by Rachel Caine
And then the vault door of the first cell.
Luis Rocha was slumped in a corner, pale and unshaven, barely conscious. His head lolled when I tried to raise him to his feet, and although I could sense the power inside of him, he was blocked from the source by the blanket of drugs circulating in him.
I couldn't heal myself as easily, but I could clear his bloodstream. It was an investment of power, not a cost; as soon as he was cleared, his power began to flow back to me, through our touch.
His hands wrapped around my wrists, and our gazes locked.
"Cassiel," he whispered. "Oh, Christ, what have you done?"
I must have looked very different to him.
"Whatever was necessary," I said. I was leaking blood on the floor from wounds I didn't feel. "Stand. We have little time."
He scrambled up. They had also outfitted him in the flimsy yellow jumpsuit and prisoner shoes. I glared at it but decided our power would be better spent toward gaining our escape from this place, before--
The entire building rumbled. Dust sifted from overhead, and the lights flickered.
"Was that you?" Luis asked me. I shook my head. "Me, neither--"
Tree roots exploded up from the floor, cracking concrete. Sharp, jagged roots like daggers, then swords. It happened fast, too fast for us to counter it immediately, and one of the roots erupted under Luis's feet, stabbing through his foot and into his leg.
He screamed and tried to pull free. As I was helping him, another root ripped through the stone floor, thick and strong as a telephone pole, and almost skewered me from below. I stumbled aside. It continued to rise, slamming into the ceiling above and shattering the impact-resistant plastic cover of the lights.
"Go!" Luis screamed at me. I shook my head and pulled his leg free of the root that impaled it, picked him up in my arms, and began to run.
It was only nine steps, I told myself. Nine steps from the back of the room to the door.
I jumped the last three, praying I had guessed right, as a whole forest of roots erupted from the floor and sliced in all directions.
We hit one of the thick, pale structures and bounced--but we bounced out, not in. I didn't pause. I hit the ground with both feet and kept running, because the roots followed us, trying to outpace and outflank me. But it was a doomed effort--too much open space, and once we had gained the outside air, too many of their own people in the way to continue an indiscriminate attack.
There was a jeep--possibly the same one that had brought me to this prison in the first place--parked next to the prison building, with the keys dangling in the ignition. I dumped Luis in the seat, climbed behind the wheel, and in seconds we were rocketing for the gate.
I didn't particularly care if adults got out of my way. I hardly slowed as the bumpers sent them flying from the path.
I knew by this time that they would try to use the children to stop me, so it was not a surprise to see those ragged young bodies lined up in front of the gate, only a grim confirmation.
I couldn't stop. Not this time.
"Luis!" I yelled. "Can you open a gap somewhere else?"
He nodded. I pointed.
Where I pointed, the inner wall exploded in a shower of bricks. The children were in the wrong place. One of them tried to scramble in front of us--C. T. Styles.
I slowed just enough to grab the boy by the scruff of his neck and sling him into the jeep on the passenger's side, into Luis's surprised embrace. "Put him out!" I ordered, and then I was testing the jeep's ability to scale a shifting mess of broken wall. The tires slipped; the vehicle tilted--then held and climbed.
Beside me, Luis slapped a hand to the child's forehead and used a burst of power to put him to sleep. "I don't like doing that!" he shouted, which forced me to laugh a little wildly. There was nothing in this I liked. I didn't like the fact that we were in an open vehicle, with gunmen drawing their aim on us, while we slithered across broken bricks into a killing field. I didn't like the fact that I had little chance of surviving this.
I didn't like the gnawing terror of knowing how much I could lose even if I did survive. Isabel. Luis. My . . . family.
I glanced over at him, through the blowing fury of my pink hair. He had the sleeping little boy in the crook of one arm and the other braced against the dashboard, and Luis's answering look was full of mad, unbelievable energy.
Just like mine, I suspected.
"Here we go," I said, and the tires bit the barren ground between the walls. I took one hand off the steering wheel and held it out to him, and Luis stopped bracing himself on the dash and instead gave me his hand, his power, his will. There was no conversation between us. None needed.
I pulled power from him and drove it deep under the wall. I softened the ground beneath a long swath.
The wall sagged, but didn't fall. Braced with an internal lacing of steel.
Luis battered at the bricks, but the external wall had been hardened against magical attacks, and now we could feel the dampening influences around us--Weather and Fire were at work, as well as opposing Earth forces.
We weren't going to make it. The jeep was hurtling at the wall at speed. If we hit and it didn't go down, we would die. C.T.'s small body would be smashed by the impact; if Luis and I survived, we'd be easily picked off by the Wardens and soldiers.
The wall had to come down. I shook the ground, and the entire structure shuddered and bled dust. Some of the concrete shattered and fell away, revealing a sinister skeleton of iron beneath.
I hit it with a final blast of power a millisecond before the jeep's front grille smashed into the structure with stunning force . . . and in that second, the steel turned translucent, and as we hit it, the crystalline structure exploded into showers of glass.
I ducked instinctively, as did Luis, curving over the unconscious boy on his lap. A shower of shards blew over us, and I felt a hundred hot cuts, but all superficial.
We were lucky. A sharp, daggerlike fragment landed between us and buried itself several inches deep in the plastic and fiber of the edge of Luis's seat. Another few inches and it might have severed an arm, or landed in his skull.
Bullets rang in a hot chatter along the metal. I pressed the accelerator, and we bounced over the remains of the wall and out into the open ground.
"Faster!" Luis yelled.
I knew that. My foot was all the way down, and we were still accelerating, tearing along the rough dirt road that led into the forest.
The forest tried to close against us, but I didn't pause; the Earth Warden back in the compound didn't have time to grow the barricade with any degree of care, and plants forced to cycle into maturity at that rate were naturally fragile. The jeep crushed the saplings trying to block our path, and we sped on.
"Watch for more children!" I snapped, intent on guiding the increasingly loosely steering jeep through the turns. I missed my motorcycle. I wondered if they'd simply abandon it in the woods, leave it to rust. It was a sad end for such a beautiful thing.
If they planned to send the rejected children against us as shock troops, they were unable to get them ahead of us.
We rocketed out of the forest and skidded onto clean, black pavement.
Free.
I looked back as I sped along, going as fast as I dared; there was no sign of pursuit.
No sign at all.
Relief began to creep through my body, slow as poison. I began to feel all the hurts, the cuts, the bullet wounds that disfigured parts of my body. I was battered, but alive.
Luis was alive.
One of the children I'd promised to retrieve was alive. The other . . .
I drew in a ragged breath, startled by a burn of tears in my eyes. Why am I crying?
Luis was still holding my hand, though I was not drawing any power from him. It was merely comfort. Human touch.
"Cassie," he said. His touch moved from my palm up my arm, stroked my shoulder, and trailed along my cheeks where tears spilled down. "Big Djinn don't cry."
And I heard the Voice in my ears, blocking out the world, whisper, I know your name, Cassiel. I have your heart now, and you will come back to me. You must.
Chapter 15
OFFICER STYLES MET us just outside of Lake City. I told him to come alone, and not to tell his wife.
He disobeyed both instructions.
Luis had helped with the worst of my injuries--again--but I was bitterly tired now and aching and afraid. Pain, I had discovered, tends to make one afraid, once adrenaline fades. I had never truly understood that before. We sat on a fallen log, in the shadow of a pine tree. C.T. was still unconscious, but sleeping normally. Luis had wrapped him in a blanket he'd found in the back of the jeep.
We were drinking cold bottles of water when the Colorado State Highway Patrol car pulled into the rest stop near our stolen vehicle.
"Heads up," Luis said. "He brought company."
The second person in the car was not, as I'd have assumed, Officer Styles's partner. It was his wife, a fragile little blonde who seemed genuinely relieved and overjoyed to see her sleeping little boy. Officer Styles was grateful, but wary.
I held out my hand to stop Mrs. Styles from approaching, and pointed at the policeman. "You," I said. "Take the boy."
He didn't understand, but he stepped forward and scooped up his son, blanket and all. C.T. murmured sleepily and nestled closer to his father's chest. I felt Luis relax as the last of the control he'd been exerting slipped away.
"We're in your debt," Officer Styles said. He didn't look happy about it, but that might have been an overload of emotion in a face not equipped to process such extremes. "I can't believe you found him."
"You should know," I said, "that your wife was aware of his location the entire time."
For a second, neither of them moved, and then a breeze shifted the pine tree behind us and skirled up dust from the road, and Officer Styles shifted to stare at his wife. "Leona?"
The pretty little blonde beside him was hardening before my eyes. Her eyes took on a bitter shine, and her smile curdled into something toxic.
She showed that only to me, and only for an instant, before turning toward her husband with a look of wounded innocence. "I don't know what she's talking about! Here, let me hold him."
"Don't," I said, "if you want to see him again. She'll take him. She intends to take him."
Whether he believed me or not, Officer Styles backed up a step as his wife came toward him. "Hold on. Are you saying Leona had something to do with this?"
"I'm saying your wife knows about the compound in the forest," I said. "The Ranch. Isn't that right, Leona? The Ranch, where they collect and train the children."
Luis stirred when the woman cast us a poisonous look. "Cassiel's right," he said. "I saw it myself, man. We were barely able to get C.T. out, and if you let her get her hands on him, I can't swear she won't take him right back. It's some kind of cult thing."
Officer Styles was looking at his wife as if she had turned into an alien creature. "Leona?"
"Give him to me." She held out her arms.
"Answer me. Did you have something to do with this?"
"He's my son!"
"He's my son, too!" Styles burst out, and when she tried to grab him, he avoided her rush. "Leona, stop! What the hell is wrong with you? How could you--"
"How could I?" Leona's face was alive now, alight with utter fury. "How could I? After what happened to me? My child isn't going to be mutilated like that. My child isn't going to be twisted by some group of superior bastards that thinks it knows what's best for the world. No, Randy, dammit, I will not let that happen to my son!"
"But--it doesn't have to--Lee, he's not even six yet!"
"He's already started showing signs. Soon enough, they'd come looking for him. They'd give us a choice, Randy: let them take him away and put him in their special schools, raise him up to be one of them, or cut away everything that makes him who he is!" Leona's eyes were mad, I thought. Anguished and mad. "I've lived like that, with half of myself sliced off. It's horrible. It's worse than dying. I won't let it happen to C.T."
"You never said--"
"No, I never said! You never asked!" Leona made another grab at the sleeping child, which Randy fended off with his elbow. "This is better for him. I swear it! They'll care for him. They'll train him. He'll serve a higher purpose."
"Yeah," Luis agreed soberly. "News flash, lady: They decided he wasn't good enough for whatever little meritocracy they're running inside that place, so he got to be King of the Rejects, which is like Oliver Twist meets Lord of the Flies. They were going to kill him, amiga. Or at least, they didn't care if he died. One thing about cults: It's all about them, not you."
That stopped Leona's rush, but only for a minute. "You just don't understand. I've seen the future. She showed it to me. I know how things will be. Should be."
"You're right," I said, and stood up. I ached all over, and watching this travesty of a reunion had turned my heart black. "I don't understand. And I don't care. You took him there, Leona. Why? What did they promise you would happen?"
"They promised me that he'd get to kill Djinn," she said. "Lots of Djinn. All the Djinn." She smiled thinly. "That's worth dying for."
I looked at my partner, who seemed not only surprised by this, but more than a little alarmed.
It only confirmed for me what I had sensed within the compound.
I stood up, nodded to Luis, and we walked to the jeep. It had clearly been through a firefight, as had we, and Officer Styles began to realize that now that his son was safely in his arms. "Where are you going?" he asked.
"Things to do," Luis said. He took the driver's seat. "My niece is still in there."
"You're going alone?" Styles clearly thought we were crazy. As we probably were.
"No," Luis said. He fired up the truck as I climbed in on the other side. "I'm going with her."
The hour was just past noon, and the sunlight that filtered through trees struck the road in harsh, glittering lace.
Luis drove fast, but not recklessly. There was an expression on his face that I thought his enemies would not like to see coming in their direction.
"We don't have any chance," I said. "You know that. They are more than prepared for us now."
"I know."
"Then why--"
"You don't think Leona's going to be calling them to warn them?" he asked. "Let them spend all night looking for us. They're good and paranoid about you right now, and we should keep it that way. Don't worry--we're not going back there on our own. You have any allies you can call right now? Anybody we can get on our side?"
I thought it over. "One," I said. "Just one."
"Is it a Djinn?"
I nodded.
"Then that's probably all we'd need, I'd say."
"I can't promise he'll help," I said, "but I can ask."
I had tried calling on Gallan when I'd been in the cell, but I'd been weak and exhausted then, and perhaps he hadn't heard.
I closed my eyes and let the flickering light and steady vibration of road beneath tires lull me into a light trance.
Gallan.
Gallan.
Gallan!
The last call I sent with a burst of true power, and I felt it ripple like a shock wave through the aetheric.
Nothing. There was no response. It seemed eerily silent.
Luis glanced at me. "Well?"
I shook my head. "If he doesn't respond to that, he doesn't intend to respond at all." That disappointed me more than I had expected. I had thought--I had hoped that Gallan, of all the Djinn, might still hold a secret regard for me, and be willing to go against the wishes of our mutual lord and master.
But in the end, perhaps he was still Ashan's creature.
A fingertip lightly brushed the curve of my ear. "I'm no one's creature," Gallan's soft voice whispered. "And you should know that better than anyone, Cassiel."
/> Luis became aware of Gallan's sudden manifestation in the back of the jeep at the same time that I did, and involuntarily swerved. Gallan--crouching, holding to nothing for support--swayed gracefully with the motion of the vehicle. The wind whipped his long golden hair into a silk war banner. He was dressed in white, all in white, and his eyes were the color of a tropical sea at midnight.
I turned in the seat to look at him, and for just a moment, the full Djinn glory of him blinded me with tears. This was what I had lost. What I had once been.
"You came," I said. My voice sounded weak, far too human. "I wasn't sure you would."
Gallan shrugged. "Ashan has other things to concern him," he said. "There are a few of us who have been left to keep watch. And I have been watching, Cassiel."
"I need your help." I glanced at Luis. "We need your help. Please, Gallan."
I got a brilliant, cutting smile in return from the Djinn. "Please. How very human of you. It's not like you to beg, my love." The smile dimmed quickly. "I will deal with you for this boon."
"We don't need deals," Luis said. "We need help."
"Help comes at a cost. Tell him, Cassiel. Tell him how True Djinn exact their prices."
"Gallan--"
"Tell him."
I glanced at Luis. "True Djinn--you would call them Old Djinn--do nothing without compensation. No favors, no kindnesses. There is always a price, in the end."
"And what's his price?"
Gallan lost his smile altogether. "My price is Cassiel."
"No," Luis snapped, before I could reply. "Not happening. Feel free to fuck off now."
"We need his help!" I said.
"Not if it means your life, we don't."
"I wouldn't kill her," Gallan said, as if the whole concept of killing was beneath him. I knew better. "I have many uses for Cassiel that don't involve her gruesome death. Many pleasant uses, in fact. I think you have imagined them yourself."
The look Luis sent him in the mirror was pure, hot contempt. "So you're a rapist, not a murderer."
Gallan's smile didn't waver. "Not if she consents," he said, and turned his attention to me. "Do you consent, Cassiel? Do you submit yourself to me in exchange for my help in retrieving the child?"
This was a different Gallan than I had known--no, not different; only I was different. His cruelty and capriciousness had been alluring when I'd been a Djinn; I'd only understood the power, not the cost it exacted. I had always found Gallan attractive, always been drawn to him.
