by Rachel Caine
“And how do you propose to be of help, you useless naked fool?”
“Temper, Cassiel,” he chided me, and kept his grin. “I can slow them down, of course. I could even try to free the children. For a price.”
Bargaining was a way of life among the Djinn, but that didn’t make it any more welcome at this moment. I needed a friend, not a mercenary. But I’d left my friends behind, and Rashid was what I had left.
“Don’t look at me that way,” he said, and leaned on the handlebars of my bike, propping his chin on his palm. “Don’t you want to save those children? Isn’t that the heroic Cassiel I’ve been hearing so much about?”
“Price,” I growled.
“Simple,” he said. “I want you to perform a service for me. It won’t stretch your abilities in the least, and best of all, it fits your personality very nicely. In fact, I should think you’ll find my request a definite pleasure.”
I gritted my teeth. “I won’t couple with you, like some animal in the forest. Don’t disgrace us both by making the suggestion.”
He managed to appear both shocked and delighted. “Would I ask that? Well, I might now; so kind of you to put it on the menu of options available. But no, I promise you, my request has nothing whatsoever to do with reproduction, human or otherwise. Quite the opposite, in fact.”
That cast a shadow over the conversation, a deliberate one. I frowned as I stared at him, reading nothing in his expression or his inhuman violet eyes. “Meaning?”
“Meaning that I’d like you to kill a man for me,” Rashid said, and dropped all his playacting. In this, at least, he was deadly serious. “I trust that’s not beyond your abilities. In fact, I think you positively enjoy it.”
He was not completely wrong in that, but I’d not give him the satisfaction of saying so. “Whom do you wish me to kill?” I asked.
“No one you know. It has nothing to do with you.”
“And why can’t you kill him yourself?”
“Because I made another bargain elsewhere, and now I find myself ... restrained,” Rashid said. “But it doesn’t mean I can’t ask someone to do it on my behalf. It’s a moment’s work for you, Cassiel, and if you do it, I will save your innocent children from the clutches of the evil Djinn. What say you? I think the advantages are all to you.”
As bargains went, it wasn’t bad, but there were unknowns in it, things that made me feel uneasy. I can’t claim that my conscience would prevent it; my conscience was not human, though there were moments when I liked to pretend. I had contemplated murder in the past, and still did think about it on a regular basis. The reason I didn’t act on it—or at least, not usually—was that it so often came with complications.
So might this, as simple as it seemed.
“How far away is this unfortunate person?” I asked.
“Luckily for you, only about an hour’s ride, if you don’t spare the horsepower. He has a tent struck out in the woods. You don’t even have to look into his eyes as you end him; a simple accident would suffice for my needs. Maybe something in a nice rockfall, or a tree flattening him. I’d prefer something that painful and lingering, but your pleasure.”
“His name.”
Rashid flipped his hand dismissively. “You hardly need that.”
“I may not need it, but I want it.”
His eyebrows rose, then drew together. “I have said, you don’t know him.”
“Is he a Warden?” Silence. I matched him frown for frown. “You want a Warden destroyed. At such a dangerous time, when the humans need all the help they can get?”
Rashid lost all his playfulness, and his beauty, as he glared at me. Anger sharpened the angles of his face, and the bones seemed to take on edges beneath the skin. “This one needs to be killed,” he said, quite softly. “This one killed a Djinn.”
There were ways to kill a Djinn, but not many, and few were within the reach of a human, even a Warden. Where it had happened, the end for the Djinn had been slow, agonizing, and appalling. “How?”
“Does it matter? A Djinn no longer exists, one who lived thousands of human lifetimes and was worth more than a river of human blood and a mountain of human bones. A Djinn who was my child.” That last was a hiss, like steam escaping from a vent deep in the earth’s core. “This Warden had him in a bottle, once. Then when he let him go, he ordered him to fight an Ifrit, to the death. For profit. My son died for money. Tell me I should show mercy, Cassiel. Tell me.”
I couldn’t. I watched Rashid’s face for a long, silent moment, imagining what it would be like to know one’s child had been devoured alive, eaten by a creature that existed by ending other Djinn. Rashid would have felt it, I thought. Connected by power and heritage, he would have felt every second of his progeny’s ending.
“Why now?” I asked him. “Why here? You must have had months to gain your revenge.”
Rashid’s face changed again, melting back into its pleasing lines. “Oh, I tried,” he said. “He had another bottle and another Djinn he could torture and destroy as he wished. He bargained for her release, under the condition that I should never harm him. I made this deal.” That grin came again, but this time it had darkness in it, and cruel amusement seemed to fuel his glowing eyes to even greater brightness. “I made that bargain to save an innocent life. You should understand that, Cassiel. But I never said I wouldn’t find others to harm him.”
That was the Djinn’s way; bargains were sacred, but there was no deal a human could make that a Djinn couldn’t find a way around, or through, or under. We’d had too long to learn our skills, and by nature we were twisting and devious. It was part of our charm.
“How do I know you’re telling me the truth?” I asked him. Rashid might be lying to me, for any number of reasons of his own; there were no codes between us that prevented lying to achieve a goal. If I failed to ask the relevant questions, then that was my problem, not his. And Rashid could spin a tale, a good one.
I felt that this one might actually be true, however.
“I’ll swear,” he said immediately. “Thrice. On anything you think necessary.”
That was an open oath, and very powerful to us. I considered for a second, then nodded. “Swear upon the Mother,” I said. No Djinn would swear on the Mother and not mean it. “Swear that every word you have said to me during this conversation has been true in every aspect.”
He considered, too; I was asking for something exacting, and if he’d lied in even the smallest detail, he wouldn’t swear. The consequences were too great.
Instead, he nodded, and said, “I swear on the Mother, and the blood of the Mother, that every word I have spoken to you during this conversation today has been true,” he said. “I have not lied. Is that sufficient?”
“Swear it three times,” I said. There was nothing more binding than that. And, to my surprise, he did so without blinking.
I said, “If I fulfill your request to me, you’ll overtake those who’ve abducted the children in Denver, stop them, and return the children to their families, or at least to the place from which they were taken?”
“I so swear,” he said. “If that Warden dies, I’ll save your children. I’m the only one who can, Cassiel. But I won’t act until he’s dead.”
That seemed fair enough. “Done,” I said.
“Done,” Rashid repeated. “The deal is struck.”
He leaned back, and gathered shadows around him. When they settled, they’d formed a black suit, cloth that slithered like silk, draping him in perfectly tailored lines. On his feet shoes formed, in the latest style, polished and perfect. He even added a tie that looked spun of moonbeams and dreams and diamonds. It suited him very well.
“Next time,” he said, “we’ll bargain for something more intimate.” His grin was half a leer this time. “I’ll wait here until it’s done.”
“Where is he?”
For answer, he created a map in midair in front of me, glowing golden lines with a bloodred star marking the location of
my quarry. He was right; it was about an hour’s ride, and I didn’t look back as I gunned the engine, leaned forward, and sped off on my mission.
I hadn’t intended to be an assassin, but sometimes one must do the unpleasant to prevent the unthinkable. Having more children twisted, destroyed, and dying was unthinkable.
This was merely unpleasant pest control.
The white dot indicating my location moved steadily over the map, as miles disappeared beneath my tires; despite the piled snow, the sky was clear. The Vision glided like a shark between the shadows as the sun climbed into the sky, and when the trees parted the silver gleamed knife-bright. My hair rippled in the icy wind, and I felt the air hissing over my exposed skin. I extended my Earth sense into the trees, feeling the slow, constant strength there, the bright sparks of life moving on their own journeys large and small. For the first time in a long time I felt like a Djinn again—free.
And that carried its own guilt, and sadness.
After almost an hour, my white mark was rapidly encroaching on the red dot, and I slowed to begin examining the road and forest more carefully. There, off to the east, I located the large ripple on the aetheric that indicated a human Warden’s presence. A Weather Warden, from the feel of it. A man, of middle age. His aetheric signature was muddy to me, constrained as I was in flesh; had I been truly Djinn, I could have read his past, known the truth of what Rashid had told me written in the whispers that followed him through time. Some acts left ghosts. The one Rashid had described to me would have left screaming, bloody trails.
It troubled me that I couldn’t read those signs, not now, not as human as I was.
I pulled the bike over and killed the engine; in the silence, the sounds of the world around me took on weight and depth. Birdsong, sweet and constant. The wet thump of melting snow falling from branches. The whispering rustle of trees, constantly in motion as they struggled for power, for position, for light and life. The smaller noises of rodents and mammals making their little lives.
And from a distance, the entirely inappropriate music of the Beach Boys came echoing through the trees.
I left the bike and walked on, dodging trees, maneuvering through thick brush that choked the areas between. Leaf litter coated the ground where the snow had melted, thick and spongy and filling the air with a thick, piney scent of decomposition. I sensed a snake making its sluggish, cool way through the leaves toward the sun, and changed course to avoid it.
Then, quite suddenly, I was in a clearing that was bathed in golden morning sunlight, and there was a dark green canvas tent angling among the surrounding trees. The grass in the clearing was artificially thick and green, and the man had scraped a round bare circle for a fire pit and lined it with stones. There was nothing in the pit now but ash and embers, burned down overnight.
The tent flap was unzipped and open, and a man sat cross-legged on a striped blanket in front, in the sun. He was dressed in a thick flannel shirt of red and blue checks, a sleeveless down vest, and a pair of much-worn and seldom-washed blue jeans, with battered hiking boots. His salt-and-pepper hair had scarce acquaintance with a barber, and he wore a three-day growth of beard, some of which glinted silver in the sun.
He was drinking a cup of something that steamed hot wisps into the cool air, and as I emerged from the trees he stopped in mid-gulp, staring at me.
He was, for a human, reasonably attractive, though worn by time—lines around his eyes, and at the corners of his mouth. He spent much time in the open, I thought, because his skin was leathery and well tanned. I could smell him from where I stood, a rich mixture of sweat, leather, and unwashed clothing.
He put down the coffee—I could smell it, too, now—and said, “Hello, there. You lost?” He turned down the machine next to him, which had finished playing the Beach Boys and moved on to another musical group I couldn’t identify. He couldn’t have missed my exotic look—the pale, pink-tinted ragged hair, the white cast of my skin, the vivid, not-quite-human green of my eyes. His face went hard and a little pale, and he put his hands down on his knees, affecting an unconcerned sort of body language. “So to what do I owe a visit from the Djinn?”
I didn’t have to speak with him; my commission from Rashid didn’t require me to know him at all, this man who’d committed such crimes against my brothers and sisters. But I inclined my head and said, “My name is Cassiel.”
“Nice to meet you,” he said, which was a patent lie. “Rick Harley. Weather. If you’re looking for a Djinn, I’m not working with any right at the moment.”
“I’m not looking for Djinn. I’m looking for you,” I said, without any particular emphasis or menace. His eyes were blue, faded a bit from their sapphire sparkle of youth. He drank too much alcohol, and it showed in the tremor of his hands and the state of his body. “Did you participate in any gambling involving the Djinn?”
He looked ghostly now, and grim. There were pale patches around his mouth and eyes, and a muscle jumped unsteadily in his jaw as he said, “Don’t know what you’re talking about. If that’s all—”
“I am speaking about the death of a Djinn,” I said. “And you know what I’m talking about, very well. It disturbs your sleep. It makes you drink too much, and cut yourself off from your family and friends to hide out here in the wilderness. You are guilty, and it eats at you.”
He said nothing to that. He stared at me as if I were the angel of death, come on this fine, sunny morning to reap his soul ... as I was. He seemed unusually composed, and resigned.
“Rick,” I said, “I’ve been sent to kill you. This isn’t my choice, although it’s justice; your death serves a greater purpose, and will save innocent lives. Your death is the price I have to pay to ensure the safety of those innocents.”
“Why are you telling me this?” he asked, and there was a grim, wry twist to his mouth at the end. “Do you think it makes me feel any fucking better? You think I’ll be happy to put my neck on the chopping block because all of a sudden I’m dying for a good cause?”
“You might be,” I said. “Your death isn’t in vain. Your death is honorable, the way a Warden’s should be. Your death redeems your life, and the mistakes you’ve made.”
“Fuck you,” he said, and stood up in an unsteady scramble. He was already drunk, I realized, even so early in the morning. His ears were flushed bright red, but his eyes were steady and focused, and frightened. “I knew one of you would come for me. I knew it would happen someday. Well, fuck you. I know I can’t win, but I’m not giving up. Maybe you can kill me, maybe you can’t, but I’m damn sure going to give you one hell of a ...”
He didn’t have a chance to finish. His head exploded in a cloud of red mist, and it took me a shocked second to realize that someone had shot him, from a distance. Someone had put a high-caliber bullet through his head, blowing it apart like a ripe melon. Warm spray spattered my face and dotted my white leathers, and a second later I heard the rolling crack of the rifle shot.
I didn’t think, only reacted, throwing myself down and to the side, rolling even as Rick Harley’s body toppled dead to the ground. Another shot snapped into the dirt where I had been, and a third followed but missed by inches. I made it to the cover of the tent’s bulk and paused, breathing hard as the facts began to hurtle through my brain at light speed.
One, I had been sent here by Rashid to kill a man.
Two, I wasn’t the only one.
Three, and most important, I had never been expected to carry through on my task.
This was a trap, set not for Harley but for me.
Rashid was no longer my ally. He was my adversary, and he’d sold me out to my enemies.
That was confirmed as a very human voice called from the trees, near where the rifle shot had originated, “Come out, Cassiel. We’ll let you live if you surrender peacefully.”
Chapter 7
THERE WAS, in fact, no possibility of surrendering, because I knew that these had to be Pearl’s human acolytes—and they were under orders
to kill me if at all possible. Otherwise, they’d not have fired the shots they already had—or, in the next breath, fired through the tent, opening bright spots of sunlight that blazed into the shadows beside me. The last of these missed my head by no more than an inch.
I closed my eyes, blocking it all out, and went on the aetheric to assess the situation. There were four of them—one, probably the shooter, holding his position in the trees beyond the tent. A second was creeping slowly through the foliage around to my left, and a third was climbing a tree to try to get an angle down on me from above.
The fourth, and most worrisome, had abandoned stealth and was running fast, heading for my exposed right. Once I was flanked, I was dead—that much was clear. They were certainly all armed. I could control guns, but there were many moving factors in this that didn’t play to my strengths.
I considered my options, which weren’t plentiful, and then did the only thing I could.
I softened the ground beneath my boots into loose, frictionless fine sand, and sank quickly to my knees, then to my hips. I held my breath as the sand advanced to my breasts, and closed my eyes and held my nose as my body plunged completely into the earth.
I was no Weather Warden, to create breathable oxygen, but the earth and things within it responded to me; I kept my vision in Oversight, assessing the positions of my enemies, and swam silently through the ground and loose rocks, cutting through like a shark beneath the waves. I sensed the two others getting quickly into position, and felt the waves of alarm and confusion when I wasn’t where they expected me to be. They would waste time assuming I’d somehow managed to make it to the trees.
The one who’d gone up into the tree had made a deadly mistake. I poured power through the tough, springy bark, waking thirst and hunger, and the branches began to twist, seeking sun. If he felt it, he must have attributed it to nothing more than the wind, until he paused and a tiny tendril of a new branch whipped around his ankle. Then another. Then another, pinning his knees. By the time he realized he was being restrained it was already too late, and bark was growing up and over his body with relentless speed.
