djinn wars 04 - broken (12 page)

“Fine,” she said with a sigh. “I’ll let Zahrias know that you’re staying.”

There,
she thought.
You were able to say his name without flinching. You can do this.

Miles nodded and turned back to his iPad. As if to trying to apologize for his rudeness, Lindsay flashed her a smile and mouthed
thank you.
Julia nodded and turned away from them, letting Murrah push the button to open the elevator door. They rode up in silence, but she thanked him as she left and headed back to the La Fonda hotel.

The rest of her team was already waiting in the lobby with their meager baggage. Julia debated whether to go over to Zahrias’ house to inform him they were leaving, or whether to take the coward’s way out and slip off before he could notice. She wasn’t given that option, however, because as soon as they went outside and began putting their backpacks and duffles in the back of the Suburban, the djinn leader appeared, seemingly from nowhere. At least, Julia hadn’t seen him walk up, but she supposed he could have just popped in from nowhere in that disconcerting way the djinn had.

He didn’t seem to have weathered the night much better than she. His eyes also looked shadowed, and his mouth was grim. But he nodded at them all pleasantly enough, although he appeared confused when he realized that Lindsay and Miles were not with them.

“Our mad scientist is still tabulating,” Julia explained, all too aware of the watching eyes of her companions as she and Zahrias shared this exchange. Had she sounded casual enough? Too casual? Nothing to do but forge ahead. “So he and Lindsay are staying behind so they can keep working. We’ll send someone to fetch them when they’re done. I hope it’s not too much of an imposition.”

“Not at all,” Zahrias replied. “They’re welcome to stay for as long as they wish.”

This would have been easier if he’d been acting like a jerk. Then Julia could tell herself that her anger with him was entirely justified. But there he was, grave and courteous and handsome, playing the polite host. “I appreciate that,” she said. “Hopefully, it will only be for a day or so more. I honestly don’t know what it is that Miles thinks he can find, but when he digs his heels in, it’s best not to argue.”

“As I said, he and Lindsay can remain for as long as they deem necessary.” Zahrias’ gaze flickered past the remainder of her group, then returned to her. His eyes were cool and dark, betraying nothing. “Have a safe journey back to Los Alamos.”

“Thank you,” she said, an empty politeness. Of course they’d have a safe trip back. The day was bright and fine, and the device would keep them safe from any djinn interference. They’d be in Los Alamos within the hour.

She nodded toward her team, and they all climbed into the Suburban, Nancy and Eric in the back seat, Brent taking shotgun once again. Feeling Zahrias’ eyes on her the entire time, Julia got into the driver’s seat and shut the door. Was there something else she should have said? Probably not. The best thing now was just to get the hell out of here.

After retrieving her sunglasses from where she’d looped them around the rearview mirror, she pulled away from the curb in front of the hotel and headed back to Paseo de Peralta so she could get them back on the highway. One good thing about the apocalypse; you could ignore the maze of one-way streets around Santa Fe’s plaza and go any direction that was the fastest. No one else seemed to be driving that morning, so Julia could do what she wanted.

All right, not exactly. What she really wanted right then was to turn the Suburban around so she could go back and tell Zahrias that she’d screwed up, that she wasn’t really angry with him. Except…she was. Sort of. It was more that intellectually she could understand his reticence about approaching her, but her gut wasn’t quite ready to forgive him. And her libido seemed to want to tell both her brain and her gut to take a hike so she could fall into his arms again.

Goddamn it.

Jaw tense, she maneuvered her way out of downtown Santa Fe and got them headed north on Highway 285. The roadway here wasn’t quite as clear as it was on the 502, since the Los Alamos group used that highway to get to and from Española, but it was all right as long as she kept her speeds down below fifty miles an hour. And once they were back on the 502, she’d be able to push it up to sixty-five.

They were coming up to the turnoff for the highway. Off to the right was a casino complex, its parking lot still filled with cars that the Los Alamos scavenging teams hadn’t deemed suitable to acquire.

Julia slowed down to take the curve that led them back under the 285 and then west on the 502. In the seat next to her, Brent was watching the scenery go by with half-lidded eyes; he’d probably been on this route a number of times already, since he’d been one of Margolis’ chief vehicle-scroungers back when they were all scouring the area for every four-wheel-drive truck and SUV they could get their hands on.

A roaring sound filled her ears. Beneath her fingers, the steering wheel jerked violently. Julia tightened her grip and hung on, thinking they must have blown a tire. But no, the whole Suburban shuddered and seemed to leap up off the pavement, flying into the air even as she felt it tipping sideways, starting to roll. Black smoke surrounded them, accompanied by flames that blew up and out, hitting the roof and walls of the underpass.

We’re going to crash,
she thought, quite calmly. Then a red-tinged darkness rushed up and swallowed her.

“You are looking quite thunderous today,” Dani remarked after Zahrias had let his brother into the house. “Weren’t you supposed to have dinner with Julia Innes last night?”

“I did have dinner with her,” Zahrias said heavily. She’d been gone less than half an hour, and already her absence weighed on him, making it difficult to think. Foolish, he knew. He had functioned quite well without her all these months, so what was the problem now?

The problem was that he had kissed her, and so now he knew exactly what he had been missing.

“From the look on your face, I would hazard a guess that it did not go well.”

Sometimes Dani could be too perceptive. But then, he had always been the one who enjoyed being around others, who liked understanding their moods and motivations. His was entirely too sunny a nature for a djinn. However, that nature had stood him in good stead when it came time to establish this mixed mortal/djinn community. The humans felt they could confide in him, for he did not seem quite so alien to them.

“It…did not go as I had hoped,” Zahrias replied.

“She does not share your attraction?”

“Not precisely.” No, that was not the problem at all. He knew well enough when a woman reacted to him, and Julia had been responsive, eager…until he confessed to her that he had kept himself from reaching out to her earlier because of the tragedies in his past.

Dani lifted a skeptical eyebrow. Although Zahrias did not have as many conquests in his past as other djinn his age might, he certainly had never lacked for female companions. “So is it that she doesn’t wish to be with you, or is it something else?”

Zahrias waved an impatient hand. Sometimes his brother could be too inquisitive for his own good. And the wound of Julia’s rejection was still too raw for Zahrias to want to discuss what had happened. Instead, he went to the sideboard and poured two glasses of wine from the bottle that sat there. Dani’s eyebrows lifted almost imperceptibly.

Clearly, the younger djinn had been spending too much time around humans. Yes, it might not yet be the hour for the midday meal, but the djinn did not follow mortal rules that governed when it might or might not be the proper time to imbibe. Alcohol affected elementals, true, but not to the same extent as it did humans.

“How does Lauren fare?” Zahrias asked. The question was an obvious deflection, and he knew Dani would see it as such, but he needed to move the discussion away from Julia.

“As well as can be expected,” Dani replied. From the glint in his eyes, he knew exactly what his brother was doing…but he would not argue the point. “She frets over being confined to her bed, but Miguel says that is what’s best for her. The pains she was experiencing have subsided, now that she isn’t moving around as much, and so everything should be fine.”

“Should” being the most important word in that sentence. Lauren’s partnership with Dani meant that she enjoyed the same robust health as the rest of the djinn, but even so, complications from mixed births such as these were not completely unknown. That was how Jasreel had lost his own mother, when she’d attempted to give another child to the djinn man who had claimed her. At least the universe had been kind and had granted Jasreel full djinn powers, thus ensuring that his father would take the motherless boy and raise him as one of their own, despite his half-blood status.

But Zahrias would not speak of such things to his brother. Dani knew Jasreel’s history as well as he himself did. Perhaps it was recalling how Jasreel had lost his mother that made Dani unusually tense now. The situation was quite different, though. True, Miguel was not a true healer, but he had spent the last six months reading about pregnancy and childbirth in the many books the mortals had left behind, and he was probably far better suited to deliver a child than the healers back in the time when Jasreel was born, so many centuries ago.

Zahrias handed one of the glasses of wine to his brother. “Since Lauren is the active, busy sort, I can see why she would chafe at being so confined. However, perhaps you should remind her that she will be very busy very soon, and so perhaps she should enjoy the quiet time she has now, even if it is being forced on her.”

A grin, and Dani lifted his glass. “Wise words, brother. I will be sure to tell her that.”

Raising his glass as well, Zahrias didn’t quite smile. Somehow he couldn’t find it within him to do so. Perhaps in a few days he would be more inclined, once the memory of Julia’s lips against his had faded. In the meantime, well, there was plenty of wine.

Her ears were ringing, and people groaned all around her. Julia opened her eyes, but nothing in the world seemed to make sense right then. After she blinked once or twice, she realized everything seemed wrong because the Suburban was on its side, the windshield a spiderweb of cracks, Brent Sanderson dangling next to her, held in place only by his seatbelt. Bright blood from a gash along his scalp obscured half his face.

“Brent?” she croaked.

He didn’t move. Shit.

Her fingers shook as she fumbled with the buckle of her own seatbelt. After a few abortive tries, she got it loose. Since she was already lying smashed up against the driver-side window, she didn’t have to worry about falling.

What the hell had happened? Her first thought had been a blown tire, but no tire should have erupted like that, with flame and smoke. Had there been some kind of explosive lying in the roadway? No, that didn’t make sense. Teams from Los Alamos had come this way before; they would have cleared anything dangerous.

Well, she could figure that out later. From the back seat, she heard more groans. “Eric? Nancy?”

Eric’s voice. “We’re okay. Banged up, but okay.”

Thank God for that at least. “Can you move?”

Nancy let out a soft moan. “I think my arm’s broken. And I dropped the device.”

“It’s okay,” Julia reassured her. “It’s got to be in the car somewhere. We can find it after we get ourselves out of here.”

“I can climb out through the passenger side,” Eric said then. “There’s glass everywhere, though.”

“Hang on,” Julia told him. The last thing she needed was for him to slice up his hands while trying to extricate himself from the vehicle. “The windshield’s already smashed, but I can push it out of the way.”

“Brent?” Nancy asked.

“He’s passed out, I think. His window’s broken, too — looks like some shrapnel or whatever it was got it. But I think he’s breathing.”

“Shit.”

“What happened?” Eric again.

Julia was about to tell him that she had no frigging clue when Nancy spoke again. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say someone hit us with an RPG or a rocket launcher or something.”

“That’s impossible,” she said.

It definitely sounded impossible. Julia could maybe believe it had been some kind of djinn attack — if it weren’t that Miles’s device should have kept any djinn in the area at least a quarter-mile away from them. Anyway, that didn’t matter right now. What mattered was getting out of the Suburban. She didn’t smell gasoline, but that didn’t mean much. It could still be leaking somewhere.

Her spirit quailed at the thought of having to limp back to Santa Fe for help, but first things first. She dumped her useless wallet and cosmetics bags and the other items from her purse — miraculously, it was still wedged next to her on the seat — and then used the empty leather bag to wrap around her hand so she could punch the windshield out of the way. Maybe it would have been better to kick it out, but with the angle she was lying at, she didn’t know if she could have gotten enough leverage. Anyway, the shattered safety glass did fall away after her second blow, landing with a crunch on the pavement.

Climbing out past the steering wheel was trickier than she’d thought, and she knew she’d picked up a few more bruises along the way, but eventually, Julia was able to push her way through the windshield opening. She landed on her hands, skinning her palms. Could have been worse, though. At least she hadn’t cut them on any broken glass.

She bit back a moan as she straightened, feeling wrenched muscles protest the movement. No doubt tomorrow she’d be one big walking bruise. But at least she was still alive.

A strange, acrid scent hung in the air below the overpass. Smoke, yes, but with a weird chemical tinge to it. Julia didn’t think she’d ever smelled something like it before. Well, she’d have to worry about that later.

The Suburban lay on its side like some prehistoric monster felled in combat. From that angle, it seemed impossibly tall to her. There was no way she could climb up there to free Brent, or help Eric out his window. Maybe if she could grab the axle somehow, pull on it so the SUV would fall back down into its normal position. A maneuver like that would jostle everyone inside, and Julia winced at what it might do to Nancy’s broken arm, but she didn’t know what else to try. She couldn’t leave them as they were.