djinn wars 02 - taken (27 page)

I squared my shoulders.
Am I getting closer?
I asked Jace.

I think so. Your voice is stronger.

Well, that was something. At least it seemed as if I was going in the right direction. I stopped in front of a door.
What about now?

Still stronger.

After glancing down the corridor in both directions and assuring myself that it remained empty, I knocked on the door
. Did you hear that?

No.

Okay, that wasn’t it. I sidled up to the next door, then knocked again.
What about this one?

Nothing. But your voice sounds very strong now — you must be close.

What was that about third time’s the charm? I went up to yet another door and knocked.

Yes, I heard that.

Thank God.
Can you come to the door?

No,
he replied.
They tie me to the bed when they’re not interrogating me.

Son of a bitch. I inspected the keypad next to the door. A red light was blinking on and off, which I assumed meant it was armed. I didn’t pretend to know too much about those sorts of things, but I guessed that it might send a signal to whoever was overseeing the building’s security if the wrong code was entered too many times.

Or maybe even once.

The door is locked with a keypad system,
I told Jace.
Don’t suppose you know the code?

Eight nine four three seven.

I blinked.
What?

Eight nine four three seven,
Jace repeated. This time he sounded almost amused.
I have the strongest connection with you, Jessica, but if a mortal is thinking a thought strongly enough, I can overhear it, in a manner of speaking. Especially if that thought is repeated. My guess is that the guards would repeat the code to themselves so they wouldn’t forget it.

Handy,
I remarked. Fingers trembling — whether from nerves or because I was beginning to thaw out, now that I’d been inside for a while — I reached out and entered the sequence Jace had given me.

I was sure a siren was going to go off, or the emergency lights in the corridor would start flashing. Instead, the red light flipped over to green, and I heard a distinct
click
. The door moved a fraction of an inch.

Holy shit. I pushed the door open all the way and slipped in, then shut it behind me. I was in a small room that might have been someone’s office once upon a time — the floor was covered in dark green industrial carpeting, and a clock hung on the wall. All the other furniture had been removed, except a narrow bed pushed up under the window. And lying on that bed was Jace.

Or rather, Jasreel. All this time, my mind had been conjuring him as the man I’d come to love, the man who wore Jason Little River’s face, but the person lying on that cot didn’t look like the mortal who’d died of the Heat. No, this was the harder, sterner-looking man, his dark eyes shadowed, and lines of pain cut into his face.

But I didn’t care about that. He was still the man I loved, no matter who he looked like. I ran across the room and knelt next to him, fighting the tears that rose in my eyes.

“Oh, Jace,” I said, and he shifted the tiniest fraction of an inch so he could look over at me. That was all the bonds holding him to the metal bunk would allow.

“Beloved,” he whispered, his voice cracked, as if with thirst or disuse. Or maybe it was a little of both.

“Let me get you out of here,” I told him, fishing in my coat pocket for the little Swiss Army knife I carried there. It was small, but the blade was sharp, and should be able to cut through the cords binding him.

“Hurry. In general, they don’t leave me alone for more than an hour at a time.”

And since he’d already said the guards had left a half hour or so earlier….

I sawed at the rope that held his left arm tied up to the metal frame of the bed. Luckily, it wasn’t very thick rope, and the strands began to separate almost at once. I wondered that they didn’t use something sturdier, then realized this was more a way of punishing Jace than keeping him from escaping. He had no way to do that, not with the door locked from the outside and one of Miles Odekirk’s damn machines preventing him from using his djinn powers to get away.

“This is madness, Jessica.” Jace’s voice was soft. I heard no condemnation in it, more wonder that I would attempt something so foolhardy.

“No, it’s not,” I said, cutting through the last few strands of the rope and moving on to the one that held his right hand. As I did so, he lifted his left arm, flexing it as if to get the blood circulating again. “I would have done it sooner, but I only just found out where they were keeping you. And then they moved you here — ”

“Shh. It’s all right.” The hand I had freed reached out to touch my hair, and I wanted to start crying for real then, feeling the warmth of his skin, the wave of love coming from him so palpable, it was like the first kiss of the sun after a long, cold winter.

Then his right hand was free as well, and he was pulling me against him, his mouth finding mine. I kissed him, even though I knew I should be moving on to free his feet. But I had to taste him again, glory in the sensation of those lips pressed to my lips, if only for a stolen second or two.

I did pull away, though, and began sawing through the rope that held his right foot. At the same time, he was bending down to start pulling at the knots of the other rope, the one on his left leg. In less than a minute he was free, and I stepped away so he could push himself up off the bed.

Oh, he was so gloriously tall, and although I could see the shadows of pain in his features, his confinement didn’t seem to have affected the heavy muscles of his arms and chest, the strength of his back. His expression was grave as he stared down at me, and although I could tell he wanted to reach out and pull me against him again, he didn’t.

“So,” he said. “I am free. Now what?”

“We get the hell out of here.”

“And what is the temperature outside?”

“A little below zero,” I admitted. “But the cold never bothered you before — ”

“When I was in full possession of my powers, no. But that device is sapping me of most of my strength, and until I am completely free of its area of effect, I can be hurt by the cold like any mortal man. Unfortunately, I am not dressed for such an outing.”

As I stared at him, I realized for the first time that he wore a plain black T-shirt and a pair of black sweat pants. His feet were bare. He could probably survive a few minutes outside dressed like that, but not the long trudge back to where I’d left the Cherokee, even though it was downhill.

“We’ll find something,” I said. “There has to be someplace in this building where there’s a spare coat or two, and maybe some boots. But we can’t stay in here — we still have to find Natila first.”

Jasreel watched me for a few seconds, then nodded grimly. “And perhaps if I get far enough away from the device in this building, it will not affect me as adversely, and I’ll be able to endure more than I thought I could.”

“Exactly,” I said, keeping my tone as encouraging as possible. For all I knew, he could be right. I didn’t know enough about how the boxes worked to even begin to estimate how far their effect extended.

I reached out and took his hand, and he grasped my gloved fingers. Worse come to worst, I’d give him my scarf and my knitted cap. He could never fit into my coat or my boots, but having a little extra protection from the cold would help some.

Hand in hand, we slipped away from the small room that had been his prison. The corridor was still empty, to my relief. Even so, I made sure my voice was barely above a whisper as I asked, “Do you think Natila is on this floor?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. We djinn can sense one another. Even with the device switched on, I was aware of her presence, if she was close enough — which is how it was back at the first place they were keeping us. Once we were here, though, I lost contact.”

Which meant she had to be on the second floor. Unless the light I had seen earlier had absolutely nothing to do with Odekirk’s second captured djinn, and she was being held in an entirely different building after all.

I pushed the worry away. We were here now, so the logical thing to do would be to search the second floor before we started second-guessing ourselves.

“This way,” I said, hurrying in the direction of the stairwell. I supposed I should be glad that Natila’s likely location was only one floor below us, and not farther up in the building.

But we never got to the stairs. When we were halfway there, the doors to the elevator opened, and out stepped Miles Odekirk, flanked by not two, but four guards. The fluorescent light in the hallway glinted off his glasses, obscuring his eyes. I saw his mouth, though. It curved in a faint smile, just before he said,

“Going somewhere, Ms. Monroe?”

Chapter Fourteen

The room might have been a twin to the one where’d they’d been keeping Jace locked up — square, with ugly green carpet and a clock ticking away somewhere above my head. In this case, however, it felt far more cramped, mostly because it held Miles Odekirk, Captain Margolis, and two guards in addition to me.

I had no idea where Jace had been taken. One of the guards had spirited him off. Well, attempted to, actually. Weakened and drained by the constant influence of the device he might be, but Jace still fought back, landing a blow to the man’s temple before launching himself in my direction, fear and desperation clearly etched on his face.

At once two of the other guards tackled him, wrestling him to the ground and then slapping a pair of handcuffs on him. I screamed my own protest, but with Margolis’ hand clamped around my arm like a band of steel, I knew I was powerless to help my lover. He was hauled off down the hallway — not in the direction of the room where he’d originally been imprisoned — and I was dragged into this other chamber, where I now sat on a hard little chair, hands bound behind me.

“Well,” said Margolis, an unpleasant sneer on his face, “it appears that Dr. Odekirk’s suspicions about you were correct.”

I maintained a stony silence, since I’d decided as they brought me in here that keeping my mouth shut was probably the best approach. Protesting my innocence wouldn’t do much good, seeing how they’d pretty much caught me red-handed.

The two men exchanged a glance, while the guards to either side were doing their best not to react. I didn’t know either of them, although I thought I’d seen the taller of the two in Pajarito’s once or twice. But I could tell by the not-quite smirks pulling at both their mouths that neither of them had much sympathy for me or my predicament. Well, why should they? To them I must seem like the lowest of the low, someone who had cast her lot in with the enemy.

I supposed I should be glad that no one had referred to me as a “djinn-fucker.”

Not yet, anyway.

“I’d ask if the cat had your tongue,” Margolis went on in conversational tones, “except I think we all know why you’re not talking. There isn’t much of a defense for what you did, is there?”

Mouth tight, I lifted my shoulders. I had a feeling the expression I wore was one my mother had always hated — the not-quite pout, eyes shifted to the side. It practically radiated guilt but wouldn’t admit to it, although in this case I was guilty of a whole hell of a lot more than just coming home an hour after my parents’ designated curfew, back when I was in high school and had stayed out too late with my friends.

“She’s not going to talk,” Odekirk put in. “We’ve seen the same thing in the other one. They fancy themselves in love with these creatures.”

I stiffened. “Other one”? He had to be talking about Evony. According to the clock, I’d been in their custody for a little more than an hour. Plenty of time for them to send someone over to the house and haul Evony out of bed, then bring her here for questioning.

Despite my vow to keep silent no matter what, I burst out, “Evony Rodriguez had nothing to do with this. She doesn’t even know that I left the house tonight!”

Again Margolis and Odekirk exchanged one of those sidelong glances. “Funny, she said almost exactly the same thing,” the commander remarked. “Sounds a bit rehearsed, if you ask me.”

“I don’t give a shit what it ‘sounds’ like,” I snapped. “She was sleeping when I left, and if she’d known what I was planning, she would’ve tried to stop me.” Maybe that was true…maybe it wasn’t. I didn’t know if she would have volunteered to come along, but I had a feeling she wouldn’t have tried to keep me from going, if it meant a chance at getting Natila back.

“So, are you saying her devotion to her lover isn’t as strong as yours is to this…Jasreel?” Odekirk pronounced the unfamiliar name with distaste.