by Rachel Caine
Pearl had just removed the Wardens' final, desperate defense, as those Djinn were set free who could have been used to fight on the side of failing humanity. All, it seemed, except the few that I'd managed to rescue, who were in the bottles in my backpack that Venna had distributed.
I thumbed the cap off the one she had left me. "Out of the bottle!" I shouted. "Now!"
In answer, I got a blur of wild, thrashing color, and then Rahel formed out of it with a world-shaking shout of fury that rattled the broken glass around us. She whirled, black braids flying, to focus those alien, cold eyes on me. Her hands were clawed, and ready to pull out my intestines.
"You can take your vengeance later," I told her. "For now, help us!"
She didn't have to do it. For a frozen, terrible second, I thought she'd simply choose to go on with her killing plan, take her last satisfaction where it came... but then she bared her sharpened teeth and said, "This will be a later conversation." She flashed over to a falling wall and held it up, dragging fallen Wardens away from it with the other hand. Her grin was awful and wonderful at once. "It's happening, Cassiel. Joanne and Lewis and David have gone to the Mother. They've left you all to distract her. Did you know you were so disposable?"
I couldn't believe her, but it was true, I realized; Lewis was gone. So were Joanne and David. I didn't know when they'd left us, and the aetheric was a horrible vibrating confusion of fury, light, power. The chaos spread through all the levels of the world.
Go, I wished them silently, and let the anger leave me in a rush. We all have our fates. Go to yours, and I will go to mine.
But mine wasn't quite done with me yet, no matter what Rahel thought.
I felt the surge of energy as the Wardens uncorked their bottles. From one of them I saw emerge a flash of indigo, of silver, and then Rashid--friend, enemy, New Djinn--was standing quite naked and elegant beside me, skin the color of the dark blue sky, eyes like moons. He said, "I'm devastated that you didn't keep me for yourself, Cassiel," but then he went just as still and quiet as the others. I recognized most of them, True Djinn and the newer, human-born ones; they were all powerful, and all dangerous in their own rights.
"Scaravelli's down!" someone shouted. "Orwell's gone! Who's next in chain of command?"
"Get Shinju!" someone else yelled, and that made me thrust myself forward, more out of dread than anger.
"No," I said. "Not her." I took in a deep breath and nodded to Luis, who raised his eyebrows, but turned to the scared and confused Wardens and began barking out quick, simple orders. Fix this; hold that; do this.... Tasks to keep them moving and focused. We couldn't afford the chaos. Chaos would feed Pearl even more.
I felt Pearl's power stirring beyond the wall, and remembered that she had a plan of her own--one that did not include the Djinn. She and her Void children had the power to devastate these last few Djinn who were under our control; she'd hunt those who'd gone wild at her leisure, but these were tethered for the slaughter.
"You!" I barked, and pointed at the woman who'd been handed Rashid's bottle. "Give him back!"
"Back?" she said, mystified, and shook her head. "I'm not giving--"
I hit her with a neat blow to the chin. It hurt like punching the edge of a knife, but I think it hurt her more; she staggered, and the Djinn bottle slipped out of her hands and bounced harmlessly on an unmade cot.
I got to it first, closed my hands on it, and Rashid said, in a voice full of plummy satisfaction, "If you wanted me so badly, you should have asked, love."
I couldn't answer him, or even look at him directly. What I was about to do was full of pain. "I've fought for you, Rashid," I said. "Now I expect you to fight for me."
"It wasn't much of a fight," he said, "but I'll do what you wish. Mistress." He leered at me, and bowed a little.
"Put on pants," I said, "and be ready at my command."
He seemed disappointed that it was my first order, but he nodded, and in the next blink his naked loins were covered in tight-fitting black leather... so tight they might as well have been a second skin. Well, he had technically obeyed. I let it go.
"Here we go," Luis breathed, and grabbed my hand to draw me up a level to the aetheric. There was a storm forming there, and in the human world, one huge enough to swallow entire countries. It was coming into existence now, all around us, and on the aetheric the pearl gray skies had turned rotten black, bloody red, with flashes of unclean greens and yellows like suppurating wounds.
The Djinn vanished, heading out to do battle with our destruction... all except Rashid, whom I kept tethered to me with a pulse of will. As I watched on the aetheric, the Djinn formed a circle around the city, and a network of brilliant, complex light wove through them.
The storm hit that barrier, erupted in angry waves, sparks, flares... but stopped. For now. I could sense the intense power flowing from the Wardens to the Djinn, outlays that human bodies weren't meant to take; even then, the storm on the aetheric was stronger, far stronger, and already it was beginning to rip at the Djinn's wall, sending pieces flying away into the dark.
"It's not going to hold," Rashid said. He sounded muted now, shaken for all his traditional remote mockery. "You have less than a day, probably only hours. There are billions at risk now. Once the Djinn fall, there's nothing to stop it from devouring everyone."
"Get Orwell back here!" someone screamed, and Luis let go of me and dropped back into his body, striding across the littered and chaotic room to grab the Warden who was starting to panic. "They ran, they ran and left us. We have to get them back--we're all going to die here!"
The artificial discipline of the Wardens turned to panic as if a thin sheet of ice had cracked, plunging us all into freezing waters. The Wardens channeling for the Djinn were locked in place; they, at least, were not panicking, but the others--it was leaping from one human to another, this knowledge of their own destruction, and the cries and wailing took on an eerie, crazy edge.
Luis jumped up on an antique table that had been shoved against the wall, took an exquisite crystal vase from the top of it, and shattered it. Loudly. "Shut up!" he roared. It was a shockingly loud voice, and forced silence down on the room, in subsiding whimpers and gasps. "Orwell and Baldwin don't run. They're doing something, something that might save everybody. That's the only damn reason they'd leave, and you know that. You're Wardens; you're not in fucking kindergarten. Wherever they went, they're fighting, and you're going to fight. The Djinn are buying time for you. Now stop screaming and start thinking!" He pointed at people, three in quick succession. "You, you, and you. Fire, Weather, Earth. Form a team. Start pulling power and strengthening the wall that the Djinn put up. The rest of you, split off in triads and start working. If you're not working, you're going to have my boot up your ass. Do you understand me?"
You might have heard a rose petal drop, so quiet were they, and then one of the Wardens at whom he'd pointed took in a breath and clapped another on the shoulder. "Right," she said. "Back to work. Alan? Join us?" The third Warden moved slowly to join them, joining hands.
The rest of the Wardens glanced at each other. Exhausted they were, and terrified, but he'd shocked them enough to remind them of duty, and there was a good deal of shame in the way they nodded to one another. One young man stuck his hand in the air. "Earth," he said.
"Earth Wardens, follow his example," Luis said. "Hold up your hands. Fire, Weather, find your partners. Hurry up." He jumped down, landing with a heavy thump of boots on carpet, and put up his own hand. Our eyes met, and he shook his head. "No, Cass. Not you. You said Pearl was on the move. It's time to stop her. I can't--I can't do it with you. If they see me take off, it's all going to come apart. I'm sorry, but... this is where our paths part. When we-- When this is done, I'll see you again." He smiled, but there was an ending in his eyes, a quiet resignation and grief. "I love you."
"I love you," I said to him, and kissed him one last, sweet time. I traced the warm skin of his face, the roughness of his emerging be
ard, and stepped away. "I don't want to leave you."
"You can't always get what you want," he said. "The great philosopher Mick Jagger said that. Go, babe. I got this."
I blinked away a blur of tears, turned, and ran for the half-open doorway that led to Pearl's children.
The door slammed shut in my face. I hit it, extending Earth power ahead of me, but the door held, bouncing me back. "Rashid!" I yelled, and despite how the Djinn felt about the practice of slavery, despite all of the games and the carefully worded, treacherous game they played, he didn't wait for my command. He hit the door in a dark blue rush, and it splintered, vaporized for three quarters of its width. Only the hinges remained, clinging to a glossy strip of wood as they flapped wildly.
Inside, Pearl stood at the center of a circle of children, all dressed in white. They were silent, eerily so, not one of them shuffling or fidgeting, and Pearl's face was turned toward the ceiling, and her smile was broad, peaceful, triumphant.
"Now," she whispered. "Now go and take your rightful places. She's vulnerable, never more than now."
The circle of children turned in their places, facing out now instead of in, and next to me Rashid shifted uneasily. "Cassiel--" The children were advancing now, walking toward the door, toward me, and the foremost in that ring were boys and girls who radiated that special kind of darkness. Whatever inhabited them, it was akin to a demon, and it did not belong here, in this world. There were young ones, no older than five or six; there were older children, as old as twelve or thirteen. Not one of them deserved the fate that had come on them; they'd been abducted, converted, abused, deceived, tortured, and mutilated. Not one of them deserved anything from me but rescue, help, love, kindness.
But this was war.
"Cassiel," Rashid said, and a warning was plain in his voice. "They're coming for you. For the Wardens and the Djinn outside. You have to stop them."
"I know," I said.
"You have to kill them. They'll destroy me."
She'd sent the Void children first, because Rashid still presented a significant threat, and she wanted him gone, destroyed, unmade. The howling darkness contained inside them had grown, and I wasn't sure there was anything of the original souls left now; I wasn't sure they were anything but shells for a virus, burned-out avatars as Xarus had been.
Pearl had used Xarus to strike at us, out there in the desert; the artificial black corner had been her creation, a display of sheer, raw power. She'd created the chimera as well. Mother Earth wouldn't have been so cruel, so perverse.
"Cassiel!"
"Back in the bottle," I said to Rashid, half absently. The first Void child was only a few feet away. Rashid vanished, and I stoppered the bottle, pushing the cork in tightly and slipping it into the pocket of my pants. I looked past the children, to Pearl.
She had lowered her gaze to meet mine.
"This doesn't have to involve them," I told her. "It's between us. It always has been."
"Not anymore," my sister said, in that silky, soft voice I had once loved, and now hated so much. "My grudge isn't against you, Cassiel. It hasn't been for some time. You're a small, insignificant bug, and I don't care about you, other than to want you removed from my path. It's the Mother who's my enemy. And she's vulnerable. It's my time now. All you need do is stand aside, and I'll let you live a while longer. That's all you want, isn't it? That's all any humans want. To delay the inevitable."
It dawned on me, late and hard, that I couldn't see Isabel in the approaching waves of children. She'd matured; she was stronger, faster, taller than any of the rest, but she wasn't there. "What did you do with her?" I asked. It came out in a cold, clear tone, one that almost shimmered in the air with menace. "Where is Isabel?"
Pearl pointed, and I followed her motion, turning slightly... and saw a body embedded in the plaster of the wall. Isabel's face was a mask, mouth frozen open in a scream.
One hand still remained free in the open air, and it trembled, finger twisting as if trying to claw at the prison.
I had a nightmare visitation of being sealed in that coffin of earth, of the crystals boring into my bones.
"She thought she could make me trust her again," Pearl said. "She failed. I'll keep her for later; you didn't want to be my angel of death, Cassiel, but she... she will make a beautiful killer, I think."
I screamed, and with no thought for anything else--not even the hands of the children reaching out for me--I drew a pure bolt of Earth power up from the ground below, blasting through concrete, steel, wood.
I blew out the wall in which Isabel was trapped.
She collapsed in a broken heap of debris, coated with pulverized drywall, but I saw her moving just a little. I saw her dust-pale hair stir as she breathed.
The first Void child touched me, and his small, cold hand closed around my wrist.
Something dark crossed over into me, a small thing, a tiny pinpoint of darkness that moved through my flesh like a burrowing insect, relentlessly seeking out the deepest, hottest flame of my power. Another chubby hand touched me, dark against my pale flesh, and I felt it again, a tiny invasion of something cold, so cold.
I remembered the needles piercing my flesh, driving inward with smooth, unflinching whispers.
"You're going to breed the future, Cassiel," Pearl said. "A chrysalis for a great power, a new power. You're the first of the new angels. My dark angels. But first, you have to accept the gift that they're giving you."
More hands on me now. I had to fight. Had to. Rashid was right. I had no choice: I had to kill them or lose myself, horribly. Already, the tiny pinpoints of darkness were starting to draw together inside me, clumping, reproducing. Spreading.
My light was still burning, my power still strong, but I couldn't turn it inward, against this; I couldn't fight an enemy already inside me. Earth Wardens were the worst at self-healing, and she'd struck me at my most vulnerable point... not just in my body, but in my mind.
I couldn't fight these children. I couldn't hurt them.
The others were flooding around me now. They were heading out into the room with the Wardens, who'd been lulled into thinking that Pearl and her followers were helping, were safe. They'd hardly have time to realize that they'd been betrayed before these children, with their wildly enhanced powers, attacked them. Luis had inadvertently helped that along, by focusing the Wardens on the problem at hand rather than what might be coming for them on their blind side.
I was the only one watching their back now. Their last line of defense... and I had just lost the war for them, unless I acted now. Now.
But I couldn't look into the faces of these children and destroy them, no matter what logic might say.
Isabel was moving. She pulled herself to her hands and knees, and slowly raised her head. Beneath that caked, tangled mop of hair, her face was a mask of white dust, splattered with drops of shockingly red blood. She did not look human. The fury on her face, in the tight, coiled movements, all these came from some other place, a wound that Pearl had inflicted long ago that had never fully healed.
"You let Cassie go!" she spat at Pearl. Isabel climbed to her feet, and balls of wickedly twisting fire formed around her hands where they hung at her sides. "You let her go now!"
"Peace, little one," Pearl said, and gave her a fond smile. "Don't presume you can speak to me as if you matter."
"You did this to us, to all of us," she said. Her voice was raw and rough, almost a growl in the back of her throat. "You made us what we are."
"I made you great," Pearl said. "I would have made you a queen in this world, if you hadn't been so weak and foolish. But I will allow you to take Cassiel's place at my side, if you wish it. The transformation will hurt, of course, just like all the other changes I made to you to help you become what you are."
"Yeah," Isabel said. "Thanks for the encouragement. It's going to help a lot when I do this."
She flung her arms wide, and I felt a surge of power blast out of the core of the planet, and
down from the aetheric, mixing and mingling in a pure white plasmatic burst that glowed eerily from Isabel's eyes, mouth, even her fingertips. Humans couldn't pull power directly from the aetheric, not as Djinn could... but Isabel was different. Pearl had made her different, just as she had the Void children, and the other Warden children she'd warped.
Isabel slammed her palms together in a wide, swinging circle, and the power rang out of her in thick, white, glassy waves across the floor, cracking concrete, shattering steel, dropping the entire center section out of the room and down into a dark, cavernous sinkhole.
"No!" I screamed at her, but she wasn't listening. The children who'd been caught in that section had fallen, tipping and sliding as the floor collapsed, and now they tumbled, along with the floor, into the unknown darkness.
I couldn't kill these children, but Isabel had been one of them. Children have no sentimentality for their own, not as adults do, and she didn't hesitate.
Pearl stayed where she was, hovering with her bare feet exactly where the floor had been. She hadn't so much as flinched. I'd seen the rings of power part and flow around her like water around a stone. For the first time, she was showing her true power--and that made her vulnerable as well.
