djinn wars 03 - fallen (31 page)

As soon as I’d made the comment, I wished I could take it back. Not because I didn’t believe it with all my heart, but because my words only served to enrage Aldair further. Pushing back his chair, he got to his feet, then took two steps to be by my side. Before I could flinch or pull away, he grasped me by the arm and hauled me upright so my face was only mere inches from his.

“‘Love’?” he rasped. “You may dress it up however you like, but what you feel is not love, but only a glamour he has placed on you. It is entirely false.”

“That’s not true!” I shot back. My world might have teetered on its foundations multiple times over the last six months, but through it all, my love for Jace was the one thing that had never faltered. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, but I do.” Aldair didn’t quite sneer, although a corner of his mouth lifted in something very close to a smirk. At the same time, he loosened his grip on my arm — not enough that I could pull entirely away, but at least enough that I wasn’t directly in his face. “You are no better than Martine or the other girls here with us. Granted, Khalim cast his glamour a little too heavily, and so Martine is not quite herself, but believe me, when a djinn comes to a mortal woman, he is sure to make himself irresistible. Have you never heard of the legend of the incubus?”

Well, I had, but only because of my studies in English lit, and not because I believed there really was such a thing as demons who appeared in the night, merely to have sex with human women. Actually, back before the Dying, there probably had been a number of people who believed such entities were aliens, rather than demons.

But Aldair was saying they were neither. They were djinn.

“Maybe I’ve heard of them,” I said. “And I’ll agree with you that Martine got too big a dose of whatever Khalim was dishing out. But that is not what happened with Jace and me. We didn’t even — ”

I’d been about to say that we hadn’t even slept together until we’d lived under the same roof for more than a month. That information, though, was far more personal than anything I wanted to share.

My discretion didn’t appear to have helped me, though, because Aldair tilted his head slightly, blue eyes bright with malice. “You were not intimate until some time had passed? That does not surprise me. Jasreel was always one for the long game.”

Don’t listen to him,
I told myself.
He’s more full of shit than an outhouse.

“You can have your opinion,” I said. “My mother used to say everyone was entitled to their own opinion. Then again, my father also liked to say that opinions are like assholes. Everyone has them, and they mostly stink.”

“Pithy,” Aldair returned with a thin smile. “How sad that the world should be deprived of such penetrating insights.”

Right then I wished I could hit him. How dare he sneer at my parents, at people who were dead because of djinn like him? Then I stopped, confused. Aldair had been a member of the original community in Taos, which meant he’d been part of the One Thousand, the conscientious objectors. From what he’d said earlier about Katelyn, his Chosen, that had all been a front. But I wanted to make sure.

“Why Taos?” I asked. “You don’t seem to have much use for us piddly mortals. So why through your lot in with the human-lovers?”

“I should think that would be obvious.”

“Well, it’s not obvious to my puny human brain.”

His fingers tightened on my arm again, and I wanted to wince but wouldn’t. “He cheated his way to you the first time. I had no choice but to select someone who would allow me to stay nearby. I knew the opportunity would come up again at some point, if I were patient enough. But then Jasreel asked Zahrias if he might stay down in Santa Fe, away from the community that had been established in Taos, and I feared I would have to wait for some time. The Immune from Los Alamos took care of that problem, though, in removing Jace from your side. Zahrias even agreed to petition you on my behalf. But you believed yourself in love, and would have nothing of me.”

He pulled me toward him again, his face scant inches from mine. This close, I could smell the wine on his breath, feel the heat radiating from him. In Jace that warmth had always been comforting, but now it seemed oppressive, as if I would soon be buried within it.

Which was probably Aldair’s plan.

Now he held me by both arms, and was pulling me against him, his mouth on mine. I squirmed and turned my head, doing anything I could to keep him away from me, but he was too strong. His tongue forced its way between my lips, and I nearly gagged. Despairingly, I realized it didn’t matter that he only wanted to do this to hurt Jace, and not because of any particular desire for me. He’d still force me into his bed, claim my body.

But not my mind,
I thought fiercely.
No matter what you do to me, Aldair, my thoughts and my heart and my soul will be mine. And Jace’s.

Even as I struggled in Aldair’s grasp, however, the room flared with light so bright that it seared into my retinas. I blinked and ducked my head, pulling my mouth away from my attacker.

“Aldair al-Ankara!” an unfamiliar voice thundered, and he let go of me, turning to face the intruders.

I did so as well, shocked and breathless from my unexpected reprieve. Standing between us and the bed were five djinn, three male and two female. Although at first glance they appeared just as ageless as all the djinn I’d encountered so far, something in the gleam of their eyes and the set of their mouths told me they must be older than Aldair, possibly older than any of the Taos contingent.

“You will release this mortal, oath-breaker,” said the djinn in the middle, who actually had a few streaks of gray in his hair, although his face was free of lines, save for around the eyes.

“I am no oath-breaker,” Aldair protested. “I swore a pact with Zahrias al-Harith to leave his people alone, if they would but quit the place they have claimed as their own, and if they would give this woman to me. She is here of her own free will. Are you not, Jessica Monroe?”

Everything in me wanted to lie, to say that he’d forced me to be here, but that wasn’t the truth. I had volunteered to come with him, although only to save the people I cared about back in Taos. And I had a feeling these djinn with their too-old eyes would catch a lie before I was even halfway done speaking it.

I pulled in a breath. “I am here voluntarily. I agreed to this bargain to save the people of Taos from further attack by Aldair and Khalim and their little band of thugs here.”

Improbably, the leader of the strange djinn smiled. “‘Little band of thugs.’ I like that.” His expression grew stern, though, as he stared at Aldair. “But it is not that pact of which I speak. I refer to the original oath we all swore, that those of the One Thousand and their Chosen should be left alone to live as they saw fit. That is the oath you have broken, Aldair al-Ankara, for I have word from Nizar al-Naqda and Alif al-Masur that you participated in an attack on the Taos community. Such an attack directly violates the compact we have all agreed to abide by.”

At first I didn’t recognize those names, and then I realized they must be the two djinn who, along with Rafi, had attempted to flee this plane so they could find help. And they’d been successful.

Against all odds, the cavalry had arrived.

Chapter Sixteen

Aldair began to splutter, “You have no proof,” but, emboldened by the presence of these apparent elders, I broke in,

“And you killed Rafi, too. Or at least one of your gang did.”

One of the female djinn, with hair like rippling copper, spoke for the first time. “Is this true, Aldair? Alif and Nizar said they were beset, but they were unable to identify who had attacked them.”

“It’s true,” I said quietly. “We buried Rafi yesterday.”

“An oath-breaker and a murderer,” the lead djinn intoned. “You have much to answer for, Aldair, as do Khalim and the rest of his followers.”

“Who are being attended to as we speak,” another djinn added. “So do not think that help will come to you, Aldair.”

His eyes were glittering, and I could see the way his bare chest rose and fell. Cornered, but wild animals were often at their most dangerous when cornered. “You will take their side, those who would debase their djinn heritage by lying down with mortals?”

“What, you mean like what you were about to do with me?” I snapped, and the djinn elders almost looked as if they were fighting back smiles.

“I would watch your words, if I were you, Aldair,” the copper-haired female djinn said. “True, there are not many of us with mortal blood, but those who possess it and have been recognized by their parents are just as much a part of our world as you are. Or rather,” she added, distaste clear in her fine features, “more so, because at least none of them have cast themselves into darkness by ignoring oaths that all of us swore to uphold.”

His hands knotted into fists. Clearly, he could tell he was outmatched, but even with all that, he refused to surrender. Maybe that was because he knew he had no real alternatives. What did the djinn do with oath-breakers, anyway? Based on what Jace had told me about the djinn not being all that organized politically, I somehow doubted there was “djinn jail” someplace where Aldair and the rest of his cronies could be locked up.

“I claim the right of combat with Jasreel al-Ankara,” Aldair said then, his eyes seeming to bore into those of the leader of the djinn elders.

“You have no such right,” said another of the djinn, one who hadn’t spoken yet. He was dark, like Jace and Zahrias, and I wondered if he might be some sort of distant relative. “You forfeited such rights when you allied yourself with Khalim and the rest of his band.”

“Not so,” Aldair replied. Now the slightest of smiles touched his mouth, and I wondered what he was playing at. I just didn’t know enough about how djinn society and its laws — or lack thereof — to know what sort of angle he was trying to manipulate now. “That is, we have two oaths at work here. While you may think it incontestable that I have broken the one, on the other, I have the compact Jessica Monroe made with me. She is not free to go until I release her, or Jasreel stakes his own claim by besting me.”

“Which he has already done before,” said the redheaded djinn woman. Her voice sounded almost amused, but then she went on, in sharper tones, “So I am not sure what you think you will accomplish by all this.”

“I will accomplish maintaining my claim on this woman,” Aldair told her, the set of his jaw seeming to indicate that he would never back down on that particular point.

“To what end?” the leader of the djinn present demanded. “As an oath-breaker, you have already doomed yourself to exile in the outer circles. You cannot take this woman with you. She will surely die.”

At those words, my heart seemed to stop in my chest. So there was some sort of jail for djinn after all…and apparently one that no mere human could possibly survive.

“What care I for that, as long as Jasreel does not have her?” Aldair said.

A long silence. The redheaded djinn woman murmured something to their leader, and he slowly nodded.

“You shall have your combat, Aldair al-Ankara,” the elder djinn said slowly. “And if you lose, you forfeit all claim to this mortal woman.”

“But if I win — ”

“If you win” — the djinn sent a pitying glance in my direction, but his voice never faltered — “if you win, she will be yours, even into the outer circles.”

“Yes,” Aldair said, and this time his eyes were focused on me, hateful, piercing. I wanted to look away, to avoid that terrible gaze, but I made myself stare back at him, chin up. He couldn’t see how terrified I was. I wouldn’t allow it. “She will be mine…even unto death.”

There must have been a good deal of mopping-up taking place on the grounds of the Ghost Ranch, but I didn’t see any of it. Instead, the redheaded djinn woman took me by the hand, while two of the other djinn, both male, flanked Aldair. In that next instant, we were blinked out of the room where we’d been standing, only to appear in the dining room of the El Monte Sagrado resort.