djinn wars 02 - taken Read online

  So after we’d more or less scraped our dishes clean, then put everything back on the room service cart and covered it up with the tablecloth that had also been provided, I finally got the courage to ask, “Do you want to tell me what all this is really about?”

  Jace had been tending the fire djinn-style, which meant using currents of air to stoke it up and shift the logs so they burned hotter. It was strange to watch, even stranger to realize that he’d had these sorts of gifts all along, and only hid them while we were in Santa Fe so he wouldn’t tip his hand too soon. At my question, he paused, then turned toward me, dark eyes searching mine. Otherwise, his face was blank, and I couldn’t begin to guess what he might be thinking.

  A liar and a cheat. Aldair’s words surfaced then, and I pushed them away. All right, Jace hadn’t been truthful with me from the start, but I’d forgiven him that. I’d been so terrified and bereft after the loss of my family and friends…of everyone and everything…that I knew I couldn’t have handled the truth of Jace’s existence, of the djinn, of why the world had ended. Not until some time had passed, anyway. He’d wanted to shield me, and I couldn’t blame him. I doubted I would have done any differently.

  “Beyond Aldair being a stubborn fool?” he replied.

  “Yes, beyond that. I’m not Helen of Troy — I kind of doubt I’m worth all this fuss.”

  At those words, Jace smiled, but at the same time, he shook his head. “You hold yourself in too little esteem. I think you compare very favorably to the fabled Helen.”

  I just stared at him. He’d never revealed to me how old he really was, so I supposed he could have been around to see the real Helen of Troy. But my brain didn’t want to try wrapping itself around that concept, so I said, “Be serious.”

  “I am serious. Deadly serious.”

  In answer, I lifted an eyebrow at him and settled back in my chair, waiting. Two could play at that game.

  He appeared to relent then, and came back over to the table and sat down. There was a little bit of Bordeaux left in the bottle, so he poured half of the remainder into my glass and the rest in his. Then he lifted the glass and held it up, appearing to inspect the color of the liquid, deep garnet when backlit by the fire leaping in the hearth.

  “Let us just say that Aldair and I have never gotten along very well. This dispute over who would have you for his Chosen — that seemed to be the final blow. He is not the sort to accept defeat easily.”

  I picked up my own glass and swirled the wine in it, but didn’t drink. “I’m surprised you both ended up here. I mean, didn’t you all have the whole world to choose from when it came to where you would settle down…after?”

  “Not exactly.” He took a swallow of the Bordeaux and closed his eyes briefly, as if savoring the taste. “We came to the places where our Chosen had lived, more or less. We thought it would be less of a shock that way, since at least your surroundings wouldn’t be completely unfamiliar. And since the woman Aldair took as your substitute was also from New Mexico, albeit farther south, in Roswell, it was necessary that he stay in this region.”

  “Was that why you were so reluctant to come here to Taos?” I asked. “Because of Aldair?”

  “I would have preferred to avoid him, yes. But also…being with you in our house in Santa Fe, being together like that, was more than I could have ever dreamed of having. I didn’t want that to end. I feared for the way things might change, once you knew what I was, and once you were around others like me.”

  How ironic that a being of such amazing powers, such age and worldliness, could experience some old-fashioned, very human insecurity. I set down my wine glass, and reached over and took his hands in mine. “I love you, Jace,” I said simply. “I loved you in Santa Fe, and I love you here in Taos. Where we are doesn’t matter, only that we’re together.”

  His fingers tightened against my flesh, warm, strong. How I’d missed the feel of him, the heat of his skin. Even though we’d been back together for a few days, it still seemed like a miracle. Or maybe it was simply that everything about him was a bit more precious, now that I knew what it was like to have him torn from my life.

  Our eyes met, and I saw the need there, a need echoed by my own body. We made love several times a day, and yet it still didn’t seem enough to satisfy my longing for him. Maybe I was just trying to make up for all those weeks when I’d slept in an empty bed.

  By some unspoken signal, we both stood at the same time. He pulled me against him, his mouth finding mine, tasting me, as I pressed against him and claimed some of his warmth for my own. Piece by piece, our clothing fell away, until we were both naked, our bodies heated by the fire and our need for one another.

  We sank down on the rug, not even wanting to take the few steps getting to the bed required, touching and stroking, flesh pressed against flesh. He lifted me so I sank down on him, finding our rhythm once more, as his hands caressed me, fingers closing over my breasts.

  It was perfection. He was perfection. We sighed through our climaxes together, and afterward he lifted me to the bed so we might fall asleep in each other’s arms. Everything in the world was forgotten — Aldair, Miles Odekirk’s devices, even Evony’s grief — as I clung to Jace. How could anything possibly go wrong, when everything felt so right?

  “He has gone,” Zahrias said flatly.

  This morning, the djinn leader had summoned both Jace and me to his conference room. That summons had come a bit earlier than I would have preferred, considering our activities of the night before. I fought back a yawn as Jace asked,

  “Aldair?”

  “Yes. He did not appear at breakfast this morning, and when I sent Lauren to check on him, his suite was empty, his things missing.”

  That made me blink the sleep out of my eyes and focus more closely on Zahrias. “Wait — you mean he just took off? Where would he go?”

  Neither of them said anything at first. Then, the words coming slowly, as if he really didn’t want to utter them, Jace replied, “He would have gone…to them.”

  “Them?” I said blankly.

  “The other djinn,” Zahrias responded. His tone was neutral enough, but a flicker in his eyes told me he was less than pleased by this turn of events.

  “Can he do that?”

  The djinn leader’s brows pulled together. “He has free will. He can do what he likes.”

  Jace added, “It is not as if any of us was forced to be here. We chose this life, chose to save what we could of humanity. But that choice does not preclude returning to the others, for whatever reason. With his Chosen gone, and no real candidate for another anywhere close by, Aldair had no reason to stay here.”

  On the surface, I supposed that made sense. But I couldn’t quite reconcile having enough belief in your convictions to rebel against what the majority of your race wanted, only to turn around and decide they weren’t so bad after all. It was like a conscientious objector of the ’60s putting down his flowers and picking up that M16 because hey, maybe shooting at innocent Vietnamese villagers wasn’t as bad as he first thought.

  “So…what are you going to do about it?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Zahrias said. “Even if I wanted to, I could not have stopped Aldair, and I most certainly don’t have the authority to go after him and force him to come back to us. We can only hope that his leaving will be the end of it.”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  The two djinn exchanged a glance. They were silent for a time, for so long, actually, that I wondered if they were sharing a subvocal conversation the way Jace and I so often had.

  At last Jace said, “I am sure all is well. We have an agreement with the other djinn, and Aldair going to them changes nothing at all, except that you and I will not have to skulk in our suite in an attempt to avoid him.”

  He sounded breezy and unruffled, and yet I wasn’t sure I quite believed him. Something had passed between Jasreel and Zahrias, some unspoken communication neither of them wanted to share with me. Fine, I�
��d let it go for now.

  But I wouldn’t forget.

  A day passed, and then another. I began to think that my worries had been for nothing. After all, Aldair was gone, but nothing had happened. Lindsay continued to tinker with the box — or rather, conduct minor experiments with it.

  “I know one of these days I’ll have to open it up and really start trying to figure out how it works,” she told me one morning, almost a week after Aldair had left. “But I’m so scared I’m going to screw it up that I keep coming up with new ways to procrastinate.”

  “Well, that’s understandable,” I replied. We were alone in the “lab” that morning, as Aidan had gone out on a hunting expedition with several other people in the Taos group, and Jace and Zahrias were having yet another of their “talks” in the conference room. For all Jace’s claim, once upon a time, that he and Zahrias really weren’t friends, his behavior seemed to tell a different story.

  It was all right, though. Even though I loved him more with every passing day and wanted to be with him as much as possible, I also knew there was a point where you could be with a person too much. Hanging out with Lindsay gave us both a chance for a little separation here and there. I would’ve done the same with Evony, but every single friendly overture I’d made to her had been rebuffed. At least she’d begun venturing from her room now and then, and even ate in the dining hall a few times, but she always did so at the table where Lauren and Dani sat. From all appearances, Lauren was her new best friend. I couldn’t say it didn’t hurt. On the other hand, at least she was being friendly with someone, even if that person wasn’t me.

  Lindsay sighed and set the box down on the workbench next to her. “Oh, yeah, everyone’s been very understanding. But I know I should be doing more. It’s just — I was good at what I was learning. I knew one day I’d make a great mechanical engineer. That thing, though?” She cast a baleful glance at the little black box. “It’s so far beyond anything I’ve ever worked with, I don’t even know where to start. I feel like one of those guys at Roswell who was asked to reverse-engineer a crashed alien spaceship.”

  “You believe in that stuff?” I asked, surprised. She’d always seemed way too level-headed for any of that UFO conspiracy crap.

  “No,” she replied, reassuring me. “I just meant it as a hypothetical example. You know?”

  I nodded. A shadow seemed to pass over the sun right then, darkening the light beyond the window, and I couldn’t help glancing outside. We’d had a forecast for several clear days in a row, which was part of the reason why the hunters had gone out today.

  “What is it?” Lindsay asked, appearing to note my distraction.

  “I don’t know. I guess I wasn’t expecting it to cloud up, but it feels like it’s getting darker.”

  “Hmm.” Probably glad of the chance to ignore the box for a few minutes, she hopped off the stool she’d been sitting on and went over to the door, cracking it open so she could peer outside. Good idea, since the windows in the auto repair shop weren’t exactly what you could call clean.

  But then she said, “Oh, my God,” and something in her tone made me get off my own stool and go see what she was looking at. As I stood in the doorway and craned my head upward, every drop of blood in my veins suddenly felt as if it had turned to ice water. The breath caught in my throat, and I had to grab hold of the doorjamb to keep my knees from giving out right then and there.

  The skies above us swirled in shades of black and gray and livid purple. But those weren’t clouds…not exactly. As I tried to focus, I could see shapes in those strange formations, see them moving in distinct patterns. And while I stared, they began to wheel and pivot, moving toward us, gaining resolution.

  Those weren’t clouds. Those were djinn, an entire army of them.

  The others. They shouldn’t be coming here. There was a truce. An agreement.

  But agreements were made to be broken, apparently.

  “Shut the door!” I screamed at Lindsay, even though I knew a door would hold back a djinn approximately the same way a sheet of tissue paper would hold back a rampaging bull. Even having that flimsy door protecting us seemed better than standing out in the open like a couple of targets just waiting to be hit.

  She obeyed without question, running inside and slamming the door. Then she locked it. Terrified green eyes fixed on my face. “It’s — it’s them, isn’t it?”

  “I think so.”

  “But — ”

  “I know. I don’t understand, either.” Aldair, I thought frantically. It must have something to do with Aldair.

  What had he told them?

  At the moment, it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that thousands of angry djinn were about to descend on an unprotected population.

  Unprotected….

  My gaze fell on Miles Odekirk’s device, and I ran to it and picked it up, then turned it over in my hands.

  “Jessica, what are you doing?”

  “Saving us,” I said, and pushed the button to activate it. I knew that Lindsay had kept it set at the level where it would cover the greatest area and yet still deprive the djinn of their powers. The automotive shop we occupied now was about a quarter-mile from the resort where most of the Taos contingent was congregated, and so we should all be covered, theoretically speaking. Yes, the device would also affect our own djinn, but better weak and tired than dead.

  Or at least, I had to hope they would all feel that way.

  From overhead there came a horrible shrieking noise. Still holding the device, I hurried to the window and peered out through the dirt-grimed glass. The hordes above us seemed to be retreating, moving back out of range of the box’s area of effect. They grew smaller and smaller, and as they went, daylight returned.

  “Holy shit,” Lindsay breathed. “It worked. They’re gone.”

  “Yes,” I said, fingers clenched around the device, the sharp edges biting into my flesh. “But for how long?”

  She looked at me soberly, and didn’t reply.

  It was a question neither of us wanted to answer.

  The Djinn Wars will continue in Fallen, due out in early June 2015. To be notified when future titles in this series and others by Christine Pope are released, please sign up here.

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  Thank you again for reading!

  Also by Christine Pope

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  Chosen

  Taken

  * * *

  THE SEDONA FILES

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  The first three books of this series are also available in an omnibus edition at a special low price!

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  About the Author

  Christine Pope has been writing stories ever since she commandeered her family’s Smith-Corona typewriter back in the sixth grade. Her work includes paranormal romance, and fantasy and science f
iction/space opera romance. She fell in love with Sedona, Arizona, while researching the Sedona Trilogy and now makes her home there, surrounded by the red rocks. No alien sightings, though...not yet, anyway!

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  If You Enjoyed This Book…

  Also by Christine Pope

  About the Author