djinn wars 02 - taken

by Christine Pope

  Time to try again. Jace?

  The answer came back almost immediately. Jessica?

  The syllables of my name were so filled with incredulity that, despite my current precarious situation, I couldn’t help smiling a little.

  Yes, my darling, it’s me.

  How — what are you doing here?

  I heard they’d brought you to the labs. Are you — are you all right?

  No answer at first, which made my icy hands turn that much colder. If he really was all right, I knew he would have told me immediately.

  Then at last, I am as well as can be expected.

  What are they doing to you?

  Nothing I cannot survive. At least, not yet.

  Although I was so cold that I had begun to feel like a walking block of ice, a tiny flame of fury began to burn in my core. Jace, what are they doing?

  A small, dry little sigh, like a whisper at the edge of that odd extra-sensory communication I could only share with him. Attempting to discover our limits. I told you once that it is very difficult to kill a djinn. Well, let’s just say this Dr. Odekirk is trying his best.

  It had been hours since I ate dinner, but even so, I could feel my stomach roil, and I tasted the sourness of acid at the back of my throat. My fears hadn’t been for nothing, had in fact been far too correct. I have to get you out of there. Where are you?

  My love, you’ve risked too much just being here. Please go back to wherever you’re staying. I can endure what they’re doing to me. What I cannot endure is knowing you had been caught here. There is no lie you could give them, I fear, that would allow you to walk free if that were to happen.

  I would have argued, except I knew he was telling the truth. Getting caught while driving around Los Alamos after curfew was one thing. Being found out at the labs, when there was only one possible reason for me being here?

  Yeah, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to lie my way out of that.

  Please, then…at least tell me what they’re doing, I pleaded. I promise you that I’m probably imagining far worse than what’s actually going on.

  That’s doubtful. Jace paused, in fact hesitating for so long that I worried he would stop there, would refuse to say anything else for fear it would upset me too much. But real horrors certainly couldn’t be any worse than my imagined ones…could they?

  Then he said, Small things at first — breaking a finger to see how quickly it would heal. Burning my flesh, again to see how soon I would recover. Electric shocks.

  I must have let out a small, tortured sound, even though I was doing my best not to react, because he said,

  My love, these are small things. Yes, they hurt, but not for long. You’ve seen how quickly you heal now, and that is only as a result of being connected with me, of having a very small percentage of the sort of healing power a djinn possesses. A burn is gone within seconds, a broken leg good as new in less than a quarter-hour.

  And you can heal, even with that device blocking most of your powers?

  Yes. I don’t know why. True, I am not healing as quickly as I normally would. Even impaired as I am, though, I still heal at a rate that would be considered miraculous in a human being. But rest assured that so far they haven’t happened upon anything that could do any permanent damage.

  Is there anything that can do permanent damage? I hated asking the question, but some part of me wanted to know.

  Of course there is. We djinn are exceptionally long-lived, but we are not immortal. Only God and his angels can lay claim to such a quality, and I am certainly no god, nor an angel.

  I decided to ignore the reference to God, and the angels. Jace spoke of them so simply, as if their existence was something that should be taken for granted, and I didn’t have time to get into a theological discussion. Then…what can hurt you?

  A long, long pause, during which the night seemed to grow colder and the wind whistled even more shrilly in my ears. Then he said, The thing that gives each djinn his or her power, the element we control, is also the one thing that can be our undoing. Burn me, shock me, push me off a cliff — it doesn’t matter. But take away my breath, my air, choke me or smother me, and I die. Just as Natila, water elemental that she is, can be drowned, or Zahrias consumed in fire.

  Oh, my God. It made a cruel sort of sense, but at the same time, hearing this particular revelation chilled me that much more. Such a simple thing. It frightened me more than I’d thought possible, to know how his existence could be ended.

  But…maybe the answer was so simple that Miles Odekirk would never figure it out. Maybe he’d keep concocting more and more elaborate tortures, and would never realize the key to destroying the djinn lay in their amazing powers, that the thing they controlled had the ultimate control over them.

  But I couldn’t allow Miles to keep experimenting on Jace, or on Natila. I didn’t care what my lover might think — I had to get him away, get him to safety.

  Again I asked, Jace, where are they keeping you?

  I could almost see his weary smile. Very close, beloved. It would have to be, or we would not be able to communicate in this way.

  So most likely he was being held in the building whose shelter I now used to shield myself from the wind and the drifting snow. Is there anyone in the building?

  Two guards.

  Anyone else?

  Dr. Odekirk was here earlier, but he left some time back.

  Is Natila close by?

  I’m not sure. I know we were brought here in the same vehicle, but then we were separated, and I haven’t seen or heard her since.

  Damn. In my mind, I’d been imagining them in a sort of lockup similar to where they’d been held in the detention center, cells right next to each other. But from what Jace was saying, it sounded as if they were being held in different rooms…possibly, if my luck was bad enough, on two different floors. I wouldn’t let myself contemplate the possibility that they could be in two entirely different buildings.

  Do you remember how many flights of stairs you went up when they brought you here?

  We didn’t climb any stairs — there was an elevator. But if felt as if we went up two or three floors.

  Two or three floors…and that was exactly where I’d noticed lights on in the building. They had to be up there. And, knowing that, I wasn’t about to let this opportunity slip by.

  Opportunity? I chided myself. What opportunity? That building has to be locked, and you don’t have any weapons with you. I mourned the arsenal I’d left behind in Santa Fe, but I’d come here to Los Alamos unarmed, knowing that if I showed up with even the most innocuous .22 locked in the glove compartment of my vehicle, there would be too many questions asked. True, I could claim that I needed the guns for self-defense, but there really wasn’t that much to defend against on the empty highways between Santa Fe and Los Alamos.

  My kingdom for that chrome-plated Ruger….

  Pining over a gun wouldn’t help anything, however. I reminded myself that none of the male guards here in town were exactly what you’d called highly trained professionals. Much to Captain Margolis’ dismay, he was the only one among them with actual military training. Nancy Olson had, as I’d guessed, been a cop, but as a woman, she wouldn’t have nighttime guard duty. Among the rest of the Los Alamos survivors, some had been weekend shooters, and that was about it. I knew I was as good a shot as any of them. And all right, I didn’t have a gun now, but if I could just get inside, I stood a fighting chance. My father had taught me how to disarm an opponent. It did require getting the jump on them, which hadn’t been the case when that one man confronted me at the Walgreens back in Albuquerque. This time, though, I’d be ready.

  Assuming I could get enough feeling back into my fingers to wrap them around the trigger of a gun.

  Jessica, what are you planning? Jace asked, that mental voice now sounding slightly alarmed.

  Nothing, I replied. Just a bit of a rescue.

  Jessica —

  Don’t bother to tell me
to stop. I’m not going to turn around and go back home like a good little girl. Not when I’ve finally found you. I’m going to get you, and then I’m going to get Natila, and then the three of us will be out of here before anyone even knows what happened. They don’t have phones here, so it takes a while for word to get around.

  But they have walkie-talkies, Jace pointed out. I’ve seen them.

  Oh, crap. I’d forgotten about those. Well, all right, disarm and disable the guards, and then take their walkie-talkies. All in a day’s work for a former grad student turned jack-of-all-trades teacher.

  I’ll handle it, I told him.

  Jessica, please —

  We’re not having this argument, I said, and began inching around the perimeter of the building. My coat was dark, and my jeans and boots as well, so I assured myself that I would look like just another moon-shadow, something blurry and indistinct and not easily tracked. If the facility had infrared cameras, I was sunk, but I told myself not to borrow trouble. Besides, even if they did have those cameras, someone would still have to be looking at the monitors at the exact right moment, and I knew they didn’t have the security manpower for that level of scrutiny.

  I came to an entrance and stopped. All was quiet here, one downward-facing fixture on the wall opposite me providing the only lighting. Holding my breath, I pushed down on the door handle, an angular steel thing.

  And the door opened. Holy shit.

  I’m inside.

  It was unlocked?

  Yes. Crazy, huh?

  Not crazy. A trap.

  Why would it be a trap? No one knows I’m here.

  Just because you want that to be true doesn’t mean that it is.

  A wave of irritation passed over me, but I brushed it away as best I could. Jace, there’s no one here. If it really was a trap, wouldn’t someone have grabbed me already?

  A short silence. Possibly.

  I think the door’s unlocked because there’s no reason to lock it. Hardly anyone comes up here to the lab. All the survivors in town think it’s creepy. And the few who do come up here on business come in through the guard station and are already on everyone’s radar.

  You’re doing a very good job of convincing yourself, aren’t you?

  By which I inferred that I had yet to convince him. Biting back the impulse to tell him, “Whatever, Jace,” I only said, The second floor?

  He sounded tired as he said, The third, I think.

  Even I wasn’t so foolhardy as to take the elevator. I crept down the corridor until I found the stairwell, then began to climb. The stairs were metal, and it was harder than I’d thought to make my way upward and not have every footfall echo off the walls around me.

  Could you have made any more noise, Jessica? I scolded myself as I stepped a little too heavily on one stair. Might as well have called ahead to tell them you were coming.

  Despite the echoing stairwell, I made it to the third floor without being stopped. I cracked the door and peeked down the hallway, first in one direction, and then the other. The place was entirely deserted, as far as I could tell.

  Do you know where you are on this floor? I asked Jace.

  Midway down, I think, he replied. They placed a hood on my head when they brought me here, so I can’t be completely sure.

  I burned at the thought of how they’d treated him, but I didn’t have time for anger right then. Are the guards with you now?

  No. They went out some time ago — a half-hour, I think. They don’t tend to stay in the room with me. They’re here when Dr. Odekirk performs his…tests.

  I couldn’t let myself think about those tests now. With any luck, Jace would have suffered the last of them. What else is in your room?

  Not much. A bed — not much more than a cot, really. That’s all. When Dr. Odekirk comes in to interrogate me, the guards bring in a chair and then take it away again. I think the device they are using to inhibit my powers must be somewhere close by, perhaps in one of the adjacent rooms, but it’s definitely not in here.

  I felt like making a Guantanamo reference, but I wasn’t sure Jace would get it. Anyway, the good news was that he was alone for the moment. The bad news was that meant the guards were roaming around the building somewhere. And I might have been lucky enough to find the entrance to the building unlocked, but I kind of doubted they’d be that careless with the room where they were holding Jace.

  Okay, I’ll scout around a bit. I need to figure out some way to open the door.

  Be careful.

  I will.

  As I began to make my way down the corridor, flattening myself against the wall as best I could and hoping the dim lighting would help to conceal my presence, I realized that most of the doors here were secured by keypads. The only way I could possibly get inside would be to enter the correct code. I figured the odds of that were roughly the same as my waking up and realizing this had all been a horrible dream.

  Not that I wanted it to be a dream. Not Jace, anyway. I wished then for a world where the Dying had never had happened, but where I could still have Jace. Such a world didn’t exist, though, and, as my grandfather used to say, wish in one hand and spit in the other, and see which one fills up first.

  I squared my shoulders. Am I getting closer? I asked Jace.

  I think so. Your voice is stronger.

  Well, that was something. At least it seemed as if I was going in the right direction. I stopped in front of a door. What about now?

  Still stronger.

  After glancing down the corridor in both directions and assuring myself that it remained empty, I knocked on the door. Did you hear that?

  No.

  Okay, that wasn’t it. I sidled up to the next door, then knocked again. What about this one?

  Nothing. But your voice sounds very strong now — you must be close.

  What was that about third time’s the charm? I went up to yet another door and knocked.

  Yes, I heard that.

  Thank God. Can you come to the door?

  No, he replied. They tie me to the bed when they’re not interrogating me.

  Son of a bitch. I inspected the keypad next to the door. A red light was blinking on and off, which I assumed meant it was armed. I didn’t pretend to know too much about those sorts of things, but I guessed that it might send a signal to whoever was overseeing the building’s security if the wrong code was entered too many times.

  Or maybe even once.

  The door is locked with a keypad system, I told Jace. Don’t suppose you know the code?

  Eight nine four three seven.

  I blinked. What?

  Eight nine four three seven, Jace repeated. This time he sounded almost amused. I have the strongest connection with you, Jessica, but if a mortal is thinking a thought strongly enough, I can overhear it, in a manner of speaking. Especially if that thought is repeated. My guess is that the guards would repeat the code to themselves so they wouldn’t forget it.

  Handy, I remarked. Fingers trembling — whether from nerves or because I was beginning to thaw out, now that I’d been inside for a while — I reached out and entered the sequence Jace had given me.

  I was sure a siren was going to go off, or the emergency lights in the corridor would start flashing. Instead, the red light flipped over to green, and I heard a distinct click. The door moved a fraction of an inch.

  Holy shit. I pushed the door open all the way and slipped in, then shut it behind me. I was in a small room that might have been someone’s office once upon a time — the floor was covered in dark green industrial carpeting, and a clock hung on the wall. All the other furniture had been removed, except a narrow bed pushed up under the window. And lying on that bed was Jace.

  Or rather, Jasreel. All this time, my mind had been conjuring him as the man I’d come to love, the man who wore Jason Little River’s face, but the person lying on that cot didn’t look like the mortal who’d died of the Heat. No, this was the harder, sterner-looking man, his dark eyes shadowe
d, and lines of pain cut into his face.

  But I didn’t care about that. He was still the man I loved, no matter who he looked like. I ran across the room and knelt next to him, fighting the tears that rose in my eyes.

  “Oh, Jace,” I said, and he shifted the tiniest fraction of an inch so he could look over at me. That was all the bonds holding him to the metal bunk would allow.

  “Beloved,” he whispered, his voice cracked, as if with thirst or disuse. Or maybe it was a little of both.

  “Let me get you out of here,” I told him, fishing in my coat pocket for the little Swiss Army knife I carried there. It was small, but the blade was sharp, and should be able to cut through the cords binding him.

  “Hurry. In general, they don’t leave me alone for more than an hour at a time.”

  And since he’d already said the guards had left a half hour or so earlier….

  I sawed at the rope that held his left arm tied up to the metal frame of the bed. Luckily, it wasn’t very thick rope, and the strands began to separate almost at once. I wondered that they didn’t use something sturdier, then realized this was more a way of punishing Jace than keeping him from escaping. He had no way to do that, not with the door locked from the outside and one of Miles Odekirk’s damn machines preventing him from using his djinn powers to get away.

  “This is madness, Jessica.” Jace’s voice was soft. I heard no condemnation in it, more wonder that I would attempt something so foolhardy.

  “No, it’s not,” I said, cutting through the last few strands of the rope and moving on to the one that held his right hand. As I did so, he lifted his left arm, flexing it as if to get the blood circulating again. “I would have done it sooner, but I only just found out where they were keeping you. And then they moved you here — ”