by Rachel Caine
A Djinn was standing in the road, blocking our path. He was the size of a man, but he was not anything like one, really; the form was correct, but his skin was a deep violet-indigo, his eyes blazed silver, and there was an aura around him that was visible even in the human world--power, madness, rage.
Rashid. He'd recovered far faster from Esmeralda's bite than any of us really had expected, and he was still under the control of the Mother. At least I believed he was.
Like Priya, he had no choice in what he'd been sent to do.
"Cass?" Luis said. "What do you want to do?"
"Get in," I said. "I'll keep him busy."
"Cassiel--"
"Do it!"
Luis yanked open the door and slid in, and I saw Rashid lower his chin. The glow in his eyes brightened, sparked with fury that was beyond even my experience.
I reached deep into Luis, into the deepest reserves of his power, and pulled all I could without damaging him beyond repair. I heard him cry out, but there was no time, no time at all, not if any of us were to survive the moment, the second.
I hit Rashid with a blast of pure white fire.
It was hardly enough to sting him, but it pushed him off the road and into the dirt, where he hit, rolled, and came to his feet with his skin dripping fire.
"Go!" I screamed, and heard Luis hit the gas. The truck rocketed past me, tires screaming; I felt the bumper brush me out of the way, but I had no time for pain because Rashid was rushing at me, and I knew, without even a hesitation, that I was about to die.
And that was, oddly, all right.
The world went quiet, still, pure, calm. Rashid was an indigo smear against it. I searched for the fear and rage that I needed to sustain me in this fight, but it was gone. Nothing left but a vast acceptance and readiness.
I'd felt this before, the detachment, the lack of fear, the power. Only once, since I'd been cast out from the Djinn, but the single bright spark of that Cassiel had never died, never surrendered.
Some part of me, some normally unreachable core, was yet a Djinn--trapped, limited, maybe even mutilated by what Ashan had done to me, but he couldn't destroy it, not utterly. And in this moment, when I shed all my human faults, fears, hopes...
The Djinn emerged, and flowed into me again, unnatural, inhuman, perfect. My body glowed with a pure white light, and I caught Rashid's arms and forced them wide as he rushed upon me. We were locked together, bodies pressed, eyes focused on each other.
And I was not afraid, any more than I'd been afraid when I'd seen an infection crawling up my arm and taken a weapon and brought it down to sever the flesh and bone. I'd known what had to be done, and I'd done it without hesitation. It had been a glorious madness, just like this.
I could hold Rashid here, trapped with me. I would hold him, for as long as necessary to ensure that Luis and the girls got safely away. For eternity, if I must.
No. No. I could do more. Must do more.
I tightened my hold on him. He was brutally strong, powered by the Mother's rage, but there was something in me, too, something that I'd carried with me. A core that wouldn't break, wouldn't yield.
His rage flowed over me, through me, out of me, and back into the Earth from which it sprang.
Rashid, I whispered, my lips kissing close to his. Rashid.
He was there. Unlike Priya, he was not yet gone, not yet burned away. He'd hidden himself deep within, and I could feel him there, his terror and pain, his anguish and rebellion.
He needed help.
He needed...
It came to me with a stunning shock what he needed, and without thinking I released him and stepped back. I couldn't save him like this, or stop him from going after those I was sworn to protect.
But I could stop him. And save him.
The instant I released him, Rashid flashed away, chasing the truck. I dove into the underbrush and found the thing I'd glimpsed, a single flare of brightness in the dark.
A glass bottle.
It was a beer bottle, still smelling of hops and malt.
Seconds left.
Rashid was in front of the truck now.
Summoning his power.
"Be thou bound to my service," I said, and concentrated every ounce of the power inside me on his distant spark. "Be thou bound to my service. Be thou bound to my service, Rashid!"
There was a scream on the aetheric, a ripping of the fabric, and power flowed like blood toward me, through me, into the bottle.
I slapped my hand down on the top, trapping him within, and collapsed to my knees on the fallen leaves. A chilly blast of wind made me shake, but it wasn't only that--the fear came back, and the emptiness, and the fragility of flesh. The Djinn Cassiel had visited me and gone, and left me a human shell full of weakness.
But I had Rashid. I had him.
There was mud caked at the bottom of the leaves, and I slammed the bottle down into it, sealing it tightly. It looked empty, but on the aetheric the glass container swirled and glowed with trapped energy.
I didn't know if the binding would keep him controlled by my will, or if it had only bound him into a prison; the only way to test it would be to release him, and that was a dangerous risk. Too dangerous, for now. Later, perhaps, it would be worth taking the chance.
The truck was still moving, already out of sight. Safe, for now.
And I was once again on foot.
Chapter 4
TWO MILES DOWN THE ROAD, I found the Victory motorcycle sitting neatly parked on the edge. The tire marks told me that the truck had stopped, unloaded it, and driven on. Good. I leaned against the bike for a few moments, head down. The rain continued, but it was fitful now, and light; no other traffic had passed in either direction.
I mounted the bike and started it with a spark of power, then patted the sleek side with absent fondness. "Let's find them," I said. I opened the saddlebag strapped to the side and found men's clothing, rolled up tightly; the beer bottle with Rashid's spirit fit nicely inside the curl of a pair of soft blue jeans, and I cushioned it further with a fleece shirt.
Then I eased the Victory out onto the black ribbon of road, and started the ride.
The punishing vibration of the engine felt magically soothing to me, pounding the kinks from knotted muscles and clearing my mind. The wind and rain in my face woke something primal in me, something that thought clearly and coldly about our chances. They were, of course, poor at best. Lewis Orwell himself had admitted that; until the bulk of the Wardens docked from their mission at sea, those of us stranded here were the thinnest possible line of defense. There was no chance we wouldn't be shattered.
But we had an unexpected, even shocking advantage, if we could actually trap and bottle the Djinn. I'd always loathed that loophole in the freedom and power of my kind, but now I felt grateful for it; without it, the humans wouldn't stand a chance, and ultimately neither would the Djinn themselves or the Mother. We had to maintain a fragile balance to fight for reason, for peace, and for the defeat of our real enemy: Pearl.
The Mother was experiencing agony and the temporary madness that came of it. If we could soothe her, it would pass. But Pearl... Pearl was a cancer at the very heart of the world, and she had to be burned away.
The bottle in my saddlebags represented a step toward all of that. Perhaps. At the very least, it symbolized a chance we hadn't had an hour ago.
I saw the white flash of paint ahead on the road, and accelerated around a curve. The truck was just ahead now, climbing a rise. I could catch it in only a moment.
I was still half a mile back when the vehicle made the top of the hill...
... And exploded in a fireball, raining metal and debris into the trees.
"No!" I screamed. It burst out of me in a fury, ripping a blood path down my nerves and flesh, and I pushed the throttle hard over, heedless of the slick road, the dangers, everything except the burning wreck that was overturned there at the top of the hill.
No one could have survived that.
>
No one.
*
I found the first body lying in a burning heap on the side of the road. The pine trees were aflame, and the sound of trees snapping as the sap boiled was like war.
It was very still.
I leaped off the Victory while it was still in motion, letting it slide to a stop as I ran to the body's side. I turned it over.
Luis.
His eyes were tightly shut, his hands fisted, but as I touched him the flames snuffed out into surly little curls of smoke, and he drew in a deep breath.
His clothes were burned, but as I frantically checked him I realized that the skin beneath was unharmed. Reddened, but not seared. He had a broken ulna and two cracked ribs, but nothing that couldn't be fixed.
"Did my best," he whispered. "Christ. That hurt."
I smoothed his wet hair back. He smelled acridly of burned plastic and metal, but he was alive. Improbably, alive.
"Iz," he said. "Over there. She jumped, with the girl." He pointed with his unbroken arm. I kissed him quickly and rose to move in that direction.
The trees there were broken, snapped off at the base and laid out in an eerily neat circular pattern, like wheat stalks bent flat by the wind. And in the center of it was Isabel, curled up like an infant.
No sign of the girl at all.
I turned Isabel over. Her eyes were tightly shut, her skin pale, but she was breathing. Improbably, she wasn't even scorched--not a single mark on her.
She was whispering under her breath. I pulled her into my arms and bent my head closer to make it out.
"--Couldn't stop her, couldn't stop her..."
"Isabel," I said. "Ibby. Ibby!"
Her dark eyes flew open, but they were shockingly ringed by red now, as if every blood vessel in them had exploded with effort. She didn't seem to see me at all. "Couldn't stop her," she whispered. "Mama, I couldn't--"
"Shhh, Ibby, hush, it's all right; you're all right." It appalled me that she was, in this extreme, calling on her mother, on a mother she'd seen gunned down. "It's Cassiel. I'm here."
"Mama," she wailed, just as she had on that terrible day, and then her arms went around my neck. "Mama, I couldn't stop her. I tried but she just--"
Me. She wasn't calling on Angela, on the ghost of her mother who was gone. She was calling me by that name. Me.
My breath left me in a rush, and I held her tightly against me. Breathed in the smell of her hair, kissed her forehead, and felt a sunburst of feeling so large, so overwhelming that I could not even properly call it love. It was more than that. Much more.
"The girl," Ibby said, whispering now with her head against my shoulder. "It was the girl. I thought she was sleeping, but she woke up and I couldn't stop her. She was so strong.... It's my fault...."
I carried her over to her uncle. "Luis is all right, my love, you see? He's all right." I sat her down next to him as he struggled up, and he hugged her with his good arm. "You couldn't have done more. You saved him, Ibby."
"Es," Ibby whispered, and turned her tear-streaked, eerily red-eyed face toward me. "Where's Es?"
The truck was a blazing inferno, belching black smoke and radiating an intense, crippling heat. I couldn't see anything within it except the stark bones of steel pillars. If Esmeralda was inside, there was little left of her.
"I'm right here," Esmeralda said, and I confess, I jumped; she was wrapped around a pine tree, dangling her human half upside down. Her fangs flashed as she laughed. "I'm no fool, Iz. You wanted to pretend that little bitch was safe, so I bailed out on the road and got in the trees to follow. I'm just surprised it took so long for her to try to blow you up, that's all. I'd have done it way sooner." She slithered down the trunk of the tree and righted herself to face me. "Hey, why aren't you dead, anyway? No way you could take down that Djinn."
"You--you left me?" Isabel said slowly, sitting up. "You just left?"
Esmeralda shrugged and crossed her arms, leaning her upper body against a tree trunk for support while her coils stacked around her. "Yeah, so? You act like a dumbass, you get left. First rule of survival, Iz. So don't do it again. This ain't no rescue mission, and you can't save anybody. Right, Albino Barbie?"
I supposed that was meant for me, but I was watching the disillusionment on Isabel's face, and it hurt. She'd trusted Esmeralda, formed a partly imaginary bond with the older girl. She hadn't realized what I'd always known--that Esmeralda's capacity for devotion, and for love, was severely blunted.
"Indeed," I said, raising my eyebrows. "Not everyone can be saved. But the difference between you and Isabel is that Isabel will try. And that is a virtue, not a vice."
Esmeralda shot me a murderous look, a rude gesture, and sank sullenly into her coils. "Fine, let her Pollyanna along all you want, but the time's coming, Djinn bitch. Time's coming she has to make a choice, and if you get in the way, you'll get hurt. You know I'm right."
"You left me," Isabel said. "You knew it was going to go wrong, and you didn't even try to help!"
"Girl, look at me. I've got no freaky powers now; your Warden friends saw to that." Esmeralda shrugged. "You wouldn't have listened to me anyway. Right?"
Isabel turned her face away. Her uncle hugged her closer, but she pulled free and walked toward the burning truck. She extended her hand, and I felt the stirring not just of the air as the fire slowly died, but also on the aetheric. The girl was a massive flare of power. A beacon of light in the dark.
She snuffed out the flames and left a smoking, frighteningly charred wreck in its place. "We have to move it off the road," she said. "Somebody could crash into it."
Luis looked at me, and I saw the exhaustion in his face. "Esmeralda," I said. "Help her."
"I told you, I ain't got no--"
"You have strength in your body," I said. "Use it."
She glowered, but sullenly shifted her coils, wrapped around the wreck, and began dragging it with a metallic screech off to the side. "It's still hot," she complained. "Ow."
"Big baby," Isabel observed. "It's not that hot."
Esmeralda rattled her tail warningly, and Isabel kicked it and walked back to Luis. "Give me your arm," she said. When he hesitated, she sighed theatrically. "Tio, you can't run around with it broken, and it'll take days for you to heal it yourself. Just let me do it."
Over her shoulder, I nodded at him. He let her take his hand in hers, and even though I looked away, I felt the astonishing power as it swept through him. Ibby's gifts were not natural, and she did not yet have the fine and delicate control that Luis possessed, but for sheer force, it rivaled the most powerful Wardens in existence... and, I thought, might even rival a Djinn.
The fact that she'd been forced into that power still woke a sickened feeling within me. Her body would never develop along a natural path, or survive as it should. Pearl was to blame for that--Pearl, and the circumstances we now faced. If you love her, stop her, a whisper inside me said. Take her out of the fight. Protect her.
But I couldn't. There was no safety in this world, and no protection.
If you were her mother, you'd protect her.
Somehow, that whisper hurt more than anything else. I wanted to fill that aching void in Isabel's life, but I was as crippled as Esmeralda. As untrustworthy.
I could not disappoint her so badly.
Luis's bone knitted together cleanly, though he'd have to be careful in lifting for a few days. If only all our troubles could be so easily fixed. "We've got a transportation issue," I said. "I can only carry one on the motorcycle. Esmeralda can go on her own, but--"
"Take Ibby," Luis said. "I can hike it."
He couldn't. He was drained, and it took time for an Earth Warden to fully recover from such profligate efforts as he'd shown the past week. Physically, mentally, and psychically.
"It's twenty more miles," I said. "I'll take Isabel, and we'll find something suitable. We'll come back for you both. Until then, rest yourself. You know you need it."
"So do you," he said, an
d lowered his voice as he took my hand. "Cass, you're not a Djinn. You're flesh and blood, like me. And you've done too much already."
He was right, of course; my reserves of power were faint and shallow, but they had to come from him, through him. Resting would not help me as much as forcing him to rest.
"Isabel will protect me," I said, and smiled a little. "I'm just the driver. Promise me you'll rest. Promise." Because now that I looked at him, in the cold afternoon light, he seemed so pale, and the dark rings around his eyes more pronounced.
But the smile was still as radiant as ever. "Chica, I get it. I promise." He pulled me closer, and just for a moment, our lips met in a soft, sweet echo of that promise. No passion in it, not now, not here, but something even deeper than that.
Trust.
I drew in my breath slowly as I pulled back, and the wind stirred my pale hair and caressed his cheek with it. I didn't want to let him go, but I knew that I had to do it. The longer I delayed, the worse our situation might be.