by Rachel Caine
None of the phone calls had seemed overly strange, but my paranoia dials were all on high. I couldn’t rule anyone out.
Hearing my doorbell ring only made my self-preservation alarms go off. I was boiling pasta. I took the precaution of turning off the burner—in case I died, no sense in burning the building down again— and went to look through the peephole.
It was David. Oh. I had told him to start acting like a human, hadn’t I? I needed to get him his own key. I unbolted the door and swung it wide—
David lunged forward, grabbed me by the throat, and drove me back to the wall as he kicked the door shut. It was a real threat; his grip was bruising my neck, making parts of me panic in fear of imminent strangulation. I grabbed for his wrist, which was stupid, and tried to get a scream past his hand.
No good.
He smiled, and I recognized the expression. It wasn’t David’s, although he was wearing David’s face. I croaked out, “Don’t you fucking pretend to be him!” and David’s body shrugged, and the Djinn morphed into his more usual form.
It was Ashan, leader of the Old Djinn. Venna’s brother and boss, and the least likeable creature I’d ever met, including the ones who’d tried to kill me. Ashan was a cool, smooth, handsome bastard, all chilly grays and ice whites, and he didn’t care for people at all. He liked me a good deal less than that. “I’ve come for a purpose,” he said, “but I don’t need to hear your prattle.”
I made some incoherent noises, which got the point across that his grip on my throat was impairing my ability to curse, and he finally let up enough to allow breath in, profanity out. After the profanity, I got my pulse rate dialed back from Going to Die to Total Panic, and said, “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You brought this on yourself,” Ashan said. He emphasized that by slamming me back against the wall with painful force. “I was content to let you live, but you, you push, you always push.”
“Let go!” I snarled. He must have sensed I meant business, because although he didn’t obey instantly, he finally released his grip and stepped back. Not far back, though, and the cold fury in his eyes stayed in place. “Where is David? What have you done to him?”
He slapped me. A solid man-slap, one that I was not prepared for; it burned and I felt a wave of total rage crest at the top of my head and flow down every nerve ending. Somehow, I held myself back, but my hands clutched into convulsive fists. “You will destroy him,” Ashan said flatly. “I care nothing for you, but I do not want another war among the Djinn, and you will bring it on. It is best if you disappear from this world before you can rain destruction on all of us.”
Word had gotten around fast, even on the outer reaches of the aetheric. I hadn’t expected the Djinn to approve, but I hadn’t expected this. “All because we’re getting married?” Venna was right about one thing: The two of us engaging in a little sexual adventure hadn’t bothered too many people. It was the wedding that was pissing them off.
“It is a vow,” Ashan said. “And a vow is, for us, unbreakable. Do you understand? You will bind him to humanity, and he is the Conduit.”
All at once, I got it, and it was like a second, harder slap, only this one was directly to the surface of my brain. “Oh crap,” I breathed, suddenly not angry at all. “You mean that by taking vows to love and cherish in sickness and in health—”
“Through him, all of the New Djinn could also be bound,” Ashan said. “Conduits to the Mother must not make such vows. We became slaves the last time such was made. I will not allow it to happen again, not for such small gain as your personal happiness.”
And another thing came crystal clear to me. Ashan wasn’t screwing around this time.
I read it in his expression: He was going to kill me. Problem solved.
And I think he would have, except that right at that moment, somebody else tried to kill me.
I thought it was Ashan who’d attacked for an instant, as I felt the force slam into me and pin me back to the wall, sink past my skin, and close around my heart like an iron hand. But I could see that in fact it wasn’t him, because he’d been forced back from me by the attack, and he was off balance and confused.
I remembered David at the diner, blown back by the aetheric attack that had taken out Lee Antonelli.
They were coming for me. No warning, no quarter. I was under attack by the Sentinels.
Dark shadows flew out of the walls and coalesced into Djinn—Ashan’s bodyguards, who’d been keeping their distance until they were summoned. A threat to their boss brought them running, but once they were on the ground, the next step wasn’t exactly clear, since Ashan wasn’t the target. I was.
And one more coalesced out of the air, a blur of motion, burning copper-bright. David. He was coming, and coming very fast, heading straight for me, blind to everything else around him.
The Djinn bodyguards stopped him, but only for a few seconds. He was too strong for them, even collectively, but the instant he broke free, Ashan lunged like a white tiger. The two of them fell, rolling, a blur of motion that somehow still conveyed the fury and power of the conflict.
As David tried to fight his way to me, I drew all my power inside, fighting the invisible fist that was trying to contract and squeeze my heart into red jam. I felt my distant, powerful daughter’s flow in to augment mine; she couldn’t act directly, but she could help.
It was enough—barely—to keep me alive.
For now.
I opened my eyes. The fight between the two most powerful Djinn was already over.
David was on his knees, held fast with Ashan’s arm around his throat and his hands twisted behind his back, and the look on his face nearly made me cry out. It was shattered. Horrified. Betrayed.
“Oh, God, no. Jo, hold on,” he said, his voice rough and trembling. “Ashan, let go, damn you. Let me help her!”
The Djinn stood silently, watching. Waiting to see what would happen. Probably waiting to see how fast I was going to drop dead. This was nothing but a gift to Ashan—I’d die, and his hands would be clean. There was no reason for David to come after him.
I held against the assault, somehow pushing back the squeezing hand around my heart, and I didn’t dare speak to David. I couldn’t. No breath and no strength left over, and I knew it wouldn’t do any good, no matter what I said. He couldn’t act, not with Ashan in the way. If he could have, he’d have already done it.
“Ashan, you can’t stand by and see her murdered!” David screamed. “Let me go!”
Ashan said, in a soft but deadly cool voice, “It’s the business of humans. She told you that. I’m only enforcing what you know are the rules.”
My vision was eroding, black spots appearing at the edges. Maybe that was why I didn’t immediately recognize that one of the Djinn standing next to Ashan was Venna, dressed not in her Alice pinafore outfit, but in plain black. I focused on her. Her blue eyes were blazing hot, the color of a gas flame.
She said nothing. She didn’t try to help either one of us, not even David, whom I knew she loved. She loved Ashan more.
No help was coming.
The Sentinels can’t keep this up, not at this level of power, I told myself, trembling. Only maybe they could. The assault continued on the aetheric, furious and unrelenting, and it required every bit of concentration I possessed to keep myself from folding. Power was counteracting power, and the resulting forces were out of control; I couldn’t do anything to reduce the damage, or I’d be instantly dead.
Around us, sparks began to crawl on every available metallic surface, zipping and popping. Lightbulbs blew out. The Sentinels—if that was indeed who was behind this—pressed me harder, and I had to respond.
Windows shattered. I heard the plate glass patio door break with a catastrophic crash. One of the curtains caught fire from the constant sparking. It burned slowly, but it burned, giving off acrid black smoke.
“Stop this! They’ll destroy her!” David screamed, and writhed to get free. Ashan held
him, but just barely. Venna looked visibly upset, and turned away from them. She brushed her hand across the flame on the curtains and transferred it to her palm, then rubbed it contemplatively between her fingers, frowning, and looked at Ashan. Something passed between the two of them, something I couldn’t understand.
The whole world was narrowing, darkness closing in on me. I could feel it all around me, eating away, sinking into every nerve, every muscle.
And the hand around my heart tightened, and every labored thump seemed likely to be my last on this earth.
David’s face was taut, pallid, and desperate. He was still trying to twist free, but his strength, like mine, wasn’t up to the task.
The odds were too high this time.
“Ashan, give me your leave,” Venna said. Her brother frowned, and nodded sharply, once. Venna disappeared so suddenly there was a small thunder-clap of air left in her wake. I couldn’t even spare the breath to curse, or to cry out. The pressure was throbbing in every nerve of my body, a constant, grinding pain that grew sharper with every heartbeat. The Sentinels weren’t going to let up. They were going to slaughter me one inexorable inch at a time, and the Djinn—the Old Djinn—wouldn’t lift a finger to stop it.
And they were going to make David watch, to make it that much more horrible.
I felt something new in the attack—a tremor. Just a flicker, but somewhere, someone was weakening. If it was a combined attack, and I thought it must be, then at least one and maybe more were faltering, running out of power. Hang on, I told myself. I felt sweat dripping from my chin onto my shirt front. A little longer.
It was an eerie way to face the end of your life. If it had just been the Old Djinn, standing there impassively, that would have been bad enough, but David— the dread and anguish in his eyes was too much. I squeezed my eyes shut and concentrated harder.
Hold. You have to hold.
I felt another element of the attacking force weaken and drop away, leaving a purer signature to it. If I could only outlast the rest, I might be able to trace it back to one source . . . at least get the name of the bus that was going to run me down.
Even that cold comfort didn’t seem too likely. I felt myself shaking harder now, as I pulled all the power out of my muscles, out of my flesh, pouring my last vital resources into defending the stronghold of my heart. I couldn’t hold out for long; my reserves had gone shockingly fast, and without David’s help, even Imara’s contributions weren’t going to be enough. . . .
I felt something in me give way, and my next breath felt wet and labored. Pain flared through me. I tasted blood, coughed, and felt warmth spray out of my mouth.
“No,” David whispered. “Ashan . . . please . . .”
Ashan didn’t speak, not even to refuse.
Another element of the attack against me broke with an almost physical shock. I could count them now: three. Three of them left, but one was unbelievably strong, much stronger than I was. Stronger than I could ever hope to be.
My legs gave out. I fell to my knees, hardly felt the impact. Part of the carpet was on fire now, and none of the Djinn were reacting to the emergency. I heard the shriek of the smoke alarm going off, and knew that I was on the verge of creating yet another disaster, one that could claim the lives of the innocent people living around me.
I closed my eyes and found one last tiny pool of strength. With that last drop of power, I pushed back. Two of the three attackers dropped away, surprised by my sudden aggression, and I saw the last one clearly.
On the aetheric, he burned a brilliant white, less a person than a star bound in human form. I couldn’t see his features, but I could see where he was, in the instant before he cut off his attack and disappeared into the boiling mass of confusion stirred up by the attack like the smoke in the apartment.
I’d won.
I pitched forward to my hands and knees, gasping in thick, tainted breaths, coughing and wheezing. My mouth was full of blood, and my coughs brought up more of it. I was hemorrhaging from my lungs, too weak to save myself, too weak to control the fire taking hold around me, or cleanse the air I was breathing. No. You can’t die now. You won!
Winning isn’t everything. You need to have something left, in the end, to move on. This was the very definition of a Pyrrhic victory.
I realized that I was staring at David, still on his knees, held pinned and helpless by Ashan. His face was the color of ashes, and his eyes an unholy, almost demonic red, consumed with pain and pent-up fury.
“She survived,” Ashan said, and I heard a note of pure surprise in his voice. I felt a surge of power move through the apartment. The siren cut off; the air turned sweet again. No more sparks. Before my watering eyes, the curtain knitted itself into its original unburned form, and the carpet healed itself.
That wasn’t David’s doing. I could tell that he was blocked by Ashan here, completely cut off. Helpless. The bodyguards wouldn’t have dared take that kind of initiative, which left only the last person I’d have ever expected to do me a kindness.
Ashan was staring at me with half-closed, thoughtful eyes. I couldn’t read his expression. I was too tired to even try.
“Go on and finish me off,” I said hoarsely. “I can’t stop you.”
“I know,” he said. It was the first time I’d heard him speak with such a level tone, no trace of hate or contempt. “You fought well. Almost like a Djinn. But you’re not a Djinn anymore, and you never will be again.” After another pause, I thought I heard him say, very quietly, “Pity.”
He let David go and stepped back. David didn’t hesitate. Ashan ceased to exist for him the instant the barriers fell, and he lunged to me and gathered me in his arms. I felt healing power cascade through me in burning, almost painful urgency, and I shuddered and buried my face against his neck.
“Jo?” He whispered it with his lips against my skin. His hands were everywhere on me, frantic, protective. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I felt tears welling up, and whether they were shock or relief or the delayed effects of fear, I couldn’t tell. I didn’t have any defenses left, not even against myself. I wanted to lie down on my side, curl up, and weep myself into unconsciousness in his embrace, but instead, I lifted my head—which felt as if it weighed about a hundred pounds—and focused on Ashan. His expression was closed and still, but I thought I saw something in it that hadn’t been there before.
“It was necessary, you know,” he said. “Necessary you stop before it’s too late.” Which wasn’t an apology, but the fact that he felt compelled to explain himself was an enormous change.
David growled, deep in his throat, and I stilled him with a hand on his cheek, still looking at Ashan.
“Thank you. I won’t expect it again,” I said. I saw a flash in his cool eyes, and he bent his head a fraction of an inch.
And then he misted away, and his bodyguards followed, giving me a range of stares from curiosity to anger.
One faded in. Venna, still in black. I curled closer to David, taking comfort in the heat of his body, the strength of his embrace. I was shaking all over, and couldn’t seem to stop. It wasn’t just physical injury. I’d come close, so desperately close—in some indefinable way, I felt more fragile now than I ever had, despite the fact that I’d won.
I wouldn’t have wanted to show so much vulnerability to Ashan, but it was different with Venna. She’d seen me crying, filthy, beaten, broken. She’d never made judgments, not in the way that Ashan would.
I felt the soft touch of her hand stroking my hair.
“You had to win alone,” Venna said. “I am sorry. I couldn’t help. It was a human matter, not for the Djinn.”
I gulped air and nodded. David wasn’t so understanding. He let out that low, vicious growl again, and Venna sat back on her heels, clearly taking the warning very seriously. I couldn’t tell if it angered her, but I doubted it. She seemed to understand his desperation.
She studied the two of us with a sorrowful and composed express
ion, like a graveyard angel. “Your enemies are much worse than you are. You should be prepared for the fight.”
I croaked, “Who? Who are they?”
“You know,” she said, and stood up. “You knew before, and you will again. You saw him. You just won’t allow yourself to see.”
I reached out and grabbed her hand. She looked down, frowning a little, and pulled free without any difficulty—but she did it gently. “I hope you survive. And I hope—I hope you are happy.”
I laughed hollowly. “I hope so, too. I don’t suppose we can count on you for a little help along those lines?”
Venna raised her eyebrows. “What do you expect?”
Nothing, I supposed.
Which was, as Venna performed her dramatic Djinn exit, exactly what we got.
David picked me up and carried me into the bathroom. I might have passed out for a while; when I woke, I was naked, and the two of us were in the bathtub, stretched out and facing each other. He was gently sluicing hot water over my chest, and when he saw I was awake, he switched to a washcloth, which he used to sponge blood from my face and mouth. There was a lot of it, which was alarming in a distant sort of way. I was too weak to really feel panic.
He pressed his lips to my forehead.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry I left you. I won’t leave you again.”
“Not even for—”
“No. Not even for the Mother.”
It had the feeling not of seduction, but of ritual, and the heat of the water eased something cold and small and terrified inside of me. We stayed in the bath until I felt sleep overtaking me, and then he carried me to bed, where I fell into a black, dreamless pit.
Sleep wasn’t without its horrors. I woke a few times feeling phantom fingers scrabbling for my heart, but it wasn’t an attack, just raw unfiltered panic. David was there to drive it away. Hush, he told me, and soothed the fear with gentle strokes of his fingers. I won’t leave you. You are safe in my arms.
