by Rachel Caine
Esmeralda coughed and muttered something under her breath; that earned a solid backhanded smack from Iz, whose blush worsened, if that was possible. “Uh—okay then, I—” Esmeralda was grinning at her now. “I just—shut up!—I’ll come back later.” She turned and left, head high, struggling to hold to her damaged dignity, and Esmeralda broke into outright guffaws of laughter.
“Oh my God, did you see her face? The two of you are so busted,” she said. “Get a room. Somewhere else.”
“Es,” Luis said. “Beat it. I mean it. And lay off the kid. She’s six-going-on-fifteen.”
Esmeralda stuck her tongue out at him—and showed fangs at the same time—but she slithered off down the hallway, petulantly knocking over a cart along the way. Luis shook his head.
“I think we just scarred that kid for life,” he said. “She’ll never look at us the same again.”
“She knew we were lovers.”
“There’s a big difference between knowing and walking in on it,” he said.
“So you regret it?”
He turned toward me, and his slow, intimate smile warmed me from within. “Not for a damn second,” he said. “I wish we had a thousand hours just like it.”
But we didn’t, and hearing it aloud brought it home to both of us. The smiles and warmth faded. Luis cleared his throat, took a step toward the door, and said, “I’m going to go find out where he’s sending us. You okay on your own to get cleaned up?”
“Yes,” I said. As he shut the door, I threw back the sheet and gown and got out of bed. With the recession of all the complicated hormonal cocktails that had given me such a burst of… enthusiasm, I was left feeling weak, shaky, and even more bruised, though still oddly elated. The elation faded as I stood in the shower and scrubbed myself with the crisp-scented soap, and I was left feeling thoughtful instead. Lewis Orwell had seemed almost… resigned, I thought. Resigned to defeat, and willing to compromise at every step to postpone that defeat by another hour, another day. Rejecting Pearl was the right thing to do, but it meant hastening an inevitable death struggle.
And he, as all humans before him, would bargain to remain in play for as long as possible, in search of a miracle.
Pearl counted on that. Feasted on it.
But why hadn’t she killed me? What could she want more than that? I will make you a weapon, she’d said. Always, she’d wanted me to join her—not as an equal, as a tool to be used.
I looked down at myself and saw the fading spots of countless injuries she’d inflicted on me with the cool, emotionless precision of a machine.
Ashan had been right all along. One day soon, it would come down to the two of us, facing each other over the heads of innocents… and I would have to make a choice that I, like Lewis Orwell, had been delaying in the face of the inevitable.
I finished in the bathroom, limped to the closet, and found fresh clothing—all new, still with the tags hanging on them. Either the Wardens had made arrangements, or Luis had gone shopping; either thought made me smile, because they had—whether through luck or skill—chosen soft, pastel colors, the kind that I most preferred. The pale pink leather jacket was buttery to the touch, as were the pants. Dressed, I felt much less fragile and helpless, though I was well aware how long it would take to recover fully.
Luis arrived a few moments later, as I was zipping up the calf-high boots. “Damn,” he said, cocking his head. “You look scarily sexy. Look, are you sure you shouldn’t be—”
“I was healthy enough to go to bed with you,” I pointed out. “I should be well enough to get out of bed; it surely follows.” He started to say something, then thought better of it and just shook his head. “Did you find where we are to meet Warden Baldwin?”
“That’s a little problem. She’s moving fast, and it’s tough to guess where, and why; communication’s been spotty at best. It looks as if she’s heading toward our home base—into the Southwest. If we start in that direction, we’ll be able to course-correct when she does.”
“She must have fared well enough if she’s still alive,” I said. Luis shrugged.
“Well, she’s got her powers back after whatever happened to them out at sea, but she lost one of the Wardens who was with her. Kevin, the kid. He’s dead, killed by Djinn. All she’s got now is one friend traveling with her, not even one with any powers, so she’s totally on her own.”
“David isn’t with her?” I couldn’t imagine a circumstance that would part him from her, in time of trouble. Not of his own accord.
“Yeah, well, that got complicated. As long as they both had no power, he could stick with her, but once she managed to get them both recharged and ready… Well, he’s a Djinn, and not just any Djinn. A conduit to the Mother. He had to get the hell away from her, for obvious reasons.”
David, once granted back his power, had been pulled into the mindless fury of the Mother. Of course. I didn’t know why I’d thought that he, of all the Djinn, would be different—none of us could resist her.
That was part of why Ashan had exacted his complicated, painful, wonderful toll on me, to make me human. In a sense, he’d protected me, left me free to act on my own when he could not. I hated to give him the credit, but it seemed likely now that he’d foreseen much of what had passed, and might still come.
I used a hospital-provided hairbrush to tame my fly-away hair, just a little, and looked at myself in the mirror. I seemed ready. There was a slight rose-colored flush in my cheeks, a lingering glow, and my green eyes were clear and steady. The punctures were healed and fading.
We will do this, I told myself. We must do this. Joanne Baldwin held almost as much strength as Lewis Orwell; the Wardens needed her, desperately. Orwell himself had told me that indirectly; what they were fighting was not a war. Wars could be won.
We stood an excellent chance of not living another day.
And yet I looked… peaceful. Ready. Alive.
“Humans,” I said aloud to the mirror, shook my head, and went to join Luis.
Chapter 10
WE DROVE THROUGH THE DAY, into the night, and saw the morning while still on the road. One benefit of being Earth Wardens: We had the ability to channel power to keep ourselves awake and alert, and although we’d need sleep eventually, it was simple enough to keep ourselves going on this journey. I rode my motorcycle, and Luis had appropriated a truck from a car lot; he’d found one that looked a great deal like his own, which made me raise an eyebrow and ask him how long it had taken to find that. He’d responded that if he was going to stand a damn good chance of dying in it, he wanted a truck that didn’t embarrass him.
I couldn’t argue with that. I was quite attached to the Victory.
We gave Portland a wide berth; the smoke of the dead city was a smear on the horizon, still burning. I kept my attention on the aetheric, watching for any signs of trouble ahead. The Djinn continued their relentless and unpredictable assaults; today, it seemed, they were focused on eradicating cities in Alaska and returning the entire state to wilderness.
There were few Wardens in Alaska. By midday, there were none. A night passed, and we kept moving.
We stopped, finally, as noon blazed in a cloudless sky; winter had lost its grip by the time we coasted to a halt in the small community of Farmington, New Mexico. Luis leaned out of the truck’s window and said, “Time to stop for food. Once we get hooked up with Baldwin, there’s no telling when we’ll have time to eat again. That girl is even more of a trouble magnet than you are.”
I shrugged, killed the Victory’s engine, and dismounted as he climbed down from the truck. We were in the parking lot of a small restaurant that still flickered a red OPEN light in the window, although there was only one other vehicle parked there. The town had seemed deserted; there’d been almost no traffic on the roads, and we’d seen no one out on the streets on foot, either.
But this little restaurant seemed to be carrying on despite all of the evidence around it that perhaps it was time to take a day off.
/> A bell rang softly as we entered through the glass door, but that seemed to be the only sound, until I heard some metal clattering, and a woman rushed out from the back, wiping her hands on a towel. She was dressed in plain blue jeans and a checked shirt, and she had the look of a woman used to hard work and disappointment—but for all that, her smile was brave. “Welcome!” she said. “Things are a little strange out there today, but I’m still cooking. You folks grab yourselves a seat anywhere. I’d bring you menus, but really, it doesn’t matter. I’ll make you whatever you’d like.”
Luis smiled at her and said, “How about a hamburger and a Coke?”
“Bread’s a couple of days old, if you can stand that, but my produce comes out of the back garden, and it’s still fresh,” the cook said. “Best hamburgers in the Four Corners area, and that’s a promise. You want cheese on that? And fries?”
“Sure. Cass?”
I ordered the same, which seemed to unreasonably delight the woman. She hustled off, and came back to deliver us drinks, frosty in mugs and fizzing with energy and sweetness. I sipped mine and watched as she hurried back to the kitchen. “Why is she so eager to serve us?” I asked. “Surely she knows how bad things are. And will become.”
“Oh, she knows,” Luis said. “Bet she doesn’t even charge us anything. Sometimes people just like to feel… normal. Like everything’s going to be okay. She likes to cook, and it makes her feel steadier. Gotta say, it makes me feel steadier, too. A little normal life in the middle of chaos—it’s not a bad thing.”
I didn’t think so, either, but it alarmed me a little that in the midst of chaos humans clung so strongly to the lost normality of their lives. Her smile was bright and friendly, and she seemed so desperate to make us part of her circle of safety.
The food, when it came, was excellent; she brought a plate of her own and put it on a separate table. “Sorry,” she said. “Proprietor’s gotta eat, too. I won’t bother you folks, and don’t be afraid to ask for anything if you need it.”
Luis scooted out a chair next to him. “Join us,” he said. “I’m Luis. This is Cass.”
“Pleased to meet you,” she said. She was beaming as she picked up her glass and plate and sat down at our table. “You folks just passing through?” She laughed a little. “Stupid question. This ain’t a time when people are settling down.”
“Yeah, we’re on our way somewhere,” Luis said. “I guess this is your place?”
“Well, it is now,” she said. “The man who owned it—he just ran away, left the place wide open. He told me I could have it if I wanted, so I figured I’d just keep it open for anybody who needed some food. Probably can’t get much more in the way of supplies, but I’ll use up what we got. No need for it to go to waste. I’m Betty, by the way.”
“You from around here, Betty?”
She took a bite of her hamburger and shook her head as she chewed and swallowed. “Nope. I was what you might call on my own. Lost my house a couple of years back, been traveling hard ever since. I ended up here when our bus broke down, and then the driver couldn’t get it fixed, so he went off to find help and never came back. Been here for about four days now, I guess. Seems like longer. Figured I might as well make the best of it.”
“Well,” Luis said, “you make one hell of a good burger. Glad you decided to fire up the grill for us.”
“Ain’t no big thing. I always wanted to open a restaurant someday,” she said, and munched a French fry contemplatively before she asked, “You two trying to fix things?”
“Fix them, how exactly?” I asked.
“Don’t know, but you two seem… different. You’re not running from something. You’re running to it. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody quite like the two of you before.”
“Well,” Luis said, “Cass is extremely pale. It is kind of weird, even for a gringa.”
Betty choked on her drink—iced tea, from the look of it. “Not what I meant,” she said. “I seen them people on the TV, the ones who can do things. Magic and such. Strikes me you could be like that. I mean, I’m a good Christian woman. I’ve always thought magic came from, you know, the devil, but—but maybe it don’t, after all.”
“If it helps, think of it as miracles,” Luis said. “That’s what I do. My cousin’s a priest, one of my aunts is a nun, and my mom still drags me to mass every chance she gets. If I thought this power came out of a bad place, I wouldn’t dare be using it.”
It puzzled me, this apparently quite serious discussion of the obvious, but then I thought of Pearl. She was what this woman feared—evil masquerading as good for as long as might be convenient.
“I had a good feeling about you two right off,” Betty said. “Might be a little wild-looking, but you’ve got good hearts. That’s important.”
The very unlikely Betty had something in her, too. Power, of a kind, though nothing that I recalled meeting before. It was a core of something I could only call a fierce, persistent hope. The kind that drove her, despite the hardships she’d endured, to make food for strangers and strive to provide a measure of comfort.
She was, I realized, human. Deeply, helplessly human, with all the faults and foibles, shining courage and power of that heritage. Unlike the Djinn, she had little control over what was to come; she likely didn’t even expect to survive it. What she did, she did in the face of panic, terror, pain, and death.
She was beautiful. I caught my breath, staring at her, because it was as if my Djinn eyes had opened again, seen all the depth of her past and complex, intricate, unpredictable future. I had spent so much time with Wardens, who were at least somewhat like the Djinn; I thought I’d known humanity in its purest form.
But this woman—this one, hopeful woman—this was humanity, distilled and purified, and it humbled me.
I ate in silence while Luis and Betty chattered on—discussing pasts, comparing relatives, talking of nothing in particular, and certainly not the lives being lost, the cities burning, the horrific cost of what was to come. It might be called denial by some, but in that moment I thought it was the very strength that made humanity so successful… the ability to transcend reality, to create reality around them, even for a moment.
It was a gift the Djinn did not have, and until that moment, I had never imagined it to be so powerful.
“So,” Betty said, when we had finished and there was nothing left on our plates but a few scraps and scrapes. “How do you folks feel about dessert? I’ve got some pies I made up fresh this morning, apple and chocolate. Even got some fresh whipped cream.”
“Apple,” Luis said, just as I said, “Chocolate.” She looked from one of us to the other, and laughed.
“I’ll have one of each,” she said. “Might as well. Can’t let it go to waste.”
She stood up to go back to the kitchen, and stacked our empty plates; when Luis tried to help, she smacked the back of his hand in mock anger. I watched her go, and couldn’t help but smile.
“I like that,” Luis said. He was staring right at me. “Your smile. You’re different when you do that.”
“Am I?”
“Usually when you smile, it’s to make a point, but that was just”—he shrugged—“human, I guess. And sweet. You’re not often sweet, and it’s nice.”
I felt oddly uncomfortable with that, and shrugged, no longer smiling. “Perhaps it’s in anticipation of the pie,” I said.
“C’mon, you’ve gotta admit. Nice lady, overcoming the odds, making pies… Who doesn’t love that?”
“Perhaps she killed the former proprietor and stuck his dismembered body in his own freezer,” I shot back. “Not so heartwarming a story, then.”
He threw a wadded-up napkin at me, and I was starting to smile again, perhaps with a wicked edge, when I heard plates crash, and Betty screamed.
I don’t remember coming out of the chair, only the feel of the swinging door beneath my hand as I stiff-armed it open.
There was a Djinn in the kitchen. Tall, slender, human, a
nd male in form; he had a long fall of blond hair and eyes that glowed an unearthly, livid white.
I didn’t know him, and it didn’t matter who he was, or had been; what he was now was rage and fury and pain given flesh.
And he was killing Betty.
His hand was locked around her throat. The broken fragments of the plates she had dropped were still bouncing and spinning across the floor, and time seemed to slow as I lunged forward.…
And the Djinn released Betty, spun away, and caught me instead.
She fell down, coughing and choking, but still breathing. He had never intended to kill her, I realized; she’d merely been a bell for him to ring to draw me to him. And that, I found, was all right. It was a choice I’d have gladly made.
Odd, how much I had changed.
Behind me, Luis shouted something that I failed to understand, but it didn’t matter; the floor beneath the Djinn suddenly rose upward in a geyser of tile, broken concrete, dirt, shattered pipes, and slammed him into the ceiling. He lost his grip on me, and I tumbled back down the instant mound of debris to crash breathlessly into the steel casing of the ovens.
Luis headed toward me, but I pointed urgently at Betty. He changed course, grabbed her, and towed her backward, pushing her out the swinging door.
“Wait!” she yelled. “What are you doing?”
“Getting my damn pie,” he said. “Stay down.”
The Djinn hadn’t been thrown off guard for long; he broke free of the pile of debris around him, but instantly met the flat side of a large skillet that Luis grabbed off the stove—still red-hot underneath, I realized. After he’d batted the Djinn across the face with it, Luis dropped the metal with a hiss of pain; the Djinn howled, evidently feeling the damage to its flesh as much as a human would have, but neither the crushed bones nor the badly burned skin bought us more than a few seconds.
Time enough for me to yank a natural gas connection loose from the wall. “Fire!” I shouted to Luis, who snapped his fingers.
The hissing gas line erupted in a blue-white jet of flame, engulfing the Djinn. It was a distraction, not a victory; we had little chance, it seemed, of destroying this one with the tools we had at hand. “Get Betty!” I yelled. “Get her out of here!” I was working hard to limit the natural tendency of the fire to eat its way back through the gas line, into a larger store; once that happened, the explosion would be spectacular, and there wouldn’t be anything left of the restaurant. I had to buy time for Luis and the woman to get clear before that happened.
