Gale Force

Chapter Eleven

To say that was a shock would be an understatement. A shock implied a jolt, like sticking your finger in a light socket; this was more like grabbing the third rail of the subway.

I’d killed Bad Bob Biringanine—well, at least, seen him die. I’d always staked a lot of certainties on that fact; I’d been told his body was found, and nobody ever seemed to have any doubt that Bad Bob was pushing up daisies. They’d certainly gone after me with enough vengeance to sell the concept of murder.

As his last act prior to dying had been to infect me with a Demon Mark, ensuring my enslavement and eventual death, I didn’t feel too good about his miraculous reappearance. Of all the people I would pick to claw their way out of a grave, he’d be the dead last— pun intended—I ever wanted to see.

Partly it was because he’d so successfully hidden his capacity for cruelty and corruption from me—from most Wardens—for so long. Partly it was that I still had nightmares about that horrible day, about the helpless fury I’d felt and the slick, gagging feel of the Demon sliding down my throat.

It couldn’t have pleasant associations for David, either. He’d been the Djinn who’d held me down. Rape, he’d called it later, and he’d been right, in an aetheric kind of way if not a physical one. But it had been a rape of both of us—he hadn’t wanted to do it any more than I had.

I’d taken three steps back from Ortega, an involuntary retreat that had nothing to do with him and everything to do with the monster that had just leaped out of the closet to roar in my face. David must have sensed my reaction, but he stayed fixed on Ortega.

“When?” he asked. “When did you give him the book?”

“A few months ago.” Ortega struggled not so much to remember—Djinn didn’t forget—but to order his mind so things were clear. “The day of mourning. He came—he had something I was looking for. He said he’d trade. He wanted the book.”

By the day of mourning, Ortega meant the day Ashan had killed our daughter, Imara, or at least destroyed her physical body. Imara had become the Earth Oracle, but on that very black day, we thought we’d lost her forever.

Oh, and I’d died, too. Kind of. I’d ended up split, amnesiac, and wandering naked in the forest. Yeah, good times.

That day had seen the expending of a lot of power. A lot. Some of it was from the Wardens, some a product of the Djinn, some from the Earth herself. And there’d been a Demon in the mix, fouling the well of power. . . . Anything could have happened, out of that bloody mess.

Apparently, anything had happened. Somehow, Bad Bob had managed to come back.

If he’d ever really been gone at all.

Suddenly, the appearance and rise of the Sentinels was beginning to make sick, deadly sense. Bad Bob was a player; he wanted power, and he’d do anything to anyone to get it. I’d cheated him the first time.

He’d make damn sure that David and I weren’t in any position to do it again.

By separating the Wardens from the Djinn, then destroying the Djinn, he could ensure that no one had the resources and strength to fight him when he made his final move. Divide and conquer. A timeless classic.

“He’s in Florida,” I said. I was sure of it, as sure as I’d ever been of anything in my life. “The bastard’s not even hiding, really. This is his old stomping ground. He’s got networks of friends and supporters; he feels safe here. That’s why we traced the signature to the Keys, and Kissimmee—”

“The beach house.” David snapped to his feet.

“What?”

“The beach house. I sensed him. I thought it was just a memory, but—” A pulse of light went through his eyes, turning them pure white. “The signature of the power fits his.”

“He’s been at the goddamn beach house?” I’d gone inside. I’d searched the house looking for the focus of the wards. Bad Bob must have been out picking up his latest issue of Megalomaniacs Weekly, which was damn lucky for me, because if he’d been there, I’d have been trapped inside the house, with David outside, and Bob could have done anything to me, anything at all. . . .

I couldn’t think about that. Not without shaking. I’d been through a lot of trauma in my life, but there was something so slick and calculated about Bad Bob’s use of me. . . . It was worse than betrayal. He’d cultivated and trained me specifically to transfer the Demon Mark to me, a cold long-term plan that I’d spoiled by not being quite as weak as he’d anticipated.

You’re stronger now, I told myself. But I also remembered the moment in my apartment when Bob had focused all the power of the Sentinels on me, and I’d realized that I wasn’t going to be strong enough, in the end.

None of us was going to be strong enough, not alone.

“If he’s still at the beach house,” David was saying, as if he couldn’t see I was melting down, “he won’t be there for long. We need to get word to Lewis.”

I shook my near-panic off with what I hoped wasn’t a visible effort, and focused on the problem at hand. “Contact Rahel. Tell her to get Kevin out of there. I don’t want him caught in the middle if we spring a trap. We’re screwed if Bad Bob has the contacts in the Wardens that I think he does. He was too well liked, even after the facts started coming out. Too many good people still like him. They wouldn’t even think of it as betraying us to do a little under-the-table heads-up to him.”

David nodded. “Ortega. I need for you to go to Rahel and give her the message. Tell her to extract Kevin. I don’t care what she has to do. I don’t care how noisy it is. Just tell the two of them to get out.”

“Me?” Ortega looked completely thrown. “But I—”

“It’s an emergency,” David said, and again, I felt that pulse of command and control. “I’m sorry, I know you don’t like to leave this place, but it has to be done.”

Ortega looked utterly miserable now. “Can’t you go? She won’t listen to me. She doesn’t even like me—”

“No,” David said. “I can’t.” He didn’t explain. Ortega heaved a great sigh, nodded, and blipped away.

David didn’t relax. He looked grim and angry, and avoided my eyes.

“Why didn’t you go?” I asked. “I mean, I’m grateful. I’m just surprised.”

“Because if you’re right, and if they have what I think they have, they will be setting a trap,” he said. “A trap designed specifically for me. They want to lure me in. I hope that they haven’t managed to get everything together yet to spring it. That’s why I’m sending Ortega.”

“Because they’d be planning to get you.”

“The Conduit,” he said. “If they can destroy me, they can destroy the structure and power of the Djinn. You were right, Jo. I didn’t believe it, but you were right. They’ve found our one true weakness, and I don’t know how we’re going to defend against them. Maybe Ashan was right. Maybe the only way to win is to withdraw.”

“And leave us to fight alone.”

He turned toward me, and I saw the fury and frustration in his eyes. “Yes.” His hands clenched and unclenched. “The book. We need to get it to his vault. I don’t want it out where anyone can stumble across it.” He forced some of his anger back with a visible effort; it wasn’t directed at me, but at the world. At Bad Bob. “I’m sorry, Jo. I can’t touch it. Can you carry it?”

I picked up the weight reluctantly, afraid that even latched it might still have the power to seduce me, but it was quiet. Just leather, paper, ink, and iron.

Just a book that held the secrets to destroying an entire race.

No wonder it felt heavy.

The vault—of course a mansion like this would have one, along with a genuine, honest-to-God panic room—was crammed with stuff. Valuable stuff, to be sure. I was no expert, but I knew that early comics were worth money, and he had shelves full of them, each carefully bagged and labeled. Coin collections. Stamp collections. Toys. Rugs. Artifacts. I edged into the big steel-cased room and waited while David reorganizedthe collections enough for me to put the book down in an open space on a table. “Does he ever sell any of this stuff?” I asked.

“No,” he said, moving a collection of what looked like vintage one-sheet posters. “But he buys a lot on eBay. Put it down here.”

I did, gratefully, and stepped back from it. So did David, letting out a slow breath.

“Ortega,” I said. “Is he going to be okay?”

David didn’t answer. I understood a lot in that moment—his frustration, his anger. There was a good deal of self-loathing in there. David was not Jonathan, who’d held the position of Djinn Conduit before him; he wasn’t naturally the kind of man who could make ruthless, cold decisions and sacrifice his friends and family when necessary. Lewis was like that. David was more like me—more willing to throw himself in front of the bus than push someone else, even if it was the tactically right thing to do.

“He’ll be okay,” I said, and took his hand. “It’s a simple enough job, and they won’t be looking for Ortega. Hell, I’d never have had a clue he was a Djinn if I’d met him in any other context.”

“I know,” David said. “I just wish I’d told him that I didn’t blame him for trading the other copy of the book. I don’t. His obsession is to collect things. Ortega has always been an innocent when it comes to humans; he could never see the potential for evil in them. That’s why Bad Bob took advantage of him.”

“He doesn’t seem very . . . Djinn.”

David led the way back out of the vault and swung the massive door shut, then spun the lock. “No,” he agreed. “Ashan wanted to destroy him completely. I wouldn’t allow it. Ortega doesn’t have much power, for a Djinn—barely more than a human. He’s never been able to really become what he was meant to be.”

“Which is?”

“Cold,” David said. “Like the rest of us.”

I kissed his hand. “You’re not cold.”

He looked at me, and I saw the shadow of what he’d done haunting him. “I can be,” he said. “When I have to be.”

We went back downstairs, edging through the boxes, trying to find empty space. Ortega had left himself a small nest, a room filled with the most beautiful things of his collection . . . exquisite crystal, breathtaking art, blindingly lovely furniture. I hated to sully it with my human presence, but my feet were tired, and the Victorian fainting couch was exquisitely comfortable.

David didn’t sit. He paced. None of the beauty touched him; he was focused elsewhere, on things far less lovely. I used the time to make calls; Lewis had been maneuvering Wardens slowly into position in Florida, using his most trusted people as well as the Ma’at, who still were outside the Warden system and therefore would be more trustworthy in something like this, if less powerful. I broke the news about Bad Bob—which was met with a suspiciously long silence, as if he’d already known and had hoped to keep it from me. That would have been par for the course.

I also gave him the update about the book, and realized midway through that I didn’t actually know what it was David had read that had so unnerved him. It didn’t tactically matter to Lewis, but it mattered to me, so after I finished the call, I asked.

“The Unmaking,” David said. “I didn’t think—until I read it in the book, I didn’t think what you were describing could be true. The Unmaking is the opposite of creation.”

“Antimatter.”

He nodded slightly. “You see it as science; we can’t see it at all, but the Ancestor Scriptures tell us that if it can be brought forth, it will feed on and destroy all Djinn, and we won’t be able to see it. It’s been thought to be nothing but a ghost. A boogeyman.”

“But it’s real,” I said. “It’s the black shard, the one we found in the dead Djinn. That was a dead Djinn.”

“It’s how they grew more of the Unmaking,” David said. I saw his throat work as he swallowed. “It feeds and grows inside a Djinn. What you found was just the husk, discarded and left behind. The Unmaking itself is far, far more powerful. That’s how the Sentinels are able to wield so much power; they steal the energy that pours from the Unmaking’s destruction of the world around it.” He closed his eyes briefly. “I sent Rahel to them without any idea of the danger.”

“You couldn’t have known!”

He ignored my attempt to mitigate things. “Ortega should have been back by now.”

“Maybe he’s having trouble finding them—”

“No.” His eyes unfocused into the distance. “No, that’s not it.”

I felt a sick lurch. “David?”

“He’s—” David reeled, as if he’d been slapped, and crashed into a table that held a glittering display of crystal. He went down amid a shower of glass like falling stars. I threw myself onto my knees next to him, trying to think what kind of first aid I could do for a Djinn, and saw a sickening blackness bloom along the right side of his face, like fast-growing mold. His mouth stretched in a silent scream, and his eyes flared a muddy red. “Ortega,” he gasped. “Help him. I’ll hold on to him as long as I can, but you have to help him!”

Ortega was under direct attack, and it was manifesting in David. Of course it was; he was the Conduit. Until he severed the connection, and left Ortega to die alone, he would suffer along with him.

I launched myself up on the aetheric, burning through the six inches of steel roof like mist, all the way up until the entire Florida coastline was below me, sparking and burning with psychic energy. It wasn’t hard to identify the trouble spot; it was a huge red dome of boiling, smoky power, and as I plunged down toward it, I felt the turbulence of the ongoing battle batter me, threatening to rip me apart. I couldn’t spot Djinn on the aetheric; they were like ghosts, flitting out of the corners of my eyes. But I could see the destruction.

Oversight isn’t ideal to seeing the details of an event, but it is useful for watching the ebb and flow of power. Ortega was an elusive sparkling shadow, dodging between thick threads of power that formed psychic nets; the Sentinels were trying to trap him. They’d already hurt him. I could see the darkness in him, just as it had been manifesting in David back in the real world.

I could sense his fury and despair. He couldn’t get free. There was something holding him here, something—

I needed to get to him. Quickly. But instant transportation was a Djinn thing, and mostly fatal to humans; the only Djinn I’d ever known who could carry a human from one point to another without leaving pieces behind was Venna.

I slammed back down into my skin, a disorienting shock that I ignored because I didn’t have time for it. David was writhing amid the broken glass, fighting for control. My hands hovered over him, but I didn’t want to try to touch him. I wasn’t sure what was happening, but it was beyond my capacity to fight.

“Trying—trying to hold him,” David gasped. “Have to—”

David was choosing this. Ortega was in trouble, and David was trying to anchor him, send him power. That left David open to attack, just as Ortega was.

“Let go!” I shook David by the shoulders with as much violence as I could. “David, let him go! You have to! If they get to you, it’s over. That’s why you sent him!”

“Can’t let him die,” David panted.

“What can I do?” Why didn’t the Sentinels come after me again, the bastards? At least then, I’d feel less helpless. . . .

“The vault,” David gasped. “The book. Use the book.”

No. There was power in that thing, sure, but it was raw and untamed and all too easy to misuse. There had to be another way to—

David’s hand became a skeletal claw. His skin was turning the color of clay.

I had no time to think about it. I jumped to my feet and ran, threading through the maze of boxes, shoving over obstructions, hurdling what I could and climbing what I couldn’t to make the most direct route back to the vault. I was trembling with fear by the time I arrived, because precious seconds were ticking away, and upstairs David was dying. . . .

The vault was locked. I remembered David closing it and spinning the dial. Christ, no, please—

I had no choice. I reached out with all the Earth power at my disposal, ripped the locking mechanism to pieces, and slammed the heavy metal door aside like so much cardboard. It ripped loose of the hinges and tipped, hitting the concrete with enough force to shatter stone.

I scrambled over it into the vault.

I lunged for the book, opened the latch, and began flipping pages. I need something to save him, I was thinking hard, trying to direct the book to meet my desperate need. Anything. Show me how to save him!

A page flipped and settled, and my eyes focused on symbols. I heard the whispers again, felt them rushing through me like wind, and had time to wonder if this was the right thing to do, the smart thing. . . .

But then it was too late. I felt my lips shaping sounds, heard my voice speak without my understanding what it was saying. On the page, each symbol lit up in fire as it was spoken, burning like miniature suns until I could barely see the rest of the scripture.

Midway through, I felt dry, aching, drained body and soul. It was taking my power to fuel itself, and I still didn’t know what it was designed to do. Doesn’t matter, I told the part of my self that was screaming, the part that was in charge of self-preservation. If I don’t, he’s gone.

I had to take the chance.

As I spoke the last word, the entire book flared hot and white, and the force leaped from the pages into the center of my chest, knocking me down in a heap. I felt a sickening, sideways motion, as if the world had been twisted into a rubbery pretzel around me, and when I opened my eyes, I was lying facedown on industrial looped carpet, smelling dust and mold. I rolled over, gasping, and felt every muscle and nerve in my body shriek in protest.

I had no idea where I was, but it seemed that I was all alone. Nothing moved in the shadows around me, as far as I could see. The room looked like a deserted hotel ballroom, but one that had seen its last happy dances long ago. The carpet I was draped across was old and filthy, and the remaining furniture was a drunken muddle of broken chairs, listing tables, and fouled linens.

My brain was racing frantically, but my body was slow to follow. I managed to force muscles into enough order to get me to my hands and knees, and then to my feet, though I had to keep a hand on the dusty wall to brace myself. Apparently, Djinn spell books weren’t the most comfortable way to travel, or the most accurate, since I’d been trying to arrive at the place where the Sentinels were hiding out. . . .

I heard voices outside, in a shadowed hallway. I quickly crouched behind a table as a flashlight speared sharply through the dark, sweeping the room. It was a casual check, but I heard footsteps coming farther into the room, and risked a look. There were two people, one with the heavy flashlight in hand. I knew their faces in the backwash of light: One was Emily, Earth Warden, and an occasional adversary; the other was even less comforting—Janette de Winter. I’d last seen her in the Denny’s, after the first earthquake in Fort Lauderdale; she looked just as polished, perfect, and diamond-hard as ever.

And just by being here, she was proving out my suspicion that she was a Sentinel.

“Do you feel anything?” Janette asked. I concentrated on concealing myself, aetherically speaking; minimizing the blaze of power around me, drawing in all my senses until I was nothing but simple human flesh. If they were looking for a Warden, they’d miss me.

The flashlight played slowly around the room again in a methodical progression, counterclockwise. I was at the nine o’clock position, and I concentrated harder as the light crawled over the detritus in the room, heading my way.

It illuminated something strange; then there was a flash of movement, and then all hell broke loose.

They hadn’t been looking for me. They’d been looking for Kevin, and he was on the offensive.

Fire streaked out of his hand in a flat plane, slammed into the two women, and knocked them back. Emily shrieked, but Janette reacted quickly, damping down the flames before they were injured and setting up a glittering shield that splashed Kevin’s assault away in a rolling orange stream. It ignited dry carpeting, brittle walls, and broken furniture in an instant bonfire.

Emily, who could control wood and metal, grabbed an entire tractor’s worth of furniture and slammed it toward Kevin with shocking violence and power. I knew her; she hadn’t been nearly that strong before. Kevin tried to dodge, but there was no way he could win; Janette was lining him up in the crosshairs for her own assault, and he had no way to stop Emily at all.

As Kevin backed toward the wall, he tripped and went down, rolled into a crouch, and instinctively covered his head with both arms as the wall of furniture tumbled toward him.

I put up a wall of power around him, and both Emily’s flood tide of furniture and Janette’s flaming wave broke against it at the same time. Again, I was shocked by the force of what they were wielding; it was all out of proportion to what most Wardens would have used, even in extremity. Kevin was strong, but he couldn’t have equaled even one of them, much less two in direct conflict.

I could. Barely.

I stepped out from behind the table. I considered a snappy announcement of my presence, but really, it wasn’t necessary; both the other Wardens—no, Sentinels—were already turning and looking for me. I felt them lock on and acquire the target, and I shook my hands lightly to loosen myself up.

“One chance to live,” I said. “Where’s Ortega?”

I couldn’t really tell their expressions, not from across the room, but their body language suggested my sudden appearance wasn’t just a surprise; it was a real shock. If I’d been hoping that would throw them off balance, though, the surprise was mine; Janette hesitated for barely a second before I sensed a surge of power traveling invisibly through the wall next to me, and the paneling around me burst into white-hot flame. I ignored it. Playing their game was a sucker bet, and I needed to get to Kevin before they could separate us and use us against each other.

I gathered up the heat vortex being generated by Janette’s flames and sent it spinning toward both the Sentinels. Neither of them were Weather Wardens, and they weren’t trained on how to defuse such things; instead, they scattered to get out of its way. I kicked off my shoes, picked them up, and did a broken-field sprint across the ballroom toward Kevin. When I reached him, I grabbed him by the collar and yanked him out of the tangle of burning chairs and tables surrounding him. “Where’s the Djinn?” I shouted. Kevin coughed, spat up black, and jerked his chin toward the doorway. “Ortega! Have you seen him?”

“Yeah,” he said, and coughed again, with deep wracking spasms that made my chest hurt to hear them. “Outside. They had him.”

Janette and Emily were standing between me and my goal. Not a good place to be. I began throwing flaming furniture together and rolling it toward them in unwieldy balls, and not even their combined powers could catch it all. One ball got past Janette and plowed into them head-on. They went flying. Strike!

“Come on,” I snapped to Kevin, and went to the first downed Sentinel. Emily. I straddled her as she lay on the floor, and put her down for the count by encasing her in a thick layer of ice, pulling all the water out of the air to do it. The heat would set her free, but not for a while. Maybe not even in time. Gosh, I was going to lose sleep over that one. I have no idea what Kevin did to Janette, but it wasn’t likely to be as merciful. Seeing his smudged, grim face, I had the feeling it was well deserved, too.

We left the ballroom. At the last minute, I damped the fires behind us. Kevin shot me a glance, and I shrugged; I had the desire for bloodshed, but somebody had to set a good example. I knew it wouldn’t be him.

“Where’s Rahel?” I asked. The hallway outside was more of the same—dim, cluttered, deserted, smelling of age and mildew.

Kevin coughed again, wiped his mouth on his shirt, and said, “They figured it out. They have her, too. I couldn’t get to her.”

“Do they know—”

“Fuck yes, they know! We were sold out. They were buying it right up until about an hour ago, and then everything went crazy. . . .”

I wanted to hear it, but the anxiety building in me wouldn’t stop clanging its warning bell. “We’ve got to find Ortega, now. Go that way. If you spot him, yell.”

But in the end, I was the one who found him.

They’d posed him carefully, the Sentinels, just as they had the Djinn I’d helped discover before. Someone—one of the Earth Wardens—had looped whorls of living wood, thick and stronger than iron, around his arms and legs, pinning him in midair against the wall.

He’d been helpless. However they’d managed it, they’d taken away his defenses, and they’d done it so fast, so horribly fast. . . .

“Jo?” Kevin’s hoarse pant came from behind me. I was standing very still, not blinking, not looking away. “Jesus.”

We couldn’t get to him. There were too many Sentinels between us and Ortega. Six at least that I could see.

I’d expected to see Bad Bob Biringanine, so the sight of him shocked me less than it had a right to.

He looked exactly as I remembered him—white hair, fair Irish skin turned ruddy on the cheeks and nose, fierce blue eyes.

He smiled when he saw me. It was the same cynical, sweet expression that I remembered so well.

And then he turned to the man standing next to him and said something. The man’s back was to me, but I knew already, before he turned. Before I saw his face and knew how badly screwed we were.

Paul Giancarlo, my trusted friend, was with the Sentinels.

I saw the terrible guilt in his eyes, but there was something else, too. A fanatical light that I’d never truly recognized before. He was hurt, I thought. He was hurt by the Djinn. He was in charge while they destroyed the Warden headquarters. He saw people die, people he liked. People he loved.

Bad Bob had preyed on him as surely as he had all these others. He’d made them victims all over again. Worse—he’d made them victimizers.

“Jo,” Paul said. “Christ, what are you doing here? Get out!”

“You want me to send David instead?” I glared at him. “Paul, there’s not enough what the hell in the world for this!”

He clenched his fists, and I saw the muscles in his jaw tense and jump. He’d always looked a bit thuggish, but never more than when he was truly angry. “If we get David, it’s over. It’s done. No more bloodshed, ” he said. “If we have to go through all the Djinn, how much suffering is that? Come on, Jo. You know they can’t be trusted. You know!”

“Apparently I can trust them more than I can trust you,” I said.

“Ah, reunions,” Bad Bob said. He reached down and flipped open the lid on a black box on the floor, something like what Heather the scientist had used to carry her radioactive materials when she’d done her show-and-tell at Warden HQ. “Stop it, you two. You’re making me all teary-eyed. Next thing you know we’ll all be group-hugging and braiding each others’ hair.”

Nothing seemed very real to me, and yet was simultaneously very, very clear. I could see every single line of wood grain, every strand of Ortega’s hair where it drifted in the subtle breezes of the hallway.

I could see everything.

A black spear rose of its own accord from the box that Bad Bob had opened. This was no shard; it must have been at least six feet long, glittering and lethal. It slowly turned, and I had the horrifying idea that it was aware, that it was seeking out its victim. It was nothing on the aetheric, an absence of all things around it, just a black hole that could never be filled.

“Too bad your boyfriend couldn’t be persuaded to make an appearance,” Bad Bob said. “I suppose we’ll just have to perform a small demonstration instead with this unlucky fellow.”

Paul caught sight of the hovering spear, and his face went an ugly, ragged shade of pale. “No,” he said. “No, you agreed, only if we could get—”

The spear oriented itself and launched itself with sudden, horrific violence at Ortega.

I screamed and tried to form a shield in front of him, but the spear—the Unmaking—tore right through as if my power was completely meaningless to it, and buried itself in Ortega’s chest.

The sound he made was like nothing I had ever heard, something I couldn’t bear to hear. It was sheer torment, the sound of a Djinn being pulled apart and feeling every hard second of the process.

Oh God no no no.

I was watching Ortega, but I was picturing David writhing on the floor of that room amid the shattered crystal, and dying along with him.

The Unmaking was burrowing into him. I could feel it eating at him, could see the color leaching from his skin.

And as it ate him, it grew larger.

“Oh God,” Kevin said, and I’d never heard him sound like that, so utterly blank and young. As if he’d never seen anything terrible in his life.

On the other side, Paul Giancarlo and most of the others winced and turned away. Some covered their ears. Some looked sick.

Bad Bob continued to smile, utterly unmoved, and all my hate focused to a red pinpoint, right between his crazy blue eyes.

My power wouldn’t work against the Unmaking, but it would damn sure make a dent in him.

I called up everything, everything, and balled it into a single bright lance of light in my right hand, and slammed it toward Bad Bob Biringanine.

Who kept smiling.

Paul Giancarlo stepped in the way—no, not stepped. Lurched. I don’t think he meant to; I don’t think that it was his choice at all. Bad Bob owned the Sentinels, body and soul, and even they probably didn’t understand just how much his creatures they’d become. They’d opened the door to hate and revenge, and the darkness had claimed them. Lee Antonelli had shown me that.

Bad Bob used him as a human shield, because he knew it would hurt me the worst of all.

I didn’t scream, but the anguish must have shown in my face; Paul must have seen it, in that instant before the force I released hit him squarely in the chest.

It was fast, so fast he never blinked as the light hit him and blew out his nervous system, destroyed his brain stem, and dropped him lifeless to the floor.

I’d just killed my friend.

Kevin paused, just for a second, eyes wide, and then he attacked when he realized that I wasn’t capable of doing anything else at that moment, too frozen in shock to move or even defend myself. The Sentinels were in confusion; Bad Bob was smiling at me, oblivious to anything but my horror, and the rest of them had no idea what they were supposed to do. Like the Ma’at, they were a collective mass of power, and without a guiding force, they fell apart.

Even so, if it had been just Kevin and me, we’d have been lost. Each of the Sentinels had more power than we did, drawn from that black well of energy the Unmaking created when it destroyed things; they’d have killed us on their own, given time.

They didn’t have time.

An explosion rattled the entire building from outside. I saw a flaming car roll by the doors at the far end of the hall.

The cavalry had arrived with a bang.

I felt the aetheric popping and crackling with the arrival of more Wardens—some on the scene, some pouring power in from remote locations. I heard the sound of fighting from outside, and then something massive crashed against the outer wall, smashing a hole the size of a Buick in the brick, and through it I saw . . . the Apocalypse, or at least, as much as could fit in the parking lot of a condemned motel.

A tornado skimmed past the opening, sucking and howling, sparking lightning against every metallic surface. Cars rolled and disintegrated under the assault, then caught fire as Weather Wardens clashed with Fire. I couldn’t tell the good guys from the bad guys, at least until the rest of the wall came down with a heavy slam, and Lewis walked in over the rubble, leading a small but heavily kick-ass army, and joined me and Kevin.

“Surrender,” he said flatly to the group of Sentinels at the end of the hall. “Do it now and we’ll let you live to see a trial. Otherwise, you get buried today.”

He meant exactly what he said. Lewis was giving no quarter today, if they pushed him into a showdown. There was no trace of hesitation in him at all.

Bad Bob must have known it. He winked, jolly as a leprechaun, and blew me a kiss. Then he went to Ortega and wrenched the black spear out of him with his bare hands.

As it came out, it grew, adding inches more to its length. With every death it was fed, it grew more malevolently, horribly powerful.

Ortega was a dessicated corpse. A husk.

Bad Bob reached down and yanked up a small female form that lay huddled at his feet, tied with glittering black ropes. Cherise’s big blue eyes were wide under the confusion of blond hair, but the fury in her was all Rahel.

“You don’t want to risk this one, do you?” Bad Bob asked, and yanked hard on her hair. “Come on, Lewis. I know you better than that. You’re one of the good guys!”

Lewis’s expression didn’t alter by a flicker. “She’s human. Humans get hurt when Wardens clash; you know that. It’s on your head, not mine.”

“My son, you’ve really learned how to operate in the subzero, haven’t you? Well, very fine, but we both know that despite this very pretty shell, what’s inside is no more human than that.” He jerked his head toward Ortega’s body. “Probably a whole lot less human, actually. She’s a wild one, isn’t she?”

Rahel was playing Cherise for all she was worth, and it broke my heart to see my friend so scared, shaking, and crying. “Please,” she choked, “I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m not—”

“You’re a Djinn,” Bad Bob cut in. “Show me. Show me now, or I use this.” He still had the spear in his other hand, and he raised it, prepared to thrust it into her guts.

Lewis let out a low, almost inaudible moan.

Rahel flowed out of her disguise, dark and commanding and imperious, but still restrained by the black ropes. Her eyes snapped violent yellow sparks as she struggled to get free. She subsided, panting, dreadlocks wild around her hawk-sharp face.

“That’s better,” Bad Bob said. “Do tell David that we’ll be in touch, Jo. If he wants to stop me from continuing to kill his people, he should consider giving himself up to us. Very soon.”

The Sentinels crowded around him. Bad Bob grabbed Rahel, and each of them touched the black surface . . . and vanished. All of them together, Rahel included.

He’d taken her.

Kevin collapsed against one of the left-standing structural walls, gagging for breath. He looked terrible. I must have looked a hell of a lot worse, because Lewis took one look at me, gestured, and suddenly there were two Earth Wardens at my side, pouring warm, sticky power into me like syrup.

I felt a rush of presence around me as I started to fall, and David’s arms caught me and held me close. “Oh God,” he whispered against my hair. “Are you crazy? What were you trying to do?”

“Save you,” I whispered back. “Always.” I wanted to tell him that everything was all right here, too, in this warm, soft place I’d reached where nothing hurt. But I couldn’t stay in that place, even though it was so tempting to just give up and let shock take over.

Instead, I forced my legs to stiffen, and I pulled away from him. David let me go. He saw what was in my face, and he let me go.

I walked toward Ortega. When Lewis tried to stop me, I shook him off. When he tried again, I hit him with a lightning bolt. I was insane, but not quite that insane; I pulled the charge at the last moment, feeding just enough through him to knock him back a step.

Ortega was dead. His eyes had gone black, burned and lifeless, and his skin was a dull, dusty gray, as if he’d turned to stone. David joined me, standing close but not touching.

“It’s not your fault,” I told David. I could only imagine that he was thinking about ordering Ortega to come here, because he’d known there was a chance. . . .

But that wasn’t what he was thinking at all. David cocked his head slowly to one side, staring at the dead Djinn, and asked, very quietly, “Who is he?”