Thin Air

by Rachel Caine

Page 39

  Evil Twin's eyes widened, and she said in a surprisingly soft, vulnerable voice, "David, no. Please, no. " He hesitated for just a second. Long enough for her to continue. "I'll leave if you'll send me home. But please don't kill me. I'm not like the other Demons you've destroyed-they didn't know; they didn't understand. I know what's going to happen. Please, you can't torture me like this!"

  "You want me to send you home," he repeated without inflection. And tears rolled out of her eyes, vanishing into steam in the superheated air. My skin was agonizingly painful, already beginning to cook.

  "Please," she said. "With this many Djinn you could do it. Open up a portal, then seal it. Then my blood won't be on your hands. "

  "No," he agreed. "What would be on my hands would be the risk that you would come back, and this time you'd lead an army. That's exactly what you're planning, isn't it?"

  The tears cut off instantly, and the Demon's voice hardened. "You'd do the same. "

  "Trust me," David said, "I've done far worse. And I've done it to people I loved. "

  And he broke the seal from the bottle, opened it, pressed the heel of his hand to her jaw to pry apart her lips. . . and fed her a Demon.

  I let go. It wasn't conscious, just instinct; I felt the raw menace of the thing as it snaked its way out of the bottle, and I just had to get away from it in an awkward scramble. David's face was like cast metal, no softness there, and no mercy. My doppelgänger was screaming, but it was too late; he held her down, slammed her mouth shut to lock the thing inside, and I watched as the Demon shed her human disguise in the extremity of her fear and rage.

  The skin simply shredded into a mist of blood and tissue, and underneath red muscle hardened into black, crystalline shell. Insectile and unsettling.

  Her eyes stayed blue. My eyes, and she defiantly focused them on me as she struggled to throw off David's hold and expel the poison he'd just forced down her throat.

  But not even the strongest Demon could fight Mother Nature-their Mother Nature, not mine. Theirs dictated that they hunted by territory, and they'd hunt each other if forced together, to the exclusion of other prey.

  Two Demons, one body.

  I watched them rip each other apart, screaming, into a black shredded mist, and didn't realize I'd fallen down until David cradled me in his arms, partly shielding me from the heat. I was shaking all over, partly from dehydration, partly from the horror of what I'd seen. Partly from realizing that she'd just been destroyed by the same thing that had once killed me, and my mind had blocked out the details until Ashan had brought it all back.

  A stream of blue fog poured from the mouth of the open bottle, and a Djinn formed out of the air and collapsed on his side on the floor, trembling. Wounded, haunted, hurt-but alive. The others closed protectively around and helped him rise.

  David didn't speak. He tossed the bottle to another Djinn-a tall, dark-skinned guy dressed in classic Arabian Nights costume, whose legs misted into fog about midthigh. I recognized him, complete to the one gold hoop earring. He'd once guarded Lewis's house in Westchester. The Djinn set the open bottle on the floor and stepped away, and the black mist swirling above the remains of the Demon formed a vortex about the bottle.

  It fought hard to stay out, but gradually it was pulled in, a steady stream of black fog condensing and rushing into the open mouth.

  As soon as the last of it had vanished, the Djinn slammed the wax stopper back into the opening, tied the ribbons, and nodded to David. Who nodded back gravely.

  The Djinn vanished, along with the bottle.

  "Where's he taking it?" I asked. My lips were dry and cracked, and my tongue felt like old paper. I didn't recognize my own voice.

  "Someplace safe," David said, and frowned at me. "Let's get you out of here. "

  But when he opened the door of the mausoleum and we stepped out into the cool, soft air, we had a surprise.

  The graveyard was full of Djinn. My first thought was, Wow, when he calls for backup, he calls for backup! But then I realized, with a sick twisting sensation in my guts, that David looked just as surprised as I did.

  And then his gaze focused on something in the midst of that crowd of several hundred, and a path formed to let two people walk out of the center.

  Venna, in her Alice costume.

  And, holding her hand like a father taking his favored child for a stroll, Ashan.

  David didn't speak. Neither did Ashan nor Venna. I shifted my gaze back and forth, worried, because I could feel the battling tides of power and purpose all around us.

  Finally David shook his head. "Let her leave," he said. "She's got no part in this. "

  "But she does," Venna said, and her hot blue eyes locked on mine. "It should never have gotten this far, David. You put the Oracle at risk. "

  "Not the first time that's happened, Ashan. Is it?" David was growing brighter, more Djinn-like, less human. I let go of his hand and took a step back. "Don't pretend you're the savior of the Djinn now. You were more than willing to destroy half of us and all of humanity to go back to being the favored of the Mother. Who gave you the right, you cold bastard? Just because you're older?"

  Ashan's eyes had turned silver, and they looked like cold pools of mercury, still and uncaring. "Yes. Because I'm older," he said. His voice resonated with assurance and cool, still energy. If other Djinn were fire, Ashan was pure air and water. . . nothing hot about him at all. You could drown in his deadly calm. "The Mother makes her own rules, but we choose how to obey them. I have a message for you, David. "

  "You have a message. " David looked wary. Worried.

  "Through the Air Oracle," Ashan replied. "We will no longer be one. You may have the New Djinn, but I will command the Old Ones. Two conduits. "

  David's glow cooled. It was a slow process, but definite, and when it was over he stood there looking at Ashan with an odd, vulnerable intensity I didn't really understand.

  "I see," he said. "You mean to destroy us. "

  "No. I merely mean to protect those of my own kind," Ashan said. "We will not fight you, nor the humans, unless attacked. If the Mother asks, we will answer. But we will have nothing to do with mortals. If you and yours choose to do so, that's your affair, but no agreements you make will bind us. "

  "You're leaving," David said, and frowned.

  "Not quite yet," Ashan said, and looked down at his feet. No, at the ground. And I felt that strange slip-sliding again, the rapid movement of the planet's magnetic force. I heard a distant hum of metal trembling, and felt the metal parts on my clothing, like zippers, pull just slightly away from me. "The magnetic field is shifting. "

  "It can't be. It's not time," David said, but like Ashan he was staring down, and I sensed it was more of a pro forma objection than a real argument. "Jonathan had plans for handling this. "

  "Yes," Ashan said. "And we will need all of our strength to carry them out. Get the New Djinn. Gather the Wardens and the Ma'at. Get them here soon. "

  "Here?" David asked. They were suddenly talking reasonably, two professionals approaching a problem. They'd blown past the personal-that Ashan was a conniving, evil bastard who'd killed my child and tried to kill me-and gone straight to the job at hand with dizzying speed. I couldn't keep up with the shifting currents.

  Venna sent me a pitying look that indicated she knew that feeling all too well.

  "It should be here. Sacred space. " Ashan said, and tugged on Venna's hand. She looked up at him and smiled, and that smile was pure pleasure. "This will be our place. Held by the Old Ones. "

  "Here won't work unless you release the shields that keep us from touching the aetheric," I pointed out. "And. . . unless you're willing to let us mere mortals enter. "

  I got a glare. Ashan was angry at the reminder. Wardens weren't meant to be here. It was, for him, an offense that one had ever stepped onto the sacred ground.

  He wasn't the only one, I sensed. There was a de
finite energy coming from the crowd, and it wasn't good, and most of it was directed toward me. I suspected a lecture on tolerance and the evils of bigotry wasn't really going to be all that well received, so I kept my mouth shut and let Ashan think about it.

  "Yes," he finally said. "We'll lower them. Bring them here. Bring everyone here. "

  David nodded, took my hand, and walked me through the crowd of Djinn-who silently moved aside, although some of them, staring at me, looked like they were holding ancient grudges. I was the Wardens personified, at the moment, and burning in effigy was a tradition going back to when my people were just a gleam in Mother Earth's eye.

  I held my silence until we reached the cemetery gates. Miraculously, the Djinn held their peace. I couldn't tell that David was worried until we reached the relative safety outside on the sidewalk, where the other Wardens were clustered around, some still shaking off the stun effects, and then he let out a breath that told me everything about how he'd been feeling.

  "What the hell was that?" I asked. He didn't meet my eyes.

  "That was a coup," he said, "and Ashan has effectively been declared the leader of more than half of the Djinn. The Old Ones outnumber my. . . I guess you'd call it my generation-and they're more powerful. When Jonathan was in charge that balance of power evened out, but I'm not Jonathan. " He shook his head slowly. "Not even close. I don't know what it will mean. "

  I wanted to ask him harder questions, but the Wardens weren't letting us have a moment; everybody was talking at once. Paul had grabbed my arm and was trying to hustle me to the van, Kevin and Cherise were blabbing at us, someone was urgently talking on the cell phone, and David. . . well, David clearly was willing to let me get dragged off if it meant he didn't have to undergo twenty questions.

  I felt the slippery sensation again, heard Paul saying something about magnetic surges as polarities threatened to shift, and the cell phone that the Warden-I knew him now, his name was Otombo; he was a Fire Warden out of Arkansas-the cell phone suddenly let out an earsplitting shriek and exploded into sparks. Otombo winced and dropped the useless piece of equipment. It let out a thin, whiny sound of electronic distress, and a tiny wisp of smoke curled up from the speaker.

  "Cell phones off! Off!" Paul bellowed. He was right; it was the only way to save them. People patted their pockets, a couple of women pawed through purses, and most got their phones shut off before anything happened. I heard the electronic wail from another quarter, and a French-Canadian curse. Oops.

  "What the hell is going on around here?" Paul demanded-from me, of course. I looked over my shoulder at David. He was staring back at the cemetery, no particular expression on his face.

  I started to repeat the question-there had been a lot of cross talk, with the other Wardens all basically asking each other the same thing-but there was no need. David said, "How much do you know about magnetism?"

  "Well, if you bang an iron tie-rod on a metal grate, you can make it a magnet," I said. "I saw it on MacGyver. " And I was ridiculously pleased to be remembering it.

  He spared me a glance. Not a patient one. "The magnetic field surrounding the Earth is moving," he said. "Breaking into islands of polarity. "

  Sam Otombo nodded. "Yes," he agreed. He had a faint tropical accent, and his long, clever face was very serious. "The field has been concentrated as we know it, at the poles, for perhaps three quarters of a million years. But there is evidence that it has shifted before, completely flipped from north to south, and this begins with islands of magnetic polarity shift. " He nudged the remains of his cell phone with his foot. "There was speculation that it could affect some types of communications, global positioning satellites. . . "

  "Wait a minute," I said. "You mean north is now south?"

  "In some places, yes. I mean that if you looked at a compass needle right now, in this place, you probably wouldn't see north," Otombo corrected. "Anything but. The magnetic field is moving, but it may take hundreds, even thousands of years for it to settle again. "

  I was completely lost. They hadn't really covered this in weather school. "Is it dangerous?"

  "Long-term, perhaps. We could have increased cosmic radiation. The magnetic field shields us from that at all but the most remote places on Earth. "

  David nodded. "You're right that it has happened before, sometimes as often as every few thousand years. But the Djinn and the Wardens have kept the system stable for millennia. "

  "Until now," I said. "Because we're no longer working together to hold it. Right?"

  "That's why you have to bring them here, Jo," he said. "Bring the Wardens. Bring the Ma'at. And hurry. "

  Chapter Seventeen

  SIXTEEN

  Funny, most people wouldn't even know it was a crisis. It didn't have any of the usual signs-no menacing clouds, no tremors in the ground, no forest fires charring acres of homes. This was the quietest, most subtle disaster I'd ever seen. Except for a few cell phones squealing their last, and some random weird magnetic effects, it seemed to go almost unnoticed.

  "Yeah, it's definitely weird," Paul said when I pointed it out as we made phone calls not from mobiles, or from the tricked-out communications van (which had been hastily shut down, just in case), but the old-fashioned way, from a bank of phone booths in a hotel lobby. David had quietly disappeared, I supposed to go try to persuade his fellow Nouveau Djinn to participate. Did even they take orders from him these days? Had I really seen him lose his place in the world there in the cemetery?