by Rachel Caine
The Demon Mark.
It had followed me.
I backed off, terrified, trying to think of a single thing I could do. Nothing came to mind. It had me cornered. There was no place to run, and certainly no place to hide, unless I planned to jump into the fire…
The Demon Mark floated toward me, then veered suddenly off target and plunged headlong into the fire.
I heard the fire scream.
I took a big step back from the open pit, heart racing. The fire blazed up a little, flickering red and orange. No discernible source. It looked, smelled, and radiated warmth like a genuine flame.
What had I done? Oh, my God… the fire. The fire was the Oracle, and I'd brought the Demon Mark right to it.
The screaming ratcheted up to a level that made me clap my hands over my ears. I blinked away tears. The incredible, heartrending pain in the sound… The Oracle was in trouble. Serious trouble. I had no idea what to do. I'd temporarily stymied the Demon Mark once, but twice was pushing it, and there was no handy geyser of power around for me to use as bait. The Oracle was the most powerful thing in the room.
The fire suddenly blazed up and out, fanning my face with heat; I scrambled backward and got to my feet. As I hovered there, torn between a total lack of options, a hand reached out of the center of the flame, and flailed on the stone floor. Groping for my help. It wasn't human, exactly—it was molten, white-hot, with curved talons instead of fingernails. Where it touched the floor, stone smoked and melted. Claws left inch-deep channels in the softening granite.
The screaming ate at my soul. I had to do something. Anything.
The hand flailed again, fingers opening and closing in agony. It was a stupid thing to do, but I couldn't stand being the cause of this. I dropped to my knees, sucked in a steadying breath, and tried to remember what Lewis had shown me back at the Wardens' offices.
And then, before I could think of the ten thousand reasons to stop, I reached out and grabbed the wrist of that flaming, white-hot hand. The hand instantly twisted, and closed around my forearm. Talons dug in, cruelly sharp and hot as acid. I hauled, hard, and felt something pulling back, trying to yank me inside that searing fire. I could smell the greasy stink of hair starting to fry. My hair. God, I hated fire.
I pulled harder, with every muscle in my body, and I got the Oracle's head and shoulders out of the bonfire. It was humanish, if not human in form. Broad, strong shoulders. Skin—if you could call it skin—that had the burnished metallic look of a statue, but throbbed with living, swirling patterns of heat. Tongues of flame rose off of his back, his outstretched arms…
When he lifted his head, still screaming, I saw the Demon Mark, flailing away on the surface of his molten skin. Trying to eat through and devour him. The Mark was turning restlessly, twisting. Where it touched him, I could see a hideous blackened patch. It seemed to be spreading. The thing was toxic to him.
If he was connected to the Mother—connected directly, in a way we mere humans weren't, and more than the average Djinn—how much more damage would this do once it got into her bloodstream? I had a sudden, sickening comprehension of just how good a deed I'd done earlier in evicting the Demon Mark from the geyser of power outside of New York.
Until I'd screwed it up here.
The Oracle was looking at me. There was a suggestion of eyes in that heat-blurred face. The scream continued, but there was even more of an edge to it now, as if he was trying to convince me.
Beg me.
I really wasn't the self-sacrificing type. If somebody had told me that I needed to voluntarily take a Demon Mark a year ago to save the world, I'd have burned rubber to get away from the idea. But things had changed. I had changed. I had a daughter out there, and people I loved.
I had too much to lose to walk away and save my own skin. And besides, this was my screwup, and I had to make it right.
I reached out and put my hand flat over the Demon Mark. This time, I did it deliberately.
I gagged at the squirming cold touch of it, but I didn't pull away. The flames beating hot against my skin didn't burn me—I hung on to enough of my limited Fire Warden ability to manage that—but I felt the Oracle's claws raking the tender skin of my left forearm. I focused on that pain, clear and pure, and let it flow through me to wall me off from the horrible sensation of the Demon Mark squirming under my fingers.
No way was I more powerful than the Oracle. The Demon Mark ignored me. It always, inevitably went with the bigger bonfire…
I was going to have to do this the hard way.
I gagged at the thought, but I closed my hand into a fist around the Demon Mark—in reality and in the aetheric—and began to pull it off.
It felt cold and slimy as a handful of thrashing worms, and it didn't want to let go. It stretched like rubbery elastic, and then it came loose with a sudden, wet smack in my hands. If I hadn't kept hold of it on the aetheric, it wouldn't have worked. If I hadn't been as strong a power as I was, it wouldn't have worked, either, but the Demon Mark decided to let go of the tough-shelled Oracle in favor of a softer target.
The Oracle collapsed facedown on the floor, and the saw-edged screaming came to a halt. I heard my sobbing breaths echoing in the room, and then fire exploded out around his body in a blinding white blaze, hot enough to singe my hair and drive me all the way back against the cool stone wall. I squeezed my eyes shut because it was getting brighter, and brighter, and I could still see the glow even through my tight-clenched lids. I closed my fist over the nauseatingly eager squirm of the Demon Mark. It was burrowing under my skin, sliding cold through my pores. It was happening faster this time, and the sensation was so horrible that I was weeping, sobbing, shaking with the urge to fling the thing away from me. It was like being stabbed with a wet, slimy knife in exquisitely slow motion.
I had to get rid of this thing, even if it meant losing my hand.
I banged through the door of the mausoleum and stumbled back out into the brilliant sunshine. It felt cold as ice to me, after the heat inside. I kept my fist clenched and staggered out, trying to think of something, anything I could do.
Lightning. It's the visual signal of an energy shift between potential and actual energy, with light and heat as the by-products. Billions of electrons have to line up in a chain for lightning to actualize, and because like draws like, a chain forming out of the sky will be drawn to a chain building up out of the ground, and when that last electron snaps into place, and the energy transfers, it has so much power that it can vaporize steel, for a fraction of a second, at least.
It might be able to stun, or kill, a Demon Mark… if I could manage a direct hit:
I pushed at the artificial tension holding the sky together overhead. The power controlling it was vast and hard-edged, but fragile. I battered at it with the strength of desperation until I felt it crack, and saw energy flare up among the gathering clouds.
Enough. More than enough.
Oh God, this was going to hurt…
In one desperate wrench, I grabbed the Demon Mark, ripped it loose, and threw it on the ground. It seemed unnaturally heavy. It hit the grass and immediately began to scuttle back toward me, moving like a spider on PCP.
It was too close, but I triggered the lightning anyway as the thing leaped for me.
You don't see it, when that kind of power hits that close to you; you feel the overwhelming burn, and for a few seconds afterward, you really can't be sure that the lightning didn't actually hit you, because the coronal effect is so strong.
So it took a few seconds for my mind to fight off the sound, light, and pressure, of the near-miss and reconstruct from the evidence what had happened. There was a tree on fire, five feet away. The top half of it was charred black, and part of it had been blown clean off. Limbs had been blown off and were still flaming on the green, green graves.
There was a smoking black hole in the grass where the Demon Mark had been. Either I'd killed it, or I'd convinced it to find an easier snack elsewhere.
My knees
buckled, and I went hard to the gravel. Ouch. When I pitched forward, the heels of my hands dug into sharp-edged rock, and I saw blood spattering the pristine white stones, dripping from my nose and mouth.
I swallowed hard, and then Imara was in front of me, eyes wide, grabbing for my elbow. She looked a little worse for wear—clothes torn, a few cuts and bruises. Her eyes were terrified.
"I'm fine," I said. My voice seemed to come faint and from a long distance out. "Are you okay?"
"We have to go, now. The Djinn are angry—"
Except that apparently the Djinn were so angry that they'd… left. No sign of the two that Imara had been going toe-to-toe with, which was odd. Just us, the mausoleum, the trees, the headstones.
"Not yet," I said. "I'm not finished."
"Mom, no!"
"Stay here." I climbed back to my feet, swaying, bracing myself on her shoulder for a long moment before turning back to the mausoleum.
There was a Djinn standing in front of it. Not really a Djinn, though—more. Other. He was… beautiful. All Djinn are made of fire, at some level, but he was fire personified, fire eternal. His body could barely contain the heat and the fury, and it rippled in patterns right under his translucent skin.
His eyes were flame. His hair was smoldering red.
He was the most gorgeously wild thing I'd ever seen. Terrifying and utterly sensual. He didn't say a word to me, just stared, and after a moment, he extended his burning hand toward me. I stayed still, aware that my heart was beating like a gong, that I was dripping with sweat and terror. Aware that if he touched me, I'd probably burn like oil left on a hot engine.
I'd healed the Oracle, or at least freed him from his prison. There was still a discolored black stain on his chest, just where his heart would have been in a human, but he seemed… better.
He didn't touch me. He just cocked his head to one side, watching.
I heard a rustle of clothing. Imara was down on the ground, abased, hiding her face. I suspected that the Oracle wasn't someone who got out much, and when he did, he caused quite a stir.
I was too giddy to be impressed.
"Favor for a favor," I said. "I need to get a message to the Mother. Can you help me?"
He didn't make a sound. If I hadn't heard that tremendously awful shrieking earlier, I'd have thought he was mute.
He continued to hold out his hand. It shimmered and flickered with heat, like the surface of the sun.
"Don't," Imara whispered. She'd raised her head, watching, but flinched again and hid her eyes when the Oracle turned his attention toward her. "Please, don't!"
I slowly extended my hand and touched his.
Glory rolled through me, and I exploded into flame.
I heard Imara scream, and I wanted to tell her it was all right, but words were useless. Meaningless. What I became in that moment was… transcendent, and for an instant, an instant, I could feel everything. Everyone. I could feel the long, slow, sleeping pulse of the Mother. I could taste the metallic chill of her nightmares.
It flooded into me in images rather than words. Forests burning. Rivers contaminated with greasy pollution. Skies roiling with black filth. Oil-covered birds. Dead, floating fish. Butchered whales. Clubbed dolphins. Death, and death, and death. Cows screaming in slaughterhouses. Pesticides poisoning everything for miles, from the smallest insect to the largest predatory birds.
Humans, a stinking flood on the Earth, unregulated by her natural defenses. Arrogant. Untouchable as a species by any but the greatest of predators… Earth herself.
A furious desire to bring us to heel.
No. No, we're not like that!
I tried sending a countermessage, but the poison had filtered into me, too; what could I say about that? It was true. All true. We were a plague upon the Earth, and we deserved what we got…
No!
I struggled to fight it back. Images of people working together. Of groups on beaches, pouring salt water over stranded whales, struggling to keep them alive until tides could come to the rescue. Environmental specialists restoring oceans and waters, reclaiming them from pollution. We care. We know. We try. Laws to protect endangered species. Jane Goodall, living with her primates. National parks, carefully tended. Children nursing injured animals back to health. We're not monsters. We're not your enemy.
It wasn't enough. I felt it swept away in the black tide of fury coming from the other side, and then something batted at me, vast and languid, and sent me flying.
The contact between my fingers and the Oracle's broke, and I staggered backward, moaning. My clothes were smoking.
The Oracle was gone. The conduit was closed.
I had no idea what to do now. For the first time I could remember, I'd completely, utterly failed. Flat busted. I wanted to sit down against the cool marble and weep, because I felt like I'd fought so hard, and come to the end of things with nothing but exhaustion and despair to show for it.
But I wasn't much for giving up. Not for more than a few cold, lightless seconds. There had to be something else I could do, and I'd have to think of it. Figure it out.
Maybe I actually would have, if I'd had the time. The fact was that I didn't. Imara, helping steady me with an arm around my shoulders, froze. "Oh, no."
A man in a natty gray suit turned the corner on the street and entered the cemetery. Tall, strong, perfect posture.
Ashan. Jonathan's third-in-command, after David. Heir apparent to the throne, who hadn't gotten what he thought he deserved.
Things were definitely worse.
Chapter Five
Ashan was intimidating as hell, and he knew it; his predominant color scheme was gray, with a little silver for highlights. As always, he looked elegantly tailored. A double-breasted suit, the color of mourning doves. A pale gray shirt. A teal-blue tie, with eyes to match. Ashan, of all the Djinn, struck me as less than human; he gave the impression that he just wore a bipedal shape with opposable thumbs for convenience, but he gave it no more importance than that. His movements had that liquid grace that all the Djinn seemed to possess but which they didn't usually flaunt quite so openly. Even Rahel seemed more part of my world.
He walked steadily toward us down that gravel path. There were dark spots marring it. Bloodstains, all of them mine. A flaming branch was blocking his path, and he kicked it casually out of the way with so much power that it hit one of the quaint weathered tombstones and snapped it off like a broken tooth.
Imara made a low sound of terror. I pushed her behind me.
"Ashan," I said. "Thanks for your concern, but really, we're fine. No need to be worried."
"Freak," he said. "Filthy groveling worm. You defile the ground you touch." Voice like nothing at all. Gray, monotone, flat. No anger, but that didn't make me feel any better. Ashan didn't need to be angry. He just needed to be awake. "You defiled the Oracle with your stench."
"I saved the Oracle from a Demon Mark," I said, and watched his expression. No surprise there. "You knew. You knew he was infected. Why didn't you come running to save him?"
"You have no right to be here." His empty eyes flashed toward Imara. "Either of you."
"Leave the kid out of it. If you want to smack somebody around—"
He moved too fast for me to see, and suddenly there was a stinging agony on the side of my face, and I was on my hands and knees. He'd slapped me. A leisurely, open-handed slap. If he'd used his fist, he'd have snapped my neck. "Do not speak to me again."
Imara threw herself in his path. "You're not hurting my—"
Ashan didn't even break stride. He backhanded her so hard, she left the ground, twisted in midair, and flew twenty feet to slam into a massive gray headstone. I watched her, horrified. She didn't move after landing.
When I looked back at Ashan, it was too late. He grabbed my throat and dragged me kissing-close. I scrabbled and scratched at his hand, but it was like trying to pry steel with your fingernails. Overhead, dark clouds scudded in from the sea, moving fast and high, as
if they wanted a ringside seat for the action. I could sense a certain eagerness up there. Storms always loved to see Weather Wardens getting their comeuppance.
"You," Ashan said with gentle precision, his lips to my ear, "should have stayed far, far away from here. You're too late, in any case. I've told the Mother the whole filthy history of humanity. None of Jonathan's benevolent, willful ignorance. None of David's foolish sentiment. The truth."
"Truth?" I croaked. "Or just your version?"
He was right. I should have headed the other way, fast, the minute I'd seen him turn the corner, but with Ashan, as with any major predator who has you at his mercy, it's best not to run unless you have an even shot at getting away. Bravado's the only real defense.
"You know the thing I like best about human beings?" he asked, and took hold of my right arm with his big, cold left hand. "You break so easily."
He pressed with his pale, white thumb. That was all. Just his thumb, and I felt the hot electric snap of a bone breaking, followed by a wet cascade of agony. I couldn't even scream. Couldn't get it past his choking hand.
His thumb moved. There were two bones in the arm, and he found the second with unerring precision.
Snap.
My shriek came out a strangled whimper. I saw red, and stars, and I wanted to heave but I'd just choke faster. And Ashan wasn't finished with me, that much was obvious.
"Call him," Ashan murmured in my ear. He hadn't so much as raised his voice a single degree in temperature. "Call your pet for me. He'll save you if you call him. He won't let me kill you."
I wanted to. Badly. But I knew all too well what Ashan was doing; he wanted David here, alone, with a lover and a daughter to try to protect. David had power—boatloads of it, inherited from Jonathan—but Ashan wasn't far behind. And he wanted David's place as the hub at the center of the Djinn universe. He wanted to remove the only real threat to his power.
But mostly, he just wanted to do to David what he was doing to me. Terrorize, humiliate, torment.
"No." I managed to mouth the word. I could protect David, if nothing else. His right hand flexed, and I felt my throat flex with it. It would be easy for him to kill me. Too easy.
