by Rachel Caine
I scraped together enough for a breath. Not enough to cushion my fall, and I was still accelerating. I knew enough about terminal velocity not to want to experience it firsthand.
I was enveloped by a chilly mist as I entered the cloud base, and was buffeted by increasingly strong winds as the atmosphere thickened around me. I spread out my arms and legs, trying to slow myself as much as possible, and started the hard work of creating a parachute. Oh, it's theoretically possible. We'd talked about it once in a long-ago classroom, and it hadn't seemed so tough back then, when I was younger and not free-falling out of the sky.
I hoped these weren't low-lying clouds. If they were, by the time I had visibility, it might be too late… but deploying my "parachute" too early would be just as bad, because the turbulence would start to rip into it as soon as I created the complex structure of fixed molecules. Theoretically, the technique I was going to use would allow the air itself to form into flexible material, and act like a gliding parachute.
Theoretically.
I gasped in another shallow breath of air and saw my left hand in another white-hot flash of lightning. The Demon Mark was still clinging to it, wet and black, seeping slowly into my flesh through the pores. Once it was under my skin, it could go anywhere. Sink its tentacles into my brain and lungs and heart. Embed itself so thoroughly that even trying to remove it would mean madness and death.
I glimpsed something shining through the clouds to my right, flaring aetheric-hot, then ice-cold; the column of power was smaller, but it was still fountaining up into the stratosphere. I slid that direction by folding my right arm in, a kind of Superman one-fisted attitude. Good thing I'd done skydiving once or twice in the past. At the time, it had just been for fun, but at least I remembered the basics of maneuvering in free fall.
I spread-eagled again when I got close to the column. The last thing I wanted was to fall in there again. I extended my Demon Marked right hand toward the flow, enough so that it could feel the tantalizing warmth.
Go on. Go for it.
It stirred and unraveled in a lazy black twist, long and sinuous. The battering of the air didn't seem to affect it at all. It unwrapped itself smoothly from my outstretched, trembling arm and reached out toward the column of power, which had started to fade and was coming in pulses like irregular heartbeats. Rahel—or whatever Djinn had saved me—had been as good as her word. The break between the worlds was starting to seal.
Timing was everything. If I waited too long, the Demon Mark would be drawn back through the barrier. If I broke off too soon, it would simply wrap around my hand again, and I could kiss my ass good-bye.
Problem was, I didn't control the timing. I just had to hope that I could sense the second that the column started to shut down.
The Demon Mark hesitated, torn between the fast-unraveling aetheric updraft and the less powerful but more certain warmth of my body.
I felt a sudden icy sensation sweep across me, and thought, now, and shook my hand violently. The Demon Mark broke free, and it had to make a choice.
It went for the column… and as it stretched its black tentacles out, the geyser gave one last, brilliant pulse, and died.
The Djinn had been successful. The energy buffet was closed… and I was now the only Happy Meal available.
I curled myself into a ball and dropped, thinning the air ahead of me to make it a quicker descent.
When I uncurled again, heart hammering wildly, I broke through the bottom of the cloud cover and Oh, crap.
Low-lying clouds.
I snapped the structure of my air chute together, and jerked to a sudden, neck-wrenching stop that turned into a slow downward spiral as the air chute's molecules—held together by desperate force of will—began to warm from the friction and spin apart.
I was still going too fast.
And there were power lines coming up.
I let the chute collapse in on itself while I was still twenty feet up, tucked and hoped breathlessly that the mud down there would be soft enough to prevent any serious injuries.
I don't remember hitting the ground, only blinking water out of my eyes and staring up at the low, angry clouds, which glowed with continued frantic flashes of lightning.
I raised my right hand and stared at it. No sign of the Demon Mark, though in all the confusion it could be just a stealthy creep away…
"Mom?" Imara's face appeared over mine, ghost-pale, eyes as reflective as a cat's. "Please say something."
"Stay still." Another voice, this one male and as familiar to me as breathing. "You've got some broken ribs. I'll have to fix them, and it's going to hurt."
I blinked rain out of my eyes and turned my head. David was crouched down next to me, rain slicking down his auburn hair and running in rivulets down his glasses. He looked miserable. Poor thing.
"Demon Mark," I said.
"I think she hit her head," Imara said anxiously.
"No, she didn't," David said, and reached over to wipe mud from my face with a gentle hand. "You're in shock, Jo."
I shook my head, spraying mud and water like an impatient sheepdog. "No! It was feeding off the power geyser. I got it out of there, but it's still around. Watch yourselves." Nothing Demon Marks loved more than a warm Djinn, and so far as I knew, once Djinn were infected, there was no way to cure them. "Get out of here."
David said, "Imara, go."
"But—"
"Did you hear me?" His voice was level as a steel bar. She stared at him, then at me, and then misted away.
"You, too," I said. "Get the hell away from here. Go."
"In a minute. First, you need some help."
I nodded, or tried to. The mud around me was cold and gelatinous, and I spared a single thought for just how trashed my clothes were. And my shoes. What had happened to my shoes? Oh man. I'd loved those shoes.
I was focusing on that when David took hold of my shattered arm and pulled, and the universe whited out into a featureless landscape, then went completely black.
Somebody had put my shirt back on. I hoped it was David. It was nice to think of him dressing me. Nicer to think of him undressing me, though…
I opened my eyes to road noise and vibration, and the pleasant daydream of David's hands on me faded away. My whole body felt like a fresh bruise. The side of my head was pressed against cool glass, and I had a wicked drool issue going on; I raised a hand, wiped my chin, and blinked away dizziness.
I was in the Camaro, and we were hauling ass for… somewhere. The road was dark, only a couple of headlights racing through the gloom and the wavering dashed yellow stripe to guide us. If there was moonlight, it was behind clouds. I could still feel energy rumbling in the atmosphere.
"What?…" I twisted in my seat—which was, fortunately, the passenger side—and looked at the driver. "Imara!"
My daughter—disorientation still followed the thought—glanced at me. She looked pale in the dashboard lights. "I was starting to worry."
"Where's—?"
"Father? He was with us for a while, but he had to go. Djinn business. I think it was about the Demon Marks." Like her father, she had the trick of driving without paying the slightest attention to the road, and kept staring right at me. "Are you better?"
I didn't feel better. No, I felt like I'd been boiled, steamed, deboned, and thrown out of a plane at thirty thousand feet. With a collapsing parachute. David had healed my broken bones, but the remainder of it was my problem. "Peachy," I lied. "How long have I been out?"
It took her a second, juggling the human concept of time in her head. "Four hours, I think. You hit the ground hard. Father did what he could to help you. He wasn't sure it would be enough." Her hands kept steering the car accurately, even while we took a curve. "Are you sure you're all right?"
Something came to me, a little late. "And how exactly do you know how to drive a car?"
Imara blinked a little and shrugged to show she didn't understand the question.
"Kid, you've been ali
ve for, what, a couple of days? Did you just wake up knowing everything that you need to know? How does that work?"
Another helpless lift of her shoulders. "I don't know. If I had to guess, I'd say I know everything my parents knew. So I benefit from your life, and Father's. It saves time."
I remembered Jonathan sending me to Patrick, the only other Djinn who'd really had to learn how to become one from scratch—who'd been brought over from human by another Djinn, rather than created the old-fashioned way, out of apocalypse and death. I'd had to take baby steps, learning how to use what I'd been given, because David hadn't been able to transfer that life experience to me the way he had done with Imara.
But the idea that your daughter knows everything you knew? Not very comforting. There were plenty of moments in my life that I'd just as soon not share with my offspring…
I pulled myself away from that, pressed my hand to my aching head, and asked, "Where are you heading?"
"Maine?…"
David had set her on the road to Seacasket, at least. And apparently global positioning was one of the things that she'd inherited from him.
I nodded and tried stretching. It didn't feel great. "What about the accident? Was everybody all right?"
"Accident?" She was either playing dumb, or all that carnage and twisted metal had meant little to her.
"There was a wreck—there was a—" A little girl. Wandering, bloodied, scared. I'd been trying to save her, hadn't I? My memory was fuzzy, tied up with images that didn't make any sense of opalescent swirls and burning and falling…
"I don't know," she confessed, and chewed her lip. I knew that gesture. It had taken me dedication to get over the same one. She was my kid, all right. "I didn't know it was important or I would have paid more attention."
"Not important?" I let that out, accusation-flavored, before I could stop myself. Imara turned her attention back to the road. Not to focus on her driving, just to avoid my censure.
And then she deliberately turned back, eyes level and completely alien. "I should have paid more attention, but you should leave that behind you now. What Father's asking you to do is more important, and you can't be distracted by individual lives now." She shook her head. "It's also very, very dangerous, what he's asking of you. I don't like it."
"I just got my synapses fried in a lightning strike, and then I fell out of the sky. Dangerous is sort of a sliding scale with me."
"Mom!" She sounded distressed. Angry. "Please understand: Whatever you've faced before, this is different, and you need to stay focused on the goal. I know that's hard for you, but if you worry about saving every individual, you'll lose them all. Let other people do their part. This is Djinn work, and it isn't the kind of thing humans are built to do."
By my very nature, I wasn't good at taking in the big picture; for me, the whole world was that lost, scared little girl wandering in a field. Those college boys trapped in their wrecked truck. The world revealed itself to me one person at a time.
But I took in a deep breath and nodded. "Right. I'm focused. How much longer—?"
"About seven more hours," Imara said. "I'll stay with you. There are things you can't do on your own. You'll need help. Father said—" She shut up, fast. Father. I wondered if David was as frightened by that as I was by the Mom thing. Or as delighted. Or both. "Is this still strange for you?"
"What?"
"Me," she said softly, and turned her attention back to the road. "Human mothers carry their children inside them. They hold them as infants; they teach and guide them. I was born as I am. That's strange, isn't it?"
She sounded wistful, even sad. I'd been so busy thinking of myself and my reactions to her that I hadn't considered how odd this might be for her, too. That maybe she felt lost in a maze of human feelings she didn't understand. Wasn't even supposed to have, perhaps.
"Imara," I said. "Pull over."
"What?"
"Please."
She coasted the car to a stop on the gravel shoulder, not far from a sign that warned of curves up ahead, and twisted around to face me. It was like looking in a faerie mirror—so similar that it made me shiver somewhere deep inside. There was an indefinable connection between us that I loved and feared in equal parts.
"You look so much like me," I murmured, and took her hands in mine. They felt warm, real, and solidly familiar.
"I am you," she said. "Most of me. I'm not so much your child as your clone—Djinn DNA doesn't mix well with human. So my flesh is mostly the same as yours, and my—my spirit is Father's."
I shivered a little. How was I supposed to feel about that? And what was I supposed to say? "I—"
"I'm not really Djinn," she said. "You know that, don't you? I can't do the things Father can do. I can't protect you."
"Mothers protect children. Not the other way around."
She tilted her head a little to the side, regarding me with a tiny little frown. "How can you protect me?"
Great question. "I won't know until I get there," I said, and impulsively reached up to touch her cheek. "Sweetheart, I'm not going to pretend that you're not stronger than I am, or faster, or smarter, or—anything else that the Djinn part of you can give. But the point is that I'll protect you when I can, and I do not want you to put yourself at risk for me. All right?"
The frown grooved deeper. "That's not what Father said to do."
"Then your dad and I need to have a talk." What she'd said was making me curious. "When you say you're not fully Djinn—"
"What are my limits, do you mean?" she asked. I nodded. "Where you're strong—in weather and fire, particularly—I'm strong. I can move the way the Djinn do. But I'm bound to my body in ways they aren't. I can't change my form. I can't use other elements that you can't control, as well." She continued to watch me carefully. Her voice was matter-of-fact, but I couldn't help but think that David and Jonathan and I had done something terrible, bringing Imara into the world. I couldn't tell if she resented the restrictions her half-blood birth had given her. If she did, that would be one hell of a case of adolescent angst.
"But," she continued when I didn't jump in, "even so, I am one of the Djinn. They all felt it when I was born. I'm still a part of them, if a small one."
I stayed quiet, thinking. She might not have been able to read my mind, but she could easily read my expressions—something I couldn't do to her.
"You're worried that if you keep me with you, they could trace you through me. A weak link."
"A little. With the Djinn so unreliable…" I'd seen the Djinn turn on a dime, when the Earth called; even though Imara might seem immune to that, she was clearly a lot more vulnerable than I'd like. And I couldn't hold my own against a full-on Djinn assault, not for more than a few seconds. No human could, if the Djinn unleashed their full potential.
She inclined her head, just once. A Djinn sort of acknowledgement, fraught with dignity. "I don't think I could protect you against them if they came in force. Do you want me to leave you?"
"And go where?" I asked.
"Anywhere. I only just arrived. I haven't even begun to learn about the world for myself." She smiled, but it felt like bravado to me. My kid was trying to make me feel better about rejecting her.
"Imara—"
"No, please don't. I want to help you, but I understand if you can't trust me—you only just met me. You'd be crazy not to be concerned."
I wasn't about to break my daughter's heart. Not yet. "Let's take it slow on the assumption of mistrust, okay? I just don't—know you."
"But I know you," she replied quietly. "And I can see that it makes you… uncomfortable."
I let that one pass. "If David can always locate you, I'm guessing you can always locate me, no matter where you are. Right? So it really doesn't matter if you're here, or learning how to spin prayer wheels in Tibet. And I'd rather have you here. Getting to know you."
She smiled again. "What if you don't like me?"
It was a sad, self-mocking smile, and suddenly
I wasn't seeing the metallic Djinn eyes, or the eerie copy of my own face; I was seeing a child, and that child hungered for everything that children do: Love, acceptance, protection. A place in the world.
She took my breath away, made my heart fill up and spill over. "Not like you? Not a chance in hell," I said. My voice was unsteady. "I love you. You're one hell of a great kid. And you're my kid."
Her eyes glittered fiercely, and it took me a second to realize that it wasn't magic, only tears.
"We'd better keep moving," she said, and turned back to start the car. "So what do you think? Breakfast first, or apocalypse?"
She was starting to inherit my sense of humor, too. Hmmm. Breakfast sounded pretty tempting. Lots more tempting than an apocalypse, anyway.
Those hardly ever came with coffee.
Chapter Four
I spent part of the drive napping, and dreaming. Not good dreams. Why couldn't my out-of-body experiences take me to a nice spa, with David giving me oil massages? Why did my brain have to punish me? I was fairly sure that I really didn't deserve it, at least not on a regular basis.
Unsettled by the nightmares, I kicked Imara out of the driver's seat as soon as I was sure I wasn't going to drop off into dreamland without warning. I always felt better driving, and the Camaro had a silky, powerful purr that welcomed me with vibrations through my entire body as I cranked her up. She needed a name, I decided. Something intimidating yet sexy. Nothing was coming to mind, though.
As we cruised along, switching highways about every hour because heaven forbid travel on the East Coast should be easy, I found myself longing for the endless straight roads in the West and South. Maine was beautiful, no doubt about it, but I wanted to drive fast. Responsibility and panic had that effect on me. Being behind the wheel gave me time to think, and there was a lot to think about, none of it good. All of it frightening.