Day of the Djinn Warriors Read Online Free Page A

head in his hands. “What’s a lamprey?” he whispered.
    “A jawless fish,” she said cruelly, “with a toothed, funnellike sucking mouth. A little like an eel.”
    John smiled wearily.
    “How do you feel?” Nimrod asked the boy.
    “Wasted,” said John.
    “And you, Philippa?” asked Nimrod. “How do you feel?”
    “Twice as strong,” she said. “Like I just plugged myself into the electricity and then had a cup of really strong coffee.”
    “I think it worked,” said Nimrod.
    “Is this what it feels like to be mundane?” said John.
    “How
does
it feel?” asked Philippa, placing a concerned, sisterly hand on his shoulder, and already regretting some of the nasty things she’d said to him.
    “Like I just came in last in the New York City Marathon and, somewhere along the way, managed to lose something very, very valuable. Like a limb. I feel like I’m coming down with some kind of virus.”
    “Sure, you never miss the water until the well runs dry,” said Mr. Rakshasas.
    “That’s for sure,” said John. He took a deep breath and stood up. “When do we leave?”
    “Now,” said Nimrod. “There’s really no time to lose.”
    They went out of the house, and into New York’s Central Park, which, late at night, is mostly deserted. There, in an open patch of ground, Nimrod whipped up a powerful but invisible tornado that was marked only by a discarded newspaper swirling around the base of the vortex. In a matter of a few seconds, he and John started to rise up on top of this column of air as if they had been summoned to appear before some celestial court. Philippa and Mr. Rakshasas watched them until they were almost fifty feet in the air, at which point, Nimrod turned the funnel of wind westward and, at a speed of almost 261 mph — an F5 on the Enhanced Fujita-Pearson Tornado Intensity Scale — they disappeared into the Manhattan night sky.

CHAPTER 3

MYSTIFIER
    D ybbuk wanted to meet his real father.
    That’s normal, isn’t it? Iblis might be the wickedest djinn in the world, but I’m still his son. What could be wrong with me wanting to meet the guy? Every kid wants to meet his old man, even if he is a sort of monster
.
    At the same time, however, he knew his mother, Jenny Sachertorte, would never permit such a thing. For one thing, she was frightened of Iblis. Most sensible people were. And for another, she would worry that meeting Iblis would only tempt Dybbuk somehow to go bad.
    I don’t know what she’s worrying about. It’s not like I’m wicked or anything, like him. Sure, I do something wild now and again. What kid doesn’t? But that doesn’t make me a bad person. Maybe, if he met me, that might help Iblis not to be bad himself anymore. It could be that not having had me around all his life has just made him worse
.
    Dybbuk knew where his father was to be found. Every djinn knew that it was the Ifrit who controlled Las Vegas, not the Mafia, like most humans thought. And Vegas wasn’tactually very far away from Palm Springs where Dybbuk lived. It was just a question of getting there. But how was he ever to persuade his mother to let him go? Since his arrival back from India, she was keeping a pretty close eye on him. What was worse, she’d made him swear an oath that he wouldn’t start any whirlwinds and fly off somewhere on his own. He was grounded.
    Dybbuk always laughed when he heard kids at his school use that word, “grounded,” as if it meant something. Unlike them of course, he really was grounded. He could always have caught a bus to Vegas, but Dybbuk was much too lazy ever to do something like that. He hated buses. Was even a little frightened of them, and of the smelly, aggressive people who were often on them. Then there was the claustrophobia he felt on a bus. This is normal for any djinn, who hate all enclosed spaces except their own lamps.
    So Dybbuk stayed home and hatched a plan that would get him to Vegas legitimately.
    There were times when Dybbuk could play