djinn wars 03 - fallen (27 page)

But then Zahrias nodded, saying, “That would be most gracious of you.”

Jace and I looked at each other. Although I’d learned that it was considered somewhat rude for a djinn and his Chosen — or two djinn who were currently bonded — to engage in mental conversation in front of company, I couldn’t help myself.

Jace, are you thinking what I’m thinking?

Beloved, I am thinking that whatever you’re thinking is entirely premature.

I flashed a grin at him, then stood up. “Come on, Julia. Let’s get the menfolk some vittles.”

And then we both began to laugh as Jace and Zahrias exchanged a look of utter puzzlement.

The next day was the farewell for Rafi. Since the ground had thawed slightly, we were able to bury him, earth elemental that he was, in a cemetery that luckily was located within the safe zone. Although we’d all shared a remarkably relaxed dinner the night before, this morning Zahrias seemed to take little notice of Julia as she stood with Jace and me. Then again, he was having to say farewell to a member of his community, one of his own.

He’d positioned himself next to Lindsay, and Lauren and Dani were on her other side. Standing a little ways off from the crowd was Miles Odekirk. The bright sun glinted off his glasses, so it was hard to read his expression. Had he come merely because he’d thought it was expected? Or had he thought he might be able to get a read from Lindsay as to when she’d be ready to go back to work?

As it turned out, that was sooner than anyone had expected. The morning after Rafi’s farewell, she headed straight to the lab. I wouldn’t have even known for a while, except that Julia had been there talking to Miles when Lindsay showed up.

“She went right up to Miles and said, ‘I’m ready,’” Julia told me over lunch. The “menfolk” were having some sort of convo with Phillip, and so I’d been left to my own devices. We’d taken our food back to my suite, since neither of us really felt like eating in the main dining room.

“And what did he do?”

A grimace. “It’s Miles. What do you think he did?”

Not knowing Miles as well as Julia did, I could only shrug.

“He barely looked up from his laptop. Then he told her, ‘Good. I have some calculations I want you to run through the simulator.’” She shook her head and picked up her sandwich. “Which could be Miles’s equivalent of a bear hug. But I think he seemed marginally glad to see her.”

I couldn’t help chuckling a little. “Well, here’s hoping his utter emotional cluelessness is exactly what she needs to get through all this.”

Julia was laughing as well, reaching for her iced tea, when an unearthly hooting sound began to fill the building. She paused, frowning. “What’s that? The fire alarm?”

It took me a moment, just because I’d only heard that sound once before. Miles had set it up only a few days after he came to Taos, saying that we needed some kind of warning system, just in case.

Warning system….

“Oh, my God.”

Julia stared at me. “What is it? Jessica!”

It was hard to form the words. I could actually feel the ice of fear working its way along my veins, seeming to prevent me from replying. But I made myself force the words out, even though saying them aloud seemed only to make the fear that much more real.

“It’s the alarm for Miles’s device,” I told her, and watched as comprehension began to grow in Julia’s big blue-gray eyes.

“It’s failed. It’s not protecting us anymore.”

Chapter Fourteen

I heard running feet in the hallway outside, and then Jace burst into the suite. “Jessica — ”

“I know,” I told him. “What are we going to do?”

“Protect ourselves,” he said. His gaze flicked to Julia and then back to me. “At least all of us djinn are now in possession of our powers, so we are not completely helpless.”

“But they take time to come back all the way!”

His mouth tightened. I could tell he didn’t care to be reminded of that fact. “Still, it is better than nothing. And our Chosen are also arming themselves.”

“With what?” Julia asked, voice jangling with fear. “Guns? What good is that going to do against djinn?”

“More than you’d think,” I replied. “I saw it myself when our caravan was attacked on the way back from Los Alamos. Bullets can’t kill them, but they do slow them down. And if they’re hit enough times, they have to blink out of here to go back where they came from and heal.”

“Precisely,” Jace said. “Zahrias wants us all together in the dining hall. We’ll make our stand there.”

I nodded. My own pistol was sitting on the top shelf of the closet, so I went to retrieve it, along with as much spare ammo as I could shove in my pockets.

“I don’t know how to shoot,” Julia said in a small voice that didn’t sound like hers.

Jace managed a smile. “That’s all right. Plenty of other people here do. You’ll be protected.”

She didn’t look precisely encouraged. However, all she did was nod. I called to Dutchie — maybe she would have been safer staying in the suite, but no way was I leaving her behind — and we all hurried out into the corridor and into the dining area where the rest of the Taos contingent was congregating.

As we joined the group, I kept shooting wary glances up at the ceiling, wondering if the djinn were going to attack by breaking through the skylights like something out of a superhero movie. Everything seemed intact so far, though.

I wasn’t the only one doing that, either — I saw other Chosen darting those same suspicious looks upward, even as they clutched the rifles and shotguns and pistols they’d brought with them. And the djinn — well, they looked worried, but also more robust than I’d seen them in weeks, color returned to cheeks, flames dancing around the fire elementals among them, an unseen wind fluttering the hair of the air elementals.

And Zahrias, face dark with anger as Miles and a white-faced Lindsay hurried into the restaurant area. They were still at least ten feet away when he thundered, “What foolishness is this?”

Lindsay flinched, and Miles reached up to push his glasses farther back on his nose. Without blinking, he said, “I told you from the beginning that this work was a calculated risk. We took all the necessary precautions, but there was always a chance that once we began to modify the field projected by the device, it could fail.”

“It was my fault,” Lindsay blurted. Even from where I stood, I could see the way her slender form was shaking in terror, although I couldn’t be sure whether her trembling was caused by the prospect of an incipient djinn attack or having to face down a furious Zahrias. “I thought Miles asked me to make a correction of .05, but it was actually .005. And…the machine just blinked and turned off.”

“Lindsay,” Miles broke in, his tone remarkably even, considering the circumstances, “I am the lead on our team. It was my responsibility to check your work.”

Zahrias didn’t appear all that impressed by Miles’s improbable grace under pressure. “How very noble of you, Dr. Odekirk. But now that the device is broken…how soon can you fix it?”

The scientist faltered a bit then. It probably didn’t help that Zahrias was such a formidable specimen compared to him, especially now that the djinn leader’s powers had returned and he wasn’t slumping over a cane. “Difficult to say. An entire assembly has been shorted out, and I don’t have an adequate replacement.”

“Do what you must,” Zahrias rasped. “But fix it. Your life depends on it just as much as the lives of everyone around you.”

A hurried nod, and then Miles murmured a few words in an undertone to Lindsay. It must have been something along the lines of “let’s get back to the lab,” because she nodded, and immediately afterward, they hurried out of the room.

I could hear the angry murmurs following them, but no one attempted any pursuit. Instead, everyone’s attention was fixed on Zahrias, waiting for him to give the directions that would save them all from destruction at the hands of the rogue djinn.

For a few seconds, he said nothing, only watched the waiting crowd. At my side, Jace was tense, but silent. Dutchie seemed to pick up something of the mood, since she pressed herself again my leg and looked up at me with her mismatched eyes, as if asking me what the problem was.

You’ll be all right,
I thought then.
The djinn have always left the animals alone. As for the rest of us….

I shivered, and Jace reached out to take my hand. On my other side, Julia appeared still, but I felt rather than saw the tremor that went through her. I could tell she was just as scared shitless as I was.

Zahrias spoke. “While it is true that our primary means of defense is currently disabled, that does not mean we are completely defenseless. We have our powers, and we have the guns of our Chosen. If those djinn who have decided to defy the covenant all our people agreed upon come to attack us now, we will be ready.”

Murmurs of assent, and I saw people nodding, djinn eyes glittering. And hands tightening on the guns they held. These people were ready to fight.

And was I? My heart pounded in my chest and my stomach tightened with fear, but somehow, with Jace beside me, I couldn’t help thinking we would make it out of this somehow, even when the odds were so stacked against us.

Then an enormous pressure crushed against my ears, as if I’d suddenly climbed a thousand feet in altitude in a single second, and a roaring sound reverberated against my aching eardrums. All the glass in the bar, which was located directly behind the restaurant itself, shattered like a spray of ice, including the mirror behind the bar itself. I threw up my hands to protect my face, although I should have been far enough away from the wreckage that none of the debris could hit me.

Despite that precaution, I felt little slivers of broken glass peppering my hands and showering down around me. Dutchie whined, and I immediately bent to brush away with my free hand any glass that had landed on her.

When I straightened up, I saw what had caused the destruction. A group of at least forty djinn stood in what used to be the bar. Smoke curled away from them, although I couldn’t see anything actually on fire. And in front of them was the black-haired, cruel-faced djinn who had led the group that attacked our caravan, and killed Evony and Ethan.

Khalim.

Through all of this, Jace had retained an iron grip on my right hand. That grip only tightened now, and I immediately saw the reason why. To Khalim’s left, and only a foot or so behind him, was Aldair. His blue eyes blazed through the smoke, an angry, burning glare that settled on me.

Although my every instinct was to look away, I forced myself to stay where I was, to return that stare as if it mattered nothing to me.

Jace caught it, too, and I felt him shift next to me, as if he intended to move toward his old adversary. Now it was my turn to tighten my grip on his fingers.

No, beloved,
I told him.
Wait to see what Zahrias does.

A very faint nod. Behind me and off to one side, I heard the unmistakable sound of someone taking the safety off their pistol. I didn’t dare turn to see who it was. All I could do was hope they wouldn’t shoot first. We didn’t need a reenactment of Fort Sumter here.

Zahrias had turned as well. I stood close enough to him that I could see a muscle twitch in his cheek, although otherwise his face was deadly still.

“You have no business here, oath-breakers.”

An ironic lift of Khalim’s brows. “Indeed? I would say our business is everywhere, since we djinn now have dominion over this world.”

“Not among us,” Zahrias replied. I wondered how he managed to keep his voice so calm, so steady. I knew I would have been shaking like an aspen leaf in a gale. “It was agreed that this community — and others like it around the world — would be kept safe. What, have you so tired of hunting Immune that you must come here to molest us?”