djinn wars 02 - taken

by Christine Pope

  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

  Because speech seemed to have deserted me for the moment, I opened the door a little wider and let her in. She pushed past me and yanked the cap off her head, shaking her hair so little bits of snow flew off and landed on the Navajo rug. A streak of red cut through her dark, dark hair — even darker than mine — and she had short bangs cut Bettie Page style. In one hand she held a shiny black patent leather weekender bag.

  “Who — ” I finally managed after I had shut the door and saw her standing in the middle of the room, giving it an admiring once-over even as she bent slightly to let her bag drop to the floor.

  “Nice place,” she remarked. “We were just holed up in a king suite at the Ohkay Owingeh casino in Española. This beats the hell out of that.” Apparently taking pity on my complete befuddlement, the girl added, “I’m Evony Rodriguez.”

  “Uh, hi,” I said. Then I forced myself to get a grip, even though the appearance of this strange young woman was apparently the final shock in a very long day. “Jessica Monroe.”

  “I know.” She unzipped her parka, revealing a tight-fitting black sweater worn over a lace-trimmed cami. It seemed clear enough that this Evony had been taking a lot more care with her appearance since the end of the world than I had. Her full lips were coated with lipstick in a scarlet shade that almost matched the streak in her black hair, and her long lashes had a thick layer of mascara. “You were right where I was told to find you.”

  “Wait — you were sent here?” Suspicion sharpened my tone. “Who sent you?”

  “Whoa,” she replied, holding up her hands. “I’m on your side. I’m Chosen, just like you. We need to stick together, especially with those assholes from Los Alamos running around and making everyone’s lives miserable.”

  “So you know about them?”

  “Of course.” Evony took her parka over to the coat tree in the corner and hung it up. Seeing it there next to Jace’s winter coat made my throat tighten all over again. The Los Alamos crew had captured him when he was only wearing a fleece pullover with a T-shirt underneath. I doubted whether they cared if he took a chill or suffered from the cold. They’d probably laugh and tell him to make his own fire, since he was a djinn. I didn’t think he was that kind of djinn, though. From what I’d seen, Jace controlled air, not fire. Playing with fire was more Zahrias’ kind of thing.

  “So if you’re Chosen,” I said, “where’s your djinn?”

  “Same place as yours,” she replied, a flash of anger in her dark eyes. “Bastards from Los Alamos came and got her early this morning.”

  My brain skidded to a stop as it attempted to process that statement. “Wait — her?”

  “Yeah, her,” Evony said. One expertly plucked eyebrow went up. “What, did you think all the djinn were straight or something?”

  “I, uh — ” Damn, I’d really stuck my foot in it there. Truly, the sexuality of the other djinn wasn’t something I’d really stopped to think about, since Jasreel was so obviously heterosexual. Maybe I had assumed they would all be like that. And because he’d been taken from me so soon after I’d learned of his true identity, I hadn’t had the chance to ask him any in-depth questions about djinn culture and society. “I guess the topic hadn’t come up yet.”

  “Uh-huh.” Evony moved closer to the fireplace and spread her hands toward its warmth. “Yeah, well, my djinn is a she. Natila.”

  “What — what happened?” I had to ask the question, although I’d begun to guess.

  A lift of her shoulders. Evony didn’t bother to turn back toward me as she said, “Same thing that happened to you. Our friends from Los Alamos showed up this morning and hauled her away. They asked me if I wanted to go with them, but I said no. I had a feeling a Mexican lesbian from Española wasn’t going to do to well with a bunch of good ol’ boys like that. They seemed like the type who’d try to convince me of the error of my ways, if you know what I mean.”

  Unfortunately, I knew exactly what she meant. Some guys seemed to view girls like Evony as projects and didn’t take their sexual orientation all that seriously. Being on your own in the post-Dying world could be scary, but in some cases it might be better than the alternative.

  I also guessed that she had quite a story to tell, and since she’d obviously come a long way, it didn’t seem very hospitable to ma
ke her keep on talking in the living room without even offering her anything to eat.

  “Are you hungry?” I asked. “Because I’ve got plenty of food. Nothing fancy, but — ”

  “Starving,” she said immediately. “I came straight here and haven’t eaten since this morning. And if you have anything decent to wash it down….” Pausing, she gave me a meaningful glance.

  “I’ve got a cellar full of wine.”

  “No beer?”

  I couldn’t help smiling. “Some. There are still a few bottles in the fridge. Let me put something together for you, and then you can tell me what happened.”

  The family room was the coziest place in the house, so that was where Evony and I ended up. I’d already eaten my dinner, but I took a piece of bread and butter with me, along with a half glass of wine, just so I wouldn’t be sitting there and merely watching as my unexpected guest plowed her way through a plate of leftover sausage and macaroni, washing it down with the last of the Kilt Lifter ale that had been sitting on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator.

  Evony’s story — at the beginning, at least — wasn’t all that different from mine. “I was home in Española when the Heat came through,” she told me between bites of sausage. “And two days after it hit, I was the only one left.” Her pretty face went blank then, as if she was trying hard not to let any of the emotions from that time seep through, as if the only way she could manage to keep functioning was to push aside all the death and suffering that had surrounded her.

  Any words I might have offered would have been useless, empty, so I only nodded and took a sip of my wine.

  She put down her fork and drank some of her beer before continuing. “I’m not going to lie — I fucking hated Española. I was working my ass off as a waitress, hoping to save enough money that I could get out and go to Albuquerque, go to school, do something with my life. I hadn’t spoken to my father for more than a year — he didn’t approve of me, of my lifestyle. He thought it was just something else I’d cooked up to torture him, or whatever.” Her face twisted, and she went on, her voice hardening, “So I tried to tell myself when he was gone that I didn’t care, since he’d made me miserable for pretty much my whole life.”

  I must have made some sort of sound, because Evony glanced up from her plate and cocked an eyebrow in my direction.

  “Don’t bother feeling sorry for me. I’m not saying this so I can have a pity party or whatever — I just wanted you to know something of where I came from.” Another swallow of beer, and she closed her eyes and drew in an appreciative breath. “Thanks for having some of the good stuff. The casino was stocked with a bunch of Bud and Miller Lite and other crap. The wine wasn’t much better, but that was what Natila liked.”

  That revelation made some sense. If Jace had been representative of the rest of his kind, it was pretty clear to me that the djinn were definitely more interested in wine than beer. The Kilt Lifter ale had still been sitting in the fridge because he’d never bothered to touch any of it.

  “So….” I wasn’t sure of the best way to ask, so I just said, “Natila came to you at the casino?”

  A smile. Surprisingly, Evony’s red lipstick appeared to be still intact, despite her having devoured most of the leftovers I’d given her to eat. “That’s right. After everyone was pretty much gone, and there was no power and no water, I figured the casino would at least have good supplies of the bottled stuff — you know how they have bottles of water waiting for you when you check into your room?”

  I nodded.

  “Plus, they actually had a generator, so I got that running. I had lights, and I cleared one of the refrigeration units in the restaurant of the stuff that had spoiled and kept what I could in there. It was okay. Not great, but okay.”

  “Weren’t — weren’t you scared?” I asked, thinking back to my first night alone in Albuquerque, when I was so frightened about being the only person left alive in the world…and even more terrified that I wasn’t.

  Her shoulders lifted, but I noticed how she didn’t quite meet my eyes, as if she didn’t want me to see that she had, under the quick resourcefulness and the brittle composure, been scared absolutely shitless herself.

  “Maybe a little. I don’t know. I had a couple of guns — found them lying in the hallway next to some dust that probably used to be the casino’s security guards. That made me feel a little safer, I guess. Even so, I kept wondering when I was going to get sick, too.”

  Oh, how I knew that feeling. I nodded, and she went on,

  “Once or twice I thought I saw people out on the street, but when I really went to look, they had disappeared. Probably we were all just trying to avoid each other so we wouldn’t get sick or something.” A quirk of her full lips. “Stupid, huh? Because if we’d survived that long, it meant we were all immune. But no one seemed to have figured that out yet.

  “Anyway, it was maybe three or four days after everything went completely to shit, and I was out in front of the casino, wondering if it was stupid of me to keep hanging out there, whether I should pack it in and head south to Albuquerque or go over to Santa Fe, or something. Someplace where there was a chance of more survivors hanging around.” Pausing, she leaned forward so she could set her empty plate down on the coffee table, then drained the rest of her beer.

  “Want another one?” I asked. That would kill what was left of the ale, but I really didn’t drink it, either, and I figured someone might as well enjoy it.

  Evony paused to consider for a moment, then shook her head. “Better not. It’s too tempting to want to drink yourself out of all this, you know?”

  Boy, did I know. All day I’d been fighting the urge to get completely shit-faced — not because I thought it would help at all, but just because it might have helped me to forget, if only for a half hour or so. I nodded, a grim smile pulling at my lips. “Why do you think I only poured myself a half glass of wine?”

  She chuckled a little at that reply, but sobered abruptly. “So I was out in front of the casino, and then I heard a motorcycle. Big one — a Harley Road King.”

  I wouldn’t have known a Road King if someone ran me over with one, but I only nodded.

  “Gorgeous bike, too — cream-colored, ghost flames in pale blue. Expensive. And then it pulls up and stops in front of the entrance to the casino, and the rider takes off her helmet and shakes out all this long blonde hair, and I’m just — ” Evony broke off and shrugged, as if even now she couldn’t adequately describe how she felt. “Well, that was about the last sort of person I’d expected to see, you know?”

  Oh, I definitely knew, because I’d felt just about the same way when I first saw Jace standing outside the gate to the compound. So gorgeous, and with that goofy half-hopeful, half-worried expression on his face. I’d probably started to fall in love with him then and there, even though at the time I would never have dared to admit it to myself. Strange that this female djinn, this Natila, had been blonde. Both Jace and Zahrias were dark, and so I’d assumed all the djinn had similar coloring. Apparently not.

  “I know the feeling,” I said, and Evony grinned.

  “Yeah, it’s not really fair that they’re all so…perfect…is it?”

  “Not really.”

  She settled back into a corner of the couch, then picked up one of the pillows and kind of hugged it against her, as if for reassurance. “So she says hi to me and that her name was Natalie and she’d been staying up in Abiquiu, sketching, doing the Georgia O’Keeffe thing, when the Heat came through. That she’d waited a few days to see if any survivors would show up, but because no one did, she decided to ride down to Española and try to find people there.” Evony went quiet for a moment, as if savoring the memory, her mouth curved in a small smile. “And then she gave me this look, and I knew.”

  “‘Knew’?” I repeated, puzzled.

  The smile stretched into a grin. “Let’s just say my gaydar was pinging, if you know what I mean.”

  Now I felt like an idiot. “Oh, r
ight.”

  “It didn’t take long before we were together, and I was just fine with that. I’d never met anyone like her before. And I was thinking, Hey, it might be the end of the world, but so far it’s working out okay for me.”

  “So she didn’t tell you who she really was?”

  At that question, Evony gave me a very sharp look. “Not at first. But about a week after we met, I said something about having to go scouting for more water, since the bottled stuff at the casino was running out — no big surprise, since we’d been using it to bathe as well as drink. And then Natila got all quiet for a minute, and she told me she had something she wanted me to see. I made some crack about how I knew she did, but she just shook her head and led me into the bathroom. I didn’t know what the hell was going on, so I followed her. Then she lifted her hand toward the shower, and water came pouring out of the shower head, just as if it was all working perfectly and the Dying had never happened. For a second or two, I just stood there and stared at it, and then I asked her what the hell was going on.”

  “And that’s when she told you?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Explained the whole thing. Of course, at first I didn’t want to believe her — how could I believe something that crazy…I mean, djinn? — but there was the way she’d just made the water go on, and how would she have been able to fake something like that?”

  She couldn’t. She wouldn’t have had to, because clearly this Natila controlled water in the same way that Jasreel had command over the air, or Zahrias was attended by dancing flames wherever he went. They were djinn, elementals. I didn’t pretend to understand their powers.

  “Did you freak out?” I asked. “Because I sure as hell did.”