Unbroken os-4

by Rachel Caine

  “—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. “Tío, 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, and 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.

  “Look after him,” I told Esmeralda. “If anything happens to him—”

  “Yeah, yeah, you’ll make me into a coat, a pair of boots, and an awesome hat, I get it,” she said. “Just go. I’m sick of looking at your pale, bony ass.” She flicked a hand at
me dismissively. I gave her a hard five-second stare before walking to my Victory. I’d laid it flat, but on the side not holding the precious bottle; I levered it upright, checked it—save for minor cosmetic damage, intact—and swung my leg over.

  “Isabel,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  She hopped on without a hesitation and put her arms around my waist. For a second I was reminded of her as a smaller child, in this same position on a different bike, on a different day. A more hopeful one, perhaps.

  Then I shook my head, started the engine, and we left Esmeralda and Luis behind, with the dull smoke still staining the air above them.

  I was worried about Isabel still; her use of power had lit up the aetheric again, like a lightning strike on an inky night… and it would draw attention. Right now, she might be the most powerful Warden not shrouded by that black corner, far out to sea, and that meant she would be a target.

  But all the vigilance seemed to be in vain. We rode fast, but smoothly. The road was empty of traffic or threats. No wrecks littered the highway. The sun had slipped beneath the line of trees now, casting cool velvet shadows across the asphalt. I drove with part of my awareness on the aetheric. If the Djinn—or Pearl’s forces—decided to attack, they wouldn’t give much warning. A split second might mean the difference between life and death.

  Less than fifteen minutes later, we topped a steep hill, and below us in a soft, mist-shrouded valley lay a small town. The billboard-large sign proclaimed it HEMMINGTON, A NICE PLACE TO LIVE, and proved it with an utterly artificial photo of a smiling family.

  It was very quiet below.

  I slowed the bike and stopped, idling. Isabel rose to look over my shoulder. “Why are we waiting?” she asked. “Come on—let’s go!”

  “A moment,” I said. There was nothing unusual, either in my field of vision or on the aetheric, yet something gave me pause.

  “Look, there’s a parking lot,” she said, and pointed. “Right there. We can get a van or something. We don’t even have to go that far.”

  “We need food and water,” I said.

  “Toilet paper,” she added. “For sure. Maybe that premoistened kind. There’s a store right there. C’mon, it’s fine. There’s nothing in there. The whole town’s empty.”

  She was right—the place was ghostly silent. Lights burned, but I sensed no human habitation at all.

  “In and out. Quickly,” I said. “You see to the van. I’ll drop you there and go on to the store. If there’s any trouble at all, take the wheels and go. You can drive, can’t you?”

  She laughed. “I was a kid yesterday, but I can learn fast, Cassie. Don’t worry about me.”

  There was no point in hesitating; the danger would be there, or not, and waiting wouldn’t improve our chances. I pressed the throttle and sent the Victory gliding down the long hill. I kept the rumbling to a minimum, out of instinct as much as caution.

  Too many predators out, and none of them in clear view. Staying quiet and small was as good a defense as any.

  The parking lot wasn’t large, but it had several choices of vehicles that would do; the largest was the work truck of some sort of contractor, and stocked with tools, from what I could make out of the interior. Not clean, but useful. I pointed to it as I rolled to a stop, and Isabel nodded as she slid off the bike. “Ibby. Be careful,” I said. She waved impatiently, and I felt a spark of power as she unlocked the door to climb inside. I felt a primitive impulse to stay with her, watch over her, but that would only increase our risks. Better to divide the job.

  I drove the bike onto the sidewalk in front of the store. It was called Mike’s EZ Stop, and there were three cars out in front, all silent and deserted. When I killed the engine on the Victory, I could hear sounds—music, applause, talking voices, all of it softened by distance.

  Televisions and radios. Not living souls.

  The thick glass windows showed nothing—a brightly lit interior of shelves, groceries, coolers at the back fully stocked with cold drinks and packs of beer. I pushed open the door and heard a soft electronic tone, but no one appeared. The registers were open and bare, as if someone had methodically stripped them of cash, but there was no vandalism here.

  I took two cloth bags from the environmentally friendly pile—ironic, now—and went shopping.

  I checked the aisles methodically for anyone hiding as I grabbed two loaves of bread, peanut butter, jam, dried jerky, energy bars—anything that would keep without refrigeration. I avoided the canned goods, only because the water would be heavy enough; if this proved safe, we could always come back for more.

  I was putting the last of the water into the bag when I rounded the corner and faced the last wall of coolers.

  They did not contain beer.

  The dead stared back at me, frosted and ice-eyed—employees still in aprons, a man in a tan jumpsuit who might have gone with the van Isabel was taking, a small boy crumpled into a fetal ball, a fat old woman in a flowered dress, more; they were stacked in the cooler in a horrifying mess.

  Not all were intact.

  It couldn’t be all of the town, as overwhelming as it seemed.

  I backed up into a row of shelves, and jars of spaghetti sauce clinked together. One popped free and shattered in a mess of red and broken, jagged glass.

  Out. Get out. Something screamed inside me, some instinct more human than Djinn, though there was alarm within my Djinn soul as well. I tightened my grip on the bags, whirled, and ran for the doors.

  The glass suddenly went opaque with cracks.

  I threw myself forward into a facedown slide on the linoleum floor just as all the windows shattered inward, shredding the interior of the store like a bomb. Wind. Not just any wind. No, this was traveling at insane force, blowing over shelves, ripping up counters, and flinging them into the air. I saw a register fly by overhead before it hit a sliding metal shelf and blew apart into sharp fragments of metal and plastic. The electrical power cord hissed wildly in the air like a living thing and slapped the floor only a few inches from my hand.

  I had no defense against weather. Not in here.

  The initial burst of air had destroyed things, but now it sucked out again, then turned, and turned, warm and cool colliding in an insane battle for supremacy. The debris swirled and sped up into a blur, and the roof of the little store ripped away with a shriek of cracking steel and timber.

  Gone.

  The walls went next, unraveling into bricks and beams. I curled up tight on the floor and felt the wind sucking at me, ripping me with teeth made of steel and glass, wood and sharp plastic. It would flay me alive, or pull me into the storm of deadly, grinding debris. The linoleum floor, which was being ripped away around me, was at least under my control; made of largely organic materials, it was something within reach of my Earth powers, and I first rolled and wrapped the thick, flexible coating around my body. It protected me to some extent—enough that I began grabbing and dissolving the other organic debris in the air, especially the cutting and stabbing surfaces, into dust. The wind could still throw me at fatal speed, but at least it couldn’t rip me to pieces quite so easily.

  But it had other tricks, this tornado formed—I felt it now—of sheer, volcanic hatred… and as it shredded the coolers at the sides of the store, bodies joined the debris. The wind scoured them apart in seconds, into wet flesh and sharp, flaying bone. It was all organic, all under the domain of my Earth power, but it was too much, too fast, especially now that the storm was mixing so many different kinds of weapons together.

  The dead attacked me in the second wave, and I’d already spent what power I had to stop the first assault. The bones stabbed at me like flying knives, and skulls pummeled me with the force of thrown bowling balls. The thick flooring couldn’t protect me completely, or forever, and the tornado seemed to be growing in fury now, focused solely on ripping me to pieces.…

  And then something entered the fight, on my side. A brilliant rush of power that threw up walls around me, solid earth
and concrete, rigid metal, a berm of safety that gave me relief from the pummeling.

  And then, quite suddenly, I felt the back of the tornado snap as the power fueling it withdrew. The wind faltered, scattered in all directions, and bones and ripped flesh and debris rained down on the shelter that covered me.

  I couldn’t breathe. The linoleum had wrapped tightly to my body, and the air within the shelter had been exhausted in only a few gasps.

  I’d suffocate here, in my safe haven.…

  But then the top peeled away with the ease of a can opening, and a face looked down on me. Two faces, actually. One, veiled with a fall of dark hair, was Isabel’s, looking pale and frightened.

  The other was indigo blue, silver-eyed, and I felt a surge of frantic panic as I realized that it was Rashid. Rashid, whom I’d imprisoned in a bottle…

  … That was now held tightly in Isabel’s hand.

  “Get her out,” Isabel ordered. Rashid ripped the shelter further open, took hold of the linoleum, and unrolled me from its stifling embrace. I gagged in dusty breaths and stared at his extended hand for a few seconds before grabbing it.

  He lifted me effortlessly out and into a wasteland. A very limited and specific one, covering only the building that had once been Mike’s EZ Stop; there was nothing left but scattered bricks, rubble, and the pulped remains of the dead. Not something I wanted Isabel to witness, but not something I could easily shield her from, either.

  Isabel grabbed on to me and hugged me, wordless and shaking. I hugged her back and looked over at Rashid, who inclined his head just a tiny bit.

  “You’re sane,” I said.

  “Well,” he replied, with a sharp-toothed smile, “that is not a common opinion. But I am no longer a puppet of the Mother’s will. Only of hers.” He cast a dark look at Isabel, and my arms tightened around her in reaction. “You are well aware how I feel about such things.”

  “Don’t,” I warned him. “She’s a child.”

  “Old enough to hold my bottle,” he said. “Though that was your doing, my sweet dear cousin, sticking me in one. For the second time. There will come a reckoning. Soon.”