djinn wars 03 - fallen

by Christine Pope

  A silence fell. I hardly dared to breathe, fearing they might overhear even a sigh. That was probably silly, since it was a breezy day, and the wind was soughing through the pines.

  At last Zahrias spoke again. “And have you discussed this with your Chosen? Do they agree that it is all very well for you to abandon them to pursue a quest with only a small chance of success?”

  “You don’t know that for certain,” said one of the other djinn, someone who hadn’t spoken before this. “Why is it so unlikely that others of our kind would come to lend their assistance?”

  “I cannot speak to that,” Zahrias replied. “All I am saying is that sending yourselves forth from this world takes more energy than you might think. And drawing on that energy after it has been depleted for weeks and weeks will be difficult at best.”

  “Perhaps,” Rafi said. “Perhaps not. You only have Jasreel’s word to go on, and because he is not precisely one of us — ”

  “We will not go down that road again,” Zahrias cut in. His voice was quiet, but I heard the steel in it, and the others must have, too, because after a brief pause, Rafi went on, sounding somewhat chastened,

  “And as to our Chosen, we have spoken with them, and they understand the risks. They want us as we were, not as we are now — things with half-lives, hardly worth living. If they agree, who are you to tell us no?”

  “Only the one who agreed to lead this group,” Zahrias replied. He sounded so tired that I wished I could get up from my hiding place and give him a hug.

  Not that he would ever allow such a casual display of affection from a mere human. At the same time, my thoughts skated back to Rafi’s remark that Jace wasn’t exactly one of them. Just what the hell had he meant by that?

  “Lead the group,” said the other djinn, the one whose name I couldn’t recall. “Offer guidance, and counsel. But not to be our lord and master.”

  “True. I did not agree to that, nor did you. I cannot hold you here. If you wish to take this risk, then that is your decision.”

  “Good,” Rafi said. “Then it is decided. We will leave this place, and go for help.”

  “As you will,” Zahrias conceded, adding, “And I pray that you will not be the ones in need of help before this is done.”

  They left, and I sat there on the bench for a long while. I wanted to make sure there was no chance of bumping into any of them before I left — and I also needed that time to gather myself, to process what I’d just heard.

  Those djinn were leaving, and Zahrias was letting them go. Worse, their Chosen had agreed to this madness.

  As to that remark about Jace…maybe I’d have the courage to ask him about that. Maybe. He’d been so very tired lately, bearing up under the effects of the device, trying to assist Zahrias where he could. Being the lover he knew I wanted, even though our physical intimacies were sapping even more strength, strength he simply didn’t have.

  Besides, Rafi could have meant anything, including something as simple as Jace not agreeing with those djinn that making a break to get help was a good idea. During my time here in Taos, I’d developed a — well, antipathy was probably too strong a word, but something about Rafi just rubbed me the wrong way. He was clearly displeased by the amount of time Lindsay spent working in the lab with Miles, although I had a hard time figuring out what else she could do that would be of more benefit to the community. What, did her djinn expect her to wait on him hand and foot every second of the day and give him sponge baths or something?

  Probably. He was also doing better than some…but maybe he’d been looking around and seeing how some of the more incapacitated djinn didn’t have to lift a finger to do anything, and thinking he’d like some of that treatment himself.

  Well, Lindsay’s domestic issues were her own business. If it turned out that she’d actually agreed to this hare-brained scheme to go off in search of help, then I would just have to keep my mouth shut on the subject.

  I headed back to the suite, but Jace wasn’t there. That didn’t surprise me too much; he’d been spreading himself awfully thin lately, so he could be anywhere from the kitchen, helping Phillip chop vegetables, to assisting with folding sheets and towels in the laundry. The Chosen were mainly the ones who’d been doing that sort of thing, but they weren’t above accepting some extra help, especially when they’d had to play nursemaid to a bunch of djinn on top of everything else.

  So I glanced at the clock, decided it was late enough to take Dutchie on her afternoon walk, and put on her collar and leash. Of course she was thrilled; we sometimes let her have the run of the resort, but I didn’t want her getting in the way, so she often spent her days sleeping in the suite and waiting for us to take her on a walk.

  She danced at the end of her leash as we left the resort grounds and began walking down Kit Carson Road. Off and on I’d contemplated letting her run free, but I worried that she would dart over the edge of the safe zone. Maybe the rogue djinn wouldn’t care about a single dog venturing out into unprotected territory. But if she did that, I knew I wouldn’t be able to chase after her. I loved that dog, but not enough to risk the kind of bodily mayhem they’d visited on Aidan.

  And don’t forget about kidnapping, too, I thought, recalling how Aidan had described the way the leader of the rogue djinn had thrown Martine over his shoulder and referred to her as “payment.”

  I shivered then, but kept walking, letting Dutchie run out to the end of her retractable leash. The fresh breeze blew through my hair, and I pulled in a deep breath. It did feel good to be out here, away from the sense of desperation that hung over the resort we’d made our home.

  About a week after Jace and I had returned to Taos, he and Dani had walked the perimeter of the safe zone, marking it as best they could with fluorescent orange paint, the kind that road crews used to label the pavement during construction projects. Because of that, I knew I could go all the way to the plaza while still under the protection of Miles’s device. I generally didn’t walk the dog quite that far, but today I thought it would feel good to go to the little open square and sit in the gazebo. Just some time alone to gather my thoughts.

  Dutchie didn’t mind, of course. The longer the walk, the better, in her book. But as I stopped at the corner of Kit Carson and Highway 68, movement caught the corner of my eye. I turned, thinking it was probably one of the other Chosen out on one of their foraging expeditions. There were still some items to be had around town, although the pickings were beginning to get slim. None of us wanted to think about what would happen when we’d completely stripped everything within the safe zone bare.

  But this person — this woman, I realized — wasn’t moving in any sort of purposeful manner, but rather staggering her way down the road, weaving from one side to the other. In a different world, I might have thought she was drunk.

  The breeze caught at her long dark-honey hair, playing with it. My eyes narrowed. None of the Chosen in Taos — or the djinn, for that matter — had hair that color. In fact, I only knew one person who —

  I began to run toward her, dragging Dutchie along with me. Since she’d already taken care of business, she was fine with a good run. We pounded down the center of the street, closing the distance between us and the stranger. As we approached, the woman seemed to reach the edge of her endurance, sinking down onto the asphalt. I let go of Dutchie’s leash and ran to the woman, trying to grab her before her head smacked into the pavement. As she collapsed into my arms, she stared up at me with wide, frightened gray-blue eyes before passing out completely.

  I knew those eyes. I knew her.

  The woman I held was Julia Innes.

  Chapter Ten

  I couldn’t carry her all the way back to the resort. Instead, I told Dutchie to stand guard, then turned and ran up Kit Carson Street as fast as I could, eating up the almost half-mile like someone competing in the Olympics trials. As I pushed my way into the front doors of the main building, I almost collided with Aidan and Lilias, who looked as if they’d j
ust come in from getting their own breath of fresh air. Lilias even had some pink in her cheeks.

  “Hey,” Aidan said, catching me by the arms before I ran smack into him. “What is it?”

  “Yes, Jessica — what’s wrong?” Lilias asked.

  “J-Julia,” I panted, and they exchanged a puzzled glance.

  “Julia?” Aidan repeated. “Who’s Julia?”

  “From — from Los Alamos.”

  Aidan’s eyebrows went up. “What the hell is she doing here?”

  “I don’t know.” By then I’d managed to more or less catch my breath, so I went on, in slightly less frantic tones, “She’s passed out in the middle of Highway 68. I left Dutchie with her because I knew I couldn’t carry her by myself.”

  “Show me,” he said.

  Lilias frowned. “Aidan, that’s almost a half-mile from here. Perhaps you should get some help — ”

  “I can do it,” he broke in. Smiling crookedly — a smile that pulled at the half-healed scars on his face — he added, “I’m fine, Lilias. I’m about as better as I’m going to be. In fact, I’ve been going nuts, trying to take it easy for you. I can do this. I want to.”

  Hesitating, she stared up at him for a few seconds, then at last gave a half-hearted nod. “If you must.”

  He reached out and touched her cheek, then turned back to me. “Let’s go.”

  Since I didn’t want us to be completely worn out by the time we got there, I sort of half-jogged the distance to where I’d left Julia, Aidan keeping up at my side. When we reached the intersection, nothing seemed to have changed. Well, nothing except that Dutchie had taken up a defensive position near Julia’s head and was looking up at a crow perched on top of a building that used to be an art gallery. I heard a faint growl coming from my dog’s throat, although the crow didn’t appear particularly intimidated.

  “Good job, Dutchie,” I said, bending down to scratch her ears briefly.

  At the same time, Aidan knelt next to Julia’s limp form. As I turned away from the dog, I realized then how banged up Julia really was — her jeans were torn in multiple places, her jacket was stained, and a bruise marred the lower side of one cheek, down near the jaw line.

  “What the hell happened to her?” he asked. Moving with care, he slipped his arms under her so he could lift her from the road. She moaned slightly but didn’t open her eyes.

  “I have no idea,” I replied. I’d witnessed my share of horrors since the Heat had come along, but something about seeing Julia, self-assured, beautiful Julia who never had a hair out of place, battered and dirty and semi-conscious, rocked me to my core. “So let’s get her back to the resort and cleaned up, and hopefully then she’ll have recovered enough to tell us how she got here.”

  And why, I thought. I couldn’t imagine Julia risking the frightening open spaces between here and Los Alamos without having a damn good reason for making the journey.

  With her cradled in Aidan’s arms, we made our way back to the resort. It was a much slower trip than the one to retrieve her, but eventually we reached the main doors to the check-in area, where I hurried ahead so I could open them for him. Lilias must have spread the word, because there was quite a crowd waiting for us there, including Lauren, Jace, and Zahrias, as well as a few Chosen who were probably just there to looky-loo.

  “I’ve already gotten a room ready for her,” Lauren told me. “It’s in the same wing as the room we gave Miles. I thought that might be better, since they know each other already, right?”

  She looked a little hesitant, as if uncertain whether she’d done the right thing, and I hurried to say, “That’s a great idea. Plus, it’s a little closer in, so Aidan won’t have to carry her so far.”

  “Just show me the way,” he said, sounding strained. He was a strong guy, but carrying a full-grown woman for a half-mile uphill probably wasn’t a picnic for anyone.

  “Oh, right. This way.”

  She led him down the corridor to the right, and we all followed a few feet behind, minus the looky-loos, who decamped after Zahrias gave them a single lifted eyebrow. I unclipped Dutchie’s leash so she could tag along in the rear. She was pretty good about not getting underfoot.

  “What happened?” Jace asked in an undertone, leaning close to me. He smelled good, of fresh-baked bread, which seemed to prove my hunch that he’d been helping Phillip in the kitchen.

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “I was walking Dutchie, and then I saw someone coming down 68. When I got closer, I realized it was Julia.”

  He shook his head. “And she was alone?”

  “As far as I could tell. Looks like she went through hell to get here, too.”

  After that, he didn’t say anything, but only walked beside me, looking grim. I couldn’t blame him. Her appearance had generated about a thousand questions in my head, all of them so far unanswered.

  It didn’t look as if we’d be getting those answers anytime soon, either. Lauren led us to one of the resort’s smaller rooms, not a suite, and Aidan laid Julia down on the bed there. Her head fell against the pillows, but she didn’t move.

  “I’ll go get Miguel,” Lauren told Zahrias, who had stopped just inside the doorway and was standing there with his arms crossed. “And some clean things for her.”

  “Thank you,” he said gravely. “And thank you, Aidan, for your assistance here.”

  His words were clearly a dismissal. Luckily, Aidan didn’t seem to take offense at more or less being told to get out. He said easily, “Sure,” and then followed Lauren out of the room.

  That left Zahrias and Jace and me. “Do you want us to go, too?” I asked. Not that I intended to. I just wanted to know if I’d have to put up a fight.

  But Zahrias only said, “No. You should stay, since you knew her. It might be better for her to see a familiar face when she awakes.”

  He was probably right about that. I moved closer to the bed and reached out to take Julia’s hand. Her fingers were cold. Was she in shock of some kind? Or had she merely passed out from exhaustion? She had cuts and bruises and scrapes all over, it seemed, but I couldn’t see any wounds severe enough to send her into shock.

  Miguel appeared then, carrying a first aid kit he’d lifted from the urgent-care center down Highway 68. Without acknowledging any of us, he went around to the other side of the bed so he could set down the kit. He lifted Julia’s wrist, laying his fingers there so he could get her pulse.

  “No sign of her waking up?” he asked after gently lowering her arm to the mattress.

  “No,” I said. “She groaned a little when Aidan lifted her so he could bring her here, but she hasn’t made a sound since then.”

  A nod, and then Miguel was fishing around in his kit. He pulled out the object of his search — a penlight — and bent toward Julia’s face, reaching with his free hand to open one of her eyes and shine the light in it. After that he tested her other eye.

  “Pupils are responsive,” he said after putting the light back in the first aid kit. “I think she’s just dehydrated and suffering from exhaustion. We need to get some fluids in her.”

  “Will she drink when she’s like that?” Jace asked.

  “I don’t know. Let’s try it with a little water. If she can’t swallow, I’ll have to go back to the urgent-care center and see if they have the supplies for me to set up a saline drip.”

  I swallowed. That sounded a little drastic to me, especially for someone who’d once confessed that he’d never completed his EMT certification. “Do you know how to do that?”

  “Yes…in theory.”

  Zahrias and Jace exchanged a glance.

  “Well, let us hope we don’t have to take such extreme measures,” Zahrias said. Stepping away from the door, he headed to the bathroom, where the original toiletries from before the Dying appeared to still be laid out, including a set of plastic-wrapped glasses. He pulled the plastic off one of them and poured some water from the tap into it — not much, just enough to fill maybe the bottom third o
f the glass. He handed it to Miguel.

  “Here goes,” he said, putting it up against her cracked lips. Then he tipped some water into her mouth.

  It dribbled down her cheek and onto the stained shirt she wore. I cursed inwardly. But then she seemed to stiffen, and her lips parted slightly. Miguel tilted the glass once again, and this time she drank, greedily gulping at the water until it was gone.

  Her eyelids fluttered, just for a second. “More,” she whispered.

  Thank God. Miguel hurried into the bathroom and poured more water into the glass, and again she drank until it was gone. Then she opened her eyes for real this time, blinking in confusion at Miguel. Of course she wouldn’t know who he was. But after that her gaze slid toward me, and she smiled.

  “So I made it,” she breathed.

  “You sure did,” I told her. “You’re in Taos. You’re safe.”

  She nodded, and her eyes closed.

  “She needs to sleep, and she’s dehydrated,” Miguel said. “But I think she’s going to be okay. Someone should stay here with her, though, to give her some more water when she wakes up.”

  I glanced up at Jace, and he nodded. I would have offered even if he didn’t want me to, but that wasn’t Jace. He understood that it was more important for me to be with Julia than with him, at least for now.

  “I’ll have Phillip put together a tray for you,” he told me. “Dinnertime isn’t that far off now.”

  “Thanks, Jace.” That was all I said aloud, but our eyes met and I added, We’ll need to talk later. There’s…stuff…going on.

  You mean about Rafi and Alif and Nizar?

  You knew?

  Zahrias came and told me. It’s a foolish and dangerous errand, but we can’t stop them.