by Rachel Caine
I felt myself grin, humorlessly. "Humans and guns. Do you have enough bullets for every living thing that survives in the desert? We have to run. We have no choice."
"We can't make it all the way into Vegas," David said. "They're coming fast, and in waves. There's some kind of motel down the hill. We can make it there and hold them off."
"Maybe you can, but I damn sure can't run fast enough," Luis said. He sounded worried. "Cass--"
"I know," I said. "The car can coast down. I can handle the motorcycle."
"Those birds are going to dive on you."
"Perhaps, but I'm not leaving the motorcycle." I shrugged. "I like it."
He gave me a look that said I was insane--as perhaps I was--and got into the car with Joanne and David. Whatever Djinn force was animating the vehicle gave it a push, and the Mustang picked up rolling speed as the grade steepened. I had a more difficult time of it, balancing the motorcycle without the forward thrust, but I managed. We glided in a hiss of tires down the winding hill, and above us birds screamed. I heard the constant beat of wings. I kept a vigilant watch on them, waiting for an attack, but curiously, none came.
Not yet.
I'd expected the refuge David mentioned to be easily visible, but I was surprised.... It was dark against the hills, and it loomed up suddenly, with an unsettlingly barren aspect to it. The building was large, multi-story, and utterly deserted, with a smoke-blackened plaster exterior; and there had been a halfhearted attempt to board up a few of the broken windows, but it was clear that no one was interested in the place any longer. I supposed that at the edge of the end of the world, securing an abandoned hotel in hopes of later renovation might not have been anyone's largest priority.
It would have been better to continue, but ahead I saw the Mustang was slowing... and then, with a greasy gray puff of smoke, one tire blew out, and then another. It hobbled on for a few dozen more feet, loose rubber flapping loudly, and then there was a surge of power through the aetheric, and the tires reinflated. The Djinn, repairing the damage.
Then the tires blew out again--all four this time, and more decisively.
The car drifted to a stop, metal grinding noisily on asphalt as the rubber shredded away, macerated between stone and steel.
Luis got out of the car, as did the lithe form of David; I watched them move the limp form of what had been the Djinn driver out of the way, and Joanne took his place behind the wheel. Odd that it would take both a Djinn and a Warden to push a car; David ought to have been able to move it with a thought, even without tires easing the process.
Instead, they seemed to be working very hard at pushing the bumper of the car. It went only a few feet, and then Luis stumbled, and...
... And the car's wheels sank into the road, as if into heavy mud. Luis was also trapped. David pulled him out, but not without difficulty.
I abandoned the bike, which was too heavy to maneuver without power, and ran for Joanne's side of the car, which was already sunken too deeply for her to open the door. I reached in the window and grabbed her. Pulling her out and carrying her was no easy matter; she was tall and not excessively thin, and the road was attempting to suck me down with all its might. I focused all my earth-derived powers to try to hold it back, and managed--just barely--to stumble my way through the black muck and make it to the harder gravel on the roadway.
Something was very wrong here.
I tried automatically to shift my vision into the aetheric spectrums, and suddenly felt claustrophobic, not free... because it was as if night had fallen there on the aetheric plane, where there was not, had never been, true darkness. I saw David stumble and fall, and I understood why; no Djinn could function with that crippling shock. Even human as I was now, I felt the impact of it, the horror. It was utterly, completely wrong.
I knew something cruel and terrible was happening, something potentially fatal for us all, and the fear sharpened as I heard David whisper to Joanne, "Kill him."
Luis was the only other male present, and he held up both hands in surrender as Joanne looked at him with dark, almost feral eyes. "He's not talking about me! I'm not doing it!"
I realized it in the same moment that Joanne did. "The Djinn who was driving your car," I said.
"He wasn't a Djinn," she said. "He was just a shell. Burned out. No will of his own... an avatar..."
"Not anymore," I said. "Something's filled him. Something else."
"Who, the devil?" Rocha asked. "'Cause this doesn't feel so great, and I can't see a thing on the aetheric. Cass?"
"Nothing," I said. "Careful. I hear wings."
We had only that single second before the eagle attacked again--not me this time, but Luis. He raised his right arm instinctively to protect his eyes, and I saw the claws sink in and rip free in bloody sprays. It clawed the arm aside, and snapped for his eyes.
I lunged for it. The aetheric might have gone blind, but there was still power in the earth around us, and I poured it into the feathered, strong body of the bird as I touched it and drew it close to my chest. "Hush," I whispered to it, and stroked its beautiful, glossy feathers as sleep took hold. "Hush, I won't hurt you, child of the skies." I pulled off the backpack and put it aside. My leather jacket, even shredded down the front, made an effective restraint when I stripped it off and tied the sleeves around the sleeping bird; it wouldn't keep him trapped long once he woke, but it seemed safer for him than leaving him unprotected and limp. I put him down carefully and said, "We need shelter. There were more on the way...." I paused, because my motorcycle, which I'd carefully parked off the road, tipped over with a sudden crash, and began sinking into the softened asphalt. I couldn't completely abandon it, poor thing, any more than I could the eagle; I grabbed the handlebar and levered it back upright, slimed with melted road tar, and wheeled it out into the dense sand. It was likely no better, but at least it wouldn't suffer the indignity of Joanne's Mustang, which was now being crushed, consumed and destroyed somewhere beneath that simmering tarry surface.
I pulled the straps of the backpack on over my sleeveless pale pink tank top. The weight of the bottles was surprisingly light, but then again, they were empty of contents. Just full of power.
"Get everybody in the hotel!" Luis called to me. He was helping Joanne guide David toward the derelict building, and I ran after them, well aware that the night was full of danger, and how vulnerable we were running blind in the aetheric as well as the shadows of reality.
By the time I joined them, David had single-handedly ripped the boards from the front doors, snapped the lock, and levered open the entrance. Luis and Joanne were already inside the lobby, and David nodded for me to follow them. He sealed up the doors with a crash as he stepped in. It wasn't merely locked; he'd woven the wood itself together into one solid structure.
The lobby reeked of smoke, mold, and the uneasily lingering ghosts of sweat, sex, and desperation. Never one of the showplaces of the town, the materials had been drab and cheap to begin with; destruction had rendered it oddly antique, though I was certain it could not be more than a few years old. Black colonies of mold swarmed the walls and spilled in clumps on the carpeting, and I was doubting sincerely that this was any place to stage our defense, save that it was the only shelter we could reach. It was too large, too porous--even with Djinn at our disposal.
"I think I lost money here once," Luis said. "Didn't really look all that much better then. I'll bet the drinks were stronger, though."
"Oh, you know they took the liquor with them when they left." Joanne sighed. "Liquor and cash. And frankly, a big-screen plasma isn't going to be much good to us in the current circumstances. Not even with free HBO."
She sounded cheerful, but with a bright edge of mania; Joanne, like the rest of us, had been pushed too close to the edge, and was all too aware of the drop looming below. Still, she was smiling. I was far from sure that I had the same grace within me. I worried that we'd not get out of here alive. I worried what Isabel was doing, and who had charge of he
r--and I prayed it wasn't Shinju or Esmeralda. I worried about... everyone.
Including Luis. He was holding together, but there were only so many shocks any of us could take before coming apart, however temporarily. He seemed stolid, but I remembered the ashen certainty I'd seen in him of the fate of humanity. How long before he, too, would lose faith?
Joanne led the way across the destruction and into a back room, which was less affected by smoke, mold, and general neglect; it had a small kitchenette, tables, couches, and bathroom areas beyond. A room for the staff, not guests; the furnishings here were even cheaper and more utilitarian than outside.
Luxurious, under the current circumstances, though I could imagine staff members grumbling about its Spartan pleasures.
As Luis and I helped David--still shaken and blinded by the disruption of the aetheric, as a human would be by a sudden loss of gravity--into a chair, Joanne turned to additional defenses. She called up power and began to melt the metal edges of the door and frame into a sturdy, permanent seal; it took a while and some fine concentration to create a solid barrier. Joanne finally let out a heavy sigh, rubbed her forehead, and must have realized that she was still holding a pistol in a tight, white-knuckled grip. "Probably not going to do much good anyway," she said, when she saw me watching.
"Maybe not," I agreed. "But we can ill afford to reject any line of defense."
She nodded and stuck it in the waistband of her pants, and I made way for her as she came to David's side. She took his hand, and his fixed stare slowly focused on her face. I turned away to give them privacy, and saw someone standing in the shadows.
Gold eyes gleaming.
Rahel, who must have been listening to Joanne and David's exchange, because she said softly, "David was right about the aetheric." Joanne responded instantly, summoning a handful of fire as she spun to face the potential threat, then held it at the sight of the Djinn. "I was following. I hit... something. I had to take physical form to get this far, and I don't think I can reach much of my power. It's as if we're in..."
"In a black corner," David finished, when she hesitated. "But only at half the strength of a natural-developing one. It feels artificial. Imposed."
I had never experienced one in physical form, and on the aetheric black corners--which occurred naturally, but with utmost rarity--were easy to see and easier to avoid, unless they formed around you. If this was how it felt at half strength, I never wanted to be trapped in one at full power; when I reached for the aetheric, I felt as if I was suffocating on darkness, and although I could reach my power, it felt muffled, tenuous, vulnerable. It would be worse for the full Djinn, of course. Much worse.
Rahel was eating candy as she contemplated our situation, and it made me feel unexpectedly quite hungry. As if she sensed it, Rahel scooped more snacks from the guts of the machine she'd cracked open, and tossed them to us in turn. I received some sort of chocolate-covered cookie. It was unexpectedly crispy beneath the sweet coating, and there was a lingering kiss of caramel. It was a taste, I decided, that I could have come to love.
A pity that what I was eating would likely be the last candy the human race would ever produce.
Rahel and Joanne were talking, but it was more banter than substantive conversation, I thought--unimportant. Rahel would not be so casual if there was any chance of our enemies striking at us immediately, which meant we could delay our inevitable deaths by at least a bit more. Then again, the Djinn were badly handicapped just now; they depended on the aetheric as their primary reality, with this world as unreal to them as that realm was to humans. It was possible she was... overconfident.
"Perhaps you should keep watch," I said, raising my voice over their repartee; both stopped and gave me a look, but then Joanne nodded.
"Rahel, that's your job," she said. "You see anything, anything, that looks suspicious, you tell Cassiel or Luis. Let David rest. And don't give me any of that wily Djinn crap, either. You know how serious this is."
Rahel said, "It doesn't get more serious, I believe. So yes, I will indulge you, sistah. But where are you going?"
"We've got bathrooms," Joanne said. "Hell, we might even have running water, if there's a miracle the size of China. I'm going to take advantage."
As Joanne walked away, heading for the back area, Rahel moved the blinds on a small strip of window that looked out on the lobby and froze in that position, as if she could stand forever.
No doubt she could.
"Let me see your arm," I said, turning to Luis. He seemed surprised, and looked down at it with a frown. His right was a bloody mess; the wounds still bled, but the eagle's claws hadn't reached any significant blood vessels, at least. The shredded tissues looked bad.
"Damn." He sank down on the tan couch, and his laugh rang hollow. "Kinda forgot about that. Thanks for reminding me." I sat next to him and examined the wound, then put my hands on either side of it. "Hey, if you're going to seal it, try to keep the tat intact. Took days to get that inked."
I gave him a flash of a look, then turned my attention to the problem at hand. There was muscle, nerve, and tissue damage--a surprising lot of it, given the fast and glancing nature of the attack. Birds had real power in them, and this one more than most. I began weaving together the muscles; nerves were trickier, requiring fine control that was difficult with the heavy, dark pressure on the aetheric. Closing the skin was, by contrast, a simple matter.
"Huh," he said, looking down at what I'd done after I wiped the blood away. "Not bad. Gives the tat some character with the scars. Here. Rest." He raised the arm--carefully, as it was likely still aching from the accelerated healing--and settled it on the back of the couch, and I removed my backpack and leaned in and against him. We both needed showers, but I could hear water running from the back; evidently, the owners of this place hadn't shut off all of the utilities before the fog of chaos had descended. That would be Joanne, I would bet; she had been the worst off, in terms of needing a wash. I didn't mind the way Luis smelled, though; his body smelled sharply male, vibrantly alive in ways that I would not have thought I could appreciate. I breathed him in deeply, and pressed closer. Now that the adrenaline of the ride was passing, even though I knew we were still under threat, I felt the drag of exhaustion pulling at me, trying to close my eyes. Here, in his arms, I felt safe. Illusion though it was, it was powerful.
And it lasted until Rahel suddenly swiveled her head sharply, at an utterly inhuman angle, to stare toward the showers. David came to his feet in a fluid and boneless motion, and I felt it, too, a power moving through the air around us, something hot and feral and living.
And aware of us.
David turned to Luis and me, and pointed. His eyes were blazing gold. "Stay here!" he ordered us, and he vanished in a blur, heading toward the showers.
"I don't take your orders," I said, and stood up; it was entirely possible that Joanne needed more help than David, in his currently weakened state, could offer.
Rahel flashed across the distance between us, and before I could blink, was standing in my way with one taloned hand extended to me.
The pointed, razor-sharp ends of her nails were embedded, ever so shallowly, in my skin, just over my heart. "You should take his orders," she said, and narrowed her eyes as she smiled. "David's remarkably good at what he does when it comes to her safety, and he's far better suited to deal with this. So you just stay still like a good little human, Cassiel."
I drew in breath to order her away, and she casually reached out her other hand to lay a slender finger across my lips.
My voice locked in my throat. She took the finger away to waggle it mockingly in my face. "Ah, ah, ah," she said. "No cheating and ordering me to let you pass, mistress. I've been at this game a lot longer than you. If I don't want to do something, you can't make me. You're not human enough to surprise me. You're Djinn at heart, and I know how you think."
Luis stood up. I expected him to come to my defense, but instead he walked over to the chair where David
had been sitting. Rahel glanced at him, then back to me. As long as I had her bottle, what he did was of little consequence to her...
... Until he picked up the shotgun David had dropped beside the chair, racked the slide, and pointed it directly at Rahel's head. "How about me?" he asked her. "Do I surprise you? Let her go. Now."
Before Rahel could respond--either to attack him, or release me, and I knew they were equal weight in her at that moment--there was the explosive crack of a gunshot from the other room, and it was as if that single shot had cracked a black glass jar that had been pressing down over all of us. The thick pressure shattered, though the release carried with it a stinging whip crack of power that woke a red pain behind my eyes. Rahel staggered, and then her eyes widened. She released me instantly, pulled her claws back, and turned toward the bathroom as if my interference no longer mattered at all.
Joanne came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, hair wet and pressed in dripping strings around her face. Her expression was blank, but there was a terrible distance in her eyes as David led her along with a hand on her arm. He eased her down in the chair.
She was still holding a pistol in her hand. He took it from her and placed it aside, then brushed his fingertips over her forehead, trailing them down across her face, her parted lips.
