Windfall tww-4

by Rachel Caine

  I really was out of adrenaline. My pulse stayed steady, even when he jammed the gun harder into the soft skin under my throat. It made me want to gag. I opened my eyes and looked at him, and close up, he made Quinn look warm and puppy-friendly. Stone-cold killer, this guy. I could feel the lost lives crowding around him like smoke.

  “Then I don’t need you,” he said, “and you need to be taught a lesson, bitch.”

  “You think you have time?” I shot back. “We’re in a little bit of trouble here, in case you haven’t noticed. Unless you came in a Sherman tank, I think you may have a little trouble making your escape after—”

  Windows blew at the far end of the lobby, and wind screamed in, flapping Delgado’s coat in ways Burberry never intended. One of his musclemen rapped something out fast in Spanish, too fast for me to catch. I wanted to turn my head and see what was happening to Sarah, because she was quiet again, and I was worried.

  “My friend reminds me that we have a plane to catch in Miami,” Delgado said.

  “And the roads are very bad. So I don’t have time for you or your bullshit. Do you have my stuff? Yes or no.”

  I kept holding the stare. “No.”

  “You have anything I might be interested in?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad.” He shrugged and put the gun back in his pocket. “Take them outside. You know what to do.”

  His guys didn’t hesitate. My feet scrabbled for purchase on the floor, but they just lifted me up by the elbows as he stepped away, and carried me like a paper doll toward the big, thick glass doors. There was some discussion about how to open them, given the wind pressure. They finally decided on the one on the right. When they opened it, the hurricane blast caught it, slammed it back, and shattered it into safety-glass fragments against the stone wall. The metal backstop had been ripped totally out of the concrete.

  “Wait!” I screamed. It didn’t matter, and in the next second the two men carrying me had me outside and whatever noise I made was drowned out by the piercing, constant shriek of the storm as it crept ashore.

  We weren’t anywhere near the worst of the storm yet, and the wreckage was awesome. The two musclemen were having a time of it, shuffling along hunched against the wind; they got to one of two giant palm trees that were bending and thrashing like rubber toys and threw me up against the rough trunk, facing out.

  I saw Sarah out of the corner of my watering eye, joining me. Our fingers instantly locked together.

  Muscleman number one grabbed a roll of duct tape out of his jacket pocket and started wrapping it around me, Sarah, the tree trunk. Tough, sticky tape binding my hands together, then looping over my knees, my hips, my breasts, my shoulders, my neck.

  Same with Sarah. We were duct-taped to the tree, facing the storm. The rain hit like needles, agonizing and unstoppable. I had no leverage, and I knew Sarah couldn’t do anything, groggy as she was.

  Muscleman grinned at us, wrinkling his tattoos, and he and his cronies shuffled off to join Big Boss Delgado inside his huge black Hummer. Which, if you didn’t have a Sherman tank, was probably the best idea for a storm like this.

  Delgado didn’t even turn to look at us as they drove away. He was already on his cell phone, punching numbers. We were yesterday’s to-do list.

  I couldn’t get my breath. The wind was pummeling us hard, in bruising gusts that were going to turn bone-breaking before long. My skin already felt as if it were being burned off with a soldering iron from the constant impact of the rain—water torture in fast-forward.

  I screamed in rage and tried to draw power. I got a weak stir of response, but nothing that could counter the awesome power of this storm, nothing that could break duct tape. It was resistant to water. Over time, it might weaken enough for me to break free, but they’d done a damn good job of making sure I didn’t have any stress points to work on.

  I heard more windows blow out over the scream of the wind. I tasted salt and blood, gasped for breath, and closed my eyes against the relentless, pounding rain.

  Sarah was screaming. I could hear her in the brief lulls before the next waves of gusts. Delgado hadn’t wasted a bullet on us, but he’d executed us in fine style. If we were lucky, we’d pass out from the pain before debris started hitting us and slicing us apart, one piece at a time—or blown sand began to blast our skin off, layer by layer. We might suffocate from the pressure of the wind on our chests, since we couldn’t move to relieve it.

  But we were already dead. We were just going to take a long time getting to the end of it.

  I summoned up enough breath to scream, “David!”

  Because he’d come. He’d said he’d always come, and I needed him, God, I needed him right now more than I ever had…

  He didn’t come. Nobody came.

  I felt something sharp slice my cheek—blown metal, maybe, or maybe only a palm frond—and saw blood whip red in a stream into the wind.

  I wasn’t ready to die. I didn’t want to die like this. Not like this. I’d faced it so many times already, and it was all bad, but this…

  Please, I prayed.

  A figure appeared out of the blur of the storm, leaning into the wind, grabbing hold of the trembling metal railing on the building ramp for stability, and when he turned his head toward me I saw that it was Eamon. Wind-bruised, streaming with rain. All his polish was gone, and what was left was frighteningly primal.

  He lunged and caught hold of the duct tape around my waist, holding to it with those long, bloodied fingers.

  For a frozen second, I couldn’t say anything at all. He looked insane. Insane and oddly turned on.

  “Ask me,” he shouted. Even six inches away, the wind nearly ripped his words into nonsense. He tugged on the duct tape binding me. “Ask me!”

  “Please,” I screamed. “Please—”

  He grinned, showing teeth, and reached into his pocket. Came up with a switchblade knife that he flicked open with a practiced twist of his hand. The blade was at least six inches long, and gleamed wetly in the dim light.

  “Please what?” he asked, and put the knife to exposed skin just under the notch of my collarbone. “Articulate, my love. Speak up.”

  “Please save my sister!”

  He froze, eyes blinking, and slowly took the knife away.

  “Save my sister, you bastard. You owe me that.”

  Eamon Drake, bastard at large, stepped back, sliced through the duct tape, and dragged Sarah away from the tree. He tugged her flapping bathrobe back into place, yanked the knot tight, and hugged her in both arms to protect her from the wind.

  And in that moment I knew, absolutely, that she wasn’t just a means to an end to him. And maybe never had been.

  He was still watching me, with a curious kind of light in his eyes.

  “Beg,” he shouted. I could barely catch the tattered rag of sound. A blast of wind nearly toppled him over and he braced himself with his knife hand against the tree, over my head. Leaning close.

  “Fuck off!” I screamed back.

  He grinned and leaned back, and drove the knife straight at me.

  I jerked my head to one side, gasping, and felt the duct tape pull as he cut it barely a quarter inch from my neck. I felt the cold kiss of the knife drag down and bury itself shallowly in the skin of my shoulder.

  He wasn’t as careful in cutting the others. Quick, careless slashes. I felt the pinsparks of pain.

  “You can beg me later, love,” he said, and picked Sarah up with a sudden heave, dropping the knife to the ground. The wind skittered it away. He threw my sister’s limp weight over his shoulder and staggered away toward the parking garage.

  I fell forward, or tried to, but the storm held me up, anchoring me against the tree as firmly as the duct tape had. I managed to strip the remains of the restraints off, and staggered sideways, rubbing skin from my back against the harsh triangular scales of the tree, and when I turned the wind slammed me violently off balance, back toward the building.

  Ch
erise was still inside.

  I don’t know how I made it back to the lobby—clawing the whole way, bleeding, nearly blind—and fell face-first on the glass-scattered, rain-slick marble.

  Shock was setting in. I felt distant and dreamy, and nothing seemed to matter much just now. Sarah was with Eamon, and that was bad, but at least she wasn’t getting her skin abraded off out in the hurricane. I’ll fix it, I promised myself. I’ll fix everything, soon.

  David hadn’t come to save me. I tried not to think about that.

  When I staggered to the closet and threw the door open, Cherise was huddled under the cot, wrapped in a blanket. All china-pale skin and huge, blue eyes.

  “I stayed,” she said in a small voice.

  “Good job. And we’re going,” I said, and started to laugh. It wasn’t a good kind of laugh. I choked it off and took her hand.

  The less I say about making it from the building to the parking garage, the better. The tunnel was a shattered-open concrete bridge, a deathtrap only a complete idiot would attempt; we somehow made it by crawling across the open ground and made it into the relative shelter of the garage.

  Stairs were a misery. I made it somehow, with Cherise tugging me this time.

  I think I blacked out. When I came around again, Cherise was driving the Mustang out of the garage, chanting something under her breath that sounded like please please please, and the wind hit the car and shuddered it five feet to the left, violently, and I knew we weren’t going to make it.

  Something loomed out of the darkness to our right. I saw it at the same time as Cherise, and we both screamed.

  Apparently Eladio Delgado’s Hummer had caught a bad gust, and once it was on its side, it was like a giant sail. It was being shoved along at highway speeds, and it was heading straight for us.

  It hit a broken chunk of concrete and flew into the air, flipping uncontrollably. I covered my head, uselessly, and saw Cherise do the same…

  The world stopped.

  Breathless.

  I felt Jonathan die, and it was a terrible thing, like every mouth in the world opening to scream. The fabric of things unraveled, and time twisted on its axis, and the sky went black and red and gold and green and a color that should only exist on the aetheric, but the aetheric was burning, everything was burning at levels that could never catch fire because this shouldn’t happen…

  And the storm died with him.

  Nothing just stops, of course; the wind kept blowing and the waves kept surging ahead of it, but I felt the sentient black anguish of that hurricane extinguish itself in a blaze of heart-destroying sorrow, and time skipped two beats for a period of mourning, and then…

  … then Eladio Delgado’s Hummer slammed to the ground two feet to the left of the Mustang, rolled, and exploded into flame so hot that I felt it on the passenger side of the car, through layers of steel and glass.

  Cherise, screaming, hit the gas and got us the hell out. We skidded wildly, pushed around by the wind, but made it to the road.

  I looked back and saw the windowless, shattered outline of the TestosteroneTowers shivering and swaying in the wind. Not quite breaking, but almost.

  Over the ocean, the black clouds slowed down their manic swirl, and while the rain kept lashing, the winds slowly decreased in speed.

  Cherise drove too fast, skidding around debris and wrecks, trembling like a leaf. I didn’t stop her. I was listening to the silence on the aetheric.

  I’d never felt anything like this before, this… absence.

  “Stop,” I said suddenly. Cherise didn’t seem to hear me. I lunged and grabbed for the steering wheel; she hit the brakes and fought me, but we somehow got the Mustang safely pulled over to the side of the road. Gale-force winds continued to shudder the car. “Stay here,” I said, and got out.

  My legs almost folded, but I found that inner core of strength David had always told me I had, and crossed the slick, hurricane-buckled surface of the road to what had once been the beach. More ocean than sand, now. Blue-white foam. Not really water, not really air; you could drown in it but never sink.

  I’d lost my shoes somewhere. My feet sank deep into wet sand, and I kept walking, unsteady, wandering left and then right.

  I saw the Djinn standing in the surf. Ashan, looking gray as death. Inhuman.

  Alice in her wet pinafore, with long golden hair whipped straight by the wind.

  Rahel, on her knees in the foam, staring out to sea.

  Dozens of them.

  Then hundreds, forming in whispers of mist and fog and ocean, all staring out to sea.

  I felt the heat move through me, and went to my knees, too. Moaned and pitched forward on my hands, panting against the pressure.

  Something was talking. Something huge. I couldn’t understand it, only feel it, and humans weren’t made to contain this kind of emotion. I wanted to scream, and laugh, and die. In a blinding rush I knew; I knew what it was all about, I knew love in its most intense, furious, burning form, and it was like nothing I had ever felt, even as a Djinn.

  All around me, the Djinn were lifting up their heads, staring at the sky. Eyes closed. Drinking in the flood of light and love.

  And then it ended, and I felt empty, so very empty.

  Someone came walking out of the surf, naked and golden and beautiful, and he wasn’t David anymore, not my David, he was something more.

  On the aetheric, he was a white-hot star, and everything, everything linked to him. Every Djinn. Every Warden. The network clicked into place and began to hum with power, vast and intense.

  Jonathan was dead.

  And David had become the linchpin in his place.

  He staggered and went down in the water, and Ashan and Rahel leaped forward, taking his arms, dragging him out onto the shore. I got to my feet but didn’t move toward them, because something in me told me… it wasn’t right. Not anymore.

  When he got up, David was dressed and steady. He looked the same as he always had, on the surface, but what was underneath was hugely different.

  As he looked at me, I saw eternity in his eyes. They were black, swirling with galaxies and energy.

  He came to me and crouched down. Not touching me, except with the force of his emotion. “I’m sorry,” he told me softly. “I’m so sorry. I wish things were different, Jo.”

  All the Djinn turned to look at me, and I felt the force of their stares. All those inhuman eyes. All that power, back in their own hands.

  Something was very, very wrong.

  I heard that murmur again, echoing on a level that I couldn’t hear or understand, only feel.

  David reached out, but his hand stopped a few inches from my skin. There was a vast distance between us, a gulf neither of us could reach across. “Tell the Wardens that the Djinn can’t be owned anymore. That agreement died with Jonathan. It’s a new world now.”

  I swallowed hard. I could feel the difference on the aetheric, a silvery vibration that was growing stronger. Like a gigantic, slow heartbeat.

  “What’s happening?”

  He glanced up, as if he could see what I was feeling. “She’s coming awake.”

  “Who’s coming awake?”

  His black eyes came down to meet mine again. “The Mother. Our Mother. Your Mother.”

  Earth.

  “Is that…” I was really afraid to ask. “That’s not good, is it.”

  “Not for you,” he said. “I’m sorry. I love you, but I can’t protect you, not from her.”

  Something changed in that whisper. A red thread of anger in the silver pulse. David’s eyes swirled from black to crimson, then back again.

  Rahel’s, too.

  And Ashan’s.

  “You need to tell the Wardens,” David said. “You need to tell them that she’s dreaming, but the dream is ending. She’s going to be very—”

  His eyes turned entirely red.

  “Angry,” he said. “She’s already angry, even in her dreams. We don’t have any choice. We belong to her
now.”

  I stumbled back. He didn’t move to attack. None of them did, but I could feel the pulse of menace, pounding faster.

  “Run,” David told me softly. “Tell the Wardens. Tell them they need to stop her. Stop us before it’s too late. Before she wakes up all the way.”

  “How?” Because I had no idea, none at all, how any group of Wardens, no matter how powerful, could begin to fight the Djinn, much less the Earth itself. It was just… impossible. “David! How?”

  “RUN!” he screamed.

  I felt his control shatter with a sound like breaking crystal, and stumbled backward from what I saw in his eyes.

  A hand closed around my arm and jerked me upright. Not David. Not Rahel. Not Ashan. I didn’t know this Djinn. She had waist-length, glossy black hair falling in waves; she had burnished golden skin and eyes like the sun.

  “Stop staring and run,” she yelled, and shoved me to the car.

  We ran. Behind us, hundreds of Djinn closed in on us like a silent, deadly pack of hounds. My savior practically threw me into the car, leaped in the passenger door and screamed at Cherise, “DRIVE!” When Cherise stared, uncomprehending, the Djinn gestured at the gas pedal.

  We peeled out at an inhuman speed, leaving the storm-swept beach and the rest of the Djinn behind.

  David came closest to catching us. I twisted to watch him disappearing in the back window, a tall figure standing in the road, coat blowing and belling in the wind.

  “Are you all right?” the black-haired Djinn asked. I blinked at her. She looked familiar, but I had no idea why. “Hey! Can you hear me? Are you all right?”

  I opened my mouth to tell her that I was, but something was happening in the back of my mind, something enormous and unbelievable. I knew something, but I couldn’t think what it was.

  She must have seen it in my eyes, the knowledge and the fear, because she smiled, and when I saw the smile, it all came into blinding clarity.

  That was David’s smile.

  That was my face.

  That was my daughter.

  “Imara,” I said. She closed her hand around mine, and her skin was hot and smooth and real. “Oh, my God. How…”