by Rachel Caine
He'd turned the car into a gas chamber.
I reached for the wind and slammed him hard enough to disincorporate him into mist, and in the instant before he could re-form, I jammed the window button and rolled all four down. Fresh air whipped in and blew out the poisoned fog, and I hit the gas and burned rubber right at him.
He wasn't there when the front end arrived. I looked behind me, but saw nothing except Marion's Xterra crawling up the road in pursuit. I knew better than to think I'd lost him, but at least I had—no pun intended—breathing space.
I picked up the cell phone again. The line was still open, and I could hear Paul giving muffled orders in the distance. "Hey!" I yelled. "I need you! Pick up!"
"What do you need?" In a crisis, Paul was all about the facts, not the feelings. He'd hate me later, maybe kill me, but right now he'd made a choice and he'd stick to it.
"Djinn," I said. "Yours. Get it out here and tell it to block Star's Djinn, or I'll never make it there. He'll—"
A building tilted over the street in front of me. I screamed, dropped the phone, and twisted the wheel. It was an old, dilapidated thing of fire-ravaged bricks and blank glassless windows, probably due for demolition, but there was no way it should have chosen this moment to lie down right in front of me. I shifted gears and let the Viper scream at full power; a brick hit the roof with a bang, then another, and then we shot out from under the falling shadow and it collapsed behind us with a dull roar and a cloud of white smoke.
A light pole slammed forward into my path. I twisted around it.
A mailbox threw itself, trailing sparks and federally protected letters in its wake. I hit the brakes and slithered past it with inches to spare.
"Paul!" I screamed. "Now would be good!"
Too late. David had mastered the timing now, and the next light pole was falling just exactly right—too far away for me to beat it, too close for me to stop. I hit the curb with enough force that I was afraid the Viper's tires would blow, but we bounced up, flashed by more wooden poles, kissed the finish on a dilapidated bus-stop shelter, and bounced out again into the street.
Into the path of an eighteen-wheel tractor-trailer, which was barreling down the cross street. Nobody was driving it, and the load on the back looked suspiciously like a propane tank.
I went weirdly calm. The Viper was fast, but she wasn't supernatural, and I didn't have enough speed to make it, enough road to stop, or enough luck to avoid it this time.
Sorry, Mona. It was fun while it lasted.
Something flashed into the way. Someone—small, golden haired, dressed in blue and white like a fairytale heroine.
A Djinn had come to my rescue, but it wasn't Paul's; it was, instead, Alice in Wonderland.
She held up one small, delicate hand and brought the truck to a stop. Perfect control. She looked over her shoulder at me as I arrowed through the intersection, and I saw a smile on her lips, a neon-blue spark of life in her eyes that I hadn't seen before.
A whisper came through my car radio. Go. I'll keep him back.
Apparently, she was itching for a rematch from the game of keep-away at Cathy's bookstore. I made a mental note to thank Cathy later—preferably with chocolates and really fine booze—and felt the tension in my shoulders loosen just a little. At least I didn't have to fight David. Not directly.
No, I only had to fight Star. And myself.
I checked addresses when grimy industrial sections gave way to grimy lower-middle-class houses. Universally small, mostly of clapboard and in need of paint and new fences, they were crammed together like sardines with postage-stamp front yards mostly filled with weeds and rusting junk.
Estrella's house shone like a diamond in a sack of coal. Larger, well proportioned, gleaming with fresh paint and a neat white-painted fence. No weeds in the new spring grass, the only concession to lawn ornaments a heavy concrete birdbath with a cherub on top. It didn't look like the place to find somebody willing to kill in order to keep secrets.
I pulled the Viper to a halt at the curb and got out. Lights were on in the house, warm behind the window shades. The muted blue flicker of a TV screen made shadows in one of the bedroom windows.
All too normal. And I'd never expected to reach it this easily. That made it harder, somehow, bringing all my anger and fury had seemed easier when I didn't have to knock politely to do it.
I went up the steps and rang the doorbell.
"It's open," Star's voice rang out. I swallowed hard, looked up and down the street, hoping to see Marion's yellow Xterra, but I was all alone. "Come on in, Jo."
I turned the knob and stepped inside.
The hallway was burnished wood, lovingly polished; a side table had faded photographs lined up, starting with two stiff-looking people in the formal dress of the mid-1800s, progressing by decades through Star's family. Hers was the last photo on the table. High school graduation, a beautiful girl, a winning smile, the devil's own laughter in her dark eyes.
I closed the door behind me and waited.
"In the kitchen!" she called. I smelled the mouthwatering aroma of fresh-baking peanut butter cookies.
Something very wrong about contemplating murder with the smell of baking in the air. As maybe she intended.
I walked down the hallway past a darkened formal living room, a brightly lit family room filled with warm colors and gleaming wood. The kitchen was at the back of the house, an old design, and I stopped in the doorway. Star was standing next to the oven, mitt on her hand, taking cookie sheets off the racks.
"Just a sec," she said, and deposited the last gray pan on top of the bulky avocado-green stove. "Ah. There. Now."
She stripped off the oven mitt, turned off the oven. No more fake scars, not this time. She was showing me her true face. Untouched. Beautiful. False.
"You're wondering how this happened." She touched the smooth bronze skin of her cheek. "I was rotting to death in that hospital, and they couldn't— no, they wouldn't—help me."
"Star—"
"Let me finish. All they had to do was give me a fucking Djinn, but no, they wouldn't do that. I hadn't earned it. They said I didn't have the temperament to handle the responsibility." She glared at me. How had I missed all that hatred in her eyes before? All that bitterness? Had she covered that up, too? "They left me with a face like a melted hockey mask. You remember?"
Of course I remembered. I couldn't move, couldn't speak. She reached for the oven mitt again, grabbed a tray of cookies, and began to savagely shovel the peanut butter rounds off into a white china bowl.
"Well, I didn't have to take that." She finished scraping cookies off and dumped the pan in the sink. "I could feel it out there. Waiting for me. All I had to do was accept it."
She reached into the refrigerator and took out a jug of milk. She lifted it in my direction. When I didn't reach for it, she shrugged and put it on the counter, got out a glass, and poured.
"It felt like I was dying," she said, and took a sip. "Like my soul was burning out. But then it stopped hurting, and it became something else. Something real. Something with a purpose."
"It's not purpose, Star. It's just suicide with a longer fuse."
She picked up a cookie and bit into it.
"Also a really big bang," she agreed. "You think that bothers me? I've been dying a long damn time."
"Looks like you're feeling pretty good to me."
"This?" She stroked her unmarked face. "Yeah. It healed me. But it doesn't stay, not unless I find a way to get the Mark back inside me. I can already feel myself getting slower. Older. Twisting inside."
"So why get rid of it?"
She slammed down the china bowl. "I didn't! All I tried to do was feed the Mark. I needed a Djinn."
Rahel had told me the truth, for once. "The book. Free-range Djinn, yours for the taking. You claim them, feed them to the Demon."
"Yeah." She gave me a bleak smile. "Should have been easy, you know? Only it wasn't. Because the minute I grabbed one, there was
Lewis, showing up to smack my ass, and girl, he is one strong Warden. I thought he was gonna kill me."
I'd moved a step closer to her without even realizing it. I came to a stop, haunted by the fact that I'd always let my fondness for her blind me to just how selfish she really was.
"How'd he get the Mark?"
She glared. "He took it. I didn't give it to him. The stupid bastard said he was trying to help me. I didn't want his help!"
Her belligerent tone didn't go with the too-bright shine in her eyes. Pain in there. Deep, anguished self-loathing. She went back to scraping cookies off sheet pans, dumping them into a bowl with quick, nervous motions.
"Then let him go," I said. "You can't get the Mark back from him, you said so yourself. It goes from weaker to stronger. Nobody's stronger than Lewis. It's finished."
"No!" She almost screamed it at me, a raw physical outburst that sounded as if it scraped her throat bloody. "I'll get it back. I have to!"
"How?" I sounded so logical all of a sudden. So calm. Maybe it was just shock, but all I really felt for her in that moment was sheer, sad pity. She'd been so glorious, once. So selfless. Seeing the ruin of that… ached in ways that I'd never expected.
Her dark eyes looked blind behind the glitter of fury, but this time her voice came out soft, nearly controlled. "You gave me a way," she said. "I can't take the Mark from him, but your hot boyfriend Djinn can. And then I can order him to give it back to me. I can't make Lewis do shit, all he does is sits there and meditates, like he's thinking the damn thing to death. But I can make David do it."
Fear went solid and slick as glass in my throat. I tried to swallow the lump. "No, it doesn't work that way. If David takes the Mark he can't get rid of it. He'll be infested. Or worse." If her Mark was as mature as it sounded, it might just devour him instead. I'd seen a Demon hatch, before. I didn't want to ever see it again. "Give it up, Star. Please. Let me try to help, try to think of something…"
She dumped the bowl on the counter between us. "You already did think of something. You brought the damn Wardens here. If they find us, they'll take him away, take you away… and you know what they'll do to me, Jo. Gut me and leave me like I was before. A freak. Worse. A powerless freak. I can't live like that, and you know it."
"Nothing you can do to stop it now," I said. "It's too late. I'm sorry. I really am."
"Oh, there is something I can do. Nobody knows where the hell Lewis is, anyway, so it's no big thing. He disappears, you disappear… all I have to do is get rid of Maid Marion and her merry band of butchers out there. Maybe I'll get David to blow up their truck. I hate those damn SUVs, anyway, and they'll just blame it all on you." Star finished scraping cookies from the second sheet pan, dumped it, and held out the bowl to me. "Here. Have one."
"Thanks, I'd rather choke on a razor blade. Which I'm not so sure you didn't bake inside those."
She smiled, or tried to, and put the bowl down. "So. We gonna fight now, or what?"
I looked at her over the bowl of cookies. My friend. My sister. My ghostly reflection of what might have happened if I'd been the one in the fire that day, because I'd always known I wasn't cut out for normal human life any more than Star was.
"Guess so," I said. "Because I'm taking Lewis and David out of here."
"Thought you'd say that."
She took another bite of cookie.
Behind her, the oven exploded into a brilliant blue-white ball of flame, which raced my way.
I dropped to the floor in a crouch and tossed every oxygen molecule out of the air around me for three feet in any direction. Fire needs O2. It was an elementary tactic, but it worked; the fire blasted toward me, hit the shield of nonoxygenated air, and deflected around. The heat wasn't hard to control, either; after all, it was just molecules moving. I made them move slower.
When it was over, I wasn't even singed. I let go of the air bubble, stepped toward Star, and took a deep breath. "You know, I was feeling sorry for you," I said. "Poor little Star, all alone in that hospital, burned beyond recognition, boo-fucking-hoo. Did you ever stop to think about all those Wardens who died? Who never even made it out? Of course you didn't. Because it's just all about you."
She laughed. It was a crazy sound. She held out both hands in front of her, palms up, and intense blue-white flames danced on the skin and reflected in her dark eyes. "Yeah, like it ain't all about you, Jo. Bad Bob dumps a problem on you, and what do you do? Take off running like a scared rabbit to save your skin. You don't want to give up your powers any more than I do. You've put people in danger. Hell, for all I know, you killed some, too. So don't pretend we're not alike."
"Oh, we're alike," I agreed. "See, that's why I didn't use David like some piece of Kleenex to save my skin. Because we're so fucking alike."
"You gonna whine or fight?"
"I'm gonna win," I said. "Bank it."
She bared her teeth. "Yeah? Look behind you."
I did.
There was a man standing there in the open doorway that must have led to the cellar of the house-tall, lanky, his face almost hidden by a growth of shaggy dark hair. He was wearing an ancient stained tie-dyed shirt and sweatpants stiff with grime. His feet were filthy. If I'd passed him on the street, I'd have dropped a dollar in his will work for food cup.
It was Lewis.
I turned around, put my hands out to my sides in the universal no-danger-here pose, and said, "Lewis? Remember me? It's Jo."
He was staring at me with eyes so wide and dark that they looked to be all pupil. Drugged, or worse. Completely mad.
He was staring at my breasts. Which was, to put it mildly, more weird than flattering in the current circumstances.
He looked up into my face, and I felt my knees turn to water at the sight of all the torment and confusion in his eyes. If Star didn't get punished for anything else she did, ever, she should be punished for this.
"Jo?" he asked, and it was an entirely normal voice, which was entirely not normal, given the way he looked. "I'm really sorry about all this. I can't stop it."
And then he walked up and slugged me, right in the face.
Fire and Weather don't go to war. We don't go to war because it's too dangerous, and we have no decisive advantages. Our powers counter each other very nicely, all the way down the line.
But when Weather fights Weather… that's when it gets nasty.
And that was exactly why I'd declared a Code One general alert, because I wanted the mystical world of the aetheric locked down tighter than a drum. A Code One calls every Warden able to respond, everywhere, to action. Locking down their patterns, whether of weather or fire or earth, in the same way you'd anchor boats in a storm or plywood your windows in a hurricane. Basically, it meant everything came to a stop.
Over Oklahoma City, the air was clear, still, and dead. Nothing was moving. Nothing could without a massive push, one large enough to toss off the controls of at least a hundred Wardens and their Djinn.
That wasn't likely to happen. Not even for Lewis.
Which at the moment of my opening my eyes didn't help much, because I felt like I'd been hit by a Mack Truck. I'm mostly insulated against lightning, I can sling wind and rain and hail with the best of 'em, but boxing… not my specialty.
I groaned and rolled over on my side and touched my throbbing chin. My lip was split. I explored it with the tip of my tongue, tasted fresh blood, and tried to figure out exactly what was going on.
Ah. It all came back. Star, the cookies, Lewis smacking the crap out of me.
The Code One lockdown.
I might have robbed Star and Lewis of options, but I also hadn't left myself a whole lot of room to maneuver.
Something brushed my face, light as cobwebs, and where it touched pain faded. I knew that touch, that warming sensation.
"She's awake." David's voice, stripped of emotion. I opened my eyes and saw him sitting next to me. He didn't ask how I was, or say anything directly to me, but that touch—I had to believe that it h
ad been David who'd done that, the real David. Was it possible for him to fight for control? To go against her? If Star knew…
"About time." Star, of course; she sounded freaked, which made her sound callous. "Jesus, girl, you're not exactly one of those TV kick-ass hero chicks, are you. One punch, you're down for ten minutes. My mama could have done better."
"Get her down here, we'll go," I mumbled. I wiped a trickle of blood away from my lips and sat up.
"It's over, Star. I've already spilled the beans. They're coming for all of us. Lewis'll probably get a Demonectomy, but you, you're toast, babe. They'll hoover you so dry, you won't be able to light a match with a nuclear weapon."
She kicked me. Right in the stomach. I'd never been kicked in the stomach before, and it was not a special treat. I rolled over, pulled my knees up, and gagged through the pain. I wondered if she'd ruptured anything I couldn't live without. It would be a real bitch to end up dead, ripped up by this damn Demon I hadn't chosen, setting destruction loose on the aetheric, just because I'd taken a pointy-toed boot in the spleen.
"Don't," Lewis said. He was sitting in the corner, resting his chin on his crossed forearms.
"Don't what?" Star shot back, and paced in front of me like a crack addict on a caffeine high. "She ruined it! She brought them here… and now they know. I can't let them take me. I can't."
Watching her, I realized David had been right when he'd warned me of the corrupting effects of living with the Demon Mark. Star had taken it; she'd lived with it in secret for a long time, and it had gnawed out her soul.
It made me wonder about Lewis. He had a towering amount of ability, but I wasn't sure anymore about his soul.
I was no longer sure about mine, either.
Star whirled on David and snapped her fingers at him. "You. Get us out of here."
"Where?" he asked without moving his eyes away from me. Dark eyes, a stranger's eyes. But he was still watching me with that eerie focus, the way he had before. You don't own him completely, Star.
She growled in frustration, walked over to him, and grabbed him by the hair. She forced his head up and made him meet her eyes. "Hey. Look at me when I'm talking to you!"
