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  TAKEN

  Book 2 of the Djinn Wars

  CHRISTINE POPE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations, or persons, whether living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  TAKEN

  Copyright © 2015 by Christine Pope

  Published by Dark Valentine Press

  Cover design and ebook formatting by Indie Author Services.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems — except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews — without permission in writing from its publisher, Dark Valentine Press.

  Please contact the author through the form on her website at www.christinepope.com if you experience any formatting or readability issues with this book.

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  Chapter One

  I don’t know how long I stood out in the icy air, feeling the wind whip at my hair, tears seeming to freeze on my cheeks. Overhead, the sky grew darker and darker, a bruised-looking mass of clouds building from 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 my palm and whined, her head cocked to the 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. Who could blame her, with the temperature barely above freezing? Since she was a border collie mix, she had a thick coat, but it wasn’t that thick.

  Some time would have to pass before she realized that Jace hadn’t gone off with those men just to shoot dinner, that he wouldn’t be back by the end of the day. After all, he 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 cold and making myself sick wasn’t going to do either of us any good.

  Before I went inside, though, I walked down to the gate and inspected the electronic mechanism that usually controlled it. As I’d feared, a few wires were hanging out of the box, which meant the gate was now basically useless. I didn’t know the first thing about electronics, or soldering, or whatever else I’d need to do to fix it.

  My internal voice was far more confident than I felt. But there are manuals and all kinds of equipment here at the compound, so don’t give up before you’ve even 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 repair the gate and not blow myself up in the process.

  Shivering, I pushed the gate shut. It was heavy, and I had a feeling the next morning my muscles would give me grief about the way I’d just overexerted them, but closing the gate at least gave the compound 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 lock or used the black box to open the door or whatever, because the front door lock still seemed to work. Or maybe it hadn’t even been locked. Jace and I hadn’t been all that careful about it lately. What was the point, with the house guarded by a nine-foot wall and an electronic gate?

  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 had brought me that tree. He’d brought it because he loved me.

  That memory was all it took. The tears I’d pushed 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 and attempted 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 that he’d touched, something he’d created with his own hands.

  You don’t know that, I tried to scold myself. You made twice as many of those strands as he did, since he ate almost as much as what actually 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 Jace 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 erupted in me at that thought, pushing away the despair. 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 anger had burned its way through me. I’d never accept the way the gang from Los Alamos had stolen Jace from me. They had no right. He’d done nothing wrong, in fact had done everything he could to prevent the Dying, from having his people continue plotting to destroy humanity. 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 at least I would be safe.

  True, the djinn were responsible for humanity’s demise, but not all of the elementals had participated in that genocide. It seemed clear enough to me that was a fine point of distinction the Los Alamos people didn’t want to make. Much simpler to condemn all the djinn as a single monolithic group, right?

  With an almost physical effort, I made myself turn away from the tree. Then I went down the hall to the guest bathroom, which was closest, so I could splash some water on my face and blow my nose.

  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 allow myself to 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 to lunch,” I told her, then went to fetch a cupful of food from the big bag of dry food in the pantry.

  Feeding the dog helped me to calm down a little. Jace 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 shape possible so that when I went to rescue my djinn lover, 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 baked sausage and 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 plann
ed 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 people 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 only a few thousand survivors of the Dying here, but how many of those humans had the vengeful djinn picked off before those few souls 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, I doubted all would have made their way to that small hillside 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 one of me.

  Trying not to sigh, I forced down the leftovers, ignoring Dutchie as she settled near the base of my 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 captive.

  Although…could you even execute a djinn? That is, Jace certainly 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, Jace still looked human, just different from the man I’d come to know.

  But he’d told me 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 out how that could possibly work 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.

  And I couldn’t begin to guess where the man in the glasses might have gotten that device he was carrying. Was it djinn-made? I hadn’t gotten the impression that he was in charge, exactly…the guy with the military-looking haircut had definitely appeared to be the boss of that particular group. So how were they connected?

  I threw Dutchie one last scrap of sausage that I’d saved 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 it be a real trial, or at least a facsimile of 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 his defender. Never mind that everything I knew about courtroom procedures I’d gleaned from watching old episodes of various crime dramas. Then again, even my limited knowledge 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. Maybe they expected him to defend himself. That would go over really well.

  After heading back 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 normally, 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 eyes on the rest of the compound. That was better than nothing. Also, I was able to scrounge some chain and a padlock — still in its clamshell packaging — from the storage area in the basement, and that made me feel…well, not better, exactly, but at least slightly safer.

  I pulled on my coat and scarf, but not my gloves, since I needed the 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 who was only out for some casual looting. If such a person even existed; for all I knew, I was taking all these precautions for nothing. The Los Alamos team had included the only people I’d seen since I’d left Albuquerque.

  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 I’d never felt at loose ends when Jace was around. We’d always had plenty to occupy us. Well, in a few hours I’d have 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.

  A meltdown was not something I’d allow myself, though. I made a few desultory notes about possible methods of fixing the gate, peered outside and saw the snow had finally arrived, then decided I’d better take care of the animals early before it got too bad.

  The goats had already taken shelter in their shed, so I filled their trough with pellets. Their water still looked good — Jace had handled that in the morning — so I left it for now. Same thing with the chickens, although there were a few new eggs. I scooped them into my pockets before heading back to the house, dodging snowflakes the whole way. It seemed the storm had decided to arrive in earnest.

  Inside it was snug and warm enough, though, and I puttered here and there, forcing myself to focus on mundane chores, such as bringing in more wood from the log room on the side of the house and stoking up all the fireplaces to combat the rapidly dropping temperatures outside. Busyness helped a little, although I couldn’t help feeling the gnawing, aching sensation somewhere in my midsection, the one that told me Jace was gone and I had absolutely no idea of how t
o get him back.

  It isn’t fair, I thought irrationally. To survive the Dying, to lose everyone I cared about, and then to lose him, too.

  Well, as my parents had been all too fond of pointing out, life wasn’t fair. And right then I wasn’t about to dissect the cognitive dissonance that came from knowing Jace’s people were the ones responsible for the Dying, and yet still to miss him, to want him, to know that I loved him in a way I hadn’t thought I could ever love anyone. My anger with him at deceiving me about his true identity had been as intense as a summer monsoon storm, but just as short-lived. Now I only wanted him back.

  Sitting at the table in the breakfast nook where we’d shared too many meals hurt far too much, and so did the idea of trying to eat at that vast dining room table. I took my dinner of heated-up canned soup and toasted bread to the living room where I could eat in front of the fireplace, although even the warmth of that fire didn’t seem to penetrate the core of cold at the very center of my being. Nothing could dispel that inner chill, except Jace’s touch.

  I wondered if I should leave here the next day, head up to Taos and see if the djinn there could do anything to help me. But no, that wouldn’t work. Zahrias had said his people were unable to penetrate the veil that had apparently descended on Los Alamos, and had resorted to sending some of their Chosen to that enclave of the Immune to see what they could discover. Since none of the Chosen had returned, I had to believe that they’d either been captured as spies, or had a change of heart once they were safe and among their own kind.

  No, that didn’t seem right. I knew that being around the other survivors wouldn’t have changed how I felt about Jace; if anything, it would have made me work harder to convince them that not all the djinn were evil. Those other Chosen must have been caught, found out. Would they also be put on trial as traitors?

  I didn’t know for sure. The leader of the group that captured Jace had appeared interested in convincing me to join them, and not because he seemed to think I was guilty of crimes against humanity or whatever. No, I’d seen that look on enough guys’ faces at bars or clubs to know what it meant — that he wouldn’t mind getting into my pants in the near future.