Forsaken (The Djinn Wars Book 5) Read online

  Well, they’d go their separate ways, she thought with a pang she really didn’t want to acknowledge. If she analyzed her feelings too closely, she could get herself in trouble. But she knew she needed to be sensible about this. What kind of future could a djinn and a human who wasn’t Chosen have, after all?

  Maybe she could convince him to take her as close to Los Alamos as possible without actually being affected by the devices — whatever they really were — that protected the town from djinn incursions. She should be able to make it the rest of the way, and then…what? They’d take her in, no doubt; she had a feeling they would welcome some new blood, especially since they probably wouldn’t have seen any other survivors for a while now. Of course, the flip side of that situation was probably that everyone was already paired off, since they would have all been sharing the town for an entire year. She’d be on the outside, that was for sure.

  And man, are you borrowing trouble, she scolded herself as she headed out of the side yard and down the street. As before, it was empty and quiet, the weeds and the rust and the wind slowly whittling away at the artifacts man had left behind. You and Qadim are doing just fine. More than fine. It’s not so crazy to think that he might still want to make you his Chosen, if you give him enough time to warm up to the idea.

  What that would be like, she wasn’t really sure. Certainly she’d never thought she might one day be immortal, forever preserved at the peak of her youth. Or maybe not quite her peak, according to the djinn. She still wanted to shake her head at them only wanting to take humans who were somewhere between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-five.

  Anyway, if the past few days had been any indication, then maybe spending eternity with Qadim wouldn’t be so bad.

  She rounded the corner that brought her out of the housing development where Clay’s home was located and began moving down the sidewalk, going as quickly as the burden she carried would allow her. This had always been her least favorite part of the journey, since there really wasn’t anywhere to hide. Once she was in the more commercial areas off University Boulevard, she’d feel a lot better.

  A shadow passed overhead, and she startled until she realized it was only a large raven, sailing along on the wind, black wings outstretched. It circled lazily, clearly enjoying the updrafts created by the warmth of the asphalt road next to her.

  When Madison looked back down, however, she knew she was about to pay the price for her momentary distraction. Standing there on the sidewalk in front of her was the handsome, cruel-faced djinn she’d seen tear several of her fellow survivors to shreds. His deep blue robes shimmered in the breeze, almost the same color as the narrowed eyes that were now fixed on her.

  Her heart skittered, jumped. She knew escape was impossible, but it was the only thing which sprang to her mind in that endless, terrible moment.

  Run.

  She dropped the overnight bag and bolted, headed between two shabby mobile homes. Where she thought she was going, she had no idea. She only knew that if she stayed where she was, she’d surely die.

  His laughter followed her, rich and mocking. As she emerged into a backyard cluttered with a rusted-out swing set and an impressive collection of old tires, the djinn descended from the sky and stood in front of her, arms crossed and a smirk on his sculpted mouth.

  “Going somewhere, Madison Reynolds?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Qadim glanced up at the sun and frowned. Madison had sworn to him that her errand shouldn’t take her more than an hour or an hour and a half at the very most, and yet he knew more time than that had passed. He’d been hard at work, planting trees so they might form a pleasant border to the pond he’d created the day before, and so had lost some sense of how long it had been since she left. But the sun was telling him now that at least two hours had gone by, probably more.

  Scowling, he turned back toward the hotel. Perhaps she had returned, but had gone straight there rather than disturb him at his work. He would have preferred that she check in with him. Better that she had been heedless, however, when compared to the alternative.

  “Madison?” he called out as he entered the Andaluz. Only silence met his ears, but the hotel was a large place. Perhaps she was upstairs in her suite, getting things settled. She had mentioned that she planned to retrieve a few personal belongings from the shelter.

  But her room was empty, and so was the penthouse suite where they’d spent several delicious nights together. Frown deepening, he returned to the ground floor. She wasn’t there, either — not in the kitchen, nor in any of the other rooms.

  A chill began to work its way down his spine, but he told himself not to jump to any conclusions. After all, the amount of time she’d given him had only been an estimate. Perhaps she truly hadn’t known for sure how long it would take for her to transfer all the knowledge she sought onto those things she’d called “thumb drives,” and so she was still back at the shelter, waiting for the process to be complete.

  That would be easy enough to find out.

  He transported himself directly into the shelter, for now that he had been there once, he could come and go as he pleased. Some of the lights were on — in the corridor, and in the room where the television was located. But he saw no sign of her.

  “Madison?” This time her name sounded almost tentative to him, as if deep down he’d already realized she wasn’t here, and he was just stretching out his search because he didn’t know what else to do.

  Still nothing.

  He knew she wasn’t here. And yet he went from room to room, checking each one, just in case. At the end of his inspection, he was forced to acknowledge that all he’d done was waste his time.

  Clearly, she had been here. The computer in the one office was still on, its screen flickering through a series of glowing geometric shapes, and when he went to the access corridor that led to the outside world, he discovered that each of the heavy metal doors had been locked. Those locked doors told him that she hadn’t been in a hurry when she left, that she’d been methodical about making sure the shelter had been secured.

  Not wishing to squeeze himself through the final door, Qadim blinked back up to the surface and looked around the neglected backyard. He could spy remnants of the gazebo he’d destroyed, but no other evidence that anyone had been there recently.

  Very well, he’d have to do his best at tracing her steps. He cast his mind back to the day when he’d first pursued her here. She’d come around the corner from a larger street just to the west. If she had taken the same route today, then he might be able to detect some sign of her.

  Since he didn’t know exactly where he was going, he decided it would be better to walk, just as an ordinary human might. The djinn mode of travel was very useful, but it did lend itself to missing out on small details.

  When he got to the larger boulevard, that street was just as empty as the one he’d left, with the same landscape of cars slowly rusting where they’d been abandoned, weeds growing up through the sidewalks, houses growing ramshackle with no one to care for them. All in all, the scene was incredibly forlorn. In that moment, Qadim wondered if some of his motivation for remaking the city was to erase all signs of the way these people had been torn from their lives.

  Something dark on the sidewalk up ahead caught his attention. His eyes narrowed, and he realized the object was the bag that Madison had said she intended to bring with her to the shelter. Next to it, another item he couldn’t quite identify lay on the ground, paper rippling in the breeze.

  Every muscle in his body seemed to clench as he realized the second item was her sketchbook.

  Propelled by worry, he ran to the spot where the abandoned overnight bag and sketchpad lay on the sidewalk. Yes, the bag was definitely hers, and since the sketchbook had fallen open to the page with his portrait on it, he knew that it couldn’t have belonged to anyone else, either.

  He looked around wildly. No sign of Madison, but he also couldn’t detect any signs of a struggle, nothing t
o indicate that she hadn’t just dropped these things for some reason and continued on her way. But he knew better.

  Bending down, he opened the bag and quickly looked inside. Yes, there were the things she’d said she wanted to retrieve from the shelter, along with a portable computer. In one of the bag’s side pockets were a group of hard little plastic objects about the size of — well, the size of his thumb. So it seemed she had been able to collect the information she sought.

  As to what had happened after that, he couldn’t say for certain. It looked as if she’d disappeared into thin air. He had a suspicion, though…a terrible one. Yes, they hadn’t seen any sign of Hasan or any other djinn for days now, but that didn’t necessarily mean they hadn’t been lurking somewhere, just waiting for the chance to come upon Madison while she was alone.

  I should never have let her go to the shelter without me, Qadim thought then. Just because something gives the impression of being safe doesn’t necessarily mean that it is.

  The only thing he could find remotely reassuring was that there were no signs of violence — no blood on the sidewalk, no weeds crushed and disturbed where a person might have fallen. If Hasan had taken her, he hadn’t hurt her.

  Yet.

  Qadim’s hands knotted into fists. He knew he had to think logically, and he had to think quickly. Hasan’s territory was in a place called Chama, which Qadim knew was somewhere to the north and west of where he was now. But he would have to look at a map, because he knew very little about the state, save for the few areas he’d already visited — Albuquerque and Santa Fe and a few smaller towns located to the north of the former capitol. His connection to Hasan was not strong enough for him to immediately blink himself wherever the other djinn was holed up. That was the limitation of their travel — a djinn had to know where he was going, or he could not safely send himself to his chosen destination. The elders were not bound by this limitation, and could go where they liked, but he was not an elder, nor even an elemental of the air, who could at least hurry the process by flying to his destination.

  No, he’d have to do this the hard way…and Qadim very much feared he might not be able to solve the mystery before Madison’s time ran out.

  She didn’t know why she wasn’t dead. Shouldn’t she be dead? Qadim had spoken of this djinn — Hasan, she remembered — as someone dedicated to killing every survivor he’d come across. So why he hadn’t immediately dispatched her, she couldn’t begin to guess.

  They were in a house. A nice one, from what she could tell, large and built in a modified lodge style, with vaulted wood ceilings and a big stone fireplace. Through the windows she saw rolling, dry pasture land, and then a series of hills off in the distance, topped with tall ponderosa pines and the flaming yellow of autumn-turned aspens.

  Chama, she thought. That’s where Qadim said Hasan’s “land grant” was located.

  In other circumstances, she might have found the view beautiful. At the moment, however, she couldn’t think of much except the djinn who stood before her.

  An impartial observer would have said he was far more handsome than Qadim, his features more finely sculpted, his eyes not so deep-set and shadowed. However, all Madison could see was the fanatical fire in those blue eyes, the contempt in Hasan’s expression as he studied her.

  “So,” he said, once his inspection had apparently concluded, “you are the reason Qadim al-Syan has chosen to betray his kind?”

  Hasan’s command of English surprised her. If he hated humans so much, then why would he bother to learn their language? Madison lifted her shoulders, or at least attempted to. With the way her hands had been bound behind her to the chair where she sat, her range of motion was somewhat limited. “Why a betrayal?” she asked, surprised that her voice should sound so steady when inside she felt like a quivering mess. She swallowed, then went on, “Others of your people are involved with humans. As far as I can tell, no one seems too upset about that.”

  A curl of the lip. “If you are referring to the One Thousand and their Chosen, well, I can say that some are not so very pleased by that state of affairs, either. However, it was the compromise that was agreed upon, and the elders have ensured the safety of those humans. But you?” He shook his head, disgust clear in his expression as he surveyed her. “You are not Qadim’s Chosen. You are nothing.”

  “He might not agree with you on that point,” Madison shot back. Her bravery surprised her, but maybe it was only that she’d been afraid of this man — this djinn — for so long that, now she was actually confronted by the reality of him, she didn’t know if she was quite as frightened as maybe she should have been. She didn’t know what he had planned, but if murder had been his only intention, then he could have killed her back in Albuquerque and left her body for Qadim to find. Which meant he must have something else in mind.

  Her entire soul quailed at that idea, though. She could think of only a few reasons why he might have spirited her away here, none of them pleasant. But no, that didn’t make any sense. He was clearly repelled by her, so she doubted her kidnapping had anything to do with sex. Then again, rape wasn’t about sex. It was about power. Dominance. Her stomach churned, and she forced herself to take in a breath so she wouldn’t throw up. She had to keep it together, no matter what happened.

  Hasan didn’t appear terribly offended by her retort. “Qadim is not always the most discriminating sort when it comes to women. And because he is seen as disgraced, he has not had many opportunities to enjoy the company of djinn women lately. It is not that difficult to understand why he might have lowered himself to dally with you when no other choices presented themselves.”

  Dally? Was that what she and Qadim had been doing for the past few days? Well, it was a pleasant way to pass the time. But even as that thought passed through Madison’s mind, a seed of doubt began to grow there. Qadim had spoken of the trouble he and his sister had gotten into, although he hadn’t provided all that many details. Maybe he really had approached her because he didn’t have any alternative. He needed his itch scratched.

  No, she refused to believe that. There had been a couple of highly embarrassing instances where she’d gone to bed with a man, thinking there was something to their connection…only to realize that he had no interest in pursuing anything else with her, now that he’d gotten what he wanted. She knew all too well what that felt like. But Qadim hadn’t been indifferent afterward. If anything, one encounter seemed to feed off another, as if every time they made love, it only awoke a new need, rather than slaking their desire.

  “Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out, don’t you?” Madison asked. Maybe she was provoking Hasan, but she hoped he might let slip a clue as to what his plan actually was. Not that she’d necessarily be in a position to do anything about it. The past year had taught her that she could take care of herself, but going up against a djinn was not something you did lightly.

  Hasan didn’t reply immediately. Instead, he stood there, arms crossed, and continued to gaze at her with that highly unsettling blue stare of his. Unsettling, because Madison didn’t think she’d ever had anyone look at her in such a way, like she was some intriguing new species of insect.

  Then he came closer. Before she could react, he’d grabbed a handful of her hair and had pulled her head backward so she was forced to stare up into his face. She barely stifled a gasp of pain, just because she knew he wanted to know that he’d hurt her, and she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction. Those blue eyes blazed down at her. She swallowed.

  “If you were a djinn woman, you might be considered passable,” he said at last, right before he let go of her hair. Because her hands were tied behind her back, she couldn’t even reach up to massage her aching scalp. “But a human? Qadim’s exile must have turned his mind.”

  Madison frowned. “If he’s an exile, then aren’t all of you?”

  “Of course not,” Hasan snapped. “We have only taken back that which should have been ours all along. Our true exile was in the
otherworld. No, you must see what I was given” — a sweep of his hand toward the glorious autumn vista outside the windows — “and compare it to the wasteland which is now Qadim al-Syan’s. His is truly an exile, for who would ever want to live in that?”

  “Well, it’s better than Death Valley,” she replied, nettled on behalf of her hometown. The anger felt good, actually. If she was angry, then she couldn’t be quite as frightened. Anyway, she’d be the first to admit there were parts of Albuquerque that were less than scenic, but the Sandia Mountains were beautiful, and the Rio Grande valley was beautiful, and not anything close to a “wasteland.”

  Hasan’s mouth compressed. “Do not bother to argue with me, mortal, for you have little idea of which you speak.”

  It was Madison’s turn to press her lips together. She had to, or otherwise she feared she might say something she regretted. Yes, she’d survived trading a few barbs with the djinn, but she didn’t know how long that might go on before he lost his temper. That was the last thing she wanted. She knew what he was capable of.

  Apparently he saw the shift in her expression, because he smiled at her in triumph. “Ah, you are beginning to see the wisdom of silence. So you are capable of learning something.”

  This time it was almost impossible not to reply, but she kept her mouth shut. The best thing to do, she realized, was to avoid provoking him and hope that Qadim would be able to figure out where she was and come to rescue her. As much as she wished for that outcome, though, she worried about what would happen if the two djinn had an open confrontation. How did djinn even fight? If it were purely a physical match, then she’d say that Qadim would have the upper hand, since he was several inches taller than Hasan and had proportionally more muscle mass. But these were djinn, and so they probably had ways of fighting that involved a lot more than brute strength.

  If anything happened to Qadim….

  Hasan gave a satisfied nod, as if pleased by her silence. In the next instant, his hand was on her arm, and they blinked out of the living room and into another space. Judging by the wooden ceilings and trim around the window, it had to be in the same house.