Forsaken (The Djinn Wars Book 5) (5 page)

Was it enough to outrun a djinn? But the world’s fastest human had been clocked at something like twenty-eight miles per hour….

He didn’t see you,
she told herself. True, she’d only gotten a glimpse of him, but it seemed to her he’d been looking in the other direction, away from her. If that was true, then she had a fighting chance. And in a minute or two she’d be safely back within streets and buildings that still existed, and she could give him the slip then…if she even needed to.

The sound of footsteps pounding behind her sent her heart into her throat. Looking back could quite possibly slow her down, but she had to know.

He was there, bursting through a patch of waist-high grasses before emerging onto the pavement of Central Avenue. Incongruously she noted that he appeared to have traded his flowing robes for a pair of jeans and a dark green T-shirt. But she couldn’t risk more of a glance than that, had to keep going, no matter what.

“Wait!”

His voice was deep and resonant, even when calling out to her. For some reason, she was surprised that he spoke English. This time, she didn’t look back. She’d already slowed herself down by stealing that first glimpse. A grim smile tugged at her lips, though, even as terror lent strength to the legs pumping away on the bike’s pedals.

Did he really think that she’d stop just because he asked her to? She’d seen what happened to humans when djinn caught up with them.

Familiar pavement was once more under her bicycle’s tires. Madison couldn’t sigh in relief, though, because all her breath was being used up to force the bike to speeds for which it had never been designed.

He was still behind her, though — she could hear his booted feet churning away at the street’s surface. For a second she wondered why he hadn’t taken to the air to pursue her, but then she remembered how he’d lifted his hands and the earth had shaken. He was an earth elemental, not a being of air. Quite possibly he couldn’t fly at all.

Please God,
she thought. If this was a footrace, she might have a real chance at getting away from him.

She jinked down Walter Street in the hope that the sudden movement might throw him off. But no — those implacable footsteps still sounded behind her. At least they
were
behind her, though. He was fast, but he was no Olympic sprinter.

Avenida Cesar Chavez was coming up fast. Should she head over there and hope to lose him in the sports complex with its stadiums? No, too many open parking lots. It was probably better to cut over on Gibson, even if that meant overshooting a bit and having to come up at home base in a “soft underbelly” approach. At least that way she could zig and zag through narrow residential streets. She knew the area, and he didn’t.

She hoped that would be enough.

Dodging abandoned cars, she cut a sharp left onto Gibson and kept going. The problem was, so did the djinn. An ordinary man would probably have begun to get winded by now, but the sound of his footfalls never flagged. She made another of those abrupt left-hand turns onto Indiana Street, tires squealing. Actually, she could feel the bike skid beneath her before it caught again and kept going.

Her heart still seemed to be sticking in her throat, so it really didn’t have anywhere else to go after that near-miss. And soon she’d have to make a decision, because by this point she was only a quarter-mile away from Clay Michaels’ former house and its backyard bomb shelter. Risking a quick glance down at the gauges, she saw that pushing the bike to its limits had drained the battery far more quickly than usual. Should she use up all the charge left in the bike for one final burst of speed in the hope that she’d get there enough ahead of the djinn that she could lock down the shelter and keep him out? Maybe should she take another detour and pray that she’d lose him far enough away from the house so he’d never be able to find her.

Neither option seemed particularly appealing. And a second glance confirmed that there just wasn’t enough battery left for her to lead the djinn on a wild goose chase through Albuquerque.

Shit.
Shit.

She all but stood on the pedals, pumping away, lending her own energy to bolster the bike’s flagging resources. This time she did risk a look back, just because she needed to know how much of a lead she had on him. It already had been a good hundred yards or so, and now the gap seemed to widen slightly. Good, but not good enough.

Come on, come on,
she urged the bike, even though at this point it was as much her own energy as the bike’s battery that pushed it forward.

As she yanked the handlebars to turn down onto Sandia Court, the bike slid for real under her. Madison could feel it going, knew there was no way to prevent it from falling. The best she could do was go limp and pray she’d be able to roll with it and get to her feet before the djinn caught up with her.

From behind her, she heard a sound of dismay as she hit the pavement. Pain flared in her shoulder, and she couldn’t seem to pull air into her lungs. But she’d broken a bone in a skateboard fall when she was twelve, so she knew what that felt like. She didn’t think she’d broken anything this time, even though her shoulder hurt like a mother.

Which meant she needed to keep going. The house was so close….

Wincing, she pushed herself to her feet and stumbled forward, ignoring the throbbing sensation in her shoulder. She could deal with that later. Plenty of pain meds in the shelter’s first aid cabinet.

But when she got to the curb, she tripped over the uneven pavement, which had been forced upward by a tree root, and fell onto the sidewalk. This time the agony was so intense that she couldn’t prevent herself from crying out, even as she tried to push herself up by one hand and get back to her feet.

Too late. Strong arms went around her and lifted her from the sidewalk. She had an impression of deep-set dark eyes staring down at her and a clean, warm scent, like sun-dried grass, before her head fell back against the swell of his bicep and the world swirled down into darkness.

H
is first instinct
had been to carry her to his own suite at the Hotel Andaluz. But then Qadim thought of what her reaction might be when she awoke in his bed, and decided it would probably be better to put her somewhere else. He was staying in a hotel, after all. The one thing it certainly did not lack was empty beds.

So he took the young woman to the room immediately below his, another suite, if not quite as luxurious. A snap of his fingers summoned fresh linens from the hotel’s storerooms to put on the bed, since the old ones had been dusted with the pale gray ash that signaled some unfortunate human had met his or her demise there. Then he laid the girl down, but not before tugging off the sturdy low boots she wore, not so very different from the hiking shoes he’d appropriated.

During all this, she didn’t stir, and Qadim frowned, worried that she had injured herself worse than he’d thought. He hadn’t seen her head hit the pavement, and so he didn’t think she had a concussion. But she was clearly unconscious, deeply so.

The reason became clear enough as he reached out to touch her shoulder and could feel the way her left arm hung at an odd angle. She must have dislocated the joint during that bad spill she’d taken. Well, he’d fixed such things in the past when his comrades in arms had been injured, and so he knew he could do the same thing for this mortal young woman. Better that she had fainted. That way, she wouldn’t feel what he was about to do.

He slid the pillows out from under her so she lay flat on the bed, her arm outstretched. Pulling slowly but firmly, he could almost see the bone moving under her flesh before it slid into place. Good. The area was already bruised and swollen, but he didn’t think she had broken anything.

What she needed was the joint immobilized. Luckily, the hotel had plenty of spare sheets, and within the next moment, Qadim had torn one to a more manageable size, then gently eased her arm into the makeshift sling and fastened it around her neck. Afterward, he plumped up the pillows and laid her against them before pulling up the covers to above her waist. She was still fully dressed and possibly would have been more comfortable in something looser-fitting, but he guessed she would not be pleased to awaken and find that he had tampered with her clothing.

Then he took one of the chairs from the sitting area on the other side of the room and set it down next to her bed. Perhaps she would also not appreciate him sitting there and watching her, but he did not think it a good idea to leave her unattended while she was still unconscious. It was probably the pain that had caused her swoon, true, and yet he would not forgive himself if her condition worsened while he was elsewhere.

Or perhaps it was only that he wanted to stay where he could gaze at her.

Apparently Hasan had been right, and this young woman was the human presence the air elemental had sensed. Would he have been any less implacable if he had known that his prey was so beautiful?

For she was very fair to look upon, with a glorious mane of wavy pale red hair and clear ivory skin. Her eyes were shut now, but he remembered how they had stared at him, wide with fear, before she had fainted. Those eyes had been a deep, warm green, like the finest jade, ringed with lashes several shades darker than her hair. High cheekbones, and a straight little nose, and her mouth —

Qadim had to force himself to stop there, for her full lips made him think of pleasures he guessed she would be quite unwilling to share. Still, he had to wonder who she was, and where she’d been hiding all this time. He thought she must be quite a resourceful young woman, for he hadn’t heard of any other mortals who had managed to survive this long after the Dying, except for the Chosen, of course, and the band of holdouts in Los Alamos.

Perhaps she would tell him, once she awoke.

* * *

G
od
, her shoulder ached. That was the first thing to enter her awareness — a dull, throbbing pain in her left shoulder joint. Her eyes fluttered open, and she looked down to see that her arm was bound in a makeshift sling. The second thing she realized was that she lay in a large luxurious bed, her body supported by pillows.

And the third thing was that the djinn sat in a chair next to the bed, his dark eyes watching her with concern, and a sudden flicker of relief.

“So you are back with us,” he said, his voice even more deep and resonant now that he spoke quietly rather than yelling at her to stop.

“I guess so,” Madison replied, not sure what else she should say. Actually, she was mostly surprised that she was still alive. But the djinn hadn’t killed her, had actually set her shoulder and put it in a sling. At least, she assumed he must have given her his version of battlefield first aid. Why, she couldn’t begin to guess. She glanced down at the sling, clearly a hotel sheet that had seen better days. “Your work?”

He nodded. “You will need to take care not to move it until it has finished healing.”

Right then, staying still didn’t seem like much of a problem. Even shifting her weight slightly set off a low, heavy throbbing through her shoulder, and she bit her lip.

“I brought some analgesics,” the djinn said, his gaze flickering toward the nightstand. Sitting there were several packets of aspirin and ibuprofen and Tylenol. He must have gotten them from the hotel’s gift shop. “I wasn’t sure which one you would prefer.”

How did a djinn even know about over-the-counter painkillers? According to everything she’d read, the otherworldly race was immortal, or the next thing to it, and definitely not subject to mortal aches and pains. Madison decided she’d put her questions aside for later, however, and said, “The ibuprofen. I’m afraid you’ll have to open it, though.”

“That is not a problem.” He picked up the ibuprofen packet and tore it open. His hands were strong and deeply tanned, or maybe that was his usual skin tone. After he nodded toward her uninjured arm, Madison lifted her hand and held it palm up. He tipped the tablets into her hand, then retrieved a bottle of water that had also been sitting on the nightstand.

Since she couldn’t take the water from him until she’d put the pills in her mouth, she set them on her tongue and nodded at him to give her the bottle. He handed it over, and she managed to get both pills down simultaneously, although she’d always been somewhat inept at taking medication. Maybe this time around she was just eager to get that ibuprofen circulating in her system as soon as possible.

The djinn watched this entire procedure, then gave a small nod after she swallowed some more water and settled back against the pillows. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”

Was she? The pain in her shoulder had overwhelmed all the other lesser aches, but now as Madison paused to take stock, she realized that she pretty much hurt all over. Her knee was probably the worst, after her shoulder, but she was fairly certain she’d only banged it badly. Nothing felt broken, even though she knew she’d be covered in a spectacular set of bruises before all this was over with. It could have been much, much worse, however. She’d been lucky.

“I’m banged up, but I’ll live,” she replied. This whole situation felt completely surreal. Not only was she actually talking to one of the fearsome djinn, but she wasn’t nearly as frightened as she’d thought she’d be. Maybe it was the calm way he looked at her, or just the realization that someone bent on killing her probably wouldn’t have bothered to set her shoulder. She hesitated, wondering if she dared ask him the question that had been bothering her ever since she woke up. Oh, well. Nothing ventured. “But…why?”

He didn’t pretend to misunderstand her. Dark eyes fixed on her face, he said, “Not all my kind are as bloodthirsty as you might have come to believe.”

“The djinn, you mean.”

“So you know what we are.” The level, dark brows creased in a frown as he continued to watch her. “Have you had dealings with us before?”

“Not directly.” She still held the bottle of water, and she lifted it and took a long drink before continuing, “I’ve…seen what you can do, though.”

A shadow passed over his features. Up close, there was something almost breathtaking about him, about the strong bones of his face and the thick lashes that shadowed his eyes and the heavy dark hair that flowed partway down his back. No, he wasn’t pretty-boy handsome, but Madison had never had much use for pretty boys. She liked faces with character and distinction.

You shouldn’t be thinking about his looks at all,
she thought then, although something about her inner voice lacked conviction. Maybe it was just that it felt so good to be talking to someone. Anyone. Even one of these fearsome elementals. Until that moment, she hadn’t even realized how lonely she’d been, how desolate. She’d made busywork for herself so she could try to ignore how the universe seemed to have forsaken her. That same inner voice taking on a fierce note, she told herself,
He’s a djinn. His people destroyed the world.

Well, to be fair, they’d destroyed humanity. The world itself looked as if it was doing just fine.

“That is unfortunate,” he said. His lips tightened for a second, and then he added, “We are not all like that.”

You could have fooled me,
Madison thought, but she didn’t reply immediately. For whatever reason, he’d helped her, and pointing out the murderous qualities of his fellow djinn didn’t seem like the best way of staying on his good side. “I guess not,” she said after a pause he must have noticed.

He didn’t comment, however, but only gave a small lift of his shoulders. Then he said, clearly changing the subject, “What is your name?”

“Madison. Madison Reynolds.”

An expression of confusion passed over his face. “Madison? This is a woman’s name? I have not heard it before.”

She allowed herself a grim chuckle. “Well, it didn’t used to be a girl’s name. It was supposed to be a joke in an ’80s romantic comedy movie, but enough people didn’t get the joke that it sort of became a real name.”

Now he looked even more puzzled, his brows creasing as he attempted to make some sense of what she’d just told him.

Relenting, she said, “It’s okay. Don’t worry about it. What’s your name?”

“I am Qadim al-Syan.”

The obviously Middle Eastern sound of the name surprised her somewhat, but she supposed it made some sense. The djinn had first appeared in that part of the world, or at least it was in ancient Arabia and its environs that those legends had originally surfaced. “Can I call you Qadim, or do you prefer the whole thing?”

A sudden light entered his eyes, and he almost smiled. “Qadim is fine. And is it also fine that I call you Madison?”

“Sure.”

He paused then, watching her so closely that she could feel a flush rise to her cheeks. It wasn’t that she detected anything leering or inappropriate in his gaze, only that she wasn’t used to being subjected to that kind of scrutiny. His next question was innocuous enough, however. “Are you hungry? Should I bring you something to eat?”

Maybe it would be a good idea to eat something to cushion the ibuprofen, but Madison knew her appetite had fled for the moment. She realized then how tired she was, how much she ached all over. Crazy as it might sound, what she really wanted to do was sleep. Normally, her survival instincts would have been screaming at her not to let her guard down, even for a second, but it seemed she had done her best to convince herself that Qadim didn’t mean her any harm. Otherwise, why would he have gone to the trouble of setting her shoulder and making sure she was settled in a comfortable bed?

Anyway, giving herself some time to rest was just good sense. She wouldn’t be able to accomplish much of anything — including getting herself away from here, if given the opportunity — with the way she felt right now.

“I’m not really that hungry,” she replied, and tried to ignore the flicker of disappointment in his eyes. “Is it all right if I just rest for a while?”

“Of course. It would be good for you to sleep, I think. I will check on you in a few hours, when it would be time for the evening meal. You can tell me then if you are ready to eat anything.”

“Thank you,” she said.

He nodded, then got up from his chair. The briefest of hesitations, as if he’d intended to say something else. But it seemed he thought better of it, because he only offered her another nod before he went to the door of the suite and let himself out.

For a long moment, Madison stared at the closed door, as if she wasn’t quite sure that the djinn might not let himself right back in. But the door remained shut, and her own weariness was becoming too difficult to ignore. She did need to rest and let her body begin to heal itself. As to what was going to happen next, she didn’t have a clue.

She figured she’d deal with that when the time came.