djinn wars 02 - taken

by Christine Pope

  It still felt like we were flying, though, compared to our agonizing drive the day before. And before too long we were coming down into Nambe, where I cut off on a side road to take our same stealthy path into Santa Fe, the one I had to pray wasn’t being observed by the Los Alamos group. I really didn’t see how they could — watching the highway made sense, but spying on every road in and out of town would be way too much for their limited manpower.

  Or at least I hoped it would.

  I didn’t see any sign of life as we skirted the northern edge of town and then picked up Alameda, however. Here I had to slow back down, as obviously the djinn weren’t about to tip their hand by clearing the roads in Santa Fe. That was the worst part — dropping to a crawl when we were so close to our destination, but I didn’t have much choice.

  The drive along Upper Canyon was similarly deserted, and the bright sun had melted enough of the snow that the road was icy in spots. Even the four-wheel drive slipped here and there, and I clamped down on my bottom lip and prayed we wouldn’t get stuck. Zahrias had bailed us out once, but I couldn’t expect him to do it again. Not here, so far away from his home territory.

  Eventually, though, we did make it to the gate to the property, and I climbed out to unlock the padlock and unwrap the chain. At least today the sun was shining, although the air had an intense bite to it, and I knew I wouldn’t want to remain standing in the snow for too long. I didn’t have to, of course, and within a minute or two, I was back inside the Cherokee and coaxing it up the incline to the house.

  Since we probably wouldn’t be staying long, I didn’t bother with putting the Jeep in the garage, but instead backed it up as close to the rear door of the house as I could. Dutchie pressed her nose against the window and whined softly; I could tell she knew she was home, and wanted out.

  You and me both, I thought, climbing out of the vehicle and going to the rear door so I could let her out of the Jeep. Evony climbed out as well, and I unlocked the back door to the house, standing out of the way so Dutchie could go charging inside.

  Nothing seemed to have been touched. It was cold, because we hadn’t been there to light any fires, but the refrigerator still hummed away, and none of the digital clocks on the other appliances were blinking. Clearly, the power had held, even through the storm.

  It hurt to think I wouldn’t be staying here in this place of refuge Jace had provided for me…but I reflected I wouldn’t have this sanctuary at all if it weren’t for him. Anyway, I wouldn’t be able to rest here until I brought him safely home.

  “I need to pack a few more things,” I told Evony as she set her weekender bag on the kitchen counter. “Not much — just a few changes of clothes. And then I need to check on the animals….” I let the words die away then as it came to me that I’d need to do something about the livestock. Leaving them on their own for a night was one thing, but I had absolutely no idea how long I would be gone this time. “Well, shit.”

  “What?” Evony asked. She’d started heading toward one of the cupboards, probably to scrounge a snack or something, but at my curse she turned back toward me, eyebrows raised in question.

  “The goats and the chickens. If it was summer, I’d just let them all go and hope for the best, but I can’t do that to them now. They’d never survive.” From somewhere, a memory of glowing red eyes came to me, and I recalled the coyotes who’d watched Jace and me drive by in the Cherokee on that November night not so long ago. No, I definitely couldn’t leave the animals to fend for themselves. It was almost January, and those coyotes were probably pretty hungry right about now.

  “Take them with us,” Evony suggested, and I blinked at her.

  “What?”

  “Why not? You have a trailer — I saw it out there by the garage. Maybe the Los Alamos people will be happier to see us if we bring them a little present. A peace offering, you know?”

  I could have hugged her. That was brilliant. Yes, I’d be giving up the animals Jace and I had so carefully gathered and brought here, but I had to guess that the survivors in Los Alamos would be happy to get some livestock to add to whatever they might already have. Even if they’d managed to keep the lights on the whole time, and the local grocery story had never run out of power, I doubted they’d turn up their noses at an additional supply of fresh eggs and milk.

  And if I succeeded at bringing Jace home, we could always go on another foraging expedition. I had absolutely no idea how many goats and chickens had been raised on local farms, but there would have to be some left around…assuming they had someplace to shelter from the cold. Anyway, I told myself that what we’d done once before, we could do again.

  “That’s perfect, Evony. Thank you.” Of course, even as I thanked her, I began to worry about how we’d get the goats in the trailer. The first time around, they hadn’t exactly been amenable, and I didn’t have Jace with me to put his goat-whisperer moves on them.

  But it turned out they were a lot more tractable this time, possibly because they were hoping a ride in the trailer meant they were going to greener pastures than the dead grass in the yard and the drafty little shed Jace had built for them. I had no idea what kind of facilities were available in Los Alamos, but surely someone there had to have kept horses or something. After I maneuvered the Cherokee around and Evony helped me get the trailer on the hitch — “I used to help my brother get his cars ready for shows,” she informed me — we herded the goats into the trailer, and they went in more or less obediently enough.

  The chickens were a little tougher, but I ended up putting plastic down in the back of the Jeep and then loading them in there. Good thing that Evony and I were both traveling light; she put her weekender bag on one side of the back seat, and I set my duffle on top of that. Dutchie would just have to be confined to half the seat. She didn’t look all that thrilled about it, but since she could tell she wasn’t going to be left behind, she was willing to put up with the cramped quarters. At least she was such a well-behaved dog that I wouldn’t have to worry about her bothering the chickens.

  As for the rest…well, the house was tightly built, and should be all right. The drip system in the greenhouse more or less sustained itself. Yes, I’d have some maintenance to do when I got back, but I thought the plants would be okay for a few days.

  Or weeks. Whatever it took.

  We locked everything up again and headed out. I’d thought driving in snow was hard enough, but doing it while pulling a horse trailer was doubly difficult. The only thing that saved me was following the trail I’d already broken on the way up to the property. Well, that and the sunny, clear day itself, since at least I could see where I was going.

  Westward through Santa Fe, and then finally to the highway. I paused there and took a breath. Evony glanced over at me, gaze questioning.

  “Are you ready for this?” I asked her.

  “Probably not,” she replied, and grinned. “But let’s go for it anyway. The worst they can do is shoot us.”

  “Thanks.”

  She didn’t stop smiling, though, and I pushed us up onto Highway 64, angling north and west.

  To Los Alamos.

  Chapter Seven

  Oddly, the highway felt somewhat clearer than the roads. Maybe that was because it sat up high, and the wind had managed to blow some of the snow away. I doubted the open highways in this area had anything to do with the djinn, not in as exposed a spot as this.

  And it did feel exposed, trundling along, never going more than twenty miles an hour or so. From time to time, I had to slow down even more than that to avoid stopped vehicles, the smaller ones almost buried in snow. I thought we would probably make it to Los Alamos before dark, even as creeping as our current pace felt, but it would be close.

  After we’d pulled off Highway 64 onto 502, the road that led directly to the stronghold of the Immune, Evony finally broke the silence.

  “Don’t you wonder where the rest of them are?”

  “The rest of who?” I asked, hands tight
on the steering wheel. Right then I was really wishing that the Los Alamos crew had waited until the spring thaw to make their move and start kidnapping djinn. It would’ve made this whole situation a lot easier to deal with.

  “The djinn.” She glanced skyward, then over at me. “You know, the ones who didn’t want to play nice and rescue any mortals. The ones who started this whole thing.”

  Damn, didn’t we have enough to worry about already? “I hadn’t really thought about it,” I said carefully. “I guess I figured they were leaving us alone because we were Chosen, and they’d made a deal with the Thousand, the conscientious objectors.”

  “I suppose.” Before we’d left, I’d set fresh bottles of water in the cupholders. She picked up her bottle now and cracked the cap, but she didn’t drink, instead sitting there and tightening it and loosening it. “But what if they decide they don’t want to leave us alone anymore?”

  Despite myself, I couldn’t help shooting an uneasy glance of my own upward, as if I expected to see a horde of djinn come screaming down out of the sky like a bunch of rage-fueled Valkyries. “I don’t think they would do that. The other djinn — the Thousand — would never allow it.”

  “But there are only a thousand of them. Natila said there were twenty thousand djinn altogether. Talk about being outnumbered.”

  “Since when have you been such a buzzkill?” I demanded, my hands tightening even more around the steering wheel. At least focusing on driving kept me from brooding too much over her words. I had a feeling if I really allowed myself to start thinking about it, I’d seriously freak myself out, and I didn’t have time for that.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I’m just starting to get the heebie-jeebies. When I came to find you, I had a mission, and I guess I wasn’t thinking about the whole thing. And when it was snowing, I felt, I don’t know…more protected. Safer. Like those other djinn couldn’t see me. Which I know is stupid, because it sounds like they can see pretty much whatever the hell they want, except in Los Alamos.”

  “Well, that should reassure you, then,” I said. “Because none of the djinn can see anything in Los Alamos, thanks to that doohickey they have, which means that once we get there, we should be safe enough.”

  “Safe from djinn,” she pointed out.

  All right, that much was true. The bad djinn wouldn’t be able to get to us there, but that didn’t mean the mortal population couldn’t do us plenty of harm if they wanted to.

  I started rehearsing what I was going to say when we got there, making sure I had something of a coherent story straight in my head. The last thing I wanted was to start stammering all over the place like a guilty idiot the first time they started asking questions. I was going to say I got scared, being alone on the compound like that, and I wanted to be with my own kind. Evony had found me, and we’d decided that it was best for us to go to Los Alamos. As for our djinn lovers, well, we’d just been trying to stay alive, and had gone along with their wishes. The world had collapsed, and we didn’t know what else to do. But now we’d finally realized what a mistake we’d made.

  And so on.

  Lying like that would feel terrible — even lying to the people in Los Alamos. It would seem like a repudiation of everything Jace and I had shared. But I would lie for the next hundred years to everyone I met if it meant getting him home safely. I couldn’t worry about scruples right now. Not with so much at stake.

  After we passed the outskirts of Española and began moving upward toward Los Alamos, the snow on the roadway decreased, leveling out so much that it was clear the Immune there must have been plowing it. Why, I wasn’t sure, except that maybe it helped speed up any trips they might have made to go foraging. The pickings in Española wouldn’t be as good as in Santa Fe, but it also wasn’t nearly as far away.

  And then I had to bring us to a stop just as we rounded a curve where the road split off between the 502 and the 30, because there was a barricade across the highway, with a bright yellow Hummer I knew all too well parked in front of it, and two men holding assault rifles standing there in the cold. One of them had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth; a thin line of smoke trailed upward into the cold, clear sky.

  My heart began to pound, but I forced in a breath, trying the best I could to look calm as the man without the cigarette began to approach the Cherokee while his companion hung back, rifle pointed directly at our windshield. Beside me, Evony sat straight and unmoving, fingers clenched on the edge of her seat.

  As the guard approached the driver-side window, he made a rolling-down motion with one hand. I pressed the button, and then tried not to gasp when I looked up into his face.

  I knew this man.

  All right, not really, but I did recognize him. The blond guard from the raid on my house, when they had taken Jace away.

  His eyes widened behind his sunglasses, and I could tell he’d placed me, too. The gloved hands clutching the rifle relaxed almost infinitesimally, but I noticed.

  “What the hell?” he began, then seemed to check himself. “That is, Ms. Monroe? What are you doing here?”

  “Taking you guys up on your offer,” I replied. A casual tone, but not too casual. If I sounded a bit worried, I wanted him to think it was because I didn’t know for sure whether they would actually take me in.

  A long pause. He took off his sunglasses — which weren’t really necessary by that point, as the sun had begun to dip behind the mountains — and flicked a gaze past me to Evony. “Who are you?”

  “Evony Rodriguez,” she said. “I used to live in Española.”

  Again he hesitated, and then I saw him nod, as if he’d just placed her as another Chosen like me. “And what’s this?” He pointed at the trailer we were towing.

  “My livestock,” I explained. “That is, five goats. We have a dozen chickens in the back. I stayed at the house because I didn’t want to abandon the animals, but then I realized I just couldn’t stay out there alone. I was hoping you might need some fresh eggs and milk.”

  His expression softened finally, and I realized he actually wasn’t a bad-looking guy. In fact, once upon a time, if he’d come up to me in a bar and offered to buy me a drink, I doubted I would have declined. But I wasn’t that girl anymore.

  However, he didn’t have to know that.

  “We could use it,” he said. “That’s…generous of you, Ms. Monroe.”

  “Jessica,” I put in, and he even smiled. Just a little, and it was gone in a flash, almost as if he didn’t want his cigarette-smoking companion to see him getting too friendly.

  “Jessica,” he repeated. “I’m Dan Lowery. I can’t leave my post here, but I’ll radio ahead that you’re here, and someone will meet you and show you where you can take your…goats. And then I’m pretty sure the commander will want to talk to you.”

  “Commander?”

  “Captain Margolis. And he really is a captain,” Dan added, as if he felt the need to explain further. “National Guard.”

  I remembered the big man with the short hair, the grim expression on his face as he’d looked at Jace. And I also recalled the way he’d looked at me. Not exactly professional, but, as I’d already told myself, with an interest I would definitely exploit if necessary.

  “Okay,” I said. “That’s totally understandable. But — there’ll be someplace for us, if you take us in?”

  Another reluctant smile. “Not an issue. We’ve in-gathered a lot of Immune, but altogether, we’re still not nearly what the population of the town was before the Dying.”

  No, I supposed it wouldn’t be. I doubted there would ever be a town or city again that could get anywhere close to its pre-Dying population. Housing wouldn’t be an issue for a long, long time.

  I told him, “That’s good to hear,” and he nodded and stepped away, calling out to his companion that we were coming through.

  The other guard stubbed out his cigarette, then climbed into the Hummer so he could pull it just far enough out of the center of the road th
at we’d be able to squeeze by. The entire time I was maneuvering past him, I kept expecting him to step on the gas and ram us or something, prevent us from going farther up the hill, but he didn’t. We moved along without incident, then continued our climb into Los Alamos.

  And it was quite a climb. Even though intellectually I’d known that the town was perched up in the Jemez Mountains, I hadn’t really understood what that meant until we were twisting and turning up the two-lane highway, the trailer rattling along behind us, complete with some irritated bleats of protest from the goats inside. No wonder the Immune had chosen this place — this road would be dead easy to defend, and from what Evony had said, going out the back way wasn’t any better.

  At last the highway emerged onto a plateau, and the road widened into four lanes. Snow was piled high to either side of us, but the street itself was clear. Well, not entirely clear. Stopped directly ahead were two SUVs with light bars on top and some kind of blazon on the side, clearly law enforcement vehicles.

  Knowing the drill a little better now, I slowed to a halt and waited as a man and a woman wearing dark uniforms with heavy parkas over them emerged from the first SUV and began walking toward us.

  “Go directly to jail,” Evony quipped. “Do not pass Go — ”

  “Very funny. The guard said the commander would want to talk to us, so I guess this is his way of guiding us in.”

  “Looks very welcoming.”

  I shot her a sour look but didn’t say anything, mostly because I really didn’t want the two approaching officers — or whoever they were — to hear us squabbling. Better to sit tight and wait to see what happened.

  This time I rolled down the window right away. The woman peered in at us. I noticed the way her hand rested on the sidearm at her hip. “Jessica Monroe?”

  “Yes,” I replied, although I couldn’t help wondering who the hell else she expected me to be.