by Rachel Caine
“Do you, Joanne—” His clerical voice was about half an octave higher than it ought to have been. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Do you, Joanne, take this man—”
“Wait,” I said.
All of the Djinn—even Ashan—let out a sigh, and David’s grip on my hand tightened painfully. His eyes went wide, and his skin bone-pale.
“Jo—”
“Just wait,” I repeated. “Ashan, the Oracles—you admitted yourself that you don’t know what will happen, David. How can we do this? How can we change the rules like this when we don’t even know what’s coming for us?” My voice broke. My heart broke. I was watching the fire die in him, and it hurt. “It isn’t about us. It’s about them, all of the people who depend on us!”
“I’m willing to take the risk,” he whispered. “Believe in us, Jo. Please. Believe.”
His hand came up to trace my cheek, and I felt tears well up in my eyes and burn trails down my cheeks. His fingertips came away wet from my face, and he raised them to his lips.
Please.
I might have changed my mind. I can’t swear that I would have, or I wouldn’t; the fracture between my head and my heart ran right down to my soul.
I didn’t have time to find out.
The aetheric caught fire. At first I thought it was David, erupting in frustration and anger at me for what I’d done, but then I realized that it wasn’t him at all.
We were under attack.
David spun away from me. So did the other Djinn, all facing outward, blindly seeking the threat. “You know what to do,” David shouted to Ashan. “Protect the Oracles!”
A silver scar formed on David’s right cheek, then darkened, and the infection I’d seen earlier at Ortega’s house began to spread its tendrils again under his skin, moving frighteningly fast.
“David!” I grabbed for him, but he spun away, avoiding me. Doing his job. Dispatching his waiting Djinn according to some plan he hadn’t shared with me. . . . Lewis was moving, too, shouting at the Wardens. Everybody had a plan, it seemed, except for me.
I felt the black wave sweep over me. It wasn’t meant for me; it was centered on David, but even the edges of it made me feel faint and sick.
He collapsed against me, shuddering, and I felt a scream trying to rip loose from him. I was the only thing holding him up, the only defense he had left.
The Oracles vanished, leaving gusts of hot wind in their place that fluttered the pale layers of my gown. David’s weight pulled me down. It seemed as though he was growing heavier with every passing second.
Ashan stood there, immobile, impassive, perfect.
“Help!” I screamed at him, and grabbed his hand. It felt like cold marble. “Damn you, he’s your brother! Do something!” The two of them were the same, united by purpose and power, if not by the ties of blood that humans understood.
Ashan pulled free of my grip. “If you want him,” he said, “save him. He won’t save himself. He could, if he wished.”
I couldn’t hold David up. Lewis lunged forward and tried to help take his weight, but there was something strange happening here, something worse than anything I’d expected.
“God,” Lewis muttered. “Hold on, we’re trying to put up the shield. Hold on—”
The Sentinels attacked from all around us, on every front. I heard some physical confrontations, and saw a bloom of fire erupt somewhere off to the side, followed by shouts and screams. Security piled on top of me and began hustling me away; I gathered up my train with both hands, clutching it out of the way of traffic. Lewis had arranged our forces in teams, but even so, the assault was shocking in its suddenness and force. I grabbed Lewis’s arm as he pushed past and shook it fiercely. “They’re using Rahel to get to him! If you’re going to counter, it has to be now. Right now! Go!”
“Already on it,” Lewis snapped, and spun away. “Stay here. Draw them if you can.”
David was down on the ground, surrounded by fierce-eyed Djinn protectors ready to fight anything that came for him, but they let me through. I sank down at his side in a flutter of silk and held him. He was gasping and trembling, eyes molten gold but with ominous sparks of darkness flying through them. The gray mottling on his face was taking on a shocking life of its own, moving dark tendrils beneath his skin. Seeking out the aetheric pipeline that made David the Conduit. Once it had that . . .
“Let her go!” I shouted, and grabbed him by the lapels. “David, you have to let Rahel go, please!”
He shook his head. His hand grabbed for mine and clenched tightly. “Say it,” he said. His voice was raw in his throat, almost primal. “Say the words. Say it!”
I felt tears trembling in my eyes. The whole world was coming apart. I heard the crack of gunfire somewhere off to the side, and more screaming. Someone was shouting about a Warden down; someone else was warning of a Sentinel attack coming in the form of a tidal wave from the ocean.
This couldn’t be right. It couldn’t be.
I squeezed my eyes shut, felt the tears burn down my cheeks, and whispered, “Oh God help me, I do. I do.”
There was an eerie second of utter silence, not even the wind moving. Conflicts stopped, pinned on the instant, and I felt something inside me shifting, aligning like a puzzle box.
And a wave of pure golden power flowed into me, through me, and out.
I opened my eyes and saw David watching my face with a look I could think of only as awed relief. The gray faded from his face, back to a silvery scar. Gone.
And I felt the echoing power between us build, and build, and build, waves on the beach, pounding and ceaseless, cascading out into the other Djinn, enhancing their raw power and refining it into surgical weapons.
I’d just made the New Djinn a quantum leap more powerful, by giving them a second anchor into the aetheric.
I’d also just gotten married, even if the minister hadn’t quite gotten around to saying the words before he’d fled to the hills, along with most of the others.
The Djinn snapped a glowing shield of power over us, brilliant as shimmering gold. It covered not just the two of us, but all of the Palms—hell, it went so far out that it might have been covering all of Florida. Whatever the Sentinels were doing, they quit doing it, fast, rightly recognizing that they had just been dealt a very serious blow. It would take them time to figure out exactly what had happened.
“Did you know?” I felt giddy, halfway to heaven. Endorphins kicking in. “Did you plan that?”
David grabbed me and kissed me, long and hard, with a good deal less restraint than most bridegrooms would have shown under similar circumstances. His hands roamed, stroking down the silk, crushing it to my hips, his fingertips brushing over the skin left exposed by the open V of the corset at my back.
“Absolutely,” he said, deadpan, when he pulled back.
“You had no idea.”
“I knew.”
“You liar. You guessed!”
He laughed and buried his face against my neck, picked me up, and whirled me around in the deserted gazebo. A storm wind lashed surf against the rocks, and a wild cascade of lightning slashed out of the sky and grounded spectacularly out at sea. It was the joy of the Djinn, made real.
David sobered, but the light stayed in him, burning fiercely. He kissed me again, this time more gently, with a promise of things to come, and I felt the curling smile on his lips. “I need to go,” he said. “Things to do.”
“Same here,” I said. “They’ll be looking for an explanation of what just happened.”
He stepped back, and his gaze raked me from head to toe, ravenous and warm. “Don’t change,” he said. “I’ll be back. I want to take that off you.”
I shivered, nodded, and watched my lover—no, I supposed I was going to have to get used to the idea of husband—mist away on the hot, humid breeze.
I couldn’t see any other Djinn, but there were plenty of hired security, all looking grim and efficient as they herded guests to cover. I had a whole con
tingent of them stationed near me, all facing outward. I reached up and tapped the nearest one on the shoulder. “Hey!”
“Ma’am?” He angled in my direction a huge ear that looked as though it had been badly mangled in some kind of sculpting accident, but didn’t turn to face me. “You ready to go?”
“Guess so. Looks like the wedding’s over!”
He snorted. “Right. Let’s get you to the safe zone!”
“Sure,” I said. I felt giddy. Almost invincible, actually, but even if bullets might bounce off me, I was pretty sure they wouldn’t do the dress any good. Priorities. “Hey, didn’t you notice all the cool stuff going on? Supernatural stuff all over the place?”
“Lady,” he said wearily, “I’ve guarded the Rolling Stones. Trust me, you guys are amateurs.”
When the phalanx of guards closed in around me, it was like being in a moving tank of body armor; I clutched the train of my dress well out of reach of their boots, and hustled along down the path, up the steps, and into the narrow hallways I’d come through before. No staff were smiling at me this time; they were probably busy toting up the damage charges. I hoped David’s black AmEx was up to the job.
My security detail arrowed me straight past Lewis and a group of Wardens all huddled together; I tried to bail out to talk to them, but clearly that wasn’t in the plans. No matter how loud I yelled, we continued moving straight for the elevators. The guards broke up there, facing outward in an arc while the guy in charge—Mr. Squishy Ear—took my elbow in one massive, scarred hand and escorted me firmly across the threshold and into one of the lifts. He punched in a key card, and away we went, just the two of us.
“Where’s Cherise? My maid of honor?” I asked.
“Cute little thing? ’Bout this high?” He marked off a height just above the waistband of his ripstop pants. “Blond?”
“That’s the one.”
“Yeah, she’s already upstairs. We got her out ASAP. She wasn’t any too happy about it. Said she wanted to see you kick some ass.” He sent me a sideways look that doubted my ass-kicking abilities. Sucker.
I smiled sweetly. “Not in these shoes. They’re rentals.”
The elevator lurched and came to a stop, and when my bodyguard came to alert, I held out a hand and launched myself up into the aetheric, searching for trouble. A Sentinel was in the woodwork, trying to short-circuit the brakes and snap the cable. Nice. I didn’t even have to act; the Wardens and the Djinn swarmed in a golden blur, smothering the unfortunate enemy combatant. I smiled serenely at the guard, who looked tense and prone to frowns, and leaned against the polished wood of the elevator wall. “So,” I said, as the lift trembled and started up again. “Rolling Stones, eh? Crazy?”
“Hard to believe, I know”—he shrugged—“but I gotta say, lady, in the crazy sweepstakes, you and your wedding are coming up fast.”
“I wouldn’t bet against us.”
The doors dinged at the penthouse level, and I strolled majestically out into the foyer. More bodyguards, equally grim and serious looking. I wasn’t asked for ID; apparently, the dress was a big tip-off.
I went into the suite, walked straight to the bar, and poured myself a stiff, two-fingered shot of tequila. No lime, no salt, none of the party trappings. This was about serious alcohol, delivered in its purest form at maximum impact. It was like getting slapped with an agave cactus; I gasped and bent over the bar, tingling all over.
“Wow,” Cherise said, watching me. “It’s like Brides Gone Wild. Impressive.”
I held out my arms, she ran into them, and we hugged. “Glad you’re okay,” she whispered. “I was so scared. . . .”
“I wasn’t,” Kevin said. He was stretched out on my nice beige jacquard sofa, ruining a perfectly good tuxedo and getting his nicely polished shoes all over the fabric. Unlike Lewis and David, he wasn’t improved by formal wear. He looked like a hoodlum who’d mugged a groomsman. “I was betting you’d be barbecued.”
“Asshole,” Cherise said. It sounded like she meant it for a change, and Kevin’s perpetual slouch straightened a little. “Her wedding just got blown all to hell. You could at least not be a total wad about it. For once.”
He sat up completely, brushed the hair out of his eyes, and looked a little less smug. “Sorry,” he said, and almost meant it. “I mean, I knew it was going to come out the way you wanted it to. You wanted to draw the Sentinels out; you did it. Most of them got obliterated, right?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “The plan was to force them out in the open so we could identify them. That seems to be working pretty well.”
“It wasn’t just the wedding,” Kevin said. “All the shiny pieces were here, right? Ashan? The Oracles?”
Yeah, as if I’d actually planned that part. “Sure. The better to get them to step out and show themselves. ”
“So you got him. The old guy.” He meant Bad Bob. I didn’t answer. I poured another shot glass of tequila and downed it.
“You might want to leave,” I said. “Because this isn’t over.”
Both Kevin and Cherise looked taken aback, looking around at the calm, orderly luxury of the penthouse. Out at sea, the storms were dissipating; there was still tension in the tectonic plates, but it was being bled off in harmless ways by the Earth Wardens. The Ma’at were all over the whole balancing problem. It all looked . . . calm.
“Leave,” I said, even more softly. I poured two shot glasses and put the bottle aside. “Go now.”
Kevin grabbed Cherise’s hand and dragged her, still protesting, toward the door. I didn’t raise my head to watch them go. I stayed focused on the silvery glitter of the alcohol in crystal, and when I heard the door click shut, I said, “You might as well show yourself. I know you’re here.” I could feel his presence now. I couldn’t believe how it felt—how cold, how empty.
I heard the chuckle, and it was so familiar, so damned familiar it burned. I tried hard not to shudder, tried to keep my head up and my back straight. “Tequila,” Bad Bob said. “Always thought you were a scotch girl, Jo.”
“I am,” I said. “But I remember you always had a taste for the stuff.” I took a shot glass and turned, holding it out.
Sure enough, on the other side of the room, Bad Bob stood watching me. He was wearing a tuxedo, too, or half of one, anyway; the pants were formal, the shirt untucked, the tie loosened. No coat. His suspenders were in a garish rainbow that brought to mind the early oeuvre of Robin Williams.
“Like it?” He snapped the suspenders with his thumbs. “Thought I’d help you celebrate the happy day. And it’s a happy day, isn’t it? You and David, all cozy and bound up together, till death do you part.” Bad Bob grinned, all teeth and crazy blue eyes. “I’ll take that drink now.”
I levitated it across to him. He laughed and snatched it out of the air, threw it back, and blew the shot glass into powder in midair with a random burst of power.
“You know what I am, don’t you?” he asked. He continued to grin, relentless as a shark, and ambled slowly around the room, poking and touching things at random. “You know why I’m so set on getting you.”
“I know,” I said. “I’ve killed three of you so far.”
That snapped his head around fast, and the grin turned bloody in its intensity. “Don’t flatter yourself,” he said. “You used our own against us twice. That doesn’t even count. Any fool Warden could have done it. But the last—ah, the last one was special. She was mine.”
“I didn’t think the Demons had family.”
“I didn’t say she was family; I said she was mine. I created her; I cultivated her. I set her on you. And you stood there and watched her die.” His smile twitched insanely. “Poetic justice, I suppose, your Djinn pouring poison down her throat the way I did it to you in the first place. Never been much for poetry, myself.” He stretched out a hand. The bottle of tequila left the bar and arrowed across the room to smack into his palm. He swallowed one mouthful, then two, and licked his lips. “Down to us, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” I cocked my head and smiled back at him, trying to be as winter cold as he. “So what’re you going to do, Bob? The Djinn have twice the power they did an hour ago, and none of the restraints they used to have. You can’t command them. You can’t trick them. And you damn sure can’t scare them anymore. The Wardens know you now, and the ones who thought the idea of the Sentinels made sense are learning better, fast. You can’t threaten to go public. What’s left?”
“Same thing that’s always left, girly-girl.” He shrugged. “Death, horror, destruction. No matter how good you are, you can’t stop it all. I’ll push you until you break, you, the Wardens, the Djinn. Until you make a mistake and I come for you.”
“You don’t think coming here was a mistake?” I asked. “ ’Cause I have to admit, ballsy. Not real smart, but ballsy.”
“Oh, I’ll be gone well before help arrives,” he said. “Might surprise you, but I can do the Djinn thing now—blip around through the aetheric. Handy when you want to visit old, suspicious friends.”
I felt the atmosphere shift, slide toward the darker spectrums. “Okay. Nice to see you, Bob. Now, fuck off.”
“I always did love your sharp tongue,” he said. “I’m not going to fight you today. Be a shame to destroy that dress.” The bastard winked at me. “No, I’ll just go home, play with my new friends. You know them, I’ll bet: Rahel, that rascal, pretending to be all soft and human like that. Oh, and my new friend. Someone very special.”
He reached into the shadows, and he pulled out my daughter.
Imara stumbled and fell to her knees, the brick-red dress she normally wore now fluttering and writhing around her. He’d bound her up with black ropes of twisting, glittering power, and where they touched her, they burned. No, I thought numbly. Impossible. She was safe; she was taken back to the chapel; Ashan was guarding her. . . .
“Ashan never did like this one,” he said. “Figures on appointing a new Earth Oracle in short order. Nice friends you have. Maybe you ought to reconsider which side of this you’re on, girl; what do you think?”
I lunged for Imara and slammed into a barrier, one that blew me back across the room to slam full force into the glass tiles of the bar. I saw stars and darkness, and sank to an awkward sitting position on the floor, surrounded by fallen shards of mirror.