djinn wars 02 - taken (13 page)

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I’m just starting to get the heebie-jeebies. When I came to find you, I had a mission, and I guess I wasn’t thinking about the whole thing. And when it was snowing, I felt, I don’t know…more protected. Safer. Like those other djinn couldn’t see me. Which I know is stupid, because it sounds like they can see pretty much whatever the hell they want, except in Los Alamos.”

“Well, that should reassure you, then,” I said. “Because none of the djinn can see anything in Los Alamos, thanks to that doohickey they have, which means that once we get there, we should be safe enough.”

“Safe from
djinn
,” she pointed out.

All right, that much was true. The bad djinn wouldn’t be able to get to us there, but that didn’t mean the mortal population couldn’t do us plenty of harm if they wanted to.

I started rehearsing what I was going to say when we got there, making sure I had something of a coherent story straight in my head. The last thing I wanted was to start stammering all over the place like a guilty idiot the first time they started asking questions. I was going to say I got scared, being alone on the compound like that, and I wanted to be with my own kind. Evony had found me, and we’d decided that it was best for us to go to Los Alamos. As for our djinn lovers, well, we’d just been trying to stay alive, and had gone along with their wishes. The world had collapsed, and we didn’t know what else to do. But now we’d finally realized what a mistake we’d made.

And so on.

Lying like that would feel terrible — even lying to the people in Los Alamos. It would seem like a repudiation of everything Jace and I had shared. But I would lie for the next hundred years to everyone I met if it meant getting him home safely. I couldn’t worry about scruples right now. Not with so much at stake.

After we passed the outskirts of Española and began moving upward toward Los Alamos, the snow on the roadway decreased, leveling out so much that it was clear the Immune there must have been plowing it. Why, I wasn’t sure, except that maybe it helped speed up any trips they might have made to go foraging. The pickings in Española wouldn’t be as good as in Santa Fe, but it also wasn’t nearly as far away.

And then I had to bring us to a stop just as we rounded a curve where the road split off between the 502 and the 30, because there was a barricade across the highway, with a bright yellow Hummer I knew all too well parked in front of it, and two men holding assault rifles standing there in the cold. One of them had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth; a thin line of smoke trailed upward into the cold, clear sky.

My heart began to pound, but I forced in a breath, trying the best I could to look calm as the man without the cigarette began to approach the Cherokee while his companion hung back, rifle pointed directly at our windshield. Beside me, Evony sat straight and unmoving, fingers clenched on the edge of her seat.

As the guard approached the driver-side window, he made a rolling-down motion with one hand. I pressed the button, and then tried not to gasp when I looked up into his face.

I knew this man.

All right, not really, but I did recognize him. The blond guard from the raid on my house, when they had taken Jace away.

His eyes widened behind his sunglasses, and I could tell he’d placed me, too. The gloved hands clutching the rifle relaxed almost infinitesimally, but I noticed.

“What the hell?” he began, then seemed to check himself. “That is, Ms. Monroe? What are you doing here?”

“Taking you guys up on your offer,” I replied. A casual tone, but not
too
casual. If I sounded a bit worried, I wanted him to think it was because I didn’t know for sure whether they would actually take me in.

A long pause. He took off his sunglasses — which weren’t really necessary by that point, as the sun had begun to dip behind the mountains — and flicked a gaze past me to Evony. “Who are you?”

“Evony Rodriguez,” she said. “I used to live in Española.”

Again he hesitated, and then I saw him nod, as if he’d just placed her as another Chosen like me. “And what’s this?” He pointed at the trailer we were towing.

“My livestock,” I explained. “That is, five goats. We have a dozen chickens in the back. I stayed at the house because I didn’t want to abandon the animals, but then I realized I just couldn’t stay out there alone. I was hoping you might need some fresh eggs and milk.”

His expression softened finally, and I realized he actually wasn’t a bad-looking guy. In fact, once upon a time, if he’d come up to me in a bar and offered to buy me a drink, I doubted I would have declined. But I wasn’t that girl anymore.

However, he didn’t have to know that.

“We could use it,” he said. “That’s…generous of you, Ms. Monroe.”

“Jessica,” I put in, and he even smiled. Just a little, and it was gone in a flash, almost as if he didn’t want his cigarette-smoking companion to see him getting too friendly.

“Jessica,” he repeated. “I’m Dan Lowery. I can’t leave my post here, but I’ll radio ahead that you’re here, and someone will meet you and show you where you can take your…goats. And then I’m pretty sure the commander will want to talk to you.”

“Commander?”

“Captain Margolis. And he really is a captain,” Dan added, as if he felt the need to explain further. “National Guard.”

I remembered the big man with the short hair, the grim expression on his face as he’d looked at Jace. And I also recalled the way he’d looked at me. Not exactly professional, but, as I’d already told myself, with an interest I would definitely exploit if necessary.

“Okay,” I said. “That’s totally understandable. But — there’ll be someplace for us, if you take us in?”

Another reluctant smile. “Not an issue. We’ve in-gathered a lot of Immune, but altogether, we’re still not nearly what the population of the town was before the Dying.”

No, I supposed it wouldn’t be. I doubted there would ever be a town or city again that could get anywhere close to its pre-Dying population. Housing wouldn’t be an issue for a long, long time.

I told him, “That’s good to hear,” and he nodded and stepped away, calling out to his companion that we were coming through.

The other guard stubbed out his cigarette, then climbed into the Hummer so he could pull it just far enough out of the center of the road that we’d be able to squeeze by. The entire time I was maneuvering past him, I kept expecting him to step on the gas and ram us or something, prevent us from going farther up the hill, but he didn’t. We moved along without incident, then continued our climb into Los Alamos.

And it was quite a climb. Even though intellectually I’d known that the town was perched up in the Jemez Mountains, I hadn’t really understood what that meant until we were twisting and turning up the two-lane highway, the trailer rattling along behind us, complete with some irritated bleats of protest from the goats inside. No wonder the Immune had chosen this place — this road would be dead easy to defend, and from what Evony had said, going out the back way wasn’t any better.

At last the highway emerged onto a plateau, and the road widened into four lanes. Snow was piled high to either side of us, but the street itself was clear. Well, not entirely clear. Stopped directly ahead were two SUVs with light bars on top and some kind of blazon on the side, clearly law enforcement vehicles.

Knowing the drill a little better now, I slowed to a halt and waited as a man and a woman wearing dark uniforms with heavy parkas over them emerged from the first SUV and began walking toward us.

“Go directly to jail,” Evony quipped. “Do not pass Go — ”

“Very funny. The guard said the commander would want to talk to us, so I guess this is his way of guiding us in.”

“Looks very welcoming.”

I shot her a sour look but didn’t say anything, mostly because I really didn’t want the two approaching officers — or whoever they were — to hear us squabbling. Better to sit tight and wait to see what happened.

This time I rolled down the window right away. The woman peered in at us. I noticed the way her hand rested on the sidearm at her hip. “Jessica Monroe?”

“Yes,” I replied, although I couldn’t help wondering who the hell else she expected me to be.

“Step out of the vehicle, please,” she said. “Your companion, too.”

This really didn’t feel good, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. As I’d loaded my belongings into the Cherokee, I’d contemplated bringing along a couple of handguns, and maybe one of the rifles. I’d decided against it, though, worried that the Immune would get the wrong idea if they discovered a cache of weapons in the vehicle. And now, as Evony and I got out, and the male officer peered in the back of the Jeep to see the chickens there, along with Evony’s weekender bag and my duffle, I was glad we were unarmed. Provoking a confrontation over a few guns would definitely be the wrong way to get started in Los Alamos.

“Officer Ortega here will take the livestock to a safe place,” the female cop said.

Wait, what? Dan Lowery had made it sound as if I’d be the one driving to wherever the goats would be sheltered. And if they thought I’d let this Officer Ortega take off with my dad’s Cherokee….

Then I saw again the way the female cop’s right hand rested on the gun at her belt, and I realized getting in an argument about the Jeep probably wasn’t that great an idea.

“Okay,” I replied. “But can I get my dog out of the back seat? She goes everywhere with me.”

To my surprise, the hard set of the woman’s mouth softened slightly. “No problem. Go and get her.”

I nodded and went over to the rear driver-side door of the Jeep, then opened it. Dutchie jumped right out, tail wagging. Since I was there anyway, I also retrieved Evony’s and my bags, and carried them back over to where she and the female officer were waiting.

“Let me see inside those,” the cop said.

Knowing any protests would be useless, I backed away a foot or so. The woman knelt and unzipped first my bag, then Evony’s, and poked around in each of them. Since there wasn’t anything more incriminating in there than toiletries and a few changes of clothes, she quickly closed the bags back up and got to her feet.

While she was occupied, her companion had gotten behind the wheel of the Cherokee. It hurt to see him slowly drive it off, but I forced myself to stand there and let it go. Los Alamos wasn’t that big a town; I’d locate the Jeep again if they didn’t seem too eager to give it back to me when I needed it.

“Your dog have a leash?” the female cop asked.

I nodded and pulled Dutchie’s collar and leash from where I kept them coiled up in the outer zippered pocket of the backpack that held the rest of her supplies. These days, I really didn’t bother with either of them, and the dog gave me a curious tilt of the head as I snapped her collar on. But again, it wasn’t worth getting into an argument over.

“Okay,” the officer said. “Come on, and I’ll drive you over to the justice center.”

Evony’s eyebrows went up at an alarming angle. “Are we under arrest?”

Not even a quirk at the corner of the woman’s mouth. She looked like she was probably in her early forties, with brown hair pulled into an intricate French braid and cool gray eyes. If she hadn’t been a cop before the Heat struck, she’d still been…something. Maybe ex-military.

“No, you’re not under arrest. But it’s a hike up to the center, and the commander wants to talk to you ASAP. So let’s go.”

Evony and I exchanged a glance, then silently gathered up our bags and obediently followed the cop over to her SUV. She opened up the back so we could dump our bags in, and indicated that we should get in the back seat. Dutchie got the place of honor, riding shotgun, and, to my surprise, I saw the officer reach over to scratch behind my dog’s ears before she slipped her key into the ignition. Dutchie, indiscriminate ho that she was, gave a big doggy smile.

Brat,
I thought, but my inner amusement faded as we began to move, heading into the heart of town. Here, too, the streets were all plowed, the sidewalks shoveled. And I saw what appeared to be normal signs of life — vehicles on the street, almost all of them trucks and SUVs equipped with four-wheel drive; cars actually parked in the lot of the local Smith’s grocery store; even a woman out at a park with a couple of kids, watching as they hurled snowballs at one another.

Kids. These were the first children I’d seen since the Heat swept through the population. There had to have been some children among the Immune, but I hadn’t come across any in Albuquerque, and of course the djinn were preoccupied with their Chosen, so no children in Taos, either.

Well, I guess that means the djinn don’t have any pedophiles among them,
I thought, then wanted to shake my head at myself. But it was true. They obviously gravitated toward Immune who were young and good-looking, but that certainly wasn’t a crime.

I could tell Evony was watching, too; her gaze was focused on the world outside the window, intent. However, her expression appeared to be very blank, for her. Not that I could claim to know her very well, not after only a few days in one another’s company, but in general she seemed to wear her moods on her face. Was this glimpse at an almost normal world upsetting her somehow? Or was she just merely trying to practice her poker face for our interview with the commander?

That was an interview I could have lived without. Then again, I’d managed to face down Zahrias and lived to tell the tale, so I should be able to survive an encounter with a mere captain easily enough. Maybe. In the end, Zahrias had turned out to be — well, I wouldn’t go so far as to call him an ally, but he was certainly far less scary than I’d imagined him to be.

We pulled off onto a side street, then into a parking lot that backed up to a large modern-looking building of brick and glass. Considering how rundown in appearance a lot of the municipal facilities in Albuquerque had been, I was a little surprised to see how nice this place was. It looked as if someone had had money to throw around in Los Alamos, small as it was.

“Go ahead and bring your bags,” the officer instructed us. “You’ll be getting your housing assignments here as well.”