by Rachel Caine
Marion’s words were bleak, and I sensed the conviction underlying them. “The Wardens who followed Joanne Baldwin and the leader of the New Djinn, David,” I said. “What’s happened?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Nobody does, at the moment. They’ve been out of touch for a long time, and it doesn’t look good. We have to consider the strong possibility that they may not come back, and that’s an enormous blow. Possibly a killing one.”
That was a sobering thought—that the best and brightest, not just of the Wardens but of the Djinn as well, could already have been lost, somewhere far out to sea. “How many are left?”
“Wardens? Besides those here, about fifty, scattered across the United States, Canada, and South America. Maybe another two hundred in Europe and across Asia. Not so many, comes down to it, and most of them are scared out of their minds, and were second-rank talents to begin with.” She smiled slightly, but very grimly. “Present company excluded, of course. I had to fight some pretty heavy battles with Lewis to keep you two here.” Lewis being the head of the Wardens’ organization, and without question the most powerful Warden of them all.
“Yeah, in the middle of you describing how we’re all going to die, I’m going to worry about not getting flattered,” Luis said. “Seriously, that’s all? What about Djinn?”
“The ones who follow Ashan won’t communicate at all, so we have no idea of their strength, or if they’d lift a finger to help us anyway. David’s followers are working with us, and they’re all that’s held things together this long—but there aren’t many who can be truly relied upon. They’re Djinn. You can’t assume they’ll be willing to do it forever, or even into the next moment.” A glance at me. “No offense.”
“I take none,” I said. “Because you’re correct. Djinn will have little patience for the problems of Wardens, in the end. You’ve done little enough the past few thousand years to earn our trust, or our respect. Were I still Djinn, I would ignore you just as Ashan has done.”
That might have been too much honesty, considering the look that Luis gave me. I shrugged. It was the truth.
“What about Ibby?” Luis said. “I want to know what you’re going to do to help her. And I’d better hear everything, not just the sunny-side-up version—”
He would have continued, but there was a sudden shift in the mood of the room, something subtle but unmistakable. Marion shifted her weight in her wheelchair, staring behind her at the doorway, which banged open without so much as a courtesy knock.
“You’d better come,” Ben said. The young Warden looked out of breath, and his aura almost sizzled with alarm. “It’s Isabel. It’s started.”
We passed through a series of doors that I was certain were as secure as might be found in any prison, but I scarcely noticed, and I knew they made no impression on Luis. Nothing did—not the number of rooms, nor the number of people we passed. The only thing he was focused on was Isabel.
I confess, I was not much different.
Marion’s wheelchair was capable of great bursts of speed, and she quickly outdistanced us, shouting as she went, “Make a hole! Make a hole, people!” There must have been bodies in the way for her to make that outcry, but by the time we reached the blockage it was gone, withdrawn into the corners of the rooms. I had a blurred impression of children whispering, of older Wardens comforting them, and then Marion’s electric engine was slowing, bringing her chair to a gliding halt. Luis and I caught up only seconds later, but Marion blocked our way into the room—perhaps deliberately.
The room we saw through the doorway was small but comfortable—a twin bed, a small dresser and mirror, a chest in the corner, a television set, games, toys. It was a child’s room, but impersonal as yet, without a stamp of personality on it. Isabel’s new home. Spike’s tiny desert in its plastic container sat on one of the tables, and the lizard was watching all the furor in the room with perky, unemotional interest.
Ibby lay on the floor next to the bed, curled into a ball with her dark hair covering her face. Her whole body was shuddering, and she was sobbing wildly. Next to her sat Janice. The grandmotherly woman was trying to comfort Ibby, but each time she tried to touch her, Isabel flinched and screamed, and the terror in it ripped through me like hooks through flesh.
I didn’t think. I grabbed the handlebars of Marion’s wheelchair and hauled it out of my way, rushed in, and gathered Ibby into my arms, rocking her.
She screamed again, fighting me. I caught my breath, feeling that scream break something inside of me with a harsh, glassy snap—not a bone but something more vital, more ephemeral.
Had I been born human, it would have been a broken heart.
“Hush,” I whispered, and held her tight, rocking her. “Hush, Ibby. I’m here. Nothing will hurt you now. Hush.”
She collapsed against me like a wet doll, gasping for breath in damp hitches. “It hurts,” she whispered, a bare breath of sound. “It hurts inside and I can’t make it stop, Cassie. Please make it stop!”
I felt cold, and looked across at Janice, whose creased face was set in lines of grim sadness. I turned my attention to Ibby, using Oversight, mapping out the aetheric emanations of her body and spirit.
She was burning so brightly that it seemed to sear my inner eyes. I couldn’t distinguish colors, only an out-of-control conflagration of power that held a bloody core of violent crimson.
Something was wrong, very wrong. I’d seen her in pain before, but not like this.
“Hush,” I whispered again, and kissed her forehead. It burned, too, with an unnatural kind of fever. “Hush, my love, you’re safe now. I won’t let anything harm you.”
She cried for what seemed like an eternity, but eventually I felt the heat begin to cool inside her, and her tormented little body stilled in my arms, falling into a dazed sleep. It wasn’t healthy, not in any way. I looked up, and saw that Luis was crouched next to me, staring at Ibby with a ghostly pallor on his face. Marion, beyond him, looked grim, as did Janice. I saw Janice shake her head in response to a silent question from the wheelchair-bound Warden.
Janice reached for Ibby. I hesitated. “Let me have her,” she said quietly. “She’ll be all right for a while now. She’ll sleep. I can do her some good.”
I sensed nothing from the woman but a sad pity, and I finally allowed her to take Ibby from my arms. The absence of her warm weight hurt in ways I couldn’t define, and I had to fight the urge to cry out.
Luis put his hand on my shoulder, feeling what I felt, and looked at Marion. “What the hell happened to her?”
She exchanged another look with Janice as the older woman put Ibby in bed and drew the covers up around her chin. “We’d better talk,” Marion said. “This way.”
She led us back through the rooms and hallways, moving slowly this time, stopping to flash reassuring smiles at anxious children and Wardens. “Everything’s fine,” she said, again and again.
I knew she was lying, but there was no point in challenging her here, in front of those she was protecting.
She dropped the reassurance as soon as the doors were shut and we were locked into the conference room once again. Luis didn’t hesitate. “What the hell just happened?” he demanded again, and, instead of sitting as she indicated, loomed over her to force her to look straight up. “What did you do to her?”
She did, without a trace of discomfort. “You may have noticed,” she said, “that these days, most people are taller than I am. Please sit. I know you’re upset, but that won’t help the situation.”
He was angry, but he wasn’t insensitive (although I was tempted to be); he pulled out a chair from the table and sat down across from her, straddling it backward and crossing his arms over the top. I followed his lead, sitting a little farther away, just in case I needed for any reason to serve as backup.
Not that it would come to a fight, I hoped.
“Now,” Luis said. “What did you do to Ibby?”
Marion sighed. “Nothing, I’m afraid. Yo
ur niece, like all the children in this facility, has had the channels that carry power forced open—nerves that weren’t developed and mature enough to carry the kind of signals that Warden powers generate. It’s very rare for a young potential Warden to manifest anything before the age of puberty, because that level of development is all-important. These children—” She paused and shook her head. “I don’t like putting it this way, but it was a kind of clinical, cold rape, and it has consequences. What we will do here is try to repair the damage that’s been done, because the nerves themselves are still immature and raw, and the power they’re channeling is far too great. We have to contain it while the damage is healing. In your niece’s case, we’ll put in limiters to control her power flows. She won’t be of any immediate use to anyone, not until she’s healed enough to handle things on her own.”
Luis was silent—shaken, I could feel that. He’d just been told, very bluntly, what he already knew, but in a way that brought it home to him in visceral terms. He didn’t know what to say, except, “That doesn’t answer my question. What just happened to her now?”
“What you just saw is the first signs that her body’s defenses are fighting against what’s been done to her. Once that cycle of feedback begins, it’s very dangerous, both to Ibby and to everyone around her, because in a very real sense, she is fighting herself.” Marion hesitated, then said, “It will get worse, I’m afraid. Much worse.”
Luis swallowed. “How much worse?”
Marion regarded us both steadily and sadly. “These children are like road flares,” she said. “They burn very hot, and very fast, and with very little control. Once their bodies begin acting against them, they burn themselves out quickly. I’m sorry, but the more your niece used her power, the more she damaged her ability to regulate it. ... Think of it as developing a potentially fatal allergy. At the rate she’s going, even if she avoids the obvious mistakes, she’ll still be dead before she reaches puberty. Her body simply can’t sustain the level of power being channeled through it, and with the body’s instinct to fight the damage, it’ll be further and irrevocably destroyed. It will cannibalize itself to keep going, but at a certain point, it won’t be able to survive.”
I felt—hollow. Numbed inside, but distantly aware that I had been injured, possibly dangerously so. Ibby was dying. Slowly, to be sure, but Pearl, my own sister, had twisted her, warped her, and was even now remotely killing the child in slow, cruel stages.
“No,” I said. “No, that can’t be true.”
“You saw what happened just now,” Marion said, not unkindly. “The fact is, this kind of thing will happen more and more frequently—waves of agony racing through her body, unbearable feedback from a system that isn’t capable of channeling it efficiently, shredding her nervous system. The fits will come more frequently the more often she is allowed, or asked, to use her powers, until she simply stays in that state.” Marion looked weary now, and a little sick. “That’s why I asked you to bring her here. It’s the only hope she has. Unfortunately, it does appear that we might have left it too late to allow for any kind of true recovery.”
Luis took my hand. The warm feeling of his flesh on mine steadied me a little, until I looked at his face and saw the same pallid dread there. “Can you save her?” he asked Marion.
She didn’t blink. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s going to take some time before I can even accurately assess the damage already done. I’m only giving you my preliminary impression. If Ibby fights me, it’ll be worse, and she’ll fail much faster. If she works with me, then I think I can prolong her life. I wish I could offer you more hope, but I have to tell you the truth. That’s why it’s important that she stay here, Luis. Without intervention, we stand a very good chance of losing her within the year. Not only that, but there’s a risk she will take many, many other innocents with her.” She paused, and then delivered the worst of it. “Even in the best-case scenario, it’s unlikely she’ll live to see adulthood. I’m sorry.”
I felt the surge of fury and horror from Luis, and he shoved his chair back and rose to stride away, staring out one of the windows with blind intensity. He was on the trembling verge of violence, or of tears; it could go either way. Neither would be useful, not here.
I didn’t even need to look at Luis to know we were in agreement. I said softly, on behalf of both of us, “What can you do for her?”
“There are treatments,” she said. “Janice and I will administer them, as we do with all the children here who are displaying that kind of reaction. It’ll take time, and I can’t promise you it will be painless for her, but we can buy her time. That’s the best I can offer. Time.” She let that fall into silence, then said, “I could use your help. Trained Earth Wardens are precious here.”
Luis and I answered at the same time.
“Yes, absolutely,” he said.
And I said, just as decisively, “No.”
We looked at each other. There was shock and disbelief in his face and, I was certain, in mine as well. “We can’t just abandon her, Cass! What the hell?”
“We can’t save her by staying here,” I said. “It may be too late to save her at all. But what we can do, what we must do, is stop Pearl before any other children are mutilated and destroyed. Staying here may help your guilt, but it’s not productive.”
That turned Luis’s eyes ice-cold. “Not productive? Look, I know you’re not human, but just pretend for a second—”
“Wait,” Marion said, and leaned across the table as if she intended to physically interpose herself between us. “Maybe Cassiel is right. Maybe there are two greater goods here. I’m selfish; I think keeping you here is the better option. But I can’t deny that she’s got a point. Neither can you, Warden Rocha, if you look at it objectively.”
He was in no mood to examine anything objectively, and I had to admit that I wasn’t, either. I was raw and furious over what I’d seen happen to Isabel, and so was he. Our instincts simply ran differently.
He wanted to protect. I wanted to attack.
“Do you even have a plan?” Luis demanded. I stared back at him without replying. “You don’t, do you? You’re going to run off and what? Run around screaming for Pearl to fight fair? Get a grip, Cass. She doesn’t have to fight you. She’s fucking winning.”
“She’ll fight me,” I said. “If she hates me even a fraction as much as I hate her, she won’t be able to pass up the chance to make me suffer.”
“She’s already making you suffer,” Luis shot back. “Unless you just don’t feel it. Is that it?”
I caught my breath, feeling his barb dig deep. “No. I feel it. But I can’t just let it pass. You know that.”
“You can’t go without a fucking plan, Cassiel. It’s stupid. And it’s suicide.”
Marion cleared her throat when neither of us spoke further. “All right,” she said. “Let’s take some time. Cassiel, stay with us for a few days while we decide together what the best course may be. Agreed?”
I was tempted to slam my way out of the room, get on my motorcycle, and ride away to find some way, any way, to avenge Isabel, but something stopped me.
The proud, angry yet vulnerable look on Luis’s face.
“All right,” I said. “Until there is a plan. But I can’t stay here forever.”
“I’m not asking you to,” Marion said.
But Luis was, though he wisely was not asking it out loud.
Chapter 5
I HAD NEVER EXPECTED to work with children. Isabel, yes, but I had always considered her a special case in many ways—the first child I had ever met, after taking human form, and a very special, sweet, affectionate child at that. I had grown desperately fond of her, and I was aware that that was unusual for me. I am not fond of many things, really, and fewer people.
But almost immediately, I was put face-to-face with a great many individuals, and I was asked to care about them, deeply. As an Earth Warden, or at least a crippled Djinn sharing the powers of an Earth Warde
n, such connection was natural to me, and yet still sat oddly with my nature. Luis was compassionate. I was not ... but the more children we met at the school, the more his compassion grew, and influenced me as well, overtaking my natural reserve.
I had already met Mike and Gillian, who proved to be the two oldest in the compound; Mike and Gillian, I soon learned, had been among Pearl’s earliest captures and experiments, and while Mike seemed to have fared the best—or at least sustained the least long-term damage—he was having considerable difficulty with sudden crippling flares of pain and panic. Gillian was much worse, with episodes of paranoia that brought out uncontrollable manifestations of her powers—a potentially fatal problem for anyone around her. Mike, being a natural opposite to Gillian’s Weather powers, was a good check and balance for her, and she for him, but Gillian was frighteningly fragile, and for all Mike’s stoic strength, he was still only a boy—one forced to be a man far too early.
The others were worse. Elijah was a small African-American boy with a heartbreakingly beautiful smile, prone to sudden attacks of epileptic fits during which his artificially strong Earth power affected others around him. That connection triggered similar seizures at best, crushing injuries to the internal organs of others at worst. He had a constant Warden companion to monitor his status and try to head off the attacks, but they were becoming more and more frequent.
Little Sanjay couldn’t speak, and his inarticulate rage triggered actual fiery explosions when his frustration grew too intense.
