Forsaken (The Djinn Wars Book 5) Read Free Page B

also explained why the djinn would want all humans dead. They desired this world, believing it had been denied them in favor of giving it to the human race.
    Well, it was theirs now.
    She sat down on the couch and set her glass of water on the coffee table in front of her. If anyone had been shown a snapshot of this room and not been told where it was, they probably would have said it was an image of a high-end model home, or maybe a very expensive hotel. The sofa was leather, the coffee table burnished juniper lovingly carved to preserve the twisted shape of the original wood. Alabaster sconces held in place by old bronze fittings hung on the wall, bracketing original oils by local artists.
    Actually, several of the paintings in the shelter were hers. And not ones she’d created after she’d hidden herself away here, but plein air pieces Clay Michaels had bought from her to decorate the space. She’d always wondered if he’d done so because he truly appreciated her art or whether his installation of the paintings here was more or less the equivalent of a parent sticking his child’s stick figure drawings on the refrigerator door.
    As she stared without really seeing at an oil of the Rio Grande gorge near Taos, all brooding purples and grays and blacks, she couldn’t get the image of the djinn she’d just seen out of her mind. If she’d been thinking, she would have pulled the slim camera she carried with her everywhere from her pocket and taken a couple of quick snapshots, if only to reassure herself that he actually was real and not something a mind fevered with too much loneliness might have conjured up.
    Well, she’d have to settle for the next best thing.
    She had sketchbooks and pencils and charcoals stashed away in most of the shelter’s rooms, although one of the secondary bedrooms was the only place where she had an actual easel set up so she could work with her beloved oils. Now, though, a sketchpad would be enough. Madison picked up the one she’d left on a side table and then selected a charcoal pencil from the stoneware cup she used to store her drawing supplies. His looks cried out for charcoal, with his long nose and heavy dark hair and sweeping night-colored robes.
    The profile first, with its severe but elegant lines of brow and nose and chin. She had to obscure that chin with the shadow of his beard, but it couldn’t quite hide the shape of his jaw. Whether she was remembering those details correctly, she didn’t know for sure. She’d been so startled by his being there at all that all she had was the sudden, shocked imprint of his appearance on her mind’s eye, and that was what she consulted now, sketching quickly, the face and figure of the djinn taking shape on the paper beneath her charcoal pencil.
    When she was done, she paused for a moment so she could stare down at her handiwork. Was he actually that handsome? Madison supposed he must be, or close to it, anyway; there wasn’t much point in romanticizing a member of such a murderous race.
    But although she’d consigned his appearance to paper, she still wasn’t any closer to discovering what in the world he was doing here.
    She stared down at the sketch for a long moment, then murmured, “Who are you?”
    She didn’t say the next words out loud, but they echoed through her mind just the same.
    And what do you want?

    * * *
    Q adim crossed his arms and surveyed his handiwork. The buildings in a quarter-mile radius had all been leveled, including a cinema and a train station. Now the Hotel Andaluz stood proudly alone, a faded American flag still flapping above the entrance. That was better, and enough work for one day. If he was diligent, perhaps in a year he would have cleared enough to make all his efforts worthwhile.
    Fighting back a scowl, he slapped the dust from his robes and went inside the hotel. Although the power had been out in Albuquerque for more than a year, a djinn had no need of something as limiting as electricity.