Jinn Nation Read online

  Jinn Nation

  Caroline Barnard-Smith

  A Little Hoot Press Edition

  Jinn Nation

  Copyright 2011 - Caroline Barnard-Smith

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people, or events, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  The right of Caroline Barnard-Smith to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988.

  Cover design by Andy Isaacs

  Cover art by Trodel / Fotopedia.com, Abdone / Dreamstime.com, Linden Laserna / Stock.XCHNG, Conna Lee / Stock.XCHNG

  Jannisaries font created by Dan Zadorozny / Iconian Fonts

  Published by Little Hoot Press at Smashwords

  http://www.carolinebarnardsmith.co.uk

  This one’s for Dad,

  Proudest Grandfather in the Land

  And also for Angela,

  Inspiration Made Ginger

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part One: The Solemn Hypnotic

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Part Two: Life Among the Dead

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Part Three: And Now We're All Alone

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also Available

  Prologue

  Once, the vampire Dylan had feared nothing and no one. He’d rampaged throughout the world on a seemingly never ending quest to fill his eternal years with the finest, most outrageous extravagances; with exquisite, soft-limbed young women and copious amounts of rich, vibrating blood.

  His thirst was rarely quenched. He revelled in the wild-eyed chase through midnight streets, in the thrill of capture and the bird’s wing flutter of quickened hearts pressed against his chest as he swept aside hair and clothing, searching for that tender, magical spot where the blood pumped strongest, where the vein that carried it strained hardest against the surface of the skin.

  He travelled with a porcelain skinned, golden haired demonic nightmare of an immortal who in the latter half of the twentieth century was calling herself Gwyneth. He worshipped her like a goddess. She was, after all, his creator: the vampire who had taken him as a poor, half starved mortal and drained him of his blood, refilling his broken body with her own unholy essence and transforming him into a remorseless creature of the night. He remained eternally grateful. Together they cast a seductive spell over entire villages, demanding the inhabitants offer up their most attractive youths as sacrifices until eventually they grew tired of their surroundings and set the whole community to burn. They waltzed beneath icy stars in Paris and tore through Amsterdam’s red light district, feasting on sweet smelling whores bathed in the soft glow of scarlet bulbs.

  But life, however full of joy, inevitably changes. The world turned, humanity evolved and Dylan and Gwyneth found themselves at war with new technology that could track their every movement, could trace the DNA they left behind on corpses and chase them in high-speed cars. Suddenly, the streets no longer belonged to them.

  The immortals began to starve. They huddled in the dark, brought together by hunger and desperation after so many years spent scattered across the globe. It was then that Gwyneth hatched her grand idea. She would conduct a feast, a gathering of humans so world-weary they wouldn't notice the sharp edged smiles and eager stares of their hosts until it was too late. The plan was impressive, it was detailed. It was flawed. The humans fought back, clawing at life the way that mortal animals are programmed to do.

  Dylan watched his kin burn, the only survivor of a massacre that would echo down the ages. He felt disembodied as he peered through the rain splattered glass into the ornate church where Gwyneth had planned to realise her most sickening scheme yet. His love was the last to die, expending her long and vile life in a cacophony of screams that vibrated inside his head and dreams for countless nights to come.

  For the first time, Dylan was utterly alone. He stumbled away, hands clasped to his stomach as dry retches tore from his throat, and began to run. He didn't stop until the sun began to rise, chasing away the damp night time mists. When he finally paused and looked around, he discovered he was in the midst of the English countryside, surrounded on all sides by fields and narrow, hedge-lined roads with no idea how he had gotten there.

  Beside him, a blank-eyed cow moaned plaintively, the sound amplified in the heavy silence of the breaking dawn. Dylan jumped over a rusting gate and launched himself upon the beast, dodging the sturdy, kicking legs as he tore into the flesh at the nape of its neck with his teeth, ripping out thick skin and sinew until he ruptured a vein and the blood began to flow in a torrent, filling his mouth again and again as he drank it down with the desperation of any starving man.

  It wasn't until the cow had slumped to the muddy grass, tail still quivering, that Dylan backed away in horror, suddenly disgusted with himself for drinking from such a dirty, common creature. The taste of filth and course cow hide coated the inside of his mouth, threatening to stir his stomach, now heavy and warm with blood, back to violent retching. He briefly wondered what Gwyneth would say if she could see him now, feeding from cattle like an uneducated heathen. Her face flashed into his mind, shining like the sun, framed with the thick blonde ringlets of an angel, and grief swamped him like a flash flood. His breath felt strangled in his throat and as he struggled to breathe, tears leapt to his eyes, threaded with the cow's blood he had just ingested. They ran down the broad planes of his face, streaking his cheeks with scarlet. He doubled over, his mouth open in a silent scream, and fell to the ground, curling into a shaking foetal position beside the ruined corpse of the cow.

  ***

  Dylan took a room in the first hotel he happened across. It was one of the only businesses yet to be boarded up in a sad, rundown market town called Norrington. He spent a week simply lying on the hard bed beneath old-fashioned, scratchy sheets, staring up at the yellowed ceiling and reliving his long life. The life he had spent in Gwyneth's arms. Gwyneth could be cruel and was often burdened with her own self-importance, but she had taught him how to find joy in eternity, in elaborate ritual and freshly let blood.

  On the seventh day, driven by hunger and fatigue, Dylan left the hotel and took to the streets of the town, taking in his surroundings for the first time. A dilapidated factory overhung the neat rows of terraced houses, creating a huge silhouette against the sky. The windows were broken, the brickwork crumbling and scarred with lurid graffiti. Something was drawing Dylan towards the sad structure, something that called to the deepest, most primal part of him. It was the smell of fear, of sweat and hot, bright blood. Somebody was bleeding.

  He walked into the factory without checking the perimeter for cameras or guards, no longer caring enough about his own wellbeing to adhere to any of the safeguards his kin had instilled in him. He was acting on instinct alone
, overcome by a yawning appetite and the kind of bones-deep weariness only caused by utter despair.

  Inside the barren, deserted space, crowded around a kneeling figure on the floor, were three men. They all looked up as Dylan approached, automatically moving forward in an effort to shield their prize from view.

  "Who the fuck are you?" one of them grunted. He was wearing blue dungarees, stained with farm muck.

  "I'm no one," Dylan said, surprised to find his voice so easily. He'd barely uttered a word, even to himself in the privacy of his hotel room, since the terrible night he had watched Gwyneth die. He glanced at the men flanking the soiled farmhand, a young man in a hand knitted woollen jumper and an older gentleman leaning on a walking stick, and smiled. They didn't seem to be much of a threat. "What are the dungarees all about?" he asked their ringleader. "Isn't that a bit stereotypical for a farm labourer? I'm surprised you're not chewing on a piece of hay."

  "How do you know I'm a farm labourer?"

  Dylan shrugged, still smiling. Despite everything, he was beginning to feel like himself again. "I have highly attuned senses." He sniffed the air with an over-exaggerated flourish. "You smell like Eau De Pig Shit."

  "He must be drunk or something," the younger man said. He had short tufts of wispy, dark hair standing out on his chin that he'd obviously tried and failed to style into some semblance of a goatee.

  "We should grab him," the man with the walking stick suggested. "I don't recognise him, he’s probably just a tourist."

  "Don't be stupid, George," the ringleader chastised. "He might be here with friends."

  "No, it's just me," Dylan said. "Grab away."

  As the younger man began to move towards him, a determined look on his boyish face, the figure hunched over on the floor moaned and attempted to stand up.

  "Oh no, you don't," the ringleader said, turning to push them back down.

  Dylan looked past the men, craning his neck to make out the mewling captive beyond. "What are you guys doing in here, anyway?" he said. "I can smell blood."

  "You can smell blood mixed in with the pig shit, you mean?" the ringleader said. He smirked and motioned to the goateed young man. "Go on, Ian. I've had enough of this pisshead, let's eat him."

  Ian nodded and began to advance once more, almost falling backwards onto the concrete when Dylan clamped his strong, bloodless fingers down onto the man’s shoulders, preventing him from moving any closer.

  "What the fuck?" Ian said, his voice high and panicked.

  "You're going to eat me?" Dylan said, ignoring him. He began to laugh. "This is turning into one of the weirdest nights of my life, and I have quite a few weird nights to choose from, believe me. I'm not drunk, by the way. If only I were. No, the sad truth is that you all seem to have stumbled upon a walking irony. What do you call yourselves? Cannibals? Satanists? Have I interrupted some sort of ritualistic killing? You see, the joke is that I'm the one who's going to eat you."

  Dylan grinned at the ringleader, lips pulled back to reveal his lengthening canines, sharp as ice picks and slick with saliva. He didn't notice that Ian and George had slipped behind him until he felt the sharp pain of a walking stick glancing across the back of his head. He whirled around with a roar and found the two men poised and ready to strike, hands raised in fists before their faces. Dylan rushed at them but to his surprise they sprung away easily, flanking him on either side and hissing like agitated cats.

  “Wait,” Dylan said, backing away slightly. “What’s going on here?” He felt the large, course hands of the ringleader close around his neck, dragging him backwards as he squeezed his throat. Dylan struggled to free himself but the man’s grip was as brutal as his own. Ian appeared before him, laughing and clapping. With a jolt of surprise, Dylan noticed the man’s eyes had begun to flare with a fiery light that highlighted his face, casting it in an amber glow.

  Using his entire strength, he was finally able to wrench himself from the ringleader’s grasp. He turned and kicked him hard in the shin, sending the man to the floor with a heavy thud. The ringleader stared up at him amid the settling dust disturbed by his fall, eyes wide with shock.

  “Are you jinn?” he asked.

  “He can’t be,” Ian said. “He doesn’t smell like any jinn I’ve ever met.”

  “Jinn?” Dylan said. “That’s what you are?” He rubbed his neck as he stared at the men surrounding him, regarding them with fresh eyes. His throat felt constricted, bruised by the ringleader’s iron hold. “I’ve only met a jinn once before, in a bar in Rio. He said your kind were very rare.”

  “We used to be, but things change,” the ringleader said. He rose slowly from the floor, hands raised in a gesture of peace. “The weak flounder while the strong flourish, it’s evolution.” He edged closer to Dylan, peering into his face. “So what the hell are you? You’re as strong as us.”

  Dylan opened his mouth wide, flashing two perfectly pointed teeth as curved and cruel as falcons’ talons. “I’ll let you guess.”

  “A vampire?” Ian said. “No way, there’s no such thing. You must have had your teeth filed like that, I’ve seen it on the internet.”

  Dylan flew at Ian on silent feet, so fast he became a blur. He stopped before him, mouth still open wide, his face so close to the younger man’s their noses were almost touching. “Do you believe me now?”

  Ian frowned, embarrassed at being caught off-guard. He took a long step backwards. “I suppose so.”

  “I’ve heard stories about vampires,” George said. He lifted his walking stick into the air and pointed it at Dylan as he spoke. “I was told you all starved to death.”

  “Well, that’s obviously not true,” Dylan said. He glanced at the figure still kneeling on the floor. It was a teenage girl, shivering in a thin night dress. Her eyes roved the room wildly and her mouth was slack, lips shining with the drool she didn’t have the presence of mind to wipe away. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “We told her she was already dead,” the ringleader said, laughing. “She thinks she’s been a very bad girl who’s gone to Hell.”

  The jinn crowded around the girl once more, sniggering amongst themselves when she cried out: “I want to go home, I don’t belong here. Please let me go.”

  “You can’t go home,” Ian said, dropping to one knee so he could grasp her chin, his thumb and forefinger gripping so hard her pale skin blotched and reddened. “Your family’s dead, too.”

  The girl gasped and began to sob, slapping Ian’s hand away from her face.

  As Dylan watched, fascinated by the men’s coarseness, by the simple joy they derived from abject cruelty, his empty stomach knotted and murmured. The ringleader must have noticed the hunger etched into Dylan’s features because he stepped away from the group and approached him once more, one hand outstretched.

  “The name’s Phil,” he said.

  Dylan grasped the proffered hand and shook it. “I’m Dylan.” He was finding it hard to look the man in the eye. His gaze kept wandering to the delicate waif, trembling on the cold floor behind him.

  “You want a taste, Dylan?”

  Dylan grinned and nodded. “Hell, yes.”

  As they fed, the jinn seemed to be as interested in Dylan as he was in them. He stared without shame when they forced the girl onto her back and ripped her open from breast bone to belly button with a sharpened flick knife, not even bothering to remove her dirty night dress. Unsure if he was disgusted or filled with a strange sense of awe, Dylan continued to watch as they liberated the fat, dripping organs inside, gorging themselves upon them until dark juices ran from their chins and stained the front of their clothes. When the girl attempted to rise, crazed and wild with agony, they ignored her screams and slapped her back down to the concrete. Similarly, as Dylan took his turn and gathered the convulsing child into his arms, piercing her throat and slaking his ravenous thirst with long, greedy gulps, the jinn paused and looked up from their frenzied, dog-like gnawing, transfixed by a spectacle they had only seen played
out in Hollywood movies.

  When the meal was done and the girl was still, her broken body framed by spent blood and the ruined jelly of chewed organs, the men grinned at each other, faces wet with life and gore.

  “That was fun,” Dylan said. “Although I must admit I was a little shocked. I had no idea that jinn literally ate people.”

  “We only eat the choicest parts,” Phil said, slightly out of breath from his rabid exertions. “The parts inside, the parts that make a body work. That’s where the power is.”

  “It’s like Popeye’s spinach,” George said, removing a small packet of tissues from his back pocket. He took one out and wiped his face and mouth before offering them around the group. “We ingest strength and vitality, so we become strong and vital.”

  “But not immortal?” Dylan removed a tissue from the packet and handed them back to George. When he tried to wipe his chin and the sticky place where the girl had lain against his chest, he found the blood had already begun to dry and that attempting to remove it with a paper tissue was virtually impossible. With a sigh, he crumpled the inadequate object and discarded it upon the ripe corpse before him.

  “No, we’re not immortal,” George said. “But we do live a bloody long time. I would have been dead long ago if it wasn’t for the stones.” He patted his stomach, suddenly sombre. “Cancer.”