Firestorm tww-5

by Rachel Caine

  In my rearview mirror, fire was flowing down the road like lava.

  "Damn, damn, damn," I chanted, and reached for anything to hold it back. I was nowhere near the caliber of someone like Emily or—hell—Kevin. I managed to slow it down, just a little. Or maybe it just did that on its own. Hard to tell, with the chaos on the aetheric.

  I broke out of the smoke into a temporary little clearing—green trees swaying with agitated winds, not yet on fire. I wiped sweaty palms on my shirt and firmed up my grip on the wheel, and hit the gas…

  … and a massive—and I mean massive—tree toppled over across the road, slamming down with pulverizing force about ten feet from the battered hood of the SUV.

  I screamed and hit the brakes. Felt the thump as Emily's limp body hit the back of my seat and fell into the floorboard; she made a weak moan, so at least she was still alive. The SUV fishtailed, tried to yaw left, and lurched to a halt.

  Oh fuck.

  I turned frantically to look behind. The advancing fire was moving fast again, leaping from tree to tree like some demented flaming Tarzan. I felt the heat notch up inside the car.

  We were going to die. If we were lucky, we'd expire of the smoke first, but I didn't think the fire was feeling especially generous about it…

  I ducked my head as the tree to my left caught with a bubbling, hissing snap of pine sap combusting. Smoke clogged my throat. I coughed and slid sideways to try to find some clean, breathable air. Panic made it hard to do anything Wardenish with the situation; my body was acknowledging imminent death, and it had no time to spare for rational thought.

  I tried to breathe, but it was too hot, and there was a dry, hot, sere blanket pressing down on my mouth and nose and I couldn't breathe…

  And then, I felt a breath of fresh, cool air, as if somebody had turned on the biggest air conditioner in the world. I sucked it in with a gasping whoop, coughed, and kept breathing as I forced myself back up to a sitting position.

  David was standing in front of the truck, arms spread wide, coat flared out like wings. He looked fragile, standing framed by a curtain of fire, although I knew he wasn't. He reached out and rested his hands lightly on the hood, staring in at me through the haze of cracks in the glass, smoke, and dust.

  Cool air filled the cabin of the truck. Sweet and pure as an early spring morning. Except for the surreal roar of the fire outside, we could have been parked for a picnic.

  David gave me a faint, unreadable smile, then straightened up and walked over to my side of the vehicle.

  "We don't have a lot of time," he said. Master of the obvious, he was.

  "What the hell are you doing here?"

  "Other things," he said. "Surprisingly, I don't spend all my time following you, but then, I didn't think I had to. Imagine how surprised I am to see you in the middle of this. Have you lost your mind?"

  "You can psychoanalyze me when we're not getting burned alive," I gasped. "For now, could you just help us get out of here?"

  "I will. Once I move this tree, don't stop, whatever you see. Understand?" He reached in and traced a finger down the side of my face, a hot sweet touch that ended too soon. "Go now. Time's short. I'll yell at you later."

  "But—" I gestured helplessly at the gigantic felled tree in the way.

  He walked over, and grabbed a fragile little twig of a branch that should have snapped off in his hand the second he pulled on it.

  Instead, he picked up the entire tree, like some balsawood stage prop. Only, clearly, it was the real thing, heavy and groaning, shaking dust and splinters as he hauled it around like a toy. He casually dragged it in a quarter circle, like a gate on a road, and dumped it along the side in a thick crash of pine needles.

  "Go!" David shouted. "Don't stop!"

  I gunned it. The SUV's tires flailed for purchase, caught, and rocketed us forward. As we passed David, he reached out to touch the truck, just a brush of his fingers across the finish.

  The broken and cracked glass healed with an audible, singing crack. I couldn't tell about the other damage, but I was willing to bet that Emily was getting her SUV back in like-new condition.

  And then he was gone, a dot in the mirror, vulnerable and fragile next to the rising giant fury of the forest fire, standing in front of the oncoming flood of plasma and flame.

  I was shaking all over. Too much information, delivered wrapped up in too much personal death-threat, to absorb all at once. At least I'd seen David for all of thirty seconds. That was something…

  Yeah, I'd seen a Demon hatch out of a crispy-baked Warden, too. And been attacked by a burning zombie.

  I wished I could say that it was an exceptional day.

  "What happened?" a hoarse voice asked at my ear. I screamed, took my foot off the gas, and then jammed it back on as my forebrain caught up with my instincts. "Sorry. Scare you?"

  Emily. She was sitting up, looking weary and smoke-blackened and red-eyed, barely better than something from a horror movie herself. Clinging to the seat for support.

  "No," I lied. "Are you okay?"

  "Fuck no, you've got to be kidding," she said, and let herself drop back against the seats. "Is it out? The fire?"

  I checked the rearview mirror. The whole sky was red and black, a churning fury of destruction.

  "Not quite," I said bleakly.

  "It's only a couple of miles from Drumondville. We have to—"

  "No," I said flatly. "It's enough, Emily. We can't do any more."

  She lunged upright, grabbed the back of my seat, and thrust her face next to mine. I got an up-close look at her red-rimmed eyes, furious and brimming with moisture.

  "There are people out there! People who are going to die! We're Wardens! You can't just leave!"

  I knew that. I felt it inside me, the same desperate yearning to make everything right, set the crooked straight, save every life and fix every broken thing in the world.

  I turned my stare back to the bumpy road, blinked twice, and said, "Sometimes you have to let it burn, Emily."

  She stared at me in disbelieving, weary silence for a few seconds. "You coldhearted unbelievable bitch," she said. I didn't answer. I kept driving. She was too weak to try to take the wheel from me—hell, she was too weak to be sitting up for long, and she proved it by letting go and slithering back down to a supine position on the backseat. When I looked in the rearview, she turned her face aside, but there was no mistaking the startlingly pale tracks of tears on her dirty face.

  "They were right about you," she said. "You should have been neutered when we had a chance. You don't deserve to be a Warden."

  I felt her words like a blunt, cold knife shoved right under my heart. If she'd been trying to rip my guts out and decorate the truck with them, she couldn't possibly have done a finer job. Since the night I'd fought for my life against Bad Bob Biringanine, the surly but beloved old codger of the Wardens, I'd been persona non grata in a big way. The black sheep of the family. Blamed for everything, and praised for nothing.

  But I was a Warden, dammit. I loved the sky, the sea, the living air around me in cell-deep ways that only another Warden could ever understand. I wanted to help people so much that the impulse ached inside me. I was a Warden, and the Wardens loved the world. But it was strictly a one-way love affair, and we forgot that, the closer we got to our duties.

  "Bitch," Emily mumbled distantly. She was sliding into unconsciousness again, or sleep. Too tired to be angry. I turned on the radio, glided it over to a station that had some decent music, and kept it on for the rest of the bumpy escape from the forest to cover up the quiet, uneven sounds as I gulped back tears.

  The SUV growled to the top of the ridgeline, and I had a spectacular view of the inferno of the valley behind us, and what lay ahead.

  "Oh ho," I whispered, and the tears finally broke free.

  David had warned me. Bad things. There were dead people lying in the road.

  The only ones standing were the Djinn—four of them. They were crouched among
the dead, studying bodies with varying degrees of disinterest. I jammed on the brakes, remembered what David had said as the Djinn began to turn toward our Jeep.

  Don't stop, whatever you see.

  I didn't recognize any of these—two males, two females, at least in appearance. Two of them looked very young, almost childlike. One of the male Djinn had a burly, weightlifter-type look. The remaining female Djinn could have sat for a portrait of a Pre-Raphaelite angel, minus the wings… unbelievably, radiantly beautiful.

  She was the coldest one of all.

  All this went through my mind in a second, and then I hit the gas. The Jeep raced forward. I felt the engine sputter and realized, with a chill, that the Djinn were capable of stopping it dead. David had done it to me, once upon a time. Only not with such a deadly motivation.

  Don't stop.

  I formed shells of pure air around the spark plugs. The engine sputtered again, caught, and surged, rocking from side to side on the rough road.

  "What's happening?" Emily had decided to speak to me again. I didn't have time to answer. I felt her pull on the back of my seat as she hauled herself upright. "What—What the hell?…"

  She screamed in my ear as all four of the Djinn—all of them, moving in concert—stepped into the road, blocking us. The kids in front.

  Don't stop. No matter what.

  I closed my eyes, sucked in a panicked breath and held it. And kept the Jeep hurtling toward them at speed.

  "No!" Emily shrieked, rattling my eardrum, and I felt the wheel wrench as she grabbed it over my shoulder and twisted, hard, to the right. I lost my grip. The wheels lost the road, bounced over ruts, lost purchase…

  We rolled over. All the way over, in torturously slow increments, as the world spun in a complete 360. The Jeep bounced and groaned as it settled back upright on its springs again.

  So much for Emily's SUV being good as new.

  "You idiot!" I yelled, and cranked the key. Nothing. Whether it was the crash, or the Djinn, the truck wasn't going anywhere. I wasn't hurt, but I was scared, and my personal terror level got elevated as the driver's side door was wrenched open.

  Angel Djinn stood there, staring at me with pure white eyes. Her skin was a delicate, inhuman silver, and her robes like alabaster silk blowing in an unfelt breeze. She had dark, waving hair that cascaded in luxurious waves over her shoulders, past her hips, down to trail the ground and her bare feet.

  She reached in, grabbed my seat belt, and ripped it loose with a single tug, then grabbed my arm and dragged me out. Slammed me up against the fender of the Jeep in a flurry of dust and held me there, with her hand poised over my heart.

  We froze that way. I didn't dare breathe. She didn't need to. Her head slowly tilted to one side, then came back upright again. I was reminded of the deliberate targeting movements of praying mantises.

  "You stink of it," she whispered. I could hardly understand her; her accent sounded odd, antique, as if she hadn't bothered to speak to a human in hundreds of years. "Filth. Reeking filth."

  Next to her shining perfection, that's pretty much what I felt like, too. But I knew what she was sensing—the two Demon Marks I'd had on me in the past twenty-four hours. Not to mention the Demon that had been chasing after me like a freight train back in the forest, lighting trees on fire as it came.

  But I'm not one to take that kind of thing lying down.

  "Do I have a Demon Mark?" I demanded. Not that you should demand anything from a Djinn who's just participating in the slaughter of about—my brain whited out at an attempt at the number. Upwards of fifteen people, at least.

  "No," she said, and did the head-tilt back and forth again. Maybe I was like a Magic Eye poster, and she was trying to see the Statue of Liberty hidden inside me. She dropped her hand back to her side. "You may go."

  She abruptly turned and glided around the Jeep, over to the other side, where Emily was leaning against the door. Emily promptly scooted over to my side of the car and rattled the handle. Stuck. Stay there, I mouthed. She ignored me, of course. But to be fair, maybe she couldn't see me. The window was fractured into a fine latticework of cracked safety glass.

  "Excuse me," a polite voice said, and before I could flinch, much less grant pardon, I was picked up and set gently off to the side by the big male Djinn, who had dark cocoa skin and black eyes, and a whole lot of long pale hair that was tied into a ponytail at his back. He was dressed in more conventional styles than Angel Djinn—blue jeans, a chambray work shirt in fashionable (and daring) light purple. He misted out at the knees. It didn't seem to bother him.

  I stumbled on gravel when he let go of me. He reached over, grabbed the handle of the back door of the SUV, and removed the door, handle and all. He set it gently aside, next to the one Angel had dismembered, and leaned in to grab Emily by the scruff of her shirt. She screamed and fought, but it was a little like a puppy fighting a wolfhound, only not so equal. "Shhhhh," he told her, and held a finger to her lips. She went instantly still, and white as bleached paper. "Good girl." He set her on the ground and stepped back, still holding her by one arm in case she might decide to sprint for it.

  Angel glided back, barely touching the ground. Her feet looked as if they'd never encountered dust, much less rocky, tough ground.

  She held her hand over Emily's heart.

  Head-tilt. It stayed frozen in one spot for longer than I liked, and then slowly came back upright.

  She moved quick as a tiger, fingernails forming into silver claws, and ripped Emily's shirt open over her heart. Not just the shirt. The jog bra was a casualty, and Angel hadn't been too careful about the skin, either.

  Under the pale flesh and the claw marks and the vivid red blood, I glimpsed a tangle of black racing out of sight under her skin.

  "No," I whispered. "Oh, no. How—? When—?" Because I knew for a fact that Emily hadn't been infected when we'd left her house. It had to have happened in the woods, when we'd been separated.

  The damn Demon Mark was still following me, and when it hadn't cornered me, it had gone for Emily.

  Emily's jaw worked nervously, and she looked at me as she fumbled the shreds of her shirt back together.

  "It is early," Angel said. She was unquestionably the Djinn in charge here. The two who looked like kids—a matched set, boy and girl twins dressed in identical T-shirts and sloppy corduroy pants, with tangled brown hair—looked at her with a kind of unquestioning worship. The polite male Djinn, too. "Do you want this one?"

  She was talking to me. To me. "Do I—uh—what?"

  "Do you want this one?" she asked slowly, sounding out each word with heavy care. When I looked blank, Angel turned to the male Djinn holding Emily's elbow.

  "Do you want us to take the Demon out of her," he translated. "It's still early. We can do it."

  "Um… will it hurt her?" Stupid question. Of course it would. But it would hurt her a lot worse to keep it. "Never mind. Yes. If you can."

  He nodded, took a glass bottle from a leather bag at his side, and handed it to Angel. She opened it carefully and held it in her left hand.

  "Don't move," she said to Emily, and plunged her right hand into her chest.

  Emily shrieked. I think I must have, too. I know I lunged forward, or tried to, but suddenly there were arms around me from behind, although all the Djinn were in front of me.

  "No, love." David's whisper in my ear. "This has to be done."

  I spun to look at him. Emily was making terrible, agonizing noises, and there were dead people on the ground, dead people… "You killed these people?"

  He looked tired. Shadows in those normally bright eyes. "It had to be done."

  "You killed them?"

  He shook his head. "Let's not do this. Not now."

  "Why didn't you want me to stop, if you didn't know this was going on?" But I knew. He must have sensed the lingering presence of my encounters with Demon Marks on me, just as Angel had. He'd been afraid that they'd just assume I was one of the infected. "God, David,
how could you do this? These were Wardens."

  "Wardens have always passed their infections on to Djinn, and we could never fight back. Now we can."

  "So it was them or you. Is that it?"

  His eyes held mine, steady. Flecked with amber and full of regret. "Yes. Them or us. And don't tell me the Wardens haven't done the same. Don't tell me that you wouldn't if it came to it."

  "Slaughter fifteen people like sheep? No, David, I—" Emily's tortured moans suddenly cut off with the sound of flesh hitting the ground. I spun back toward her, and saw her being picked up from her faint by the big male Djinn, who placed her back in the SUV's passenger side. He removed that door, too, and the back one, as well. Evidently, he liked symmetry.

  I rushed to her side and pressed my fingers to her throat. A nice, steady pulse. She moaned weakly and opened her eyes. Bloodshot and unfocused, but it looked like she'd live.

  "They were on their way to the fire," David said grimly. "Fire that would have accelerated the Demon Marks and hatched out more than we could handle at one time. We had to stop them before the Demons emerged, and it was too late to remove them safely. We didn't have a choice."

  "We could have done something!" I shouted, rounding on him. He didn't back up. "We could have put them in a cell, in a hospital, anything but killing them and tossing them out like yesterday's trash! You don't have the right, David!"

  "No!" he shouted back. "I have the responsibility! Now, if we've taken enough of a guilt trip, I have a fire to stop."

  He whirled and stalked away, coat flapping in the hot wind behind him. I scrambled after, heart pounding in a bloody, loud fury in my ears. I grabbed his arm, felt heavy wool and the flex of muscles, and dragged him to a stop.

  "David!"

  He turned, and his expression… Ah, God. The agony was heartrending. "There's nobody else to make these choices. You know."