djinn wars 03 - fallen (7 page)

“That is not important, dearest,” Lilias said gently.

A sigh. “Maybe not. But at least it would have made the whole mess worth something. Anyway, we were headed back into town when all of a sudden the sky darkened overhead, like a cloud passing by. None of us thought much of it, since it was sort of a cloudy day to begin with. But then it was as if that cloud dived down at us, and it got darker and darker, and the Polaris just sort of died on us. And then…
they
were there.”

“‘They’?” Zahrias asked, although from the brooding expression on his face, I would have said he already knew exactly who “they” were.

“Djinn. Other djinn. I’d never seen them before.”

“Any of them?” I cut in, recalling Aldair’s blazing blue eyes, how Zahrias had said the air elemental had gone to join those who hunted humans for sport.

Aidan shook his head, then winced. One hand began to move toward the bandages on his left cheek, but he stopped himself and knotted his fingers together on top of the duvet cover, as if worried he’d forget again and reach for his wounded face if he didn’t keep his hands in plain sight. “No. There were about ten of them, I think. I mean, there were more, up there, you know?” He lifted a shoulder vaguely skyward, then continued, “But the ones on the ground, the ones who surrounded us…I didn’t recognize any of them. Their leader was dark, like you and Jace here. No one ever said his name, though. Anyway, he told us that we were trespassing on land that wasn’t ours, and that none of us had any business being here, that our day was over.”

In the chair next to mine, Jace shifted, and his fingers clasped the arms, knuckles turning white under the strain. “What did you do?”

A swallow, and I could see Lilias tighten her hold on Aidan’s hand, as if to reassure him that she was there, and that he was safe here, no matter what might have happened the day before. He hesitated, the muscles in his throat working. “I — I didn’t really do anything at first. It was just — just a shock, I guess. I’d thought we were safe. We’d all been told that we were safe because we were Chosen, you know? But then Clay stepped forward and said as much, that if they had a problem with us being there, they should talk to their leaders, the ones who’d made the agreement in the first place, that we and all the other Chosen like us would be protected. And then — ”

Another long pause. I knew whatever it was, it wouldn’t be good. Not with Aidan sitting there with his face ripped up, looking like he’d been attacked by a wild animal. Come to think of it, maybe he had.

Voice shaking, he said, “The lead djinn just laughed. And before any of us could even blink, he pulled this long dagger or short sword or whatever from his belt, and drove it right through Clay’s gut. Martine screamed. I remember that — her screaming like some chick from a horror movie or something. The lead djinn went for her then.”

“He killed her, too?” Zahrias asked. If someone didn’t know him very well, they probably would have said he was showing no reaction at all to Aidan’s story. But his dark eyes glittered, even though the rest of his features remained still, and I could see the way he was forcing himself to keep from responding. If he’d had the full use of his powers, no doubt he would have been surrounded by a veritable inferno of virtual flames showing his anger.

“No.” Aidan shifted on the bed, his head falling backward slightly, as if the strain of sitting up was beginning to take its toll on him. “The djinn grabbed her and threw her over his shoulder. She was still screaming bloody murder and beating on his back, but it didn’t seem to faze him at all. He just laughed and said he’d take her as payment for our trespassing. This all happened in less than a minute, you know? I guess I was sort of in shock, but right then I started to yell at him, to tell him to put her down. He just kind of smiled at me, then said, ‘Give Lilias my love.’ And then that sword came up again, but this time he used it to slice up my face. It hurt like — well, I don’t know what it hurt like, because I’d never felt anything like it before. Like fire, I guess.”

The second he’d repeated the djinn’s words — “give Lilias my love — ” she’d gone ramrod stiff, all the color draining from her face. “This djinn,” she said faintly. “Did he wear purple? Dark, dark purple?”

Aidan blinked, seeming to consider. “Yeah, I think so. You know who he is?”

In answer, she wrapped both her hands around Aidan’s. Although she had looked far more composed this morning than the last time I had seen her, now she wept again, although silently, tears tracing their way down her smooth cheeks. Incongruously, I wondered how she managed to cry without smearing any of the kohl that ringed her big dark eyes.

“I knew him…once,” she replied after a noticeable pause. “But that was a long time ago. So long that I had hoped…I’d hoped he’d forgotten.”

Forgotten what, I didn’t know for sure, although it seemed clear enough to me that Lilias and this vengeful djinn — whoever he was — had some kind of a past together. I glanced over at Jace. He was frowning slightly, but I didn’t see anything in his expression that seemed to indicate he knew Lilias’ former lover. I supposed that was possible; there were some twenty thousand or so djinn currently alive, and that was a lot of people to keep track of, even if you had many, many lifetimes in which to do it.

Zahrias, however, seemed to know exactly who had killed Clay, mutilated Aidan, and kidnapped Martine. His brows drew together, and his eyes glittered. “Well, it seems Khalim has not forgotten. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. His was never a very forgiving nature.”

At these words, Aidan shifted on the bed, jaw tight with pain. “What…you were together?”

“A long time ago,” she said again. With one hand she reached up to wipe away the tears on her cheek. It was a brusque gesture, one made in such a way that I got the impression she was angry with herself for losing control like that in front of everyone. “Long before I chose you, Aidan. You must believe that.”

“Oh, I believe it.” He leaned his head back against the pillows and shut his eyes. Whether that was from exhaustion at having to recount the story to all of us, or because he didn’t want to look at Lilias, I didn’t know. Aidan and I had talked, but not about anything personal. Just logistical sorts of things, really. I couldn’t claim to know him well, and I had no idea how much Lilias had told him of her life with the djinn before she’d come here to Taos. If I had to guess, I’d say probably not much. Why would she? Those djinn who were of the One Thousand had thrown in their lot with us mortals, and probably thought they’d left their old lives behind for good.

Apparently not. And apparently having a djinn ex-lover could be a hell of a lot worse than having the sort of obsessed human ex who would stalk you on Facebook or loiter around your school or office, hoping to catch sight of you. Not that I knew from personal experience, but my friend Elena had had a couple of doozies. She finally had to get a restraining order for one of them.

Too bad that sort of thing wouldn’t really work on a djinn.

“So,” I said, because the silence in the room was playing on my already frayed nerves. “Now we know who the bad guys are. Or at least one of them. That’s something, right?”

Even though I could tell the effort cost him, Zahrias pushed himself up out of his chair so he could go over to the window and stare at the winter-bare courtyard outside. His hands hung at his sides, as if he didn’t have the energy to clench them into fists. “It is very little, actually. I already had my suspicions as to who some of these…troublemakers…might be. I am not at all surprised to find that Khalim actually is one of them.”

I hated the flat, defeated tone in Zahrias’ voice. He didn’t sound at all like himself, but who could blame him? He — like every other djinn in Taos — was trying to function while Miles Odekirk’s device continuously sucked away every spare bit of energy he possessed.

“What do you want us to do?” Jace asked then. He appeared calm enough, but there was a faint crease between his brows, one that seemed to indicate he was also troubled by Zahrias’ attitude. The djinn community here had only been enduring the effects of Miles’s little black box for about a day. That was far too soon for any of them to be giving up, especially their leader.

Zahrias turned away from the window. It was a bright sunny day, the snow in the courtyard retreated to little patches here and there in the shadows. If you only looked at the sky and the evergreens, and not the bare branches of the oaks and sycamores and cottonwood trees, you could almost believe it was springtime.

But we knew better.

His shoulders lifted, and he wouldn’t look directly at Jace, or at me. Certainly not at Lilias and her wounded lover. His gaze seemed to be fixed somewhere beyond the walls of this suite. Possibly he was thinking of where the other djinn were hiding, which, according to what Jace had told me, was a very, very long way from here…or just in the next room, depending on how you looked at it.

“Do what you can,” Zahrias said at last. “I only fear it will not be enough.”

And he moved past us and on to the door, then let himself out. My heart beat once, then again. And again, while the silence grew.

Finally, Jace spoke. “We should go to the lab, Jessica. Let us see how Lindsay is doing.”

By “lab” he meant the supply room in the basement of the resort. Lauren had slipped a note under our door to let us know the lab had been moved here from the former auto repair shop we’d been using. I understood the reasoning. The device needed to stay here, close to the people it was protecting. Anyway, Jace had a point. The key to all this was figuring out a way to have the device shield us from the bad djinn, yet leave our loved ones untouched. Simple, right?

“Okay,” I replied, getting up from my chair. Directing my next words at Lilias and Aidan, I asked, “Is there anything we can get you?”

“No,” Aidan said. “I mean, Lauren’s checking in on us. Go to the lab. We’re all right.”

I didn’t know about that, but I also knew it wasn’t my place to argue. Aidan probably wanted Jace and me to get the hell out of there so he could talk to Lilias in private. I would have wanted the same thing, if our positions had been reversed.

“Take care,” Jace said quietly as we left the room.

Whether those words had been addressed to Aidan or Lilias, I couldn’t be sure.

Unfortunately, Lindsay didn’t seem to be doing much of anything when we showed up. She sat at what had probably been the facility manager’s desk, the box in front of her. There were tools scattered around, but it didn’t look to me as if she’d been using any of them. She was alone, too; maybe her djinn was too exhausted to remain with her, and obviously Aidan wasn’t going to be helping anyone out for a while. No sign of Evony, or of Kelli or Randall, the other two who’d volunteered for mad scientist duty.

“That good, huh?” I asked, noting Lindsay’s glum expression.

She startled slightly at the sound of my voice; apparently, she’d been very far away. “Worse, probably.” With a sigh, she rolled her chair away from the desk and got up. “I’ve been sitting here and staring at that thing for, like, an hour. I know I need to crack it open if I’m ever going to start figuring it out, but…I just can’t.” Her big green eyes fastened on mine, worried, helpless. That probably bothered her just as much as anything else. I doubted Lindsay had ever felt helpless in her entire life. Well, at least not until the Heat came along.

“Why can’t you?” Jace asked. He stood next to me, regarding her calmly. I knew that it was difficult for him to be in the same room with the device, but you’d never know it to look at him right then.

“Because — well, because it’s the only thing keeping us safe right now, isn’t it?” With a nervous gesture very unlike her, she shoved a piece of dark blonde hair behind one ear. “If I start fiddling with it, I could break it. And then we’ll be even worse off than we are now.”

Well, I couldn’t argue with her there. For a second I considered making a crack about it being the green wire she needed to cut, and then I realized that would be a very bad idea. Lindsay didn’t need lame jokes right now. She needed a way to delve into the device’s secrets without destroying it in the process.

Apparently Jace had heard the edge of panic in her voice, because he said, his tone soothing, “Tell us what you have found out about it. Your theories. Then we can go from there.”

His words seemed to have some effect, because she let out a small breath and nodded, some of the tension leaving her jaw. “Okay. Well. I can operate it just fine now. The controls aren’t that difficult, once you understand how it’s supposed to be held. And really, it is sort of a ‘set it and forget it’ kind of contraption, unless you’re actively trying to inflict hurt on the djinn nearby.”

Jace winced at that comment. I remembered how Miles Odekirk had been playing with the device when the group from Los Alamos invaded my house. It hadn’t been his first field test — that must have occurred when they captured Natila — and so I realized the scientist had been manipulating the box to see what kind of effect the various levels of intensity would have on a djinn, rather than maintaining the device at one particular setting and hoping for the best.