djinn wars 04 - broken (19 page)

Jessica didn’t quite groan, but she looked as if she wanted to. “Well, that’s just great.”

“It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t start looking,” Zahrias said. “It only means finding her will be more difficult. But we should go now. We’ve already wasted enough time.”

A nod. Her expression was resigned. “I guess I should have brought more coffee.”

The bed was comfortable enough, but that didn’t mean Julia intended to get a lick of sleep that night. After dinner, she’d been allowed to come up to her designated room on her own. Qadim had stayed in the dining room, finishing the last of the bottle of wine. The satisfied expression he’d worn seemed to indicate that he was confident in the outcome of his battle with Zahrias the next day.

What form that would take, she wasn’t sure. She’d witnessed Jasreel’s duel with his half-brother Aldair, but they were both air elementals and so had fought on a more or less even playing field. But with Zahrias commanding fire and Qadim controlling earth, she wasn’t sure how that would even work.

Well, she supposed she would find out tomorrow.

She was lying flat on her back, eyes fixed on the ceiling. The door was locked, but Julia didn’t have much confidence in that flimsy defense. No door locks could keep a djinn out. What unnerved her even more was that she hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Margolis since Qadim had sent him packing. He had to be skulking around someplace, but where?

He won’t try anything,
she told herself.
Qadim would just do that Darth Vader maneuver on him again.

Maybe. She’d seen the flicker of madness far back in Margolis’ eyes, and wondered if that madness would spur him to questionable action, even if doing so meant risking Qadim’s wrath. Margolis had never been all that stable, but six months of imprisonment had only served to damage him that much more. It was possible that fear of the djinn who commanded him wasn’t strong enough to keep him away from the prize he’d been lusting after for so long.

If only she really was Zahrias’ Chosen. She knew that the djinn had a connection with the mortals they’d made their partners, a connection so deep they could reach out to one another across the miles and communicate by thought. But she wasn’t anything to Zahrias, only a woman he’d felt some attraction to, but not enough so he would dedicate his life to her.

All right, she could deal with that. The knowledge hurt, but so had a lot of other things in her life. Maybe he’d sensed the flaw within her, had realized that something inside had been fractured early on and could never really be repaired. She could slap a temporary bandage on it and pretend everything was fine, but it wasn’t. Because Zahrias was strong and noble, he deserved someone strong as well, not a woman who was so weak that she’d sell the property she’d worked so hard to earn on her own, just because her fiancé told her to, a woman who’d stood there and let him hit her that one time, just because she’d had the temerity to go car shopping without him.

Jessica had tried to reassure Julia, to tell her that she knew Julia would have had the strength to leave eventually if the Heat hadn’t intervened, but Julia wasn’t so sure. Years of being told you were worthless eventually started to build up. You believed it, even if others tried to step in and tell you it wasn’t true.

Restless, she pushed back the covers and got out of bed, then went to the window. She wasn’t really sure what she expected to see, because the night was black as pitch beyond the little oasis of light here at the house. But she didn’t want to be lying there, consumed by thoughts that chased themselves around and around and never seemed to go anywhere.

But a gibbous moon had risen over the mountains to the east, and its light was enough to illuminate the courtyard, which lay below her balcony. The fountain’s water still danced in the moonlight, catching its rays and shimmering like shattered diamonds in the darkness. The water was not the only thing moving out there, however. Julia caught sight of a figure walking in the shadowy courtyard, coming to pause near the edge of the fountain. Margolis?

No, the figure was too tall, and when he moved, she saw the glint of silk along the robes he wore. Qadim. But what was he doing out there?

His arms were extended in front of him, palms flat to the ground. In the next instant, Julia felt the faintest rumble of the earth beneath the house. Not enough to cause any real damage, or even to knock over the bottles of perfume the previous occupant of this room had left sitting on a tray on top of the dresser. But enough to signal that the djinn was exerting his power in some way, even though Julia couldn’t begin to guess what that was.

In the next moment, he turned. Even at this distance, Julia could tell he was looking up at her window. Could he see her standing there in her T-shirt and cut-off yoga pants, so very different from the glamorous outfit he’d made her wear at dinner? The moonlight might be reflecting off the glass; surely it was very bright now, and coming in at the wrong angle. But djinn eyes were sharper than mortal eyes….

Rattled, she moved away from the window and got into bed. The covers offered no real security, but it felt better to be burrowed beneath them, just like all the times when she was a little girl and had overheard her parents fighting. Back then, she’d thought if she could only cover her ears, maybe that would make it all stop, even though the bruises on her mother’s arms and face after such incidents always gave the lie to Julia’s childish hopes.

There was no point in revisiting those memories, however. Both her parents were gone now, and if they’d found some sort of peace in death, she would never know for certain. What she did know was that she needed to be as rested as possible tomorrow — not so she was looking her best, and therefore would make even more alluring bait, but because if she stayed sharp, maybe she could figure out some way for both her and Zahrias to survive.

She shut her eyes and made herself breathe deeply. In…out…in…out. Rest…rest….

Darkness fell.

Chapter Ten

Jasreel and Jessica went off in one direction, while Zahrias headed in the other. Perhaps being separated was unwise, but they could cover a great deal more ground this way. He could only hope that if the couple located Julia first, they would come and fetch him before they did anything foolish. Qadim was older and wilier and, Zahrias feared, stronger than Jasreel. Yes, his cousin had shown a good deal of resourcefulness in his duel with Aldair, but Zahrias didn’t know if that would be enough.

As Jessica had told him, this was a far more rural area than Santa Fe. The properties were spread far apart, and often set back a good distance from the road. Because Qadim was no doubt doing everything he could to block Julia’s presence, Zahrias couldn’t rely on the faint but distinctive tingle that told him when a mortal was nearby. He could only use his eyes, hoping that one of these houses would betray some signs of life. What made it even trickier was that the homes were empty, but quite a few still had some sort of lighting around them because of the human technology that allowed exterior lights to soak up the sun’s rays during the daytime and then illuminate a designated area during the nighttime hours. More than once he’d stopped, hope flaring that he’d encountered someplace where people yet lived, only to find nothing there except those deceptive solar lights.

At least he could drift along, using his powers to propel him rather than having to trudge from house to house on foot the way a human would. But as the night wore on, he could feel his sense of unease growing, tension increasing in his neck and shoulders with every house that proved itself empty. Perhaps their speculation that Qadim had remained in the area had been wrong, and this was all just wasted effort. From his studies of the region, Zahrias knew there were other small settlements farther up this road, places tucked away into the folds of the mountains, in hidden box canyons and deep valleys. It would take days to search them all if Pojoaque turned out to be a dead end.

If that proved to be the case, though, he would keep going. He knew he couldn’t rest until Julia was found, and safe in his arms. And if he had to go down on his knees and beg her forgiveness for refusing to acknowledge what had been before his eyes all along, he would do that as well. He couldn’t change the past, but he could make sure their future was a bright one.

First, though, he had to find her.

No dreams haunted her sleep. Maybe she was so exhausted that she wouldn’t allow herself to be tortured by nightmares, although Julia knew she would be haunted for the rest of her life by the sound of those shots fired from Margolis’ gun, each sharp
crack
a signal that another good friend had been lost to her forever. Now, though, it was a relief to lose herself in oblivion, to forget all the horrors of the day that had preceded this welcome darkness.

A floorboard creaked, and her eyes flew open. She could see nothing except the bluish glow of moonlight beyond the French doors, not as bright as it had been when she first lay down. Enough time must have elapsed for the moon to have passed overhead, lowering toward the west.

Her ears strained to hear the sound repeated, but only silence rang in her eardrums. She must have imagined that creak. Besides, houses settled and made noises all the time. Startling at every single one of them would only keep her up for the rest of whatever remained of the night.

Julia closed her eyes and attempted to find the still, quiet place that had allowed her to fall asleep the first time. But then the creaking sound came again, and she sat upright in bed — only to feel a rough hand clap against her mouth.

“Quiet,” Richard Margolis whispered. “Not a sound.”

Something sharp pricked against her ribcage. Heart pounding, eyes adjusting to the darkness, she saw that he held a long knife to her side. God, he really had lost it. He didn’t honestly think he could get away with this, did he?

She opened her mouth — to say what, she wasn’t sure — and the knife’s tip began to dig into her flesh. Even that small contact was enough to make her eyes water. But she kept quiet.

“Good,” he said, still in that insinuating whisper. “I know what Qadim’s doing. Full of promises, but no payout. So I’ll just have you now. I know I can trust you to be quiet…you were quiet the last time, weren’t you, Julia?”

Yes, she’d been quiet. Hadn’t cried out or protested, only let him do what he wanted, since she’d known no one was around to hear her scream. It had been better to deny him the satisfaction of knowing that he’d hurt her, even though she’d felt another part of her soul begin to crack and break on that black winter night.

Now she gave one tiny nod. A faint gleam of his teeth in the dimness of the room as he smiled, and then his free hand began to crawl up under her T-shirt, moving toward her breast. Despite herself, she could feel the beginnings of a scream building in her throat. This couldn’t be happening again. Especially after she and Zahrias —

The door to the room was flung open, slamming against the wall. At the same time, a blinding light filled the chamber. Qadim stood in the doorway, eyes blazing.

“She is not yours!” he thundered.

In the next instant, Margolis was torn away from Julia and flung against the wall. This time, however, unlike the scene earlier in the downstairs hallway, Qadim battered Margolis into the heavy plaster over and over again, until at last there was a final, terrible
crack
and the commander’s eyes went glassy, even as his head flopped over at an unnatural angle.

With a sound of disgust, the djinn made a final, dismissive wave of his hand, and Margolis slid to the ground in a heap, his limp form clearly signaling that he was dead, his neck broken.

Julia could only sit there, aghast, not sure how she should react. Yes, she’d prayed that one day Margolis would meet his fate in a manner that he deserved, but now —

Qadim came over and knelt at her bedside, dark eyes flickering over her. “You did not suffer any harm?”

Heat rising to her cheeks, she realized that the commander’s manhandling had pushed her T-shirt up far enough that the faint shadow of the lower curve of her breast was visible. Without speaking, she nodded as she tugged her shirt down.