Unknown os-2

by Rachel Caine

  I held up my metal hand and said, “No ambulance. No hospital.” I wiggled the fingers to show him that it worked, then lowered it and closed my eyes. “I will sleep now.”

  I don’t know, but I imagined that Turner and Luis exchanged long looks. I simply drifted off into a half-drugged distance of shock, artificial calm, and true, genuine exhaustion.

  It felt like I slept only a few minutes before coming awake again, shaking. The calm and shock had left me, the cold Djinn certainty had left me, and there was only the knowledge of what I had done to my fragile human flesh.

  Luis was sitting beside me on the couch. I looked mutely at him, my eyes blurring with cold, lost tears, and he put his arm around me, pressed his lips to my temple, and whispered, “Thank God. Thank God you’re back.”

  I was. The person who had been inhabiting my body, from the moment I had realized what my only choice had been, was gone. That Cassiel had once again been banished to the hidden recesses where she lurked.

  “That was her, wasn’t it?” he asked. “The Cassiel you used to be. The Djinn. The badass you keep telling me about.” The one who would make the choice to destroy humanity, if it was necessary.

  I nodded, burying my face against his shirt. I couldn’t stop shaking. Couldn’t stem the tears. His hand stroked my hair over and over, an animal comfort and connection, and I wanted . . . oblivion. Just for a while.

  “You were right,” he told me. “She’s terrifying.”

  To me, as well.

  The next few minutes were long ones, silent ones, filled with the sound of Turner drinking down a glass of water, refilling it, then emptying it again, as if he hoped to wash himself clean from the inside out. I wondered if I should ask for something, but I didn’t need to do so; Luis, unasked, brought me a glass and very gently encouraged me to drink.

  I hadn’t realized how thirsty I was until the water touched my lips, and then I sucked it down gulp after greedy gulp, barely pausing for air until the tumbler was dry. He refilled it, then sat beside me as I drank at a slower pace, stroking my hair with restless fingers.

  “It’s the power,” he said. “It takes a lot out of you, physically. And you—” He glanced down at the metal hand, lying still in my lap. “Yeah. I’m not even sure how you did what you did.”

  “Which part?” I asked.

  “Hell, any of it. I’ve never seen anything like that before, outside of some big-budget sci-fi movie.” He kept watching the hand with guarded fascination. “Are you sure that’s not some evil hand or something?”

  “Evil?” I raised it in surprise, flexing the metal fingers. “Why would this be evil?”

  “You’re kidding. I mean, it’s a metal hand.”

  “My flesh hand was much worse, I think.” I touched my fingers together. The control was very good, but there was an odd clink as the metal connected.

  Luis continued to stare. “Can you feel anything with that?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  I raised my eyebrows involuntarily, because it was a question that hadn’t rightly occurred to me. I ran the metal fingertips over texture—the sofa, the smooth leather of my jacket, then lightly over Luis’s skin.

  All different sensations. All exactly as experience had taught me they should feel.

  “The metal,” I said, surprised. “It’s a part of the living Earth. Your powers control metal, so I can interpret the sensations.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “No,” I said, and put my metal palm against his warm cheek. “Does it feel odd?”

  He seemed startled, raising his hand to lay it over my bronze one. Before he could answer me, my cell phone began to ring, buzzing against my skin like a trapped insect. I slid it free, flipped it open, and held it to my ear. The screen displayed nothing at all except a random pattern of light.

  I put it to my ear.

  “Human technology.” It was Rashid. He sounded disgusted, and a little smug. “So wasteful, yet so interesting.”

  “We can’t all be you,” I said. “Did you get the child?”

  “Of course. And before you ask, the man driving the car doesn’t yet know that she’s gone. I retrieved her when he stopped for a traffic signal.”

  “Did he see you?”

  “Of course not. To all appearances she is still locked in his trunk.” Rashid’s voice took on a slight edge. “Before you ask, yes, I am following him.”

  “What about the girl? You’re sure she’s all right?”

  “Did I not say—”

  “Yes.” I closed my eyes and tried to focus. At Luis’s urgent gesture, I put the phone on speaker so the others could hear. “What did you do with her?”

  “I am not insensitive; I didn’t just abandon her at the side of the road. I found a policeman. I handed her over safely enough.”

  That eased a weight within me that was staggering once lifted. “Where are you now?”

  “In the trunk of his car,” Rashid said. “I thought it would be impolite to take one thing from him and leave nothing in return.”

  “No,” Turner snapped. “You need to get out of there. Just get out. If you got the girl, the job’s over. Leave it.”

  “Don’t,” I said, overriding him. “Stay with him, Rashid. But understand, if he is heading toward Pearl, you must know when to let go. You can’t allow yourself to get too close. You saw what she can do.” He’d knifed the blackened evidence of it on the kitchen table.

  “I saw,” he agreed. “I will be in contact.”

  He broke the connection without any sort of goodbye, which was not unexpected. Turner was already dialing his own phone, and turning away to hold a fast, urgent conversation. He was back in just under five minutes, looking immensely relieved beneath his pallor and exhaustion.

  “They’ve got the girl all right,” he said. “She’s in custody, heading for the hospital with an armed escort. I got a Warden to meet them at the hospital. She’ll be watched.”

  “And her parents?”

  “I’m heading over there now,” he said. “This kind of good news, I’d rather deliver in person.” He picked up his suit jacket, which was as rumpled as his pants and shirt, and shrugged it on, avoiding our eyes. Then he said, “You two want to come along?”

  “I’m not sure. She still doesn’t look too good,” Luis said doubtfully, but I was already moving to stand up. He braced me with one hand under my left elbow, but

  I felt only a touch of disorientation. The shock was, indeed, passing.

  The physical pieces of it, at any rate. I couldn’t yet tell what I felt emotionally, or would feel tomorrow. It was entirely new territory for me, to have been so deeply hurt. Especially by my own choice, and my own action.

  “I want to go with you,” I said. “If you’ll allow it.”

  We all glanced at the burned spot on the table, the soot-blackened knife, and the white exposed bones that were all that was left of my hand. Turner shuddered.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I guess you’ve got the right to do whatever you want to right now. Fine.”

  Luis didn’t approve, but he only shook his head and touched my shoulder to turn me toward him. “Hey,” he said. “You need more?” More power, he meant. I hadn’t dared to check, but now I realized that I was as empty of energy within as I had been parched and thirsty.

  I nodded. He sighed and took my right hand in his, facing me. “Ready?” he asked.

  I held his gaze and nodded.

  His energy flowed into me, a trickle that built to a steady pulse within my veins. It left my skin burning hot, and I felt the interface of metal with my arm grow colder by contrast, like a phantom limb of ice. The power coursed through me, repairing damages, and then pooled deep within. I pulled away then, sending a wordless pulse of gratitude between us, and in an unguarded moment saw the drawn look on his face, and the fierce pain in his eyes.

  I was hurting him. He was weary and anguished; he had seen me do a terrible thing, and had been helpless to stop it
, or to save me from the consequences. On top of that, he’d already been through a great deal. Now, I was taking from his precious reserves of strength.

  But he didn’t hold back. Not at all.

  I kissed him. I don’t know why; it was wrong, it was the wrong moment, the wrong place. Everything about it was irrational and terribly mistaken, except for the rush of feeling that rose inside me at the soft, and surprised, touch of his lips. At the way his body tensed and leaned toward mine. At the way his hands slipped up my arms and caressed my body.

  Luis broke the kiss with a gasp and stepped away, cheeks flaming dark red. His eyes cut toward Turner, who had paused, staring, in the act of turning the knob on the front door.

  “What are you looking at?” he demanded. Turner shook his head. “Then get the hell out, man, you never saw people kissing before? Go.”

  Turner shut his mouth with a snap and left the house. Luis reached down to take my right hand in his left. His forehead leaned to press against mine.

  “Hey,” he said. “Later, okay? We need to talk about this.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Later.”

  If there was a later.

  I reached for the scroll, sealed in its protective coating of enamel that felt as warm as bone, and slipped it back within my jacket as we left.

  The FBI sedan was no more pleasant this time than it had been before, but it was mercifully brief, and I was too tired, too distant to take any notice of, or make any objection to, the various stenches and discomforts. My muscles had begun to ache and throb, complaining of the long day and constant fear. I needed rest, I realized. Sleep. Food. The basics to continue human life.

  But first, I needed to see this through. That wasn’t logical, but it was necessary.

  “Why did she come after you?” Luis asked. “She’s doing it more and more, all these little attacks. It’s like she’s trying to kill you, but not trying too hard.”

  It was an excellent question. I kept my eyes closed, adjusted my position in the seat to ease an ache in my back, and said, “Have you ever seen a bullfight, Luis?”

  “A—hey, man, just because I’m Hispanic doesn’t mean—”

  “I’m talking about the picadors,” I said. “The bull must be angered before the fight. So the picadors torment the beast, stabbing it, arousing its fury until it is willing to charge. It makes a better show.”

  He was silent for a moment, and I felt his gaze on me. I didn’t look.

  “I’m the bull,” I said. “The sacrifice. She just wants a better fight.”

  “What about the rest of us? The Wardens?”

  I shrugged. “She’ll kill anyone who gets in her way,” I said. “But her fight isn’t really with you. It’s with me. With the Djinn.”

  “I thought you were the bullfighter, chica.”

  I smiled slowly. “Sometimes you’re the bullfighter,” I said. “And sometimes, you’re the bull.”

  I slept a little during the drive, waking as Turner slowed the car and braked it in front of a house on a suburban street—a house like many others. Like Lu-is’s own, in fact, if a little older. There were many cars parked around it—police vehicles and big, industrial vans bristling with ungainly antennae. There were also those on foot—simple gawkers, drawn by the mystery of what was happening, so long as it wasn’t happening to them, of course. Turner’s car was waved beyond the barricades, into a clear space in the driveway.

  “Back door,” he said. “Follow me. And don’t look over at the crowd. Cameras are filming everything, you’d be breaking news.”

  I kept my back to the crowd as strobes flashed, camera lights woke to a bright glare, and questions began to be shouted in our wake. We walked quickly and quietly around the corner of the house, leaving the reporters and onlookers behind, and followed a small brick path through a neat, small yard to a screen door as the sudden burst of noisy interest faded out in disappointment.

  Beyond it, all of the lights were on behind the house, no doubt to discourage the curious or determined. There was a girl’s bicycle lying on its side on the porch, and a pair of roller skates, elbow and knee pads, a pink helmet.

  A baseball mitt and bat. A soccer ball. Gloria was an active child. Turner didn’t so much as glance at them, but I supposed he’d seen it before. Been here before.

  Inside, the police paused as Turner came in, turning expectantly toward him. There were three present, two of them in plain suits, one in uniform. I didn’t recognize any of them, but they evidently recognized me, and Luis, with closed expressions and guarded nods.

  The two people sitting on the couch, apart but somehow unmistakably together, looked . . . empty. Haunted and hollowed out by fear and stress. The woman had a glimmer of power around her, only a ghost on the aetheric; she had once tried to be a Warden, I remembered Turner had said. She’d lost whatever power she’d once had, or at least lost the will to use it. She was a thin, middle-aged woman of African descent, with delicate, high cheekbones and skin the color of dark roasted coffee. Beautiful, but drawn and made frail by fear.

  The man was taller, a bit lighter in coloring, and his eyes were a striking pale green. He looked at us mutely. Miserably. With, still, a gleam of hope in his expression.

  There was an array of photographs on the coffee table in front of them, removed from frames that had been carelessly stacked beneath on the carpet. In each was the image of their child, Gloria—laughing, fearless, strong. A life, laid out in a neatly spaced row.

  I remembered the terror and pain in the girl I’d touched, locked in that trunk, and felt another lingering stab of outrage and anger. This was Gloria—the confidence, the strength, the possibility. That other should never have been visited on her, not at this age. Not at any age.

  A flare of sudden awareness illuminated the woman’s dimmed eyes—she’d read something in Turner’s body language, or his expression. She came to her feet, suddenly tense, and her husband rose with her more slowly, more carefully, as if he might break if he moved too fast.

  “She’s alive,” Mrs. Jensen said. It wasn’t a guess. I watched life spill into her, like water pouring from a broken dam, and she no longer looked frail. No longer tired. I could now see where Gloria inherited her strength and vivacity. “She’s alive!”

  She clapped her hands and threw herself into her husband’s arms. He continued to stare over her head at Agent Turner, eyes still full of hope and fear, until Turner smiled and said, “She’s okay, we’ve got her. She’s on her way to the emergency room in La Jolla. We can have you on a plane in half an hour. You’ll see her very soon, I promise you.”

  The man shuddered and shut his eyes, burying his face in his wife’s hair, and the two of them clung together and cried, sinking back down to the couch, weeping in utter relief. There was a feeling in the room as the tension shattered—it reminded me of the clean, crisp air after a storm’s passage. A moment of peace.

  All things changed, but the moments were what mattered. I had never understood that as a Djinn, where such things were eternal, but now I strove to recognize these moments, cling to them, live in them as fully as I could.

  I was happy for these strangers. Just . . . happy.

  “I want to introduce you to someone,” Turner continued. “This is Luis Rocha, he’s a—civilian consultant working with us. And his partner—” He hesitated.

  “Leslie,” I supplied. “Leslie Raine.”

  “Yes, of course.” He looked briefly embarrassed by the lapse, though he shouldn’t have been; I was impressed that he had not automatically called me Cassiel.

  “They were—instrumental in getting Gloria away safely from the man who took her.”

  Instrumental. What an odd thing to be, an instrument. But then, I supposed that he was right in labeling me so. I had been used . . . by Ashan, by the Wardens, by Turner himself. In this case, though, perhaps it had been a higher purpose at work.

  Still. I did not like being used, not even by God.

  Luis glanced down at my left ha
nd, burnished and gleaming; I slid it into the pocket of my jacket before the Jensens could notice and comment on its oddity. Mrs. Jensen sniffled, wiped at her eyes, and forced a smile on her lips as she extended her hand toward me. I shook it gravely, then her husband’s. Luis did as well. There was something so vulnerable in their gratitude, so overwhelming, that it was difficult for me to meet their tear-brimmed eyes. I didn’t feel worthy of their respect, suddenly. I remembered suggesting that we use their child as bait, and felt suddenly filthy with the memory.

  “Did you get him?” Mr. Jensen asked. “The man who took my little girl?”

  The police were prepared for the question, I realized; I had not been, and I looked at Luis, who looked in turn at Turner. Turner’s expression didn’t change. “We’re running him down,” he said. “He’s not going anywhere. We’ll have him in custody before your plane touches down in Cali.”

  “You let me have him,” Mr. Jensen said. “You let me have him and you won’t have to worry about any of that bullshit. There won’t be enough of that bastard to bury, I promise you that.”

  I knew how he felt. I felt the same, and I wondered, in a strangely disconnected way, if Rashid had also been moved to hatred by holding that little girl in his arms as she wept in pain. If so, Mr. Jensen wouldn’t have anything left to punish.

  I rather hoped that was the case. It would amuse Rashid, and save Mr. Jensen from any . . . regrets.

  “Let’s focus on Gloria right now,” Turner said, which seemed to distract the parents from their vengeance, at least for now. “Get some things together, and get some of Gloria’s as well. That will help her feel more at home in the hospital—clothes, toys, that kind of thing. They’re probably going to want to keep her overnight for observation.”

  They both nodded, eager to have something, anything to do. I felt almost regretful as I said, “Before you go, I need to ask you a question.”

  The Jensens stopped, still holding on to each other, and both of their gazes fixed on me.

  “Have either of you ever been to a place called the Ranch?”

  I wasn’t so much expecting a straightforward answer to the question as hoping to see, in the aetheric, an indication of surprise. And I got it, from the husband. A faint, but unmistakable, ripple of surprise.