by Rachel Caine
Pity about the hamster-trail tunnel out there, in that case.
These kinds of places usually had security on duty, but there was a noticeable lack; I figured that the cops had already been around and instructed evacuation, and the security guy had scurried along with them.
I walked over to the touch screen and paged through the floors. Blank… blank… an import/export company… blank… blank… Drake, Willoughby and Smythe. Seventh floor. I took a look around the lobby. It was built for impressing visitors, not views, so there weren’t many windows. That was good. I spotted a camouflaged door behind the empty security desk. When I tried the doorknob, it was locked; I braced myself and kicked half a dozen times before I got the lock to yield. It looks easier on TV, trust me.
The room behind was small, bare except for a cot, desk and chair. I sat Cherise down on the cot and took her hands. “Wait for me,” I said. “Don’t leave here unless you have to, okay? It’s a windowless interior room; you’re pretty safe here.”
She nodded, pale and looking young enough to braid her hair and sell Girl Scout cookies. I couldn’t help it; I hugged her. She hugged me back, fiercely.
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” I said. I felt her gulp for breath. “It’s going to be fine, Cher. Who’s the tough girl?”
“Me,” she whispered.
“Damn right.” I pulled away, gave her a smile, and watched her try to return it.
She was scared to death. Had reason to be. I was trying not to indulge in a complete, total freakout myself.
I left her there, kicked off my shoes, and hit the stairs.
When I got to the seventh floor, I was wheezing and flushed and the place the cougar had slashed me was throbbing like a son of a bitch, but the bleeding was still minimal. Still, I was willing to bet that I was looking like a wrathful Amazon. Frizzy hair, bloody, ripped shirt, and I hadn’t had the time or energy to shave my legs in days.
The mostly intact jeans were all that was saving me from complete embarrassment.
I gasped until I was sufficiently oxygenated, then adjusted the weight of my purse, dropped my shoes to the ground and stepped back into them. And yeah, okay, I straightened my hair. Because when you’re going to confront someone like Eamon, every little bit helps.
The last thing I did was take the stopper from David’s blue glass bottle. I left it buried in the bottom of my purse. Now or never, I told myself. I had no way to hedge this bet. I had to take some things on faith.
The frosted glass doors at the front advertised, in small, discreet type, the investment offices of Drake, Willoughby and Smythe. Lights on inside. I pulled on the ice-cold metal handle and the glass swung open with a well-balanced hiss.
Beyond was a reception area, all blond wood and silver, with a giant picture window at the back. The contrast was eerie and terrifying… the cool indifference of the interior design, the roiling primal fury of the storm outside, smearing the glass in sheets of rain. The glass was trembling, bowing in and out. There wasn’t all that much time to waste.
There was a second set of glass doors, these clear instead of frosted. I shoved my way through them and into a hallway lined with a dozen offices.
Light spilled out the open door of the one at the end.
I walked down the expensively carpeted last mile, passing reproductions of old masters, framed documents, alcoves with statues. At the end of the hall I turned left and saw the name on the door.
EAMON DRAKE.
The office was a triangle of glass, and his desk sat at the pointy end, sleek and black and empty of anything but a blotter, a penholder, and a single sheet of white paper. Very minimalist.
Sarah was lying on the black leather couch close to the left-hand wall. She was awake, but clearly not fully conscious; she was still wearing the bathrobe, and he hadn’t bothered to fully close it. At least, I thought with a wave of sickness, he hadn’t fully opened it. That was a little comfort.
Eamon was sitting on the arm of the couch, watching me. There was a gun in his hand.
It was pointed straight at Sarah’s head.
“Let’s not waste time,” he said. “This storm could make our little, petty differences seem mild. Hand it over and we’re finished, thanks, ta, bye.”
I opened my purse and took out the lipstick case I’d taken from Shirl’s demon-infected Warden friend. I flipped it open to show him the bottle.
“Open it and make him appear,” Eamon said. “I hope you’ll forgive me if I say that I don’t want a free sample of Eternity for Men instead of what we agreed on.”
I took the small perfume sample bottle out, unstopped it, and told the Djinn to appear. He obliged, not that he had much choice; he came out as a youngish-looking guy, dark-haired, with eyes the color of violets. Blank expression. I felt a resonance of connection, but nothing deep and certainly nothing strong. Djinn were, of course, powerful, but on a scale of one to ten, he was maybe a three.
“Back in the bottle,” I told him, and he misted and vanished. I put the stopper back in and raised my eyebrows at Eamon. “Satisfied?”
He cocked his head, staring at me with those deceptively soft, innocent eyes.
Oh, he was a clever one. He knew there was something wrong.
“I’m not a bad judge of people,” he said. “And this is too easy, love. You’re taking this too meekly.”
“What do you want me to do? Scream? Cry? Get my sister killed?” I clenched my teeth and felt jaw muscles flutter as I tried to breathe through the surge of helpless fury. “Take the fucking bottle, Eamon. Otherwise we’re all going to die in here.”
He caressed Sarah’s hair with the barrel of the gun. “Threats don’t serve you.”
“It’s not a threat, you idiot! Look out there! We’re in a goddamn Cuisinart if these windows go!”
He spared a glance for the storm, nodded, and held out his hand. Long, graceful fingers, well-manicured. He looked like a surgeon, a concert pianist, something brilliant and precise.
“Throw it,” he said.
I pitched the bottle to him, underhanded. He plucked it effortlessly out of the air, and for a second I saw the awe in his eyes. He had what he wanted.
Now was the moment of risk, the moment when everything could go to hell. All he had to do was pull the trigger.
He looked at me, smiled, and thumbed the stopper out of the bottle. It rolled away, onto the carpet, and the Djinn misted out again. Subtly different, this time. Paler skin, eyes still violet but hair turning reddish, and cut in a longer style that made him look younger and prettier.
“Pity he isn’t female,” Eamon said critically. “What’s your name?”
“Valentine.”
“Valentine, can you keep these windows from breaking?”
The Djinn nodded. I opened my mouth to warn Eamon he was making a mistake phrasing it as a question, but he didn’t need me to tell him that.
“Keep the windows from breaking,” Eamon said, and the order clicked in. The glass stopped rattling. Outside, the storm continued to howl, but we were about as safe as it was possible to be. From broken glass, at least.
Eamon let out his breath in a trembling sigh, and I saw the hot spark in his eyes.
“You’re only human,” I told him. “You don’t have the reserves of power to fund him for anything more powerful than that. Don’t be stupid.”
“Oh, I’m not interested in the world, I assure you. One person at a time is my motto.” He gave me another fevered, glittering smile. “You kept your bargain.”
“Yes,” I said. “I did.”
“You know, I’m sorry I’m going to have to do this. Valentine, kill—”
“David,” I said, “come out.”
That was all it took.
A black blur that Eamon couldn’t see, and suddenly Valentine was falling, screaming, ripping at the black shadow that formed over and around him. It was a nightmare to watch. David had changed into something more horrible than I could stand to see, and something th
at even my eyes wouldn’t properly focus… I caught hints of sharp edges and teeth and claws, of insectile thrashing limbs. I stumbled off to the side, well away from them, until my hip banged painfully into Eamon’s desk.
Eamon was thrown. “Valentine! Kill her!”
Valentine wasn’t in any shape to obey commands. He was down flat on his face, screaming, and the Ifrit’s claws were ripping him apart into mist.
Killing him.
Devouring him.
Eamon hadn’t expected this, and for a long moment he was frozen, staring at his Djinn dying on the floor, bottle still held useless in his hand.
I called lightning and zapped him. Not fatally, because I didn’t have it in me, but he screamed and jerked and slid bonelessly off the arm of the couch into a twisted pile on the carpet.
The bottle rolled free. The gun bounced under the couch.
The Ifrit finished its meal and began its transformation, taking on weight and shape and human form.
A trembling, naked human form.
David fell to his hands and knees, gagging, gasping, and collapsed on his side, his back to me. I stared at the beautiful long slide of his back and wanted so badly to run to him and stroke his hair, cover him in kisses, and hold him close and swear that I’d never let this happen again, never…
He turned his head and looked at me, and what was in his eyes burned me to ash.
Nobody, human or Djinn, should live with that kind of guilt and horror. That much longing.
“Let me go,” he whispered. “I love you, but please, you have to let me go.”
I knew he was right. And it was the only time possible I had left to do it.
I hardly felt the bottle shatter as I slammed it against the desktop. Even the slashes in my hand hardly registered. That kind of pain was nothing, it was insignificant against the bonfire burning in my soul.
I felt him leave me, a sudden cutting of the cord, an irrevocable loss that left me empty inside.
He stood up, clothing himself as he moved. Faded, loose khaki pants. A well-worn blue shirt. The olive drab coat swirling around him, brushing the tops of his boots.
He was warmth and fire and everything I had ever wanted in my life.
He fitted his large, square hands around my shoulders, slid them silently up to my face, and pulled me into a kiss. His breath shuddered into my mouth, and I felt his whole body trembling.
“I knew it had to be this way,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry, Jo. I’m so—I can’t stay in this form for long. I have to go.”
“Go,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”
One last kiss, this one fierce and devouring, and in the middle of it he turned to mist and faded away.
I cried out and lurched forward, reaching with a bloody hand for nothing.
At the other end of the room, a window blew out in a silver spray of glass, and buried shrapnel in the wall above the couch.
I gasped and lunged forward, nearly tripping over Eamon, who was moving weakly, and grabbed Sarah to pull her upright. She couldn’t walk, but she mumbled, something about Eamon; I slung her arm across my shoulder and half walked, half dragged her to the door.
As we reached the safety of the hall, another window let loose with the sound of a bomb exploding. Oh God. The whole building was shaking.
I dragged Sarah to the stairwell and leaned her against the wall, then ran back to get Eamon. I just couldn’t leave him there, helpless, to get shredded, no matter what he’d done. He might deserve to die, but this would be a kind of death I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
I pelted in and was blinded for a second by a blaze of lightning that hit close enough to make the hair on my arms tremble. Eamon was still slumped on the floor, bleeding already from a dozen deep cuts; I grabbed him under the arms and pulled, groaning with the strain in my back, across wet carpet and wedges of glittering glass. He twisted around, trying to help or fight; I screamed at him to stop and kept hauling.
Somehow, I wasn’t really sure how, I got him into the stairwell and rolled him onto his bleeding back on the concrete. Sarah was on the steps, clinging to the railing, looking pale and vague-eyed and in danger of tumbling; I left Eamon there and jumped over him to catch her when she stumbled. “You’re on your own!”
I yelled back at him as he reached slowly for the handrail to pull himself up to a sitting position.
I put my arm around Sarah’s waist to guide her down the steps.
It was a long, long, long way to the bottom. One torturous step at a time.
Sarah’s bare feet were scratched and bleeding by the time we made it, and she was more or less coherent.
Coherent enough to turn in my arms and look back up the stairs and mumble, “But Eamon…”
“Eamon can go to hell,” I said grimly. “Come on. We need to get out of here.”
She didn’t want to, but I wasn’t going to take any crap from Sarah, not now. And not over her abusive psycho boyfriend.
We banged through the door to the stairs into the lobby…
… and into a group of men standing there looking at the touch screen, just the way I’d done earlier. Rescue! I thought in relief, just for a second, and then I realized that these guys weren’t exactly dressed like they were public servants on patrol. Three of them looked tough as hell—tattooed, greasy, muscled up past any sensible point of no return.
The fourth one had on a Burberry trench coat that had gone from taupe to chocolate from the force of the rain, and under that a half-soaked hand-tailored suit with a silk tie. I felt sorry for the shoes, which surely looked Italian and not hurricane-safe. He had an expensive haircut even the rain couldn’t dampen, a dark mustache, and a cruel twist to his mouth.
He took one look at me, nodded to his Muscle Squad, and they rushed me. Sarah went flying. One of them knotted a big, tattooed hand in her hair and dragged her upright; she wasn’t medicated enough not to scream. I didn’t fight. I knew I didn’t have much of a chance, especially when the Suit pulled out a gun that looked remarkably similar to the one Eamon had been using upstairs. Apparently it was a model much favored by sleazebags.
I wasn’t really scared anymore. The kind of day I’d had, adrenaline starts running low after a while. I just stared at him, dumbfounded, and he stared back with lightless dark eyes.
“You’re the one,” he said. “You’re the one who killed Quinn. Drake said you’d be coming. Nice to know I don’t have to cut his tongue out for lying to me.”
Eamon had sold me out. I don’t know why that didn’t surprise me.
He walked up to me and shoved the gun under my chin. “I am Eladio Delgado, and you have something I want.”
I shut my eyes and thought, Here we go again.
Interlude
I’m still sitting on the beach when the storm makes landfall. It closes around me like a black fist, trying to crush me as it’s crushing the things born of man all around me—boats shattered into splinters, buildings ripped from foundations, metal twisted and bones crushed.
It can’t touch me.
I stand up and walk into the storm surge; it foams around my feet, then my knees, then my thighs… not that I have any of those things, really, they’re just markers, symbols of what I am. Or was.
I stand in the storm and I listen to it, because it’s talking. Not talking in mathematics and physics, the way the Wardens measure things, but in symbols and poetry and the music of a broken heart. It’s the mourning of the Earth, this storm. It’s the scream of a wounded creature that can’t heal.
It’s part of me.
As I’m standing there, listening, I feel David’s presence slide into the world next to me, and a complex web of energy clicks together. Fulfilling me, and finishing me.
He says, “I don’t want it to be this way. Jonathan, please, don’t let it be this way.”
“I don’t have a choice,” I tell him, and turn to look at him. She’s done him damage, his human girl. Not really human anymore, although I guess she doesn’t know that. D
avid’s barely Djinn anymore, sliding on that fragile slope back into the dark.
“You have to stop this,” he says. He’s talking about the storm, of course. But he doesn’t really know what he’s talking about.
I shrug. “I already stopped it once. Look how that turned out.” In the distance, I can feel Ashan and the others waiting, hearing the song of the storm, responding to its call. They’re coming for me, and together they’re strong enough to take me. I know Rahel is coming, and Alice, and dozens more, and if they get here in time it’ll be a pitched battle and the world will bleed. Not be destroyed, because the Earth is tougher than that, older, harder. But everything on it is, in one way or another, fragile.
Life is fragile.
David’s eyes are flickering copper, then black, then copper, then black. He is trying desperately to hang on.
“Jonathan, don’t do this. You don’t have to do this.”
“I do,” I say, “because I love you, brother.”
And I turn and walk into the storm.
I feel him change, behind me, and even over the burning wail of the storm I hear his scream of mortal agony as he changes, as he loses control of who and what he is.
This is how it has to be, I think, just before the Ifrit sinks its talons into my back.
And it hurts just about as much as I expected it to.
Chapter Nine
Well, both Eamon and Detective Rodriguez had point-blank warned me that I’d better watch my back. Of course, Eamon had then proceeded to stick a knife in, but that was just his way. At least he’d warned me first.
The cold metal of the gun barrel under my chin made a pretty dramatic statement as to my new friend’s intentions. He wasn’t the subtle, sinister type like Eamon; he was more like me. Just state your business and get it done.
I respected that.
“I don’t have Quinn’s stash,” I said flatly. No point in doing the I-don’t-know-what-you’re-talking-about tango. “It blew up with his truck out in the desert, and I’ve told this story about five times in the past week so excuse me if I don’t go over it again except to say, sorry, you’re out of luck.”
