Unbroken

Chapter 3

THE DEAD DID NOT need their vehicles, at least. Isabel took an unsettling amount of satisfaction in burning the roadhouse, and as the flames billowed high into the air, waving flags of black, acrid smoke, I checked out the Victory I’d coveted before. Over the past few weeks Luis had developed his latent power as a Fire Warden; as we were partners, linked at the aetheric level, it was simple enough to tap into his power, and a stroke of my fingers on the ignition fired it to rumbling life under me. The familiar throbbing purr of the engine made something tense in me relax, made me remember that mankind had survived on this powerful and dangerous earth for a long time… and not only survived, but thrived. They had taken steps no other species had done—they had refined nature, rivaled it, harnessed it, and conquered it in small ways. The motorcycle I had mounted was an incredibly strong yet precise piece of engineering—as much of a miracle as the workings of a cell, or the vast and ceaseless wandering of the wind.

Humans simply couldn’t see it.

“You don’t need that,” Luis said. He was leaning against the truck, watching me with his head cocked to the side. “You can ride with us.”

I shook my head and revved the engine, just a little. “I prefer to be more… mobile. You can use a scout driving ahead, spotting for trouble.” That, and I wanted my freedom. Being walled up in the cabin of a truck, especially if I was not driving—it was not how I cared to spend what would likely be my last day alive.

Luis smiled. “You never look as happy as when you’re on one of those,” he said, and then gave it another second’s thought. “Okay, I can think of one other time you’re happy, but the position is kind of similar.”

That woke memories that merged pleasantly with the steady, low vibration of the motor between my legs, and I raised my eyebrows and challenged him with a stare. He gave me a small nod and climbed up into the cab. Isabel was sitting beside him now, with Esmeralda still coiled up in the cargo area.

I eased the Victory out behind the truck, then thought better of it and leaned into a wide arc as I accelerated, whipping smoothly past and out in front before the first broad, sloping turn of the road came about. The day was still bright, the wind cool and fresh, the air scented pleasantly with winter pine… but I could smell the smoke of the pyre left burning behind us, and I knew that the death we’d just witnessed was happening now, on a devastating scale, in places far distant from this.

The end of the world would not happen all at once, and that made it all the more appalling.

The weather turned on us within an hour; the clear, cold skies were covered fast by a rising curtain of bruise black, punched with brilliant stabs of lightning. I did not like the look of that, and even without a true Weather Warden sense to guide me, I could tell that it was full of anger, violence, and power. The first drops began falling in an ice-cold rush. I was without much to protect me, and was almost instantly chilled, first to shivering muscles and then to aching bones. My flyaway pale hair was plastered flat to my face, and I could not feel the fingers of my real, flesh hand where they gripped the throttles. Curiously, I could feel my other hand, the false one I’d fashioned with the last of my Djinn power to replace one corrupted by my sister’s black powers. If thy hand offend thee, cut it off. Most humans treated that as a metaphoric saying from the Bible. I had taken it quite literally, and it should have crippled me.

Sometimes the odd metallic gleam of that arm and hand startled me, but just now, I was grateful for it; in a hostile world of cold, it felt… warm. Soothing, somehow, powered by a tiny spark of what I’d once been.

But the rest of me was suffering badly, and over the next hour I was so concentrated on staying on the bike that my vision had tunneled to an intense focus on the blurred road ahead. I failed to hear the horn honking behind me over the roar of the engine and the rain until Luis flashed his lights, illuminating the black, shadowed rain in glowing strobes. I forced my clenched fingers to respond, and slowed the bike as I pulled it over to the side. The truck eased in behind me, and Luis got out and ran to my side. He’d found a jacket in the truck, a thin blue windbreaker, which he tossed over my shoulders. “Let’s get your bike in the truck!” he yelled. “You can’t stay out in this!”

I felt immense, stupid relief at this; it hadn’t occurred to me, in my focus, to give up and seek shelter. I almost fell in getting off the bike, and Luis had to catch and stabilize me. “You’re ice cold,” he said. “Go on, get in the cab. I’ll get the bike loaded.”

I stumbled to the truck and opened the door as he jogged by with the rolling Victory to the back of the truck. I supposed that there was a ramp of some sort, but the mechanics of it fled my mind as soon as I crawled into the warm, dry cab and slammed the door. I was shuddering with cold, and the blast of warm air from the vents felt like a lost, tropical paradise. Only gradually did I become aware that Isabel was sitting next to me, her hand tucked in my metallic one.

“Do you want me to help?” she asked. “I can.”

“No,” I said through chattering teeth. “You’ve used enough power today. Rest. It isn’t necessary.”

She immediately pulled her hand free and crossed her arms. I recognized the line that formed between her brows, and the harder jut of her chin. She’d inherited that from her father, Manny, and for just a flash, I felt the loss of him all over again. He’d been my first partner, my first human friend. My ally. And I’d let him down. “Fine,” Isabel said coldly. “Then freeze. I don’t care.”

She did, I knew that; it was a child’s anger, a child’s acting out, but it still stung deep. As she meant it to do. I said nothing, just closed my eyes and drank in the warm, hot-metal scented breeze that was slowly beginning to ease the chill. Isabel, not getting the reaction she’d wished, busied herself with twisting the radio dial. Bursts of static flared in time with lightning as it laddered overhead, but she finally landed on a relatively clear signal.

It was not good news.

The radio announcer was shaken; that was clear even through the grainy, static-hissed connection. “—Desperate situation right now as the area has been hit with both extremely violent, wind-whipped fires and a damaging earthquake that seismologists report measured at least an eight point five. Surrounding states are sending assistance, as is the federal government, but there is news pouring in of flooding and extreme tornado activity in other areas, and frankly, there’s a limit to what rescue and volunteer efforts can accomplish at this point. The focus has turned to evacuations and saving those in the path of the destruction. In other news, in Boston, a spokesman for the CDC has confirmed the outbreak of a dangerous new virus, and the city government has called for an immediate, city-wide quarantine. While there has been speculation that this illness, which has claimed an unknown number of victims over the past twenty-four hours, was some type of bioterrorism, the spokesman stressed that they are conducting a thorough and speedy investigation to determine the point of origin of the virus.”

Isabel said nothing. She just turned the radio off as Luis opened the door and threw himself into the driver’s seat. He was soaked as well, despite his jacket and the oily trucker’s hat he’d thrown on, but he still flashed me a concerned look. “You okay?” he asked.

“She’s fine,” Isabel answered before I could speak. “There are lots of fires and earthquakes. What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Rest. You’re going to need your strength, Iz.”

“I’m not tired!”

“Yes, you are; you just don’t know it. You can’t burn through power like that and not have consequences—not even you. Just relax and let yourself heal inside.”

“But—”

“Iz. I said no.”

She slumped down in the seat, glaring at nothing, and Luis exchanged a look with me over her head as he started the truck again. He didn’t need to speak; I could understand his thoughts well enough.

It was going to be difficult with her from here on out.

Luis sighed and said, “We’re going to need beer.”

Esmeralda had been quiet—dangerously so—in the back of the truck, but as we drew nearer to Seattle, I heard her rustling and banging in the back. Finally, there was a sharp, annoyed rapping against the wall behind our seats, and Luis pulled the truck in at a closed, but covered, gas station. “Need a fill-up anyway,” he said. “Thank God for credit cards at pumps. You check on Reptile Girl back there, Iz.”

She had been steaming and glowering the entire drive, and now she gave him a frosty stare. “Say please,” she said.

“I thought you wanted to be treated like an adult, not a little kid,” he shot back. “Get your ass out and check on Esmeralda. Please.”

It clearly didn’t improve her mood, but she wiggled across the seat and darted toward the back. The rain was still pounding down, and the sound it made on the tin shield above us was a continuous, metallic din. Still, we were dry, and I couldn’t really say I was displeased with the trade. I stood outside with Luis, enjoying the smell of the rain, as he filled the gas tank. Isabel reappeared and said crankily, “She had to pee. So do I.”

“Open the store and go to the bathroom.”

Isabel rolled her eyes. “She’s a snake, Tío; she doesn’t use a toilet. She’s out there in the rain. She’s pretty angry about it, too.”

“Just go do your business and get back here,” Luis said. “Lock it back up when you’re done, okay?”

She didn’t answer. I had to smile at the thought that Luis had felt a need to lock a store during what would be, most likely, a time of chaos; Earth Wardens did tend to be more responsible with their powers than others. Most Fire Wardens would have melted the lock in their quest to get relief, and I didn’t like to think what a Weather Warden might have done.

Isabel vanished inside the store.

“How about you?” Luis asked me. “Need to go?” When I shook my head, he said, “Okay, then watch the pump. I’m hitting the head.”

He moved in that direction. I concentrated on the boring task of watching the numbers spin meaninglessly on the pump; Luis had—probably uselessly—given his credit card for the payment, but economies across the world would stumble today, shatter tomorrow. Soon, it wouldn’t be how many imaginary dollars, or pounds, or yen, were in an imaginary account.… It would be about survival, and survival required tools. Things to barter, things to use. I began making a list of what would be good to acquire.

The pump stopped with a thud and click, and I replaced the nozzle where it was meant to go… and then realized how alone I was. Esmeralda was still missing, somewhere out in the rain; Luis and Isabel were in the store itself. It was just me, and the constant, punishing rain.

But there was someone watching me.

I stayed very still, facing out toward the downpour-obscured road. I saw nothing, but I sensed… something. A presence. The damp hair on the back of my neck prickled, and I felt the need to back up, but I stood my ground.

There was a sigh of wind, and the curtain of rain parted in a clear, square corridor. Water sluiced off the invisible top and down the sides. It was a precise, dangerously controlled use of power, and at the other end of the opening stood a child. Small, delicate; girl or boy, I couldn’t tell, and it didn’t matter greatly at that age.

“Sister,” the child said, and that voice echoed out, too large and powerful for that frail form. “I need to speak with you.”

I didn’t know the child herself, but she was only a vessel. The power that loomed larger around her was familiar, and dangerous indeed. Pearl had come to see me—not in the flesh, but occupying it, piloting it from afar.

The open, rain-free corridor was an invitation, an obvious one that lured me toward the child. It was stupid of me to consider going toward the danger, but I was in a blackly strange place, and danger was all around me now.

So I went.

The sound of the rain drumming against the child’s shield was punishingly loud, until I stopped a few feet away. Then, the roar cut off cleanly, leaving a silence so charged with tension that I could feel the hair on my arms stir and shiver.

The child had dark eyes, short-cropped silky hair, and a secretive little smile too old for her years. I thought of Ibby, of the destruction of her childhood, and forced the anger away. “Sister,” I said. “Too weak to form your own flesh now?”

“Too careful,” she said, in that lazily amused tone. “What a judgmental thing you’ve become, Cassiel. Humanity has corrupted you quite to the core. Did you like your taste of the Mother’s love? She’d have killed you, you know. Supped on your blood and gnawed the power from your broken bones. She’s a cannibal. And all your human friends will be food for her feast.”

“Hers or yours,” I said, and shrugged. “Death is death, Pearl. You offer nothing better.”

“I offer a stay of execution. A partnership to keep humanity alive. You need me, sister. You know that you do.”

“For what? You’re only seeking to save your own existence. If the Mother destroys the human race, you go with it; you’ve hidden yourself very well, I have to admit, and you did what all the Djinn thought impossible—you hid yourself away and drew power from humans, growing in power as they did. I’d applaud, but I doubt you can successfully root yourself so well in the power of the cockroaches who survive after them, although that would certainly be apt.”

The child’s eyes sparked with a sudden red glow, and power crackled around me in blue-white zaps along the edges of the corridor. “Softly,” she said. “I may not love you so much as all that, Cassiel.”

We fought like humans, I realized then… like siblings. Bitter and acrimonious, too sensitive to each other’s moods and vulnerabilities. The most violent hatreds came from families.

I took a step back and forced myself to stay silent. The glow faded slowly, and the crackling power hissed and fell silent, although a burnt-ozone smell filled the space around me.

“I came in peace,” Pearl said. “I came to save you.”

“We don’t need you,” I told her. I said it firmly, but without anger, and I even gave her a small nod of respect. “If you wish to fight, do so. But the Wardens fight alone, as they always have.”

“You speak for them.”

“They’d say the same.”

The child’s smile was, this time, truly unsettling. “You think so? Really? We’ll see, my sister. But the truth is, I don’t need you. You are an annoyance with which I no longer wish to contend. I gave you a chance. Now I hope you enjoy the consequences. Good-bye, my sister. Say hello to our mother.”

I had a second’s warning this time, purely because Pearl couldn’t help but gloat; it was just enough time to drop to one knee on the muddy ground and punch power down into the water-drenched soil. I had no dominion over the water, but the soil responded to me, sluggish but powerful. It rose up in a thick, slippery wave under the child’s feet, throwing her—him?—off balance with a high, surprised cry. The attack that was blasting toward me missed, but only just; I felt the incredible heat of it blister my skin and sizzle my hair, and completed my forward motion to fall flat on the mud. My shirt was blazing, and I rolled over to kill the flames. As I did so, I kept moving the ground under the child’s feet, and riding the thick, shifting sludge kept the Fire Warden from launching another effective assault.

The rain shield overhead collapsed, and ice-cold water hit my burned skin in a punishing, breathtaking slap. I felt power shifting on the aetheric, and desperately kept pushing the earth around, trying to buy time. This child’s power was enormous, and extremely well controlled; if I gave a second’s pause, she would respond with a blistering assault that would burn the skin right off my body and leave me dying in the mud, or worse. I was fortunate that the child was strong in fire; earth was a good defense against that, if I could stay ahead of her and anticipate her moves.

It was hard to do, but while rocking her off balance yet again, I simultaneously pulled the mud up in a counterwave that buried me but left a tiny hole through which I could catch a breath. I sucked in a deep one, and rolled even as I sank deeper into the muck, reaching, reaching.…

I felt the mud suddenly harden around me, and the heat against my back was sudden and stunning, as if I’d been shoved beneath a giant broiler. She was trying to bake me, if not burn me. I sank deeper to avoid it, then twisted up, hands outstretched.

My fingers closed on the stick-thin legs of the child, and I sent a massive burst of power up through her nerves to force an overload and shutdown.

The child toppled over in a sudden, helpless heap.

I clawed up from the mud and flopped next to her, gasping and letting the rain pound me as it sluiced the grit from my face and eyes. Then I checked the child for signs of life. She was breathing, but unmoving. Her heart was speeding too fast, trying to fight me as I held her in that state. I put my palm flat on her forehead, closed my eyes, and eased her into a deeper state of calm and then, finally, unconsciousness.

“Cass?” Luis lunged out of the rain. He looked frantic as he dropped to his knees beside the two of us. “What happened?”

“One of Pearl’s,” I said wearily, and almost pitched forward as I lost my balance. Luis’s warm hands grabbed my shoulders, and he pulled me back against him, arms wrapping me in safety. “She’s going to the Wardens to offer her help to them against the Mother. And they’ll accept; they’re bound to. They don’t understand what she is. What she wants.”

“Then we have to tell them,” he said. “She tried to shut you up, right?” He looked down at the small form of the girl. “Cass, did you—”

“She’s alive,” I said, and coughed up a mouthful of dirty water, retching mud up from my stomach in a sudden rush. I didn’t feel better for the purge.

“Well, we can’t just leave her here. She’ll freeze.”

“We can’t take her, either. She’s dangerous.”

But now Isabel was there, too, and she reached out with a cry for the little girl. “What did you do?” she shouted at me, glaring, and I didn’t have the energy or the heart to explain. “You’re always hurting people! Always!”

“Iz, stop, hang on a minute—”

But she avoided Luis’s outstretched hand, picked up the little girl, and carried her off toward shelter. The look she shot me was full of dark fury and distrust.

“Iz!” Luis yelled, but if Isabel could hear him, she didn’t care. He turned his anger on me, instead. “Cassiel, do you have some kind of death wish? You can’t just walk off and have a chat with that evil bitch without backup—you know that! What were you thinking?”

It was as if his frightened, protective anger was contagious, because suddenly irritation inside me sparked into rage, and I shoved free of him and stumbled up to my feet. The rain no longer felt cold; it seemed soothing as it slapped down on my face and hair, soaked into my clothes. I was still shaking, but the chemicals in my body driving it were from a far different source.

“I was thinking that there’s no point!” I shouted back at him, and shook my head so forcefully that spray flew in a mist. “It’s the end, Luis! And there’s no point in being careful now. It’s all risk, and loss, and I can’t—” I ran out of breath, and the anger wasn’t enough to cushion me against the sudden, horrible reality of the losses, and the ones that were to come. “I can’t live through this. There’s no point.”

He felt sorry for me; I could see it. Fool. He didn’t understand, didn’t see what I saw, didn’t understand the gulf that yawned black and hungry beneath our feet. We were rolling down a steep hill into a chasm, and there was no stopping it now. The Mother would destroy us, or we could cling to the false comfort held out by Pearl, and die later, and more horribly.

Ashan had exiled me from the Djinn because I’d refused to kill humanity—a clean masterstroke of strategy that would have destroyed Pearl along with them. His response had been to cast me down into human form, but I had grown to realize, over this time with them, that it hadn’t been punishment so much as another, long-game strategy. I was the miserable hope that Ashan had placed in the center of this, placed to bring about the end of the game if I had the courage… a useless, fragile, broken human. I couldn’t save anyone. I couldn’t even save myself.

Ashan had thought far too much of me. It was all useless, and shattered, and wrong, and the hope and love in Luis’s eyes were tragic now.

I pushed past him and slogged through the clinging mud toward the truck.

Esmeralda was coiled up in a loose tangle of scales and limbs near the back door, looking as drowned and annoyed as I felt. Her tail rattled as I passed her. “Saw you out there,” she said. “Have fun with your hermana?”

“Shut up,” I snapped.

“You can’t let Isabel keep doing that, you know,” she said. “Picking up strays.”

“Like you?”

Esmeralda smiled, but there was a hint of the snake in that smile. “Some strays bite. This one will. You can’t save them all. Got to make sure Iz understands that.”

Esmeralda wasn’t saying anything that I didn’t feel myself, gut-deep, but it offended me that she was echoing my own thoughts. I didn’t want this Djinn-killing sociopath on my side, or in my head.

“Saving children may not be your priority,” I said coolly, “but perhaps it should be ours. Keep away from the girl. She may yet be salvageable.”

“Keep telling yourself that!” she yelled back, as I climbed into the truck’s cab. “She’s going to melt your faces off, and don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

Isabel was already inside, sitting stiffly in the center of the bench seat with the little girl in her arms. She’d wrapped her in the blanket I’d used before, and asleep, the child seemed innocent and heartbreakingly vulnerable. I slammed the door. Isabel edged away from me, putting clear space between us, as Luis got in the driver’s side. I heard the back door slam as Esmeralda took her place.

Nobody spoke at all as we drove away, into the storm.

Luis still had a working cell phone, and charged it using the plug-in port in the truck. His first call, once we were safely out of the heart of the storm and into something more like normal rain, was to the Wardens.

“Crisis Center,” said a sharp male voice on the other end of the line. “Name?”

“Luis Rocha, Earth. Checking in,” he said.

“You mobile and able to take work?”

“Yes,” he said, and gave me a quelling look when I started to speak. “Are they back?”

“They who?”

“The ones who went off on the cruise,” he said. The cruise in question had not actually been a vacation; a large number of the most powerful Wardens had boarded an ocean liner and sailed away from the coast of Florida, trying to prevent a major disaster. So far, there had been no word of their return… but then, we’d been preoccupied.

“Not yet,” the voice said. “They should be docking in a few days, though. We’ve made contact and told them how dire the situation is here. They’re making best possible speed, but it’s up to us to hold until they get here.”

From the stress in the man’s voice, he didn’t think that was very likely. I didn’t hold out much hope, either. Mother Earth, conscious and angry, could destroy much of human civilization in a day, never mind a week. The Wardens remaining wouldn’t be able to stop it, especially with the Djinn co-opted against them.

“I need to speak with Lewis Orwell,” I said. “Now.”

“Who’s this?”

“Cassiel, who was once a Djinn. Put me through.” I had, I thought, learned my humility lessons well; I had at least thought to give some context to my name, instead of presuming that it still held a resonance of power on its own.

“Can’t do that, lady.”

My voice went lower and colder. “Put me through.”

“Warden Rocha, please tell her that—”

“He tells me nothing,” I interrupted. “Put me through to Lewis Orwell now.”

A heavy sigh rattled through the phone, and the unfortunate in the Crisis Center said, “I’ll try. Hold.”

Luis said, “You really think you’re going to get the fucking Lord High Master of the Wardens to chat with you right now? Jesus, Cass, get a grip.”

“If Pearl wants to form an alliance with the Wardens, it will have to be stopped, and he’s the one to stop it,” I said. “He needs to know. Now.”

“Sometimes I think you just don’t get the concept of boss. He’s not going to—”

These was a click, and a different voice, scratchy with distance and a fragile connection, came on. “Orwell,” he said. “And it had better be breaking news, Cassiel.”

“It is,” I said. “You remember why I was cast down.”

“Well, I don’t know if down is very flattering to the rest of us. Cast out might be a better term. But yes, I remember. Ashan wanted you to kill the human race, and you said you wouldn’t. I hope you’re not calling to ask for a thank-you, because we’re just a little busy.” He sounded very grim, far more so than I’d expected. Orwell was one of those perpetually confident men, and yet now… “The Djinn who came with us are dying. Cut off. We’re in a black corner.”

A black corner was a Warden term for one of the burned-out areas of the world, where such an explosion of power had taken place that it destroyed the aetheric, and prevented Djinn from accessing their power. Djinn stranded in one of those areas would starve to death, slowly or quickly. Most black corners were small, isolated areas; even an injured Djinn could crawl out before permanent damage was done. But out on the ocean, when the aetheric was so ripped and bloodied… they might not survive. Any of them. They were New Djinn, most of them, but there was one.… “Venna,” I said aloud, and felt a surge of dread. “Is Venna—?”

“She’s sick,” he said. “Very sick.”

“No.” I said it softly, and almost involuntarily. Venna was a True Djinn, like me; she was ancient and incredibly powerful. I’d been puzzled by her recent affiliation with humans, but then, she’d always been intrigued by the strangest things. “Not Venna.” The loss of someone such as she would bring down the heavens, I thought.

What hurt more was the realization that I hadn’t felt her distress. Venna and I had links that went back farther than the human race, and yet… yet I felt nothing of her danger, or pain.

Lewis sighed. “Get to the point, Cassiel.”

I gulped back my pain, my shock, and focused hard to say, “Pearl. The enemy I’ve been fighting. She’s become very powerful, and now she will approach the Wardens, offer to fight by their side. You must not take her offer, Lewis.”

“Is it a trap? Is she going to not fight on our side?”

“No—she will. She must. She needs humanity to live, for now, until she achieves her ultimate goal… but then she’ll turn on the Wardens, destroy you all. When she no longer needs them, she’ll kill the rest of humanity as well.”

He was silent a long time, long enough that I feared the connection lost, but then Lewis said, “Good to know. Thanks, Cass. We should make landfall in a few days, but meanwhile, I need every Warden out there to fight, understand? Don’t give up. Shield all that you can.”

“You must promise me that you won’t accept any help from her!”

“How can I?” Lewis sounded—not himself. That was a cry of bleak despair, and the words that followed were just as dark. “I had twenty-five thousand Wardens when I started, to protect almost seven billion people. Know how many I have now? It’s tough to get a real count, but I was down to about ten thousand, and now—now it’s maybe half that. The Djinn are either dying or puppets for Mother Earth. We’ve got nothing. You expect me to throw back the only possible ally we have?”

“She’ll kill you,” I said softly. “She’ll kill you all.”

“Listen to yourself,” he replied. “Even after all this time, you can’t think of yourself as one of us.”

He hung up the call, and I sank back in the seat, feeling weary and utterly defeated. Luis silently put the phone away and concentrated on driving for a while.

“Well,” he finally said, “at least you warned him. But I’ve got to be honest: He’s right. He’s got to pick the lesser of two evils right now.”

“Pearl isn’t the lesser. She only appears to be, from the Wardens’ perspective right now.”

“Yeah, well, you can argue it when we see him.” He yawned, shook himself out of it, and said, “We can’t keep this up. We’re burning power every time we turn around, and it’s going to wear us down, Cass. We haven’t even made it to an actual fight yet, and already I’m drained. So are you.” He checked his watch and the fuel gauge. “We’ve got at least another eight to ten hours before we get to Seattle, and that’s if the roads hold out and we don’t run into trouble, which we damn sure will.”

“And your point…?”

“We need rest. We need to figure out what to do with Pearl Junior there, because you can’t keep her unconscious from now until this all shakes out, and having her at our backs is the definition of a bad idea.”

“What are you saying?” I half turned in the seat now, staring at him.

“I’m saying that we’ve got the hell beat out of us more than we can handle already, and we’re going to have to handle a lot more. We need to refuel, recharge, get ready. Going in drained means we ain’t helping anybody.”

“They’ll bring the fight to us!”

“Maybe,” Luis said. “But out here, away from the cities, it’s still quiet. And we’re stopping to rest before we do something stupid, because we’re too tired to think straight.”

He took his foot off the gas.

I flooded power through the metal, and the engine growled deep. The truck lunged forward, inciting a chorus of yelped protests from the others. I held Luis’s stare with mine, and then said quietly, “Watch the road. We’re not stopping. We cannot stop. There’s no more rest, no more time. Do you understand?”

“You’re crazy. We’re human, not Djinn. We can’t just— Let go of the pedal, Cass.”

I said nothing. There was something in my stare that made him go quiet in the end, and he faced forward.

We kept driving.

Thirty minutes later, we slowed for the first signs of trouble—a tangle of wreckage in the middle of the road. Luis stopped the truck, and we both went to examine the damage. It had been a car once, but there was nothing left of it now to identify it as such, save one mangled tire still visible. From the fluids leaking from the crushed object, there had been occupants. They were beyond saving.

“Any idea what did that?” Luis asked me. I shook my head, but that was a lie. There was no damage to the close-crowding trees on either side of the road, which argued against an attack by weather; I could visualize a Djinn easily compacting the vehicle with careless blows, driving the metal in on the occupants. But why this car? Why…

I found a severed hand by the side of the road, a perfectly undamaged specimen sheared cleanly by some incredible force. It was a woman’s hand, with manicured fingernails that had seen better days, and a great deal of recent abuse.

In the palm, when I checked it in Oversight, there shimmered the ghost of a stylized sun—the identification of a Warden. I looked at the crushed car, startled, and the agony and violence that bloomed on the aetheric made me shudder. A Djinn had done this. A powerful, furious, mad Djinn.

Because they were Wardens, headed—as we were—to battle.

“Luis,” I said softly.

“I know,” he said.

“Wardens.”

“I know. Get in the damn truck, now.”

We ran for it, but I slowed as I felt the aetheric bending around us. Something had just arrived. The hot, intangible rush of power blasted through me, and left me scorched and trembling inside.

I stopped and turned to face it. Luis made it to the door of the truck, but turned as well. I heard him whisper, softly, “Madre de Dios.”

A Djinn was standing in the road, blocking our path. He was the size of a man, but he was not anything like one, really; the form was correct, but his skin was a deep violet-indigo, his eyes blazed silver, and there was an aura around him that was visible even in the human world—power, madness, rage.

Rashid. He’d recovered far faster from Esmeralda’s bite than any of us really had expected, and he was still under the control of the Mother. At least I believed he was.

Like Priya, he had no choice in what he’d been sent to do.

“Cass?” Luis said. “What do you want to do?”

“Get in,” I said. “I’ll keep him busy.”

“Cassiel—”

“Do it!”

Luis yanked open the door and slid in, and I saw Rashid lower his chin. The glow in his eyes brightened, sparked with fury that was beyond even my experience.

I reached deep into Luis, into the deepest reserves of his power, and pulled all I could without damaging him beyond repair. I heard him cry out, but there was no time, no time at all, not if any of us were to survive the moment, the second.

I hit Rashid with a blast of pure white fire.

It was hardly enough to sting him, but it pushed him off the road and into the dirt, where he hit, rolled, and came to his feet with his skin dripping fire.

“Go!” I screamed, and heard Luis hit the gas. The truck rocketed past me, tires screaming; I felt the bumper brush me out of the way, but I had no time for pain because Rashid was rushing at me, and I knew, without even a hesitation, that I was about to die.

And that was, oddly, all right.

The world went quiet, still, pure, calm. Rashid was an indigo smear against it. I searched for the fear and rage that I needed to sustain me in this fight, but it was gone. Nothing left but a vast acceptance and readiness.

I’d felt this before, the detachment, the lack of fear, the power. Only once, since I’d been cast out from the Djinn, but the single bright spark of that Cassiel had never died, never surrendered.

Some part of me, some normally unreachable core, was yet a Djinn—trapped, limited, maybe even mutilated by what Ashan had done to me, but he couldn’t destroy it, not utterly. And in this moment, when I shed all my human faults, fears, hopes…

The Djinn emerged, and flowed into me again, unnatural, inhuman, perfect. My body glowed with a pure white light, and I caught Rashid’s arms and forced them wide as he rushed upon me. We were locked together, bodies pressed, eyes focused on each other.

And I was not afraid, any more than I’d been afraid when I’d seen an infection crawling up my arm and taken a weapon and brought it down to sever the flesh and bone. I’d known what had to be done, and I’d done it without hesitation. It had been a glorious madness, just like this.

I could hold Rashid here, trapped with me. I would hold him, for as long as necessary to ensure that Luis and the girls got safely away. For eternity, if I must.

No. No. I could do more. Must do more.

I tightened my hold on him. He was brutally strong, powered by the Mother’s rage, but there was something in me, too, something that I’d carried with me. A core that wouldn’t break, wouldn’t yield.

His rage flowed over me, through me, out of me, and back into the Earth from which it sprang.

Rashid, I whispered, my lips kissing close to his. Rashid.

He was there. Unlike Priya, he was not yet gone, not yet burned away. He’d hidden himself deep within, and I could feel him there, his terror and pain, his anguish and rebellion.

He needed help.

He needed…

It came to me with a stunning shock what he needed, and without thinking I released him and stepped back. I couldn’t save him like this, or stop him from going after those I was sworn to protect.

But I could stop him. And save him.

The instant I released him, Rashid flashed away, chasing the truck. I dove into the underbrush and found the thing I’d glimpsed, a single flare of brightness in the dark.

A glass bottle.

It was a beer bottle, still smelling of hops and malt.

Seconds left.

Rashid was in front of the truck now.

Summoning his power.

“Be thou bound to my service,” I said, and concentrated every ounce of the power inside me on his distant spark. “Be thou bound to my service. Be thou bound to my service, Rashid!”

There was a scream on the aetheric, a ripping of the fabric, and power flowed like blood toward me, through me, into the bottle.

I slapped my hand down on the top, trapping him within, and collapsed to my knees on the fallen leaves. A chilly blast of wind made me shake, but it wasn’t only that—the fear came back, and the emptiness, and the fragility of flesh. The Djinn Cassiel had visited me and gone, and left me a human shell full of weakness.

But I had Rashid. I had him.

There was mud caked at the bottom of the leaves, and I slammed the bottle down into it, sealing it tightly. It looked empty, but on the aetheric the glass container swirled and glowed with trapped energy.

I didn’t know if the binding would keep him controlled by my will, or if it had only bound him into a prison; the only way to test it would be to release him, and that was a dangerous risk. Too dangerous, for now. Later, perhaps, it would be worth taking the chance.

The truck was still moving, already out of sight. Safe, for now.

And I was once again on foot.