Unbroken

Chapter 1

ON THE MORNING of the end of the world, I woke up curled beneath the cover of fallen leaves. It was extraordinarily quiet that morning, a hush like nothing I’d ever heard before… the calm that falls before the storm, but this storm, when it came, would never pass.

Not for us.

For most of a million years, the planet beneath me, the pulsing, living Earth herself, had been silent—not dead, but dormant, like a long-sleeping volcano. The past few years had seen warning signs… explosions of violence, as if she had been restless in her dreams. But just yesterday, something wondrous and terrible happened: She awoke in pain.

The quiet around me now was not peace. It was the indrawn breath before the scream.

I lay still for a few moments, savoring the silence. A bird’s wings flapped somewhere in the distance, and condensation tapped on leaves as it slipped from tree branches overhead. The sun was rising, tinting the low-lying mist a soft orange.

I was cold, wet, and afraid, but I felt a precious moment of peace. I could almost believe it was the beginning of the world, the beginning of hope, the beginning of everything.…

Except that I knew, as we all did, that it was the end.

Next to me, buried in the leaves and sharing my warmth, Luis Rocha stirred, groaned, and opened his eyes. His heavy sigh said everything about how he felt about the dawning of the day, and no wonder—of the two of us, Luis had taken the most abuse in the battle of the night before. “Chica,” he said, “if you tell me there’s no coffee, I’m going to die. I mean that. It’s not a metaphor or anything.”

I turned my head in his direction and smiled. It was not a nice smile. “There’s no coffee,” I said. “Nor is there likely to be any for some time.”

“You are one cold bitch. It’s a good thing I love you.” He sounded miserable, but at least he was talking. Breathing. Living.

I brushed the mess of leaf litter away from my leather jacket and jeans, and stood up to stretch my arms high, toward heaven. My muscles were cold and tight and bruised, and I winced with the hot red twinges that the movements woke. My hair was damp and tangled. I looked, I thought, like some strange madwoman, like an ancient Greek maenad who’d spent the night running the hills with the beasts… only perhaps a great deal more frightening. I’d seen it in the stares of others, how odd I could seem—tall, pale, sharply angled, with the unnaturally green eyes of a Djinn.

Luis tried to sit up, failed, and flopped back onto the leaves. He closed his eyes, and his dark caramel skin seemed to pale almost to gold. “Okay, that was a freaking bad idea. A little help, Cassiel?”

I silently extended a hand, and when he took it, hauled him up to his feet and held him there while he swayed. He was still favoring his leg—injured, inexpertly patched—and I was concerned about the continued pallor of his skin. His breathing came in short, pained gasps, then slowly evened out.

I was worried about him, but I didn’t dare say it. Luis wouldn’t thank me for it, and there was little help I could offer now. I could draw power out of the earth around us and speed the healing process, but drawing attention to myself today with the use of my gifts was dangerous. Wardens were going to die today, many of them. Too many, most likely.

I did not want us to be among those unfortunates.

“How’s your leg?” I asked, knowing he’d lie. As he did.

“Fine,” Luis said, and put his weight on it. I felt the wave of pain that cascaded through him in a hot red ripple, but apart from the tightening of his lips, he didn’t show any sign of it on the outside. I was never sure whether he knew how much I felt through our link; my Earth power was channeled by and rooted through his, and it gave me access to emotions and physical sensations I knew he’d sometimes rather keep private. “Where’s Ibby?”

Stupid of me not to have immediately thought of her, and I cursed my own lack of maternal instinct, of human connection. Ibby was a child, and she ought to have been foremost in my mind from the moment of waking. That she wasn’t would be unforgivable to Luis.

I turned toward the spot where I’d left her safely tucked in a few feet away. “Isabel?” My breath steamed in the chill, quiet air. “Ibby?” I’d left her next to us last night, carefully concealed from the elements and wrapped in a thin silvery blanket to hold in her body heat. She had been safe, as safe as we could make her.

But now she wasn’t answering.

Luis scrambled to the piled leaves and brushed them aside. He looked up at me. “Not here,” he said. The tension and suppressed panic in his voice was unmistakable, even without any connection between us. “She’s not here!”

I had hesitated to use power before, but I reached for it now, horrified by the thought that she might have slipped away in the night… or been taken. She’d been taken from us before, violently, and the thought it might have happened again while I slept only a few feet away…

I heard a rustle in the tree above us, and looked up to see Isabel a dizzying height up. She lay belly-down on a thick limb, and she looked delighted with the trauma she was causing—that smile was pure mischief, and her dark eyes were alight with amusement.

She was six years old, and climbing trees to make her loved ones suffer was likely perfectly normal. I wondered if my anger was equally natural. “Ibby!” I snapped. “Get down. Now!”

Luis was also staring up at her, and if I was angry, he was furious. He let loose a storm of Spanish, concluding with an emphatic gesture that clearly indicated she should waste no time making her way to the ground.

“Oh, chill out; she’s fine,” said another voice, and I heard a slight rustle in the branches—the only warning before a massive snake’s coils slithered into sight about twenty feet above me. The coils twisted, and the human half of Esmeralda’s body—the upper half—came into view. She was a pretty young woman, with a bitter cast to her smile, which was also more than a little cruel. “I brought her up here for safety. Don’t worry, she stayed warmer than you did. I’m only half cold-blooded.”

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.

It was addictive, that power. And dangerous.

Especially now.

Luis tried to cut the connection as his eyes widened in surprise. “No, you can’t.…” He knew how dangerous it was to use power now, and he also knew I had not done it lightly. “Cassiel, stop—”

I poured the power out again, through my fingertips, bathing his wound in a flood of healing energy.

It hurt. And it was glorious.

Luis collapsed against the tree trunk behind him and slid down, eyes closing as a moan escaped his suddenly pallid lips. I helped cushion some of the shock, but I couldn’t stop the pain; the infection had crept deep into him overnight, unusually fast and deadly, and it took concentration to seek it and burn it out of him. That didn’t stop the sensations that continued to squeeze him in their grip, though—complex waves of heat, cold, orgasm, agony. The tissues of his damaged artery knitted together in strong, rubbery layers over the thin patch that had held him through the night, and then the muscles and outer layers of skin bonded over it.

I didn’t stop until he was healed.

As the last cells absorbed the healing energy, I let the connection whisper closed between us; I’d consumed much of Luis’s reserves, and my own as well, but it had to be done. I couldn’t bear to think of him suffering any longer.

Odd, how that had taken over from concern for myself—the only concern I’d had for so many millennia.

Now, in the wake of that urgency, I found myself swaying on my knees, falling, and caught in Luis’s strong hands. It felt good. Safe. The pleasure I’d felt in channeling all that effusion of power was gone now, and in its place was an aching emptiness, a weariness that descended like nightfall and make me feel weak, lost, alone.

Luis gathered me against his chest, and I let my head fall against his chest. “Shhh,” he whispered to me, and smoothed my leaf-littered hair. “Thank you, Cass. But you shouldn’t have done that. You know you shouldn’t have.”

“No choice,” I whispered back. I felt as bloodless and ill as he’d been before. “Infection. It would have killed you.”

“I know.” The calm with which he said it surprised me, and he smiled a little. “Death ain’t no new thing for me, chica. It’s kind of what we were born for, humans. Never expected to live long, as a Warden. Not expecting to survive these next few days, for damn sure. None of us should.”

The words were sober, the tone kind. I felt a chill, listening to him; he had a calm conviction that was difficult to comprehend. We were not so given to the inevitable, we Djinn. We liked to be the inevitable, not its victims. Humans had a kind of courage I’d never truly understood: the courage to face their own doom.

I didn’t know if Djinn had that same bravery; we’d never been called on to use it, if so. Suffering, we understood, but obliteration was something else again. We could neither fully comprehend it, nor accept it.

“We’ve had some differences lately,” Luis continued. “Said things, done things… but, Cassiel, I want you to know that it doesn’t matter now. None of that. All that matters is that I love you. Understand?”

He meant it. I could feel the warm, steady pressure of his stare, and the surge of emotion inside him. He did love me, with all the fragile power of his human soul.

I smiled slowly and said, “I understand.” I did not tell him I loved him, but I did not need to do so; he could feel it, flowing between us like the golden-hot energy of the Earth. The Djinn love intensely, and rarely, and I was still shy of admitting what I felt aloud… but he knew.

He leaned forward and kissed me, a warm, damp brush of his lips that turned serious and deep as I leaned forward into it. It was not the time, or the place, for such things, but I felt frantic with the need to tell him, without words, how valuable his life was to me.

“Easy,” Luis whispered, and put his warm hands on either side of my head. “Peace, Cass. This isn’t the time for any good-byes.”

I took in a deep breath and nodded. Here, in the calm before the storm that was to come, was the only time to say our good-byes, but I understood that once we did, once we let go of each other on some fundamental level, it would rob us of energy we might need to survive. As long as we fought for each other, for Isabel, we had a chance.

“Then we should be moving,” I said, and got to my feet. I offered him a hand, but he rose easily, testing his leg and nodding approval. “No pain?”

“Eh, a little. Not enough to matter. Good job. So… where are we going, exactly?”

It was a dangerous tactic, but I decided to forego Oversight and rise up directly into the aetheric; it took a frightening lot of effort to do so. I’d spent most of my reserves of power in healing Luis, and detaching myself from physical form and drifting into the next realm seemed a huge accomplishment. I drifted there, recovering, and then propelled myself up, higher, deeper into the aetheric plane.

The forest in which we were physically located was unchanged… a deep well of living green, shot through with vertical splashes of brown and gold, an impressionist’s view of trees and grass. Living things glittered and shimmered as they moved through the protection of the branches. I saw Luis’s aetheric form there below, glowing in blues and whites. Next to him was my own physical form, but gone gray without my inhabiting spirit. Isabel was an opal-brilliant swirl of colors a few feet away, and there, streaking smoothly through the trees, was a poisonously green figure that could only be Esmeralda.

We were alone here.

I turned my gaze outward, over a confusing jumble of colors and shapes, ever changing, driven by human events as much as nature. Change is the fundamental principle of all living things, but humanity makes it an obsession, a religion. Today, however… Today it was dwarfed by the explosion of bloodred, bruise black energy cascading up from all sides. Mother Earth’s rage and pain glittered in the heavens like cutting-hard rain. It turned in angles in the air, held high and ready to fall.

I felt cold and small, seeing that. When that storm fell, the world would end for mankind, in blood and slaughter.

I saw the roil of colors on the horizon that marked a Warden battling back the powers of the Mother—a useless victory in an entirely foregone war, but the Wardens, like all humans, simply never gave up. They couldn’t. Djinn could, and did, withdraw to other realms. Humans had only this one. They were committed, until death.

And some were dying, right now, as I watched. I could see the vicious snaps of Djinn responses to the Wardens’ attempts to control the fire that was blazing its way relentless toward a helpless population center. With the fuel of Mother Earth’s anger behind it, the flames couldn’t be contained by normal human firefighting methods; it would burn things that ought not to burn, and spread like oil on water.

The Wardens were few, and brave. And they were dying.

As I watched, more Fire Wardens joined in, though their powers were limited by distance. It would not be enough, and surely they all knew it. Any effective defense would be smashed by the shock troops of the Djinn, now fighting not for themselves and their own agenda, but in defense of, and at the command of, Mother Earth.

I had felt it before, that ecstatic possession, the loss of self and identity. It was, for the Djinn, euphoric and beautiful—for most of them, at any rate. Those with a fondness for the human race, of specific individuals… those would be trapped in a miserable horror, forced to feel pleasure at their own actions against humanity, yet still retaining some core of self deep inside that fought. I thought of David, reluctant leader of the Djinn descended from humans, and shuddered. His ties to the human world were deep and constant. He loved a Warden, a woman whom he would inevitably face in a battle to the death now.

All stories eventually end in tragedy, but that was more tragic than most.

Luis’s touch on my shoulder drew me back down, and I fell into my body with a snap of sudden sensation as nerves and muscles woke and complained of my absence. “How bad?” he asked quietly.

“A wildfire in the forest. The city’s already lost, though they’ll fight to the last.” My voice was soft, and a little sad. Some part of me, some Djinn part, craved that experience, the wild and furious power, the lack of responsibility for my own actions. Glorious destruction.

“What city?” Luis was already digging out his map from the pack he’d somehow managed to carry strapped on his shoulders during our mad run through the forest last night. The map was waterproofed in plastic, which was a lucky thing, as rain was starting to fall now from the gently gray sky in a soft, steady mist. Luis spread it out on a log and looked at me questioningly.

My knowledge of human geography was sketchy, at best, and I studied the flat lines and names uncertainly.

Isabel appeared at my shoulder and pointed decisively. “Portland,” she said. When we both glanced her way, she shrugged. “Fire Warden,” she said. “I can feel it.” She frowned a little, at the dot on the page, and her fingertip touching it. “I’ve been sending them power, but I don’t think it’ll be enough. Do you?”

I silently shook my head.

“Any Earth Wardens working it? Weather?” Luis asked.

“Five Earth Wardens,” I said. “And Lewis Orwell is working from a distance. I could see his aura from here.” Lewis was the most powerful Warden alive today, but even he couldn’t stop what was coming. Not by brute force. “He’s managing the evacuation, such as may be possible. But there will be loss of life.”

It was a still, quiet morning, and it was the beginning of the end of the human world.

The three of us stood in silence for a moment, considering that, and then Luis cleared his throat and said, “We need a plan, and I got nothing.”

“I do,” Ibby said. “You won’t like it, but—”

“Hush,” I said, but I didn’t even know why, in that moment, except that a feeling had crawled over my skin, an instinct as primitive as fear of the dark. Predator, something whispered to me. Danger.

The forest had gone quiet. Luis started to speak, but I held out my hand to silence him and listened, head down.

When the attack came, it came with the suddenness and ferocity of a bolt of lightning. There was no gradual gathering of power, no sense of a warning—only a sudden, shocking, overwhelming blast of fury, power, and hatred.

I had no time to prepare, but something in me, some vestige of Djinn, had gathered up such power as I still had, and flung it outward in defense. It wasn’t much, and it didn’t stop the Djinn that rushed at me, but it did slow her, just enough to allow me to grab Luis and Ibby and drag them down, straight down, into the living earth. I didn’t have enough power left to sustain us, and unlike a Weather Warden, I couldn’t draw air to us once we were buried in the smothering, softened ground.

But I didn’t need to. Isabel and Luis, after a shocked second of adjustment, both added power to our flight through the ground, and the three of us swam around rocks, through the gnarled traps of tree roots, diving down and then up through the black gritty soil. I hardened the ground behind us as we rolled up into the open air, gasping and coughing, and sealed it behind us.

It wouldn’t save us for long. The Djinn had senses we couldn’t imagine, and powers we couldn’t match. We needed help, powerful help.

“Ground yourselves!” I shouted, and grabbed both Luis’s hand and Isabel’s, as the two of them drew power out of the thick taproot of the world’s energy. It should have come as a thick flow, like honey, but instead it was a geyser of power, blasting into Luis, into Isabel, channeling through me into a blinding, crippling burst. A shield burst out around us, a thick pearlescent shell that crackled and sizzled.…

And on the other side, I saw a form striding out of the mist, heading for us with relentless, steady speed. It was indistinct for a moment, and then took on shape and color. He was tall, lean, and with skin an unsettling indigo color, and silver eyes.

The Djinn Rashid had not developed an appreciation for human clothing since last I’d seen him, but his nakedness did not seem to me to make him vulnerable, or weak; instead, it made him seem eerily invincible.

As he was.

“Rashid!” I called, but even as I did, I knew it was useless. That was the shell of the Djinn I had known, but not the essence of him; his uniqueness had been displaced, overridden by the madness and need of our mutual mother.

He held out both hands toward us as he continued that steady advance, and an intense white-hot fire poured out of his hands toward us. It met the shell we’d thrown up, and the thin protection hissed, sizzled, went opaque beneath the incredible power of the onslaught. Around us, trees were burning, bursting as their sap boiled within. We’d be dead in seconds once the shield failed.

Inside the bubble, things were not good either… of the three of us, none had Weather talents, and the temperature and quality of the air trapped within rapidly degraded into a molten, sour mess. It would be a close race to see which would destroy us first: fire, seared lungs, or simple asphyxiation. But fighting Rashid, or any Djinn, was a desperate gamble now; he had infinite resources and few vulnerabilities. Attacking him was our only real option, but we’d be cruelly exposed for a few seconds, and it wouldn’t take him that long to finish us.

I didn’t count Rashid as a friend, exactly, but he’d been an ally, a strong (if sometimes treacherous) one. If I could reach that part of him, perhaps, just perhaps, there was a chance we might survive this.

I had to try. Dying inside our own shield had no glory at all.

I didn’t tell Luis or Isabel what I was doing; there was no time for the inevitable debate. I took in a hot, searing breath, sent out a silent prayer to whatever power watched over wayward, fallen Djinn, and yanked my hands free of theirs to break the circuit.

The bubble around us shattered, and I put my hands flat on the backs of my lover and his niece and shoved them facedown into the leaf litter of the forest, then sprang up out of my crouch and straight for Rashid. I had no facility with fire, but one of the two Wardens I’d left behind me managed to counter his attack for a split second, just enough to put me close enough to grab him.

It was a suicidal tactic, but all I had left. I wouldn’t allow him to kill those I loved in front of me, not as long as I had breath in me.

The silent, peaceful forest was now a vision of hell. I could feel the fury and pain of the Earth vibrating through the ground, pouring out of the burning, mutilated trees. The fire cast a ruddy glow over the mist, turning it bloody even as the heat burned it away, and in the unnatural flames Rashid’s skin looked blue-black, his eyes as hot as molten metal.

I held his hands apart and out from his body, and fire poured from his fingertips to ignite the fallen leaves piled around us.

“Rashid!” I shouted, and pulled myself closer to him, body-close, feeling the feverish intensity of the Mother through his skin. “Rashid, stop! You must stop!” I was using physical contact, trying to waken his individuality, his memories, his conscience. I saw a flicker in those unnatural eyes, just a bare second, and I knew he was still there. Trapped, fighting, but there.

He couldn’t win the battle any more than I could, though. We were still allies, but helpless to reach each other.

I was going to die. So would Luis and Isabel.

No. Not that. Not now, now, after all the fight and pain and blood. I would not allow that.

I pulled power from the Earth beneath me—not the sentient power of the Mother herself, but the silent, pulsing well of her blood, her energy, her life. I could reach it only through my connection to Luis, but he’d locked it fully open now, and although it was direly dangerous I consumed as much as I could pull, fast and painfully dragging it through Luis’s fragile human form as he lay on the smoldering leaves.

I used myself as a lens and blasted it on through Rashid’s body, sweeping away the influence of the Mother, just for a single fierce moment.

The fire stuttered and stopped its rush from his hands, leaving only floating cinders, and Rashid’s eyes cleared, blinked, and focused directly on mine.

“I can’t,” he whispered. He sounded shaken, more vulnerable than I’d ever heard a Djinn to be. “I’m sorry, Cassiel. I can’t do it. I’m going to kill you. All of you. And I don’t want that.”

I sensed a presence behind him, twisted and dark, slithering up in the confusion of burning vegetation. He didn’t; he was focused on me, on the distraction I had inadvertently provided.

I held his gaze. “I’m sorry, too,” I said, very sadly, and then looked over his shoulder. “Do it now.”

Esmeralda rose up behind him, a terrifying specter of twisted nature. Her eyes were slits of gold and black, and her fangs had appeared, cruelly sharp and curved, jeweled with venom.

She struck so rapidly I never saw her move; suddenly her fangs were buried in the hollow of Rashid’s neck, her reptilian eyes burning into mine from the distance of mere inches, and I saw her jaws work, forcing in the venom.

Rashid screamed and tried to turn, but I held him still. Those silver eyes rolled up, turned pure white, and I felt him grow limp in my grip, dragging me down with him. He collapsed into the burning leaves, and I rolled free.

Isabel climbed to her feet, extended her hands, and began extinguishing the flames. Fire is a living thing itself, growing and consuming, and like any creature it will fight for its existence; Isabel needed help, but I lingered where I was, looking down at Rashid. He lay silent and limp, eyes open and white.

There was a rustle in the leaves, and Esmeralda rose up next to me, swaying on her snakelike body. She wiped silvery blood from her pretty mouth, staring down at her victim with an avid hunter’s gleam in her now-human eyes. “He tastes like the Mother,” she said, and licked her lips. “Like life and death and power. I could get used to that.”

“No,” I said softly. “You couldn’t. Is he dead?” He looked dead, and although I had reconciled myself to the idea that many, many worthy souls would perish today, it hurt like raw open wounds, seeing him so still and… broken.

Esmeralda shrugged, as if she couldn’t care less. “Don’t know,” she said. “My venom has killed Djinn before, but he’s pretty strong. Probably not. He’ll just be out of the fight for a while.” She slithered off to check Isabel and Luis.

I crouched down and put my hand on Rashid’s forehead. Djinn didn’t have pulses, not unless they were manifesting a completely human form; Rashid didn’t bother with such minute details. But I could feel a tiny, whispering thread of power still inside him, like an echo. He was there—injured, frail, on the verge of falling into darkness, but there.

I bent closer, put my lips close to his pointed indigo blue ear, and whispered, “Don’t come after us again, Rashid. I don’t wish to kill you, but I will. You know I’m capable of doing that, even to you.”

“Cass?” Luis’s voice, from behind me. I sat back on my heels and looked over my shoulder at him. The flickering firelight was almost extinguished now, but the trees were still popping and smoldering, dropping cinders, not flaming leaves. Heavy gray smoke had replaced the earlier mist, and it rolled sullenly around our feet and hazed the air. “Cass, we’ve got to get the hell out of here. If there’s one Djinn, she’ll send others.”

“Maybe not,” Isabel said in a distracted tone as she focused on controlling the last still-burning tree that ringed us. “The battle with the Wardens outside of Portland is really fierce. I don’t know if she’ll care enough about us.”

“Better we don’t find that out, Iz. Let’s get these out and move.” Now, Luis linked hands with her, and together they snuffed out the flames.

Isabel looked at him oddly. “Iz?” she said. “You’ve never called me that before.”

He stomped out a few remaining embers that were trying to take root in the half-burnt leaves. “I called you Ibby,” he said. “But Ibby’s gone. You’re different. So now you’re Iz.”

She’d aged her body overnight, and matured in many ways over the past few months, but that was still the hurt of a child on her face, swiftly hidden. “Iz,” she repeated, and forced a smile. “Okay, Tío. Iz it is.”

“Iz it is,” Esmeralda repeated, and laughed. She held out her hand, and Isabel slapped it. “Awesome. I like it better. Ibby was a baby’s name. Now you’re fierce.”

She was. There was something sharp and angry in Isabel now, something forged out of hardship and pain. I didn’t like it, but I was practical enough to know that we needed it now. All of us needed to be sharp, angry, and strong.

This world was no longer any place for a child.

I cast a last look at Rashid, lying almost-dead in the leaves, and nodded to Luis. “Let’s go.”