by Rachel Caine
I can't afford to put my Djinn out of commission with this thing, he'd said.
I could give it to a Djinn. Only I didn't have one, did I? Bad Bob's Djinn was gone. That meant I had to find one.
It all came together in a brilliant flash in my head.
Lewis. I could get one from Lewis.
It was dead silent in the Land Rover when I finished. David wasn't looking at me. He wasn't looking anywhere, exactly, just staring straight ahead. I couldn't tell what he was thinking.
"Now you know," I said. "You know what you're risking just being around me. Because I swear to God, David, I can't have this thing get loose again the way it did on the beach. I'll kill myself first."
"No!" He lunged at me, and I almost ran the truck off the road. He held up his hands, more to stop himself than to reassure me. "You can't. Listen to me, you cannot die with this thing in you."
"Well, I can't let it just destroy everything, either! I have to control it, or get rid of it. Or die."
David sucked down a deep breath. "If you die with the Mark, the Demon will tear itself from your body, and it will walk the aetheric. If that happens, the destruction you saw before will be nothing next to what it can accomplish in its aetheric form. It will take more power than all of you have to stop it then."
"Well, I'm not just passing it on to somebody like the goddamn herpes virus." He was watching me with that creepy intensity again. "What?"
"Give it to me," he said. "Say the words, bind me, and give it to me. You can. You have to."
"No!" The idea gave me chills. Worse than chills. I had no idea what the Demon Mark would do to a Djinn, but I had no doubt that if the Mark fed off power, it would find an all-you-can-eat smorgas-board inside a Djinn.
"It can't overcome me," he said. "It'll be trapped inside of me, forever."
"It'll destroy you!"
"No worse than it will you, in time," he said. "I can be contained. Once I'm sealed inside a bottle and put back in the vault, I'm no danger to anyone. You—"
"No!" I shouted, and slammed my hands on the steering wheel like I wanted to beat sense into him. "No, dammit, I said no!"
David was so very reasonable, so convincing. "I'm what you were looking for. I'm a Djinn, Joanne. I'm your way out."
I felt tears burning in my eyes, couldn't get my breath around the lump of distress in my throat. God, no. Yes, it was what I wanted, and I couldn't do it. Couldn't. There had to be something else, some other way….
"I'll find Lewis," I whispered. My head was pounding from the force of my misery. I wanted to cry, or scream, or just whimper. "He'll know what to do."
"Why?" David's voice was so soft, so reasonable.
I felt a surge of absolute panic, because I realized… realized I didn't know. Why would he know any better than I did? Lewis was more powerful, all right— more powerful than anybody. That didn't mean he could save me, except by presenting me with the same choice I had right now. Destroying someone else. A Djinn, maybe, but in every way that mattered, a real person.
"I'm so tired—" It came out of me in a rush, uncontrolled. "I can't think about it. Not now."
"You have to," David whispered. "Let's just get this over with."
The car lurched, sputtered, and coasted to a stop. Dead.
"No," I whispered. "I won't let you… take it…" I'd fight him with my last breath, if I had to. I wouldn't be the cause of his destruction. If there was any right thing left in my life…
The lights flickered and died, and in the ghostly whisper of the fan spinning down, I felt David reach across and draw his hand gently across my forehead.
"Then rest," he said.
I woke up in the passenger seat, belted firmly in place, cramped in places I hadn't known I had muscles. The clock made no sense. My mouth tasted like the bottom of a fish tank, and I needed to pee so badly, it hurt.
"What…." I mumbled. David was driving. "Thought you couldn't drive."
"I lied," he said. "Djinn do that."
I muttered something about his mother under my breath—did Djinn have mothers? — and squinted at the clock again.
"Wait a minute," I said. "I've been asleep for only thirty minutes?"
He didn't answer.
"Oh. Twelve and a half hours."
"We're an hour outside Tulsa," he said. "We should be nearing Oklahoma City."
There was a brilliant blaze of light on the horizon, like frozen gold smoke against the cloudy sky. Still light rain falling, but when I checked Oversight, I found everything even and steady. No storms chasing me, for a change.
"Let's stop," I said.
David glanced aside at me. "Where?"
"Anywhere with a bathroom."
"I'll find something."
I nodded and ran my hands through my hair. That didn't cut it. I hunted around in Marion's glove compartment, came up with a brush, and attacked the tangles in my hair until it was shiny and smooth. Nothing much I could do about my generally gritty condition, but Marion had also left behind some nice wintergreen gum that took care of evening breath. I was starting to feel caffeine deprived, but just about the time I thought about complaining, a sign appeared in the distance: loves. The billboard text underneath Said GAS—FOOD—BATHROOMS.
"Miracles provided," David said. I froze for a second, then remembered to breathe. Surely he didn't know that was Bad Bob's tag line. Surely.
At exactly 9 p.m. we pulled into a parking lot big enough to hold at least thirty or forty long-haul rigs; it was a little more than half full. Oklahoma was having a damp spring, it seemed; the clouds overhead were inoffensive nimbus, spitting light rain, and we hurried inside to a warm, well-lit vestibule. On one side was a convenience store, on the other, a traditional sit-down diner; straight ahead was the sign for bathrooms. I left David to his own amusements and headed for the relief station. On the way, I ran across a gleaming bank of pay phones, and I remembered something I'd forgotten to do.
Star. I'd meant to call Star and tell her I was coming.
I picked up the handset and thought about it for a while, hung up, then finally completed the call. She wasn't there, but her answering machine took my message. Coming into town tonight or tomorrow. See you soon.
I hoped I would, anyway. I was feeling desperately alone. I wanted to count on David, but I was such a danger to him…. It was like traveling with someone bent on suicide. If I said the wrong thing, got desperate… I had to be on my guard. Always.
When I came back, I found David sitting at a table in the diner, contemplating a menu. He had a cup of steaming coffee in front of him. I gestured at the waitress for the same and picked up my own copy of the house specials.
"Any ideas?" I asked.
I got a quick flash of copper eyes over the top of the menu. "A few," he said. It sounded neutral, but his eyes weren't. They were verging on Djinn again, not enough human camouflage to matter. "You need to end this. Now. Before it's too late."
"Get stuffed." I studied choices. The waitress— who, amazingly enough, had pink hair to go with her pink uniform—delivered my coffee, and I made an instant decision. "I know it's weird, but I want breakfast. Got any blueberry muffins?"
"Sure," she shrugged. "What else?"
"Pancakes. And bacon."
Pink hair nodded. "For you, handsome?"
David shrugged. "The same." She folded our menus and was gone in a flash of a cotton-candy skirt.
Which left us looking at each other in uncomfortable silence.
"You have to stop," David said at last. "You're running out of money. You have no friends, no family. You don't even know if Lewis will help you."
"I've got you," I pointed out.
"Do you?" A flash of hot-metal temper in his eyes. "Not unless you say the words."
There was no way to answer that, and I didn't try. I looked down at my hands, adjusted the silverware into neat rows, and finally sipped coffee.
"You're a fool," he finally said, and sat back. "Marion's hunters will be
coming for you, and how will you fight them?"
"Same way I already did."
"The Mark is taking you over. It's moving slowly, but it's moving. It's filtering into your thoughts, your actions—that's why you won't take what I'm offering. It isn't because you care about me. It's because the Demon won't allow it."
He touched a nerve I didn't think was raw. "Shut up," I snapped. "Enough. We're going on to Oklahoma City. I've got friends there. Besides, Lewis will know what to do."
He leaned across the table and fixed me with those eerie, inhumanly beautiful eyes. "What if he doesn't?"
"Then I guess Marion's people are going to get a big surprise when they try to give me a power-ectomy."
He sat back as the waitress slid plates of food between us. We ate in silence, avoiding each other's gazes like old married folks.
When we were finished, there was still a basket of blueberry muffins between us. I asked for a sack and bagged them up. Not like there was a chance in hell I'd live to starve to death, but still. Reflex.
We got back in the Land Rover and drove into the surreal yellow glow of Oklahoma City.
* * *
I don't suppose anybody ever forgets how they lose their virginity. I certainly can't forget. And, of course, it involved a storm.
Rain is a mixed blessing when you're in college. Everybody likes rain, to a point, but when you're trudging around campus, soaked to the skin and looking like something the Red Cross would put on a poster, it loses its charm. So there I was—cold, wet, eighteen, and a virgin. Yes, really, eighteen. I wasn't saving myself or anything noble like that; the simple fact was that I thought most guys who wanted to drag me into the backseat were losers, and I had more standards than hormones.
College was different. Here I was at this great school, with all its rich history and good-looking young men, and even better, I was in a program that not only didn't punish me for my weirdo status, it valued me. After four months, I was blooming. Putting away the baggy shirts and shapeless sweatpants, indulging in clingy, flirty clothes my mother wouldn't approve of.
That was how it happened: clingy, flirty shirt, tight blue jeans, and a storm.
I came into the Microclimate Lab blown on a cold gust of wind, dropped my backpack to the floor with a squish, and leaned against the wall to catch my breath. My lab partner was already there and looking so dry and comfortable, I knew he hadn't been out of the building all day.
"It's about time," he said. "You're thirty minutes late. We've got to map the pressure streams and have all this done for Yorenson by noon tomorrow—"
He was turning around, and about the time he got to that part of the sentence, he saw me standing there and stopped talking. I wiped water out of my eyes and saw him staring at me. Well, not at me, exactly. At my chest.
The clingy, flirty shirt? The rain had turned it about as transparent as fishnet.
I wasn't wearing a bra. And my nipples were as hard as thumbtacks from the cold wind.
I crossed my arms over my chest and tried not to look too much like the fool I felt. My lab partner— somebody I'd had a crush on from about the first ten seconds of laving eyes on him—didn't care how much of one he looked, apparently, because he just blinked and kept staring.
"You were saying?" I asked.
He clearly drew a blank.
I sighed. "Yes, I'm a girl. Don't tell me you never noticed before."
He had the grace to blush, and he did it well—one of those neck-to-hairline flushes that makes some men look all the more attractive. He was one of them. Dark hair, bedroom eyes. Not that I cared, of course. Much.
"Here," he said, and stood up to take off his jacket. He started to hand it over, then hesitated. "Maybe you should, um, turn around first."
When I did, he draped the jacket over my shoulders and let me situate everything to my not-so-high standards of modesty. The jacket was warm dark leather, and it smelled like aftershave and male sweat. When I turned around, he was working hard at being the gentleman the jacket offer implied. I was frankly a little disappointed.
"Guess we'd better get to work," I said.
"Not yet. You're freezing."
I was shaking, all right, but it was half hormones; the lab was empty except for the two of us, and we had it scheduled for the entire afternoon. Rain lashed the windows, and thunder rumbled so deep, I felt it like a caress.
Showing off, he warmed up the room by about five degrees. I was grateful, but we both knew it was a violation of the rules. No adjusting of temperature for anything but assignments. Still, no teachers taking notes.
"I'm okay," I said, and took my seat at the table. My hair was still wet and dripping, so I bent over and squeezed as much out of it as I could. When I straightened up, the jacket gaped open, and I saw his eyes dive to get another look.
We pretended to work for a while—okay, maybe we even did work for a while—and actually came up with some right answers for the day and recorded them in our logs. Fast, too; we finished the assignment and had at least an hour left. The storm was still blowing outside, and the energy tingled all over, begging me to come out and play. I was almost dry now, but still wore his jacket, and he hadn't asked for it back.
"Well," I said, and stood up. "I guess we might as well get out of here."
"Might as well." He stood up, too. Taller than me. Broader. Standing too close.
I looked up into his eyes and slid the jacket slowly down my arms, and held it out to him. He took it and dropped it on the floor somewhere behind him.
I looked down at myself. The blouse hadn't quite dried; my nipples were still clearly visible through the thin fabric.
He took one step forward and put his hands on my waist. When I didn't step back, he moved his hands up along my sides, thumbs out, up, along the underside of my breasts. Those thumbs settled on the second most sensitive area on my body, where he moved them in a slow, gentle circle that took my breath away.
"So," he said, and his voice was coming from somewhere much deeper than it had before, "we're supposed to be researching energy, right?"
"Energy," I agreed. My voice was shaking.
"Heat."
"That, too."
He leaned down, and our lips met and melted. No shortage of heat there, or friction. I was shaking all over again, but I'd never felt so alive, so fully in my skin as I did at that moment.
Rain, and rain, and rain. His jacket made a pillow on the floor behind the lab table. We fumbled at each other's clothes until they slid away. The sting of cool air on naked skin, then the flare of shared warmth. Not a lot of foreplay, but hell, I didn't need it; the storm combined with the energy passing between us had made me as ready as I'd ever be. The pain took me by surprise, and so did my sudden desperate desire to make it stop, make him stop.
And with the tearing of my hymen, something else happened. Power. Power raced into every nerve in my body and snapped me into full awareness. I knew the man who was making love to me, every cell, every nerve, every pulse beat that echoed between us. I felt… everything.
I felt the huge rumbling cascade of his power as it flooded me, making me arch hard against him, and the extreme pain of it, the pleasure… sparks snapped between us, blue-white, bleeding off energy that our bodies weren't built to contain. Power, echoing between us, waves bouncing from one of us to the other and getting stronger with every second.
He wasn't prepared any more than I was. We were swept away on a rhythm like the sea, and when the tide came, it came high, and I drowned on waves and waves of a pleasure I'd never felt before, felt him drowning with me, clung to him for dear life.
I heard things shattering around us. Lightbulbs. Glass windows. I felt wind scream over us in whipping, out-of-control gusts.
And then it was over, and we were lying together, sweating, weak, and still feeling the power building between us.
He realized how dangerous it was before I did. He pulled away from me and kept going, far away, scrambling backwards until his back t
ouched the wall. I scuttled back and hid under the lab table. All around us, the wind whipped and screamed and overturned tables and chairs until it finally faded to a breeze, then a sigh.
Stillness.
"God," he whispered, and put his head in his hands. I sympathized. My head was pounding, too. Every nerve in my body felt crisped.
I licked my lips and said, "It's not supposed to happen like that, right?"
There was blood on the floor where I'd been lying. I stared at it for a few seconds and saw he was staring at it, too.
He looked utterly stricken. "No," he whispered. "God, I'm so sorry. I didn't know—"
I didn't know whether he was apologizing because I'd been a virgin or because we'd almost destroyed the campus. I didn't really have time to find out.
The man was, of course, Lewis Levander Orwell. And so far as I know, he never again touched a girl who was in the Program.
I was still looking for my panties when Professor Yorenson arrived to find out what the hell was going on.
I don't know what I'd been expecting. A message from above, complete with cherubs and singing choirs, inviting me to join Lewis in whatever hole he'd crawled into? Crap.
We cruised around I-40, looking for signs from the heavens while I restlessly cycled through radio stations, hoping for a cryptic message.
Nothing.
If Lewis was here, evidently he didn't want to talk to me.
I finally pulled up in the parking lot of a La Quinta Motor Inn.
"He's here?" David asked, frowning. I was on the verge of hysterical tears or worse, hysterical laughter— worn down to nothing by the strain.
"He's around," I lied. My voice was shaking. "I need a shower and a good night's sleep in a real bed. If you've got a problem with that, thumb a ride."
He shook his head and followed me into the hotel lobby.
I checked us in with the last of my cash. I was so tired, I would have taken a cell in a monastery, but La Quinta turned out to be quite a showplace, with an indoor pool and a bubbling jewel of a hot tub that we passed on the way to the elevators. They'd booked me third-floor accommodations, facing the parking lot and the approaching storm. That was perfectly fine with me. Always best to keep your eye on what's coming.
