Forbidden

Chapter 2-1

Chapter Two

Aldair had not known what to think when the strange woman appeared in front of him. He had spent what felt like an eternity in the outer circles, the place where he had been banished after his ignominious defeat at the hands of his hated half-brother Jasreel. But he knew at once from the way the woman gasped and choked on the poisonous air that she must be human. A djinn could live here, if uncomfortably. A human, on the other hand, would die within the minute.

His quick actions had saved her, but he had not done so for any altruistic reasons. No, he had guessed that if she had the means to come here to the otherworld, then she could also get herself away — which meant she could take him with her. He would be free.

Despite this primary motivation, he could not help but notice that this human woman, whoever she was, seemed as if she would be quite lovely when she wasn’t wracked with coughs. Her lips had been lush when he placed his mouth on hers to give her his breath. And the eyes that had stared up at him in gratitude were a dark, smoky gray, quite arresting.

Even so, he would not allow himself to be distracted by her. The important thing was to get away from the otherworld, and she was his only means of doing so. And though at first she had seemed reluctant, or frightened, at the end she did what she must to activate the device and bring them here.

Wherever that was.

Before his exile, and long before the djinn had exterminated most of mankind, Aldair had traveled the world and seen many of its sights for himself. But he could not remember ever being in a place such as this. No grand city of concrete and stone and steel here, nor a wild forest or a lush grassland. They had landed on a narrow road in a valley of some sorts, with the sort of scrubby vegetation he knew grew in the southwestern part of the land that had once been the United States. The buildings he could see appeared quite ramshackle and old, the kind of wooden structures that had to have been built decades earlier, perhaps as much as a century before.

He turned toward the woman, who by that point had gotten shakily to her feet. Even in the plain clothing favored by human females in this place and time, she was enticing enough, with her slim waist and the curves of her breasts, accented by the tight-fitting, sleeveless top she wore.

But he would have to focus on those curves later. For now, he needed to know where they were.

“Where have you brought me?” he demanded. “What is this place?”

For a few seconds, she didn’t reply, but kept staring down the street, which, unlike the roads in Taos, had not been cleared of abandoned vehicles. A person could walk around them, but a car could never negotiate the choked pavement. Not that he needed to worry about such concerns; air elementals such as he had their own means of getting around.

“I think we’re in Madrid,” she said at last.

She pronounced the word strangely, with the accent on the first syllable and a flat “A” sound. Aldair felt his nostrils flare in derision. “Foolish woman,” he said, “I have been to Madrid. It looks nothing like this.”

At this remark, she turned back toward him, a half-smile playing on her lips. “Not Madrid, Spain,” she replied, pronouncing it correctly this time. “Madrid, New Mexico. It used to be a mining town. Now it’s a little artist colony, tourist destination.” Her smile faded abruptly as she added, “Or at least it used to be…before.”

He cared little for that. The Heat had done its work, and he had no energy to waste on the billions the disease had taken with it. “Where in New Mexico?” he asked sharply.

For of course it would not do to be too close to Santa Fe, where a contingent of the One Thousand and their Chosen dwelt. Where that bastard Jasreel lived with Jessica Monroe, the woman who should have been Aldair’s own….

“South of Santa Fe,” the woman he’d rescued said.

“How far?”

If she was puzzled by this line of questioning, she didn’t show it. She did give a little hack of a cough before she spoke, though. They would probably need to find water soon.

“I’m not sure…maybe twenty, thirty miles? Sorry, I only came through here once. Jack and I were driving to Taos, and we thought it would be fun to come up the Turquoise Trail and have lunch in Madrid.”

“Who is Jack?”

“My husband,” she said, her expression darkening. “My dead husband, that is.”

Aldair chose to ignore that comment. If she had survived the Heat, then of course she would also have suffered her own losses. He could do nothing about that. He had not been one of those who had concocted the disease, but he also had not much cared one way or another what happened to mankind. The only reason he had joined the ranks of the One Thousand was that his hated half-brother Jasreel had desired a woman of the Immune to be his Chosen, and Aldair had seen Jessica Monroe as a chance to get his revenge on the brother he despised. Unfortunately, none of those plans had gone the way Aldair had hoped….

The woman coughed again, and he realized they could do little else until they found some water, and perhaps something to eat. If he had been an ordinary mortal, such a task would have been somewhat difficult, as he guessed that any food left behind here in Madrid after its inhabitants had died would be long since spoiled. Bottled water, however, should still be viable.

He imagined holding a bottle in each hand, and in the next moment the wished-for water bottles had appeared. “It appears you need this,” he said, holding out one of the bottles to the woman.

Her eyes widened. “What — ?”

“It is a power of ours,” Aldair broke in. It seemed clear enough to him that she had never been around a djinn before. Not one of the Chosen, then, although she was certainly attractive enough to be one. Perhaps too old? That must be it. At any rate, he guessed she must be one of the survivors from Los Alamos. That made sense, since he could think of no other way she would have had access to one of those infernal devices. “We can summon the things we need for our sustenance. Go on, drink.”

She hesitated for a moment, but her thirst clearly overcame her caution, for she went ahead and unscrewed the cap, and took a long drink, followed by another. “Better,” she said.

“Good.”

The device still lay on the ground where the woman had dropped it. Aldair went over and picked it up. A loose wire dangled from somewhere in its interior. It did not appear to be functioning at the moment, and he could not help but be glad about that.

“I’ll take that,” the woman said.

He shot her an amused glance. She was standing there trying to look at him quite sternly, but the effect was marred by the smudges of dirt on her cheeks and chin, the way strands of her warm, malt-brown hair had slipped loose from the clasp that held it back from her face.

“I think not,” he returned easily. “I want to make sure it cannot send me back to the otherworld.”

“It won’t,” she said. Her fingers tightened on the bottle of water she held. “The malfunction only occurs when the wire hits the circuit board in the wrong place. And it has to be switched on. I pushed the button to turn it off as soon as we landed here.”

“Ah.” Well, that explained some of it. She’d had no real intention of going to the djinn plane, let alone that world’s dreaded outer circles. Only a mishap of some sort. How such a thing could have occurred, Aldair had no idea. He was not a scientist. And at the moment, he didn’t much care. The important thing was that he was free…for now, anyway. He had to pray that the elders would not be able to discover that their captive had escaped. “Even so, I will hold on to it.” He turned away from her, noted how the sun was beginning to dip behind the hills to the west. “In the meantime, I think it best that we find some shelter. How well do you know this town?”

“I told you, I don’t.” From the set of her jaw, he could see she wasn’t particularly pleased that he had refused to surrender the device to her. “I only passed through once. We had lunch at a place called The Hollar.”

Odd name, but he decided to leave that aside. It wasn’t important. “Did people live here, or is it only shops and restaurants?”

“Yes, some did, I think. Not many. Probably no more than a few hundred at the most. But I remember seeing houses as we came into town. Mostly on the outskirts.”

“Show me,” he commanded, and a flicker of irritation came and went in her storm-colored eyes. However, she didn’t protest, only pointed down the road.

“That way, I think. But I’m not sure if I’m up to a hike right now. That crud feels like it’s still somewhere down at the bottom of my lungs.”

It probably was. While he did not think she had suffered any lasting harm, he knew she would need some time to recover. Any real exertion would only lead to another coughing fit. What she really needed was to rest, to drink more water and have something to eat.

Well, luckily he could prevent her from having to walk at all. Without responding, he tucked the device under his left arm, then went to her and wrapped his other arm around her waist. She let out a startled little gasp, and he said, “You had better hang on tight.”

A frown pulled at her fine dark brows, but she did as instructed — after an obvious pause — and wrapped her arms around his waist. Then it was time to take to the air, the ground dropping away from them as he soared upward. She gasped again, followed by a cough, and her arms tightened about him, but she stayed calm and still enough as he flew over the cars choking the streets, past rows of shabby-looking shops and overgrown yards, past a large building that proclaimed itself to be The Mine Shaft. Perhaps another restaurant?

They would have to leave that exploration for later, though. Now they were passing the southern border of the town proper. Aldair’s eyes scanned the ground below them, looking for someplace that would serve as a proper refuge. If forced, he would go to one of those ramshackle houses, but he would far prefer something bigger and newer.

There. A dirt road wound off the highway and up a hill, and to a respectable-enough homestead, one with a largish house, a few outbuildings, a windmill.

“That one looks good,” the woman said. “There are solar panels on the roof. That means it might still have power.”

Such technical issues were not of too much concern to him, for he knew he could spare enough power to maintain a home of that size. Still, if it did have solar power, that meant he would not have to use much, if any, of his own energy.

He brought them down into the open dirt area just beyond the garage. As soon as his feet touched the ground, he set down the woman. She removed her arms from around his waist and stepped away, looking somewhat pale. Had their flight disturbed her, or was her pallor only a result of her exposure to the air of the outer circles?

When she spoke, though, she sounded composed enough. “Well, that made it a little easier.” Her voice was still rather hoarse, though, and she lifted the bottle of water to her lips and took a long swallow. “Guess we’d better look around.”

“I agree.”

Aldair moved past her to the house, which was not the sort of flat-topped stucco structure he’d come to expect in this part of the world, but rather a large two-story building with a sloped metal roof and wide porches that wrapped around three of its four sides. Two chimneys poked their way up from the roof, and well-grown trees — cottonwood and oak, apple and elm — shaded most of its windows.

He went up the porch steps, the woman a few feet behind him. The door was locked, but that mattered little to him; he touched his fingers to the knob, and at once it obediently turned.