“Beg to differ, miss.” The leader of the Los Alamos gang gave a faint nod, and the four men holding him began to drag Jasreel out the front door.
“No!” I began to move after them, but another of the group, one of the two men flanking the guy with the black box, took me by the arm.
“I wouldn’t,” he said in a murmur. “Right now you have the benefit of the doubt, but….” He let the words die away, but I got his meaning. It was Jasreel these men were after, not me. The last thing I should be doing was provoking them.
I gave the fair-haired man, who seemed to be about my age or a little more, the faintest of nods, then held my position, just a few feet away from the guy in charge. “What proof do you have that he’s guilty of anything?”
“His nature is proof enough.” He gave another of those chin-jerks at the man with the black box and the two men with him. For the first time, the one wearing glasses looked up from his device, whatever it was, then gave a faint nod, right before they went out the front door. The blond one gave me a warning glance before he turned and took up the rear, as if to tell me that I needed to stay put and keep my mouth shut.
Fat chance of that. Instead, I followed them. As soon as I was outside, the chilly air seemed to bite at me, piercing the thermal shirt I wore, but I ignored the momentary discomfort. Parked a little ways down the drive were two Hummers, one bright yellow, the other red. Clearly, these were some of the vehicles “liberated” from Santa Fe and the surrounding area.
I could see Jasreel being bundled into the yellow Hummer and cursed mentally. What was I supposed to do? There were seven of them — all right, the guy with the box seemed peculiarly uninterested in his surroundings and kept fiddling with the device, whatever it was, so maybe he wasn’t much of a threat — but the rest of them were all big enough to take me individually, let alone as a group. And all my weapons were currently locked up in the gun safe.
The leader of the group paused and glanced down at me, seeming to really assess my appearance for the first time. He didn’t leer, but I could see the look in his eyes take on a certain glint. “You should come with us,” he said casually. “We’re trying to in-gather as many of the Immune as we can. You’d be safe with us in Los Alamos. We can protect you.”
For a second, I actually considered it. Not because I wanted to go with this bastard and his crew, but because that way I’d be closer to Jasreel. I’d still have to figure out some way to free him, but I thought attempting a rescue would be a lot easier if I were nearby.
No, beloved.
The words were barely more than a gasp in my mind. I couldn’t speak aloud, not with the leader of the band of thugs standing close by, so in desperation I tried to respond the same way. Amazingly, it seemed to work.
But I want to stay with you!
You will be…better able to help me if you stay away from them, and free.
How?
You will need assistance…and you will not be able to get it if you come with me to Los Alamos now. I do not think they intend to kill me right away.
And that’s supposed to be reassuring?
Yes, beloved.
I had to ask. How are we doing this?
The bond between us. They have trapped me here on this plane, cut off my powers, but I can still speak to you thus. At least —
But then the thought-speech abruptly broke off, and I realized it must have been because they’d finally hauled Jasreel into the Hummer and shut the door behind him. So our mental connection was limited — by space, and by physical barriers.
Luckily, the entire exchange had taken place in less time than the blink of an eye.
“Thanks for the offer,” I told the leader, my tone as casual as I could make it, as if I hadn’t just held a desperate mental dialogue with their captive. “But I’ve got goats and chickens to tend. I think I’ll stay right here.”
His eyes narrowed. “You sure? It’s not safe for a woman alone.”
And I’d be so much safer in Los Alamos. Right. Evenly, I replied, “I’ll take my chances.”
A long hesitation, and I worried that he might try to force me into the other Hummer. But then he shrugged and said, “Door’s always open. Come find us there when you’re ready.”
I nodded, and he seemed to take that as the conclusion of our conversation, because he signaled the three men still waiting outside to get in the red Hummer. Immediately afterward, he crossed to the vehicle and climbed in the passenger seat. A slap on the door, and both vehicles moved off, heading down the drive and out through the gate, which I noticed was standing wide open. They must have shorted out the mechanism or something, although that should have triggered the alarm system. Then again, I didn’t know what the black box the weedy-looking man had been holding could do. Maybe it could simultaneously short out the alarm and somehow trap Jasreel here in this world, with no hope of escape. Or maybe one of the men in the Hummers had just stepped out and clipped a couple of wires.
In a minute or two, I’d have to go inspect the gate and see if what they’d done was anything I could fix. In a minute or two, I’d have to take Dutchie back into the house and lock up, and pray that no unfriendly eyes had seen me in my current vulnerable state.
Right then, though, I could only stand there in the driveway and feel the icy tears roll down my cheeks, stinging in the bitter wind that was blowing down from the north. Jasreel was gone.
I turned so I faced west, in the direction the vehicles had disappeared. And although I knew he couldn’t hear me, I still sent the words out to him, letting them ride on the wind.
I will find you…beloved.
Turn the page for a sneak peek at the next book in The Djinn Wars, Taken, due out in April 2015.
Sneak Peek: Taken
I don’t know how long I stood out in the icy air, feeling the wind whip at my loose hair, tears seeming to freeze on my cheeks. Overhead, the sky grew darker and darker, a bruised-looking mass of clouds building from out of the northeast.
It was Dutchie who brought me back to myself, stirring me out of my frozen misery. She thrust a cold, wet nose into one palm and whined, her head cocked to one side. I forced myself to look down. The dog didn’t look particularly troubled, although I could tell she wanted to go back in the house. Some time would have to pass before she realized that Jasreel hadn’t gone off with those men just to shoot dinner. After all, Jace often disappeared for hours to go hunting, and he didn’t always take Dutchie with him. Most of the time, but not always.
“Okay, girl,” I told her. We did need to go inside. I had to regroup, figure out what to do next. Standing out here in the freezing air and making myself sick wasn’t going to do any of us any good.
Before I went inside, though, I walked down to the gate and inspected the mechanism. As I’d feared, a few wires were hanging out of the box that controlled it, which meant the gate was now basically useless. I didn’t know the first thing about electronics, or soldering, or whatever else I’d have to do to fix it.
But there are manuals and all kinds of equipment here at the compound, so don’t give up before you’ve even gotten started.
That sounded great. Except right then I wasn’t sure I could even summon the energy to feed myself later that evening, let alone teach myself enough about wiring that I could actually manage to repair the gate and not blow myself up in the meantime.
Shivering, I pushed the gate shut. It was heavy, and I had a feeling the next morning my muscles would let me know about the way I’d overexerted them, but closing the gate at least gave the illusion of security, if not the real thing.
“Come on, Dutchie,” I said, and began the weary trudge up the hill to go back inside the house. She trotted along next to me, looking a little worried, although that might have been me projecting my own emotions on her.
What in the world was I supposed to do now?
One step at a time. Up the hill. Inside the house. Close the door and lock it. The thugs from Los Alamos must have picked the l
ock or used the black box to open the door or whatever, because the lock did still work.
And now I was — well, I wouldn’t say I was exactly feeling better, but at least I wasn’t inviting incipient frostbite. Around me, everything looked familiar, unchanged. The fire still crackled in the hearth, and the air was spicy with the scent of the Christmas tree that stood in the corner.
The tree. I went to it and inhaled its fragrance, reached out to touch its soft needles. Jace — Jasreel — had brought me that tree. He’d brought it because he loved me.
That was all it took. The tears I’d forced back returned with a vengeance, coursing down my cheeks as my fingers clenched so tightly on one of the popcorn strands surrounding the Christmas tree that it broke, sending soft white kernels falling to the floor.
Shit. I dropped to my knees, attempting to gather them all up. What if that was one of the strands Jace had made? I had hardly anything left of him, and now I’d just broken something he’d created.
You don’t know that, I tried to scold myself. You made twice as many as he did, since he was eating almost as much as what ended up on the tree.
Unbidden, a smile came to my lips, even through the tears. I remembered him sitting on the couch, dark eyes guiltily shifting to me as at least one kernel went in his mouth for every one he strung on the thread I’d given him.
How could he be so human? Were the djinn really all that different from us, or had he perfected the guise of humanity better than most of them?
I didn’t know, and right then, I didn’t care. The only thing I knew was that I loved him, and he’d been taken from me.
Rage began to build in me at that thought. Well, that was right on schedule, wasn’t it? First denial, and then anger. But I didn’t want to come to acceptance, once the fury had burned its way through me. I’d never accept the way the gang from Los Alamos had stolen Jasreel from me. They had no right. He’d done nothing, had done what he could to prevent the Dying. And when it was clear that he’d been overruled in that debate, he’d somehow chosen me from all the survivors, had made sure I would be safe.
The djinn were responsible, but not all of them. It seemed clear enough to me that was a fine point of distinction the Los Alamos people didn’t want to make. Much easier to lump them all together and assign them a blanket designation of guilt, right?
I turned away from the tree and went down the hall to the guest bathroom so I could splash some water on my face and blow my nose. Dutchie followed partway but stopped outside, since she knew she wasn’t allowed in the bathroom.
The simple actions helped a little. Not completely, but at least I felt as if I had a slightly stronger grip on my emotions. Crying wasn’t going to change anything. I wouldn’t feel bad for having a temporary meltdown, but on the other hand, I knew I had to get myself together and figure out what to do next.
It was only a little before noon. Strange how my life could be changed so utterly before the day was even half over.
As I looked down at her, Dutchie gave me a half-hopeful tail thump.
“Close enough,” I told her, going to fetch a cupful of food from the big bag of dry food in the pantry.
Feeding the dog helped me to calm down that much more. Jasreel was gone, but I still had Dutchie to take care of, and I needed to take care of myself, too. I needed to be in the very best fighting trim possible so that when I went to bust out Jace, I wouldn’t have self-sabotaged by moping around and not eating, or drinking too much, or whatever else I felt like doing at that particular moment.
Although my appetite had completely deserted me, I made myself eat some leftover sausage and baked macaroni. I remembered sitting down and having that meal only a few nights earlier, recalled the way Jace and I had laughed and plotted and planned for the coming spring, how we’d realized we should make another foray to Home Depot to scoop up any seeds and other useful gardening items that the gleaners had left behind.
Well, now at least I knew who those gleaners were. The people from Los Alamos.
How many of them were there? The leader of the group had said they were trying to in-gather as many as they could, but that meant nothing to me. New Mexico hadn’t been a densely populated state even at its peak. Altogether, there were probably a few thousand survivors of the Dying, but how many of those had the vengeful djinn picked off before they could make it to this supposed haven in Los Alamos?
I wasn’t sure I wanted to guess, but between that and the inevitable disease and accidents that occurred after any great cataclysm, I estimated maybe a thousand were still alive. Of those survivors, I doubted all of them would have made their way to that small town, built on several plateaus nestled in the Jemez Mountain range. So possibly…five hundred? Six hundred?
That didn’t sound like a whole lot, but it was still five hundred of them up against just me.
Trying not to sigh, I forced down the leftovers, ignoring Dutchie as she settled near the base of the chair and waited to see if I’d have any scraps to give her when I was done. I also tried to ignore the thoughts that swirled around in my brain, telling me that Jace had been wrong and that the Los Alamos crew was going to execute him just as soon as they cleared space on the hanging tree or whatever they planned to use to rid themselves of their captured djinn.
Could you even execute a djinn? That is, Jace had definitely felt real enough; I’d kissed him, touched him, made love to him. His body certainly seemed human, at least in every aspect that mattered to me. Some of that could have been subterfuge, but not all; when he’d given up his assumed identity of Jason Little River, Jasreel still looked human, just different from the young man I’d first come to know.
But he’d made mention of being trapped on this plane by the device the man in the glasses had been carrying, which meant Jace had the ability to move from this world to others, planes of existence I could barely begin to imagine. So maybe that body was real while he was here, but changed into something else when he wasn’t on the corporeal plane?
Just trying to figure that out made my head hurt. I’d never believed in ghosts and spirits, psychics and channeling and all that stuff. I believed in what I could see, could touch. Well, I’d seen Jace floating above the living room floor, so I knew he wasn’t an ordinary man. And I’d touched him, so I also knew he was real. Ergo, there were things in heaven and earth that certainly had never been dreamt of in my philosophy…at least not until the Dying changed the world irrevocably.
I threw Dutchie one last scrap of sausage that I’d saved specifically for her, then went to rinse off my plate. As I did so, my brain kept working away at the problem. The leader of the group from Los Alamos had said that Jace would be put on trial for his supposed crimes. Would that trial be real, or at least a facsimile of real one, with a prosecutor and a defense attorney and all that? Or would they dispense with the niceties, declare him guilty after a sham trial, and string him up anyway?
The thought crossed my mind that I could go to Los Alamos and offer myself as Jasreel’s defender. Never mind that everything I knew about courtroom procedures I’d gleaned from watching episodes of Law and Order or, even more improbably, Drop Dead Diva. Even that might be better than the so-called “defense” Jace would get from whoever in Los Alamos was assigned to his case. If they assigned anyone at all.
After going back out to the living room, I pushed the curtains aside and peered out. The sky still looked lowering, but the snow, if it was coming at all, hadn’t made an appearance yet. And although I’d shut the gate, I hadn’t secured it. Until I could attempt to make repairs, I really should get out there and lock it up with some chain and a padlock or something.
First I made a detour to the office and woke up the computer so I could take a look at the security feed. As I’d feared, even though the cameras on the rest of the property seemed to be working fine, the one that overlooked the front gate was dark, so it had to have been disabled at the same time the main mechanism was circumvented.
Well, at least I had e
yes on the rest of the compound. That was better than nothing. Also, I was able to scrounge the chain and a padlock — still in its clamshell packaging — from the storage area in the basement, and that made me feel…well, not better, but at least slightly reassured.
I pulled on my coat and scarf, but not my gloves, since I needed full use of my hands. Once I was outfitted, I went back outside, Dutchie bounding along at my heels, and headed down to the gate, which I secured to the wall as best I could by looping the chain around the steel frame bolted to the adobe. When I pulled on it, there might have been the slightest amount of give, but overall, it seemed sturdy enough. No, it wouldn’t stand up to someone driving a Hummer through it, and if you were determined enough, you could probably still climb up and over the gate itself, but I thought it should deter anyone out for some casual looting. If such a person even existed; for all I knew, I was taking precautions for nothing.
But having the gate locked made me feel a little better, if nothing else, and I needed to feel better. I needed to tell myself there was still hope, that this would all somehow work out in the end. Right then I couldn’t see how that was possible, but when the Heat had swept through Albuquerque, I was sure I would die along with everyone else, and yet here I was.
Good enough for now.
We went back inside, and I piled a few more logs on the fireplace. A long, empty afternoon stretched in front of me. Funny how it hadn’t felt that way when Jace was around. We’d always had plenty to occupy us. Well, in a few hours I’d need to go out and feed the chickens and the goats, make sure they had fresh water, but what I was supposed to do between now and then, I didn’t know. Sit down with one of the new-looking paperback mysteries from the shelves in the office and pretend my world hadn’t just ended?
No way.
I did go into the office, but ignored the paperbacks in favor of the manuals that sat on one of the shelves. There actually was a book on basic electronics, but when I picked it up and started flipping through it, my eyes wanted to cross at all the diagrams and the figures and formulas I found in it, and I felt like crying all over again. After all, there was a reason why I’d been getting my master’s in English and not in electrical engineering or something.
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