djinn wars 04 - broken

by Pope, Christine

  The location of that delivery room soon became clear enough, for Zahrias could hear Lauren’s cries and moans coming from the hallway to the left. Perhaps it was foolish for him to sit here and wait when he could do nothing, but this child would be his niece or nephew, and he thought it his duty to be here for the birth.

  To Zahrias’ surprise, Jasreel and Jessica appeared only a few minutes after he arrived.

  “Dani reached out to me,” Jasreel explained, while Jessica offered a tentative smile.

  “After all, there should be friends and family in the waiting room, right?” she said. “Jace is family, and Lauren and I have gotten to be pretty good friends, especially after — ” She broke off awkwardly.

  Zahrias knew she must be referring to Julia and her return to Los Alamos. The two women had been close, at least as far as he could tell, and Jessica had probably missed having a good female friend here in town. He braced himself, waiting for the inevitable question.

  “How was your dinner?”

  “Excellent,” he said, his tone short. “Phillip always prepares very good meals.”

  A confused expression passed over Jessica’s face, and then she bit her lip and exchanged a sidelong glance with Jasreel. No doubt they were sharing a quick subvocal conversation, probably attempting to analyze what had gone wrong.

  Having Dani pry into such a thing was bad enough, but if Jessica and Jace started probing the same subject, it would be intolerable. As a brother, Dani had some right to ask questions about Zahrias’ personal affairs, but Jessica and Jasreel did not possess those same privileges. Yes, he and Jasreel were cousins. That did not mean Jasreel could make any inquiries he liked.

  Apparently the younger djinn knew that as well, because he gave Jessica a final quelling glance, and she settled back in her chair with a sigh.

  “Have they decided on any names?” Jasreel asked.

  An innocuous enough change of subject. Zahrias wanted to sigh as well, only in relief, not exasperation. “I don’t believe they had yet made a final determination. Dani wanted a djinn name, while Lauren expressed her preference for something, as she put it, ‘a little more pronounceable.’”

  “Well, let’s hope they don’t go for a hyphenate,” Jessica said. “Can you imagine having to go through life named Jaden-Danilar or whatever?”

  “I am sure that common sense will prevail.” Or rather, he was fairly certain that Dani would have the last word. Lauren could be strong-minded about certain things, but Zahrias had noticed that she tended to defer to his brother on important matters.

  Another series of moans and cries carried down the corridor, and Jessica winced. “Sounds like Miguel decided against the epidural.”

  “If you’re referring to one of your drugs, then yes, he discussed the matter with Dani and Lauren, and they all decided together that it would be too risky, since he wasn’t trained in its use. However, I believe Lauren has been practicing a certain method of breathing — ”

  “Lamaze,” Jessica supplied. After glancing down the corridor, and flinching once again as another guttural groan traveled down toward them, she added, “That doesn’t sound like it’s going so well.”

  Zahrias was inclined to agree with her. However, he had been present at other births, and he knew that one could not always judge how they were progressing merely based on the volume of the crying involved. Lauren was a strong, healthy young woman, and Miguel claimed he knew what he was doing. This would all be fine.

  “Goddamn you, Dani — I told you I wanted to wait!” traveled down the corridor, followed by a low murmur of male voices.

  Jasreel shook his head, but at that same time, a lopsided smile tugged at his lips. “And people wonder why Jessica and I didn’t run out and immediately start a family once everything seemed to calm down.”

  Had others in the community been asking about that? The djinn were usually slow to have children, considering they had so much time to play with. Humans seemed to have a different take on the subject, however. Then again, Lilias had just informed him that she and Aidan would be having a child of their own sometime next spring.

  “Wise,” Zahrias said, “considering we don’t precisely know how calm things are. With Margolis on the loose — ”

  Jasreel’s smile immediately slipped away, and Jessica reached out and took his hand. They sat very close to one another on the angular metal-and-fabric couch, their legs not quite touching. Seeing their casual intimacy made a twinge of jealousy go through Zahrias. The two of them made it look so easy. But no, they had gone through their own trials to get to where they were now. Could he ever persuade Julia that perhaps one day they, too, might be able to share such closeness, such easiness with one another?

  “Any progress on that?” Jessica asked.

  Zahrias didn’t bother to shake his head. He was sure the frown he wore was answer enough. “Miles says he is still ‘tabulating,’ whatever that means. I fear he is just too stubborn to give up his investigation. Certainly there is no evidence to show how Margolis escaped, and even less to indicate where he might have gone.”

  “Are you — ” The words trailed off, and Jessica shot a sideways glance at Jasreel. His shoulders lifted slightly. That small gesture seemed to be what she’d required to continue, though, for she asked, “Are you sure it was safe, sending Julia off like that?”

  “Like what?” Zahrias responded, his tone harsher than he’d intended. Jessica didn’t blink, however, but only gazed at him steadily, waiting to hear what else he had to say on the subject. “She left with the same guards she brought with her. They were traveling over roads they traversed only the day before yesterday. If Margolis was out there somewhere, waiting to pounce, he could have gotten her on her journey here. Not that I believe he is out there,” he added, because the look of worry still hadn’t left Jessica’s eyes. “The man is many things, but I don’t believe he is a fool. He would want to put as much distance between us and himself as possible.”

  “You’re probably right,” Jessica said, and she pushed up against Jasreel, who dropped an arm around her. “I just wish — ”

  “What do you wish, beloved?” he asked.

  Her dark gaze was fixed, not on the doorway that opened on the corridor, but on the opposite wall — the western one. Somewhere, miles beyond, Julia would be driving home to Los Alamos.

  “I just wish I didn’t feel in my bones as if something was wrong.”

  * * *

  Julia didn’t recognize the house. How could she? It was somewhere in the Pojoaque Valley, maybe a mile from the ill-fated underpass where Margolis had attacked her group with his rocket launcher. A gracious place, built to feel old even if it wasn’t, with its beamed ceilings and wooden floors and arched doorways, the sort of house someone would use to escape the world.

  Unfortunately, that seemed to be Margolis’ intended purpose for it as well.

  Qadim — the djinn — hadn’t directly replied to the commander’s request back in the tunnel, but had only said, in a deep, harsh voice, “Take her to the house.” Then he’d disappeared with much less fanfare than the manner in which he had arrived, blinking out of existence in the peculiar way that djinn had.

  Margolis had grasped her by the arm and dragged her to a black pickup truck parked just beyond the underpass. After pushing her into the passenger seat, he went and got behind the wheel, then gunned the engine and drove them past the wreckage of the Suburban, heading deeper into Pojoaque.

  She hadn’t spoken, hadn’t asked where he was taking her. What difference did it make, really? Her people were dead. They’d died trying to find the man who now held her captive. In that moment, she could only thank God for Miles’s stubbornness, his insistence on staying in Santa Fe. Otherwise, he and Lindsay would probably be dead, too.

  A tiny whimper of misery pushed its way past Julia’s lips. Margolis didn’t seem to hear, however; he had the windows rolled down, and the noise was probably sufficient to keep him from noticing any sound she had made. Ex
perimentally, she put her hand on the door handle, wondering if she had the courage to open it and jump out, even though they were racketing along at around fifty miles an hour. But of course it was locked.

  If Margolis noticed, he didn’t say anything. Maybe she should have been studying his expression for cues as to what he planned to do next, but Julia couldn’t bear to look at him. So she sat quietly in her seat, watching as they headed out into the country and the road grew narrower, crowded on either side with oaks and cottonwoods. Then Margolis turned the truck down a narrow lane that clearly led to a private property of some sort. At last they pulled up in front of the house, which was painted a warm ochre shade and surrounded by more trees.

  They’d gone inside. Margolis pointed at a chair in the family room, which was located right off the kitchen, and said, “Sit.”

  So she did. He seemed restless; he ran a hand through his gray-streaked dark hair, which was longer than she remembered. Probably the Santa Fe contingent hadn’t been too worried about maintaining the buzz cut he preferred. At length he shrugged out of the green army jacket he wore and flung it on the couch. Underneath he had on a black T-shirt.

  Disconcerted, Julia saw that he had a series of small scratches, less than an inch long, cut into the skin of both his forearms. The cuts were far too regular to have occurred due to some sort of accident.

  He seemed to catch her staring, because he said, “I wanted to keep track of how many days they kept me locked up in there. One hundred and eighty-nine, in case you were wondering.”

  Holy hell. Julia had no idea what kind of a man Richard Margolis had been before the Dying — whether he’d had a family, people he cared about, some kind of stable life — but it definitely had done a number on his head. Even when she was working for him, she’d gotten the impression that something was off, but as long as everything was going well in his world, he seemed to more or less maintain some kind of mental equilibrium. After Jessica and Evony and Jace escaped, though, he’d gone off the deep end…or so Julia had thought. Now she realized he’d still been wading in the shallow end of the pool compared to who he’d become after being imprisoned by the djinn in Santa Fe.

  Since she had no way to reply to his statement without making it sound as if she thought he was crazy — because she did — she decided to avoid that subject altogether. “May I please have a glass of water? I’m feeling kind of wiped.”

  There. She wanted him to think she was weak, had been more shaken up by the attack on her party than she actually was. Not to say that she wasn’t aching all over at the moment, and grieving inside, but if he gave her an opening, she sure as hell was going to take it.

  He watched her for a moment, dark eyes appraising. She couldn’t quite make herself meet his gaze. That was probably all right, though. He’d be expecting her to be cowed, fearful of him. After all, she knew exactly what he was capable of.

  After an agonizing pause, he nodded and went into the kitchen, then opened the refrigerator and pulled out a plastic bottle of water. So he had power here. Did the house have solar panels on the roof or somewhere else on the property, or were things here djinn-powered like they were back in Santa Fe?

  “Here,” he said, handing it to her. His fingers touched hers as she took the bottle from him, and she forced herself not to shudder. He’d done that on purpose, she knew.

  Julia didn’t bother to thank him. In silence, she unscrewed the cap and took a long swallow of water. It was cold and felt good going down her throat. She drank more, maybe about a third of the bottle’s contents, and then put the cap back on.

  The whole time, Margolis had been standing there, watching her. The greedy gleam in his eyes made her want to vomit, but she knew she couldn’t lose it now. Even if the worst happened.

  And if it did, well, she’d survived him once before, and she’d survive him again. “Who’s Qadim?” she asked abruptly.

  Margolis didn’t blink. Something about his dark, flat stare made her think of a snake. “An earth elemental.”

  “Yeah, I kind of got that part. How do you know him? Last I checked, you weren’t exactly on what I’d call friendly terms with the djinn.”

  A couch was positioned to the left of the armchair where she sat. Margolis lowered himself onto the sofa and smiled slightly. “He helped me.”

  “Helped you? Is that how you got out of the cell at the U.S. Marshals’ building?”

  At her mention of the place where he’d been held captive for six months, Margolis’ brows drew together. “Yes.”

  Julia had to wonder how this Qadim had managed that stunt. True, djinn could blink themselves from place to place without batting an eyelash, and apparently they could take humans for ride-alongs when they did so, but shouldn’t the other djinn in Santa Fe have sensed the presence of an elemental who wasn’t part of their group? She had to admit she wasn’t quite sure how all that worked.

  “But…why?” Margolis’ main obsession had been finding a way to get revenge on the djinn, hence his waterboarding experiments on Jace and Natila. Julia couldn’t figure out why one of the djinn would willingly work with someone whose goal in life was to kill as many of their kind as possible.

  Margolis reached over and took her hand. She had to force herself not to snatch it back. But they were alone together here, and she didn’t want to provoke him. If he was talking, then he wasn’t doing…other things.

  Even so, she couldn’t prevent the shudder that went over her at his touch. His flesh was warm and rough, and he ran his index finger over the cut on the back of her hand. The wound stung slightly, and she flinched.

  “He promised me things,” Margolis said. “You among them.”

  Somehow, Julia managed to choke back the bile that had begun to rise in the back of her throat. “I’m not his to promise.”

  “Oh, but you are.”

  Qadim’s voice came from the doorway that led from the kitchen into the dining room. He seemed to fill the space, head almost touching the curved arch of the opening. Then he walked toward them, stopping a few feet away from where Julia and Margolis sat.

  She would never have said that Margolis was a comforting presence, but right then she was almost glad that he sat by her and held her hand. At least that way he seemed to provide something of a buffer between her and the djinn.

  Here, in the prosaic surroundings of the country house, Qadim seemed even more frightening to her. He had to be more than six and a half feet tall, his shoulders proportionately broad. Like Zahrias, he had jet-black hair and black eyes, but the resemblance stopped there. His nose was long, his mouth a cruel line. Gold hoops glimmered in both his ears, and his clothing, similar in style to what Zahrias wore, was the deep shades of earth, brown and black and iron gray.

  Wearing an amused expression, he gazed down at the two of them. Something in those black, black eyes flickered as he took in the way Margolis’ hand had closed around hers, and his mouth compressed.

  “I did not say you could have her yet.”

  At once Margolis let go of Julia’s fingers. She wasn’t sure she should be relieved that he was no longer touching her, or worried by the way he so quickly reacted to Qadim’s words.

  Even though he had let go of her, the commander still managed to voice a protest. “I have done everything you asked — ”

  “Peace,” Qadim rumbled, and Margolis subsided. The djinn turned his gaze on Julia, and she had to fight to keep herself from looking away. Something about his expression made the blood in her veins turn to ice. Tone musing, he went on, “Yes, I can see why he would want you. For a daughter of men, you are quite beautiful, aren’t you?”

  How could she respond to that question? Demurring would probably only anger him. Agreeing would make her sound impossibly conceited. Besides, which “he” was Qadim referring to? If he’d meant Margolis, wouldn’t he have referred to him by name?

  But what other “he” could he mean?

  Oh, no….

  Swallowing, Julia said, “If you
say so.”

  Qadim’s eyes narrowed. Then he glanced over at Margolis. “Leave us. I wish to speak to her alone.”

  That request — well, command, judging by Qadim’s tone — didn’t sit too well with Margolis. He scowled and got up from the couch, saying, “I brought her here. I don’t think — ”

  “That is correct,” Qadim interposed, the rumble of his deep voice effectively burying the commander’s protests. “You do not think. You do as I say. Now go.”

  Still with his forehead etched in a frown, Margolis stalked out of the room. Julia sat frozen in her chair, wishing she could flee. Not that the djinn would probably allow her to take two steps before he stopped her.

  “Better,” he went on, once the sound of Margolis’ footsteps had disappeared. Julia wondered how big the house actually was. “Come with me.”

  That didn’t sound good. She doubted protesting that she wanted to stay right here would go over too well with Qadim, however, and so she got up from her chair. “Where are we going?”

  He smiled, and she wished he hadn’t. Most people’s smiles improved their faces, but she couldn’t say the same for the earth elemental. “Not far.”

  Moving away from her, he went to a set of French doors a few feet behind the couch. They opened on a courtyard where the trees seemed about to overwhelm their planters and dead plants filled the various terra-cotta pots set around the space. Seeing them, Julia couldn’t help but think how pretty they must have been once upon a time, when someone lived here and tended the flowers that grew there once. All gone now, all dead.

  In the center of the courtyard was a raised fountain, its interior lined with brightly painted Mexican tiles in shades of green and red and blue. Qadim snapped his fingers, and the fountain came to life, water splashing merrily away under the bright afternoon sun.