djinn wars 03 - fallen Page 10

  In that moment, I couldn’t even tell who had the upper hand. The flames would rage forward, and the wind and water would push them back. And we humans could only cower in the vehicles, unsure as to what we should do…except stay inside and hope our champions would eventually emerge the victors in this conflict.

  But then I heard Evony mutter, “Fuck this,” and push open the door on her side of the Jeep.

  To my surprise, I saw Miles Odekirk reach for her, as if to prevent her from participating in this insanity. She was too fast, though, and slipped out into the maelstrom before his fingers could close around her arm.

  “Shit!” Ethan cursed, and he, too, was out, leaving me alone in the Jeep. Well, alone with Odekirk. In the rearview mirror, the scientist’s eyes caught mine, and then I saw him shake his head slightly. He might have been frightened out of his mind, the same way I felt right about then, but he wasn’t so terrified that he intended to leave the safety, however spurious, of the SUV.

  Evony was moving fast, running to stand next to Jace. Dark fire glinted off the barrel of her pistol as she pointed it at the black-haired djinn.

  There was too much noise from the howling wind for me to hear the gun going off, but I saw the flare from the muzzle, saw her arms jerk from the recoil. Ethan came up beside her and got off another shot, and another.

  The flames subsided for a second or two, even while a shrieking filled the air that had nothing to do with the wind Jace and our other djinn had called. I winced, fingers tightening on the grip of my own gun. Had Evony hit our enemy…or enemies? I’d only seen the one, but I knew there had to be many more than that single djinn out there.

  An explosion of light — no, fire, this time in concentrated spheres that launched themselves out of the darkness, striking Evony and Ethan so they were thrown to the ground, screaming, then going still.

  Another scream echoed in my ears — mine, screaming my denial. My left hand found the door handle, began to pull it.

  “Don’t,” Miles said. “You can’t do anything to help them.”

  Like that mattered. Not when it was Evony lying out there, pistol knocked a yard from her hand, her dark hair fanning out against the asphalt like crumpled silk.

  From our own djinn came an answering scream, wind and water and, yes, flame and swirling dust falling on our enemies, a storm so intense, so wild and uncontrolled, that I knew no mere human could hope to survive in it. Maybe no other djinn, either; I stared out into the night, tears rolling down my cheeks, and waited for the counterattack.

  It never came. Gradually, the wind’s howl died down, and the dust devils subsided, and the water flowed away to nurture the hard winter soil. All that was left were our djinn, faces streaked with dirt, clothing torn. And they knelt by Evony and Ethan, and they wept.

  We came into Taos a little after midnight, limping our way to the resort that was our only sanctuary. Jace had held my hand the whole way, fingers tight on mine. Because of that, I knew the precise moment we crossed into the safe zone. His flesh grew cooler, and I knew he no longer had access to his powers.

  The powers that had saved most of us, but not all.

  I swallowed and fought back the tears. Later, I’d let myself cry, but for now I had to maneuver my borrowed Jeep through the dark streets. No careless energy wasted on lighting the street lamps, not now. Everything we had needed to be used for keeping our food safe, illuminating our one small corner of town.

  Evony’s limp form lay draped across Dani’s and Miles Odekirk’s laps. The scientist hadn’t made a sound of protest, possibly because he knew we were all poised on a razor’s edge, and it wouldn’t take much to make any of us snap.

  Terrible mixed metaphor, but I wasn’t thinking very clearly at the moment.

  We didn’t have room for Ethan in the Jeep, but he was being brought back to Taos in the bed of one of the pickups. Irrelevantly, I wondered if the ground was even thawed enough for us to bury them properly. It had been warmer than normal the past few days, but still well into the teens at night.

  During the whole drive, Jace had been silent. Perhaps he’d only wanted to keep from distracting me; after all, it seemed as if we’d driven off the rogue djinn for the time, but maybe that was only what they wanted us to think. Maybe they’d moved farther on down the road, and were only waiting to pounce on us at the perfect unguarded moment.

  That didn’t happen, though. It seemed we must have delivered, if not a killing blow, at least a wounding one. All we needed was enough breathing space to get within the device’s field of effect, and then we’d be able to regroup.

  We got that breathing space, although it was certainly a very solemn caravan that pulled into the parking lot of the El Monte Sagrado. There at last we did see some lights, burning on either side of the front entrance to the resort, and even though it was now past midnight, those doors opened, and Lauren and Zahrias emerged just as Jace and I were getting out of the Jeep.

  “Thank God,” she began, then apparently saw the stricken look on my face, the way Jace ever so subtly shook his head.

  “What happened?” Zahrias asked, dark eyes flickering from Jace to me, and then to Dani as he slid out of the back seat. A second or two later, Miles extricated himself with some difficulty. I saw why at once; he hadn’t left Evony behind, but carried her in his arms. It was as if he knew that none of the djinn now had the strength to carry her.

  “They attacked your party,” Miles said. His face was very pale in the moonlight and the reflected glow from the lights that guarded the front entrance to the resort. In his tone I heard a sort of wonder, as if he still didn’t quite know what to make of it all.

  Not a muscle moved in Zahrias’ face. He stared at Evony, who looked like a broken doll in the scientist’s arms. Then he said, “Of course they did. They would have been waiting for an opening.”

  “But…they were djinn.”

  “Yes.” A grim smile touched the corner of the djinn leader’s mouth. “You may find yourself surprised by us, Dr. Odekirk. In the meantime….”

  Two Chosen came out of the door then, young men. I recognized David, Aidan’s erstwhile partner in guard duty, and I thought the other one’s name was Remy, but I couldn’t recall for sure. My thoughts kept chasing around one another, unable to settle down. We had succeeded…but we had also failed. We hadn’t been able to keep all our people safe.

  David moved past Zahrias and Lauren so he could approach Miles Odekirk. “I’ll take her,” he said quietly, and the scientist startled, then nodded, surrendering Evony’s body to one of her own people.

  But were we? Some of us were Chosen, as she had been, but I knew she hadn’t really felt at home here. Maybe if she had been able to come here with Natila, but….

  Now they were both gone.

  Tears began to run down my cheeks then, scalding in the cold night air. I felt Jace’s touch on my arm.

  “Beloved, let us go inside.”

  “I want to stay with Evony,” I said.

  No protest. Only a nod, and he replied, “Of course. Let us hold a vigil for her.”

  I headed over to where David stood with her in his arms, ignoring Miles. Jace came with me, a faithful shadow at my side.

  “I know where we can take her,” Lauren said, gesturing for us to follow her inside.

  As we went, I saw Zahrias approach Miles. “This is not quite the homecoming we had expected, but let me show you the rooms we’ve prepared for you.”

  And it seemed Miles could only nod. For myself, I wasn’t paying attention after that. I trailed along behind David and Lauren, until at last we came to a large room hung with oil paintings, some abstract, some of what appeared to be local landscapes. In the center of that room were red-upholstered chairs and couches. David went to one of these and laid Evony gently down on it. Her hair slipped over the edge of the cushions, making her look like a sort of latter-day Snow White. Only I knew that no one would be coming along to kiss her awake.

  Jace led me to one of the ch
airs so I could sit down next to her. I took her cold hand in mine and murmured, “I’m so sorry. So, so sorry.”

  No response, of course. No, I was alone with my grief and my guilt, even though Jace and Lauren and David occupied the room as well.

  Beloved, you did nothing wrong.

  I shook my head without looking up. I should have stopped her.

  How? By getting out of the vehicle and endangering yourself as well? We were tasked with retrieving Miles Odekirk, and if you had gone after Evony, you would have left him unprotected. If anything had happened to him, all hope of helping everyone here in Taos would have been lost.

  They were sensible words. I even understood them at some level. At the same time, though, I raged at the capriciousness of fate, that Evony should have to endure so much pain and not even have the opportunity to somehow come out on the other side, whole again, if not precisely healed.

  Take heart in this, beloved, Jace went on. Her bullets did hit their target. Khalim was wounded, along with several of his followers. That is why they fled in the end. We were keeping them at bay, but were not strong enough to overcome them all. When Evony and then Ethan fired at them, they gave us the small advantage we needed.

  Hearing this, I felt — well, not exactly cheered, but maybe satisfied. Evony had gone down, but she’d gone down swinging. Since I didn’t trust myself to speak, I reached out and took Jace’s hand, clinging to it. I didn’t even care that his skin was cool against mine, a sure sign that Miles’s device was working on him once again.

  As I clung to him, I dimly noted that Lauren and David had slipped out of the room. That was all right. I was here with Jace, and that was the important thing.

  We would stay here together, and mourn our dead.

  Chapter Eight

  There actually was a cemetery in Taos within the mile radius of the protective field the device cast, but, as I’d feared, the ground was too hard for a proper burial. I wondered how they’d done it in the time before. With jackhammers and backhoes, I supposed, both of which were in short supply these days. Putting people in the ground was not the djinn way, not all the time, at any rate. Their customs were much more like those of the Vikings — those born of fire went out that way, and those of the air were sent to the afterlife in the same manner. The water elementals were set adrift on the sea, while only the earth elementals took their long sleep in the ground. Since, according to the driver’s license I found in the abandoned backpack in Evony’s room, she’d been an Aries, a fire sign, it seemed a fitting way to send her off as well. Besides, I had a feeling she would have enjoyed the spectacle.

  A group of the Chosen built two pyres in a vacant lot not far from the resort, and the entire colony went to pay their respects. Even Miles Odekirk, who stood off to one side, Lindsay and her djinn not too far away. She’d sort of been assigned to him, since she was the closest thing to a scientist we had. I got the impression neither she nor her partner was too thrilled about the situation. Then again, I doubted Miles was, either.

  “I’m surprised a race that can’t die has funeral customs,” I’d remarked to Jace just the day before the ceremony. We had sat down at a secluded table in the dining room, since our suite had begun to feel like a prison cell. Even taking Dutchie on walks three times a day wasn’t enough to throw off that sensation of being trapped.

  “No one ever said a djinn cannot die,” he said. “It is a much rarer event for us, but it does happen. So the mechanisms must be in place to handle it, one way or another.”

  Handle it. That was one way to phrase things, I supposed. I didn’t think I was handling things all that well, when you got right down to it.

  In a way, it was hard for me to even define what my relationship with Evony had been. Friends? Unlikely allies thrown together because of a common goal? And in the end, neither of those things, because Natila had been lost, and Evony had blamed me for her death.

  “At any rate,” Jace had continued, “we must celebrate your friend’s life. She sacrificed herself, and died a warrior. We will all remember her strength and thank her for it.”

  As for that, I wasn’t completely sure. Of course Jace and I would remember, but Evony hadn’t really been a member of this community. She hadn’t been given the chance. I didn’t bother to protest, though. One of the things I loved about Jace was his ability to see the good in people. Whether that made him blind to some of their lesser qualities, well…it was a fault I found easy enough to forgive.

  Only a day and a half had passed since our party had returned to Taos. Now the small warm snap seemed to be over, the skies gray and dull, once again threatening snow. I’d heard they could get snow here all the way into June, although that certainly wasn’t common. A snowstorm in February, on the other hand, was ordinary enough, but I wanted to scowl up at the leaden heavens. Evony should have had a day as bright and fierce as she was. Also, skies like this now only served to remind me of that first attack by the rogue djinn, and the skin on the back of my neck couldn’t help prickling. Never mind that we were safe enough for the moment, surrounded by our invisible shield.

  The djinn in attendance looked listless and dull, however, and I noted that not all of them were present. Those who had come, I guessed, were there more for Ethan than Evony. He actually had been a part of the group here. Off to one side, a petite djinn woman with lustrous brown hair leaned against a pale, grim Zahrias and wept. She must have been Ethan’s partner.

  I wept for Evony, because I knew no one else would.

  The flames licked up into the sullen skies. No one spoke, and I wondered, behind my tears, whether I should say something. It felt odd and unnatural to stand there in silence, but perhaps that was how the djinn sent the ones they had lost into the afterlife. Did they believe in such things?

  Of course they must. I’d heard Jace speak of God and angels and hell.

  Did that mean there was no heaven?

  At last it was over, the roaring fires beginning to die down. One by one, the djinn in attendance began to slip away, their Chosen helping them make their way over the uneven ground, since all of the elementals were laboring under the draining effects of Miles’s device. And he — well, he stood where he was for a long time, watching the scene with a speculative little frown on his face, as if attempting to reconcile everything he thought he knew about the djinn with what he had just witnessed. At last Lindsay murmured something to him, and they headed back to the resort along with everyone else.

  It didn’t look as if Miles intended to try to escape anytime soon.

  Then again, where would he go?

  The next day, Zahrias actually asked me to go check on the progress in the lab. His request startled me somewhat, since I assumed he would have spoken directly with Lindsay if he wanted to know what was going on. Something about the way he phrased that request, however, made me think that he wasn’t entirely sure whether he would get an accurate report from her. I liked Lindsay, but I couldn’t exactly fault Zahrias for thinking that way; she did have a tendency to inflate her progress, although whether to make herself look good or because she didn’t want anyone to give up hope too soon, I didn’t know. For obvious reasons, I hoped it was the latter.

  Jace didn’t accompany me, as Zahrias was having him and Dani and several of the other djinn who’d been on the mission to kidnap Miles Odekirk give a detailed report as to what precisely had happened. I reflected it was just as well that the djinn leader wasn’t asking for my input, because even after a day and a half, it was hard for me to remember any exact details. Only a maelstrom of fire and wind and water and dust. Just Evony and Ethan falling to the ground. All that, and nothing else.

  So I headed down into the basement room Lindsay had been using as the lab, not sure exactly what I would find. Miles had appeared subdued enough at Evony’s and Ethan’s…leave-taking, for want of a better word. It didn’t really feel like a funeral — no speeches, no flowers, no girl from the church singing “Ave Maria.” But it had been our way of sayi
ng goodbye.

  But just because the scientist didn’t appear to be contemplating a jail break didn’t mean he would necessarily cooperate with us. Maybe he was thinking a little civil disobedience was the best way to get back at the people who’d stolen him from Los Alamos.

  I didn’t have a lot of sympathy. Well, now you know how it feels, asshole, I thought as I approached the door to the lab. After all, he’d done the same thing to Jace and Natila, only he’d been given a nice hotel room instead of a jail cell, and gourmet meals from our resident chef rather than whatever odds and ends the Los Alamos people deemed worthy of passing on to their captive djinn. And let’s not even get started on the effects of those goddamn devices of his….

  As I entered the lab, I noticed immediately that Lindsay and Miles were on opposite sides of the space. She was typing away on a laptop, and he sat at one of the worktables, the pieces of the half-assembled device laid out neatly in front of him.

  “How’s it going?” I asked, my tone probably too hearty. I’d decided that, no matter what my personal feelings about Miles Odekirk might be, I should do my best to get an accurate report to take back to Zahrias. If that meant playing nice, so be it.

  The scientist didn’t bother to look up, but Lindsay did stop typing so she could smile at me. Her expression was tentative, though, as if she wasn’t quite sure how to act around me so soon after Evony’s death.

  That was all right. I wasn’t entirely sure how to act around me, either.

  “I guess…it’s going,” she said, gaze darting toward Miles and back to me. I was no mind reader, but it wasn’t too difficult to figure out that she had roughly a thousand other things she’d rather be doing than being stuck in a basement with Miles Odekirk.

  “Any supplies you need?” I inquired, directing the question at him.

  So far he’d been ignoring me, but apparently even he thought it would be rude to ignore my query. After setting down a piece of complicated-looking circuit board, he replied, “I highly doubt that this town would have anything I require.”