by Rachel Caine
"Can't you do it from a distance?"
"Yes." He flashed a grin in my direction. "It just isn't as much fun as seeing the look on your face."
I gave him a long, long stare. I imbued it with all the Djinn haughtiness at my command, which was quite a bit, even now. "I will wait in the truck," I said, and turned to go.
A strange silence fell over the land, a hush that prickled along my nerves like a storm of needles, and I stopped, turning my head, searching for the cause of it. Something . . .
"Cassiel!" Manny cried.
I whirled, heart pounding, as I felt the surge of power roar through the air, swirling around the cattle pen.
A whirling, invisible cyclone of energy separated me from Manny.
A cow trumpeted in panic and pain, shook its head, and toppled to its knees. It hit the trampled ground with a thud and thrashed, screaming.
Another.
Another.
"Manny!" I screamed it, and although it was an enormous effort without his help, I launched myself up into the aetheric with all the power I had in reserve.
It didn't help. Djinn senses were beyond me; what was left was inconsistent, confusing, a blur of forces that twisted in on itself like a hurricane, spiraling tighter and tighter. Manny was backing away from it, but there was nowhere to go; the cattle were panicked, as much of a danger to him and each other as the power encircling them. He could have fought through them to the metal fence, but not beyond, with the forces swirling just outside and moving inward.
It was a noose, and the noose was drawing tighter. I did not stop to think. I plunged into the storm.
The force hit me with staggering intensity, whipping my fragile body, punching into my head and soul like red-hot needles. I struggled on and felt cold metal under my searching hands. The fence. I wriggled between the bars and fell into soft dirt, bathed in the stench of the cattle and their leavings. That no longer mattered.
I crawled. The pressure against my head eased first, and then my shoulders, as I inched farther into the temporarily safe area inside the cattle pen.
Not so safe as all that. I heard the panicked bellows of the cattle, and massive sharp hooves stomped the ground beside my head. I heaved myself up just as Manny's hands closed around me, whirling me around to face him.
"What the hell are you doing?" he shouted at me, and swung me out of the way as a massive cow charged the rushing band of power edging in over the fence.
The cow entered the wall, wailed an eerie cry, and toppled to its knees, then to its side.
Dead.
I felt the breath stop in my lungs. I might have died. It had not occurred to me because Djinn didn't think of such things, of the way fragile bodies could so easily shatter. Suddenly, Manny's anger at me made sense.
The power took on a reddish hue and crept in another foot, forcing the cattle back. Whether we risked the barrier or not, we would eventually be injured, and probably killed, by the panicked beasts.
My once-Djinn nature might protect me a second time, but I couldn't rely on it, and I couldn't risk Manny's life.
My hand slipped down his arm to grab his hand. He flinched, then nodded, tight-lipped. "Do it," he said.
"Together," I replied.
Compared with the white-hot geyser of Lewis Orwell's abilities, Manny was weak, but strong enough--and canny enough--to allow me to take his power, all his power, amplify it, and feed it back to him. It was, I thought, the reason that humans had made Djinn their servants--our ability to channel, magnify, and refine their powers so completely.
It was trust I required, and trust I received, as Manny let go of his own destiny and put it into my hands.
I shaped his power into a sharp edge, something that gleamed like the blade of a knife on the aetheric. I forced the edges finer, finer still, until it was thin as a whisper, and strong as steel.
Then I threw out my arms and cut through the barrier holding us penned. Not only the storm of force around us, but the iron of the cattle pen itself.
I formed a second sharp-edged plane and slammed it down five feet from the first, through force and metal. The metal fence, chopped at two points, fell in the middle to form an exit, a break in the attack large enough for us to escape.
Except that Manny did not take it. Instead, he began slapping the cattle's thick hides, driving them to the hole I kept open. "Move!" he yelled. The cows, once prodded, saw the clear space and thundered toward it. I could not dodge out of the way. I was transfixed by the crushing load of concentration; the barriers I'd managed to erect were strong, but holding them against the battering attack was like holding a pane of glass against a hurricane--a doomed effort, but one requiring all my attention.
Manny must have realized that just in time. I felt a sudden surge of power from him--just a small amount, because he had little left to give. Just enough to divert the cattle from my unprotected body.
The beasts streamed around me, hot and bellowing, and thundered through the narrow gap. When the last bawling animal was free, Manny hesitated at the edge.
"Go!" I shouted. He plunged through.
I did not think I could keep the barriers in place while moving, but I tried, walking slowly and calmly with my arms outstretched to either side. My fingertips brushed the slick, cool surface of the walls I'd put in place. I felt them shudder.
I felt them shatter when I was still in the middle.
The storm closed around me and shattered me, too.
I came back to consciousness with my eyes full of cloudless blue sky, tasting dust and metal. When I took a breath, it was thick with the smell of cattle.
It was the stench that convinced me. Ah, then. Not dead, unless the humans are correct about hell.
For a moment, as pain washed over me, I wished I'd been granted that mercy, but instead, a face loomed close, blocking out the sun. I expected Manny, but no. A cow, blinking its huge brown eyes, watched me with as deep a curiosity as something so primitive could muster. It nudged me with a damp nose.
"Hey!" Manny's sharp voice startled the cow, and it pulled back and away, trotting off to join its fellows placidly cropping the trampled grass. This time Manny's shadow blocked the sun as he leaned over me. "You're okay. Thank God."
I felt strangely . . . light. Empty. I held out my hand to him, and it trembled with the effort.
He looked at it, then past my shaking fingers to focus on my face.
"You saved my life," he said. There was something odd in his voice. "You really did."
I had no strength left to voice my needs. Part of me was already fraying at the edges, and I was afraid, the way I'd been afraid as Ashan ripped me from the world of the Djinn and sent me falling into flesh.
This time, I was falling into darkness. No one, not even the Djinn, knew what came after that. I was empty, and fading.
Manny's hand wrapped around mine in a strong clasp, and he sat down beside me as the power trickled slowly from the wellspring inside him, filling empty spaces inside me. I gasped in relief and pain, and wrapped my other hand around his.
The flow of power seemed intolerably slow. It was all I could do not to rip and tear at his control to get at that life-giving flow, but I forced myself to stay down, stay still, be passive.
And in time, the panic lessened, and the emptiness receded. Well before I was complete, though, Manny's supply of power failed. He could give no more without endangering himself.
"It's enough," I told him, in response to his silent question. He helped me to my feet. I looked down at myself and grimaced, because in my haste to reach him I had crawled through filth. I did not have it to spare, but I used a pulse of power to clean myself.
Manny laughed. "Vanity really is your vice of choice, isn't it?"
"No," I said somberly. "I believe it's pride."
Manny had no idea who might want to kill him. He was, he said, not a man who made enemies; that might or might not be correct, but I felt he was telling me the truth as he saw it.
T
his had not felt like an attack from another Warden, though I supposed that was possible. While it had been full of power and energy, there had been a formless sense about it, too. I supposed that it could have been a Djinn, but only if the Djinn was merely toying with us. Testing, perhaps--testing me?
A new thought, and one not entirely comforting. I didn't like having faceless, nameless enemies.
We drove back to town in silence; Manny, I could perceive, was thinking furiously about what had happened. He had walked to the house and spoken to the rancher about the dead cattle; I have no idea what explanation he put to it--perhaps something to do with freak weather or lightning. He kept his thoughts and suspicions--if he had any--to himself.
Instead of taking me to my apartment, or back to our office, he took me to his home. Isabel was in the front yard, playing some elaborate and complicated game involving three dolls, a large number of scattered building blocks, and a much-abused cardboard box large enough to hide in.
"Papa!" She threw the dolls in the dirt and ran to wrap herself around Manny. He lifted her and kissed her dirty face, settled her on his hip, and turned to face the street. There was a large, gleaming black truck with flames painted in an orange blaze along the sides parked there--a flamboyant, obvious sort of vehicle.
There seemed to be conflict in his expression--delight warring with dread. He shook his head. "I see Uncle Luis is here," he said. "Right?"
"Right!" Isabel bubbled, and laughed. She stared at me over Manny's shoulder, smiling, and I waved wearily in return. "Cassie looks funny."
"Cassiel," I said reflexively. "Not Cassie."
Manny grimaced and nudged his daughter. "It's not polite to say people look funny, Ibby."
"But she does! She's white like snow, and her hair's fluffy. How come she doesn't look like everybody else?"
"Ibby!"
I summoned up the will to laugh a little. "Don't. She's right. I do look odd to her eyes." And to my own. Definitely to my own . . .
"Hey, bro." The screen door to the house opened with a creak of hinges, and the man who stood there was a bit shorter than Manny, but far broader in the chest and shoulders. His hair was glossy, straight, and down to his shoulders. He was wearing a gray sleeveless shirt that revealed muscular arms covered with intricate dark tattoos.
Flames.
I had seen his picture, on the mantel.
"You look like hell, man," he said, and held out a sweating brown bottle to Manny. "Bad day at the office?"
"You could say that." Manny let Isabel down, and she scampered back to her playground, gathering up and dusting off her dolls before resuming her games. Manny had a certain guarded distance, and I wondered if it was because of this stranger, or me. "Luis, meet Cassiel. You probably heard about her." He twisted the cap from the bottle Luis had given him, and drank a deep, thirsty mouthful of the beer.
Luis. Brother. Another Warden, and one far stronger than Manny; I could feel his energy like heat against my skin, even from several feet away. An Earth Warden, like his brother. I wondered why he'd gotten tattoos of flames; it seemed an odd sort of choice.
I remembered, too, that when Manny was on the aetheric, he had the ghosts of the same tattoos on his arms. Odd indeed . . . unless his unconscious manifestation on the aetheric wished to be like his brother.
Luis had large brown eyes, and they surveyed me with interest and intensity. He offered a vague salute with his half-empty bottle of beer. "Hey, Cassiel," he said. "You drink beer?"
"Yes," I said. There was a challenge in his question, and I was in no mood to be defeated. Luis nodded, without any change in expression, and reached down inside the door. He held a bottle out to me. I went up the porch steps and took it, twisted the cap as I'd seen Manny do, and took a deep swallow.
The taste was foul. I choked, coughed, and managed not to spew the stuff back on Luis's smirking face. I swallowed and willed myself not to give him more amusement.
The second sip was easier. "Thank you," I said.
"You're an asshole," Manny told his brother. "Inside. What the hell are you doing here, man?"
He shoved Luis on the shoulder. Manny was the weaker of the two, but Luis allowed himself to be pushed, retreating back into the house.
We followed.
Angela was setting the table--four places. When she saw me, she quickly turned away and added another plate, as well as a welcoming silent smile. I thought--though my command of human expressions was not expert--that she looked troubled, despite the smile.
"Seriously, man, have you lost your mind?" Manny demanded as the screen door banged shut behind us with a sound like a thunderclap. "You don't come back to Albuquerque. You know that. You're asking for trouble."
Luis's face set in stubborn lines. "I don't let fear run my life," he said. "You shouldn't either, Manny."
"I got a wife and kid! I got things to lose, bro. You think about that before you go stirring things up again." Manny shot me a look, excluding me from this strange conversation. I wandered to the screen door to watch Isabel playing in the box, earnestly talking to her dolls as they acted out whatever drama she had constructed. One toppled over into the dust, and Isabel leaned the other two over the fallen, mimicking human concern. Angela moved to the window to check on her child before going back to the kitchen.
I continued to listen to the brothers.
"This is still Norteno territory, and they're not going to miss you rolling up, big as life, in that damn flashy truck," Manny was saying. "You want to visit, you at least let me know before you come. We got our own problems around here without throwing yours on top."
"Love you too, Manny," Luis said. "Look, I'm sorry, but all that crap, that's past, all right? The Nortenos have bigger things to worry about than me. I've been out of that a long time now."
"You know how it is: You're never out. I hear they remember." Manny was less angry now, but I could sense the dark undercurrents still in his voice. "Think about Angela and Ibby. I'm planning to move them out of here later in the year, now that I got a raise from the Wardens."
"For taking her on?" Her meant, of course, me. I decided that mentioning me included me once more in the conversation, and turned toward the two men. Manny glanced nervously toward me; Luis did not. His eyes were fixed on his brother, and his muscular arms were folded across his chest. "Shit, bro, you sure about this?"
"You mean, is he sure about me?" I deliberately took another shallow sip of the beer. The malty, bitter aftertaste was less prominent this time. "I doubt he is, but I have proved useful to him."
Luis did look at me this time, and I did not care for the expression on his face. It seemed to pass judgment, and I would not be judged by humans. Not even by a Warden as powerful as I suspected Luis to be. "You get yourself in trouble today?" he asked--not me, but Manny. Manny shook his head.
"Not any more than usual."
I wondered why Manny was feeling it necessary to lie, even by omission, to his own brother, but I kept my silence. The two men continued to stare at each other, a contest of wills that left a palpable shiver in the air, and then Luis shrugged and chugged down half of his beer in one long gulp. "You know where I am if you need me."
He didn't wait for Manny to answer, but turned and walked into the kitchen, where Angela was preparing the meal. Isabel banged in through the front door, still clutching her dolls, and ran into the kitchen. Voices rose and fell, punctuated by Isabel's giggles.
Manny sipped his beer in silence, eyes unfocused and distant.
"Your brother," I said.
"Yeah," he answered. "Lucky me."
Chapter 5
I LEARNED A great deal at the meal that night, mainly from the silences and when they fell. Manny loved his brother, but there were secrets between them, things that not even Angela seemed to fully understand. I said little, preferring to observe.
The meal was tamales, Angela explained to me, and went into great detail of how to season the pork that was rolled into the cornmeal. I was g
rateful that she quickly pointed out that the corn husk skins should be removed before eating, as that had posed a worry for me. The food was a heady mixture of tastes and textures, and Ibby tipped hot sauce freely onto my plate, begging me to try it with the tamales and rice. I haughtily refused. That earned me laughter from the others at the table, but kind laughter. Bright, not dark.
"So," Manny said, "Luis, you staying long?"
"Maybe." He shoveled another bite of food into his mouth. He had not been shy about the hot sauce, and seemed unaffected by it. "Waiting on a transfer out of Florida. I'm kind of on detached service right now."
Manny exchanged a look with his wife, and Angela frowned. "Where's the transfer to?" she asked. "Ibby, stop playing with the rice. You're getting it all over the table."
Isabel glowered at her, but ate the forkful of rice she had been waving around. Luis took a sip of his beer.
"They tell me they're short of Wardens in Colorado," he said. "So probably there, but it'll be closer than the coast." He nudged Isabel, seated next to him. "You'd like that, right?"
"Right!" She chewed her food noisily and grinned at him.
"Luis--" Manny said, and then shrugged. "It's your life, man. But if I were you, I wouldn't come back here. Not to New Mexico. And not to any place Nortenos has a chapter. They don't forget, man. And they never forgive. You know that."
"I know. I just don't care," Luis said. He focused his attention back on his plate. "So what have you guys been up to while I was gone? Ibby?"
Isabel launched into a bubbling, breathless story about everything from the history of her dolls to the horny toad she had found in the backyard. Angela caught my eye and smiled, and I felt . . . warmed. Part of the circle of safety, however much an illusion it might be.
I saved his life, I thought, watching Manny as he talked and laughed with his wife and daughter. He would not be here tonight if I hadn't.
There was something curiously strong about that feeling. I didn't know what to name it, or whether or not it would help or harm me--but I couldn't ignore it. As a Djinn, I had never cared about an individual human, other than as a tool to be used and discarded. I had never given a moment's thought to what they had been before or after; I had spent as little time as possible in contact with them, and forgotten them almost immediately. Now I wondered. I thought about all of those faces I had glimpsed through the ages of my life--young, old, male, female--and how I might have helped or harmed them.
