by Rachel Caine
Taken away.
I watched as their bodies were removed, and felt another pang of loss. Death happened in stages among humans, and with each step another tie severed. How many remained?
You don't have to feel it at all, something in me said. You could leave. Go back to the Wardens and tell them you want a new posting. You need never see Luis Rocha or Isabel again.
It was so tempting to walk away, to leave this behind in the human world where it belonged. To start over. I could choose to walk away. It would be easy.
It would be a Djinn thing to do.
Instead, I sat down on the front porch step and waited.
In time, the police cars left, the onlookers dispersed. The phone inside began to ring, and I heard the muted sound of Luis's voice, explaining to callers what had happened. Friends, family, perhaps the Wardens had called, as well.
Isabel cried. She wailed. It was the sound of a child realizing that her world had broken around her. I was not human. I could not give her false promises, and the thought still lingered in me, I could leave. Just walk away from all this pain, this senseless, stupid waste.
As night began to fall, the front screen door slammed, and with a creak of wood, Luis settled down next to me on the steps. He smelled of soap and shampoo, freshly laundered clothing. No trace of Manny's death still remained on him.
He did not speak for a while. We watched the sun go down in a bright blaze of colors.
"Isabel wants to see you," he said. "You coming in?"
I turned and looked at him. He did not meet my gaze.
"For the kid," Luis said. "Not for me. I don't care what the hell you do."
I stood up and walked into the house. It smelled like--home. The still-lingering aroma of Angela's last meal on the air. Clean, warm, welcoming. In the kitchen, plates and glasses still remained in the sink, waiting to be washed; I drew hot water and added soap, and scrubbed them sparkling before I went to the child's bedroom.
Luis had tucked her securely in her bed, but she was not asleep. Her thumb was still in her mouth, and her eyes were dark and very wide.
I sat down on the edge of the bed and very carefully stroked her silken dark hair. "Ibby," I said. "I am here."
She didn't speak, but she curled against me. Tears leaked silently from her eyes. I picked her up in my arms, heavy and warm and human, and rocked her until she began to cry in earnest. Chubby arms around my neck, holding tight.
I buried my face in the clean cotton of her night-gown. It was for her comfort, not my own. Djinn did not grieve. Djinn walked away.
It took hours, but she fell asleep still in my arms. I tucked her back in her bed and went out into the living room, where Luis sat in the dark.
I crouched down next to his chair, putting our eyes at a level, though he did not look at me.
"I would not ask," I said, "except that Manny is gone. I need--" My tongue didn't want to finish the request. Luis's dark eyes shifted, and the look sent shivers through me.
"You need power," he said. "Yeah?"
I nodded. I held out my thin white hand, and his own large, strong one closed over it in a crushing grip.
"Fine," he said. "Here. Take it."
Power rushed across the link, burning and angry, and I gulped down all I could before finally yanking my hand free of his. He continued to glare at me, and the stolen fire inside me gave me an insight I didn't want.
"You blame me," I said.
"Of course I blame you."
"Yet the men in the car were shooting at you, not at me." I said it calmly, without accusation, but Luis flinched as though struck. "Isn't that true?"
He didn't answer. He looked through me, to some event in his past that I couldn't read. As a Djinn, I could have known; as a human, I would not have even seen the shape of it. This frustrating middle ground made my head ache with possibilities.
"Maybe," he said at last. "The police say it was a car full of Nortenos, so maybe they were aiming for me. Why? Does that make you feel better about leaving Manny and Angela alone to die while you played the big, bad Djinn hero?"
It was my turn to flinch, inwardly at least. "Even had I been there, even had I used every ounce of power inside me and destroyed myself in the process, I could not have saved Angela. She was dead the moment the bullet entered her brain. It's not likely I could have repaired the damage to Manny's heart, either."
He knew that. He was an Earth Warden; his analysis would have shown him the same thing, but he could not, would not, accept it.
The night stretched on in silence, and finally Luis said, "Get out. I don't want you in their house."
I rose to my feet, but didn't move to the door. "Isabel--"
"She's my niece. I'll take care of her." His bloodshot eyes fixed on mine. "Go away. Get your free lunch somewhere else. You don't belong here."
No one--human or Djinn--had ever spoken to me so, in such words, in such tones. It should have been a death sentence for him, with as much power as tingled in my veins.
Instead, I walked away. I left the house, closing the door quietly behind me, and as I stood out in the dark, I realized that I had no car and no way to get to my home.
I pointed myself in the right direction, and began to walk.
I did not go home. I walked to the building, but there was nothing inside it to draw me. Instead, I walked all night, thinking. The world passed in a blur of lights, noise, distant laughter. None of it mattered. I couldn't leave the prison of my own body, and inside that cage I waited, trapped, for something.
In the morning, my cell phone began to ring. Messages from the Wardens organization. Manny had likely been right; they were assuming that I'd had a hand in the death of the Warden in El Paso.
It occurred to me that I did have something I could do. Something to channel this dark need inside of me.
Something to lash out at this world that had hurt me.
Manny's superior officer in the Wardens, Scott Sands, lived in an expensive high-rise building in downtown Albuquerque, one that commanded a view of the pine-covered mountains. Once again, I walked; the feeling of movement was important to me, and I was in no great hurry. Not now.
The apartment building had electronic security, which was a simple thing to confound. I took the steps at a run. When there were no more steps, I opened the door to the top level--a quiet, carpeted hall with solid, expensive doors.
I could have knocked, perhaps.
Instead, I blew open the door to 1514, and then I shattered the the plate glass windows that composed the entire back wall of the apartment. Cold mountain wind shrieked in, sending Scott Sands lurching to his feet in surprise. He was still in his bathrobe and slippers. I was happy to see that he lived alone--I would not have hesitated had he put his family in the line of fire, but neither would I have relished it.
But alone--ah, that was a different thing, and I could take my time about it.
He cowered before me, and then, of course, he remembered he was a Warden, and he counterattacked.
Electricity arced from every power outlet in the apartment, formed a pink-tinged bolt in the palm of his hand, and arrowed toward me.
I dodged it easily. It struck the walls of his apartment and splashed in a burning spray across his carpet, crisping it into stinking slag.
"Is that your best effort?" I asked, and began walking toward him. "I was expecting more from a hardened killer, Scott. Perhaps you should try again."
He scrambled away from me, pale legs flashing beneath his fluffy black bathrobe. The wind pushed at him, sending papers flying in a white storm around us.
He used the wind, whipping the papers into a cutting vortex between us. I had no command of the wind, but because the power I'd taken was Earth power, I had command of the paper, and I sent it hurtling inward to cover him in a choking, smothering cloud. It rammed against his mouth, nose, and eyes, triggering panic.
He lost control of the vortex.
I had my hand around his throat before he could
claw the clinging sheets from his eyes, and the Earth power coursing through my veins made me far stronger than a human of my size. It would have been easy to crush him.
I held him still instead, staring into his wide, frightened eyes. Thinking of Manny's open eyes, the last time I had seen them. Open and so empty.
"You hired the Fire Warden to burn Manny Rocha's office," I said. "And to kill Manny and Luis, if possible. Yes?"
He clawed at my hand, but he would have had more luck opening a vise with feathers. "Yes," he choked out. "Yes!"
"Were you responsible for the shooting?" He didn't answer. His pupils were huge, his face growing purple. It occurred to me that he might need breath to speak, and I loosened my grip enough to let a trickle of air into his lungs. "I'm not in a good mood, Warden Sands. Please answer swiftly."
"No," he gasped. "No!"
"Why did you destroy Manny's office, then?"
"I--can't breathe--"
"That is the point of choking you," I pointed out. "Haste, please, if you want to live."
Scott's face was distended, his eyes bulging, and there was true panic in him now. He'd kill me if he could, but I had the upper hand, and it was crushing his throat.
"Orders," he managed to scrape out. "From the Ranch."
"The Ranch," I repeated. It meant nothing to me. "Whose ranch? Where?"
"Mistake," he wheezed. "Papers. Had to kill them, in case they knew."
He wouldn't speak another word, not even when I squeezed tighter. At last, I dropped him semiconscious to the floor and crouched down next to him, staring into his eyes. The terror in him was close to madness.
"You fear your masters more than you fear me," I said. I didn't need his acknowledgment; it was clear enough. "Do you really think that's wise, Warden Sands? I think you understand how little I care about your pathetic life just now."
He blinked at me and said, "You don't know. You don't understand."
"Clearly, I don't care."
He laughed. Laughed. It was a raw, broken sound, and then he rolled over to his hands and knees, the robe loose and dragging as he crawled.
He reached the windowsill and glanced back at me, and I saw the light of madness in his eyes.
"You can't fight her," he said. "I'd like to see you try, bitch."
And then he pitched forward, out into empty space.
I moved to the window and slapped aside the blowing, lashing curtains. Beyond, the fragile blue of the New Mexico sky burned over the mountains, and the sun shone brightly.
There was no sign of Warden Scott Sands on the pavement below. It was as if he had . . . flown away.
Wardens had unique powers, it was true, but even had he been capable of such a feat, he would have still been visible against the clear morning sky.
He was simply . . . gone. As if--and this struck me deep, and badly--as if he had walked away, into the aetheric. Wardens could not. Djinn could . . . but Sands was no Djinn. And there were only a few of my kind capable of carrying humans unharmed through the aetheric. Fewer still who would be at the beck and call of humans.
I stayed where I was for a long moment, staring out at the impossible, and then I walked slowly across the broken glass to the shattered door. I heard the sirens below on the street, likely responding to my explosive entry into this apartment.
Once again, I felt the net drawing tight around me, and I didn't know how to stop it. This was human business, Warden business, and a Djinn had no place in it.
My phone rang. This time, as I took the stairs down to street level, I answered it.
"Hey," a male voice said. "It's Lewis Orwell. And you're in one hell of a lot of trouble."
"I know," I said.
"You kill anybody, Cassiel?"
"No." Not technically. "Possibly the four in the car who shot Manny. Do they count?"
He sighed. "That's a question we don't have time to get into. You kill any Wardens?"
"No."
"Because I've been told you did." He paused for a second. "Manny's dead. Did you have anything to do with it?"
"No," I said. "I was there. I saw it."
Someone was coming up the stairs. I froze on the landing where I was, pressed my shoulders to the concrete, and willed myself invisible. This was an Earth Warden trick, using only a fraction of my power, and it worked beautifully; the police officers jogged past me, heading up. I waited until they had turned two flights before continuing on my way.
"I need your help," I said.
"Can't. We've got big-time problems of our own right now. All the Wardens I can grab are coming with me, out of the country. Most of the Djinn are coming, too. The best I can do for you is to tell you where to find some resources."
"Resources?"
"Money. Identification." I heard the sound of the ocean, strong and rhythmic, through the speaker of the phone. "I need to go. You won't be able to reach me again until I get back, so be careful. Are you ready for the information?"
"Yes," I said. "Ready."
Unexpectedly, what he gave me was not addresses, but coordinates--numbers. I memorized them and repeated them back, and then, just as quickly, Lewis was gone, the phone call ended.
When I tried to call back, the number didn't respond.
The Wardens were facing dangers that had nothing to do with me. Even the Djinn were involved. I had the strong feeling that my survival now rested solely with me, and if I wished to find any kind of justice for Manny Rocha, any kind of justice for his wife and his daughter, then I would need to save myself first.
Alone.
I descended the remaining flights of stairs and slipped out a service entrance. My appearance was no longer simply exotic, but dangerously obvious. I would need things.
Luckily, the human world was full of them.
I dyed my hair in the restroom of a gas station. The harsh chemical smell clung to me even after I had wiped away the excess and dried my hair as best I could using the bathroom's blower mechanism. It no longer looked like a white puffball, at least. Instead, it looked like a pink puffball, lighter at the ends. I resembled, I realized, one of the unhealthy-looking pink snacking cakes in the convenience store's shop.
With the last of my cash, I bought changes of clothes and makeup. I deliberately chose unusual styles, in garishly colored layers, and made up my face in dramatic neon strokes. I looked young and outrageous, and I noticed that following this transformation most humans avoided eye contact with me.
I was no longer immediately recognizable as the pale albino woman in white who had been spotted at the scene of so many deaths, and that was all I wanted.
Lewis's coordinates led me to the heart of Albuquerque, in Old Town, to a shaded spot next to the blocky tan-and-brown structure of the National Atomic Museum. It was just a bare patch of earth, and a large flat rock. Humans had scrawled obscure messages on its surface, but time was bleaching them into history, and I wondered for a moment how he expected me to find anything in so empty a place.
One of the obscure messages caught my eye, because it was the glyph of the Wardens--an odd place for it to be lurking, most surely. I traced it with a fingertip, and then lifted the rock.
Beneath it was damp earth, but it formed a slight hollow--as if something had been buried beneath. I dug with my fingers and brushed cool metal--a cylinder, a type of container with a screw-on lid. It was welded shut, in a way that any competent Earth Warden would have been able to unseal but that would resist simple human tampering; I burned my fingertips opening it, but the reward was a folded piece of note-paper and three plastic bags.
The note, although unsigned, was clearly from Lewis Orwell, and it said,
If you're holding this, you're an Earth Warden in trouble, and I decided you were worth helping. The bags contain cash, two new credit cards with high limits, and a set of clean ID documents for you to alter. One thing: If you use any of this without my authorization, I'll kill you. Call first. You know the number.
I presumed that since Lewis h
ad sent me here, there was little need for another phone call. I opened each bag in turn. Cash--several thousand dollars in old bills. Two credit cards, as he'd promised, in the neutral-gender name of Leslie Raine. The identification--a Texas driver's license, birth certificate, and passport--were in the same name. The photograph was of an extremely generic human, androgynous. I concentrated on each of them in turn, adjusting the pigments within the photographs until the image more closely resembled me, including my newly pink hair.
I wrote my name and the date on the back of the note and put it back in the cylinder, sealed it, and buried it beneath the rock again.
Leslie Raine.
It seemed as much my name as any other.
I left Albuquerque on a newly purchased motorcycle. The motor vehicle permit that had come with my new identity, I was told, would not allow me to operate the machine legally until I took the tests necessary, but despite my new disguise I didn't feel comfortable placing myself on police property to achieve that goal. I simply asked to see an example of a motorcycle license, which would allow me to make the necessary alterations to the license I had.
I solemnly lied to the vendor that I would go straight to the appropriate authority to obtain the proper documents. He was less inclined to question me once the credit card purchase went through, and I added a black helmet, white leather jacket, gloves, and chaps. I donned those in the changing room, picked up the helmet, mounted the motorcycle, and taught myself the mechanics of it in a few moments.
"You sure you can handle that?" the salesman asked me as I went over the controls. "That's a lot of motorcycle, lady."
Indeed, it was. The motorcycle was a sleekly designed Victory Vision in gray and steel, and it had cost the Wardens quite a bit of money. Still, I felt it was better than buying a car; I was doubtful that I'd want to be trapped in a steel box for hours on end, but this seemed freeing. Powerful.
I started the engine and savored the shivering purr of power. I pressed the throttle and listened to the finely tuned roar, and for the first time in my human life, it felt entirely natural to smile.
"It's perfect," I said. I put on the helmet, raised the kickstand, and put the machine into gear.
The salesman waved good-bye to me in my rearview mirror. I concentrated on operating the motorcycle. It was a complex dance of balance, intuition, and control, and I felt a rush of excitement I had not felt since falling into flesh. This--this was freedom. I was alone, I had escaped my enemies, and for the moment, at least, I could simply exist.