djinn wars 02 - taken (2 page)

I wasn’t sure I wanted to guess, but between that and the inevitable disease and accidents that occurred after any great cataclysm, I estimated maybe a thousand were still alive. Of those, I doubted all would have made their way to that small hillside town, built on several plateaus nestled in the Jemez Mountain range. So possibly…five hundred? Six hundred?

That didn’t sound like a whole lot, but it was still five hundred of them up against just one of me.

Trying not to sigh, I forced down the leftovers, ignoring Dutchie as she settled near the base of my chair and waited to see if I’d have any scraps to give her when I was done. I also tried to ignore the thoughts that swirled around in my brain, telling me that Jace had been wrong and that the Los Alamos crew was going to execute him just as soon as they cleared space on the hanging tree or whatever they planned to use to rid themselves of their captive.

Although…
could
you even execute a djinn? That is, Jace certainly felt real enough; I’d kissed him, touched him, made love to him. His body certainly seemed human, at least in every aspect that mattered to me. Some of that could have been subterfuge, but not all; when he’d given up his assumed identity of Jason Little River, Jace still looked human, just different from the man I’d come to know.

But he’d told me of being trapped on this plane by the device the man in the glasses had been carrying, which meant Jace had the ability to move from this world to others, planes of existence I could barely begin to imagine. So maybe that body was real while he was here, but changed into something else when he wasn’t on the corporeal plane?

Just trying to figure out how that could possibly work made my head hurt. I’d never believed in ghosts and spirits, psychics and channeling and all that stuff. I believed in what I could see, could touch. Well, I’d seen Jace floating above the living room floor, so I knew he wasn’t an ordinary man. And I’d touched him, so I also knew he was real. Ergo, there were things in heaven and earth that certainly had never been dreamt of in my philosophy…at least not until the Dying changed the world irrevocably.

And I couldn’t begin to guess where the man in the glasses might have gotten that device he was carrying. Was it djinn-made? I hadn’t gotten the impression that he was in charge, exactly…the guy with the military-looking haircut had definitely appeared to be the boss of that particular group. So how were they connected?

I threw Dutchie one last scrap of sausage that I’d saved for her, then went to rinse off my plate. As I did so, my brain kept working away at the problem. The leader of the group from Los Alamos had said that Jace would be put on trial for his supposed crimes. Would it be a real trial, or at least a facsimile of one, with a prosecutor and a defense attorney and all that? Or would they dispense with the niceties, declare him guilty after a sham trial, and string him up anyway?

The thought crossed my mind that I could go to Los Alamos and offer myself as his defender. Never mind that everything I knew about courtroom procedures I’d gleaned from watching old episodes of various crime dramas. Then again, even my limited knowledge might be better than the so-called “defense” Jace would get from whoever in Los Alamos was assigned to his case. If they assigned anyone at all. Maybe they expected him to defend himself. That would go over really well.

After heading back to the living room, I pushed the curtains aside and peered out. The sky still looked lowering, but the snow, if it was coming at all, hadn’t made an appearance yet. And although I’d shut the gate, I hadn’t secured it. Until I could attempt to make repairs, I really should get out there and lock it up with some chain and a padlock or something.

First I made a detour to the office and woke up the computer so I could take a look at the security feed. As I’d feared, even though the cameras on the rest of the property seemed to be working normally, the one that overlooked the front gate was dark, so it had to have been disabled at the same time the main mechanism was circumvented.

Well, at least I had eyes on the rest of the compound. That was better than nothing. Also, I was able to scrounge some chain and a padlock — still in its clamshell packaging — from the storage area in the basement, and that made me feel…well, not better, exactly, but at least slightly safer.

I pulled on my coat and scarf, but not my gloves, since I needed the full use of my hands. Once I was outfitted, I went back outside, Dutchie bounding along at my heels, and headed down to the gate, which I secured to the wall as best I could by looping the chain around the steel frame bolted to the adobe. When I pulled on it, there might have been the slightest amount of give, but overall, it seemed sturdy enough. No, it wouldn’t stand up to someone driving a Hummer through it, and if you were determined enough, you could probably still climb up and over the gate itself, but I thought it should deter anyone who was only out for some casual looting. If such a person even existed; for all I knew, I was taking all these precautions for nothing. The Los Alamos team had included the only people I’d seen since I’d left Albuquerque.

But having the gate locked made me feel a little better, if nothing else, and I needed to feel better. I needed to tell myself there was still hope, that this would all somehow work out in the end. Right then I couldn’t see how that was possible, but when the Heat had swept through Albuquerque, I was sure I would die along with everyone else, and yet here I was.

Good enough for now.

We went back inside, and I piled a few more logs on the fireplace. A long, empty afternoon stretched in front of me. Funny how I’d never felt at loose ends when Jace was around. We’d always had plenty to occupy us. Well, in a few hours I’d have to go out and feed the chickens and the goats, make sure they had fresh water, but what I was supposed to do between now and then, I didn’t know. Sit down with one of the new-looking paperback mysteries from the shelves in the office and pretend my world hadn’t just ended?

No way.

I did go into the office, but ignored the paperbacks in favor of the manuals that sat on one of the shelves. There actually was a book on basic electronics, but when I picked it up and started flipping through it, my eyes wanted to cross at all the diagrams and the figures and formulas I found in it, and I felt like crying all over again. After all, there was a reason why I’d been getting my master’s in English, and not in electrical engineering.

A meltdown was not something I’d allow myself, though. I made a few desultory notes about possible methods of fixing the gate, peered outside and saw the snow had finally arrived, then decided I’d better take care of the animals early before it got too bad.

The goats had already taken shelter in their shed, so I filled their trough with pellets. Their water still looked good — Jace had handled that in the morning — so I left it for now. Same thing with the chickens, although there were a few new eggs. I scooped them into my pockets before heading back to the house, dodging snowflakes the whole way. It seemed the storm had decided to arrive in earnest.

Inside it was snug and warm enough, though, and I puttered here and there, forcing myself to focus on mundane chores, such as bringing in more wood from the log room on the side of the house and stoking up all the fireplaces to combat the rapidly dropping temperatures outside. Busyness helped a little, although I couldn’t help feeling the gnawing, aching sensation somewhere in my midsection, the one that told me Jace was gone and I had absolutely no idea of how to get him back.

It isn’t fair,
I thought irrationally.
To survive the Dying, to lose everyone I cared about, and then to lose him, too.

Well, as my parents had been all too fond of pointing out, life wasn’t fair. And right then I wasn’t about to dissect the cognitive dissonance that came from knowing Jace’s people were the ones responsible for the Dying, and yet still to miss him, to want him, to know that I loved him in a way I hadn’t thought I could ever love anyone. My anger with him at deceiving me about his true identity had been as intense as a summer monsoon storm, but just as short-lived. Now I only wanted him back.

Sitting at the table in the breakfast nook where we’d shared too many meals hurt far too much, and so did the idea of trying to eat at that vast dining room table. I took my dinner of heated-up canned soup and toasted bread to the living room where I could eat in front of the fireplace, although even the warmth of that fire didn’t seem to penetrate the core of cold at the very center of my being. Nothing could dispel that inner chill, except Jace’s touch.

I wondered if I should leave here the next day, head up to Taos and see if the djinn there could do anything to help me. But no, that wouldn’t work. Zahrias had said his people were unable to penetrate the veil that had apparently descended on Los Alamos, and had resorted to sending some of their Chosen to that enclave of the Immune to see what they could discover. Since none of the Chosen had returned, I had to believe that they’d either been captured as spies, or had a change of heart once they were safe and among their own kind.

No, that didn’t seem right. I knew that being around the other survivors wouldn’t have changed how I felt about Jace; if anything, it would have made me work harder to convince them that not all the djinn were evil. Those other Chosen must have been caught, found out. Would they also be put on trial as traitors?

I didn’t know for sure. The leader of the group that captured Jace had appeared interested in convincing me to join them, and not because he seemed to think I was guilty of crimes against humanity or whatever. No, I’d seen that look on enough guys’ faces at bars or clubs to know what it meant — that he wouldn’t mind getting into my pants in the near future.

There was a joke. I would rather have jumped into bed with Zahrias than with that human bastard.

But his interest was still something I might be able to exploit at a later date, and it also told me that he was willing to overlook my fraternizing with Jace, as long as there was no chance of it happening again.

All right, I’d found an angle. What exactly I could do with it, I didn’t know. I also couldn’t help wondering if Jace had told me to stay away because he wanted me to be safe, and not because he thought I actually had a better chance of rescuing him if I was out in the world where I could find an ally, some assistance. It would be just like him to think of my safety and not his own survival.

His concern wouldn’t stop me, though. He could be as noble and selfless as he wanted, but in this matter, I intended to be utterly selfish. I wanted him back. I wanted
him
. No matter what.

All right, so I was resolved to rescue him. I still needed a plan.

Scowling, I picked up my plate and bowl and took them to the kitchen, then poured my half-eaten soup down the drain. Completely wasteful, and not like me at all, but in that moment I couldn’t really force myself to care. There was pallet after pallet of canned soup down in the storage area in the basement, far more than I could probably eat before it went bad.

Especially now that I was the only one around to eat it.

That thick, choking feeling, the one of despair, caught at my throat, and I grasped the kitchen counter, forcing myself to breathe. To calm down. Jace was alive for now. I had to believe that. Otherwise, I might as well lie down and die, and I wouldn’t allow that to happen. Not after everything I’d already survived.

The clock in the living room chimed. Seven o’clock. And in one of those moments of pure incongruity, I realized it was Christmas Eve.

Merry fucking Christmas.

I went back out to the living room and stood there for a long moment, staring at the tree Jace had brought me. How could a djinn have known that such a simple thing would be so important to me?

Because he hadn’t been thinking like a djinn. He’d been thinking like the man who loved me.

The doorbell sounded, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. At least, I thought it was the doorbell. I’d never heard it before.

My frazzled brain eventually processed the meaning of that doorbell ringing. Someone was standing outside the door. How had they gotten into the compound? Climbed over the gate? Then I decided that wasn’t really the important consideration here.

Someone was outside.

And irritated, too, by the way they rang the doorbell again, then started banging on the door.

An unfamiliar voice — a woman’s voice — called out, “I know you’re in there, Jessica! Open the goddamn door! It’s freezing out here!”

That someone was a woman, and she knew my name. What the ever-loving hell?

Before I could even stop to think about what I was doing, I crossed the living room, then hesitated for a few seconds. That could be anyone out there. Someone from the Los Alamos group, come to finish me off. That didn’t sound right, though. I hadn’t seen one woman in their group; clearly, they didn’t seem to think women made good enforcers.

You’re crazy, Jessica,
I thought, just before I turned the deadbolt and opened the door. Outside on the porch stood a young woman around my age, a pretty Hispanic girl wearing a red and green Nordic-style knitted cap and a bulky red parka, both of which were dusted with snow.

I’d never seen her before.

We stared at each other for a few seconds, and then she said, “Are you going to let me in? Because you’d better, if you ever want to see your djinn lover alive again.”

Chapter Two