Burn For Him (20 page)

“But, the Devil?”

“Lucifer is a Fallen Angel.  I needed to explain this part to you, to show you that not all angels are blindly on the side of good. I needed to tell you because not all Djinn are the same.  We are those grey areas that I was telling you about.”

“Well, how does that work, then?” I was almost afraid to ask.  This was way too much for me to be able to take in.

“As I said, I’m you Qareen. Your guardian, if you like.  Your constant companion. You know that I would never hurt you.  It’s just not in me. I’m not like that.”

“Okay, so wait a minute.  You said that you feed off emotions.  How does that work?” I tried to keep my voice neutral, but it was an effort.

“I do, you’re right. I can’t really explain to you how it works. It’s kind of like asking how you breathe.  Sure, there’s a scientific explanation behind it, but it is simply just something you do.  It’s something that you do without thinking.  It’s the same for me.  But, I can only feed off of positive emotions.  That’s the reason that I do that job that I do.  Exercise releases endorphins in the brain.  It gives you a high.  It makes you feel good.  That’s what sustains me. Positive energy.”

I nodded.  That I could sort of understand.  I knew Harper as well as I knew myself, or at least I thought I did.  I knew that he wasn’t evil or bad.  It made sense to me that he would do everything in his power to make people happy. 

“It’s what I need to survive.  Peoples happiness is what makes me live.  But, more importantly, it is your happiness that means the world to me. It’s not even about the emotion that I need.  It’s because you are my best friend, Carrie.  I would never intentionally do anything to upset you.  I would always do everything in my power to protect you from any harm.  You have to believe that.” He looked at me with such pain in his eyes.  I hated that he thought I could doubt him.  Sure, this was all crazy, but I knew that he would never do anything to hurt me.  He had always been there for me, no matter what, and I knew that he always would be.  I didn’t think that this whole Djinn business would change us that much.  He would still be Harper to me, I just had to get my head around this new world that he was telling me about.

“I do.”  I replied, firmly and surely. 

“We’re not all the same.  Not all of us feed off of positive emotions.  You can pretty much guarantee that when the shit hits the fan that there is often a Djinn lurking in the background somewhere.  I don’t always mean the big stuff, like wars, but everyday life when things go wrong.  Some thrive on chaos and personal destruction.”

He paused for a moment and I was glad of the time for my brain to catch up with everything that he was telling me.  It was hard for me to take it all in, but I was going to try my hardest to understand.  Harper was a Djinn.  He was my guardian Djinn.  It was strange to think that there was an underlying motive to our friendship.

I narrowed my eyes at him.  I felt the sudden need to lighten the subject.  “So, when do I get my three wishes, then?”  I joked.  It all felt way too intense and I hated to see Harper so stressed and serious like this.  It was all pressing down on me and it was getting hard for me to breathe again.

Harper laughed, genuinely this time.  “If only that really was something that we could do.  Can you imagine all the fun we’d have if I could do that?” He chuckled again and I could only imagine the wild ideas that were running through his mind.

“We’d be raising hell, that’s for sure!” I quipped and Harper raised an eyebrow at my choice of words.  I grinned over at him to let him know that I’d purposely chosen that phrasing.  It was good to feel the tension slip away from us for a little while at least.

“But, honestly, no.  We can’t do that.  The whole ‘genie’ thing is something that was made up.  We don’t live in bottles, either.” 

Now, it was my time to laugh.

“So, are you ready to hear the rest of it?” He asked, instantly his facial expression turned serious once again.  I nodded and took hold of his hand.  I knew how hard this was for him to tell me.  I could feel the tension running through his body.  It was hard for me to hear, but I wasn’t the one telling my secret life story.

“Why did you come to me?” I thought that it was a good idea to start at the beginning, as I said before.  I didn’t really mean for him to start with the beginning of time and creation, I more meant the beginning of our time together.  I had to know why it all started.  Why he had come to me.

“I came to you the night of the fire.”

An involuntary shudder ran through me.  I flatly refused to think back to that time in my life.  It was just too painful for me to think about.  I’d only been five years old and I had suffered through the worst tragedy of my life.  Tears pricked at my eyes as I fought not to think about it.

“That night, I was sent to you.  You needed me.  You needed someone to help you get through it.”

“But, we were only five.”

“Carrie, I know that this is difficult for you to understand, but as I said, I am not human.  I am a humanoid creature.  I can take on the human form at will.  I came to you. I couldn’t exactly come to you as an adult.  I had to come to you in a way that we could be together.”

I gulped.  I didn’t want to ask this, but I had to.  “So, has any of this been real?”

Harper knew what I meant and he looked shocked and hurt that I could have asked him that.  “Every single second of it was real.”

I grabbed hold of his hand again, “I’m so sorry, Harp.  But, I had to ask.  I had to be sure.”

After a quick moment, he smiled at me again.  “You have to believe that this is a true friendship that we have.  No lying.  Nothing false.” He squeezed my hand as if to reassure me.  “Do you want me to go on?”

“Yes.”

“I came to you on that night.  Djinn are made of smokeless fire in our true forms.  That was the night that the fire called to me.  It told me where I needed to be and who I needed to be with.  You.  It was you that needed me, Carrie.  You were crying out for help.”

I had never really given it too much thought until now.  Harper had come into my life at a time when I needed him the most.  It wasn’t something that I even bothered to think about at the time.  I was only five.  I just accepted this new friend in my life.  Now, I wasn’t even sure that I really wanted to question it.  No matter what he was, Harper coming into my life was the best thing that ever happened to me.

“So, did you have a hand in any of the foster families that I had to live with?” I think that I already knew that answer to this one, or at least part of it anyway.  I hadn’t always had the best of luck and I was shoved from family to family to family over the years.  Only a handful of them stuck out in my mind as pleasant memories.

“No.  I’m afraid not.  That sort of thing is out of my power.  But, I was always there for you.  I am not one of the Djinn that are strong enough to manipulate the human mind or the actions of others.  I can only really make the best of a bad situation.” He smiled sadly, like he thought he had failed me in some way.

“You sure did that. Every single memory I have as a kid, every good memory, you’re in it.”

He smiled a little brighter this time.  “We’ve had some fun times, haven’t we?” He was clearly remembering our time growing up together when we got into all kinds of mischief.  I didn’t answer him. I knew that if we started reminiscing that we would spend the rest of the day wandering down memory lane and we had a more pressing conversation to have right now.

Harper looked lost for a moment.  I knew that I was going to have to be the one to get us back on track.  “So, you’re made of fire? Hot.” I joked.

“Yeah.” He laughed.  “This isn’t the real me.  But, it has grown to be me.  This is my choice and I have grown into myself over the years.” He gestured to his whole body.  “There is only one thing that I have to constantly work on in my human form, and that is my eyes.”

I frowned for a moment before quoting, “The windows to your soul.” I said, more to myself than to Harper, but he caught the muttered comment.  I wasn’t scared to ask him the question this time.  It didn’t matter what he was saying to me anymore.  This was still the same guy that I had always known.  If he had wanted to do something to hurt me, he had had the last eighteen years to do so.  I didn’t see why he was going to start now.  “So, what is it about your eyes that is so different?”

Harper looked down at our entwined fingers for a moment before looking back up at me.  I gasped.  I couldn’t help it.  I had expected him to tell me, not to show me.

His eyes were shining an ethereal yellow, like liquid fire.  They were so bright that they were almost blinding.  Glowing.  It was like his eyes had been replaced by liquid jewels. I had never seen anything like this before.  Not in any horror or fantasy movies or anything like that. I could feel my heart start to race again.  It wasn’t because I was scared.  I was simply shocked by the beauty of that fiery stare.  They held a beauty all of their own.

“Wow!” Was all I could say to him. Harper blinked and they immediately went back to their normal hazel golden brown.

“So, now you’ve seen.” He said, simply.

“You’re not kidding! I’ve never seen anything like that before.” If there had been any doubt left in my mind about what he had been telling me before, seeing the sight of those dazzling yellow eyes had just confirmed every single word that he said.

“Do you have any questions for me?”

“I have a thousand!” I laughed.  “I just can’t think of any right now.”

“You don’t have to ask them all right now.  We’ve got all the time in the world.”

I cocked an eyebrow at him and smirked, “So, does this mean that I’m stuck with you forever?”

Harper grinned.  It felt good to be feeling like we were ‘us’ again.  “’Fraid so, chick.” But, then his grin gave way to that serious look again.  “But, I want you to know that you do have a choice in this.  If you don’t want me to be around, and I wouldn’t blame you after learning all of this, then I can leave.  This is not something that I want to force on you.  I can keep on protecting you from a distance.”

“You mean like a stalker?” I joked.

“Like a protector.”  He clearly wasn’t prepared to joke about this yet.

I nodded.  I had to.  I had to acknowledge that he was more than just a friend in my life.  He had his own role to play, one that I didn’t even know about up until this very moment.  I now understood better why he said that me knowing all of this didn’t have to change anything between us. It didn’t actually change a single thing that I felt about him and what he meant to me.  It wouldn’t change how we lived our lives.

“Are you happy?” I asked suddenly.

He looked up at me sharply, “What? Why would you ask that?”

“I want to know if you’re happy.”

“Yes.  Yes, I am.” And I knew that he really meant it.  I was glad that everything I had known between us was real and that he wasn’t just pretending to get what he wanted out of our friendship.  I was glad that I wasn’t just a means to an end for him.

“So, why are you telling me all of this now?”

“Because…. Milligan is also a Djinn.”

Chapter Fourteen

Now, it was my time to look shocked again. “He’s what?” I jumped up off of the sofa.  “How do you know that?”

I could totally handle everything that Harper was telling me about himself, but Milligan? He was a Djinn? What did that mean? I knew that he wasn’t like Harper and that thought scared me more than anything else.

He sat still on the sofa.  He knew that I needed to walk off this nervous energy that had suddenly just invaded me.  “I finally started to understand when you told me about the tattoo.  It’s more than just an ink design.  It’s something that we are born with, created with.  Sort of like what you would think of as a birth mark.  Other than our eyes, it is the only other thing that we take over from our true form to our human form.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“I couldn’t be completely sure.  We have a way of identifying one another.  I can’t really explain to you how it works.  It wouldn’t really make much sense to you.  But, we can see one another on a higher level.  We can see each other in our true forms.  Somehow, Milligan had managed to hide that from me.  That’s what confused me.”

I gulped.  Harper looked angry that Milligan had been able to hide his true self from him, that he had gotten the better of him.  I had seen so many different emotions from Harper tonight. In a way it made me feel a little better.  It was like I was finally getting to truly know the real him.  Every single part of him.  It somehow made our bond feel stronger.

“What did he want with me?”  I now knew that there had been more to it than met the eye.  It was true that I was confused by the feelings and the whole situation with Milligan, but now that Harper had stated that he was also a Djinn, I knew that there was more to it. It wasn’t a coincidental meeting.

“Now that I have been able to piece it all together, I understand a bit better what he is.  Milligan is a Shaitan.  They are among the cruellest and most devious of our kind.”

I rolled my eyes at him.  “Great.  That’s just fucking great.  So, I get caught up with the psycho.  Just my luck.” I said, sounding pissed off and broken.  Trust me to attract the worst of their kind.

“Milligan is able to manipulate others.  You would be able to liken it to demonic forces.  The Shaitan are the true forces of evil.”

“Why? Why me?”

It was almost like Harper didn’t hear my pitiful question as he carried on, “They can manipulate the minds and actions of others.  They can bend and break the will of others.”

“Why would he want to do that to me?” I knew that it was a pretty stupid question.  Who could ever really explain why evil did what it did? Evil was a motive all of its own.

“Because the Shaitan are still Djinn.  They feed off of emotions, just like the rest of us.  But, they feed off of negative, harmful energies and emotions.  Fear, stress, lust.  Any negative energy that can make you feel out of control.” He glared at the wall as he spoke, like he even hated to just think of them.

But, Milligan? How could that be? How could evil come in such an attractive package? Then, it dawned on me what Harper was saying.  Lust.  I had wanted him so badly.  I wanted him so much that it was almost a physical ache.  I had wanted him even when I was scared of him and frightened by his actions.  I had to laugh ruefully when I thought of all that he would have gained from me and my emotions.

“Why didn’t I see it from the beginning? I should have been able to see that there was something off about him.”  But, I knew the answer to that. I didn’t know so I couldn’t see. He had me where he wanted from me.  Right from the start. All I had felt from the very first time I met him was fear that was over-taken by lust.  Lust had been at the centre of it all.  How could I have been so blind? How could I have been so stupid?

“You wouldn’t have known anything.  All you saw was a man that you wanted and a man that wanted you.  Lust is as simple as that.  He called to you.  You were powerless to stop it.”

“But, I’m not stupid.  How could I have let great sex cloud my judgement like that? I’ve always been so careful with men.  Why did I let my emotions rule my head? I knew that he wasn’t the man for me, but I still wanted him.”

“Milligan would have been able to throw all of that good sense in your head out of the window.  He would have done anything to get what he wanted from you. That’s what they do.”

“But, even after those awful dead flowers and everything else, I still wanted him.  Even when I talked myself out of wanting him, as soon as I saw him, I wanted him.  Even when he stood there in front of me and I hated him with every single part of me, I still wanted him.” My voice sounded strangled, but it portrayed pretty well what I was feeling.

“Don’t beat yourself up about it.  It’s how they work.  You wouldn’t have been able to fight it, no matter what you did or wanted.” He replied, trying to reassure me, but it didn’t work, though.  I still thought that it was my fault.  I should have been stronger.

“Would I be able to do anything to stop it? Now that I know?”

Harper sighed.  “Probably not.  He’s strong.  He has to be to have been able to hide his true self from me.”

“Are you stronger?”

“No.  I’m not.”

“Will he know what you are?”

“Yes.”

Well, wasn’t that just brilliant? Fucking brilliant. Even though I knew that Milligan wasn’t human and that I didn’t really deep down want him, I knew that the next time I saw him, I’d want to jump his bones just like every other time I’d seen him.  How warped was that? And there was nothing I could do to stop it.

“So, what happens now?”

“I don’t know really.  I haven’t figured it out yet.  I wanted to make sure that you were fully aware of the situation before I thought about it.” Harper shrugged helplessly.

“Well, let me know when you work it out.” I snapped as I stormed out of the lounge.  This had all gotten too much for me.  I stomped into the kitchen.  I needed a drink.  Opening up the fridge, it was oddly bare.  There was nothing in there that I fancied.  No beer, no Jaeger, nothing alcoholic whatsoever.  You could tell that Dee hadn’t been around here lately.  She was the one who kept the fridge nicely stocked up with goodies.  All that was in there was Pepsi.  I cracked open a can.

As I took a swig, another thought occurred to me.  Milligan was also a Djinn.  I couldn’t remember exactly what Harper had actually called him, but that didn’t really matter to me.  He was a supernatural or spiritual being and a powerful one at that.  Harper had said that he could manipulate people and their actions.  What if everything that had been happening lately hadn’t all just been coincidence?  I’d been having a run of bad luck.  Bad things had been happening to me and others around me.

I raced back into the living room.  Harper was standing over by the windows, looking out at the clear night sky.

“You said that Milligan could do things, manipulate people. This all started happening the first night that we went down to the nightclub.  That was the night that I first met Milligan.  That was the night that Dee had her fall.”

I was met with silence.  I didn’t say anything else.  I waited impatiently for Harper to talk to me.

“I wondered when you would figure that out.”

I raised my eyebrows at him and threw my hands up in the air.  “Are you kidding me? On top of everything else, you think that I’ve got the presence of mind to work things like that out for myself? You should have told me.”

He glanced back at me over his shoulder.  “There are some things that you need to be able to figure out for yourself.  I’ve told you all that I can.  The rest kind of depends on you.”

“Depends on me? What can I do?”

“You need to be able to resist him.  You need to try to resist Milligan.”

“How? How the hell am I supposed to do that?” I asked him.  It seemed to me that he was asking me the impossible.  I couldn’t control what I felt when I was around him.  How was I supposed to resist him? Was there some trick to it?

“You just have to try.”

“Why?”

“Because he is not going to give up on you now.  He’s on a roll.  He wants you.  You feed him well.  I need you to try and keep hold of yourself and your emotions when you next see him.  I need you to try and buy us some time while I try to work out what I need to do next.  I need to try and find a way to get him away from you.  I need to get rid of him.”

“Do you mean that you are going to kill him?” I should have sounded a little more outraged at the fact that he was standing there and possibly talking about ‘offing’ someone.

“No.  We can’t kill him.”

“Why not?”

“There are many things that you still don’t know about my kind.  It would take an eternity for me to be able to tell you everything that you need to know about us.  You need to think about everything that has happened lately and see what can be linked back to Milligan.”

I didn’t like this.  Harper sounded so stressed and down, more so than I had ever known before.  I realised with a start that it was probably a direct reflection of how I was feeling.  It made sense.  If he was energised by my positive feelings then no wonder he was feeling as he was right now.  I had nothing to smile about.  The only thing that I was feeling was negative.  Milligan would be having a field day if he were here right now.

“Carrie.”  Harper said suddenly, grabbing hold of my shoulders and pushing me to face the window.  I didn’t know what the hell he thought he was doing at first, but then I noticed the car that was parked over the other side of the road. Milligan’s car.  As soon as I saw it, I felt that familiar pull low down in my stomach, cramping and tightening with anticipation.

I blinked and lowered my head.  Trying to pull away from him, Harper kept his hands on my shoulders, keeping me in place.

“What do you feel?”  His voice was stone cold.

“Harp, don’t.  Please, don’t do this.”

“Carrie! What do you feel?”

I wrenched myself out of his grasp and spun around to face him.  “I want him. Are you happy now? I want him more than I have ever wanted anything before.  Is that what you wanted to hear?” I shouted in his face, feeling a failure and tears pricked at my eyes.

“Carrie, I just wanted you to realise that you can’t stand up against him just with will power alone.  He can tear that apart to get to what he wants.”

“But, how does he do that? I didn’t even see him.  Just his car.  What the hell is wrong with me?” I could feel my throat tightening.

“There’s nothing wrong with you. You associate that car with Milligan and that sparks the memory of his touch. He’s got to you and you need to find the strength to resist him.”

I glanced back over my shoulder out the window and stared at the car for a moment.  “How? I don’t see how I can do this.  If he’s going to tear my will power apart, what am I left with?”

“That’s the problem.  I don’t know.”

“Well, you’re not a lot of help, are you?” I shook my head at him and shoved my way past, going to walk back over to the sofa. I was going to do what he asked and think about everything that he’d told me. It was a little bit much to take in, but I was at least going to try.  So much bad stuff had happened lately in such a short space of time that it was difficult for me to think what could have just been bad luck and what could have been down took to Milligan.

I took in a deep breath and decided to take my own piece of advice and start from the beginning.  But, I couldn’t do it on my own.  “Would you help me, please?”

Luckily Harper knew what I meant and he didn’t leave me stranded.  “Of course I will.”

Right.  Let’s start from the very beginning, when I had met Milligan.  “Milligan was responsible for Destiny’s fall?” I started.  I didn’t want to believe it, really.  Not because I didn’t want to think badly of Milligan, because I hated him, but I also hated the thought that Dee had been caught up in the middle of this mess. All because of me.

“I fear yes.”

“How did he do that?”

Harper glanced back at me with pain clearly in his eyes.  He hated the thought of Dee being injured because of all of this, too.  “I actually think that he got Michelle to push her down the stairs.”

Well, I didn’t expect to hear that. “Michelle?” I sounded shocked, but I really was.  Sure, I’d though that she was a bit of a fake Barbie doll wannabe when I first met her in the club, but the second time I saw her at the hospital, I’d thought she’d seemed quite sweet. Then, it dawned on me that I hadn’t actually seen her again after that time in the hospital.  I had been so wrapped up in everything that was happening to me in my life that I hadn’t even thought to ask Harper what was going on with him.

“Yes.  Michelle.  I didn’t see it at first, but there was something about her that was a little bit ‘off’.  I couldn’t put my finger on what it was.  I could kick myself now.  I should have been able to see it.  She was under his influence.  I think that she was being manipulated by Milligan.  I think that he got her to push Dee down the stairs and then got her to worm her way into my life, without her even knowing it.  That’s the thing.  She thought that she genuinely wanted to be with me, but I knew that there was something that wasn’t quite right.  I think that it was his plan from the very beginning. He knew what I was.  Well, he should of, anyway.  I don’t ever try to hide what I am.  To be honest, I wouldn’t even know how to do that.  It’s just not in my nature.  But, if that had been his plan, then it backfired on him.  There was something about her that swung from intense to vacant.  It wasn’t normal.  I told her that I didn’t want to see her again.  She even cried.  I didn’t understand why she would have been quite so upset when I had only seen her a couple times.  Now, I know that she was meant to distract me so that I didn’t notice so much what was going on with you.”