by Rachel Caine
The Djinn was managing to extinguish itself, so I grabbed a bottle of cooking oil, ripped the cap off, and threw it in his direction. The plastic bottle was easy enough to melt in midflight, and the oil coated his skin and gave the fire fresh life all over him.
He was no longer amused.
I felt the coming blow, and the whole building rocked around me, as if it had suddenly been struck by a tornado, but the weather outside was calm and clear. The Djinn was breaking the restaurant apart—and in the kitchen area, sharp metal was everywhere, lying loose, or just lightly secured. A block on the counter holding a succession of cutting knives tipped over, and the knives slid free and rotated in the air, each finding and focusing in on me with their sharp points.
Half of them flew directly at me in a rush, and I had just enough time to fling out my hand and create a strong magnetic field on the front of the stove. The knives, and most of the other metal pulling free in the room, veered course and clanged against the stove’s side in a near-unbreakable bond. The Djinn suddenly snuffed out all of the fire—even the flaming torch of the gas jet—and went very still. I felt the energy in the room change, as if something very large that had been casually swatting at me suddenly turned and focused its attention on me quite closely.
Another Djinn misted into existence next to the one who still smoldered with sparks in its blackened skin. Then another, and another.
I backed through the swinging doors, not daring to take my eyes off them. “Get in the truck,” I called over my shoulder. “Take her with you. Start driving.”
“Cass—”
“Do it!” I heard the front bell ring as they left, and the normality of that sound was made all the more wrenching by the three Djinn who simply misted right through the walls, walking toward me. I knew that I couldn’t take on three Djinn; even with Luis, there was no possibility of surviving the experience.
Instead, I took in a deep breath and set myself on fire.
The effect was, indeed, spectacular; the flames bloomed along my sleeve, and I screamed in panic and made a show of trying to slap them out. In fact, I was spreading them over my jacket, then down my pants, until my whole body was coated in a writhing fury of orange fire. I screamed again, ran into a table, and fell to the floor, still burning. The floor around me began to sizzle and melt. Flames climbed up the wooden legs of the chair against which I lay.
I thrashed a bit, and then went still. The hiss of the burning floor and table was helpful in selling the illusion that my flesh was blackening and sizzling like meat on a grill, and after a few more seconds, the Djinn lost interest in me and misted away.
I let the fire go on for a few more seconds. It was as well I did, because the last Djinn to leave—the one I’d burned, who did in fact still trail smoke behind him—came back to watch for a moment. Not mistrust, I thought, so much as satisfaction.
When he was finally gone, I doused the flames, rolled up to my feet, and ran for my motorcycle. Luis’s truck was long gone; I had done my best to focus the Djinn on me, not on him, so I was hopeful that he wouldn’t be their target if he was fleeing. All I needed to do was fire up the Victory, and…
The Victory was a steaming, melted pile of scrap metal.
I stared at it, grim and quite disappointed, and with a muttered curse, moved down the street to another building, then another. It seemed that every vehicle in town had been destroyed, and I was still searching for something, anything, that could take me on the road when I heard, very distinctly, the blatting sounds of motorcycle engines, more than one, approaching down the deserted main street.
I ducked outside. A biker gang, at least twenty strong, was cruising through, checking out the prospects for food, fuel, or looting; they had the hard, grubby look of men and women who’d been on the road for days, and the hunted expressions of those who’d seen too much.
I stepped out into their way, and the first wave of bikes coasted to a stop just inches from my body.
Even idling, the Harleys were loud beasts. The one I immediately pegged as the leader was looking me over, frowning, and he finally said, “So, are you stupid, or just crazy?”
“Neither,” I said. “I need a motorcycle.”
Under normal circumstances that would have gotten a derisive laugh, but not this time. They had no more humor left, it seemed. I saw guns being drawn, including a sawed-off shotgun, which would have worried me if I hadn’t already had considerable experience with firearms. I didn’t blink, or look away from the leader’s face.
“You need to get out of here and keep moving,” I told him. “Stay away from towns. Try to live off the land, and conserve your fuel. Once it goes dry, there may not be more for a while. Things are going to get worse, not better.”
“I’m still listening for a reason not to shoot you and get you out of our way,” he said. “Got anything, blondie?”
In response, I deflated both tires on his bike. He yelped in surprise as the weight shifted, struggling to hold it upright. “I could destroy some of your bikes,” I said quietly. “I could do that quite spectacularly, if I wished. They blow up so well. Or I could fuse the parts together. Or even fuse you into the metal, which I assure you would be very unpleasant, until you died of the experience. But I’m trying to be hospitable.” I called a fireball and balanced it in a blazing hand-sized bonfire on my palm. “I need a vehicle. I’m sorry I have nothing to give you for it, but let’s call it the spoils of war. If I’m still alive later, I’ll buy a new one for the leader of the”—I checked the logo on the back of his weathered denim jacket—“Devil’s Traitors.”
To his credit, he didn’t immediately back off, though his eyes had narrowed at the sight of the flame held so casually in my hand. “We’re out of Albuquerque,” he said. “You’d better make it a fucking awesome bike, lady.” He looked toward the back of the pack, and pointed. “Take Pointer’s ride. Pointer, double up with Gar, and don’t bitch about it. We’ll steal you another one down the road.”
The tough-looking one-eyed man he indicated didn’t seem pleased, but he did as instructed, leaving the Harley idling and leaning on its kickstand as he took his place on the other bike. I nodded thanks, and mounted up.
“Blondie,” the biker said from the front of the pack. I released the kickstand. “If I see you again and you aren’t wheeling in a brand-new shiny ride for Pointer, this ain’t going to go well for you. Got me?”
I nodded. “Seems fair,” I said. “I live in Albuquerque. I’ll find you.”
“Not if I find you first,” he said, and let out the clutch. They picked up speed and left the streets in a swirl of dust and trash.
I hit the throttle, and went in pursuit of Luis.
He’d stopped on the side of the road twenty miles away, at another roadhouse; this one was deserted and locked, but he’d opened it up, and Betty was inspecting the establishment with enthusiasm. He eyed my new Harley with raised eyebrows. “Bike trouble?” he asked.
“Don’t ask.” I was annoyed at the way the Harley rode; the bars were too far forward and low, and it would take time to customize it properly. I missed the Victory. “She’ll be all right here. We have to go. I’m not entirely sure the Djinn will leave us be, although I did a good imitation of gruesomely dying for their benefit.”
“Would have paid to see that one,” he said, and then shook his head, all humor falling away. “No, actually, I wouldn’t. Let’s never put on that particular show, okay?”
“I agree,” I said. “Let’s not.”
Tracking Joanne was exhausting, and we dodged trouble over and over again; there were more Djinn now, and more active. The few humans we ran into seemed more interested in fleeing than fighting, which was lucky; it meant less destruction left in our wake.
But it took too long to match our course to Joanne’s finally stationary position.
I released the throttle on the roaring Harley and coasted to a halt as we topped the last rise. We’d gotten an update from Lewis Orwell to meet Joanne Bald
win at a government contractor’s secured installation in the Texas panhandle near Amarillo, and it was close, very close—though the smoke rising up into the clear blue sky didn’t bode well for the installation’s fate. Luis’s truck stopped next to me, and he rolled down the window.
“Madre,” Luis murmured, as we looked down at the true scale of the destruction in front of us. The buildings that had—presumably—once existed had been leveled into rubble. The secure fencing at the perimeter of the facility lay in twists and tatters, and near the center of the large debris field lay an enormous pit from which black smoke and dust still drifted. “What the hell was this place?”
There was a sign—damaged and ripped partway down the center, but still readable. “Some kind of research and construction facility,” I said. “Nuclear weapons.”
“Perfect,” Luis said grimly. “My day wasn’t sucking hard enough; I get to fry my balls off, too. Feel that? Radiation’s off the scale.”
“It can be dealt with,” I said. “She’s down there. In the pit. Buried, I think.”
“Sure, because that’ll be easy, given our great history with that kind of thing. Plus radiation.”
“And there are Djinn down there, as well,” I said, concentrating harder. The residual boiling energies of the fight made a confusing smear of livid color on the aetheric, but I could still see the flitting, telltale motions that betrayed the presence of my former brothers and sisters. “She’s battling them.”
He said nothing to that, just rolled up the window. I took it to mean we were cleared to go, so I gave the Harley its head and picked up speed as it roared down the hill. Luis’s truck raced behind me. I pulled up at the fence and parked the bike, while he bounced his truck off the road and into the dirt, heading for a section of fence that had been completely shredded away in the blast. The torn edges of metal glistened like diamond as he rocketed past; he hit the brakes and slewed the truck to a stop near the edge of the still-burning pit.
“That might have been unnecessarily risky,” I told him, walking over. He flashed me a grin.
“You know me, chica. I live for drama. So. We do this fast. Tunnel down, get her out. The sooner we’re away from here, the better. Countermeasures for the radiation are going to take a hell of a lot of power we can’t afford to spend.”
I nodded and joined him at the crumbling edge. He held out his hand, and I took it, but Luis didn’t immediately start the process of moving earth toward Joanne. He took in a deep breath, and looked at me.
“Cass,” he said. “If we don’t get through this—well, you know. But do your best to get through it, okay? I’m not ready for endings just yet.”
I nodded. If he felt he had to say it, he assessed our chances to be even worse than they’d been so far, and that was poor indeed. I could feel it all around us—the fury was thick in the air, choking and hot as the smoke. The Earth wanted Joanne dead, and if we wanted to join the fight, she’d gladly take us, too.
I suppose we could have turned away, but Lewis’s instructions had been specific: Find Joanne, and keep her safe. She was needed, badly needed, in this fight.
Currently, she looked as if she needed the help very, very badly.
We already had practice at tunneling, but this was a shallower goal than when we’d rescued the trapped Wardens outside of Seattle; this was more of a ramp than a shaft. I helped channel Luis’s power with finer control, slicing through the first layers of dirt, stone, metal, and rubble and flinging them up and out of the way. Once the packed earth beneath was visible, the process became more of a brute-force exercise, carving an opening down at a sharp angle. It took a surprisingly short time, considering, but then the ground had already been shaken loose by the battle that had occurred here before our arrival—which must have been spectacular.
We were still only halfway down our makeshift ramp when I felt something break on the aetheric, something massive and immensely powerful… a Djinn. That had been the death of a Djinn—no, I realized, not the death… the emptying of a Djinn, and the burst of incredibly violent energy around the body of a Warden.
Around Joanne Baldwin.
No Warden could drain a Djinn, but a Djinn could go beyond his limits; it commonly occurred when one tried to violate the will of the Mother, or one of the laws that could not be broken without cost.
Like denying death.
Someone had just saved Joanne’s life… and now the bright star that had been a Djinn was going out, its brilliance twisting in on itself, turning black and inverted and hungry.
I was seeing—and feeling—the birth of an Ifrit. It was what happened to Djinn who drained themselves past the point of no return, and now—like me—could exist only by consuming the power of others. I subsisted on the power of Wardens, but Ifrits didn’t prey on humans; there was not enough power to sustain them.
They preyed on other Djinn, and when they did, they battened on in a mindless fury, to the death.
“Faster,” I breathed. Already, the Ifrit—whoever it had once been—had secured on a victim and was ripping the immortal’s life away in bloody, unspooling strips. The chaos intensified in that narrow battlefield below us.
“Yeah, enough nice engineering,” he said, and just punched through the rest of the way, shoving aside concrete, rebar, fractured steel, earth, anything that was in our way. He dashed ahead and scrambled over the last few enormous chunks of concrete; below us was a mostly intact, though pitted and cracked, floor. I followed his example, and saw a hellish nightmare of smoke, flame, the residual aetheric glow of radiation… and Djinn. There were several facing us, though they’d momentarily paused.
Joanne Baldwin was a few feet away, though for a shocked second I didn’t recognize her. She was filthy, tattered, and underneath the grime and streaks of blood, she had the tender-pink skin of someone very recently healed. Luis didn’t allow it to give him pause at all, remarkably enough.
“Sorry we’re late,” he said, and jumped down the rest of the way, flexing his knees as he landed. His smile was sheer, raw nerve, though there was a hint of terror in the shine of his eyes. “Madre, you don’t go halfway when you blow shit up, do you? There’s enough rads burning in here to barbecue lead. We can’t stay here long.”
Joanne seemed both shocked and relieved to see us. She said something I couldn’t hear over the sudden roar of a Djinn’s attack; the Djinn was quickly countered by a blur that was moving in Joanne’s defense. I was distracted by that, and focused in only as Luis said, with remarkable calm, “… moving fast. Hey, Cass, you remember Joanne?”
It was a foolish question; no one, having met the Weather Warden, ever forgot her. Whether such memories were favorable was another thing entirely, and we had far more to worry about than the niceties.
All I could do was nod, and she returned it shakily. To say that she’d looked better would be something of an understatement; I was amazed the woman was still standing.
I looked at the Djinn arrayed against us, and felt a tremor of memory; I’d faced some of these same ones as we’d emerged from another tunnel, in Seattle. Ashan’s closest allies. “They’re under the Mother’s control,” I said, which was probably unnecessary, given the near-insane pale shine in their eyes. “They won’t stop coming for you. They know you hurt her in what you did here.” And Baldwin had, indeed, scarred the Mother deeply this time with the raw, bleeding radiation—another wound on a maddened and angry beast already snarling with fury.
“I know that,” Joanne shot back. “It was kind of the plan. Here. Rocha, take this. Try to bind one of them.”
Luis gave her a puzzled look. “Try to what? What the hell are you talking about?” He wasn’t following only because he was too busy calculating our chances; I, however, realized immediately what she was saying.
Bind.
She’d been binding the Djinn into bottles—and there, coming out of the shadows, misting into human form, was one of them.
David, the leader of the New Djinn. His human shell had
skin that held a subtle bronzed metallic shine to it, and his eyes were the bright, unsettling color of melting copper. Beautiful, and eerie, and at the moment, full of fury directed at those who were coming for his lover. No—his wife. David, the Djinn, had bound himself permanently to a human, a bond as strong as any bottle in terms of vows… though now, I realized, he was bound a second time, into a glass prison that helped insulate him from the irresistible siren call of the Mother.
He nodded to me, as one equal to another. In my bad old days as a Djinn, I would have found it gallingly presumptuous; even the highest of the New Djinn was no match for the lowest of the True Djinn, or that had been my fixed and constant opinion then. Now my horizons had… expanded. David was a burning brand of power, steady and pure, and his origins mattered little.… If anything, the humanity from which he’d been born gave him more substance to me now. He had lived as I did now; he understood and cherished the pull of the world, the flesh, the strange and quiet beauty of a human life.
He loved Joanne. It was as much a part of him as the flesh that clothed him, or the blazing light in his smile. Something, perhaps, to aspire to be—something like David.
I had no more time to think on it. Two Djinn came for us in the same instant; the reaction from both Joanne and David was almost instantaneous, the stuff of pure, natural communion between the two of them. David might have been the most powerful of the New Djinn, but those he was facing were to be feared regardless, and there were too many of them. He met two of them head-on and was slammed back against debris, momentarily out of the fight—but Joanne didn’t pause. Didn’t even slow as she strode forward.
