The Djinn (25 page)

“
Behold,
your spirit of
vengeance.”

Sheathing both swords in its belt, the Djinn pulled its
hood back.

That face
.

He knew that face.
Al-
Dula’s
eyes widened in confusion and terror.
It was that infidel baron’s own
daughter! Isabella. But what had happened to her? Her once beautiful and
pristine face was now scarred and mottled with puss-filled sores. Her right eye
drooped at an unnatural angle. Leprosy! She was now a leper.

“Hear me, beast,” she said. “You and your treachery
destroyed the lives of the two men that meant more to me than
all the
world. You deserve death. But today, I am able to
show you mercy. Not because of me, but for the memory of the one who came
before
me.
The one who gave his life
to save others.
I will not tarnish that memory with your blood.”

The woman turned to her men and nodded some unspoken
command. They moved silently back into the shadows of the flames and were seen
no more. Looking back at Al-Dula, she drew her sword once more and placed it at
his throat. A flick of her wrist and a small trickle of blood poured out of a
tiny cut.

“That, murderer, is for my father. Let it be a reminder to
you,” she said. “Now, the one who protects the Book is here. It is he who has
constantly led me to your path. The scroll calls to him. The bad news for you
is…I don’t believe he will be as forgiving as I.”

And with that, Isabella stood up and looked toward the back
of the tavern. In the shadows, a hulking mass emerged.
A clay
giant unlike any of Gregory’s golems.
This one had the head of a man,
though no face, and was etched with strange symbols over its entire hide. Its
size dwarfed those created by
Rakeesha
and the cold,
stare of its eyeless face filled Al-Dula with dread.

“No, wait!” the Saracen screamed at Isabella. “Here, take
the Book. Give it to him! I don’t want it anymore!”

“I fear it’s much too late for that,” she said, bowing
slightly to the golem as it lumbered toward Al-Dula.
“Much
too late for that.”

 
As the golem
lumbered toward him, Isabella bowed slightly to it, walked around Al-
Dula’s
trembling form, and walked out into the rising sun.

THE ENIGMA DIRECTIVE SERIES
:

Primal
Thirst

Sirens’
Song

Devil’s Child (Coming
Soon)

DARK HOLLOWS MYSTERIES
:

The
Curse of One-Eyed Jack

The Dirge of
Briarsnare
Marsh (Coming Soon)

Book three of The
ENIGMA Directive series

Coming
Winter
of 2012

I hope you enjoy the complete
first two (completely unedited) chapters of the third ENIGMA Directive novel,
Devil’s Child. Many of my fans have expressed their anticipation over how long
it’s taken to complete it…some have been outright frustrated. But rest assured
,
I do believe that this truly is the best book of the
series so far. I’m hoping it will be well worth the wait and for that reason, I
decided to include this excerpt in the
ebook
version
of The
Djinn
.

DEVIL’S CHILD

(An ENIGMA Directive Novel)

CHAPTER ONE

No matter how many times a
mallet-sized fist flies toward your face, you always have the same
reaction—close your eyes, scrunch your neck down a bit, and hope for the best.
Sometimes you get lucky and they miss. Unfortunately, as I stared down the
aborigine smuggler’s long muscular arm hurling at
lightspeed
in my direction, I knew my luck was about as dried up as my canteen for the
last two days.

The giant’s fist slammed against
my jaw, twisting my head in an unnatural left-leaning spasm. Blood spewed from
where a tooth bit down deep into my lower lip. It hurt like a mother, but at
that point, I just felt lucky to have teeth at all.

“Please, Dr. Jackson,” said a
calming, subtle voice from somewhere behind me. It was tinged with a thick
Australian accent. “Be reasonable. The longer you keep your silence, the longer
Charlie
M’nenga
here will continue to…um…try to pry
your mouth open. After all, you have so little to lose at this point.”

I glared at the massive brute
hulking above me while trying to wrestle free of the nylon ropes securing me
fast to the wicker chair. I was in a rather sparse hut, nothing more than an
old moth-eaten rug covering the otherwise dirt floor. Two netted hammocks hung
unoccupied to my right, suspended by posts supporting the straw ceiling above.

The man speaking so eloquently
behind me was Arthur
Blaisemore
—I’ve called him Artie
for as long as I’ve known him. Just for spite. He’s a competitor.
Sort of.
While I was a
cryptozoological
researcher, trying to hunt down strange creatures from all over the world in
order to understand them better—and hopefully, protect them—
Blaisemore
was really nothing more than a poacher.
A scumbag mercenary
who hunted
cryptids
for profit and prestige.

The little weasel strode around
to look me in the face, his arms stretched behind his back. He was just as
scrawny,
and weak-jawed as I remembered. The man had a pale,
ferret-like face with a wisp of sandy blond hair combed over one side of his
balding head. He also sported a single gold cap on one of his incisors that
seemed to glisten no matter how low the light was in a given room. A new
addition to his appearance—or rather, a subtraction, I should say—was that he
was now missing the index finger on his left hand.

He motioned for his aboriginal
subordinate to step aside and moved into the bigger man’s place, bending over
to look me square in the eyes.

“Tsk, tsk, Jackie Boy,” he said,
an icy grin stretching the corners of his mouth. “Why are you so bloody
stubborn? All we want to know is where you hid the baby
bunyip
.”

The
bunyip
…the
silliest looking Australian animal to be seen by man since the platypus popped
out of whatever
hole
had coughed it up and the reason
I was in the pickle I now found myself in. ENIGMA, the agency I work for, had
heard that a large ring of poachers and smugglers were carting off
cryptids
in the Outback like they were going out of style.
Despite orders from my superiors to the contrary, my team and I had come out to
put a stop to it. And like most of my plans, it hadn’t worked out exactly the
way it was supposed to.

We’d bribed just the right
people and leaned on a few more for good measure, but we finally found the camp
where the poachers had set up shop in the uppermost tip of Queensland. Under
the direction of our team’s field agent and Captain America wannabe, Scott
Landers, we had made a daring nighttime ninja raid of the camp. In no time at
all, we’d found the
bunyip
cub. And yes, I was
relieved it was just a cub. Full grown
bunyips
are
known to grow as large as six feet in length and weigh over five hundred
pounds. The little critter we’d found was only about fifty pounds, so we
grabbed it from its cage, and hauled butt out of there as fast as we could.

The plan would have worked like
a charm if we’d given the little bugger a sedative like I’d suggested to begin
with. But no, my team hadn’t seen a need. So when it was jostled awake by our
scurrying footsteps toward the riverbed and our awaiting boat, it started
shrieking to beat the band. Its cries alerted the patrolling guards and woke up
the rest of the camp. Then things had gotten a little chaotic. All par the
course for yours truly.
Unfortunately.

So, ushering Landers and my best
friend Randy into the boat, I handed them the whining sack of fur known as the
bunyip
and headed toward the smuggler’s own fleet of river
boats to try to disable them. That’s when I got caught…just when I was
puncturing the gas tank of the last vessel with a KA-BAR knife.

In hindsight, I guess we should
have taken our chances on the open water, but then, no one’s ever accused me of
being a Ph.D.
Which is sad because I honestly am one.

 
“And I’m telling you, Artie, I have no idea
where it is,” I said, spitting a congealed clump of blood from my mouth. The
taste of copper coated my teeth, but I smiled up at the lead poacher anyway.
“It must have gone
walksies
for the night.”

The cold smile melted from his
face as he stretched to his full height and nodded at Charlie. The big lug
lumbered over to me and balled up his fist yet again. I wasn’t sure how much more
of a beating I could take. The pirate’s beating had already bruised at least
two ribs. I was having trouble breathing from the pain to my sides. One eye was
already starting to swell shut and the other’s vision seemed off by multiples
of three.

“Wait,” I said, looking over at
Artie.

He moved over to me, shoving the
larger man aside like a gnat. Bending down once more, he looked me in the good
eye and tilted his head. “Yes?”

I swallowed, or at least tried
to against the sandpaper rough dryness of my throat. I wasn’t joking when I
said I hadn’t had water for two days. We’d been rationing before we even found
the camp. And I’d been holed up in a cramped cell dug into the muddy soil for
the last twenty-four hours while the pirates awaited the return of
Blaisemore
to meet out whatever justice he felt necessary
to the foreign interloper who’d stolen their prize out from under them.

“Could I have something to drink
first?” I asked, coughing to clear my throat.

He eyed me before turning his
filth-eating grin up a notch and stalking past me. I tried to turn my head to
see where he was going, but unless I turned into Linda Blair, that just wasn’t
going to happen. After several seconds, I heard the sound of metal plates
clinking together and the flow of some liquid into a glass.

“Jack,” Artie crooned from
behind. “You really must forgive me. We tend to become so uncivilized out here
in the wilds.”

He suddenly appeared again with
a metal mug and a covered dish. The smell from the plate was intoxicating,
sapping the feeble remainder of my saliva from my lips.

“Water,” he said, hiking up the
mug before hefting the plate.
“And my favorite delicacy in
the world.
Sautéed koala.
They are yours as
soon as you tell us where your friends have taken the
bunyip
.”

I blinked. My eyes never wavered
from the plate.

“Koala?”
I asked.

He nodded, a proud gleam
flickering across his eyes.

“Koala?”
I thought maybe he’d misunderstood my
original question or something. Felt it bore repeating.

His head tilted slightly, as if
questioning my concerns over the species of the food set before me. “It really
is quite delicious.”

“Are you kidding me? I’m not
going to eat a
freakin
’ koala!” My brain kept
screaming at me to shut up, but my mouth would have none of it. ‘Besides,
they’d taste all…
eucalyptusey
.”

Arthur’s face screwed up in a
vengeful grimace as he hurled the plate across the room and jabbed a finger
against my chest.

“You think you’re funny, don’t
you mate?” He glanced over to his monstrous goon and nodded once more. “He’s
not going to tell us anything. Feed him to the crocs.”

A malicious grin crawled up
Charlie’s face and he lurched toward me.

“Crocs?”
The parched lump in my throat grew three
sizes larger than it had been just two seconds earlier. “Where’d you get your
degree in villainy from?
The University of Clichés?”

“Shut up, Jack. I’m sick of that
mouth of yours. It’s been an obnoxious pain for as long as I’ve known you and
I’m rather pleased to finally be able to shut it up.” He moved to the side,
allowing the muscle-bound enforcer access to my bonds. “I’m sure I’m not the
only one who’ll be happy either. Maggie, I believe, might even pay me
handsomely when I tell her I’ve taken care of you.”

Maggie…is she here? Is she
part of this?

A shudder rippled down my spine
at the thought. I didn’t even want to think about what she’d do to me if she’d
been there at that moment. Last time I’d seen her, she’d promised to put a
bullet in my kneecaps if she ever laid sight of me again and she wasn’t the
type to sling around idle threats. No, Artie was right. She’d probably give up
her share of the loot just to see what the smugglers had in mind for me.

“Wait just a minute,” I said, as
the big black man snatched me to my feet and refastened my hands behind my
back. “Maybe we can work out some kind of deal. I can help you catch another
one or something.”

Arthur slithered around to face
me; his gold-toothed grin shining brightly at me.

“I know you’re smarter than
that, mate. By their very nature,
cryptids
are near
impossible to find, much less catch.” For good measure, as if he could contain
his fury no longer, his bony hand flashed out across my skull in a girlish
slap. “We spent months tracking that cub down. Its parents are already long
gone.”

He shook his head as he moved
toward the door of the tiny hovel.

“No, the whole situation is
going to make my employers extremely unhappy. The discovery of that
bunyip
would have sliced away years of painstaking research
and you threw that all away in a single night.”

The aborigine shoved me forward
and I would have fallen flat on my face if he hadn’t grabbed my arms in time.

“Let me talk to them,” I said,
as I was forced to the open door. Arthur stood to the side, smiling coldly at
me. “Maybe we can make some kind of arrangement.”

“They know you too well, Jack.
You’ve been a thorn in their side since you joined up with ENIGMA. They’ll be
happy to see you go as well.” He stepped out into the balmy night and directed
a handful of guards to take me to the edge of the water for chow time. The
excitement rustling through the obviously bored-out-their-mind poachers was
palpable at the command.

Without a word, Arthur stalked
off to another hut on the south end of the complex while I was quickly shoved
away from camp to the water’s murky edge. Though it was dark, the full moon
shined down on us, offering a silvery halo that gleamed off the water’s
surface. I could make out the forms of massive log-like objects floating lazily
in the current.

Crocodiles.

Charlie’s hand pushed against my
back, forcing me to take a single step into the river.

“Hold on now,” I shouted, trying
to turn to face my captor. “I’m telling you, we can figure something out.”

When I finally managed to wheel
around, I was greeted by the barrels of six rather nasty looking guns pointed
directly at my head. Unlike preparing to get hit in the face with a fist, no
amount of eye-clinching or neck-scrunching was going to stop a bullet at such
close range. Charlie nudged the barrel of his gun toward the water.
His message clear.

Either walk in or take a bullet
in the face.

Neither option was particularly
appealing at the moment.

I looked back at the waiting
crocs and then to the armed smugglers
baring
down on
me.

Ah, crap
.

I took another step into the
water. The lounging crocodiles remained still, as if they hadn’t noticed the
tasty little morsel traipsing right onto their buffet line. I only hoped their
disinterest would last.

Okay, God. You closed the
mouths of lions for that Daniel guy. How good are you with oversized lizards
?

I’d only recently started talking
to God and wasn’t quite sure I was doing it right. Up until my trip to Malaysia
the year before, I’d pretty much discounted any notion of some divine being
that watched benevolently over us. Events during that little excursion had
changed all that. But I was still a newbie. Wasn’t quite sure if my prayer
would only work if I spoke it in King James English or not. So I repeated
it…only this time, to make Sir Lawrence Olivier proud.