by Rachel Caine
“Cher!” I grabbed her by the shoulders, hard, and shook her until the bliss faded from her eyes. “Cherise, listen to me. You’re not trained. You have no idea what you’re doing. Don’t—”
Electric shocks zapped through my hands, straight up my arms, and knocked me back with a stunning blow all the way to the Mustang. I found myself on the ground, skin tingling and aching, shaking all over. My muscles were buzzing.
David no longer moved at Djinn speed, but he was just as fast as any man seeing a threat to someone he loved, and as I tried to shake off the shock he did a classic cop roll over the hood of the car and went for her.
Kevin summoned up a fireball and dropped it neatly between David and Cherise, sending my husband stumbling back. “Don’t try it, man,” Kevin said. “It’s not her fault.”
I wasn’t the only one in shock. Cherise hadn’t moved since she’d given me the zap, but now, as the fire flamed unnaturally high between her and David, she let out a sharp, horrified cry and dropped to her knees next to me in the filthy water. “Oh my God, Jo, I didn’t mean—I just—I just wanted you to let go of me, I—” She reached out to touch me, then hesitated, staring at her hands.
I coughed and sat up. My ribs ached. I could feel residual trembles in all of my long muscles, but my heart seemed to be ticking along, if rapidly, and I was in control enough to be able to push dripping hair back out of my eyes. Even if it felt like a lot of effort to do so. “I think that proves my point,” I said, and then had to pause for a racking round of coughing.
David tried to get to me. Kevin moved the fire in front of him, and I saw David really get angry—angry enough to do anything. He was only human now, but that kind of anger was nothing to fool around with. There was still a trace of Djinn in there somewhere; I could just feel it—even if it was only a memory of power. It made him fearless, and a little bit crazy.
He plunged through the fire.
Kevin yelped, surprised, and damped the flames down quickly—including the ones that had taken hold of David’s clothes even in that brief instant of contact. David ignored the burns. He grabbed Kevin and slammed him back against the car with a hand around his throat, and I saw his muscles tighten. Kevin’s eyes widened, and he clawed at David’s hand, wheezing.
“David, don’t,” I managed to gasp, and got my coughing under control. There was something unpleasant in my mouth. I spat it out and tasted blood, but not a lot. That was good, right? Not a lot? Some part of my brain was grasping desperately for good news. “We don’t have time for this.”
“Don’t,” David said, attention still locked on Kevin’s face, “ever do that again. Do you understand me?”
Kevin managed to nod. David let go, shoved him away, and knelt down to gather me in his arms. The look he turned on Cherise was black with fury.
“It’s not her fault,” I told him. “Kevin’s right. She got slammed with a ton of power, and she has no idea how to use it. She’s like a baby with a nuclear bomb and a big shiny red button.”
“Hey!” Cherise said, in almost her old tones. “I’m right here! Have a heart.”
“No offense,” I said, “but Wardens get trained. They get trained a lot. And even then, we make massive mistakes, and people die. You don’t have that luxury, Cher. You’re too powerful, all at once. Your learning curve means death tolls. Now take down the shield.”
“What?” Cherise seemed blank. I pointed up at the invisible umbrella she was holding over us. Rain was pouring off of it in silver sheets. “I’m not—oh. I guess I am, huh?”
“Instinct. It’ll kill you. Or actually, other people,” I said. “Drop it. I’ll show you how to build it right.”
“I—don’t think I know how to drop it. I mean, I didn’t know how to put it up in the first place.”
“Talk later, flee now,” Kevin said, rubbing his throat and glaring at David. “Seeing as how we’re going to die if we hang around here in Lightning Central.”
I looked up at David, and saw his fierce love and anger and desire to lash out. And protect me. He was taking this being human thing harder than I was, after all. “Kevin has a point,” I said. “Let’s work it out in motion.”
He didn’t like it; I could see that, but he nodded and helped me to my feet. I was shaky but serviceable. Wetter than a sponge on the bottom of the ocean, but maybe I could get Cherise to dry me off as a training exercise. Then again, she’d probably desiccate me completely and leave me a dry, dead husk, so maybe not such a great plan after all.
“Maybe you shouldn’t drive,” David said.
“Ha! The day I can’t drive the Boss is the day that you need to wrap me in plastic and leave me by the side of the road for the buzzards.”
“Jo, I’m serious.”
“So am I,” I said. “Nobody drives it but me. Those are the rules. Now get in the car. Please. I don’t need to argue, I just need to drive.”
He didn’t like it, but he nodded and helped me in. Cherise was maintaining the rain shield above the car, which was convenient even though it worried me in a Warden sense. There were all kinds of ways to power that kind of defensive capability, but the best ways, the ones that would ultimately have the least impact on the world around us, were the most difficult to learn. Cherise was, without a doubt, just grabbing raw power and slamming it into a form without regard for how out of balance the equations fell.
The storm had already noticed her. And it was going to get very interested now.
Everybody piled into the car, and I found the keys and started up the Boss. His engine caught with a fierce grumble, and I threw it into reverse as another lightning bolt slammed home, this one torching a tree near the corner of the parking lot. Combined with the still-burning telephone pole, the place was starting to look like it needed to be renamed the Disaster Drive-In.
“Sorry,” I whispered, and peeled out of the parking lot. Once I hit road speed, I began to really start liking Cherise’s shield, even if it was an energy suck monster. It was like driving under a mobile bridge, and it kept the rain from hammering the windshield, which was excellent. I opened up the Boss as we gained the access road for the freeway. When we reached the top of the ramp, I glanced over and saw three stabs of white-hot light smash down from the boiling clouds into the roof of the motel.
The trees weren’t the only thing on fire anymore, and now there were innocent lives at risk—not just ours. The roof was burning, and it was possible that even with the rain, it would spread. The tree and telephone pole weren’t showing any signs of going out.
“Kevin,” I said. “Get that fire out.”
“The rain will take care of it. I don’t need to—”
“Did you hear me ask? Because I’m pretty sure I put it as an order, not a request for your opinion. Just do it. Now, Kevin!”
Kevin shut up and looked toward the burning roof. Seconds later, it snuffed itself out. He ended the blazes on the telephone pole and tree for good measure. Show-off. “Anything else, boss?”
“Yeah. Be quiet.”
He shot me the finger, which did not shock me, and slumped back in his seat with a mutinous, pouty expression. Still not out of his teen angst, I saw. Or maybe he’d just grow up to be a pouty, petulant man. Yeah, that was going to be attractive.
I took a deep breath and looked over at David. “Are you okay? Not burned?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “He put it out before it did any damage.”
I made sure I had the Boss aimed straight and steady on the nearly empty rain-slick highway, and focused on the blurring lane markers for a while. Finally, I said, “Cherise, I need you to think how it felt when you put up the shield. What made you do it?”
“Um . . . I guess . . . I was getting wet. I didn’t like it.”
“Okay. Are you getting wet now?”
“Obviously not . . . Oh. Right. Okay. But I’m still wet. And kind of cold.”
I turned up the heater and directed the blast toward the back, although I was cold and shivering, to
o. “Once your body is convinced you don’t need it, you’ll be able to let go,” I said. “Your instincts are controlling your power, and that’s a very bad thing, Cher.” The other bad thing, although I didn’t dare say it, was that in my experience, regular people weren’t Wardens for a reason. There were changes in body chemistry in Wardens: different nerve conduction times, subtle differences that allowed us to handle and channel the kinds of power that would destroy—sooner or later—non-Wardens who tried to handle the same forces.
I didn’t know whether the transfer of powers from me to Cherise—if that was what had happened—had also given her an upgrade on the physical side. If it hadn’t, it was like putting jet fuel in a car’s gas tank. It would run for only a short time before it exploded under the stress.
I needed her to back off from using them until a specialist, an Earth Warden with real knowledge, could get a look at what was happening inside of her. But if she allowed instinct to dictate how those powers were used, we were all in serious trouble, and there was no way she’d be able to control any of it. I didn’t feel much like Yoda, but I’d have to do as a mentor.
“There is no ‘try,’ ” I said, and then swallowed a laugh. “Okay, how is it now?”
“Better,” Cherise said. “I feel better. Not as cold.”
And sure enough, overhead, the shield holding the rain off us cut in and out for a few seconds, then collapsed completely. Instant white noise, from the rain pounding on the Boss’s metal, and I engaged the wipers on full. No trouble seeing the road ahead, even with the torrential downpour. . . . Lightning was a constant event, strobing everything into horror- movie shadows and glares. “Good,” I said, and put warm approval into my voice, even though I was freezing, still. “Good work, Cher. Did you feel it when it let go?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“All right, here’s your first test. Try putting the shield back up again.”
It took about thirty seconds, but she reestablished a flickering, uncertain rain shield above the car, then, at my direction, let it go. We did that three times, until she could put up and take down the shield on command. “Good,” I said. “Now you’re controlling it; it’s not controlling you. You feel that pulse of power that comes when you call? If you feel it coming when you didn’t mean to call it, stop it. You know how. It’s the same way you dropped the shield.”
As teaching went, this was desperately inadequate. She ought to be sitting safely in a secured facility, hooked up to biofeedback equipment, getting instruction from a qualified Earth Warden who could walk her through things properly. But this was the Warden equivalent of first aid to the injured. . . . I just needed to get her stable for now. That meant teaching her whatever I could, as quickly as I could, while limiting her use of powers to the smallest expenditures possible.
It also meant outrunning this storm.
I opened up the Mustang and let him fly, and oh man, could he fly. The road vibration that was noticeable at lower speeds vanished as he hit his stride, and then it settled into a power glide so smooth it was like levitating as the speed needle hit a hundred.
This was dangerous. It wasn’t that I hadn’t driven this fast, under these conditions, before; I’d even done it while splitting my attention between controlling external supernatural forces and the road. But now I felt acutely human, powerless, and exposed. David couldn’t cover me. Cherise was now as much of a hindrance as a help, and Kevin—God only knew what Kevin could do, other than blow things up. Which he would do with great enthusiasm, of course. That wasn’t always a downside. . . .
“Something’s happening,” Cherise said suddenly. There was suppressed panic in her voice, and when I looked in the rearview mirror I saw that her eyes had gone wide, her face tight with fear. “I feel—it’s like a spike, in my head, this feeling—something’s looking at me. . . .”
I knew that feeling. It was the storm, and it had found her. We were about to be targeted.
“Easy,” I said, in my most calm and soothing voice. I gripped the steering wheel tightly to keep my hands from shaking. “That’s okay, that’s normal, all right? Take a deep breath. I need you to close your eyes now, and tell me what you see.”
“What I see? With my eyes closed?” She laughed wildly. “I can tell you that right now. Black!”
“Just do it, Cher.”
“Bitch, you are on my last nerve right now.”
“I know. Just do it.”
She shut her feverish, terrified eyes, and said, “Okay, happy now? It’s dark. And—” Her words fell away into a sudden silence, and then she said, “Oh,” in an entirely different voice. “What the hell is that?”
“Oversight,” I said. “It’s sort of the heads-up display version of going up into the aetheric, the energy realm. In the beginning you have to close your eyes to see it so you can concentrate. What do you see?”
“Uh . . . colors? Lots of colors. It’s a trippy lava-lamp groove thing up in here. Which is cool, I guess.” She was back on firmer ground now, and I could hear the relief in her voice. “What am I looking at?”
“Remember those Doppler radar maps we used back at the TV station?” I asked, and that helped steady her, too: the reference to our time together working at that low-rent local station as your stereotypical weather girls. Not that we hadn’t gotten our own back on that one. “The neon-colored ones?”
“Oh yeah. Those things. So this is the storm I’m seeing.”
“You’re seeing the energy flows. I need you to tell me where it looks worst.”
“Worst how, exactly?”
“You’ll feel it.” I couldn’t explain it any better than that; I wasn’t sure that how I’d perceive it would be a guide to how she would be able to process the information.
After a few seconds, she said, “That spot looks radioactive.”
“Where?”
Without opening her eyes, she lifted a hand, and pointed.
Straight through the front window.
Ahead of our speeding car.
I jerked my attention away from her and took my foot off the gas exactly one second before the next lightning flash revealed what Cherise had seen in Oversight. . . .
A person.
Standing in the road.
Waiting for us.
“That’s a Djinn!” Kevin yelled.
Like I didn’t know that already, even without powers.
Chapter Four
“Hold on!” I screamed, and tried to change lanes. It was deadly at this speed, on wet roads, but I didn’t have much choice; I had the distinct impression that hitting this particular Djinn would be like slamming full speed into the side of a mountain. Car versus mountain: never a good thing.
Unfortunately, physics was not my friend on either side of the choice just now, and as soon as I changed direction, the seal broke between the tires and the road, and we began to hydroplane. No antilock brakes on a vintage Mustang—it was all up to me, and it was happening in hypertime, speeded by adrenaline and sheer, massive momentum. I acted on ingrained training, turning the wheel gently into the skid, letting off the gas, staying off the brake. I kept us out of a spin and managed to keep us on the road, but we’d gone into a Tokyo drift sideways, sliding past the motionless Djinn at better than eighty miles per hour.
It turned, tracking to follow us.
“David!” I yelled.
“Old Djinn!” he said back. “Not one of mine!” Not good news under the best of circumstances, and these were far from the best.
The Djinn suddenly turned as we slid along, leaving it behind, and ran after us. In only three long strides it had hold of the bumper of the car, and I felt the slamming jerk of it stopping our skid. We were all thrown forward, hard enough to make my head feel a little fuzzy. Before I could blink, my driver’s-side door was open, and the Djinn was leaning over me, close enough to bite my throat out. Which they had been known to do.
I yelped and flailed, but the Djinn put a hand flat on my chest and shoved me firmly
against the seat. I thought for sure he was going to lean in and smash me like a bug, but the pressure seemed just enough to keep me still, not enough to shatter bone.
He unhooked my seat belt, picked me up like I weighed no more than a bulky bag of feathers, and came around to David’s side of the Mustang. David was fumbling for the door latch, just about as out of it as I felt. The Djinn got there first, dumping me unceremoniously on my husband’s lap. I pulled my legs in as he started to close the door again, and put my arms around David’s neck.
“What the hell is going on?” David asked. I shook my head, mystified, as the unknown Djinn got in on the driver’s side, ignored seat belt laws, and slammed the car into gear.
Whoever he was, he could drive like the proverbial devil. The Boss roared like a lion as he opened the engine up, and no matter how fast I’d gone, this was faster, wet roads be damned. I tried not to look. It was way too scary.
“Hey,” Cherise said, in an out-of-it kind of voice that gained strength as she went along. “Who’s driving this thing?” By the end, she sounded positively paranoid, which was a very bad thing. A scared Cherise was a dangerous one right now. I shook away my lingering bleariness and looked at her over the seat.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Everything’s fine. We’re in good hands.” I dropped back down on David’s lap and looked him in the eyes as I moderated my tone to a whisper. “We are, right?”
David cleared his throat and addressed himself to our new driver. “I don’t know you.” That was a neutral opening gambit, neither aggressive nor friendly. Considering the dude had just supernaturally carjacked us, I thought it was quite thoughtful. It was also quite useless, though. The Djinn didn’t even glance at us. He just drove like a machine—like some extension of the car itself. He didn’t even blink. His eyes were glowing, an unsettling color that hovered somewhere between green and gold, and—like most Djinn—he was striking in features. His were prominent and blunt, not handsome as most chose to be. A face of strength and immovable power, and a body to match. Greek sculptors would have adored him.