It was hard to stare down a creature whose eyes were ten meters apart, but I did my best.
“I’ll crush this cheaply made toy globe like a lightbulb!” shouted the djinni.
Lightning crackled and thunder boomed. The globe grew black as the djinni brought his hands together over our sphere. He squeezed with all his might, but the globe resisted.
Besides the physical forces, weird magics crackled around the globe, trying to break my masterpiece. I snorted in derision as the extra-dimensional component safely shunted all that energy away. The only drawback was that it channeled the energy through me.
No problem—I could handle a lot of energy for the brief time it took to route it away.
Where did it go? Was all that magic and energy creating a Big Bang event somewhere in the multiverse? I could almost see the math, how it would work…
Mike touched my elbow and murmured, “Luna, please don’t blank out while the monster is trying to kill us.”
“Thanks, Mike.” Magicians are too easily distracted.
The djinni snarled, revealing teeth the size of driveway slabs. He twisted and shook us like a child with a snow globe.
Instead of bashing against the sides of our shelter, we stayed upright as the momentum of his attack shifted away. No matter how the globe twisted, down remained down for us inside.
He yelled a curse in an ancient tongue and hurled us toward the ground.
Sand and earth splashed like water as we hit the ground. We were probably setting off earthquake detectors on the other side of the world. But once again, inertia inside the globe was several orders of magnitude lower than the force applied outside.
Then the djinni took on a fully human shape. He was still gigantic, but he had human legs and feet now.
The last thing I saw was a giant, callused heel coming down on us. Even with the help of the globe, this Godzilla-sized stomp was too much to handle. I blacked out as the force transferred through me.
I woke up with my head in Mike’s lap. I blinked and focused on Ariel. She stood ten feet away with a snarl on her lips. A savage cut on her face bled profusely. Mike had his silver dagger upraised in front of us.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “If I kill her, I’ll be free!”
“You’ll never be free,” said Mike. “If you hurt Luna, I’ll kill you even if that reverse pack link doesn’t kill you first.”
“I don’t believe I can die from that link. She just said that to scare me,” Ariel said. Then she spat out a curse in Hebrew.
I felt Mike stiffen, then relax. Was that golem curse still active? Maybe I hadn’t removed it, just neutralized it with Mason’s coin.
“Oh, it’s true, Ariel,” I said as I sat up. “But it only works one way. I can kill you any time and not feel a thing.”
She stared into my eyes for a long ten seconds, then averted her gaze. I made a mental note to never sleep around her again.
I shook my head to throw off useless thoughts. Fear came back in a rush. We were arguing while a djinni was trying to kill us. I ran to the side of the globe and peered out.
The giant djinni was lying on his back, curled up and holding his battered heel. I hadn’t even registered his fall, which must have shaken the earth for miles around.
“Was this ‘cheaply made toy globe’ too tough a nut for you to crack?” I taunted. “Is that the best you could do? Stomp your feet like a child?”
Mike stood behind me and whispered, “Please don’t piss off the god-level entity.”
“I thought you only believed in one God.”
“I do,” said Mike. I could feel the faith in his voice. “It’s god-level, not my God. A ‘god-with-a-little-G’ type god. Not the genuine thing, but still not worth fighting needlessly.”
“So he’s a ‘genie-with-a-little-G’ monster?”
I turned to the monster, who had scooted closer to our globe. I knew he had heard every word.
“Little G-genie,” I called. Giant eyes focused on me through the glass as I tapped on it. “Looks like inside here is my domain.”
He sat on his butt and rubbed his sore heel. “My master has ordered all foreign influences, both mundane and magical, removed from his domain.”
“What are you going to do about it, big guy?”
He glared at me as if I were an annoying insect. “I might carry your globe to the center of the earth and leave you there. I might carry it to the moon and abandon it there. I might chain it with great weights and drop it to the bottom of the ocean.”
I shivered at these threats. What would going to the moon do to werewolves? It might be great, but it might be fatal.
Wait. He had said ‘might,’ not ‘could’ or ‘will.’ And he hadn’t followed through with those threats. There was some faint memory, a lesson Mason had taught about these entities and their weak points.
These creatures, so much more powerful than even the strongest werewolves and magicians, bound themselves with rules and unbreakable vows. Like playing Uno with children. Or to keep a level playing field with other entities of similar power levels? Or maybe for some reason humans couldn’t fathom.
In any case, I was suddenly sure he couldn’t follow through on his grandiose threats.
“But that would mean leaving your domain,” I said. I furrowed my brow in puzzlement. “Wouldn’t that break some kind of rule?”
He grunted as if punched in the gut, sending a small sandstorm to beat against the globe.
Through gritted teeth, he threatened, “I have other ways to get rid of you. The man who freed me has given his orders. We allow no foreigners here. I will enter your tiny domain and slaughter you all like I would stomp a snake.”
There was an old story about a clever man tricking a genie, using his own pride against him. Could it work
