The Djinn (The Order of the Knightshades Book 1) Read online

  “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 th
e 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.

  O’ Lord, as thy shut the mouths of the lions for thy servant Daniel, I beseech you to do the same for…crap! What’s the King James word for “me”?

  Apparently, it didn’t really matter because a low growl reverberated from the water to my left a second later. I turned to catch the fleeting image of a serpentine tail descend from the shoreline into the murky river. The water rippled as the other crocs submerged into the depths.

  “Keep moving,” the big man said from behind just as I heard the telltale sound of a hammer being pulled back on the big man’s .357.

  I scanned the surface for any signs of the waiting crocodiles and came up empty. They had all disappeared. Tensing, I took another step out, moving deeper into the water.

  “You know, if I get a parasite from this, I’m really going to get ticked,” I grumbled as the river rose up to my waistline. “They say they crawl through your urethra. Not a pleasant image for anyone.”

  “Oh for the love of…” I heard Charlie growl just before the crack of a gun echoed across the barren landscape.

  I froze. Then started patting myself down. There didn’t seem to be any holes in me, so I spun around to look at the massive smuggler. A weird shaped mark appeared in the center of his forehead, a stream of crimson oozed down into his stunned eyes. Then, he silently fell face first into the water.

  I looked at the other guards, bewilderment plastered across their own faces as they stared dumbly at their fallen comrade. Then, five more shots rang out, leaving five dead guards immediately in their wake.

  Landers, I thought, scouring the terrain for signs of my friends. A flash of light flared up over a hundred yards away in the center of the broad river. Then, I heard the sound of an outboard motor whine to life and a small speed boat coasted quickly toward me.

  The crocs lurking in the water jittered off at the approaching watercraft, but I couldn’t say the same for the thirteen pirates baring assault rifles heading my way from camp. The scrawny form of Artie led the way, as he pointed and shouted curses in my direction.

  I looked at my approaching friends, turned back to the smugglers still sixty yards away and threw them a wave before diving into the water. A few seconds later, one of my oldest and best friends, Randy, was hauling me into the boat with a huge grin plastered across his face.

  “I sure am glad to see you guys,” I said, as Landers maneuvered the vessel around.

  “Yeah, we weren’t exactly sure how we were going to get you out of there,” Randy said, as he handed me a cigar. “Lucky they have no imagination when it comes to killing people.”

  “I said the exact same thing.” I clutched the cigar in my teeth with a grin as he lit it with a covered match. It was a ritual. Every time I narrowly escaped death, I had to have a cigar. The philosophy was simple, if illogical…if I was going to die from something, I’d rather it be from smoking.

  I turned to the grim visage of the ex-marine manning the wheel. “Uh, Scott? We still have a little problem with the fact that those guys have faster boats than us.”

  “No,” he said, throwing me a slight smile and holding up a black, rectangular box in his hand. “I don’t think we do.”

  He pushed a red button on the box and the night sky behind us exploded in four balls of fiery coolness. The smuggler’s vessels were smashed to splinters by the concussive force of C-4 charges that the ENIGMA agent had obviously planted before his daring rescue.

  “Nice.” I couldn’t contain my own smile as I took a long pull from the stogey. I jerked slightly as something rubbed up against my leg in the boat. I glanced down to see the soft, cuddly features of the bunyip nudging me with its broad snout. Tiny nubs that would one day became tusks protruded from its mouth. “So,” I said to it, “now to get you to your new home.”

  I picked the little guy up and placed him in my lap as we sped through the dark waters of the Queensland river. Next stop, home and a long vacation. I couldn’t wait.

  DEVIL’S CHILD

  (An ENIGMA Directive Novel)

  CHAPTER TWO

  I limped my way through the halls of ENIGMA headquarters, nestled in a series of non-descript buildings in a business district of Arlington, VA. My little Jack Russell terrier, Arnold, limped right alongside me. Oh, he wasn’t injured. Just having sympathy pains…if dogs can have that anyway. But he’s not exactly an ordinary dog either, though I’d never told a single soul about where he came from. Needless to say, having him limp in sympathy with my own aches is not as crazy as it might sound.

  And why shouldn’t he feel
bad for me? After all, I had enough aches all over my body to keep most people incapacitated for at least a week. I’m not bragging…I’d just as soon be one of those people, wrapped up in my blankets at home, and watching Oprah while the bruises and broken ribs mended. But Director Anton Polk, I guess you can say he’s sort of my boss, demanded a debriefing of our trip to Australia. Which basically translates to a major chewing out for disobeying his orders not to go in the first place.

  So, I pulled myself from the much needed R&R, hopped the first plane from my modest two-story townhouse in Florida, and made my way to the one place on earth I wanted to be the farthest away from.

  I came to a set of elevators and mashed the button. The lobby was barren, like the desert wasteland of the Mad Max movies. Only a single security guard had nodded me in, as I’d entered the building. It wasn’t surprising. It was Saturday. The few office personnel who actually worked in the building had a zillion better things to do with their time than to come here and listen to Dr. Obadiah Jackson get reamed by the Director.

  The elevator door pinged open and I stepped through. Arnold bounded inside as well, his tongue lolling over to one side of his head as his tail wagged furiously.

  “Heh. Yeah, I know you’re excited,” I said to him, crouching down to give him a good pat. “Polk is definitely not going to like seeing you, is he?”

  Polk had forbade any non-cryptid animals access to any part of the ENIGMA complex. He despised animals. Hated them was a better word. I think it probably has to do with the nearly head-exploding bouts of sneezing that occurs when he gets within five feet of anything walking on four legs. Which, of course, is precisely the reason I always insist on having Arnold tag along whenever I make an appearance. Plus, Arnold loves the crotchety old skinflint. I couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped my lips as I stood up and waited for the elevator to reach its destination…thirty-three levels straight down into the Virginia soil.