by Rachel Caine
“Hell, girl, I’m surprised either of us is breathing. And you are beautiful. Always.” He kissed me so tenderly that it stilled everything for a moment, all the pain and fear and worry and time ticking away. And then he made me smile by saying, “Okay, I’m not saying you couldn’t get an upgrade with a shower and shampoo, maybe a change of clothes. I would personally love to see you in a towel right now.”
“You’re insane,” I said.
“Yeah, well, some people cope with certain death by getting a little bit horny. Why, are you saying you wouldn’t like that right now?”Oddly enough, even after everything—or, perhaps because of it—the idea had a certain bizarre appeal. I was overwhelmingly aware of time passing, of the situation worsening around us, but the fantasy that somehow this could stop just for an hour, perhaps two—that we could find some beautiful, quiet space for the two of us and live that fantasy out, in private—seemed breathtakingly lovely.
And impossible, of course. But I was starting to realize that today, and every day after, would be a study in the impossible. Each minute we both still lived was an improbable gift.
“If you can find a motel,” I said softly, with my lips close to his ear, “and find a way to keep the girls safe and elsewhere, then I will be happy to show you how I feel about your suggestions. Though I fear now is not the time.”
“I know,” Luis said, and pressed his lips to the sensitive skin beneath my ear, waking shivers. “But I figured the thought might keep us both focused for a while.”
It was certainly having a focusing effect upon me, but just then a sharp, shrill tune came from Luis’s pocket, and he pulled back and fumbled for it with evident surprise. “Thought all the grids were down,” he said as he checked the screen of his phone. “Back up, I guess. For now.”
“Who is it?”
He shook his head and pressed the button to accept the call. “Rocha,” he said. “Who is this?” I couldn’t hear the response, but I could see his face—still and frozen halfway to a frown. “What?”
I mouthed the obvious question again, but he looked away from me, frown slowly deepening. When I started to speak aloud, he held up his hand, palm out, to stop me.
“Yeah, I hear you,” he said. “You can’t be serious. It’s me, Cassiel, my niece—we aren’t exactly the infantry. You want an extraction, you’re going to have to send in reinforcements. Lots of them.”
Another pause. He turned completely away from me and lowered his voice. I picked out words that were disturbing, in or out of context—suicide, dangerous, impossible—but then he ended the conversation as suddenly as he’d started it, and shoved the phone back into his pocket. He stayed turned away from me for a few more seconds, hands fisted, and then slowly faced me.
“So,” he said. “I guess you heard something about that.”
“A suicide mission,” I said calmly. “Impossible. You used the word dangerous, but clearly that was superfluous, given the rest of it.”
He grinned, but it was a small, tightly controlled expression, and above it his eyes remained serious. “They’ve got a small group of Wardens trapped, and they need an Earth Warden to go get them. They’re Fire and Weather, can’t do it on their own. So I guess we’re drafted.”
“Where are they?”
He pointed down. “They’re trapped in a collapsed mine shaft,” he said. “And it’s deep. But since there are six of them, and we’re losing manpower all the time, I guess HQ doesn’t feel like writing them off quite yet. They want our—and I’m quoting here—best efforts at rescue.”
I raised my eyebrows. “How far down?”
“Honestly? Nobody’s sure. You know those miners in Chile they rescued a couple of years ago? Not quite that far, but farther than any sane person should have ended up. I’m guessing a Djinn shoved them in there and slammed the door.”
“And could still be guarding it,” I said. “Perhaps.”
“Yeah, maybe so. Which is why I don’t want Iz and Esmeralda along for the ride on this one. We take them all the way to Seattle, get them settled and safe, and then we go on to the rescue.”
“We just agreed we wouldn’t split up.”
“You want to drag two kids down hundreds of feet into gas-filled tunnels where any little spark could blow us all up? I’m pretty sure Esmeralda wouldn’t go anyway, which would split us up to begin with. And I don’t want Iz down there. Call me crazy, but I think we’ve done enough to her for one day.” By we he meant, of course, me. I’d done enough to her for the day. And he was entirely right. “We’re going to need help, especially if there’s a Djinn involved.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “Will you trust me in this?”
“Don’t I always?” he asked. “What am I trusting you about, specifically?”
“I’d rather not say right now.”
His head tilted a little to the side as he regarded me, and although the trust I’d requested was there, so was a healthy dose of doubt. I didn’t blame him. I’d have felt the same, really. “But you’re going to say before we’re half a mile underground and getting hammered by a pissed-off insane Djinn, right? And it’d be real handy if you had, say, a Weather Warden in your back pocket who could manufacture breathable air, because I’m thinking the lack of that will be a little challenging.”
“Trust me,” I said again.
He dragged a gentle finger down the side of my face. “Oh,” he said. “Cassiel, if I trust anybody today, it’s you. I got no choice, do I?”
In truth, I wasn’t sure that made me feel very much better.
“Excuse me,” said a new, and very tentative, voice. I turned, and there was a woman standing a few feet away, with her hand clasping that of a small boy of about six years old. She was pretty, and the uncertain voice seemed to match her hesitant body language. “Did you come from out of town?” That was a polite way, I thought, of saying that we weren’t from around here. The boy ogled Luis with fascination, especially the flame tattoos that licked the skin around the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt.
“Yes, ma’am,” Luis replied. He sounded extremely polite suddenly. “We’re just getting a few supplies, then we’re heading out.”
“Oh, I wasn’t— No, of course you’re welcome here. I’m sorry if it sounded like you weren’t, sir. That wasn’t what I meant, not at all.…” She was flustered now, and solved it by extending her free hand to him. “I’m Lucy. Lucy McKee.”
“Hello, Mrs. McKee.”
“I only asked because the phones are down, and there’s a lot of rumors—the TV reports look just awful. Is it terrorists? Do you know? A lot of people are saying it’s terrorists.” She had large blue eyes that her son had inherited, and they both looked at us with grave, hopeful intensity.
“No, ma’am, I don’t think it’s terrorists,” Luis said. He said it gently, but firmly. “Right now, there are a lot of things going on, but none of them are man-made as far as I’m aware. You should tell your family to stay together. You have a disaster plan, don’t you? How to contact each other? You’ve got food and water supplies?”
“Well, a few, but—”
“Get more,” he said. “Mrs. McKee, I don’t want to scare anybody, but I’m not telling you anything that they won’t be saying on the radio and TV soon. Keep in contact with your people, and get yourself supplied with food and water. Don’t try to go to a bigger city right now. That’s where the trouble will be worse. Understand?”
She nodded silently. I saw a glimmer of tears in her eyes, and fear, but she blinked and forced a smile for her son. “We’ll do that, won’t we, sweetie? We’ll go to the store right now.”
“Can I get Pop Rocks?”
“If you want to, of course you can.” She looked up at us, oddly embarrassed. “I don’t usually let him, but—”
“Let him have what he wants,” Luis said. “Today. Stay safe, ma’am.”
She gave him another smile, fainter this time, and hurried her son along. We watched them go down the block, to the same grocery sto
re Luis had already visited.
“Do you think they’ll live?” I asked him softly. He didn’t look at me.
“Do you think any of us will?”
Without another word, or waiting for my answer, he walked back to the van.
Chapter 5
OUR GIRLS WERE QUIET for the most part, although Esmeralda was grumpy and restless; this was not, I found, shocking. Iz seemed too quiet, too withdrawn, and I tried to engage her in conversation for a while before abandoning the attempt and letting her ride in silence, staring out the window.
“Couple of hours more,” Luis said. “It’s going to get more dangerous the closer we get to Seattle, so stay alert. Cass, I need you up on the aetheric if you can manage it. Keep a lookout for any trouble.”
I nodded and took his hand; physical contact between the two of us made access to the aetheric realm easier for me. A small burst of power sent me soaring up, out of my body, and the world took on the nacreous shimmer of mother of pearl, then dissolved into lines, light, whispers, fog. My native environment, as a Djinn, but I was no longer at home in it, and I felt the steady, though small, drain of power required to sustain me here. It was a risk, doing this; Luis was still weak, and his reserves of power were less than either of us might have wished. Mine were still shallow, too, but I was more concerned about him; I could only channel power through him, and draining him past safety put us both at risk.
For now, though, it was only a minimal exposure.
The forest around us was very much the same on the aetheric as it was in the human world; more impressionistic, perhaps, suggestions of trees and shadows of animals moving through them in streaks of subtle color. Life was bright, even plant life; the trees pulsed with slow whispers of golden energy. Beautiful, and calming.
But there was trouble everywhere around us.
The road on which the van traveled was a thick dead slice through all that life, a thing of man’s making, too recent to have any real history and place on the aetheric, where time was as much a visible dimension as the others. Not everything mankind created looked so awkward here, but new construction did. The town we’d left behind had more weight and natural ease to it, because its history gave it reality as much as the wood and glass and metal of which it was built. Time had given it life of its own, and the memories and events that had taken place there, good or bad, had created its own aura. It was, I thought, a good place to live, full of small joys and long peaces. No human place was free of sadness, madness, death, but in their town, at least, that was outweighed by something I could only call… happiness.
I didn’t wish to, but I found my aethereal body turning slowly, facing another direction… toward Hemmington.
The town was a blackened scar. For all its apparent peace and silence in the human plane, here it was a shriek, a vibrating well of agony, an open wound in the world. Something had happened there, something great and terrible, and the death that had followed hadn’t left only human corpses; it had rendered that entire town, and everything in it, poisonous.
It was a trap, but instead of something that would blow up intruders, it would lure them in, lull them, and then destroy. My own trauma there had added to the scarring, I realized; so had Isabel’s.
I looked at the girl, sitting silently in the van below me, and saw the taint of that place inside her. It had infected her in subtle, awful ways. She’d heal, I thought, but for now, the germs of it continued to fester. I mourned that, and the blackening of the roots of her power that she’d done to herself. Isabel was still beautiful, a shining star on the aetheric, but she glittered more darkly than she ought.
I turned away from Hemmington, extending my vision farther out. Not far away, Portland burned. The Wardens had withdrawn their forces, fallen back to Seattle. By the standards of human cities, Portland was a young place—only a little over a hundred years of buildings and settlements, and little that had lasted for any length of time. It had held a significant population, though most had scattered now, in bright groups that fled in all directions. The forces pummeling Portland were full of bright, bloodred fury… flames that seared away what humans had built and returned it to ashes.
The death toll must have been significant, but the suffering was done now; what was left in that city belonged to the Djinn and to the Mother. Humans had no place there now.
Not so far away—and too close for comfort—the Wardens had regrouped and gathered their forces near Seattle. They’d kept the destruction confined to Portland so far; I could see that their efforts were focused on evacuating the people and finding them safety, not on trying to douse the unnaturally bright flames that continued to devour what had once been one of America’s great cities. It was, I knew, far from the only disaster they were facing; there was a great, dark energy rising from the midwest of the continent, where floods raced out of control and Weather Wardens struggled to divert storms and tame rivers. It would not end well, from the raw, bleeding colors of the aetheric. There was more—the harsh stabbing oranges and stark ripping greens of earthquakes were flashing along long-dormant rifts, toppling houses and rocking the tall towers of distant cities. The ocean’s tides were rising under the whipping winds of forming hurricanes far out to sea.
There was death coming, and it would not stop.
I already knew it, but staring at it here, in this way, it shook me how fragile the Wardens were, how utterly useless their defenses. I’d heard the grim despair in Lewis Orwell’s voice, and now I felt it, as well; this was a fight to the death, but the winner was a foregone conclusion. All we could do was bind up wounds and defend for as long as we could. Without more Wardens, without the supporting power of Djinn, humanity had very little time left as masters of the world.
If they’d ever truly held that title, other than in their own minds.
We had avoided truly being attacked thus far, mainly because nature was directing its hatred toward the largest concentrations of what it perceived as threats… toward cities, and the Wardens who clumped to defend them. As we came closer to Seattle, we’d start drawing unwelcome attention; Isabel’s bright power would ensure that we couldn’t pass completely unnoticed. Even Luis had an impressive presence on the aetheric, though Iz’s light effectively hid his, and I presumed mine as well.
I was watching the ongoing battle of the Wardens when I felt the first stirring of… awareness. It was not so much something seen as felt… the power that was consuming Portland, that mindless beast seemed to pause and look. I felt the impact of its stare, like clouds over the face of the sun. All of the aetheric seemed to dim and go quiet.
It was looking at us.
I did not dare to move, not even to drift down into my body. There was a sense of a vast, predatory interest focused on us, and any tiny mistake could bring disaster.
The flames in Portland faltered and began to fall silent, but the energy behind them did not fall away; no, it gathered itself, a beast tensing to spring.
We were too close.
Freezing like prey wouldn’t save us, I realized. I dropped back into my body with a breathless, icy rush, lunged forward to brace myself against the dashboard of the van, and gasped out, “Turn! Get off this road!”
“What?” Luis asked. “Jesus, Cass, what is it?”
“Get off the road. Do it now!”
“Chica, there’s nowhere to go!”
“Turn around!” My shout must have conveyed the true depths of my alarm, because he didn’t hesitate anymore. Luis hit the brakes, brought the van into a shuddering, tire-burning slide. Momentum threatened to tip us, but he controlled it somehow and accelerated into the drift. The tires caught traction, and suddenly we jerked forward, heading back the way we’d come.
“Faster!” I yelled. “Get us off this road!”
Luis didn’t ask any more questions, just pressed the accelerator to the floor. When the van responded sluggishly, I felt him working the engine with Earth power, opening up clogged valves to pull more power out of the churning met
al parts.
It wasn’t going to be enough.
I could see it now, through the back window—a blazing arrow of power coming behind us, like liquid sunlight flowing down the road. The trees on either side were igniting into brilliant orange. Everything it touched died.
And it was going to catch us.
“Stop,” Isabel said.
“Can’t do that,” Luis said. “Cass is right. We can’t fight this.”
“You can’t run fast enough,” she said. She sounded scared, but certain. “Cassie, we need him.”
She was talking about Rashid, but Rashid would be of no real help to us; he might possibly be able to preserve our lives, but this power would simply drown us, consume us, and even a Djinn’s power was limited by his master’s endurance. Sooner or later, he would lose that battle, and we would be dissolved, digested, gone.
The benefit for Rashid would be that the glass of his bottle wouldn’t last, either; he’d be free again, free to join the crusade against the hunted remains of humanity. Though I wondered whether he would take quite so much joy in it as others.
“Cassie!” she shouted. We had seconds, if that. She was right. There was nothing else we could do, not against this vast force of nature that rolled toward us.
I lunged over the seat, into the back of the van, thumping down next to Esmeralda, who was staring out the window with a grim, silent concentration that was not quite fear and not quite delight. An uneasy mix of the two. “Beautiful,” she said. “Death’s really beautiful, you know.”
“Shut up,” I said, and ripped open the saddlebag of the Victory, parked beside her coils. Her rattle stirred with a dry hiss, but I kicked it out of the way and grabbed Rashid’s bottle. I ripped the foam stopper out. “Rashid! You’re called!”
He could have dawdled; any enterprising Djinn could have used delay to his advantage, especially one with a grudge, but instead he was instantaneously crouched in front of me, silver eyes gleaming, naked indigo body coiled almost as sinuously as Esmeralda’s reptilian form. His teeth glittered as his lips cut in a smile. “What will you?” he asked me.
