by Rachel Caine
"You know me, chica. I live for drama. So. We do this fast. Tunnel down, get her out. The sooner we're away from here, the better. Countermeasures for the radiation are going to take a hell of a lot of power we can't afford to spend."
I nodded and joined him at the crumbling edge. He held out his hand, and I took it, but Luis didn't immediately start the process of moving earth toward Joanne. He took in a deep breath, and looked at me.
"Cass," he said. "If we don't get through this--well, you know. But do your best to get through it, okay? I'm not ready for endings just yet."
I nodded. If he felt he had to say it, he assessed our chances to be even worse than they'd been so far, and that was poor indeed. I could feel it all around us--the fury was thick in the air, choking and hot as the smoke. The Earth wanted Joanne dead, and if we wanted to join the fight, she'd gladly take us, too.
I suppose we could have turned away, but Lewis's instructions had been specific: Find Joanne, and keep her safe. She was needed, badly needed, in this fight.
Currently, she looked as if she needed the help very, very badly.
We already had practice at tunneling, but this was a shallower goal than when we'd rescued the trapped Wardens outside of Seattle; this was more of a ramp than a shaft. I helped channel Luis's power with finer control, slicing through the first layers of dirt, stone, metal, and rubble and flinging them up and out of the way. Once the packed earth beneath was visible, the process became more of a brute-force exercise, carving an opening down at a sharp angle. It took a surprisingly short time, considering, but then the ground had already been shaken loose by the battle that had occurred here before our arrival--which must have been spectacular.
We were still only halfway down our makeshift ramp when I felt something break on the aetheric, something massive and immensely powerful... a Djinn. That had been the death of a Djinn--no, I realized, not the death... the emptying of a Djinn, and the burst of incredibly violent energy around the body of a Warden.
Around Joanne Baldwin.
No Warden could drain a Djinn, but a Djinn could go beyond his limits; it commonly occurred when one tried to violate the will of the Mother, or one of the laws that could not be broken without cost.
Like denying death.
Someone had just saved Joanne's life... and now the bright star that had been a Djinn was going out, its brilliance twisting in on itself, turning black and inverted and hungry.
I was seeing--and feeling--the birth of an Ifrit. It was what happened to Djinn who drained themselves past the point of no return, and now--like me--could exist only by consuming the power of others. I subsisted on the power of Wardens, but Ifrits didn't prey on humans; there was not enough power to sustain them.
They preyed on other Djinn, and when they did, they battened on in a mindless fury, to the death.
"Faster," I breathed. Already, the Ifrit--whoever it had once been--had secured on a victim and was ripping the immortal's life away in bloody, unspooling strips. The chaos intensified in that narrow battlefield below us.
"Yeah, enough nice engineering," he said, and just punched through the rest of the way, shoving aside concrete, rebar, fractured steel, earth, anything that was in our way. He dashed ahead and scrambled over the last few enormous chunks of concrete; below us was a mostly intact, though pitted and cracked, floor. I followed his example, and saw a hellish nightmare of smoke, flame, the residual aetheric glow of radiation... and Djinn. There were several facing us, though they'd momentarily paused.
Joanne Baldwin was a few feet away, though for a shocked second I didn't recognize her. She was filthy, tattered, and underneath the grime and streaks of blood, she had the tender-pink skin of someone very recently healed. Luis didn't allow it to give him pause at all, remarkably enough.
"Sorry we're late," he said, and jumped down the rest of the way, flexing his knees as he landed. His smile was sheer, raw nerve, though there was a hint of terror in the shine of his eyes. "Madre, you don't go halfway when you blow shit up, do you? There's enough rads burning in here to barbecue lead. We can't stay here long."
Joanne seemed both shocked and relieved to see us. She said something I couldn't hear over the sudden roar of a Djinn's attack; the Djinn was quickly countered by a blur that was moving in Joanne's defense. I was distracted by that, and focused in only as Luis said, with remarkable calm, "... moving fast. Hey, Cass, you remember Joanne?"
It was a foolish question; no one, having met the Weather Warden, ever forgot her. Whether such memories were favorable was another thing entirely, and we had far more to worry about than the niceties.
All I could do was nod, and she returned it shakily. To say that she'd looked better would be something of an understatement; I was amazed the woman was still standing.
I looked at the Djinn arrayed against us, and felt a tremor of memory; I'd faced some of these same ones as we'd emerged from another tunnel, in Seattle. Ashan's closest allies. "They're under the Mother's control," I said, which was probably unnecessary, given the near-insane pale shine in their eyes. "They won't stop coming for you. They know you hurt her in what you did here." And Baldwin had, indeed, scarred the Mother deeply this time with the raw, bleeding radiation--another wound on a maddened and angry beast already snarling with fury.
"I know that," Joanne shot back. "It was kind of the plan. Here. Rocha, take this. Try to bind one of them."
Luis gave her a puzzled look. "Try to what? What the hell are you talking about?" He wasn't following only because he was too busy calculating our chances; I, however, realized immediately what she was saying.
Bind.
She'd been binding the Djinn into bottles--and there, coming out of the shadows, misting into human form, was one of them.
David, the leader of the New Djinn. His human shell had skin that held a subtle bronzed metallic shine to it, and his eyes were the bright, unsettling color of melting copper. Beautiful, and eerie, and at the moment, full of fury directed at those who were coming for his lover. No--his wife. David, the Djinn, had bound himself permanently to a human, a bond as strong as any bottle in terms of vows... though now, I realized, he was bound a second time, into a glass prison that helped insulate him from the irresistible siren call of the Mother.
He nodded to me, as one equal to another. In my bad old days as a Djinn, I would have found it gallingly presumptuous; even the highest of the New Djinn was no match for the lowest of the True Djinn, or that had been my fixed and constant opinion then. Now my horizons had... expanded. David was a burning brand of power, steady and pure, and his origins mattered little.... If anything, the humanity from which he'd been born gave him more substance to me now. He had lived as I did now; he understood and cherished the pull of the world, the flesh, the strange and quiet beauty of a human life.
He loved Joanne. It was as much a part of him as the flesh that clothed him, or the blazing light in his smile. Something, perhaps, to aspire to be--something like David.
I had no more time to think on it. Two Djinn came for us in the same instant; the reaction from both Joanne and David was almost instantaneous, the stuff of pure, natural communion between the two of them. David might have been the most powerful of the New Djinn, but those he was facing were to be feared regardless, and there were too many of them. He met two of them head-on and was slammed back against debris, momentarily out of the fight--but Joanne didn't pause. Didn't even slow as she strode forward.
Weather Wardens had a power uniquely suited to battling Djinn, at least those unwise enough to maintain a form that wasn't completely founded in flesh... and most of the True Djinn rarely bothered with flesh and bone and blood. They preferred to establish themselves in a less corporeal form, and it left them vulnerable to the one thing that Weather Wardens commanded above all others: wind.
She raised a tearing, howling storm in the debris-choked cave. She was sensible enough to raise a shield to keep the worst of it from us, but the Djinn quickly realized their disadvantage. Some t
ook flesh. Others stubbornly tried to battle her on their own terms--a less-than-winning proposition.
And one of those who had gone to hard, brutal, angry flesh headed straight for me, eyes glowing, head lowered, teeth bared to rip and chew.
Baldwin had pressed an uncapped glass bottle into Luis's hands, but he clearly was still struggling to process her instructions while simultaneously assessing the dangers coming at us on all sides. There was no time to explain. I grabbed it from him and shouted the incantation that sealed a Djinn into a prison of glass and hatred. "Be thou bound to my service! Be thou bound to my service! Be thou bound to my service--"
As fast as I said it, the Djinn was faster, roaring up on me in a flash of smeared light, and his fist made contact with my chest just as the second syllable of the last word left my lips.
I was incredibly lucky. It would have shattered my rib cage into powder, had that blow landed at full strength, but he was already dissolving into mist as it hit, shrieking his anger and frustration in an eerily metallic wail.
I had just imprisoned one of my own people, and he wasn't the first I'd subjected to this indignity. I did not have time to feel the guilt of it, not even a second, though I caught my breath on a gasp even as I corked the bottle and tossed it to Luis, then grabbed another empty container from the case that was lying on the rocks in front of us. I picked out another Djinn and repeated the incantation, faster this time, and she blew apart into smoke and dust before she was able to land a blow on me.
The third bottle, though, was already occupied, as I found out when I yanked out the cork and felt the tingling shiver of power speed through me. A Djinn came howling from her prison, and the hissing tentacles of mist solidified into a tall, dark-skinned woman with glossy hair in tiny braids, and a ferocious grin. Her eyes were as golden as a hunting cat's, and she tilted her head forward, tiny beads swinging and clacking at the ends of her braids, as she considered me, her new master. The grin was just as predatory as her eyes. Her name was Rahel, and she commanded respect throughout all of the hierarchy of the Djinn, because many thought she was utterly insane. She did enjoy making life difficult for anyone she encountered--human and Djinn alike.
I thought for a moment she'd target me for that chaotic instinct, but then she gave an ear-piercing yell of bloody joy and threw herself into the fray against those coming for us. Interesting, I thought. Not to mention perilous, trying to keep that one caged. I went on to the next bottle--fortunately, empty. We had cut the odds by half, and the Djinn who were fighting for us were more than capable now of keeping them from menacing our fragile human forms.
That was a very good thing, because although Joanne was still standing, she wouldn't be for long. I could see the shock setting in on her--given the blood soaking her clothing and smearing her skin, no one could fail to be weak, even if the injuries had been healed. I was expending energy as well in the binding of the Djinn; I'd never realized what a drain it was, but each required an effort of will and power, and I was rapidly growing weary.
Luis was staying alert for any other threats, but when only one maddened enemy was left, he took the bottle from my hand and did the binding spell, slotted the bottle back into the padded box, searched my pockets for the other bottles as well to store them safely away.
And for the first time, it was eerily quiet in this hot, dust-shrouded ruin where fires still burned. The bound Djinn went still, waiting for instructions, and instead of looking to me, who technically held their bottles and their wills, they were watching Joanne.
She fell on her knees to the ground, as if driven there by the pressure. It looked more like a collapse of relief than one of weakness, but David went to her side immediately. She was safe, with him.
"What did we just do?" Luis asked. He sounded shaken. "Fuck."
"We did what we had to do to survive," I replied. Unlike the Weather Warden, I felt no relief; I was shaken indeed by what I'd done, and what the price would be for it. I was a Djinn, one of them, and I had just raped their will. There would be no forgiveness for that. I saw it in their eyes. I forced myself to forget that, and focus on more immediate issues. "We won't survive long if we don't leave this place. The radiation is too high even for Earth Wardens to stay here much longer." It was a constant burn now against my skin. A human, unprotected, would have been fatally compromised in minutes.
David gathered up Joanne in his arms; she made some halfhearted protest, and he some response, but I saw the utter relief on her face, as if some endless pain had finally stopped hurting when she was in his embrace. They'd been parted for a time, I realized, and what I was looking at was not just love as humans knew it, but something stronger. Two halves of a whole, being mated.
The faithful, constant love of the Djinn was, I had always believed, unique in the world. I hadn't known that humans were capable of such things, until I saw how well the two of them fit together.
"Don't ever do anything this stupid again," David said to her as I picked up the box of bottles and led the way back over the scattered concrete blocks and up into the tunnel. I heard her scratchy, half-amused laugh.
"If I had a nickel for every time somebody said that..."
He dropped his voice to a low tone, too low for me to overhear, not that I wished to do so. It would be private, and serious, and I had enough of that to carry all on my own, along with the bottles. The box wasn't heavy, but it was unwieldy, and Luis took one side of it as we started the uphill journey.
"Second verse, same as the first," he said, panting with effort; we had packed the tunnel's earth as much as possible, but it was still uneven footing, and easy to slip. An angle that had seemed expeditious and simple coming down was less so when climbing out. "New rule: We don't do tunnels again. Sound good?"
"Excellent," I agreed, and meant it. I realized that I'd left the Djinn standing down there at the bottom, waiting for orders. "Should I put them back in the bottles? All of them?"
"Not all," Luis said. "You don't have David's bottle, anyway. I'm pretty sure Joanne does. I'd leave at least one out, in case we need the help."
"Which?"
He shrugged. "Rahel," he said. "She's always been friendlier to humans than most."
"Not to me," I said, thinking of her evil grin and the shine of those eyes. But I muttered under my breath, "Back in the bottles, all of you. Except Rahel." I was relatively new at enslaving Djinn, and it felt deeply wrong to do it, but a surge of power raced through me, and I felt it echoing in those I'd bound. They evaporated into mist, contained by the glass, and I stoppered the bottles quickly before we resumed our climb.
Rahel, in fine Djinn style, elected to leap the distance and wait for us up on the surface, while we toiled every brutal inch of the way. Once we'd achieved the sunlight, Luis braced himself on a toppled wall and crouched down, head lowered. Sweat dripped from the point of his chain until he wiped his face with his equally sweaty bare arm. "Damn. Next time remind me to angle my tunnels better."
"You were in a hurry," I said, and patted my pockets again to make sure I had put all of the bottles in the box. Luis added a last one just as David strode out of the tunnel and set Joanne up on her feet. He held her until he was sure she was steady.
"Anything to add?" I asked. Joanne nodded and pulled a few from the torn pockets of her jacket as well--all except one, which she considered, and then kept.
It wasn't David's. It was corked. When I gave her a questioning look, she said, "It's Venna. I can't risk her getting out again. She's--" Joanne shuddered a little, and David moved closer again, offering silent support. "She saved my life. And she's paying the price."
"Ifrit," I whispered. Venna. I'd mourn my sister when I could, but the love I'd borne her didn't extend to the twisted, blackened, starveling creature that existed now in that bottle. Ifrits could be killed, but it was a difficult matter, and one I had no desire to attempt in my current human condition. Of course, that human condition also protected me from her, but even so. Venna had been one of the
best of us, of all of the Djinn; it pained me deeply that she'd become so lost. Ifrits couldn't be healed, not unless they destroyed someone more powerful than themselves, and even then the chances weren't good of success.
The only Djinn greater than Venna--and this was arguable--was Ashan.
I became aware of a burning thirst, and shrugged off the pack that I'd been carrying--it wasn't large, but some things I'd learned were necessities, including bottles of water. I had four. I took three and passed two to Luis and Joanne, then leaned against a wall to gulp down mine. The water was warm, but it washed the taste of dirt and death from my mouth, and relieved some of the budding headache I'd begun to nurse.
"We need to get moving," Luis said to me. "Radiation's still high up here, plus this place is going to get real damn busy, real soon. Might be chaos out there, but they're still not going to ignore an honest-to-God terrorist attack on a nuclear facility. Not if there's any government still standing."
"I'm not a terrorist," Joanne said, pausing in her quest to drain her entire bottle in one gulp. She looked pale beneath the drying blood. "I have clearances. Sort of."
"Yeah, well, you entered under false pretenses, blew up the place, and there's radiation all over the county, so I kind of think you're a terrorist by definition," he replied. "And because we came to get you, we're a terrorist cell, I guess. Great. Always wanted to be on some kind of no-fly list, although after today I guess that covers everybody in the world. Won't be too many planes getting off the ground these days. Too easy for the Djinn to take them out."
