djinn wars 03 - fallen (5 page)

Two hideous gashes marred Aidan’s cheeks. Blood still trickled from the wounds, and also stained the camo parka he wore. His long hair had fallen out of its usual ponytail and hung in mud- and blood-spattered strands around his face.

Jace surged forward first, slipping an arm under one of Aidan’s shoulders, since it was obvious he had trouble standing, even with the wall to support him. A second later, I went to him as well, sliding under his shoulder and feeling his weight settle on my arm as he slumped against me.

“What happened?” I asked, but even as the words left my mouth, I knew. It had to be the other djinn, the ones whose attack on Taos had been thwarted by Miles Odekirk’s device. How Aidan had managed to survive, I had no idea. And I didn’t even want to know what had happened to the other two in the hunting party, Martine and Clay. Judging by Aidan’s current condition, it couldn’t be anything good.

“They found us,” he gasped. Above his head, Jace and I exchanged a knowing glance.

“Yes,” Jace said calmly. “Can you walk at all? Our truck is just out in front.”

“Yeah.”

I had my doubts, but we began shuffling over to the fire lane where we’d parked the truck. Aidan did his best to stumble along, although I’d say his forward motion was probably at least ninety percent our doing. I opened the passenger-side door and pushed him inside as best I could, with Jace lending what little strength he had to spare for the operation. At last Aidan was more or less parked in the center of the bench seat, head lolling to one side.

“I’ll hold him up,” Jace murmured to me, voice carefully neutral. “You drive.”

“Got it.” I hurried around to the other side of the truck and climbed into the driver’s seat. Obviously, we had to get Aidan back to the resort, but what we’d do with him once we were there, I had no idea. As far as I knew, no one in the Taos community had any sort of medical experience. Yes, I had a few basic first aid skills, thanks to some coaching by my father when I was younger. That didn’t mean I knew the first thing about patching up the sort of horrific wounds Aidan had suffered. I’d just have to hope that they’d heal quickly on their own. After all, he was one of the Chosen. Lilias, his djinn, would have given him accelerated healing, just as Jace had done with me.

I took a quick glance over at him as I maneuvered the truck down the icy streets. Icy, because the djinn couldn’t keep the roads clear the way they had before the attack. It would be just our luck to be hit by a major snowstorm around now on top of everything else.

Like things aren’t bad enough without you borrowing trouble,
I thought grimly.
Worry about that later. Much later.

We were all silent as I drove. That is, Aidan didn’t seem to be in much shape for any kind of speech; his eyes had shut, and I thought he probably would have fallen over to one side if Jace hadn’t maintained a grip on his arm so he stayed more or less upright.

I ventured, still not completely used to the mental communication we could share,
He’ll be all right, though. I mean, his healing powers should kick in soon enough.

Jace’s voice in my head sounded grimmer than I’d ever heard it.
No, they won’t.

What do you mean?

His jaw tightened.
I mean that those powers come from your djinn partner. With our own powers blocked, we have no way of sharing them with you. If you’re hurt, you will heal like any ordinary human. This small power we use now, the way we can speak with one another through our bond…that’s all we have. And even that only works when we are in close enough proximity.

Holy crap. I hadn’t even stopped to consider that the device would affect our shared powers, since I’d never lost the ability to share this silent speech with Jace, as long as we were in the same building. But of course it made perfect sense that the healing, the long life, would require far more energy. If that was the case, though…if our healing and extended life came solely from our djinn, then….

So…Evony?
I asked, pretty sure I knew what Jace’s answer would be, even though I hated to hear it.

She has lost Natila, and therefore the protections her djinn lover gave her. She has returned to the way she was…before.

This just kept getting better and better. I wondered if Evony had begun to guess. I hoped not, but she wasn’t stupid. All it would take was one scrape, one ragged hangnail to persist when it should have been gone in an hour or so, and she’d know something was wrong.

Even so, we’d have to tell her. That would be fun, considering she wasn’t even speaking to me. Much.

But first things first. Despite her protestations that she was just fine with going out and finding the lost hunting party — an expedition that clearly wasn’t needed now — as far as I knew, Evony wasn’t going anywhere. We had to get Aidan taken care of as best we could, and hope that he’d revive enough to tell us what had happened. I stole a glance over at him. Even under the blood smearing his face, I could tell the wounds he’d suffered would leave a set of horrific scars. And he’d been so handsome. Not my type — even before Jace came along, I’d preferred darker men — but still.

That’s the last thing you should be worrying about,
I scolded myself.
The important thing is that he’s alive, and we’ve got to do whatever we can to make sure he stays that way.

Even though the hardware store was only half a mile from the resort at the very most, it still felt as if it took forever to get back there. But at last we were pulling into the parking lot. I drove right up to the front doors — it wasn’t as if I’d be preventing any late-arriving tourists from dropping off their luggage — then put the truck in park and hurried around to the passenger side.

Jace was already opening the door. The two of us had more or less wrangled Aidan out of the cab when I heard Lauren’s shocked voice.

“Oh, my God. What happened?”

“Two guesses,” I said grimly, propping Aidan up as best I could while Jace shut the truck door. “We’ve got to get him inside. We did find two generators. They’re in the bed, so — ”

“I’ll take care of it.” Her worried gaze rested on Aidan’s ruined face, and I saw her shiver. “His rooms with Lilias are toward the back of the hotel. There’s no way you’ll be able to carry him that far.”

“Get some of the other Chosen to help,” Jace said, his voice tight with strain. I could tell that the exertions of the afternoon were finally beginning to wear on him. “We’ll head in that direction, and they can catch up with us.”

Lauren nodded, then all but ran into the building. We followed at a much slower pace, more or less holding Aidan up, since somewhere between the hardware store and the parking lot, he seemed to have passed out completely. Maybe that was better. He had to be in a tremendous amount of pain.

Our stumbling little trio hadn’t made it much past the lobby when two Chosen I didn’t know very well, both tall young men, came hurrying up and took over, slipping their arms around Aidan so Jace and I could finally let go of him. I straightened, rubbing my neck. The next morning, I’d probably be feeling the strain in the muscles of my neck and shoulders.

“You know where to take him?” Jace asked one of them, a lean, good-looking guy with sandy hair and friendly hazel eyes.

“Lauren told us,” the man answered. “We can take over from here. You’re looking pretty wiped.”

Privately, I had to agree. Maybe Jace could hold up under the effects of the device better than most of his fellow djinn, but that didn’t mean he was doing well, especially not after expending so much effort just to get Aidan here.

“We’ll stay with him,” Jace said quietly.

The young man gave the shadows under Jace’s eyes and the pinched look around his mouth a dubious glance, and then he shrugged. He didn’t quite say,
your funeral,
but I could tell he didn’t think Jace had the energy to make it that far.

Nor did I, but somehow he took careful step after careful step, following the two young men all the way back to the suite Aidan and Lilias shared. Just as we approached the door, she came running down the hallway, black hair flying behind her like a dark cloak. Spotting her injured lover, she let out a cry and went to him. Her big dark eyes grew even larger as she took in the ruin of his face.

“What happened?”

Jace sent her a look of mingled weariness and worry. “You know what happened.”

Her full lips compressed. “I didn’t think they would take it this far.”

“Oh, they did.”

The two young men carrying Aidan didn’t pause for this convo, but took him inside and laid him down on the bed. I briefly noted that the suite seemed to have an Incan motif, with pyramids and lizard-birds in stylized murals on the wall. But then Lilias was going to Aidan and pressing her lips against his forehead.

“It is all right,” she murmured. “It is going to be all right.”

At least she wasn’t recoiling from him. In fact, I saw a fierce tenderness in her features, a determination to make sure he would survive this, no matter what. When she straightened and turned back toward the rest of us, her mouth was set, eyes clear and focused.

“I’ll need whatever healing supplies this place might have brought to us here. Are any among you a healer?”

The two young men looked at one another and shrugged. I could tell they’d thought they were beyond needing that sort of help. They probably weren’t going to be too thrilled when they found out that all of us Chosen were right back to square one — mortal, vulnerable.

In the meantime, we had to do what we could.

“I have some first aid training,” I said. “I’m sure Lauren is looking for someone to help, but I’ll do what I can until she can find someone better qualified.”

“Thank you,” she replied, then glanced over at Jace. “It seems you are even luckier in your Chosen than we all thought.”

“Well, I’m no doctor — ” I began, and she shushed me.

“Do what you can.”

I nodded and hurried into the bathroom. The washcloths and towels appeared clean enough, so I’d start there. Biting my lip, I turned on the tap, wondering if water would even come out. But it did, and it was hot. They must have already gotten the water heaters switched over to propane. As to why the plumbing was working…well, I’d thank my stars for that now and worry about the mechanics of it all later.

After dampening the cloth with hot water, I went back out to the bedroom. The two young men had disappeared, and I looked over at Jace.

“They’ve gone for supplies.”

Of course. I turned back to Aidan and tried not to wince in sympathetic agony as I dabbed at the jagged cut on one of his cheeks with the washcloth I’d prepped. He jerked under these ministrations, but I could tell he was enough out of it that he couldn’t sense all of the pain I was probably causing.

I’d just started cleaning the wound on his other cheek when a casually gorgeous Hispanic young man entered the room, carrying a small first aid kit. “I’m Miguel,” he told me. “I’ve had some EMT training, although I ended up not getting my certification after all. Let me take a look at him.”

Relieved beyond measure that help more expert than mine had arrived, I handed over the washcloth to Miguel and backed away from the bed. “Why didn’t you finish?” I asked as he began to wipe the blood from Aidan’s face.

A quick sideways flash of a smile. “Decided to try modeling instead.”

Well, I could see the logic in that, with those cheekbones and that smile. I went to take my place next to Jace and twined my fingers in his, glad to feel his touch even if his skin was cool against mine, a sure sign of the havoc the djinn-blocking device was wreaking on his system. Lilias stood on his other side, her hands clenched into fists as she watched Miguel work.

She spoke quietly, pale beneath the usual warm olive of her skin. “What can we do?”

He set the washcloth down on the nightstand and cracked open the first aid kit, then shook his head. “I’ll clean the wounds with what we’ve got here, get some bandages on, but he’s going to need something better than that. Butterfly bandages at the very least. Stitches would be better. And antibiotics.”

“There’s an urgent-care place a few blocks down the road.” Lauren’s voice came from the doorway, and I turned slightly to see her standing there, pretty features strained, although I could tell from the almost unnatural calm in her voice that she was doing her best to maintain her composure. “I’ll send someone over. Just let me know what you need.”

As Lauren spoke, Miguel was cleaning Aidan’s wounds with alcohol wipes. That must have hurt like a bitch, but he hardly moved, just twitched every so often. Then Miguel laid some gauze first over one wound, then the other, and taped the fabric down as best he could. Without looking up from his work, he said, “I’d better go. I know what to look for. He should be stable enough for now. If it’s really only a couple blocks from here, that means the urgent-care facility is close enough that I can go and come back in less than fifteen minutes.”

“Are you sure?” Lilias asked. I could tell that she didn’t want to run the risk of having the community’s only medic too far from his patient.

“Absolutely,” Miguel replied, then straightened and turned to face all of us. From the way his gaze flickered down to Aidan and back toward us, I got the feeling something else was bothering him…and I had a good idea what it was.

He said, “He’s not healing the way he should be.”

“No,” Jace returned, tone flat. “And he won’t, as long as that device is protecting us from attack by the other djinn.”

Miguel glanced at me, dark eyes intent on my face. “You knew.” The words weren’t exactly an accusation, but they sure felt that way.

“Jace told me on the drive over.”

To my surprise, Miguel only shrugged. “Okay. At least now I know what I’m dealing with.”

He moved past us and headed out the door, barely squeezing past Lauren. Now her expression was more worried than ever, brows pulled together, jaw tense, but she only said, “Anything else you need here?”

“No,” Lilias replied. She went to the table by the window and took one of the chairs, then moved it to Aidan’s bedside. I could tell the exertion bothered her — she was breathing hard by the time she was done — but none of us offered to help her. She clearly wanted to do this on her own. “Let Zahrias know what has happened. Jasreel and Jessica can stay here with me.”