Unknown os-2

by Rachel Caine

  I dug deeply for every ounce of strength inside, and sprinted hard for the edge of the cliff. As my feet touched the last of the rock, I let my power explode out, driving me up in a graceful arc toward the moon, a shallow trajectory that rose, hung for a second, and then rapidly slipped down into a dive.

  I broke the surface with my outstretched hands, and arrowed deep into the water. The shock of the cold was enough to drive all thoughts from my head for a few seconds, as momentum carried me deeper and pressure built around me. It was so dark beneath the waves that I felt lost, suspended in icy night, and my body began to cry out almost immediately in protest. Too much cold, too much pressure, no air. I was no Weather Warden; this was not my environment, not even a little. There was a vast feeling of wrongness to it, of the very primal powers interacting to my detriment.

  And then there was a tremendous wave of force that blew through the heavy liquid around me, sending me tumbling, and above I saw a silvery ripple as the surface boiled into a thrash of bubbles.

  Something vast and dark began to descend. Curiously, it brought light with it—the headlights of cars, still powered from their batteries, trapped within its vast, sticky body.

  Golems are fearfully strong things, and virtually impossible to defeat, but they have a critical weakness.

  They really can’t swim.

  The golem’s limbs flailed the water in useless sweeps. The vast quantity of metal and stone that created and sustained it, that made it so invincible, was nothing but an anchor in the water, and I floated, watching as it fell past me and was pulled down, down, into the depths below me. The car headlights continued to glow, lighting up its struggles as it fell.

  I collected myself and began to push for the surface. The icy water was sapping my strength, and lack of oxygen would begin to confuse me soon, and force me to breathe even though there was nothing safe to draw in. The golem was inconvenienced, possibly fatally; if it couldn’t get out of the water before the seed at its core was corrupted by the salt water, it would dissolve into a formless mass of junk scattered across the ocean floor for future archaeologists to puzzle over.

  But we were close to the shore, and the golem might be able to make its way back up, following the ocean floor and climbing the rocks, before the corrosive action of the salt water reached its heart.

  A white comet of force streaked through the water, blowing me aside again in an uncoordinated tangle of limbs, and I watched it descend in lazy spirals into the dark, heading for the faint glow of the golem’s illumination. I had no idea what it was. I no longer even cared.

  My lungs began aching and spasming, hungering for air. I couldn’t linger, even if I wished to try. I kicked for the surface, driving hard into the black, but without the turbulence that had briefly turned the upper layers of the water silvery with trapped air, I could see little to guide me. At last I spotted the faint moonlight drifting through the waves, and arrowed for the surface with the last energy of desperation.

  I thought I had surfaced, and opened my mouth.

  The gasp I took in was equal parts air and water, and I sputtered, choked, coughed, and tried again, knowing that if I failed again, I wouldn’t have the strength to stay conscious.

  And that would mean death.

  Warm, sweet air flooded into my lungs. I floated on the surface, coughing and breathing in uneven gasps. Around me, the water heaved, dark and cold, and there was no sign of the golem. It was gone, as if it had never existed at all. Not even the bubbles remained.

  And then, from deep below me, I saw a bright white light that flared out like an explosion—but there was no force to it, only light that lingered, expanded, and faded down to a single hot pinpoint.

  It coalesced to a single, bright dot.

  A cometary flare, racing upward toward me.

  I began swimming hard, all too aware that it was hopeless even as I began the effort; the water would have grounded out my Earth abilities, even if I had still possessed the energy to ready a defense. My speed was merely that of a tired, abused human; I had no chance against anything that might be turned against me, particularly by a Weather Warden, with dominion over the water itself.

  The water turned a brilliant aqua blue around me, then a fierce white, as the speeding form came closer. It broke the surface ten feet from me, and the light flared, then faded to a dull glow, then darkness.

  Rashid lay floating on the surface of the water, eyes full of moonlight. His skin looked pallid beneath its indigo luster, and there were slashes and cuts on his body that had not healed.

  I swam to him, feeling the water and the cold dragging at me like hands. My legs felt rubbery and strength-less, and I was losing all feeling in my arms and hands, which struck the water clumsily, like paddles.

  “The creature’s dead,” Rashid said, and opened his left hand. In it was a glowing metal ball. It had burned his palm in a red circle. “The seed. Must be crushed. Can’t be done by a Djinn.”

  I took it from him, and he gasped in a rushing breath that told me more than his expression what kind of pain holding on to that seed had caused him. His wounds began to slowly knit themselves closed.

  The seed felt warm in my hand, and I felt it vibrating, building up its power again. It would only be vulnerable for a precious short time.

  I closed my fist around it, and squeezed.

  It shattered like glass, spreading something warm and slick, like oil, over my palm. When I opened my fingers again, there was only a faint shimmer of liquid, and a single scrap of oil-soaked paper with a few faint markings.

  I took hold of it with two fingers and dipped it into the water. It dissolved almost instantly into foam.

  Gone.

  I didn’t see the destruction of the golem, but that had likely been less than dramatic; the coherence of the thing would have simply . . . stopped, scattering component pieces as gravity willed. It was possible that the central core of the thing remained, stuck and inert, with all the doomed, illuminated vehicles and dead humans trapped inside it. I shuddered a little, thinking of what it meant to have that for a grave, and dipped my whole hand in the water, scrubbing at the oily remains. My teeth were chattering.

  “One thing I will say for you,” Rashid said, distantly. “You are not the most boring human I’ve ever met.”

  “I’m not human.”

  “You grow closer to it every moment,” he said, and with a sigh, righted himself in the water. Water cascaded from his skin and hair in silvery threads, emphasizing the flawless shape of his chest, the lines of muscles beneath. For someone so decidedly not human, he aped the form very well. “You won’t survive long in this water. You’re cold.”

  He was stating the blindingly obvious. I began to swim, heading for the rocky coastline where lights glowed. I was still clumsy, still aching, but I was utterly determined not to allow Rashid the satisfaction of saving me.

  After a beat, Rashid followed me, matching me stroke for stroke. The effort warmed my body, cleared my mind, and by the time I crawled up on the stones, battered by waves, I felt I might survive. That conviction quickly faded, though, as my wet clothing clung tightly, leeching the warmth from my skin, and I realized that I had no vehicle. No way to continue to Rose Canyon, where the map had shown me Alex—where I might, might find the other children, including Ibby. Where I might prevent more attacks, more deaths. More suffering.

  If only I were not so desperately tired.

  Rashid climbed up onto the rocks, sinuous as a panther, and looked down at me. So very Djinn. So very beautiful, perfect, arrogant. So curious, in the cock of his head as he watched me.

  Then he crouched down and put a hand on my shoulder.

  Warmth sheeted over me in a flood, sinking into every tissue, coursing through my nerves and bloodstream. Waking a sleepy satiation in me, and an almost overwhelming sense of exhaustion. I wanted, badly, to lay my head down on the cold rocks and sleep.

  I fought it, somehow; simply Djinn stubbornness, my last inheritance
from an endless lifetime of never surrendering to weakness. I pulled away from Rashid and stumbled to my feet. My clothes were dry, thanks to his efforts.

  I realized, with an appalling sense of horror, that I was going to have to genuinely thank him. For saving me. That was very nearly worse than losing to the golem.

  Rashid smiled, and whether he meant to or not, he robbed me of the necessity by saying, “The next time you call me a coward, I’ll rip your spine out and beat you with it. Just so we are clear on the matter.”

  I glowered at him. “Go away.”

  “And you don’t need my help.”

  “No.”

  “Liar.” His eyes were luminous and gleeful. “Where’s your human pet? The Warden?”

  “Where he’s needed. Why do you care?”

  “I deeply do not. I was merely curious. You seem . . . attached to him.” The distaste in his voice made me bristle, again. “It seemed strange to see you here, alone.”

  “I am not attached,” I snapped. “I am . . .” I smiled, sharp edged. “Merely curious.”

  That wiped the smugness from his face, and Rashid stepped away from me. His expression smoothed out into a blank mask, but his eyes continued to burn. “I have not seen a golem walk the Earth in a few thousand years,” he said. “Interesting that your enemies have such . . . long memories, don’t you think?”

  Memories, and powers, I thought, but didn’t say. Creation of a golem was nothing that a mere child could come up with, certainly not alone; the Warden children sent against me so far had been powerful, but it was unfocused brute force, not precision. Not the kind of delicate and focused control necessary to create something like a golem. That was a manifestation of Earth powers, but so very specific, so very exacting in its nature that few had ever been able to learn the trick of it. A mere handful of humans, throughout history.

  And all of those, so far as I knew, were long dead and gone. There was no one alive today, not even Lewis Orwell, who had the ability to do this sort of thing unaided.

  “It’s Pearl,” I said. “She knows these things. Forgotten talents, forgotten uses, collected for tens of thousands of years. The Wardens of today use powers rooted in science, in their understanding of the world around them. The Wardens of yesterday had no science; their powers had sources in legend, folklore, religion. It is a different thing altogether.” The golem was a little of all three. There were others, too. Things that had not been seen on the Earth for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Giants and monsters. Things the Wardens would be ill-equipped to battle on their own, if Pearl brought them out as weapons. “She’s teaching them. These children. Guiding them.”

  Rashid said nothing to that, but I could see he looked troubled. Like my Djinn friend and sometime lover Gallan, he would not believe me when I warned him of danger. He would have to see it, experience it for himself.

  Like Gallan, that would be a fatal error. And I could not stop him from making it.

  “You’ve done enough,” I told him, more softly, and stood up. “I will call—” My voice died as I pulled the cell phone from my pocket, flipped it open, and saw a dead screen. Water dripped from the casing in a steady stream.

  I hate water.

  Rashid sighed, reached over, and flicked the phone with a single finger. The flow of water stopped, the phone gave a smug musical chime, and the screen began to glow as it restarted itself.

  “I will call Luis,” I said, as if I hadn’t paused at all, “and we will handle this among the Wardens. Go away, Rashid.”

  “Say pretty please,” he purred. There was a maniacal gleam in his eyes, a Djinn emotion I recognized—remembered—all too well.

  I simply glared back, unspeaking, until he shrugged, bared pointed teeth, and misted away, leaving me alone on the rocks.

  “Hello?” Luis’s voice on the phone, small and distant. “Cass? Where the fuck are you?” He sounded anxious. Almost frightened.

  “I’m all right,” I said, and pulled in a deep breath. The sound of his voice filled some small, dark space inside me that I hadn’t realized had gone empty. Need. That was a human thing, need. It seemed every moment I lived, I discovered more human feelings inside me.

  Curious, how like Djinn feelings they were.

  “That was really not my question,” Luis snapped. “Where?”

  “At the shore,” I said. “I need you here.”

  “And I need you here. Dios, woman, you don’t go racing off by yourself like that, not when we have kids here in trouble! What were you thinking?” I recognized the tension in his voice; it had a deadly significance to me, because it was the same tense, furious tone he had used after his brother and sister-in-law had been shot. After I had elected to chase the killers, instead of working to save their lives. “We are Wardens. We save lives first! Why is that so damn hard for you to understand?”

  “It isn’t,” I protested. A curl of damp wind blew my hair away from my face, and I looked up at the moon and sighed. “My presence was not a help to you with Brianna. I thought I would do something useful. Such as find Isabel.”

  He let out a scorching, fluid string of Spanish curses that was as evocative for its fury as its precision. I waited, holding the phone away from my ear, until I heard him pause. “Finished?” I asked him coldly. “Because I will not be talked to in this manner.”

  “God, sometimes you’re exactly like my second-grade teacher!” He almost laughed, but there was no humor in it. “I hated that bitch.”

  He sounded . . . different. I frowned. “Luis,” I said slowly. “You know not to talk to me this way.”

  “Why do I care what you want? You’re a leech! You’re only hanging around me so you can suck on me anytime you need a fix. You don’t care that you just about knocked me down, pulling that much power out of me. You didn’t care about Manny and Angela, you don’t care about Ibby, about me—” He sounded . . . drunk. Verging on insane. He was raving, I understood that, but it still hurt. Badly. Was this what he thought of me, in the dark, secret recesses of his heart? That I was a mere parasite, pretending to be a part of his world?

  It gave rise to a startling, cold question: Was I? I had deliberately held myself apart. Deliberately thought of myself as different, better, more.

  Had that made me less, in the end?

  I forced my brain—my very human brain, subject to all these treacherous tides of emotion and pain—to focus. Luis was not a cruel man. I had done nothing to anger him so much; yes, I’d left him, I’d done it without warning, but the reaction was all out of proportion.

  I’d left him with Brianna. The little Warden girl, the one that Pearl had so thoroughly corrupted. Another eager little killer, twisted away from her true life and purpose.

  Brianna. But Brianna was a Fire Warden, not an Earth Warden; she was capable of incinerating half the hospital, but what I heard in Luis’s voice was a very different kind of attack.

  One that had insidiously gotten inside of him.

  An Earth Warden had created the seed for the golem and called it into being. Set it on my trail.

  I had an enemy who had not yet revealed himself. One who was close enough to touch—and twist—Luis. One subtle enough to do it without Luis even noticing.

  Turner? But Turner was a Fire Warden. Only a Fire Warden? No, it couldn’t be Turner. I had looked at him on the aetheric. I had seen his true self. There had been no deception there. Only exhaustion.

  Unless he was very good. Good enough to fool my admittedly human-limited senses on the aetheric.

  With Pearl’s help . . .

  He’d reached for the case of the list, when it had fallen to the floor. That might have just been reaction.

  It might have been a plan. Pearl had sent him to get the list away from me. I’d stopped him. After seeing the lengths I’d been prepared to go to, he hadn’t dared make another move, not then.

  Luis was still talking, but I was no longer listening. Whether this was real anger, or false, I couldn’t know, but I no lo
nger felt that I had left him in safety.

  I no longer knew where I could find safety at all.

  I climbed from rock to rock, jumped and landed hard on the walkway on the other side of the protective barrier, and ran for the distant headlights moving along a nearby street.

  I needed a ride, and I wasn’t going to be particular about how I obtained one.

  Chapter 8

  I CONSIDERED STEALING ANOTHER VEHICLE, but they were all occupied by drivers; I was planning how to force one to stop so that I could remove the driver—without hurting him or her—when, to my surprise, a white sedan glided quietly to a stop at the curb next to me. The tinted window rolled down.

  “Hey, is your name Cassiel?”

  I looked in, frowning. The driver was no one I knew. “Get in,” the man said. The locks clicked open, and he leaned over the seat to shove the door open. “I said get in. Your friends sent me to pick you up.”

  He was a younger man, probably near Luis’s age, although there was something in his eyes that seemed much older. Hard experience, perhaps. The car was clean, neat, and smelled of smoke and narcotics. The man nodded to me as I slipped into the passenger seat and buckled my safety belt, then slammed the door. The window rolled up, sealing me in with the narcotic- flavored smoke. He pulled out into traffic, heading vaguely north.

  I watched his profile steadily. “Aren’t you going to ask me where I need to go?” I asked him.

  “Nope,” he said. “Because you’re going where I tell you.” He pulled out a knife as long as his forearm from a sheath underneath the driver’s seat, and held it casually on his leg. “You just sit there and be quiet, all right? Don’t give me no trouble.”

  “Who sent you?”

  “You always ask this many questions when you see a knife? Shut the hell up and hand it over.”

  “It,” I repeated.