by Rachel Caine
The damn thing just stood there.
“It won’t work,” David said. “There’s nothing in him to capture. He has no soul. He’s just a vessel—his body is already an empty bottle, in a way.” He sounded ragged, but sure of what he was saying.
“So what do we do with him?”
“Kill him,” he said, very softly. “The avatar is physical. It can die.”
There was something really unpleasant about that idea, and I didn’t care to examine it too closely. “Can’t we—I don’t know, evict Mommie Dearest from the avatar?”
“No. We either leave it here, where it can strike at us any time she wants, or we kill it. But there’s no other choice, Jo.”
It felt vile, somehow, and I couldn’t shake it off. But he was right, I’d be destroying a shell, not a person.
Not a person who’d driven me halfway across the country. Who’d saved my life.
I couldn’t stand to think about it any longer. I picked up the gun from where I’d left it sitting next to the sink, cocked it, and aimed at the avatar’s head.
David put his hand on my shoulder—not to stop me, but to steady me.
And I fired.
It was the worst thing I had ever done.
Chapter Ten
The aetheric blindness was gone immediately, and David’s powers came flooding back, restoring him. Everybody was happy.
Everybody but me. I kept reliving the kick of the gun in my hand, and the sight of the avatar’s head—
“Jo.” That was David, sitting down next to me on the couch. I had been silent for a long while, and they’d been sensible enough to let me be, but David clearly thought I’d brooded enough.
“Leave me alone,” I said.
“You did the right thing.”
“I know that. Just leave me alone.”
He sighed and kissed my temple, very gently. “I would have done it for you.”
“You think I’d have felt better watching you kill one of your own?” I swallowed a bitter mouthful of stomach acid and wondered vaguely where I’d left the M&M candies. I thought I could have used one right now to get the terrible, bloody taste out of my mouth. “No thanks. I’ll handle my guilt like a big girl.”
David hesitated, then put his arm around me. I opened my eyes and saw that Luis Rocha was slumped in a chair, snoring (somehow, adorably), and Cassiel was pacing, looking like a caged beast with claustrophobia. I didn’t think she would have hesitated to pop a cap in an avatar, but then again, I didn’t really want to be her, either.
She bugged me.
“I should tell you who he was, once,” David said, and that made me turn and look at him in surprise. His brows went up. “You thought he’d always been an empty shell?”
“Well—yeah. Kind of.”
“He was Old Djinn, once—but not like Ashan. More like Venna. He was curious about humans, and liked to help them. He was caught in a convergence of forces, very rare, while trying to save humans from an earthquake. It destroyed the Djinn he had been, and left the shell behind. Since then, he’s been wandering. Empty. Jonathan thought about destroying him, but he said—he said—” David stopped, thinking, and then continued more slowly. “He said that we’d need him someday.”
“Oh Jesus, David!” I found myself covering my mouth with both hands, appalled. Jonathan had demonstrated a turn for prophecy, more than once. “Why didn’t you stop me?”
“Because I think what Jonathan saw was how much you were going to need him. I think he did what he was—designed to do.” He shook his head. “That sounds wrong. That’s not what I meant. But I feel that his destiny was already over.”
Again, that didn’t make me feel better. I wasn’t sure anything right now could make me feel better because Jesus Christ I’d just pulled the trigger and killed someone, even if it hadn’t been a person, a real person, or even a real Djinn.
My body still replayed it, over and over. And it hurt.
“You need to rest,” David told me, in that tone that husbands get sometimes. He meant it, and when I opened my mouth to protest, he covered it with one hand. “Stretch out. Come on. All the way. Legs up. There you go.”
I still felt miserable, but I had to admit that being down felt a whole lot better than sitting up. Cassiel had gotten adventurous and raided a linen closet, and found bags of clean sheets, towels, and blankets. They weren’t the kind of high-thread-count stuff you’d get at the tonier hotels, but they felt good on my skin.
Like the clothes Ashan had gifted me with. Bastard. Well, at least he hadn’t dressed me in knockoffs. Could have been worse.
I flinched again as the sound of the shot rang in my ears, and David’s warmth settled in behind me, holding me close. His hand stroked my forehead, then glided down my neck, over my shoulder, down my arm. . . . It wasn’t erotic, but damn, it really was. Just being touched relaxed something in my body that seemed to have been permanently knotted up, fused into a hard mass.
I let out a slow breath, and with it went some of my grief, my anger, my disappointment. I remembered the first night that I’d insanely decided to sleep with David; I hadn’t known his name then, or that he was a Djinn, or that he was going to alter the trajectory of my life on a course up, toward the stars. He’d been so kind to me then. And he’d touched me exactly the same way, and despite all my best efforts at seduction, he hadn’t touched me any other way. Not then.
It occurred to me now that I should have valued that more. I should have realized right then that he was something . . . special.
But at least I’d been smart enough to hang on to him once I did realize what I had.
“Why are we waiting?” I asked. “The avatar’s gone. We can go now.”
“We will,” David said, and his mouth was so close to my ear that his lips brushed teasingly over its curves. “You need to rest. You picked up a big dose of radiation outside of Amarillo, and I can’t heal you properly if you’re awake. So sleep. Once morning comes, we’ll move on.”
Cassiel paused in her pacing to look at us in a guilty sort of way, as if she just realized she was probably being annoying, and settled into a chair close to where Luis was sawing logs. Rahel stood at the door, a silent statue, watching and waiting.
I don’t think I intended to fall asleep, but between the seductive warmth of David’s hands and the exhaustion buried deep in my bones, I really didn’t have a choice.
I woke up to David’s hands, again, but this time they were shaking me, and when I started to speak he put a finger to my mouth. Unmistakable warning. I went still, fighting my way back toward some kind of alertness, and saw that Luis Rocha and Cassiel were already up and on their feet, hands clasped. Rahel was closing the door with calm, competent motions, locking it, and waiting with her entire body radiating tense expectancy.
We were all very, very quiet. I don’t know why, but I felt that primitive kind of terror, the kind our ancestors probably felt hiding in caves and hoping the lions and tigers passed them by.
Something slammed into the locked door with a shocking roar, and the wood jumped and bowed inward.
The being quiet strategy hadn’t done much, clearly. I got up, and David unfolded himself from the couch as well, both of us laser focused on the door, which wasn’t going to hold. I threw Earth power into it, along with Rocha and Cassiel, and that helped, but whatever was on the other side of it had Earth power as well, and man, was it pissed.
Rahel, with a negligent wave of her hand, ripped the heavy serving bar loose from the left-hand wall and slammed it against the failing door like the world’s largest burglar bar. “I think it’s time to go,” she said. “Back door?”
Oh yeah, I’d sealed it. Good planning. But then, it was probably good that I’d done it, because I was no more than halfway through undoing my melted metal seal when another pissed-off, very large thing slammed into that door as well. If I’d undone it faster, it probably would have sliced me open on its way to destroy everyone else.
“Not that
way,” I said. “What the hell is out there?”
“I don’t think you want to know,” Rahel said, as if it was amusing to her—and it probably was. “Go up, not out. Nothing out there strikes me as good at climbing.”
David nodded, looked up, and ripped open a significant hole in the roof, which spilled in predawn light of an uncertain gray color. He flexed his knees and fired his body up, landed easily fifteen feet above us outside the hole, and did a little scouting before nodding down at us.
“Damn,” Luis said. “Forgot my jet pack. Knew I should have packed that.”
Cassiel let out a sound that was too frustrated to be a sigh, and offered him a cradle of her linked fingers for his foot. He raised both eyebrows. “Are you kidding, chica?”
“Do I seem to be?” she snapped. “Hurry.”
He put his booted foot in her hands, and she tossed him straight up, letting out a yell of fury that sounded like it was ripped out of her spine. It was an impressive demonstration of how strong she was when using her Earth powers, and even as solidly built as Rocha was, she got him up high enough that he grabbed the hand David reached down to him. David pulled him up without any effort at all.
“Rahel,” David said. “Bring Cassiel. Joanne can make her own way.” I loved that about him—he knew I wouldn’t want to be evacuated ahead of the others. Besides, he wasn’t wrong. I was a Weather Warden. Lifting myself up wasn’t a challenge.
Rahel looked at Cassiel, and Cassiel looked back. I felt sparks fly, not the romantic kind, and I wondered what kind of unpleasant history there was between these two. Knowing Cassiel’s nature, it didn’t surprise me that she’d clashed with Rahel. It only surprised me that Rahel had survived it.
Rahel looked like she really didn’t want to touch Cassiel, and Cassiel looked pretty much the same.
“Do you want me to make it an order?” I asked Rahel. She gave me an are you kidding? sort of look, and then I remembered that Cassiel actually held the bottles, all of them except Venna’s, which was buried in my own bag. So technically, I couldn’t order Rahel to do squat. Not and have her listen.
“No need,” she said. “And no time. I’ll take my shower later.”
Mee-yow, that was harsh. Cassiel might have scratched back, but Rahel grabbed her around the waist and leaped up, dragging Cassiel with her. She let go as soon as they reached the roof, not even bothering to steady Cassiel, who went sprawling.
Rahel grinned.
“Play nice,” I said, and formed an air cushion under me, then heated it. Low pressure above me, high below, and zap, Bernoulli’s principle was my friend. Up I went, on my invisible elevator pad, and stepped lightly off just as the back door below gave with a metallic shriek.
David and Rahel replaced the roof, rapidly duplicating existing materials over the hole. With any luck, it’d buy us time.
Above us the rest of the hotel rose up in a central column. The pink stucco was, in the light, smudged mostly black, and the windows were all boarded up. In the daylight, the place looked even more derelict than at night.
But what drew my attention were the things pacing at ground level below us. My mouth went dry, and I suddenly wanted to retch. That was just wrong.
“What the hell is that?” Rocha was asking, sounding just as shaken as I felt.
“Chimera,” Cassiel said. She’d rolled to her feet and was studiously ignoring Rahel, although I had the feeling that she wasn’t going to forgive, or forget for the next several millennia. “It’s a forced merger of several animal forms. Bear, mountain lion, scorpion.”
That was what creeped me out the worst, I decided. The bear with the mountain lion’s head I could handle, but the giant curving arthropod stinger that twitched and curled and dripped with venom . . . no, that was just too much. This thing was a killing machine, and there were several of them.
Not only were the chimeras awaiting us, but there were wolf packs, too, thin and half starved and snarling up at us. They made running starts and leaped up the wall, trying vainly to claw themselves up. I knew something about wolves, and that wasn’t normal. Not in the least.
“Above us!” Rocha yelled, and I yanked my attention skyward. There was a small battalion of birds up there, big ones. I didn’t see any more bald eagles, but there were a couple of gigantic hawks, and several smaller ones. One or two turkey vultures were riding the thermals, evidently waiting for the inevitable mop-up operation. “We need a shield!”
I got one up just in time, and I curved it as much as I could, so that as the birds stooped and fell toward us they wouldn’t hit quite so harshly. Even so, at least half of them collided with such hard smacks I knew they’d broken their necks. Blood ran down the sides of the shield, sickeningly bright in the rising sun. The surviving birds took wing again, circling, and I knew they’d make another run. I hated it, and I reached out, trying to find them on the aetheric, trying to turn them aside.
No use. They were being completely controlled by a force far, far more ruthless and powerful than me.
David yelled a warning and ripped a large satellite dish clean off its moorings. He threw it as if it were a discus toward the edge of the roof, where one of the bear/ lion/scorpion things was clawing its way over the edge. The satellite dish hit it squarely and tipped it backward, off balance. I saw the scorpion legs underneath the fur, and once again felt the urge to retch.
The things could climb. Great. That was just perfect.
“We’re in trouble, guys,” I said. “I’m going to have to take drastic measures.”
“By all means,” Rahel said. “I always find that entertaining.”
I shot her a dirty look and readied a fireball. When the next chimera crawled creepily onto the roof and scuttled toward us, roaring out a mountain lion’s snarl with a bear’s boom, I let it fly. The temperature was well into the thousands of degrees, and the bear’s fur burst into flame. The chimera writhed and shrieked, and I pushed it, still burning, off the roof.
When I looked over, the dying chimera was being torn apart by its kin. Ugh. I just love nature.
“There’s more coming,” Rahel said quietly. She had dropped all hint of being amused now, though to her all this was still a highly academic exercise. “I would suggest you find a way out.”
My car was roof-deep in the road out there, and I didn’t think it was ever coming out, or that it would be in any way drivable if somehow it did. It was for damn sure that three of us wouldn’t fit on the motorcycle, and even two wouldn’t survive these things—these chimeras—which would rip anyone apart in seconds once they were at ground level. Even Cassiel. Two Djinn couldn’t carry three of us to safety without taking us through the aetheric, which would likely kill us anyway.
“Right,” I said. “Rahel, take Rocha. David, take Cassiel. Get them out of here. Take them all the way to Vegas if you have to. David, you can come back for me. I can hold out.” I was the logical one to remain; my combination of powers was something that outclassed Luis Rocha’s not inconsiderable talents, and even Cassiel’s, which was limited by her connection to him. I could pull Earth, Fire, and Weather to defend myself, and now that I knew these things were killable, I felt confident I could hold out.
David looked as if he wanted very, very badly to say no, several times, loudly, but he knew I was right. Luis and Cassiel were vulnerable here, and they’d saved our lives before. They deserved our help now.
He gave me a furious look, and I saw the sparks of fire and gold blaze up in his eyes. Truly a Djinn, in that moment, with his skin shading to metallic bronze. “Don’t die,” he said flatly. “Promise me.”
“I promise,” I said. “Get out of here. I’ll wait.”
He kissed me, and it was a hungry, desperate kind of kiss that left my whole body tingling and alive, my lips sunburned with the force of his emotion. My husband. I touched his cheek and said, “I will always love you, David.”
He kissed my palm. “There is no force in creation that will keep me away. You know that.”
“I know.”
“Then wait for me.”
He turned, fury in his movements, and threw his arms around Cassiel.
Then he launched himself up off the roof, into the air, and began to fly.
Rahel watched him go, then turned her attention to me. “Until later, my sistah.” She blew me a kiss, put her arms around Luis, and purred, “Well, this is certainly an upgrade from my last passenger.” I had to laugh at the discomfort on his face, and then she flexed her knees and they were gone, too.
Another monster scrambled over the edge of the roof.
Time to go to work.
David didn’t come back.
Neither did Rahel.
I paced myself, there on that smoke-stained roof, under the glare of the Vegas sun. I had my pack, and in it was food and water, which I gulped down as the chimeras kept coming, and coming, and coming. Mother Earth must have run out of bears and mountain lions, because around noon, a new breed came scuttling over the horizon and attacked the building.
And these used to be human.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing at first, because my brain refused to process the information. It was too disturbing, too sickening. I had to face it once the first of them scaled the wall, way too quickly, and used its human hands to pull itself up over the lip and its scorpion’s feet to race toward me. The human face on the thing had rolling eyes and a lolling, foaming mouth, but being driven mad clearly hadn’t affected its razor-sharp reflexes. I dropped the juice box I was sucking on and pulled down lightning—overkill, but this thing was completely disturbing, and my skin crawled with the idea it could even exist in the same time and space with me.
I zapped it into a blackened mess when it was still fifteen feet away. My ears rang with the blast, and I felt singed and disoriented, but oddly better for ridding the world of it.
That was before I heard the clattering, and realized that there were a lot of these monsters, and they were climbing in steady, relentless streams. As I watched, stomach dropping, I saw that two more had already cleared the ledge on one side, and at least three on the other. At least the damn bear/lion creatures had been slower.
