by Rachel Caine
"Stop the car," she said.
"It's not a car. It's an SUV." I had a bad thought. "That 'Kill me now, that was metaphorical…."
Her turn to bellow, and believe me, the bellow of a Djinn makes my pissant outburst look like an undernourished peep.
I swerved off the freeway. Luckily, there was an off-ramp about twenty feet ahead to the two-way service road; I bumped over hillocks and got tires back on tarmac, and exited with something like control.
"What the hell?" I asked. Rahel was looking behind us. There was a reddish glow gathering back there.
"Out," Rahel ordered.
"Out's not such a good idea. Driving is a good idea—"
"Get out!" This was a yell, not an order, and before I could even think about responding, she was out of the car, yanking the driver's-side door open. She dragged me over center console and leather seat and out onto gravel, and she kept dragging me, faster than I could get my feet moving. When she paused for a fraction of a second, I tried to get my balance, but then I was weightless, flying, and I had no idea how I could do that in the real world, but there were things moving so fast and a huge pressure at my back…
… and then I was down, flat on the ground, tasting blood and feeling numb. I rolled over and saw the fireball belching orange and black into the sky, and for a blank second, I didn't even connect it to the Land Rover. Not that there was much left of the Land Rover, and it for damn sure wasn't white anymore. Four melting tires, crisping paint, an interior that looked like a glimpse into a nuclear furnace.
Rahel was standing, untouched, a few feet away, staring at the inferno. Djinn were creatures of fire, they said. She glowed like a torch, beautiful, scary, sexy, and I could feel the heat from where I was standing.
Something was forming out of the wreckage of the fire and smoke. Something—
Something bad.
She turned her head, and her eyes were enormous, full of power and fury, the color of boiling gold. In an eerily practical voice, she said, "You need to run now."
"What is it?" I scrambled up without much regard for bruises and cuts. Her face was calm and set.
"Just run!"
She didn't waste any more breath arguing with me. She shoved, I stumbled, almost fell, and then momentum and the desire to put distance between my fragile human self and what was coming out of that fireball took over, and I started to run.
I vaulted over the sagging barbed wire fence and fell into thick underbrush, most of it thorny. I thrashed through it with the strength of panic. Like Lot's wife, I looked back, and I saw that the fire from the truck was inexplicably looping out in a jet, streaking straight for Rahel. It hit her with so much force, I saw her yellow coat blow back like bird's wings, and then she was engulfed.
I couldn't stop. The underbrush was dry, all it would take would be a casual brush from that elemental thing that had erupted out of the Rover and I'd be nothing but charcoal and dental records. It was hard to work the weather in a panic, and I could feel things blocking me, forces in the aetheric that had control of the air, the water, the ground under my feet, the fire behind me—
I broke through the underbrush and found myself in a plowed field. Neat dark-brown rows of earth, jewel-green seedlings just pushing out of the soil. A farmhouse sat at the far end, lit up like a kitschy craft fair painting. On the other side of the field, a grassy fenced area with brown, placid cows.
And a round metal stock tank for water.
I made for the fence, jumped it, felt air burning in my lungs and didn't know if it was the fire coming for me or an overload of panic. I fell into the cow pasture. As I rolled back to my feet, I got a look back.
The underbrush was burning. No sign of Rahel. There was nothing left of the Land Rover but a sizzling metal skeleton.
I ran for the stock tank. Cows trotted out of my way, amiably uncertain, and I hoped they wouldn't end the day as barbecue, but I couldn't do anything about that just now. I spared a look over my shoulder.
Fire boiled out of the underbrush in a straight line, burning a path straight for me. It hit the fence and blew a blackened hole in it. Somehow, I knew—felt—it was Star. I forced myself faster, faster, got both feet on the ground and jumped.
I dived into the ice-cold water of the stock tank and found the slimy metal bottom. My skin took the shock hard, and it was all I could do not to gasp in a big drowning breath, but I held on, and the icy slap of it wore off in seconds, leaving me numbed.
Something hit the stock tank hard enough to rattle through the metal, and I saw a brilliant flare of orange and white sheet across the water, felt the temperature go up several degrees, and the thought came to me that if it went on for long, I'd boil like a lobster in a pot. Quite a lot of deaths to choose from, all of a sudden—burning, drowning, boiling— none of them really attractive.
I sucked oxygen molecules out of the water and made a breathable bubble, got my lips into it and refilled. I crab-walked backwards to the farthest part of the tank from where the fire was centered, and peered through algae-murked water to see the metal glowing on the other side. Pretty soon my stock tank was going to become a stockpot. Did I have a chance of getting to the surface and hauling myself out of the tank and making it all the way to—where? — before getting fried? No. No, I did not.
Mastery over air and water didn't mean a damn thing right now, except that I could probably keep breathing right up until my skin boiled off and my eyes popped. Maybe I would lose consciousness before that. I hoped so.
It got dark all of a sudden. I wondered if my eyes had failed, but then my brain slowly crawled to the conclusion that the fire had stopped.
Somebody had hold of my hair and yanked. It hurt. I opened my mouth and yelled, or tried to, but all I got was a lungful of murky water, and then I was coming out of the water and into chilled air and I was on the ground, my face in the dirt, vomiting out green ooze.
I sucked in air, coughed, and felt the linings of my lungs burn like they'd never be clean again. Could you die of disgust? I coughed until I was shaking and weak, smeared wet dirt all over my face, and rolled over to look around. Hard to tell if anything else had been baked or fried—it was too dark—but I didn't smell barbecue, and I could hear the cows mooing in panic at the far side of the pasture.
Rahel stood over me, fresh and neon as ever. She stared down at me and said, "I'm out of patience, Child of Demons. Do you love him?"
I coughed again, wiped my mouth, and gasped, "What?"
"Him." She waved her hand, and David was standing in front of me. David in Djinn form, hot bronzes and golds flickering along his skin, pooling in his eyes. "Do you love him?"
"Yes!"
Rahel snapped her fingers again, and we were standing somewhere else. Or no… I could still feel the wind on my face, feel the uneven stumpy grass under me.
But what I saw was a cellar. Dark, stacked here and there with boxes. There was a wooden worktable against the far wall, and on it…
On it lay the book from Cathy Ball's store.
Estrella stepped from the shadows behind me. I jumped out of the way, ending up next to the sheer primal heat of Rahel, and I was grateful for the warmth because this place was cold and my heart was getting colder.
I sat up. Rahel helped me to my feet.
Estrella went to the book and opened it.
"No," I whispered, and looked at Rahel; her face was impassive, but her golden eyes glowed like jack-o'-lanterns. "Stop her!"
"I can't," she said. "I can't interfere in the claiming process."
"The fuck you can't! Hell, set her house on fire… blow it down… anything!"
She rounded on me, gripped both my arms with talons hard as steel. "If I could stop her, don't you think I would? Do you think I'd waste my time chasing after a filthy corrupted little witch like you?" She shook me hard. "You stop her."
I fell out of my body, zoomed up into Oversight, and hurtled myself toward Oklahoma City. Star's house was somewhere around here…. Where w
as she? She wasn't in the aetheric, wasn't using her powers… needle in a haystack… other Wardens appearing and disappearing like sparks in a fire, but without getting close to them, I couldn't see which was which, couldn't find her. I rocketed down the lifeline back into my body and screamed at the Djinn. "Show me where she is!"
"I don't know. I can see, but I no more know where this is happening than you do. It's within your powers. Find her."
I felt a blind, anguished surge of panic. Sure, I could find her, if I had time… if I didn't have the Demon Mark eating me from inside out… if Star herself wanted to be found. No, there was nothing I could do, nothing my powers could pull up that would help me now. I needed something else.
My hand brushed something hard and angular that had made a whopping bruise on my left hip. I dug in my pocket and came up with…
… a cell phone. Star's cell phone. I punched buttons, and it lit up like a Christmas tree. Memory… memory… I paged through numbers I didn't recognize, names I didn't know.
Stopped on one I did. Star had called home to check her messages.
"Here goes nothing," I said, and hit the connect button.
In Rahel's illusion, Star was standing there with the book in her hands, mouthing words. I might be too late…
… and then she looked up, irritated, with exactly the same expression I knew I got when the phone rang at dinner. She shook her head, shrugged it off, and went back to the book.
"Pick it up," I whispered. "Come on, Star, please. Answer the phone."
On my end, the call went to voice mail. I hung up and redialed.
Star was reading the book. Lips moving.
There was a flash of intense blue-white light, and when it faded…
When it faded, David was standing with Star, facing her across the book. Frozen. Rahel spat out words I didn't know, but the vicious anger in them was universal.
Star handed him the book. He took it without any change of expression.
"Too late," I whispered. The phone was still ringing, a dull buzz in my ear. "Oh, God, no."
"Not yet. She has not claimed him yet, only trapped him." Still, Rahel didn't sound overly optimistic. She reached out with yellow-tipped claws toward David, then let her hand fall back to her side. "He fights."
He would, I knew. He'd fight to the limits of his ability, and beyond, to stay free. The same as I would.
Star smiled at him and reached over to pick up something lying on the corner of the worktable. She put it to her ear.
"Digame," she said. I watched her lips move in the illusion and heard her voice over the phone.
"Don't do it, Star," I blurted. "Please. Let him go. We've been friends a long time—it has to count for something. Don't do this to him."
She jolted in surprise and looked around the room where she was, taking in every corner, every shadow. As she turned, I saw that indescribably alien beauty in her again. The beauty a Demon had given her.
"Jo? Jesus, you're slippery. I figured you'd be dead by now. No can do, babe. I need him."
"You don't!"
"I need him."
"You don't even have the Mark anymore! You're free!"
That pretty, false face distorted in anger. "Yeah, exactly. I'm healed. Well, that's just great, isn't it? Except I can't go back to what I was. Scarred. Crippled. Useless. I need this one, Jo. I need him to live."
I remembered the incredible strength of the fire jetting across the field toward me. A thing like that didn't come cheaply. She was weakened, and she needed a fresh source of power.
She needed David.
"I love him, Star," I said. "Please. Please, don't."
She laughed. The same laugh, the same sweet, happy laugh that had kept me sane all these years, reminded me there was a normal world and normal friends and the hope of something beyond the Wardens.
The same lying laugh.
She walked up to David and trailed her fingers over his face, down his neck. I felt an overwhelming urge to bitch-slap her into next week. She tucked the phone between her ear and shoulder and flipped pages in the book he held. "Let's say I know what— and who—you're talking about."
"I'm not fucking around, Star. You either let him go, or I come and take him from you. Understand?"
She found what she was looking for. She looked down at the words for a few seconds, then stepped back.
"You have no idea," she said. "No idea what I've done, or how hard I worked. I was a fucking cripple, Jo. Ugly, maimed, burned out. Even Marion thought I wasn't worth bothering about. I barely had enough power left to light a match."
I swallowed my anger and tried to sound reasonable. "But you got better."
"Oh, yeah, I got better. No thanks to any of them." She was smiling now, but it was a hot, tight smile that looked like it hurt. "No thanks to Lewis. He left me looking like a Halloween fright mask, you know. I felt him healing me, but he didn't have the guts to take it all the way. Just like you."
She put the phone against her chest and said something to David, but there was no sound in the illusion. David didn't—couldn't—answer. Star finally put the phone back to her ear.
"Got to go, Jo," she said. "Things to do, Djinn to claim."
She hung up and tossed the phone down on the table. I screamed into the cell phone, but it was too late, too late, too late.
Estrella took a Mason jar down from a shelf and set it on the floor next to David's feet. I don't know why I kept looking, except that not looking would have been a betrayal of everything he'd shown me about honor and loyalty, about forgiveness and responsibility.
I read her lips as they moved.
Be thou bound to my service.
Oh, Star, no. Please.
Be thou bound to my service.
Please stop.
Be thou bound to my service.
I felt the David I'd known snuff out like a candle, his personality and presence obliterated by the bonding.
He was Star's.
His eyes shifted spectrums, became a dark, lightless brown.
She took the book away from him and put it down, and his gaze followed her with the unsettling attention and devotion he'd once given me.
"He's lost," Rahel said. Her voice had turned ice cold, hard enough to cut. "Trust him no more. He cannot go against her."
She let the illusion snap to darkness. I felt my knees give way and sank down in the grass again. I rested my forehead against my braced knees.
Rahel's hand rested briefly on my shoulder. Comfort? I don't know. But it did give me strength. I fought off the weight of panic in my chest and blinked against tears. My face felt hot, my skin too tight.
"I don't understand," I said. "Why is she doing this?"
"She doesn't have the Mark anymore," Rahel said. She crouched down, fluid as a shadow, to look me in the face. "She must have something to fill her emptiness."
"Then where did the Mark—?"
The answer was in her sad, furious, outraged eyes.
"Oh, God," I breathed. "Lewis tried to save her. He took it from her. And now she wants it back."
"Now you see," Rahel said soberly.
I did. Vividly. Horribly. Lewis had so much power… more power than me, than anyone. Lewis had done exactly what his nature demanded he do—he'd stepped in to heal her. In doing so, he'd been vulnerable to the Mark, and that was… horrible. Lewis corrupted, without a conscience, with unlimited power…
Apocalypse never seemed like such a personal word before.
"Is he still with her?" I asked. She tilted her head to one side, then back. "C'mon, Rahel, spill. I don't have time for Djinn games."
"I think so. We have found no trace of him."
"Why doesn't he leave?"
She blinked slowly. "I think he can't."
"Shit!" I slapped the ground hard enough to make my hand hurt. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"What would you have done differently?"
"Well, crap, maybe I wouldn't have blundered right into the trap, you id
iot!"
Rahel gave me a long, offended look that reminded me I was dealing with Power. Capital P. "I am not responsible for the short-sighted nature of mortals, Snow White. I deal with you as we have always done with humans. It is not our nature to explain ourselves. We expect you to understand this."
"Whatever. Man, if I make it out of this, we're going to have some classes in interspecies communication, 'cause you guys suck at it!" Shit. I didn't have time for this, the situation was out of control, and as somebody already falling, I had a bird's-eye view of the nasty landing. "I need to get to Oklahoma City."
"I can't take you there," she said. "I'm—"
"Yeah, free, I know. You can only travel the speed we do." She looked pleased and surprised that I already knew. "Get me to the closest car lot."
She nodded. "Hold on," she said. She threw her arms around me in a full-body hug.
And my feet left the ground.
Now, I've flown in Oversight hundreds of times, maybe thousands—and I'm used to the sensation of the world falling away. But this was different. My body wasn't safely down on the ground waiting for me; my body was dangling in midair, at the mercy of a Djinn with an ugly sense of humor.
I let out a scream that came out more like a helpless meep and threw my arms around her, too, hanging on for dear life as we soared up into the cool air. Heat battered my skin, and when I dared to look down, we were passing over the blazing orange pyre of the Land Rover.
A bird dipped wings and darted closer to check us out; I read confusion in his dark little bird eyes and absolutely felt for him. I didn't know I was doing in his airspace, either.
"You know so much of the Djinn," Rahel said, grinning. "Did you know we could do this?"
I shut my mouth before I could catch a bug in it.
Rahel touched us down on the corner of an intersection in Norman, about ten miles from where we'd started, and let me sit down and put my head between my knees to fight off the urge to puke. She found it amusing.
"You walk the worlds," she said. "Yet a little levitation bothers you?"
"A little? Hello, a lot," I shot back, and swallowed. "What are we doing here?"
Here being a closed, deserted car lot called Performance Automotive. Rahel gave me a look so exasperated, I was surprised she didn't just snap her fingers and make me into a white rat.
