by Rachel Caine
I tended to think of Esmeralda as a girl—a teenager—but she was, in fact, a failed Warden, a dangerous psychopath, and an expert killer of Djinn. From the waist down, her body had twisted and smoothed into the scaled, powerful shape of a snake—a rattlesnake, grown to nightmare size. It was the punishment of the first Djinn she’d killed, that she live out her life in that monstrous form, locked and unable to shift from it.
It did not seem to me to have chastised her as much as it ought. And it greatly worried me that little Isabel had come to hero-worship the bitter soul within that warped body so much. Still, Esmeralda did seem to care for the girl. That was something.
“Bring her down,” Luis said. He still sounded tense, but at least he’d switched back to a calmer voice, and his English. “Carefully.”
“I’m fine, Tío,” Isabel protested, but neither of us were in much of a mood to take her word for it. The two girls exchanged a silent, eye-rolling look that clearly said, Adults—what idiots, and then Esmeralda grabbed Isabel in a hug and expertly slithered her way down to the leaf-littered floor of the forest.
“See? She’s fine,” Esmeralda said, as Ibby’s feet touched ground. Luis opened his arms to give her a hug, but Ibby stayed where she was and folded her arms. “You need to stop treating her like a little kid, man. She’s not.”
Isabel was, indeed, not a typical six-year-old. When I’d met her, only a short time ago, she’d been an innocent child, sunny and sweet, but then her parents had been killed, and she’d been abducted by a twisted, powerful evil who’d once been a Djinn. Isabel had been… altered. Powers had awakened inside her that were not meant for a small girl’s form, and she had seen and done things that I didn’t fully comprehend.
But she was still, physically, the same innocent little girl I’d loved from the moment I had met her, and it was a difficult adjustment for me to make. How much worse was it for Luis, who was not only human, but her uncle?
“They’re never going to get it,” Ibby said to Esmeralda, and flopped down in a dejected pile of sharp elbows and knees. Like all of us, she looked dirty and rumpled and tired. “I wish I was older.”
“Well, you’re not,” Luis said, “and you need to do what we tell you, Ib. You know that. Don’t be giving us grief now, not now. It’s too dangerous.”
“I know that,” she shot back, and kicked leaves. “I know better than you.”
She likely did, but it was difficult to hear, especially with the militant, pouting edge to the words. Luis shook his head and limped away, facing the woods; I joined him as he took some deep breaths. “I know we kind of need Snake Chick,” he said, “but I do not like her. And I don’t like how Ibby is around her.”
“I can hear you!” Isabel yelled. Luis squeezed his eyes shut, then limped off into the woods. I hesitated, but Isabel seemed safe enough; Esmeralda had coiled herself into a pile nearby, and she was combing her fingers through her long dark hair, trying to pick out the leaf litter and cursing under her breath. It was possible that Esmeralda wouldn’t defend us, but she wouldn’t allow harm to Isabel.
I went after Luis.
I found him about twenty yards away, sitting against the bole of a tree with his legs stretched out straight; he was hugging himself against the chill and shivering a little. He seemed thoroughly miserable. “I wasn’t kidding. I need coffee,” he said. “Water?”
I had a canteen, and I offered it to him. He unstoppered it, closed his eyes, and concentrated for a moment. I felt a hot pulse of power, and then smoke began wisping from the mouth of the container. I touched it. Hot.
“One thing that’s good about being an Earth and Fire Warden,” Luis said, “I can change water into delicious moka java, and I can heat it up, too.” He took a sip and passed it over. Black coffee, smooth and bracing. We drank in silence, watching the growing sunrise. “We’ve got to rethink what we’re doing, you know. Isabel’s a kid. I know she’s got powers. I know she wants to fight—maybe has to fight. But we shouldn’t intentionally put her in the thick of things. I want to take her someplace safe, Cass.”
“Where would that be?” I asked. “I’m sorry, but the Earth herself is awake. There is no safe place; you know that. Anything built by man can be destroyed. She’s safest with us.”
“But we’re going to be in the fight, and it’s no place for a kid, dammit. What about the Wardens? They’ve got to be taking those children they were looking after someplace safer than—well, than wherever the hell we’re heading. I want her with them.”
It was Luis’s choice, as her only living relative, but I couldn’t help thinking it was a wrong one. Isabel had a possibly dangerous faith in her own abilities and she did have a great deal of power… and leaving her with those unprepared to deal with her very strong will might be a recipe for disaster. Then again, he was correct about our situation. We were definitely going to enter into fighting that would be extremely dangerous, and having Isabel with us would cripple us, and put her even more at risk.
I had no answers for it, so I drank the coffee in silence. There was something primitively comforting in its bitter warmth.
Luis was pouring out the dregs and starting to talk about finding a water source when we both felt a sudden, shockingly deep wave of power cascade through the forest, the ground, the sky—through us. It was as if energy drained from every living thing for just an instant—a split second of death, followed by a terrific flood of adrenaline and panic. Luis blurted, “What the hell was that?” His eyes had gone wide, pupils narrowed to pinpoints, and I knew I looked just as startled and pale. I shook my head.
“Isabel,” we both said, and I bolted upright, then hesitated as Luis struggled up as well. I was torn between a need to run to her and a need to ensure he was all right, but he waved me urgently on as he slung the canteen’s strap around his neck.
I ran the twenty yards back to the girls in a blur and skidded to a stop in the clearing. Nothing was out of place. Esmeralda still sat coiled, though she’d gone quite still. And Isabel…
Ibby wasn’t there.
No, she was there, but for a disorienting moment I couldn’t process what I was seeing as she turned to face me. That is not Isabel, I thought, but it was. I could see the ghost of the child in the shape of her face, the fine dark eyes… but that child had been six years old, going on seven, and this girl was at least twelve. She’d grown more than a foot, and her body had developed and rounded with it; she looked strong and lovely, and wrong. So very wrong.
I stood there frozen for a long moment. I heard the crunch of leaves as Luis limped rapidly up behind me, and went still and quiet as well.
Then I turned on Esmeralda. “What have you done?” I said it in a whisper, but my voice was trembling with outrage. “What have you done?”
Esmeralda faced me squarely, with a haughty, imperious tilt to her chin. “You’ve been out there arguing about what to do with her,” she said. “You couldn’t deal with a six-year-old, right? Well, she’s not six now. And she can take care of herself.”
“How…” Luis shifted uneasily, unable to take his gaze away from his niece’s suddenly altered face. “How did you do this?”
Esmeralda shrugged. “I can’t do it now, but I did it to myself when I was younger,” she said. “Part of what got me in trouble. But I told the kid how. It was her choice to actually do it—and she’s got the skills. Look, she was bound to do it sooner or later. Better she age herself out of it now, so she won’t be as vulnerable.”
It was a cold assessment, one that I might have made myself once. There was an eminently logical component to it that I couldn’t really deny.
But Luis looked as if he might throw up. “Ibby,” he said. “Jesus, how could you?” He knew, as I did, that she couldn’t reverse the process; a Djinn might be able to manipulate the structure of a body at will, but the changes a human Warden made in aging one were utterly beyond fixing. She had lost six years of her life, at least physically; the cost to her lifespan would be much, much greater
, because the power it took to do this was toxic.
“I had to.” Ibby gave him an apologetic look, but focused her reply to me. “I can’t be a little kid anymore, Cassiel. And I can’t have you guys worrying about me all the time. You need me to be strong, and I’m going to be. I have to be able to take care of myself.” She seemed calm and more certain than I felt at this moment. “Esmeralda showed me how to do it, and it didn’t hurt as much as you’d think.”
I had nothing to say, because it was useless to debate the issue now. They had been careful to invoke such power out of my sight, out of my control; there could be no going back for Ibby now. She had lost her childhood, instantly; there would be consequences for such a flagrant use of power, things I could not yet imagine except that her life would be harsher and shorter. Aging a body so quickly ensured pain, accelerated aging, and deadly mutations. Isabel was no longer looking at a normal human lifespan; hers would be brief, like a candle lit with a blowtorch.
Not only that, the risk—using Earth powers at such violent rates, when the Earth herself was awake and aware… that had been a hideously dangerous thing to do. It could have ended all of our lives, abruptly and very painfully.
And yet I couldn’t find it in my heart to disagree with her choice, either. Today was the beginning of the end of mankind, unless a mighty miracle occurred. She’d lost her childhood, but perhaps all childhoods were over, everywhere, starting on this cool, silent morning.
But I mourned the sweet child Ibby had been. The girl who stood before me now, fragile in her newfound power, was not the same at all.
Esmeralda was still staring at me in defiance, dirty chin raised. At the end of her serpentine tail, a rattle hissed softly.
I broke the tension by turning back to Isabel, who stood tense and defensive. “We’ll have to discuss this later; there’s no time for it now. The power you used lit up the aetheric like a flare. We must move fast.”
“Hang on,” Luis said. His voice was soft and even, but very definitely dangerous. “I’m not even going to pretend to be okay with this. I am not okay. Ibby, what you did—you’re an Earth Warden; you can’t use power this way. It’s perverted. It’s dangerous. In different times you’d end up on an operating table getting your powers removed for gross misuse. Understand? Just because the Wardens are a little too panicked right now to enforce the rules doesn’t mean there aren’t any; it just means we have to try harder to stay on the right side of the line. And you crossed it.”
She had gone steadily paler and more still as he talked, but she didn’t look away, and she didn’t try to defend herself, either. She just looked at him for a moment in silence, and then said, “I’m sorry. I’m doing my best. But I was going to hold you back, and I couldn’t do that. I just couldn’t.”
He sighed, swiped a hand over his forehead in a gesture of utter frustration, and then limped over and hugged her. Hard. She came almost up to his chin now. “Okay, here’s the deal. You’re going to feel sick, and you’re going to hurt, a lot. Your bones are still forming. I’m going to see about finding you some calcium pills, vitamins, that kind of stuff; you’re going to need it, a lot of it. You start feeling bad, you say so—none of this silent heroics crap. This shit is risky.” He kissed the top of her head, and then looked up at Esmeralda, who was smirking at the two of them with an entirely inappropriate amount of satisfaction. Luis’s eyes turned dark and dangerous. “You keep an eye on her, too. And don’t think we aren’t going to talk about this again, Es.”
“That’ll be fun,” she said. “I’ll bring cookies.”
I cleared my throat. “You were scouting last night,” I said. “Did you find out if the Warden party and the children made it safely out?” Last night, we’d narrowly escaped a trap meant to kill or capture dozens of gifted Warden children; we’d gotten separated from them, as Ibby and her friend Gillian had gone after those who had tried to kill us. I’d taken Gillian back to the others, but Isabel had refused to turn away, and it had been late enough that neither Luis nor I could force the issue. Luis had been too badly hurt to make the run back, and I couldn’t leave him behind.
Hence, our uncomfortably chilly beds of leaves in the forest for the night.
Esmeralda seemed happy to change the subject, too. She said, “All of them from the school got picked up by a Warden convoy. They’re heading for Seattle, I think. Safe, as far as I know. We’ll need them soon, though. All of them.”
“Not yet,” I said. “Let them be children for as long as they can.” I was looking at Isabel as I said it, and she raised her chin with a jerk. It was bravado, not self-confidence, and I could see that she’d learned that, too, from Esmeralda. The idea of the two of them forming this instant and dangerous connection made me deeply uneasy, but there was nothing I could do to stop it; Esmeralda was an undoubted asset to us, and she had no reason to love those we’d be fighting. As allies went, she was more than acceptable.
Just not for Isabel.
“You’re living in a fantasy, you know; you guys think these kids are some kind of innocents. They’re not,” Esmeralda replied calmly, staring directly into my eyes. “They never have been. They’re Wardens, down to the core. You’re trying to pretend they’re all pure at heart. I know. I was one.”
“You were a killer,” I said bluntly. “A psychopath. And, I observe, you still are.”
The girl smiled, but not all her teeth were human; she had a viper’s fangs hidden inside her, and now she lazily showed them to me as her pupils contracted to shining, blind vertical slits. “Got that right, bitch. Want me to prove it?”
“Hey!” Isabel said sharply. She put herself between the two of us and glared—I was relieved to see that Esmeralda got the same level of outrage that I did. “Enough! We’ve got real enemies, don’t we? The Lady out there, she wants to kill us, and so does Mother Earth, and probably the Djinn now. We’ve got plenty of trouble without this.”
I, who had existed since before the human race had descended from trees, was being chastised by a child, and it rankled, because the child was right. Esmeralda was not my favorite choice of companion, or even a safe one, but she was Isabel’s friend, and any allies at all would soon be welcome.
I bowed from the waist, spreading my hands to show I was releasing the moment. Esmeralda took an insultingly long moment to fold her fangs away, clear her eyes back to entirely human, and shrug. “Whatever,” she said, and slithered off through the hissing forest debris. “I need breakfast.”
“Do I even want to know what that means?” Luis asked, as he limped over to me. He’d held back, I realized, because he’d hoped that Esmeralda might overlook him as a threat if she and I came to a fight. Smart, but then, that was Luis; he was a great deal more capable than I sometimes gave him credit for. And capable of more subtlety than me.
Isabel snorted. “She doesn’t run on granola, Uncle Luis.” Already, it seems, she’d perfected the irritated teenage roll of the eyes. “Relax. She doesn’t eat people.”
“That you know of,” Luis said. “Mija, that girl’s dangerous. She’s killed before, and she’ll kill again. I don’t think you understand what you’re getting into with her.”
“I’m not a baby,” Isabel snapped back, and her dark eyes flashed with a hint of the power I knew she possessed. “Don’t treat me like one. I know what she is, what she’s done. She told me.”
I doubted that what Esmeralda told her was the truth, either in its breadth or depth, but there was no point in arguing with the girl. She’d not be convinced now, not by the very adults to whom she wanted to prove herself.
Luis started to speak again, but I met his eyes and shook my head. Like a sensible man, he subsided, but the frown remained grooved on his forehead.
I kept watching him as Isabel busied herself with other things, because Luis did not look well. There were dark circles beneath his eyes, and lines of pain tight around his mouth. I moved to him, and he put his arm around me. “Hell of a night,” he said. His weight shifted just
a bit, and settled more on me than his wounded leg. “You doing okay?”
“Fine,” I said. “You’re still in pain.”
“It’s good.” It wasn’t, and I gave him a long look in reply until he said, eyebrows raising, “Okay, well, maybe good isn’t the right word. It’ll be all right until it heals on its own.”
“Let me be the judge of that,” I said, and before he could protest, I crouched down and put my hand on his thigh, just at the level where the injury had occurred. He’d been very lucky not to have bled out; the tear in the artery had been grave indeed. I closed my eyes and invoked Oversight, an overlay to the real world that imbued it with the rich, shifting colors and images from the other layers of reality, the real worlds that were the natural home to the Djinn.
Luis, painted with those colors, seemed pallid and gray, and his leg pulsed with red and black energy. I could sense the sickness taking hold inside, the rot and ruin waiting to consume his feverish, dimming light.
No. I would not lose him now. Not after all this. I could not. It was no longer a selfish need, that of a Djinn depending on the skill and power of a human to provide her with energy for survival.… No, this was something else altogether, a burning and desperate need to have him alive. To preserve the beauty of what I knew was within him.
Our eyes locked, and Luis’s lips curved a little in a tired smile. “You’d better get up before someone takes a picture and we’re both porn stars,” he said, but the smile faded after a second, and a look of alarm came into his face. “You’re not going to—”
I didn’t look away from his face as I opened the connection between us, and a golden wave of Earth power flowed from him into me, drowning me in deep, soft, rich energy. I couldn’t stop the sigh that escaped; feeling that incredible sensation, so close to pain and pleasure, made me remember what it had been like to exist in that flow, that state of being. It was not so much that I missed it as when I touched it, I was a starving woman remembering the taste of food.