by Rachel Caine
There was a rustle in the leaves, and Esmeralda rose up next to me, swaying on her snakelike body. She wiped silvery blood from her pretty mouth, staring down at her victim with an avid hunter's gleam in her now-human eyes. "He tastes like the Mother," she said, and licked her lips. "Like life and death and power. I could get used to that."
"No," I said softly. "You couldn't. Is he dead?" He looked dead, and although I had reconciled myself to the idea that many, many worthy souls would perish today, it hurt like raw open wounds, seeing him so still and... broken.
Esmeralda shrugged, as if she couldn't care less. "Don't know," she said. "My venom has killed Djinn before, but he's pretty strong. Probably not. He'll just be out of the fight for a while." She slithered off to check Isabel and Luis.
I crouched down and put my hand on Rashid's forehead. Djinn didn't have pulses, not unless they were manifesting a completely human form; Rashid didn't bother with such minute details. But I could feel a tiny, whispering thread of power still inside him, like an echo. He was there--injured, frail, on the verge of falling into darkness, but there.
I bent closer, put my lips close to his pointed indigo blue ear, and whispered, "Don't come after us again, Rashid. I don't wish to kill you, but I will. You know I'm capable of doing that, even to you."
"Cass?" Luis's voice, from behind me. I sat back on my heels and looked over my shoulder at him. The flickering firelight was almost extinguished now, but the trees were still popping and smoldering, dropping cinders, not flaming leaves. Heavy gray smoke had replaced the earlier mist, and it rolled sullenly around our feet and hazed the air. "Cass, we've got to get the hell out of here. If there's one Djinn, she'll send others."
"Maybe not," Isabel said in a distracted tone as she focused on controlling the last still-burning tree that ringed us. "The battle with the Wardens outside of Portland is really fierce. I don't know if she'll care enough about us."
"Better we don't find that out, Iz. Let's get these out and move." Now, Luis linked hands with her, and together they snuffed out the flames.
Isabel looked at him oddly. "Iz?" she said. "You've never called me that before."
He stomped out a few remaining embers that were trying to take root in the half-burnt leaves. "I called you Ibby," he said. "But Ibby's gone. You're different. So now you're Iz."
She'd aged her body overnight, and matured in many ways over the past few months, but that was still the hurt of a child on her face, swiftly hidden. "Iz," she repeated, and forced a smile. "Okay, Tio. Iz it is."
"Iz it is," Esmeralda repeated, and laughed. She held out her hand, and Isabel slapped it. "Awesome. I like it better. Ibby was a baby's name. Now you're fierce."
She was. There was something sharp and angry in Isabel now, something forged out of hardship and pain. I didn't like it, but I was practical enough to know that we needed it now. All of us needed to be sharp, angry, and strong.
This world was no longer any place for a child.
I cast a last look at Rashid, lying almost-dead in the leaves, and nodded to Luis. "Let's go."
Chapter 2
OUR REAL ENEMY was not Mother Earth, but she was a formidable obstacle to overcome in finding our true fight; she was awake, though not fully aware. In the entire history of the Djinn, I could remember only a handful of times she had stirred in her long, ancient sleep, and those had been catastrophic events that had obliterated entire species, simply wiped them from the geologic record.
I'd never seen her so close to actual living thought. If she came fully to life, was able to direct the Djinn as a real army instead of an instinctive team of antibodies fighting infection, the battle would be short, devastating, and there wouldn't be even bones to mark the end of the human race, which seemed to be where she had focused her rage. Animals, plants, insects--those were collateral damage, as they so often were. But humans... Humans were the target. Their homes would be gone, their illusions of safety shattered. There was nowhere to hide when nature herself hunted you.
By contrast, the enemy we sought--my former sister, Pearl--had wrapped herself in layers of protection, hiding herself so thoroughly that it would be hard indeed to dig her out now. She hoped that most of humanity died; it would be easier for her to rule in the aftermath, I suspected.
"We need to join the Wardens," Luis said when we stopped for water and to consume a piece of energy bar that he'd split among us (except for Esmeralda, who smiled and told us she'd eaten her fill before; I think none of us wanted to know exactly what she'd consumed). "They're getting hammered out there. They need every possible pair of hands."
I wanted to argue that we should continue against Pearl, but my heart wasn't in it. There was no point in winning that fight, should the Wardens lose their own; one way or another, humanity would perish. "All right," I said. "For now we will join them. Where is the need greatest?"
"Hang on," Esmeralda said. "I didn't slither my ass all the way up from New Mexico to come fight on the side of the fucking Wardens. I thought we were going after the bitch who did things to Iz and the other kids."
"We will," I said. "But this is more pressing. You know what's at stake. Is your grudge more important?"
Esmeralda tossed her hair back over her shoulders, crossed her arms, and swayed on the thick, muscular column of her snake's body. "Pretty much, yeah," she said. "I don't forgive, and I don't forget. I thought you knew that, freak."
I smiled. It felt sinister on my lips. "Freak," I repeated. "Interesting, coming from you."
"Hey!" Isabel said sharply, and put herself between us. "Es, I need you with me, and if Cassiel and Luis say we need to help the Wardens, then that's what we should do. Are you with me?"
Esmeralda didn't look away from me and my smile. "Sure," she said. "But I'm not with them. I'm never with them, and they don't get to give me any fucking orders."
"We'll see," I whispered. Her dark pupils began to contract into reptilian slits.
"Enough!" Isabel shouted, and pointed at me. "Cassiel, stop it. You, too, Es. This is the last thing we need!"
She was right in that, although I thought it wouldn't be long before Esmeralda and I chose to finish our dance. I nodded and stepped back. The mutant girl nodded, too, and showed just a little of her snaky fangs as she grinned, like a swordsman baring the first inch of blade.
Luis was staring at me with worried focus. "We going to have a problem?" he asked. "Because Iz is right--we don't need it right now. And she saved our lives. Rashid was going to roast us like marshmallows."
"I know," I said. "And I also know that she can't be trusted. Not completely." I didn't bother to keep my voice down.
"And you can?" Esmeralda took a swig from a water bottle and passed it on to Isabel, who drank as well. "Because I heard you were all about Djinn first, humans second."
"I used to be," I said. "Not so long ago. Yes. But I've changed."
I hoped I had, at any rate. At this moment, with my instincts and hackles raised against Esmeralda's perceived threat, I wasn't so certain... until Luis took my hand, and I glanced at him. The concern in his dark eyes warmed me and made the darkness slip away in shame. Yes, I'd changed. We'd all changed.
Even Esmeralda, because before she'd become friends with Isabel, she'd never have bothered to act to save a life except her own. Not that Esmeralda would ever acknowledge it.
Around us, the forest was coming alive again--birds calling, the soft whisper of animals moving through the underbrush. The oppressive sense of danger had passed, and below us the trees stretched down into a soft winter-brown valley still streaked with mist even now that the sun was high. It was chilly, but not cold, and the clear blue sky promised no chance of snow, which was good news for our progress.
"We need to get to the road," Luis said. "Commandeer some transport--the bigger and stronger, the better. We can't walk all the way to Portland."
"We need a van," Isabel put in. "Maybe a moving van, something Es can be comfortable in."
That made the snake girl look a
t her oddly, as if no one had ever really considered Esmeralda's comfort before. That might have actually been true, or at least since she'd changed into that form and been locked there by vengeful Djinn; she was dangerous, and quite possibly as sociopathic as I had been before being trapped in human form.
Yet Isabel managed to reach some hidden depth in her that wanted the emotional connection of friends. That was Ibby's gift, perhaps... and Iz's, now, even if this new, questionably improved girl was different in many ways.
When Isabel smiled at me, unguarded, it melted my heart and made me love her all over again, as she had been, and as she was. As she would be, in days when she was fully adult.
Should we survive so long.
"Yes," I said aloud. "A van. I'll see to it."
I had no interest in wider human affairs, but as I watched the road below for a suitable vehicle, Luis sat on a rock outcropping, ankles crossed before him, and played with his cell phone. "Weather looks pretty stable here," he announced, not that it meant anything much; human forecasters couldn't anticipate what was coming, now more than ever. "Giant gas main explosion in San Diego, took out the convention center, lots dead. Guess Comic-Con is off for next year. Tornado storm in the Midwest, at least ten F4 events, a couple they think were F5. Grass fires on the prairies. That's just the United States. There are tsunami warnings out in Asia, and earthquake damage on just about every fault line."
I couldn't imagine the chaos of Warden Headquarters, caught in the jaws of all these things....They were already fighting a desperate war against an enemy of their own, and now the Earth was turning herself against them....
"There," I said aloud, as a long, silvery truck edged around the curve below and onto the straight descent. "That will do."
Luis nodded. "You need me?"
"Not for this," I said, and stood up. "Stay with the girls."
"I know you didn't just mean that the way it sounded, chica."
I flashed him a smile, raised an eyebrow, and stepped onto the steep slope of the hill on which we had paused. It would have been risky for anyone except an Earth Warden, or a crippled Djinn channeling such power; I broke off a large piece of rock and rode it in a rushing, hissing curve down the slope. It was a bit as I imagined surfing to be, only with more dust and bumps; still, when I kicked free of the rock and landed on my feet on the road, I was smiling with the adrenaline rush of it.
The truck was just coming up on me.
Locking a vehicle's brakes is easy, since almost all of the mechanical components of a truck fall within the control of Earth Wardens; this truck was just below the size of one needing air brakes, and I pressed abrasive pads to drums and brought it smoothly to a halt as the baffled driver pressed his gas pedal, which roared the engine and caused the truck to shake uselessly.
I opened the passenger side, climbed into the cab, and said, "Perhaps you should stop that."
He stared at me, openmouthed, and pressed the gas harder. I sighed, put the truck in park, and turned off the engine.
"Hey!" he said, voice shaking. "What the hell is this, lady? What are you--"
I reached into the vehicle's glove compartment--in which gloves were rarely found--and pulled out a rental agreement, maps, and, finally, a holstered handgun. I unholstered it and pointed it at him. "I'm taking the truck," I said. "I apologize. We'll try not to damage it, but I can't promise much."
"But I--you can't--!" He was babbling now, and quite pale beneath his straggly beard. He smelled of unwashed sweat, stale clothes, and fear. "I got stuff in the back!"
Stuff that was utterly unimportant, but he hadn't yet realized it. "We'll be careful with it. Now get out."
"Here?"
"There is a ranger outpost two miles in that direction." I pointed with my free hand, then used power to unlock his door and crack it open with the latch release. "Out. Now."
He blinked, but he must have seen in my face how very serious I'd become, because he didn't try to argue, or take the gun from my hand. He simply slid off the seat and ran.
Satisfactory.
I closed the door, strapped in, and started the truck as I heard the back door sliding up. The truck shifted a little with the addition of more weight in the cargo area. Esmeralda was on board, and I heard the flexible metal rattle down again.
Luis slipped into the passenger seat beside me, strapped in, and nodded. "Good to go," he said.
"Isabel?"
"In the back with Es." He shrugged. "Couldn't see any reason to insist."
He was right, of course, but it did sting a little that she preferred the musty interior of the cargo area to sitting in the front with us. I rolled down the windows to clear the stench of the former driver out as the truck started its roll down the long decline. I'd never driven something this large, but it wasn't difficult, other than adjusting to the increased mass and wind surface. I still missed my motorcycle, abandoned somewhere behind on the trail; there was so much freedom in that kind of travel, in being one with the machine, the free and open air.
I disliked enclosed cabins.
The icy blast of the winter air was bracing, or so I told myself; my breath steamed in the chill, and Luis was shivering. "Seriously?" he asked, staring at me steadily until I sighed and grudgingly rolled up the window to a compromise halfway position. Luis shook his head and looked behind the seats, which search yielded an ancient, untrustworthy-looking blanket that he settled around his shoulders with a sigh of satisfaction.
"You could make yourself warmer," I pointed out. "You are an Earth Warden."
"Try it sometime," he said. "Takes a lot of energy conversion, and we're supposed to be keeping it on the down-low right now, so I'll take the blanket. Besides, first rule of having Warden powers: Don't default to them without checking for a nonmagic solution first. Blankets work."
"I was a Djinn," I said. "Mundane solutions don't come naturally to me." Like many things, the simplest possible things humans adjusted to from birth. The overwhelming power of their senses, for one. Someone in this truck had eaten far too much cabbage, and quite recently. I inched the window down just a touch more. Luis had a blanket, after all. "Luis... you understand that what we're doing will likely end in disaster. We're fighting the Djinn and the Mother herself. This can't end well for the Wardens, or for humanity."
"Well, if it goes bad, your Pearl problem is solved," Luis said. "Since we'll all be dead, she'll lose her power supply. End of game for her. She'll want to keep us alive."
"For now, but only until she finds the right moment to strike at the Mother. If she's able to do what she intends, she won't need us. She'll be able to tap directly into the lifeblood of the planet. Her consciousness would replace the Mother's."
"And that would be bad," Luis said in a bland tone that reeked of understatement. In essence, a mad, violently selfish Djinn would become the consciousness of the Earth--a vast, sentient creature carrying us all on her skin. One thing I knew about Pearl: She enjoyed the suffering of others.
Humanity wouldn't be cleanly destroyed, as the Mother so clearly intended; under Pearl's control, there would be horrible plagues, slow destruction, deaths that might make the worst sadists flinch.
I shifted gears as we reached a long, straight curve; dark green pines brushed the dull sky, and far overhead, a thin silver shard of a plane scratched the sky. That, too, would stop soon; airplanes were far too vulnerable to the Mother's anger. But then, so were all manmade things: Trains would be twisted off the tracks. Cars would be swallowed up by roads. Houses would be crushed. Cities would burn.
All starting... today.
"Cass," Luis said. "What are you thinking?"
I reached over and took his hand in mine. Warm, strong, human. Fragile and temporary as a breath, yet strong and resilient as a river.
There was hope. Always hope. And it was those like Luis who would be the bearers of that hope, and the victims of it; heroes they were, and heroes died so that others might live.
I took a deep breath and
said, "I wish we had more time, Luis."
He misunderstood me. "Yeah, things are happening fast. Can't travel much faster, though. Not unless you intend on hijacking a plane, which I'm pretty sure would not be a good idea, either."
I'd meant something far different. Far more personal. When he touched me, my mind flashed to sensations... the stroke of his fingers along my eager flesh, the indrawn breaths, the taste of sweat on his skin. The quiet, hushed, beautiful moment at the top of the pleasure curve, when the universe expanded before me with the beauty of a Djinn's dreams.
I wished we had more time together. Not like this, not tired and dirty and exhausted, speeding to another confrontation. Together.
I started to speak, but then I caught the sad, gentle look in his eyes, and realized that he hadn't misunderstood me at all. The echo came through the link between us, soft and subtle, a sense of loss. Of letting go.
"Survival tactics," Luis said aloud. "It's what humans do. We either cling to things so desperately we can't let go, or we let go before we get hurt. It's not that I don't want... us. It's that we can't afford to put us ahead of them, Cass. We can't."
He was right, but it was because he was, in his deepest heart and soul, a hero. I was not. I wanted to cling to him with all my strength and not allow anything to come between us, not even the fate of the world and humanity.