by Rachel Caine
Lewis.
He grabbed me and hugged me fiercely, which would have normally been nice, but right now I wasn’t interested in anyone comforting me. I wanted answers.
The words died in my throat when I focused on his face. He looked terrible, worse than I’d ever seen him. Ages older than he’d been when we’d parted back in Miami.
He was tearing himself apart.
From the look on his face, I wasn’t in much better shape. I pushed all that aside, grabbed him by the collar of his rumpled, days-old shirt, and said, “Where is he?”
Lewis closed his long fingers over mine, but he didn’t try to take my hands off him. “He’s all right,” he said. “Jo, I’m sorry. I couldn’t let him leave again. I couldn’t take the risk. Ashan is out there—”
“Not anymore,” I said. “Ashan’s gone. Venna’s the Conduit now.”
That made him pause, but only for a second. “How—Never mind. It’s good that he’s gone. He was poisoning her view of us. Maybe Venna can—”
“I can’t let her go,” I interrupted. “Lewis, if I do, she’ll be as bad as the others. She’s probably more powerful than Ashan, and if she gets thrown at us again . . .” I couldn’t think of words to describe how bad that would be. Ashan had been bad enough, but having Venna bent on destroying us . . .
He gazed down at me for a long while, and then said, “Come with me.”
I let go of his collar. There was something in the quiet, almost miserable way he said it that made me gulp; I didn’t want to see Lewis feel beaten. He’d always been the one who just didn’t give up. He cheated, he schemed, he lied, he manipulated—but he didn’t give up.
If he did now, I didn’t think I could bear it at all.
He took my hand and led me past the silent Wardens. There were only thirty or so in the room, and half of those were wounded, some badly. I stopped to touch a few hands. Nobody had anything to say. I saw the same beaten weariness in every face. Well, maybe not Cassiel’s, but she was always the exception. That would require she actually gave a crap.
Lewis led me into a side room—probably some fancy sitting room where countries were bought and sold, never mind companies. It was empty and still. The air conditioning blew on my face and reminded me of the hot stinging spots that remained on my neck, arm, and leg. Ow.
He shut the door and turned to face me.
“You left me to die,” I said. “Didn’t you?”
“Jo, I couldn’t risk it. We need David here, and there were no guarantees that we wouldn’t lose you both. Rahel told me how bad it was out there, and I put him back in the bottle.”
That raised the hair on the back of my neck, and I knew my posture shifted into something that was a hairbreadth short of attack. “You put David back in the bottle. You stopped him from coming to me.”
“Yes. I got it from Cassiel. Don’t blame her. I didn’t give her a choice, and she didn’t know why I was asking.”
Screw that. Cassiel had known. Deep down, I had known, too. I’d felt it, I just hadn’t wanted to admit it.
Lewis was still talking. I struggled to hear him over the angry buzz in my ears. “Jo, I trusted you. I believed you’d find a way, and you did.”
“No,” I said. “You left me to die, and you didn’t see that out there, Lewis. You didn’t see what was going to tear me apart!”
He didn’t answer that. I understood the misery, now. He really had stood there at that table and made the cold-blooded decision to pull my rescue party, and consolidate his resources.
And leave me trapped and alone.
“Enough,” I said. “Enough. If this is what it takes to win, fuck it, I don’t want to win anymore. Give me David’s bottle.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“I won’t break it, if that’s what you’re worrying about,” I snapped. I felt that I hardly knew this man anymore, even though I’d spent half of my life thinking of him, loving him just enough to be able to not let go. “I want my husband, and I want to leave.”
“And go where? Do what? Jo, this is the end! There’s nowhere to run! She’s hunting us down, all the Wardens, everywhere. Most of us are already gone, for God’s sake. Did you see them out there? We’re dying! And when we’re gone, everyone else dies. Maybe it’ll take a few more days, maybe a week, but in the end, she won’t let a single human stay alive. I know that. I feel that!” Tears suddenly welled in Lewis’s eyes and spilled down his face, and he just—folded up, as if I’d gut-punched him. No, as if a Djinn had gut-punched him. I realized how tired he was, how shaky, as he sank to his knees on that fine Aubusson carpet. Funny how the wine red color looked like blood, as if he had—like me, back in the plant in Amarillo—already spilled every drop he had to give. “I’ve tried everything. Everything. And they keep coming, killing, destroying. Imara won’t let us near her. The Air Oracle is destroying entire islands out there. The Fire Oracle—”
I knew about the Fire Oracle; I’d seen it in my dream. As angry as I was, his horror and grief struck me, and I sank down to a crouch across from him. He was weeping uncontrollably, the tears of a man stretched too far, asked for too much.
“Listen to me,” I said, and reached out to tilt his chin up. He swiped at his face, angry with himself but still unable to stop. He was one step from a complete breakdown, and I could see it in him. “Listen. I know it seems hopeless. I know you think there’s nothing more we can do. But we can. We must. What’s our choice, to sit here and die when the hammer comes down? Screw that, Lewis. I didn’t fight my way through what I have to give up.”
Consistent, I wasn’t. A few minutes ago my only thought had been to grab David’s bottle and get the hell away from Lewis, from the Wardens, from all this crushing, endless responsibility. But seeing Lewis break . . . That reminded me of something.
It reminded me that no matter what I did, how hard I tried, I could never really be free of the Wardens. I was a Warden, and always would be, until the day I died.
“Give every Warden a bottle,” I said, “starting with the most powerful first. It’s time for the Djinn to be on our side. We already broke the rules; let’s make it count. And dammit, give me David!”
“If you’ll give me Venna,” he said, and tried for a smile. I nodded agreement. He gulped in a deep breath, and seemed to steady himself. “All right. We’ve got Djinn. We’ve got the Wardens I’ve been able to pull together. We’ve got the Ma’at, not that they’re up to a fight of this magnitude. What else?”
“We’ve got Imara.”
He was already shaking his head before I finished the short sentence. “Nobody’s got Imara, and she wants to keep it that way. I told you, I tried. She won’t come, and she won’t talk to us. She won’t give us sanctuary. She’s locked inside her own world, and she’s letting us live or die on our own.”
I pulled Venna’s bottle out of my backpack and held it out to him. “Give me David. Give me David, and I will bring Imara in on our side.”
“How?”
“Just give me the bottle.”
He had it in his pocket. As he passed it over, I felt heat emanating from the glass. David was really, truly pissed off, and I knew that the second I released him I was going to have a very hard time keeping him from breaking Lewis’s neck.
Lewis uncorked Venna’s bottle, and the child stepped out of thin air to stand at his side, hands folded. She looked up at him, innocence itself, and said, “If you give me stupid commands, I’ll kill you.”
“I expected that,” Lewis told her. “For now, help Joanne keep David from killing me. Which he’s about to try to do.”
Venna raised her eyebrows, but it wasn’t in surprise. I was pretty sure that was amusement. Other than that, she gave him absolutely no assurances.
I took a deep breath, cradled the bottle in my left hand, and pulled the cork with my right.
A storm exploded out of the bottle, and the pressure of the room changed so abruptly my ears popped. David materialized in midstride, l
ong coat swirling like smoke, and lunged for Lewis’s throat.
Venna caught his hand about an inch from its target with no apparent effort, and said, “Maybe you should greet your wife first.”
David whirled around, and I saw the look that Lewis had just faced. I’d never imagined David could seem that angry, or that deadly, but his beauty had taken on cold, unmerciful edges, and the glitter in his eyes was the color of blood.
He blinked, and it went away. “Jo?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. In one step I was crushed against him and held tight, so tight I thought he’d accidentally break my back. After a few breathless seconds he eased off and looked down into my face. His eyes widened, and I knew he was seeing what I’d just been through. Hard to hide things from a Djinn, especially one who knew as much about me as he did.
That triggered the rage again. I knew what he was thinking—he’d seen my horror and desperation, seen how close I’d come to being killed out there, and he was blaming it on Lewis. Well, rightly so, but there wasn’t time for it. Before he could lash out again, I grabbed him by the chin and held him still. “No,” I said. “I’m all right. And we need him as much as he needs us.”
The fact that I was so baldly logical about it helped clear the anger out of him, at least for now. He shuddered as it passed, and nodded to me, and I let go. “We’ll talk about this later,” he said. “Right?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “Although I plan on three days of spa treatments, with mud baths and all-day massages. So probably after that.”
It got a twitch of a smile out of him before he looked at Lewis, and Venna standing so small and delicate beside him. He said, “Ashan?”
Venna looked down. “Gone,” she said. “I grieve that it was necessary, but he was mad with power. He twisted nature. It can’t be done, no matter his motives.”
Venna had described Ashan as her brother, and from the pain that I saw in her, I believed it. What she’d done would be a long time healing, I thought, if it ever did.
“You’re the Conduit.”
“Yes,” she said, just as quietly. “Not by my choice. But I am the logical replacement.”
“Can you reach her?” David asked. I knew by her he meant Mother Earth. Venna slowly shook her head.
“Not while I am bound,” she said. “And once I am free, I become hers. Maybe without Ashan’s anger driving her she will be calmer, but the damage has been done. We have to find a way to speak to her before it’s too late.”
“We’ll do it,” I said. “David and I will go to Imara. She’ll let us in; she has to. And once we’re in, we can reach the Mother through her.”
Venna studied me with eerily calm eyes. “That will kill you, you know. You’re not strong enough.”
“I’ve done it before.”
“When she was sleeping. She’s not sleeping anymore.” The matter-of-fact way she said it made me pause. “You die, and David becomes hers. It’s what will happen. Imara knows. That’s why she kept you away.”
Venna had a turn for prophecy, too, and that chilled me deep. “But she’ll let us in.”
“Yes,” she said. “She’s your child. She’ll let you in.”
“Then we have to try it.” I turned to David, but he didn’t look nearly as convinced. He was looking past me, at Venna.
No . . . not at Venna after all.
At Lewis.
Lewis wouldn’t return the stare; he looked at the floor, deliberately avoiding any kind of contact. I wondered why, until Venna turned to Lewis, adding her stare to David’s. “She will talk to you,” Venna said.
“Lewis?” I blurted. “Why?”
Lewis let out a sigh, and now he did look up, troubled and very tired. “Because I’m the first triple-threat Warden born with that configuration in generations, and I may be the most powerful one since Jonathan walked the Earth.” He was right. A triple-threat Warden—one who could wield all three powers with equal strength—was extremely rare. So rare, in fact, that the Wardens themselves had tried to capture and study him, in hopes of figuring out how to artificially create the condition in others. Lewis had spent his time as a lab rat, and as a fugitive; he’d been a thief, a con man, a hero, a leader, and a ruthless general.
“Before you go,” David said slowly, “you should know the truth about Jonathan.”
That came out of left field. Jonathan had been the leader of the Djinn for countless ages, and he’d been David’s friend and brother in arms—maybe more, for all I knew. I had only met the Big Grand Poobah a few times, and he’d spooked me, in general, more than Venna. I knew Jonathan had been born human, and Warden; he’d become a warrior general, and died in battle, with David, on a field full of slaughter. His death had sparked the Mother to create the first of the New Djinn: Jonathan, formed out of the death of so many.
David had been brought with him, because Jonathan had refused to let him go.
What else could there be to know?
Venna suddenly glanced away from all of us, as if listening to a sound that didn’t register to me at all. “We’ll discuss it later,” she said. “Time to fight now.”
Lewis jerked upright and hit the door running into the main room. Venna blipped out and probably materialized ahead of him.
I looked wordlessly at David, and he took my hands and held them.
“I hate him,” he said. “I hate that he left you out there alone. Whatever comes, I’ll never forgive him for that.”
“Amen,” I said. “But let’s live through this first, okay?”
He gave me a smile and kissed me, and we went to join the fight.
At first glance, it looked like nothing was happening. Lewis was standing at the table that I assumed doubled as the Warden War Room. Venna snatched up Cassiel’s bag (without permission) and began flitting from Warden to Warden—literally, buzzing in and out of reality faster than a hummingbird—and opening the bag so they could take the Djinn bottles inside. Seeing that Venna herself couldn’t touch them, that was a pretty good compromise. She ran out of bottles after twelve people, but I could see at a glance in Oversight that her evaluation of who were the most powerful was dead-on.
“Be careful,” I said in a voice pitched to carry. “Those Djinn may or may not want to follow your orders. Some of them may turn on you, but it’s the best shot we have.”
“They won’t,” Venna and David said, as one, and exchanged a look. Venna continued, “We’ll make sure they don’t. There’s no time for politics now.”
Wow. That was quite a statement, coming from the new head of the Old Djinn. Ashan had been all about the politics, and—of course—the superiority and general hatred. But there was a new sheriff in town, tiny as she might be, and I rather enjoyed the idea.
One by one, the Wardens uncorked their bottles. Most looked damned nervous, and I didn’t blame them, but as the Djinn misted into evidence around us, none of them made aggressive movements. They stood, silently waiting, just as Lewis was.
Lewis said, in a faraway kind of voice that told me he’d gone far out on the aetheric, “It’s coming. Get ready.”
I went up with him—not as far up, because I’m not Lewis, and he could, as always, take things further than any other living Warden. I’d never really understood his limitations, but I understood that he had them, and he was more than likely pushing them now.
I didn’t need to soar quite as high as he did, because what was coming for us was perfectly evident, in vivid reds and deadly blacks, poison greens and rotting yellows. It was a tsunami of power rolling through the desert like a wave, sweeping everything ahead of it, and although I didn’t know exactly what it was, there was no question of what it did.
That was the Four Horsemen. That was the Grim Reaper.
That was Death, and it was coming to wipe Las Vegas off the face of the Earth.
I had no idea what our powers could do against it, but I looked at David and said, “Can the Djinn stop it?”
“No,” he said. “Not even the Djinn can do
that. But we can hold it back, for a time.”
“Do it,” I said.
He nodded and vanished, and around the room, other Djinn did the same. I went up on the aetheric to watch, and I saw the wave sweep toward the glittering, insane tangle of lights and colors that was Las Vegas—and stop, frozen in its tracks. The Djinn had taken up positions all the way around the perimeter, and as I watched, I saw that while the wave was still seething, bubbling, it was at a standstill.
David misted back in, along with Venna. “It’s not going to hold,” Venna said. “You have less than a day, probably only hours. There are millions here. Once the Djinn fall, there’s nothing to stop it, and they will die. All of them.”
I looked around at the room, at the Wardens in their shell-shocked state. I remembered those insane gamblers still stuck at the slot machines out there in the face of the end of the world as we knew it.
I thought about Cherise, who might already be lost, but would be soon if we didn’t find a way to stop this.
“There’s no more time,” Venna said. “If you want to live, we must go now.”
“It’ll take hours to get to Sedona,” I said. Venna gave me an exasperated look.
“No, it won’t,” she said, and reached out to take my hand, and Lewis’s. “Hold on. I will take you.”
“Wait!” I said, “Imara has a barrier in place! You can’t get through it!”
“She knows we’re coming,” Venna said. “She doesn’t like it, but she knows. It’s her choice whether she destroys us to protect her own existence.”
“You’re gambling on her allowing us entrance.”
Venna smiled. “It’s not a gamble. She’s your daughter.”
She seized our hands, and I had just enough time to anticipate how bad this was going to be. . . .
And then it was much, much worse.
Venna dragged us through the aetheric planes, and my God it hurt, like being towed through coils of barbed wire. It seemed that the aetheric itself was burning, aflame with all the growing and intensifying fury and determination, pain and panic. More and more people were realizing that there was no escape, and the pressure was building to fatal levels.