she said. “I remember now. The drink he gave me. The nectar of the gods.” She swallowed, and it felt like a mouthful of rusted nails. “Akila made it for me a few times. Donatti. . I think Seth is a djinn.”
More cold laughter pelted them. “Run, rabbits. Find a hole and hide. I’ll seek you.”
Somehow, they ran.
It wasn’t long before the flight was aborted. Donatti tripped over an exposed root, went down hard and didn’t get up. “Gotta stop a minute,” he muttered into the ground. “Sorry, babe.”
Jazz glanced back. At least they were out of sight of the cabin. She crouched next to him, helped him crawl to the nearest tree and sit propped against it, cringing when he winced at her touch. “How bad is it?” she said softly.
“Don’t know. Couple busted ribs, a bum arm. Don’t think it’s broken. Hurts like hell, though.”
“Which one?”
He nodded at his left shoulder.
“Let me look.” She eased the torn remains of his jacket down the arm and saw the problem. “It’s dislocated,” she said. “I can put it back. You’ll feel a little better.”
“Go for it.”
She straightened his arm and bent the elbow up. “This is going to hurt.”
He grunted. “Figures.”
“Try to relax.”
“Got any booze?”
“Fresh out.”
“Okay. I’ll just man up and faint.” He closed his eyes and leaned his head back.
She debated doing it the fast way — a lot of pain, over quickly. But she didn’t want to do any more damage if she could help it. The slow way was just as painful and drawn out, with a lot less chance of tearing muscle or ligaments. She grabbed his wrist, moved his hand against his chest and rotated arm and shoulder out slowly. He hissed through clenched teeth, let out a guttural shout when she hit full extension.
It took three tries to set the joint back. By the time she finished, sweat bathed his face and washed away some of the grime. “Oh, Christ,” he gasped. “Thank. . you. .”
“I did warn you.”
“No, I mean it’s better. A hundred times better. Shit, I think I really can run a marathon now.” He grinned at her. “Or at least walk one. Just have to. . sit a minute.”
“I’ll join you.” She plopped on the ground next to him and scanned the area, taking in the increasing density of the trees, the waning light. They had maybe an hour before full dark. Should be able to make a mile. Of course, they also had no idea what Seth was planning. “Maybe we should talk. Try to figure things out,” she said. “Let’s start with you.”
Donatti pulled himself straighter. “Well, I couldn’t make anything happen to the car,” he said. “I tried, but it was resisting or something. Then I got knocked out in the crash.”
Jazz frowned. “Resisting?”
“Yeah. Pushing me back, kind of. Damn. Ian’s really going to have to explain this magic stuff better.” He paused, winced and pressed a hand to his ribs. “Anyway, when I came around, you were gone. I freaked out. Got away from the car — think I was screaming for you. And while I was flopping around in the mud, an animal attacked me. A fox. Big one.” His brow furrowed. “Thing went straight for my throat. Not very fox-like. I thought maybe I was hallucinating.”
She understood where his thoughts were going. The djinn were born into clans named after animals, because they could assume their clan’s animal form. Ian was Dehbei, the wolf clan. She’d seen him go wolf once. Huge, beautiful, deadly wolf. And as a more-or-less human, he had shaggy, wolf-coloured hair, and a wolf’s eyes. “Seth has red hair,” she said. “And his eyes are. . well, like a fox’s.”
“Motherfucker.” His jaw firmed. “Djinn can only kill humans when they’re animals. He told you I was gone because he thought I was. He sure as hell tried to make it that way.”
“So how’d you get out of it?”
He smirked. “I played dead. You’re supposed to do that with bears. Thought it might work for a fox. Apparently it works with a djinn, too.” One hand went to his throat. “Bastard tore me a good one. Blood everywhere. I think. . I tried to heal myself. Must’ve done something right.”
“You’re not completely hopeless.”
“Coming from you, that’s a compliment.” He reached for her hand, and she gave it to him. “I could feel you,” he said hoarsely. “That’s how I found you. It was like you were whispering in my ear.”
“Oh, yeah?” She squeezed his hand. “What was I saying?”
“Let’s see. It was something like, ‘Get your ass here, right now, before I kick it all the way back upstate.’”
Her own laughter surprised her. “Yeah, that does sound like me,” she said.
“So there’s my story,” he said. “What’s yours?”
She told him everything, from waking up in the cabin bedroom thinking it was a dream, to realizing too late that she’d been drugged. “Those things he has in the bathroom. The radio, the camera,” she said. “They threw me when I thought he was just a guy who couldn’t be more than thirty. But he’s djinn.”
“And djinn don’t age,” Donatti said. “He wrecked the car. That was the resistance. How much you want to bet he did the same thing with those other cars we saw?”
“Jesus,” she whispered. “And the passengers. .”
“Let’s not stick around long enough to find out what he does with them.”
The woods were strangely silent. Other than a faint wind rustling dry leaves and their own steps on the forest floor, there was nothing. Not a single creaking branch or calling bird. No signs of other life.
They’d been walking for about fifteen minutes when Jazz slowed and came to a stop beside a big fir tree. “Donatti,” she said. “Does this look familiar to you?”
“No. It’s a goddamn tree. We’re surrounded by trees, and—” He looked closer. His gaze found what she’d noticed already, the lower branch that was broken and splintered at the trunk, hanging at a sharp angle, almost touching the ground. “We passed this before,” he said.
“Yeah. We just walked in a big fucking circle.” She kicked at the ground, spraying a cloud of dead needles in the air. “This is still the path you came up, right? So apparently it’s changed directions in the past few hours.”
Something rustled in the brush ahead. A flash of red fur darted between branches and vanished again. The bastard was following them.
“Son of a bitch.” Jazz gripped the poker two-handed and strode for the brush.
Donatti grabbed her. “Whoa, killer,” he said. “That doesn’t work with djinn. Remember?”
“Yeah. I can’t take him out. But it’ll still hurt when I smash his fucking skull.” She’d always taken care of herself, so being defenceless pissed her off. Regular people couldn’t kill a djinn. In order to enter the human realm, they had to be bound to an object, a tether. And only destroying the tether would destroy the djinn. You could empty a machine gun into one and he — or she — would live through it. Since Donatti was only part djinn, he’d still die like a human.