Please find below an excerpt from Allie & The Djinn, my upcoming release. My latest book, a novella, is a modern-day magic realism romfantasy which will be published on the 31st of October. After all, what better time to publish a story featuring magical creatures!
Quareem, one of the most powerful djinns of his time, has finally escaped the Hunters’ prison cell and is looking for a host.
Allie possesses a wealth of untapped hidden magic but spends her days chasing oblivion to ease the pain of losing her family in a tragic accident.
When Quareem jumps into Allie’s mind, they strike up a mutually beneficial arrangement. That is, until the Hunters arrive…
Allie & The Djinn
PROLOGUE
Quareem raised his hands, the walls of his tiny prison cell expanding with the movement, and concentrated on chanting every syllable with flawless pronunciation. After all, his goal wasn’t to end up as a sandworm in some wasteland, was it? After completing the spellbreaker, he waited.
No sound of a heartbeat, because the sorcery that placed him here had left him suspended outside of time and space.
I do exist, a quiet voice inside his head insisted, although, as far as the rest of the universe knew, his life had stopped the second the Hunters had trapped him and slapped their nullcuffs around his wrists.
He counted: one, two, three. The unmitigated sensory deprivation would have driven him mad if not for the sanity of numbers—and gasped as a bolt of lightning sliced through him. A sudden violent shivering had his teeth clacking against each other like knucklebones, and his heart slammed against his rib cage, beating an erratic rhythm—then a sideways shift and a glistening iridescence lit up his cell.
The next minute, he was… elsewhere.
He flinched as thunderous growls and blaring horns blasted his eardrums and squinted to limit the sharp sunlight piercing his eyeballs, before gradually opening his eyes wider and wider as he tried to make sense of the bewildering scene in front of him.
Metal boxes on wheels in various sizes and colors streamed by inches from where he stood, emitting a variety of honks, toots, and snorts. Men and women sat inside the raucous machines, their gazes fixed on the vehicle in front. People wearing outlandish outfits hurried along the sidewalk.
He drew in a long, slow breath, coughing as acrid, fusty fumes entered his lungs. This wasn’t the pure, clean air of his desert home. But so what? There was always a price to pay, and he didn’t care; he’d gained his freedom! He ran fingers over his face, through his hair, and patted his smooth cheeks. He stretched, and unused muscles and tendons expanded and released. His body was solid, no doubt about that, but somehow light, his bloodstream fizzing with bubbles. Water leaked down his smooth, golden-brown cheeks. A sensation he couldn’t identify coursed through him.
A flash of insight revealed it wasn’t the bewildering sights that blinded his vision, nor the cacophonous sounds invading his brain through his ears, nor the folk rushing along the busy street; it was the wild mixture of their emotions that overwhelmed him. Little did they know that their fears, anxieties, hopes, and loves all seeped out through their skin into the atmosphere. Such a porous membrane to contain such a wealth of power, and for a djinn with his abilities—when they were at full strength, that is—so easy to access.
He grinned. He had succeeded. Of course, he, the great Al Quareem, once acknowledged to be among the most powerful djinns to grace his society, most certainly wouldn’t cease to exist because he garbled his own spell—a spell that had taken eons to remember, hidden from his own mind by the Hunters’ hex. But he had at last remembered and escaped. He wanted to laugh and dance, but while he had liberated himself from their dungeon, his jailers would have known the instant he disappeared. His new, unfettered state would surely provide multiple opportunities, and he would rather die than allow them to incarcerate him again.
He inhaled deeper and caught the faintest whiff of something different. Alien. He spun around, searching, sniffing. Yes, there. He glimpsed the shimmer of a crimson cloak, sliding past on the other side of the veil that separated the Hunters’ world from this one. Fear, a dark wall, rose inside him. How could they be on to him so quickly? He froze, his limbs refusing to respond, and his heartbeat accelerated, ricocheting around his chest, thundering through his body.
A man clutching a bulky leather case to his chest banged his arm as he hurried by, breaking his trance. Quareem lifted a finger, pointed, and let it drop before the pain began. He sighed. No more blasting of defenseless humans—one of a hundred reasons the Hunters had incarcerated him.
He scanned the crowd, primed to move, to run, the urge to hide overwhelming him. He needed someone vulnerable. Ah! There. He cringed. His master, Shaitan curse him forever, would have beaten him senseless for considering a dirty beggar—and a female at that. This must be one of the lowest steps he had ever taken, but as a desperate fugitive, he would accept what the universe offered.
