A Most Graceful Life Ch. 11

In the other room, Hanif was on his disposable cell phone, making the necessary arrangements. Now that the djinn scum had been captured, it was time for her destruction.

"Brother Mahmoud, it is Brother Hanif. It goes well, thank you. Are you still in Canada? Excellent, could you spare a few days to come down to the United States? Yes, Kansas. I have a live one, and you are the closest brother to me. Yes, I have myTubadid. Great, how long? That should be fine. No, I'm going to call Adil, who's active in Cuba, currently. Many thank yous, my brother. Peace be upon you."

Hanif hung up the phone, before repeating much the same call to Brother Adil, who was able to join him as well. In less than two days, both brothers would join him here in Kansas, and then he would have enough manpower to operate theTubadid.

Hanif dropped his cell phone on the counter, walking slowly over to the black case that contained the ancient weapon. Running his hands around the steel locks, he unclasped them slowly, and pulled the lid back to expose it. It looked like nothing special, or anything to have fear over, especially to the unknowing. To Hanif, it almost looked like part of the device that was used for a milking machine, for livestock, with its simple design. Yet, when each brother held the handles, and the djinn underneath began to tremble and scream as it's own life force was sucked away, it gave Hanif an oddly pleasurable sensation.

The truth was that he loved operating theTubadid, and loved the chance to rid the world of more of these magical disturbances. He would especially relish the destruction of the genie in the other room. How her master had fought so valiantly, but pointlessly to save her. Yet, it would all be for naught.

Clapping his hands with a self-satisfied smile, he packed theTubadid back in its case, and locked the latches. "Only a couple more days of waiting," he whispered to himself, already feeling a sense of arousal at operating the weapon. Perhaps that could explain why he was so good at his job, and why he was relentless in chasing down djinn: the emotional and physical pleasure of their destruction made the entire chase worthwhile.

Once theTubadid was secured, Hanif walked into the darkened room where the genie was being kept, and turned the light on. The genie's eyes met his own, coldly appraising him as one would do a criminal on trial. It only made Hanif smile. He reached for the folding chair, and set it down in front of her, taking a careful seat in which to judge his captive.

"How are your accommodations, genie?" He grinned, maliciously.

Grace refused to answer him, and instead, continued to stare down his devilish eyes.

"So much for hospitality," he sneered, before shrugging his shoulders. "You should know, my brothers have been summoned. Your time in this world is now extremely limited."

Grace looked around as confusion struck her. "Brothers, what brothers?"

Hanif arched an eyebrow. It would be odd for a djinn to not know how the order of wardens operated, but then again, she was an easy capture, so maybe not. He shrugged his shoulders again, "Why, my brother wardens, of course. I will need their assistance in destroying you. Only the collective power of three wardens can destroy a djinn. Did you not know that, genie?"

Grace didn't answer once more.

"If I could do it myself, you would already be nothing more than gray matter scattered back into the universe," sighed Hanif, appearing quite bored at the prospect. "Yet, this will give me time to enjoy your anguish much more. After all, you were such a delightfully easy capture."

Grace's face darkened and her eyes filled with venom, "I didn't know wardens still existed."

Hanif threw his head back in a laugh, a particularly troubling sound that echoed off of all four walls, "You stupid little witch. Of course we still exist. We have existed for over three millennia, and we will exist for another three millennia. As long as there are djinn in the world, the Order of Light will exist to extinguish it."

"Order of Light? That's what you call yourselves? What kind of foolish, self-important demagogues name themselves something like the Order of Light? Call yourselves what you really are: the Order of Murderers."

Hanif grinned. This one had a little fight in her. It would make her death that much more pleasurable. "You speak of murder as if you are human. Magical beings don't qualify for murder, so we'll stick with the Order of Light instead. Besides, our order has spent all these years tracking down magical disturbances and trying to maintain some semblance of balance within the world. You djinn do nothing but leave a trail of disturbances and interruptions to the world of men, heavily disrupting the natural order. Nothing but nuisances to be disposed of as one would flatten a simple household fly."

Grace managed to smile at him, "You sound pretty bitter for someone in such a high and mighty order. What's your story? Unloved as a child?"

Hanif leaned forward, pressing his face closer to her, "Keep smiling, bitch. You haven't even begun to know pain yet."

"I'm already dead. There's nothing you can do to hurt me now," grinned Grace, triumphantly. She knew death was right around the corner. If she managed to enrage him, perhaps he could hasten it and end her suffering.

"Oh, I can't?" Hanif laughed, before setting his face to stone, "I have many ways to hurt you. Two in particular."

He pulled out a long, and particularly nasty looking knife, that had been sheathed within his belt. It curved to a pointy tip, with an intricate design transposed across the blade. Hanif held it to her throat. "Pressing in home now with this knife would do nothing. You wouldn't die, sadly. Only the power of theTubadid has the power to destroy you."

He slowly pulled the knife away from her throat, grinning through stained teeth. "Yet, I could go pay another visit to your master over there. Stephen, is it? Right? Perhaps show him all the places I can stick this knife and make him squeal like a pig over an open fire!"

"You bastard!" Grace screamed, trying with all her might to free herself from the Restraint. It was to no avail, and the best she could manage was to flop around like a fish without water. Hanif just watched, thoroughly entertained at her suffering. She started to sob once more.

"You are forgetting the best part of all that," he sneered again, checking the tip of his knife. "It's right before I kill him, when I let him know that his failure to save you resulting in the loss of two lives, instead of one."

Grace's eyes went wide with fear.How could he have known?

His lip curled up into a menacing snarl, "That's right, djinn. I know you're with child. Does he know? Does he know you are pregnant with his own seed?"

Grace said nothing, openly weeping once more, and praying that her love could get away from this terrible man.

"He doesn't know!" Hanif said, triumphantly. "Pity about how he will find out. You should have told him sooner. It is no matter, and we will finish the job soon."

"Fuck you!" Grace screamed, making her arms and body ache with her struggle against the Restraint. Nothing worked at all, no matter what she tried. She was completely within his power.

Hanif tsked at her, before replying back, "Such language. The world will be well rid of you. If you will excuse me now, I have work to do."

Grace sobbed openly, a mixture of crying and screaming. She let out one final challenge before he left the room completely, "You'll get yours one day! I promise you that! Someday, you'll have to answer for all the lives you've taken, and the souls you've destroyed!"

Hanif turned to her, and sighed, looking at her writhing on the ground. "I tire of your mouth, genie. Close it, or I will put the tape back on."

"Such a strong man you are. Can't even handle a woman telling you how it really is?" She taunted, managing a careless smile at the rage building behind his eyes. If she could cause him one tenth the amount of pain he had done to her, she could at least die comfortably. "You're nothing. Your order is nothing, a joke of pathetic excuses of human excrement. Someday, someone will use that knife at your side and carve out your heart. I only pray that there is one there to begin with, so you know what real pain is!"

Hanif rapidly closed the distance between them. He grabbed her by the hair, yanking her up off the floor, and pressed his fist home squarely into her jaw. The force alone sent her back down onto the ground, the yelp leaving her scurrying back for protection. Soon enough, her body stilled, and her eyes closed. She spoke no more.

"That should do the trick," replied Hanif, grimly, before turning around and slamming the door behind him.

Grace blinked a few times, on the verge of consciousness. Her head spun in circles, preventing her from keeping a coherent thought. One word escaped her lips, in a tiny whisper, before surrendering to the darkness.

"Stephen."

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Stephen awoke with a sudden groan, finding himself still face down on the floor in his bedroom. His head was throbbing, and the pain in the side of his chest was enough to make him wince with just about any movement.

Blinking several times in order to steady his vision, Stephen was finally able to fix his sight on the leg of the bed, which was directly in front of him. He remembered landing in this position, after being tossed over the bed and then punched directly in the jaw. He reached up to rub at the area where Hanif's fist made contact, finding it tender and sore. That one would take a long time to heal.

Stephen placed both hands flat on the floor, and used his strength to push himself up off the ground. It was slow going, even just to get into an upright position, thanks to the pain in his ribs. He pulled up his shirt, seeing a horrific looking bruise mark from where he had been kicked. He was sure a few ribs had broken in the scuffle over Grace.

Grace. Where was she?

He got to his feet as quickly as he could, and managed to hobble over to the hallway that connected his room with the rest of his house. It was still light out, and the time on the clock in the hall told him it was still early afternoon. Stephen guessed no one was home yet, as he surely would not have woken up on his own had his mother discovered him like that. He hobbled throughout the kitchen and looked outside. The moving truck was still where he had left it, with the bed fully accessible, yet there was no sign of Grace.

Stephen checked the entire house, from one end to the other. There wasn't a hint of the genie in any part. He tried to call out for her, hoping beyond hope that somehow the warden hadn't carried her off. He was greeted by nothing but an eerie silence that carried throughout the entire house. What could he have done with her?

Making his way over to the kitchen, Stephen once more looked outside the window, his eyes carrying across the street to the house that Hanif had purchased, while posing as his alias Henry Lopez. The windows were drawn and the blinds shut tight. The car was still in the driveway, but otherwise, it looked to be unusually ominous. He wondered if Grace was inside, or if he had taken her somewhere else. He wondered what Hanif had done with her. Was she still alive? Was she being tortured? How could a genie be destroyed anyway?

He remembered the pair of silvery handcuffs that Hanif held in his hand, the same ones he had seen locked around Grace's wrists after he had gone back inside to attempt a rescue. Obviously, those were there to restrain her, but could they be used to destroy her, too?

Stephen shook his head discouragingly. There were too many questions, and just about no answers. He just wished he knew if she was okay. If she was still alive. An idea came to him.

"Grace? Grace, are you there? Can you hear me?" He forced the words out internally as he had hundreds of times in the past, using their secret method of communication. Yet, nothing came back in return. Nothing but silence. Either Grace was blocked from accessing her magic, or she was not conscious. Both signs were equally troubling for him.

What else was disturbing for him was what he would do if he actually managed to locate Grace. Clutching at his side, he remembered how badly his first encounter with Hanif had been. Though he had been surprised and quickly overpowered, Stephen didn't doubt that Hanif possessed great strength and skill, and would be a critical factor in any attempt to rescue Grace.

He sighed, wondering how he was going to attempt this. If only Grace had left behind some kind of instructions for dealing with wardens, he might be able to figure out a plan. Yet, Grace didn't really have any belongings. All of her clothes appeared out of mid-air, as was the same with her fake car that she had created early on in their courtship. She had no other possessions, no diary, and nothing but the set of five rules that she had left him from the first day she appeared.

So what could possibly be done?How can I defeat a warden and rescue a genie? Stephen groaned to himself, as it sounded like a question he should be typing into Google, just to see if any results popped up. Looking down at his laptop, Stephen did a double take. Surely, a bit of internet research couldn't hurt? Perhaps he might stumble on something to make this task seem less daunting than it already was. Besides, it was really his only shot. It wasn't like he could just ask anyone about how to defeat a warden. Most people would look at him like he was nuts. And he seriously doubted any library would hold any kind of information like that. The internet may be his own choice.

Feeling several parts foolish, Stephen fired on the laptop, and waited for it to connect. He found himself quickly tapping at the side as it loaded his desktop. Every second worth of delay was one less second that Grace had to survive. He needed all the timing he could get. Finally, he opened up a page in the internet, and typed in his main question.

He was imminently greeted by many results for gaming communities. Stephen sighed, looking at the first five pages with nothing but results for how to beat this level, or how this character differed between a variety of different games. Nothing seemed anywhere close to what he was looking for.

He changed his search terms to just wardens and genies. His results were a little bit better, this time leading to fantasy novels instead of games, but still otherwise completely unhelpful. He spent the next half hour searching anything he could find including a variety of terms including, genie, djinn, Arabia, warden, and magic. Apart from one site that he swore was set up as a joke, nothing appeared close to what he was looking for.

Stephen resisted the urge to bang his head against a wall, if only for the reason that it would exacerbate the pain he already felt. He felt truly at a dead end. He knew of nothing that could help him neutralize the warden, or be able to rescue Grace. There just didn't seem to be any solutions.

Closing his laptop with a loud smack, he tossed it back on his bed, and let himself follow shortly after. A single, lonely tear trekked down his cheek. This wouldn't have happened if he had never gotten into a fight with Grace in the first place. If she hadn't gone inside the house, Hanif wouldn't have been able to sneak up on him the way he did. Or if he tried, perhaps Grace could have dealt with him first.

Stephen tried to steel himself. Playing the what-if game would do him no good now. There had to be a solution. Even if he could just free Grace long enough to get a head start away from the warden, he'd take it. Even if that meant sacrificing his own life, he'd be willing do that to let Grace get the chance to get away. Closing his eyes, he pictured her face. Those shimmering blue eyes, and that smile that gave reason for his heart to beat. He owed her everything that could he could muster.

When Stephen opened his eyes, his gaze focused down on the floor. He squinted to let the object come into focus, as realization dawned on his brain. He was looking at Grace's portal. Standing up, he walked over and picked it up off the floor, one of the only remaining items left in the room besides his bed. Only appearing to be a simple puzzle box, the portal was what bounded Grace to him after he solved the puzzle.

He turned the small device over again in his hands several times, trying to remember everything Grace had ever said about it. It was her home for twenty five hundred years, where she existed as nothing but potential energy. But there had to be more to it. There had to be some key, or some clue, that could help him solve the great question on his mind.

It was like something clicked in his head at that very moment. Words that Grace had said suddenly snapped into full focus.

"Even just the vessel itself is capable of great magic, completely apart from my own. That magic only responds to the master of the portal as well, such as I do."

He could hear her words clear as day. Turning the portal to look at it head on, his mind filled with an idea.Could I use the portal's magic in an effort to free Grace?

Catching his attention, the portal itself began to glow. A soft, green light was emanated from the portal for no more than a second, before returning to its original color. Was it responding to him? Could it be the tool that he needed? It was the only shot he had, but it was better than nothing.

Stephen took the small portal and placed it in his pocket, its size allowing it to fit comfortably. Now that he had something to counter the magic (he hoped), he needed something to counter the warden. Stephen hobbled to the front of the house, and carefully snuck into the storage closet off the main living room. Finding a black bag laying haphazardly over several pairs of cleats, he pulled it out and opened it. After rummaging past a pair of gloves and a few baseballs, he grasped what he was looking for and pulled it out in one smooth motion. His old wooden baseball bat, that was now the possession of the twins. It would have to do.

Stephen tossed the bag back in the closest and closed the door. He caught sight of himself in the mirror near the kitchen, carrying his brothers' baseball bat and a small puzzle box that, he hoped, would unleash enough magic to save his genie. Stephen recognized how foolish he looked, yet he couldn't have explained this to anyone else even if he tried. Even the pre-Grace Stephen would have a hard time believing what he was about to attempt. Shaking his head, he realized the ultimate truth: love makes you do crazy things.

Staring back out the kitchen window to the warden's house, he resolved to do everything in his power to rescue that blue-eyed genie that had so captured his heart. He couldn't have felt less naked going into battle with no plan, but it would have to work. He had to give everything he could for the hope of saving Grace. Stephen put his hand on the door, took a deep breath, which made his ribs throb, and opened the door from the house.

There was no turning back now.

Stephen walked out the front door, and quickly slid behind the moving truck, using it to keep an eye on the Hanif's house. Satisfied that no one else was about, or that he was being secretly watched, Stephen shuffled around the moving truck, and ducked behind a waist high decorative bush that marked the edge of the property. His stealthy movements made him feel like he was playing the main role in some kind of action movie, despite how silly it would have looked to anyone else who just might happen to see him. Yet, in his case, the stakes were incredibly real. It was enough for him to justify the theatrical stealth tactics.