by Rachel Caine
The cold, blackened part of me inside still had control, but it allowed me to collapse into a naked, smoking heap inside the air bubble. I struggled to breathe, but there was nothing left to fill my lungs that wasn’t toxic.
Someone stepped up on the other side of the bubble.
Lewis.
The darkness in me took over, but it did it in a hor rifyingly clever way.
I lifted my hand and slapped my palm flat against the bubble, pleading for mercy. My fingernails were turning a delicate robin’s-egg shade of blue. I must have looked completely pathetic and weak.
I wasn’t. Not at all.
There was something very strange in the way he was looking at me. Something my grandmother used to say. Tombstone eyes . . .
Lewis’s head snapped around, not fast enough, and something collided with him. A streak of bronze light that froze into the form of David, on the other side of my invisible prison.
I watched Lewis’s lips move. He was yelling at David, telling him not to be a fool, not to fall for it. He knew.
He needn’t have worried. David might be passionate, but he was no kind of a fool. He crouched down and put his hand flat against mine, separated by five inches of thickened, impenetrable, interlocked molecules. His face was a mask, his eyes dark and secretive, but not quite managing to hide his fury—at me, at himself, at Bad Bob for putting us here.
I smiled, tasting his despair—it felt good.
The talisman burned into my back hit a white-hot peak, and I felt my Weather powers flooding out of me, battering at the prison holding me. Lewis was incredibly strong, maybe the strongest Warden who’d ever lived, but I was damn close on this front. I hadn’t always been, or at least I hadn’t always known it, but I was afraid that very strength was going to be my undoing now . . . because I could feel my powers eating away at the force he’d set up to keep me contained. Once it broke, there was no telling what I’d do. What I could do. Possibilities raced through my mind, each worse than the last—poison gas drifting through the sealed corridors of the ship, killing everyone it touched. Or maybe I’d just blow a gigantic hole through the bottom, sending this beautiful floating coffin down to join other famous wrecks. I could almost see that one—the foaming rush of the sea through the shattered hull, the rooms filling up, all these people trapped and dying . . .
God, I wanted to do it.
I couldn’t let this happen. I couldn’t be the cause of so much death.
Bad Bob had done one thing for me, thanks to this little exercise in hellish torment; he’d shown me how to break loose. I wasn’t trapped in my body; my body existed separately from my spirit, connected only by random impulses and autonomic functions. I pulled away and stretched to the limit. I arrowed up into the aetheric, feeling the bond stretch and pull, thinner and thinner. At the top of the aetheric, there was a flickering white milky light—the boundary of another world above that one. Another plane of existence. The Djinn could pass through it. Humans couldn’t, not even Wardens.
I touched it, trailed ethereal fingers against the barrier, and looked down. Distances and heights didn’t mean the same things up on the higher planes, but in this sense they did—there was a form of gravity, and momentum, and forces that translated from the aetheric back to the physical.
I let go, turned, and put all my power into an accelerated dive back to my physical body. Instead of letting myself fall, I raced, gathering as much force along the way as I could. Pulling it directly from the aetheric, like the wake from a speedboat. I’d never tried this; I knew that there were Earth Wardens who had, who’d managed to get a power boost through this technique. It wouldn’t last, and it came at a heavy cost, but it was at least something to try.
They never told me how bad it would hurt, though.
Hitting the physical form of my body had a psychic shock wave, like slamming head-on into a bank vault at eighty miles per hour. Then the aetheric wake slammed in behind me, temporarily compressing me inside.
I blew it out through the mark on my back, channeling it through the black lines. It overloaded within an instant, shocking the mark into silence, sending it back into its containment state.
I raised my head and looked David in the eye and mouthed Help. I didn’t know if he’d believe me or not—I almost hoped he wouldn’t—but without him, I knew that sooner or later this was going to end in my death.
My whole body was trembling, anoxic, on the edge of unconsciousness. I couldn’t create oxygen from the toxic soup of molecules left inside this bubble; I’d have to break the shell, get some kind of feed from the outside.
Or maybe I’d die. That wasn’t a bad solution, all things considered. Not my fave, admittedly, but it would save innocent lives, and—
David’s outstretched palm pushed through the hard shell of air. Stress fractures formed as white cracks around his fingers, and then he broke through, and a rush of delicious air fanned my hair back from my face. The bubble disintegrated. I dropped facedown to the floor.
A weight settled on top of me—David, straddling me. Slamming his hand down on top of the black mark, and if I’d thought that sucker was painful already, this was a thousand times worse, so bad that I couldn’t stop screaming, writhing, trying to claw my way out of the pain.
“I’ll kill you!” I was screaming. And worse. And I meant it.
Lewis took my wrists and held me still. Somebody else grabbed my flailing legs and anchored them. It was like old-style surgery without the benefit of anesthesia, this feeling of something vital being cut out of me, bloody and dripping . . .
And then it stopped.
I collapsed, sobbing helplessly. I couldn’t feel David’s hand on my back. I couldn’t feel anything from the nape of my neck to my waistline; it had all gone icily numb.
“Mother of God,” someone among the onlookers murmured, and the tone was so appalled that I wondered just what he was seeing. I didn’t care. It was enough that it didn’t hurt, just for a few precious breaths.
“Get the medical team,” Lewis said. His voice sounded strangely rough, low in his throat. When I turned my head and focused on him, his eyes were red, lids swollen. There were tears tracking down his cheeks.
He was still holding my wrists in a brutally tight grip.
“I’m okay,” I said. I wasn’t. I felt hollow and odd, as if I was floating several feet from my own emotions. “Hey. Don’t worry. I won’t go nuclear on you.” I didn’t think I had anything left, anyway. “I’m losing, you know. Can’t hold it.”
Lewis let go, very slowly, and swiped his arm across his eyes. He sat back on his haunches, and his gaze moved away from me, up and behind.
Locking eyes with David, presumably.
I felt David’s warm hand touch the back of my neck. “Don’t move,” he said. He sounded almost as odd as Lewis. “I need to tell you something.”
This didn’t sound positive. “What?”
“The mark. It’s gone.”
Wasn’t that good? “And?”
There was a short, heavy silence. David said, “It burned off your skin, all the way down to the bone in places. I’ve tried to close the wound, but—”
“It won’t let you,” I finished for him. That explained the emergency numbness covering my entire back, and the shocked trembling of my muscles. I felt cold, too. My body was trying to marshal its resources against a life-threatening crisis. “It doesn’t matter, the mark’s still there. It’s buried inside me. I can’t burn it out. Was anyone hurt?”
David let out an uneven breath. “Other than you?” I felt his weight ease off of me, and then he moved into view, kneeling next to me. Lewis moved out of his way. “No. You didn’t hurt anyone. You fought it off.”
“No. Not really.” I swallowed and tried to order my drifting, scattered priorities. “I saw Bad Bob. He has sixty former Wardens with him. I can tell you where.”
“Jo—” That was Lewis again, soft and almost regretful. “We can’t believe you now. You understand that, don’
t you? You can’t know that any of what you saw is real. He could have put it there. He’s a manipulative son of a bitch. Even if it was true, he’ll move before we can get there.”
“He knows,” I said. “He knows we got one of the skins. He’ll be activating the others. You have to move, now. Stop them.”
Lewis tore his gaze away from me. “David, I’m going to need you.”
“No,” David said.
“If this ship goes down, she still dies. Is that what you want?”
David’s eyes flashed—not fire, not bronze, but white-hot, like the flash from the sharp edge of a diamond. “I’ll give you all the power you need. I’ll assign Djinn to you. But I won’t leave her. Don’t ask me again.” The edge to his voice scared me, and I reached out to touch his hand.
“No,” I said. “I’m not dead, I’m just massively screwed up.” I sucked in a deep breath. “Help me sit up.”
David didn’t like the idea, but he saw that if he didn’t, I’d flail around and do it anyway, probably hurting myself even more. “Wait,” he said. “Bandages.”
I suppose the medical team had arrived, because I was lifted up to a sitting position, my arms were raised, and I got wrapped up like a mummy, from waist to just under my armpits. It was a very odd sensation—I could feel every bit of the pressure and texture on my front and sides, but the bandages simply disappeared when they touched my back.
It took care of half the problem that I was naked in the middle of a crowd. Somebody brought in one of the cruise line’s fluffy guest robes, which took care of the other half once I’d gotten it on and belted.
When I faltered getting up, Cherise ducked in and braced me, arms around my waist. David held me up on the other side. “I’d carry you, but—” I understood. There was no way for him to do it without putting pressure on my ruined back.
“It’s fine. I can walk.” I wasn’t sure I could, but damned if I wasn’t going to try. As I stood there catching my breath and my balance, though, I took a look around.
I’d pretty much managed to trash the first-class lounge. The sofa was a skeletal wreck, burned through to the springs. The carpet where I’d been standing (or lying) was melted and blackened into a tangled knot of ash and acrylic fibers. Add to that the still-lingering smoke that curled blackly around the room, seeking exits, and the general reek of burned flesh . . . Yeah. That security deposit was gone for good.
“Sorry,” I apologized, to no one in particular, and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other on the way out of the room.
I heard a dull boom from below us, somewhere in the bowels of the ship, and looked at David’s tense expression.
“It’s not your problem,” he said.
Whether it was or not, he wasn’t going to let me claim responsibility of any kind.
“Are we sinking?” I asked.
We were sitting on my narrow bed—me lying on my stomach, David propped on the edge, looking down at me. The ship was rocking much worse than before, slamming into waves with such force that I swore I could hear metal groaning somewhere in the bowels of the vessel. Of course, that was stupid; big as this thing was, I’d never know if something was going catastrophically wrong. The iceberg that had killed the Titanic hadn’t even knocked over glasses in the dining room.
Of course, the Titanic hadn’t been wallowing in massively turmoiled seas, beset from all sides, and between being driven toward an even worse predator. We were like a whale being stalked by a school of sharks. Sooner or later, they’d take out enough bites to make a difference.
“No,” David said, and stroked my hair. “No, we’re not sinking.”
“You think the mark’s gone,” I murmured, and closed my eyes. “It’s not. I can still feel it.” My mind kept wanting to shut down, lock itself off, focus on summoning up its strength for healing, but I couldn’t seem to let it go.
David shifted. He probably touched my shoulder, or at least the bandages over the open wound, but I couldn’t feel anything. “I know,” he said. “I can see it on the aetheric.”
“It’s bigger.”
“Yes.”
“I said I’d kill you, didn’t I?” He didn’t answer. “I meant it. I really did, David. The only thing that’s stopping me is the containment. You understand?”
“I do.” He brushed fingers gently over my forehead. “It’s not your fault.”
“It will be,” I said. I felt a distant, inescapable grief, but like everything else, it was arm’s length from me. I really couldn’t feel anything. “How’s Kevin doing?”
David was silent for a long enough minute that I had to fight to stay awake to hear the answer. “He’s doing well.” My lover sounded surprised. Well, I supposed I was a little bit surprised, too. Pleasantly so. “One of the skins has already been destroyed. They’re hunting the other one in the hold. They’re getting close.”
“No problems?” It was odd to be worried by that, but I was. Things never went that easily, did they? Not in my experience.
“If there are, it’s for someone else to handle,” he said. “Rest. We’ll see to things.”
He seemed confident. I went over that in my head like a string of worry beads, and finally said, “You did warn Lyle, right? Not to take the skin on directly?”
David frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you remember?” I rolled over on my side to stare up at him. “These things are lethal to Djinn. David, you have to pull the Djinn back. Let the Wardens handle this one.”
“I will.”
Was he just humoring me? It was understandable if he was; I wasn’t sounding overly competent just now. Too tired, too sick, too much in shock. Besides, I was compromised. Even burning the tattoo right off my body hadn’t destroyed the link between me and Bad Bob. I wasn’t sure anything, short of my horrific and gruesomely painful death, would. That meant I couldn’t really count on my mind being my own, or be sure that Bad Bob wasn’t hooked into me like some kind of long-distance spy bug. I’d be perfectly placed for that kind of duty. He could use me, and there would be nothing—nothing—I could do to stop him.
Bad Bob could use me as the hammer to shatter the entire Warden organization, not to mention the Djinn. Through my link to David, I compromised their safety, too.
“Jo.” David must have known what was going through my mind, because his tone and his touch were both gentle. “You’re alive. Don’t underestimate your ability to come through this. I don’t.”
“You want to be there, with them.”
“My place is here.”
“Your place is at the front of the battle. You’re not Jonathan. You don’t sit things out.” I couldn’t quite suppress a smile. “Being the Boss of Bosses doesn’t really suit you, you know. You’re more of a hands-on guy.”
“I’m not sitting anything out. I’m a Djinn. I don’t have to be physically present to make things happen, you know.”
My brain drifted away, randomly connecting things. Wardens didn’t have to be present to make things happen, either, although for Fire and Earth Wardens it was certainly a whole lot easier to be in close proximity—which was why Fire Wardens had a tendency to die fighting their fires. . . .
My eyes opened. “David,” I said. “Who’s with Kevin?”
“Don’t worry, Lewis sent a whole team. Kevin’s only part of it.” He thought I was worried about Kevin. I struggled to sit up, but my arms felt like wet spaghetti. David helped me. “What?”
I didn’t know exactly, but I felt something. “I need to get to them. Right now.” A building anxiety. A conviction that something was very, very wrong. My arm’s-length emotions were rapidly closing in on me.
“No. You’re not going anywhere,” David said. He was right, horribly right; I couldn’t summon up the energy to make it off the bed, much less carry on to a fight. But my heart was pounding, my palms sweating, and I could feel dread boiling up from the pit of my stomach. “What is it?”
“I don�
�t know! It’s just—”
The whole ship shuddered beneath us. I looked at David, horrified, remembering the lessons of the Titanic all too clearly. I could see the same thing reflected in his face.
“Stay here.” He flared white and disappeared.
The Grand Paradise groaned like a living thing and heeled ponderously to starboard, rising and then settling back to vertical. Our little cabin didn’t have the luxury of a balcony, but it did have a small reinforced porthole. I dragged myself off the bed and shoved aside the single guest chair to reach it.
I was staring at water. That wasn’t possible. The deck we were on was far above the waterline—six stories above it, probably. How could I be looking at the water?
Were we sinking?
There was chaos outside. Shouting, screaming, rich people boiling out of their cabins and demanding to see the captain, which was their standard response to everything from being out of toothpaste to a terrorist attack. I kept myself upright by sheer force of will, edging along the wood paneling, heading for—what? I didn’t know. I just knew I needed to get there.
Two people were in my way. I blinked, because quite frankly, the last two people I expected to see holding on to each other were the cabin stewardess Aldonza and movie princess Cynthia Clark. Their body language wasn’t what I expected, either—no subservience from Aldonza, no arrogance from Clark. They were just two women, staying together for support and comfort.
They turned and looked at me with identical expressions of surprise that turned into concern.
“What the devil happened to you?” Cynthia Clark asked, and grabbed my left arm to support me. “Mrs. Prince?”
That still sounded odd to me. “Oh, hell, call me Jo. Everybody does,” I said. I felt sick and dizzy and a little bit high. “Aldonza. I need a door to the crew area. Right now.”
“Yes, Jo,” she said. Finally I’d made her give up the formality. Just in time for disaster. “This way.” She took the lead, glancing back to make sure we were struggling along in her wake. The ship seemed to be wallowing more and more now, side to side. Lights were flickering.
