Unknown os-2

by Rachel Caine

  “And I can’t give it. In whatever form.” I swallowed hard. “Choose something else.”

  He was silent. There was a subtle shift in his body; it still looked calm and meditative, but I sensed a readiness to move, to act, a restless hunger at odds with his outer stillness. “You’re certain. If it’s merely a matter of your scruples, I can play the villain. Force you to compliance.”

  “No,” I said flatly. “No bargain.”

  “Not even for the life of the one you do love?” Rashid knew. He understood why I had refused. Hence, the cold darkness in his eyes. Djinn do not understand rejection. They do not bear it well. “He is suffering now. Greatly. Soon, he will die, and what will your morality matter then? It’s a matter of flesh, nothing more.”

  “If it was nothing more, why would you want it?” I shot back, and saw his face change. His eyes flickered just a little, with hot blue. “Name another price, Rashid. Anything else except the scroll, or being your lover.”

  He shrugged. “Your firstborn.”

  Surely he was joking. That was an ancient human folktale. Djinn did not collect children; they had no use for them. The idea that Rashid would want to make a pet out of my child—presuming I could even create life within me in that way, which seemed impossible—was ridiculous, and strangely chilling.

  “My firstborn,” I repeated. “You cannot be serious.”

  “I am,” he said. “Your firstborn child. You will give him to me. Swear this.”

  “No.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Twice you refused me. Once more, and I will go.”

  “Then change what you want!”

  “No,” he said. “Firstborn. Or I go.”

  It was a foolish bargain for us both. First, I had no interest in becoming a mother in the primal human way, although I had great fondness for little Ibby. Second, I could not imagine a circumstance under which Rashid would find it desirable to collect on his bargain for a child, no matter what he claimed.

  I passed a sign that glowed green and white in the headlights, and announced that I was nearing Rose Canyon. The area seemed deserted, sleeping under the cold moonlight; trees swayed, clouds drifted, nothing else moved.

  It was a huge, empty area. Without Rashid’s help, I would be too late to find Luis. And too weak to save him.

  The fact was that Rashid was the only Djinn still willing to treat with me at all, and by the laws of bargaining, I could only reject his bargains three times before the bargaining ended.

  This was my last chance. My very last. And for whatever unfathomable reason, Rashid seemed fixed on his demand.

  “Yes,” I said. “My firstborn child, offered in exchange for your guidance to Luis Rocha and your aid in this fight to rescue the Wardens and humans. Are we agreed?”

  “We are agreed,” Rashid said, and a silvery glow slid across his skin, and pooled in his eyes for a moment before he blinked it away. “Go left.”

  There was a turnoff ahead. I took it, moving from a smooth paved road to one that was still paved, but less smooth—cracked, humped in places, poorly patched. It immediately reminded me of the stillness and isolation of the area of Colorado that Pearl had chosen for her fortress before—something faintly alive about this place, as if the Mother’s spirit dwelt a little closer to the world here than in other spots. Maybe it was simply the lack of human presence, the wildness of it.

  We drove on, the big ambulance bouncing and creaking as I steered it through narrow, winding turns and across a bridge over an unseen creek. There was little to be seen in detail; the moonlight gave vague outlines of shapes, but the subtlety of that was overridden by the glare of the headlights as we drove. I considered switching them off, and as I reached down for them, they went off without my physical assistance.

  Rashid. He was facing forward now, staring intently through the front glass and frowning. I slowed as my eyes fought to adjust to the sudden darkness. He glanced aside at me. “Change places,” he said. “I will drive.”

  I nodded and shifted over; he brushed against me on the way, and his skin felt summer- hot, and less like skin than burnished metal; with a shock, I realized that he felt like my replacement bronze left hand. It felt as if the merest touch of him would leave a burn, and my flesh tingled in passing.

  Rashid’s lonely need was a physical thing, radiating from him into me.

  I tried not to allow that to show.

  Rashid pressed the accelerator, and the ambulance leapt forward, tires biting hard and engine growling against the weight it was dragging. He drove too fast for a human, especially in the dark, but Djinn reflexes were supernatural. I was safe enough, so long as he had nothing to gain from causing an accident.

  We didn’t speak. I focused on Luis again, but though I could hear him breathing in odd, uneven jerks, he didn’t try to communicate with me. Not even to scream. Fear tightened in white-hot bands around my stomach and my throat, and I could only wait.

  Wait as Rashid reached the end of the paved road, twisted the wheel, and suddenly crashed the ambulance into a boiling green mass of foliage on the right.

  It concealed a road. Gravel at first, then raw dirt—neatly maintained, almost flat. The sides were precisely drawn, and there was no grass growing over the lines.

  It was a great deal too precise, for nature, and that spoke of Earth Wardens maintaining the landscape. It seemed a foolish waste of power, until I considered that as a training exercise, it would have been useful in itself—teaching acolytes the control and uses of their power. A Warden who could neatly control grass, trees and bushes from encroaching on the road could also do the opposite—block or destroy a road quickly with the same tools.

  It meant that we would have a difficult time getting out once they’d been alerted to our presence.

  But I already knew that.

  The road wound down a steep hill, twisting like a snake through treacherous switchbacks. Rashid flew down it at an insane speed, teeth bared, eyes flaring bright with pure, risk-taking joy.

  He lost his smile for a bare instant, and said, “Hold.” It was all he had time to say before I saw the ground ahead of us crumble and disappear into a sudden, dramatic sinkhole less than five feet from the hood of the ambulance. The hole was at least twenty feet across, and there was no chance of stopping. Still less chance of a clumsy, non- aerodynamic vehicle like an ambulance somehow jumping the chasm.

  But Rashid did both. He stopped the van so abruptly that the momentum pitched the back of the vehicle up in an arc, straight up, flipping the ambulance in a sickening full, whipping revolution twice. I clung to the dashboard and the handle above the door, struggling not to lose my grip as gravity’s pull tugged one way, then another . . . and then I saw the road coming up at us from below on the last revolution.

  We were somehow right side up. The front tires hit first, and Rashid pressed the gas.

  The back wheels slipped into the chasm, but the momentum and the front wheels’ grip dragged them up with a bump, and then we were flying again, moving so fast that the world passed in a twisting blur.

  “Five seconds,” he told me. “Be ready.” Rashid sounded utterly focused and calm.

  I was still openmouthed and amazed that we had survived that impossible maneuver.

  You made a good bargain, some part of myself said. It was probably right. My mission would have ended there in that sinkhole if I hadn’t swallowed my pride to accept Rashid’s help.

  I had no idea what we would be coming into in the promised seconds, but the seconds counted down to zero.

  Rashid hit the brakes with a violence that threw me forward, then back, and before I could open my passenger door he was out and pulling it open to drag me out. As he did, the ambulance disappeared. No, it was still there, but he had successfully hidden it, shifted it between times and realities. It was a rare Djinn skill, one I had never mastered; I hadn’t known Rashid was capable of such things.

  It was good that he was. In another second, as he pulled me at a run
away from the spot where the ambulance had been, a white- hot comet of fire hurtled out of the darkness, growing in size as it went, and detonated on the empty grass where the ambulance had been. It would have been utterly wrecked, and us with it. As it was, I felt the pressure wave and heat on my back, and smelled a faint scorch as the ends of my hair blackened. I stumbled against Rashid, who held me upright and pulled me onward, in a crashing run through underbrush, whipped by branches and slashed by thorns, pursued by something that I sensed coursing darkly through the trees like a bounding black pack of dogs. Our pursuers were silent. I tried to turn to face them, but Rashid wouldn’t allow it. Wouldn’t let me so much as slow to look.

  “Let go!” I hissed at him. He sent me a burning look out of lambent eyes and ignored me. When I stumbled and almost fell, my feet twisted in tangled roots, he hissed, grabbed me, and threw me over one shoulder with his hand gripping the backs of my thighs. It was a ridiculous, helpless posture, but I dared not struggle. He was moving too fast, and with too much purpose. I tried lifting my head to see what was behind us, but between the veil of my blowing hair and the darkness, I could make out nothing.

  And then, quite suddenly, Rashid’s body tensed, exactly as a human’s would have for a great effort, and I felt a tremendous force flow from him to hammer against the ground as he leapt. We rose into the air in a parabolic arc, and below . . . below . . .

  Below was a chasm, a deep one, full of sharp rocks and killing drops. Too wide for a human to attempt to jump, no matter how foolhardy. Had I been running on my own, I would have stopped.

  Looking down, I saw our pursuers burst out of the scrub into the small clearance between the brush and the cliff. Black as the shadows, vaguely dog-shaped, but with the physiques of bears and the speed of panthers. Nothing natural. Chimeras, forced together by the twisted but powerful skills of an Earth Warden of exceptional talent and madness. Two of them, moving faster than the others, toppled over the edge of the cliff and fell in a shower of stones and dirt to the rocks below—a drama that I watched as the arc of our jump began to decline again, and the far side rushed up at us with frightening speed.

  Rashid landed, legs tensed, and barely paused before breaking into a run, again.

  He only got a few steps before he stopped and bent to lower me back to the ground. I backed a step away from him, caught between a furious snarl and gratitude, and realized why he’d put me down.

  “Well?” He cocked an eyebrow at me. “I’m yours to command, mortal. Temporarily.”

  From all around us came the metallic clinks of weapons being made ready.

  Chapter 9

  LIGHTS BLAZED ON, brilliant as morning, illuminating us from two sides, and I saw human shapes stepping out of the trees—dressed in dark trousers, with bulky black vests and dark blue all-weather jackets. Most were armed with assault rifles. Those who weren’t were armed with handguns.

  All weapons were pointed at the two of us. This didn’t pose much of a challenge for Rashid, but for me . . .

  Agent Ben Turner stepped out of the shadows. His gun was in his holster. He looked exhausted, hollow-eyed, and angry. “You,” he said. “Down on the ground, hands behind your heads. Both of you. Do it now!” He speared Rashid with a glare. “I know you probably aren’t worried about us, but if you don’t comply, she gets shot. Understand?”

  Rashid nodded, and without a flicker of his oddly amused smile, lowered himself with Djinn grace to his knees and laced his fingers behind his head.

  Then he looked up at me, eyebrows raised.

  “Unless you’d prefer to try martyrdom,” he said. “Entirely your choice, of course.”

  I dropped to my knees, turning my glare instead to Agent Turner.

  Who had tried to kill me.

  I slowly laced my fingers together behind my head—one set flesh, one set metal—and watched as he nodded to his FBI team of agents, who swarmed forward to shove both Rashid and me forward and snap cold steel around our wrists before hauling us both to our feet again.

  There was something odd about the handcuffs, and I tested them with a frown.

  As I reached for power, a sharp, painful shock went out from the cuffs. “New thing,” Agent Turner told me, reading the surprise in my face with eerie accuracy. “We’ve been developing a few tricks the last few years. Some of us weren’t convinced the Wardens were a great thing for this country, what with all the egos and the corruption and unpredictability. We developed some countermeasures. That’s one. You try to use your powers, and you get shocked. The bigger the draw, the bigger the shock in reaction. So don’t try it. Trust me.”

  “We,” I repeated. “So your loyalty is not with the Wardens.”

  He shrugged. “Double agent,” he said. “I’m spying on the FBI for the Wardens. On the Wardens for the FBI. But only one of those is for real, and that’s the FBI side. As far as I’m concerned, if every Warden on Earth disappeared tomorrow, we’d be a hell of a lot better off. Speaking of that—” He reached out, flipped back the leather of my jacket, and found the scroll.

  No!

  I tried to fight him, but bound as I was, there was nothing I could do. I subsided, panting, as he pulled the case from my pocket. He smiled, and searched for the catch to open it.

  There wasn’t one. It had sealed itself into a perfect hard shell, like hardened ivory. After a moment of fruitless poking at the thing, Turner put it in an inside pocket of his own jacket. “Something for the techs,” he said. “They’ll figure out how to crack into it. Once we have the list, we can start to manage this effectively.”

  “To stop the abductions?”

  “For a start,” he said. “More than that, we can start managing the Wardens, instead of letting them have an unlimited supply of governmental support and cash.”

  His problems with the Wardens were, frankly, not my concern. Let Lewis Orwell and Joanne Baldwin deal with the political aspects of their organization; my concerns were much more basic. More personal. “You sent the man after me.”

  “Him? Oh, Glenn, the guy with the car? Yeah. He was only supposed to tail you, and grab the scroll if he could. I assume, since you still have it, that it didn’t work out. Did you kill him?”

  “Would you care if I had?”

  Turner smiled thinly. “Oddly enough? Yes. I’d like to keep the funeral costs down on this operation if I can. And he was acting on my orders. That means I’m ethically responsible for him.”

  I shrugged, which wasn’t particularly easy with my hands bound so closely behind me. “He shouldn’t have tried to threaten me with a knife. Or underestimated me. And your ethics are hardly what I would consider to be spotless.” I hardened my gaze and focused in on his face. “Where is Luis?”

  “Not here,” Turner said. “So don’t go nuclear on me. It wasn’t my idea to take him anyway.” I didn’t blink. “He’s safe.”

  “No,” I said. “He’s not.” I had not heard from him since Rashid and I had been taken prisoner, and although the connection remained, like a hiss of static between us, I thought Luis was unconscious. “He was being hurt.”

  Turner frowned and said, “No, that’s impossible. I know—” He stopped himself, but it was too late; he’d already admitted to me that he knew far too much. I felt a primal growl building in the back of my throat, and I knew that my eyes were growing brighter, creating their own light stronger even than the brilliant halogen spotlights being directed on me. “He’s safe. That’s all you need to know. The Wardens aren’t in charge of this anymore. This is a government matter, and we’re taking control.”

  I barked out a laugh of pure disbelief. “Really.”

  A hand fell on Turner’s shoulder, and another man stepped up, eclipsing him immediately. Not for size; Turner was broader, taller, more physically imposing. This man, however—he was unquestionably in charge. He was small in stature, expensively dressed under his government-issue bulletproof vest and Windbreaker. It was hard to tell his age; anywhere between thirty and fifty, I guessed,
but there was no trace of gray in the dark, neatly trimmed hair. Expressive dark eyes that somehow conveyed his regret and command without a word being said. He wore a wedding ring, a pale gold band on his left hand, and a silver ring with a red stone on his right. Like all the agents, he had a communications device curling around his ear.

  Unlike most, he had no gun in evidence.

  “Ms. Raine,” he said. “Or should I call you Cassiel?”

  I stared at him without blinking, and didn’t answer.

  “My name is Adrian Sanders. I’m the special agent in charge of this operation, in cooperation with Home-land Security, the ATF, and several other government agencies. So I’ve got a lot on my plate right now, not the least of which is that I have to worry about magic instead of just good old- fashioned people wanting to blow things up.” He sounded faintly disgusted with the idea. “Luis Rocha is in custody at an undisclosed location. He tried to interfere when we took some people in for questioning.”

  “Children,” I said. “You took children in for questioning.”

  Agent Sanders cocked an eyebrow. “Ms. Raine, the way I understand it, our whole problem here is children. So absolutely, I need to question anyone who can help us get to the bottom of things. Including people below voting age.”

  He seemed so reasonable, but there had been nothing at all reasonable about the pain Luis had been feeling. “I will see Luis Rocha,” I said. “Now.”

  “No,” Sanders said in reply, flatly. “You won’t. Now sit your ass down on the ground, legs crossed, and don’t get up until we tell you. I’ve got bigger problems than you.”

  I really doubted that.

  Sanders turned away, pulling Turner with him; the two men conferred, backs to me, and Turner set off at a run through the trees with an escort of three others.

  “Are you still standing up?” Sanders asked, without looking over his shoulder at me. “Because one way or another, you’re going to be on the ground in about ten seconds.”