Unbroken

Chapter 10

WE DROVE THROUGH THE DAY, into the night, and saw the morning while still on the road. One benefit of being Earth Wardens: We had the ability to channel power to keep ourselves awake and alert, and although we’d need sleep eventually, it was simple enough to keep ourselves going on this journey. I rode my motorcycle, and Luis had appropriated a truck from a car lot; he’d found one that looked a great deal like his own, which made me raise an eyebrow and ask him how long it had taken to find that. He’d responded that if he was going to stand a damn good chance of dying in it, he wanted a truck that didn’t embarrass him.

I couldn’t argue with that. I was quite attached to the Victory.

We gave Portland a wide berth; the smoke of the dead city was a smear on the horizon, still burning. I kept my attention on the aetheric, watching for any signs of trouble ahead. The Djinn continued their relentless and unpredictable assaults; today, it seemed, they were focused on eradicating cities in Alaska and returning the entire state to wilderness.

There were few Wardens in Alaska. By midday, there were none. A night passed, and we kept moving.

We stopped, finally, as noon blazed in a cloudless sky; winter had lost its grip by the time we coasted to a halt in the small community of Farmington, New Mexico. Luis leaned out of the truck’s window and said, “Time to stop for food. Once we get hooked up with Baldwin, there’s no telling when we’ll have time to eat again. That girl is even more of a trouble magnet than you are.”

I shrugged, killed the Victory’s engine, and dismounted as he climbed down from the truck. We were in the parking lot of a small restaurant that still flickered a red OPEN light in the window, although there was only one other vehicle parked there. The town had seemed deserted; there’d been almost no traffic on the roads, and we’d seen no one out on the streets on foot, either.

But this little restaurant seemed to be carrying on despite all of the evidence around it that perhaps it was time to take a day off.

A bell rang softly as we entered through the glass door, but that seemed to be the only sound, until I heard some metal clattering, and a woman rushed out from the back, wiping her hands on a towel. She was dressed in plain blue jeans and a checked shirt, and she had the look of a woman used to hard work and disappointment—but for all that, her smile was brave. “Welcome!” she said. “Things are a little strange out there today, but I’m still cooking. You folks grab yourselves a seat anywhere. I’d bring you menus, but really, it doesn’t matter. I’ll make you whatever you’d like.”

Luis smiled at her and said, “How about a hamburger and a Coke?”

“Bread’s a couple of days old, if you can stand that, but my produce comes out of the back garden, and it’s still fresh,” the cook said. “Best hamburgers in the Four Corners area, and that’s a promise. You want cheese on that? And fries?”

“Sure. Cass?”

I ordered the same, which seemed to unreasonably delight the woman. She hustled off, and came back to deliver us drinks, frosty in mugs and fizzing with energy and sweetness. I sipped mine and watched as she hurried back to the kitchen. “Why is she so eager to serve us?” I asked. “Surely she knows how bad things are. And will become.”

“Oh, she knows,” Luis said. “Bet she doesn’t even charge us anything. Sometimes people just like to feel… normal. Like everything’s going to be okay. She likes to cook, and it makes her feel steadier. Gotta say, it makes me feel steadier, too. A little normal life in the middle of chaos—it’s not a bad thing.”

I didn’t think so, either, but it alarmed me a little that in the midst of chaos humans clung so strongly to the lost normality of their lives. Her smile was bright and friendly, and she seemed so desperate to make us part of her circle of safety.

The food, when it came, was excellent; she brought a plate of her own and put it on a separate table. “Sorry,” she said. “Proprietor’s gotta eat, too. I won’t bother you folks, and don’t be afraid to ask for anything if you need it.”

Luis scooted out a chair next to him. “Join us,” he said. “I’m Luis. This is Cass.”

“Pleased to meet you,” she said. She was beaming as she picked up her glass and plate and sat down at our table. “You folks just passing through?” She laughed a little. “Stupid question. This ain’t a time when people are settling down.”

“Yeah, we’re on our way somewhere,” Luis said. “I guess this is your place?”

“Well, it is now,” she said. “The man who owned it—he just ran away, left the place wide open. He told me I could have it if I wanted, so I figured I’d just keep it open for anybody who needed some food. Probably can’t get much more in the way of supplies, but I’ll use up what we got. No need for it to go to waste. I’m Betty, by the way.”

“You from around here, Betty?”

She took a bite of her hamburger and shook her head as she chewed and swallowed. “Nope. I was what you might call on my own. Lost my house a couple of years back, been traveling hard ever since. I ended up here when our bus broke down, and then the driver couldn’t get it fixed, so he went off to find help and never came back. Been here for about four days now, I guess. Seems like longer. Figured I might as well make the best of it.”

“Well,” Luis said, “you make one hell of a good burger. Glad you decided to fire up the grill for us.”

“Ain’t no big thing. I always wanted to open a restaurant someday,” she said, and munched a French fry contemplatively before she asked, “You two trying to fix things?”

“Fix them, how exactly?” I asked.

“Don’t know, but you two seem… different. You’re not running from something. You’re running to it. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody quite like the two of you before.”

“Well,” Luis said, “Cass is extremely pale. It is kind of weird, even for a gringa.”

Betty choked on her drink—iced tea, from the look of it. “Not what I meant,” she said. “I seen them people on the TV, the ones who can do things. Magic and such. Strikes me you could be like that. I mean, I’m a good Christian woman. I’ve always thought magic came from, you know, the devil, but—but maybe it don’t, after all.”

“If it helps, think of it as miracles,” Luis said. “That’s what I do. My cousin’s a priest, one of my aunts is a nun, and my mom still drags me to mass every chance she gets. If I thought this power came out of a bad place, I wouldn’t dare be using it.”

It puzzled me, this apparently quite serious discussion of the obvious, but then I thought of Pearl. She was what this woman feared—evil masquerading as good for as long as might be convenient.

“I had a good feeling about you two right off,” Betty said. “Might be a little wild-looking, but you’ve got good hearts. That’s important.”

The very unlikely Betty had something in her, too. Power, of a kind, though nothing that I recalled meeting before. It was a core of something I could only call a fierce, persistent hope. The kind that drove her, despite the hardships she’d endured, to make food for strangers and strive to provide a measure of comfort.

She was, I realized, human. Deeply, helplessly human, with all the faults and foibles, shining courage and power of that heritage. Unlike the Djinn, she had little control over what was to come; she likely didn’t even expect to survive it. What she did, she did in the face of panic, terror, pain, and death.

She was beautiful. I caught my breath, staring at her, because it was as if my Djinn eyes had opened again, seen all the depth of her past and complex, intricate, unpredictable future. I had spent so much time with Wardens, who were at least somewhat like the Djinn; I thought I’d known humanity in its purest form.

But this woman—this one, hopeful woman—this was humanity, distilled and purified, and it humbled me.

I ate in silence while Luis and Betty chattered on—discussing pasts, comparing relatives, talking of nothing in particular, and certainly not the lives being lost, the cities burning, the horrific cost of what was to come. It might be called denial by some, but in that moment I thought it was the very strength that made humanity so successful… the ability to transcend reality, to create reality around them, even for a moment.

It was a gift the Djinn did not have, and until that moment, I had never imagined it to be so powerful.

“So,” Betty said, when we had finished and there was nothing left on our plates but a few scraps and scrapes. “How do you folks feel about dessert? I’ve got some pies I made up fresh this morning, apple and chocolate. Even got some fresh whipped cream.”

“Apple,” Luis said, just as I said, “Chocolate.” She looked from one of us to the other, and laughed.

“I’ll have one of each,” she said. “Might as well. Can’t let it go to waste.”

She stood up to go back to the kitchen, and stacked our empty plates; when Luis tried to help, she smacked the back of his hand in mock anger. I watched her go, and couldn’t help but smile.

“I like that,” Luis said. He was staring right at me. “Your smile. You’re different when you do that.”

“Am I?”

“Usually when you smile, it’s to make a point, but that was just”—he shrugged—“human, I guess. And sweet. You’re not often sweet, and it’s nice.”

I felt oddly uncomfortable with that, and shrugged, no longer smiling. “Perhaps it’s in anticipation of the pie,” I said.

“C’mon, you’ve gotta admit. Nice lady, overcoming the odds, making pies… Who doesn’t love that?”

“Perhaps she killed the former proprietor and stuck his dismembered body in his own freezer,” I shot back. “Not so heartwarming a story, then.”

He threw a wadded-up napkin at me, and I was starting to smile again, perhaps with a wicked edge, when I heard plates crash, and Betty screamed.

I don’t remember coming out of the chair, only the feel of the swinging door beneath my hand as I stiff-armed it open.

There was a Djinn in the kitchen. Tall, slender, human, and male in form; he had a long fall of blond hair and eyes that glowed an unearthly, livid white.

I didn’t know him, and it didn’t matter who he was, or had been; what he was now was rage and fury and pain given flesh.

And he was killing Betty.

His hand was locked around her throat. The broken fragments of the plates she had dropped were still bouncing and spinning across the floor, and time seemed to slow as I lunged forward.…

And the Djinn released Betty, spun away, and caught me instead.

She fell down, coughing and choking, but still breathing. He had never intended to kill her, I realized; she’d merely been a bell for him to ring to draw me to him. And that, I found, was all right. It was a choice I’d have gladly made.

Odd, how much I had changed.

Behind me, Luis shouted something that I failed to understand, but it didn’t matter; the floor beneath the Djinn suddenly rose upward in a geyser of tile, broken concrete, dirt, shattered pipes, and slammed him into the ceiling. He lost his grip on me, and I tumbled back down the instant mound of debris to crash breathlessly into the steel casing of the ovens.

Luis headed toward me, but I pointed urgently at Betty. He changed course, grabbed her, and towed her backward, pushing her out the swinging door.

“Wait!” she yelled. “What are you doing?”

“Getting my damn pie,” he said. “Stay down.”

The Djinn hadn’t been thrown off guard for long; he broke free of the pile of debris around him, but instantly met the flat side of a large skillet that Luis grabbed off the stove—still red-hot underneath, I realized. After he’d batted the Djinn across the face with it, Luis dropped the metal with a hiss of pain; the Djinn howled, evidently feeling the damage to its flesh as much as a human would have, but neither the crushed bones nor the badly burned skin bought us more than a few seconds.

Time enough for me to yank a natural gas connection loose from the wall. “Fire!” I shouted to Luis, who snapped his fingers.

The hissing gas line erupted in a blue-white jet of flame, engulfing the Djinn. It was a distraction, not a victory; we had little chance, it seemed, of destroying this one with the tools we had at hand. “Get Betty!” I yelled. “Get her out of here!” I was working hard to limit the natural tendency of the fire to eat its way back through the gas line, into a larger store; once that happened, the explosion would be spectacular, and there wouldn’t be anything left of the restaurant. I had to buy time for Luis and the woman to get clear before that happened.

The Djinn was managing to extinguish itself, so I grabbed a bottle of cooking oil, ripped the cap off, and threw it in his direction. The plastic bottle was easy enough to melt in midflight, and the oil coated his skin and gave the fire fresh life all over him.

He was no longer amused.

I felt the coming blow, and the whole building rocked around me, as if it had suddenly been struck by a tornado, but the weather outside was calm and clear. The Djinn was breaking the restaurant apart—and in the kitchen area, sharp metal was everywhere, lying loose, or just lightly secured. A block on the counter holding a succession of cutting knives tipped over, and the knives slid free and rotated in the air, each finding and focusing in on me with their sharp points.

Half of them flew directly at me in a rush, and I had just enough time to fling out my hand and create a strong magnetic field on the front of the stove. The knives, and most of the other metal pulling free in the room, veered course and clanged against the stove’s side in a near-unbreakable bond. The Djinn suddenly snuffed out all of the fire—even the flaming torch of the gas jet—and went very still. I felt the energy in the room change, as if something very large that had been casually swatting at me suddenly turned and focused its attention on me quite closely.

Another Djinn misted into existence next to the one who still smoldered with sparks in its blackened skin. Then another, and another.

I backed through the swinging doors, not daring to take my eyes off them. “Get in the truck,” I called over my shoulder. “Take her with you. Start driving.”

“Cass—”

“Do it!” I heard the front bell ring as they left, and the normality of that sound was made all the more wrenching by the three Djinn who simply misted right through the walls, walking toward me. I knew that I couldn’t take on three Djinn; even with Luis, there was no possibility of surviving the experience.

Instead, I took in a deep breath and set myself on fire.

The effect was, indeed, spectacular; the flames bloomed along my sleeve, and I screamed in panic and made a show of trying to slap them out. In fact, I was spreading them over my jacket, then down my pants, until my whole body was coated in a writhing fury of orange fire. I screamed again, ran into a table, and fell to the floor, still burning. The floor around me began to sizzle and melt. Flames climbed up the wooden legs of the chair against which I lay.

I thrashed a bit, and then went still. The hiss of the burning floor and table was helpful in selling the illusion that my flesh was blackening and sizzling like meat on a grill, and after a few more seconds, the Djinn lost interest in me and misted away.

I let the fire go on for a few more seconds. It was as well I did, because the last Djinn to leave—the one I’d burned, who did in fact still trail smoke behind him—came back to watch for a moment. Not mistrust, I thought, so much as satisfaction.

When he was finally gone, I doused the flames, rolled up to my feet, and ran for my motorcycle. Luis’s truck was long gone; I had done my best to focus the Djinn on me, not on him, so I was hopeful that he wouldn’t be their target if he was fleeing. All I needed to do was fire up the Victory, and…

The Victory was a steaming, melted pile of scrap metal.

I stared at it, grim and quite disappointed, and with a muttered curse, moved down the street to another building, then another. It seemed that every vehicle in town had been destroyed, and I was still searching for something, anything, that could take me on the road when I heard, very distinctly, the blatting sounds of motorcycle engines, more than one, approaching down the deserted main street.

I ducked outside. A biker gang, at least twenty strong, was cruising through, checking out the prospects for food, fuel, or looting; they had the hard, grubby look of men and women who’d been on the road for days, and the hunted expressions of those who’d seen too much.

I stepped out into their way, and the first wave of bikes coasted to a stop just inches from my body.

Even idling, the Harleys were loud beasts. The one I immediately pegged as the leader was looking me over, frowning, and he finally said, “So, are you stupid, or just crazy?”

“Neither,” I said. “I need a motorcycle.”

Under normal circumstances that would have gotten a derisive laugh, but not this time. They had no more humor left, it seemed. I saw guns being drawn, including a sawed-off shotgun, which would have worried me if I hadn’t already had considerable experience with firearms. I didn’t blink, or look away from the leader’s face.

“You need to get out of here and keep moving,” I told him. “Stay away from towns. Try to live off the land, and conserve your fuel. Once it goes dry, there may not be more for a while. Things are going to get worse, not better.”

“I’m still listening for a reason not to shoot you and get you out of our way,” he said. “Got anything, blondie?”

In response, I deflated both tires on his bike. He yelped in surprise as the weight shifted, struggling to hold it upright. “I could destroy some of your bikes,” I said quietly. “I could do that quite spectacularly, if I wished. They blow up so well. Or I could fuse the parts together. Or even fuse you into the metal, which I assure you would be very unpleasant, until you died of the experience. But I’m trying to be hospitable.” I called a fireball and balanced it in a blazing hand-sized bonfire on my palm. “I need a vehicle. I’m sorry I have nothing to give you for it, but let’s call it the spoils of war. If I’m still alive later, I’ll buy a new one for the leader of the”—I checked the logo on the back of his weathered denim jacket—“Devil’s Traitors.”

To his credit, he didn’t immediately back off, though his eyes had narrowed at the sight of the flame held so casually in my hand. “We’re out of Albuquerque,” he said. “You’d better make it a fucking awesome bike, lady.” He looked toward the back of the pack, and pointed. “Take Pointer’s ride. Pointer, double up with Gar, and don’t bitch about it. We’ll steal you another one down the road.”

The tough-looking one-eyed man he indicated didn’t seem pleased, but he did as instructed, leaving the Harley idling and leaning on its kickstand as he took his place on the other bike. I nodded thanks, and mounted up.

“Blondie,” the biker said from the front of the pack. I released the kickstand. “If I see you again and you aren’t wheeling in a brand-new shiny ride for Pointer, this ain’t going to go well for you. Got me?”

I nodded. “Seems fair,” I said. “I live in Albuquerque. I’ll find you.”

“Not if I find you first,” he said, and let out the clutch. They picked up speed and left the streets in a swirl of dust and trash.

I hit the throttle, and went in pursuit of Luis.

He’d stopped on the side of the road twenty miles away, at another roadhouse; this one was deserted and locked, but he’d opened it up, and Betty was inspecting the establishment with enthusiasm. He eyed my new Harley with raised eyebrows. “Bike trouble?” he asked.

“Don’t ask.” I was annoyed at the way the Harley rode; the bars were too far forward and low, and it would take time to customize it properly. I missed the Victory. “She’ll be all right here. We have to go. I’m not entirely sure the Djinn will leave us be, although I did a good imitation of gruesomely dying for their benefit.”

“Would have paid to see that one,” he said, and then shook his head, all humor falling away. “No, actually, I wouldn’t. Let’s never put on that particular show, okay?”

“I agree,” I said. “Let’s not.”

Tracking Joanne was exhausting, and we dodged trouble over and over again; there were more Djinn now, and more active. The few humans we ran into seemed more interested in fleeing than fighting, which was lucky; it meant less destruction left in our wake.

But it took too long to match our course to Joanne’s finally stationary position.

I released the throttle on the roaring Harley and coasted to a halt as we topped the last rise. We’d gotten an update from Lewis Orwell to meet Joanne Baldwin at a government contractor’s secured installation in the Texas panhandle near Amarillo, and it was close, very close—though the smoke rising up into the clear blue sky didn’t bode well for the installation’s fate. Luis’s truck stopped next to me, and he rolled down the window.

“Madre,” Luis murmured, as we looked down at the true scale of the destruction in front of us. The buildings that had—presumably—once existed had been leveled into rubble. The secure fencing at the perimeter of the facility lay in twists and tatters, and near the center of the large debris field lay an enormous pit from which black smoke and dust still drifted. “What the hell was this place?”

There was a sign—damaged and ripped partway down the center, but still readable. “Some kind of research and construction facility,” I said. “Nuclear weapons.”

“Perfect,” Luis said grimly. “My day wasn’t sucking hard enough; I get to fry my balls off, too. Feel that? Radiation’s off the scale.”

“It can be dealt with,” I said. “She’s down there. In the pit. Buried, I think.”

“Sure, because that’ll be easy, given our great history with that kind of thing. Plus radiation.”

“And there are Djinn down there, as well,” I said, concentrating harder. The residual boiling energies of the fight made a confusing smear of livid color on the aetheric, but I could still see the flitting, telltale motions that betrayed the presence of my former brothers and sisters. “She’s battling them.”

He said nothing to that, just rolled up the window. I took it to mean we were cleared to go, so I gave the Harley its head and picked up speed as it roared down the hill. Luis’s truck raced behind me. I pulled up at the fence and parked the bike, while he bounced his truck off the road and into the dirt, heading for a section of fence that had been completely shredded away in the blast. The torn edges of metal glistened like diamond as he rocketed past; he hit the brakes and slewed the truck to a stop near the edge of the still-burning pit.

“That might have been unnecessarily risky,” I told him, walking over. He flashed me a grin.

“You know me, chica. I live for drama. So. We do this fast. Tunnel down, get her out. The sooner we’re away from here, the better. Countermeasures for the radiation are going to take a hell of a lot of power we can’t afford to spend.”

I nodded and joined him at the crumbling edge. He held out his hand, and I took it, but Luis didn’t immediately start the process of moving earth toward Joanne. He took in a deep breath, and looked at me.

“Cass,” he said. “If we don’t get through this—well, you know. But do your best to get through it, okay? I’m not ready for endings just yet.”

I nodded. If he felt he had to say it, he assessed our chances to be even worse than they’d been so far, and that was poor indeed. I could feel it all around us—the fury was thick in the air, choking and hot as the smoke. The Earth wanted Joanne dead, and if we wanted to join the fight, she’d gladly take us, too.

I suppose we could have turned away, but Lewis’s instructions had been specific: Find Joanne, and keep her safe. She was needed, badly needed, in this fight.

Currently, she looked as if she needed the help very, very badly.

We already had practice at tunneling, but this was a shallower goal than when we’d rescued the trapped Wardens outside of Seattle; this was more of a ramp than a shaft. I helped channel Luis’s power with finer control, slicing through the first layers of dirt, stone, metal, and rubble and flinging them up and out of the way. Once the packed earth beneath was visible, the process became more of a brute-force exercise, carving an opening down at a sharp angle. It took a surprisingly short time, considering, but then the ground had already been shaken loose by the battle that had occurred here before our arrival—which must have been spectacular.

We were still only halfway down our makeshift ramp when I felt something break on the aetheric, something massive and immensely powerful… a Djinn. That had been the death of a Djinn—no, I realized, not the death… the emptying of a Djinn, and the burst of incredibly violent energy around the body of a Warden.

Around Joanne Baldwin.

No Warden could drain a Djinn, but a Djinn could go beyond his limits; it commonly occurred when one tried to violate the will of the Mother, or one of the laws that could not be broken without cost.

Like denying death.

Someone had just saved Joanne’s life… and now the bright star that had been a Djinn was going out, its brilliance twisting in on itself, turning black and inverted and hungry.

I was seeing—and feeling—the birth of an Ifrit. It was what happened to Djinn who drained themselves past the point of no return, and now—like me—could exist only by consuming the power of others. I subsisted on the power of Wardens, but Ifrits didn’t prey on humans; there was not enough power to sustain them.

They preyed on other Djinn, and when they did, they battened on in a mindless fury, to the death.

“Faster,” I breathed. Already, the Ifrit—whoever it had once been—had secured on a victim and was ripping the immortal’s life away in bloody, unspooling strips. The chaos intensified in that narrow battlefield below us.

“Yeah, enough nice engineering,” he said, and just punched through the rest of the way, shoving aside concrete, rebar, fractured steel, earth, anything that was in our way. He dashed ahead and scrambled over the last few enormous chunks of concrete; below us was a mostly intact, though pitted and cracked, floor. I followed his example, and saw a hellish nightmare of smoke, flame, the residual aetheric glow of radiation… and Djinn. There were several facing us, though they’d momentarily paused.

Joanne Baldwin was a few feet away, though for a shocked second I didn’t recognize her. She was filthy, tattered, and underneath the grime and streaks of blood, she had the tender-pink skin of someone very recently healed. Luis didn’t allow it to give him pause at all, remarkably enough.

“Sorry we’re late,” he said, and jumped down the rest of the way, flexing his knees as he landed. His smile was sheer, raw nerve, though there was a hint of terror in the shine of his eyes. “Madre, you don’t go halfway when you blow shit up, do you? There’s enough rads burning in here to barbecue lead. We can’t stay here long.”

Joanne seemed both shocked and relieved to see us. She said something I couldn’t hear over the sudden roar of a Djinn’s attack; the Djinn was quickly countered by a blur that was moving in Joanne’s defense. I was distracted by that, and focused in only as Luis said, with remarkable calm, “… moving fast. Hey, Cass, you remember Joanne?”

It was a foolish question; no one, having met the Weather Warden, ever forgot her. Whether such memories were favorable was another thing entirely, and we had far more to worry about than the niceties.

All I could do was nod, and she returned it shakily. To say that she’d looked better would be something of an understatement; I was amazed the woman was still standing.

I looked at the Djinn arrayed against us, and felt a tremor of memory; I’d faced some of these same ones as we’d emerged from another tunnel, in Seattle. Ashan’s closest allies. “They’re under the Mother’s control,” I said, which was probably unnecessary, given the near-insane pale shine in their eyes. “They won’t stop coming for you. They know you hurt her in what you did here.” And Baldwin had, indeed, scarred the Mother deeply this time with the raw, bleeding radiation—another wound on a maddened and angry beast already snarling with fury.

“I know that,” Joanne shot back. “It was kind of the plan. Here. Rocha, take this. Try to bind one of them.”

Luis gave her a puzzled look. “Try to what? What the hell are you talking about?” He wasn’t following only because he was too busy calculating our chances; I, however, realized immediately what she was saying.

Bind.

She’d been binding the Djinn into bottles—and there, coming out of the shadows, misting into human form, was one of them.

David, the leader of the New Djinn. His human shell had skin that held a subtle bronzed metallic shine to it, and his eyes were the bright, unsettling color of melting copper. Beautiful, and eerie, and at the moment, full of fury directed at those who were coming for his lover. No—his wife. David, the Djinn, had bound himself permanently to a human, a bond as strong as any bottle in terms of vows… though now, I realized, he was bound a second time, into a glass prison that helped insulate him from the irresistible siren call of the Mother.

He nodded to me, as one equal to another. In my bad old days as a Djinn, I would have found it gallingly presumptuous; even the highest of the New Djinn was no match for the lowest of the True Djinn, or that had been my fixed and constant opinion then. Now my horizons had… expanded. David was a burning brand of power, steady and pure, and his origins mattered little.… If anything, the humanity from which he’d been born gave him more substance to me now. He had lived as I did now; he understood and cherished the pull of the world, the flesh, the strange and quiet beauty of a human life.

He loved Joanne. It was as much a part of him as the flesh that clothed him, or the blazing light in his smile. Something, perhaps, to aspire to be—something like David.

I had no more time to think on it. Two Djinn came for us in the same instant; the reaction from both Joanne and David was almost instantaneous, the stuff of pure, natural communion between the two of them. David might have been the most powerful of the New Djinn, but those he was facing were to be feared regardless, and there were too many of them. He met two of them head-on and was slammed back against debris, momentarily out of the fight—but Joanne didn’t pause. Didn’t even slow as she strode forward.

Weather Wardens had a power uniquely suited to battling Djinn, at least those unwise enough to maintain a form that wasn’t completely founded in flesh… and most of the True Djinn rarely bothered with flesh and bone and blood. They preferred to establish themselves in a less corporeal form, and it left them vulnerable to the one thing that Weather Wardens commanded above all others: wind.

She raised a tearing, howling storm in the debris-choked cave. She was sensible enough to raise a shield to keep the worst of it from us, but the Djinn quickly realized their disadvantage. Some took flesh. Others stubbornly tried to battle her on their own terms—a less-than-winning proposition.

And one of those who had gone to hard, brutal, angry flesh headed straight for me, eyes glowing, head lowered, teeth bared to rip and chew.

Baldwin had pressed an uncapped glass bottle into Luis’s hands, but he clearly was still struggling to process her instructions while simultaneously assessing the dangers coming at us on all sides. There was no time to explain. I grabbed it from him and shouted the incantation that sealed a Djinn into a prison of glass and hatred. “Be thou bound to my service! Be thou bound to my service! Be thou bound to my service—”

As fast as I said it, the Djinn was faster, roaring up on me in a flash of smeared light, and his fist made contact with my chest just as the second syllable of the last word left my lips.

I was incredibly lucky. It would have shattered my rib cage into powder, had that blow landed at full strength, but he was already dissolving into mist as it hit, shrieking his anger and frustration in an eerily metallic wail.

I had just imprisoned one of my own people, and he wasn’t the first I’d subjected to this indignity. I did not have time to feel the guilt of it, not even a second, though I caught my breath on a gasp even as I corked the bottle and tossed it to Luis, then grabbed another empty container from the case that was lying on the rocks in front of us. I picked out another Djinn and repeated the incantation, faster this time, and she blew apart into smoke and dust before she was able to land a blow on me.

The third bottle, though, was already occupied, as I found out when I yanked out the cork and felt the tingling shiver of power speed through me. A Djinn came howling from her prison, and the hissing tentacles of mist solidified into a tall, dark-skinned woman with glossy hair in tiny braids, and a ferocious grin. Her eyes were as golden as a hunting cat’s, and she tilted her head forward, tiny beads swinging and clacking at the ends of her braids, as she considered me, her new master. The grin was just as predatory as her eyes. Her name was Rahel, and she commanded respect throughout all of the hierarchy of the Djinn, because many thought she was utterly insane. She did enjoy making life difficult for anyone she encountered—human and Djinn alike.

I thought for a moment she’d target me for that chaotic instinct, but then she gave an ear-piercing yell of bloody joy and threw herself into the fray against those coming for us. Interesting, I thought. Not to mention perilous, trying to keep that one caged. I went on to the next bottle—fortunately, empty. We had cut the odds by half, and the Djinn who were fighting for us were more than capable now of keeping them from menacing our fragile human forms.

That was a very good thing, because although Joanne was still standing, she wouldn’t be for long. I could see the shock setting in on her—given the blood soaking her clothing and smearing her skin, no one could fail to be weak, even if the injuries had been healed. I was expending energy as well in the binding of the Djinn; I’d never realized what a drain it was, but each required an effort of will and power, and I was rapidly growing weary.

Luis was staying alert for any other threats, but when only one maddened enemy was left, he took the bottle from my hand and did the binding spell, slotted the bottle back into the padded box, searched my pockets for the other bottles as well to store them safely away.

And for the first time, it was eerily quiet in this hot, dust-shrouded ruin where fires still burned. The bound Djinn went still, waiting for instructions, and instead of looking to me, who technically held their bottles and their wills, they were watching Joanne.

She fell on her knees to the ground, as if driven there by the pressure. It looked more like a collapse of relief than one of weakness, but David went to her side immediately. She was safe, with him.

“What did we just do?” Luis asked. He sounded shaken. “Fuck.”

“We did what we had to do to survive,” I replied. Unlike the Weather Warden, I felt no relief; I was shaken indeed by what I’d done, and what the price would be for it. I was a Djinn, one of them, and I had just raped their will. There would be no forgiveness for that. I saw it in their eyes. I forced myself to forget that, and focus on more immediate issues. “We won’t survive long if we don’t leave this place. The radiation is too high even for Earth Wardens to stay here much longer.” It was a constant burn now against my skin. A human, unprotected, would have been fatally compromised in minutes.

David gathered up Joanne in his arms; she made some halfhearted protest, and he some response, but I saw the utter relief on her face, as if some endless pain had finally stopped hurting when she was in his embrace. They’d been parted for a time, I realized, and what I was looking at was not just love as humans knew it, but something stronger. Two halves of a whole, being mated.

The faithful, constant love of the Djinn was, I had always believed, unique in the world. I hadn’t known that humans were capable of such things, until I saw how well the two of them fit together.

“Don’t ever do anything this stupid again,” David said to her as I picked up the box of bottles and led the way back over the scattered concrete blocks and up into the tunnel. I heard her scratchy, half-amused laugh.

“If I had a nickel for every time somebody said that…”

He dropped his voice to a low tone, too low for me to overhear, not that I wished to do so. It would be private, and serious, and I had enough of that to carry all on my own, along with the bottles. The box wasn’t heavy, but it was unwieldy, and Luis took one side of it as we started the uphill journey.

“Second verse, same as the first,” he said, panting with effort; we had packed the tunnel’s earth as much as possible, but it was still uneven footing, and easy to slip. An angle that had seemed expeditious and simple coming down was less so when climbing out. “New rule: We don’t do tunnels again. Sound good?”

“Excellent,” I agreed, and meant it. I realized that I’d left the Djinn standing down there at the bottom, waiting for orders. “Should I put them back in the bottles? All of them?”

“Not all,” Luis said. “You don’t have David’s bottle, anyway. I’m pretty sure Joanne does. I’d leave at least one out, in case we need the help.”

“Which?”

He shrugged. “Rahel,” he said. “She’s always been friendlier to humans than most.”

“Not to me,” I said, thinking of her evil grin and the shine of those eyes. But I muttered under my breath, “Back in the bottles, all of you. Except Rahel.” I was relatively new at enslaving Djinn, and it felt deeply wrong to do it, but a surge of power raced through me, and I felt it echoing in those I’d bound. They evaporated into mist, contained by the glass, and I stoppered the bottles quickly before we resumed our climb.

Rahel, in fine Djinn style, elected to leap the distance and wait for us up on the surface, while we toiled every brutal inch of the way. Once we’d achieved the sunlight, Luis braced himself on a toppled wall and crouched down, head lowered. Sweat dripped from the point of his chain until he wiped his face with his equally sweaty bare arm. “Damn. Next time remind me to angle my tunnels better.”

“You were in a hurry,” I said, and patted my pockets again to make sure I had put all of the bottles in the box. Luis added a last one just as David strode out of the tunnel and set Joanne up on her feet. He held her until he was sure she was steady.

“Anything to add?” I asked. Joanne nodded and pulled a few from the torn pockets of her jacket as well—all except one, which she considered, and then kept.

It wasn’t David’s. It was corked. When I gave her a questioning look, she said, “It’s Venna. I can’t risk her getting out again. She’s—” Joanne shuddered a little, and David moved closer again, offering silent support. “She saved my life. And she’s paying the price.”

“Ifrit,” I whispered. Venna. I’d mourn my sister when I could, but the love I’d borne her didn’t extend to the twisted, blackened, starveling creature that existed now in that bottle. Ifrits could be killed, but it was a difficult matter, and one I had no desire to attempt in my current human condition. Of course, that human condition also protected me from her, but even so. Venna had been one of the best of us, of all of the Djinn; it pained me deeply that she’d become so lost. Ifrits couldn’t be healed, not unless they destroyed someone more powerful than themselves, and even then the chances weren’t good of success.

The only Djinn greater than Venna—and this was arguable—was Ashan.

I became aware of a burning thirst, and shrugged off the pack that I’d been carrying—it wasn’t large, but some things I’d learned were necessities, including bottles of water. I had four. I took three and passed two to Luis and Joanne, then leaned against a wall to gulp down mine. The water was warm, but it washed the taste of dirt and death from my mouth, and relieved some of the budding headache I’d begun to nurse.

“We need to get moving,” Luis said to me. “Radiation’s still high up here, plus this place is going to get real damn busy, real soon. Might be chaos out there, but they’re still not going to ignore an honest-to-God terrorist attack on a nuclear facility. Not if there’s any government still standing.”

“I’m not a terrorist,” Joanne said, pausing in her quest to drain her entire bottle in one gulp. She looked pale beneath the drying blood. “I have clearances. Sort of.”

“Yeah, well, you entered under false pretenses, blew up the place, and there’s radiation all over the county, so I kind of think you’re a terrorist by definition,” he replied. “And because we came to get you, we’re a terrorist cell, I guess. Great. Always wanted to be on some kind of no-fly list, although after today I guess that covers everybody in the world. Won’t be too many planes getting off the ground these days. Too easy for the Djinn to take them out.”

Joanne finished the rest of her water. I hoped she wouldn’t make herself ill with it; she’d drained it too quickly. I wasn’t so concerned for her as I was for my own fastidiousness; human bodily functions, including vomiting, were still very distasteful to me. “Who else is coming our way?” she asked.

“Not sure. Cops, fire, every federal agency still operating? Maybe the military. This wasn’t some small-time target, you know. It’s going to get a lot of attention, as much as circumstances allow.”

“So I suppose we should…?”

“Seal up the tunnel, contain the radiation, and get the hell out of Dodge? Yeah. That’d be a good plan.” Luis—who also had finished his water too quickly—tossed his empty plastic bottle down into the tunnel, where it rolled into darkness.

“Bad recycler,” Joanne said, but tossed her empty in as well.

“Jo, you brought down the whole fucking complex and cracked open a few nukes. I don’t think a couple of biodegradable water bottles really count at this point.”

He rose to his feet, and I rose with him, as if we’d been pulled by the same string. Our hands fit together as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and for a moment I remembered David cradling Joanne in his arms, and smiled. There were partnerships, and partnerships, and what I felt for Luis.…

It was not the time to analyze what I felt, and I shook my head to clear it as Luis began to call power.

Collapsing a tunnel was far, far easier than building one, or keeping it open; a little application of force, and the smooth, even structure began to come apart… in streams of dirt at first, and then, as the surface tension holding the earth together broke, an avalanche of soil and rock. Luis pressed down on the wrecked room where we’d found Joanne, and the last remaining roof supports collapsed, burying it in a roaring thump.

Dust erupted out of the mouth of the tunnel, gray and cloudy, turning darker as the collapse raced up toward us.

Then the entire pit sank down another ten feet, and silence fell.

“If we had time, I’d recommend covering this whole place in concrete,” he said. “The radiation’s contained, and I accelerated the decay, but it’s going to take a while to cool off.… Damn—here they come.” Luis turned slightly toward the horizon, and I heard the far-off wail of sirens. “Right. Time to go. Who needs a ride?”

Joanne—who’d taken my last bottle of water and somewhat wastefully used it to rinse herself relatively clean—shook her head. She was busy plucking the bottles out of the padded case where I’d put them, and wrapping them in a dense wad of material, which she then stuffed into my nearly empty backpack and handed to me. “You’re the official keeper of the Djinn. Try not to fall on that,” she said. “That would be bad.”

I took the pack and adjusted the straps on my shoulders to let it ride comfortably. “What was wrong with the box?”

“One thing about carrying boxes—you tend to drop them in a fight,” she said. “Wearing them is a much better option.” She studied me for a few seconds. “You don’t look happy about it.”

I hated that she’d made me responsible for my tethered, imprisoned brothers and sisters, hated it, but I couldn’t articulate the reasons. Nor would I, to her. “We need to go. The Djinn will be back on us soon, and we don’t need more entanglements with humans.” I knew, better than she did, that the rest of the Djinn would make us a priority now—we weren’t merely annoying Wardens to be squashed; we were annoying Wardens with prisoners who knew that the accords between Djinn and Wardens were back in place and that it was possible to enslave the Djinn again. That was knowledge they would very much want to destroy at its source before the rest of the Wardens began to try to act on it.

Joanne was asking where we wanted to go. Luis said, “It’s all pretty much apocalyptic at this point, so take your pick. I’d suggest heading to Sedona. That’s where Orwell was taking the rest of the Wardens, if they didn’t get held up on the way. It’s a fairly good, protected place.”

We headed for the vehicles, and Luis stopped dead as he stared at his truck. “Damn,” he said, and kicked the front tire. It was sitting in mud—mud that stank of oils and mechanical fluids. “I must have busted a line. This thing ain’t going anywhere.” He could fix it, given time; Earth wardens were gifted at that kind of repair, but the sirens were keening close now.

“Then you’re with me,” I said, and pulled him with me toward the motorcycle. He let loose a string of Spanish obscenities under his breath.

“I ain’t riding bitch,” he said.

“Then you’re walking,” I said, “because it’s my bike.” I was not concerned for his macho sensibilities, and after a furious look at the now-visible flashing lights on the horizon, he climbed on behind me. I smiled—since he couldn’t see the flash of teeth now—and gunned the Harley in a sand-spouting roar.

Joanne and David had their own transportation, a solid-looking car that seemed capable of good speed when required. Oddly, there was already someone in the car that was parked a short distance away, covered with the inevitable blurring curtain of dust… and that was the car that Joanne and David entered, in the backseat. No sooner did the door close behind them than the car spun tires and headed for the road. “Who’s driving the car?” I asked Luis. He shrugged.

“Knowing her? Satan.”

I let out the clutch and followed. A few moments later, power shimmered the air, and I felt something passing over us like a hot gust of wind. “Veil!” Luis shouted in my ear. “We’re hidden, so don’t expect anybody to get out of the way for you from now on!”

I gunned the engine and passed the Mustang, slowing down to take a look at the driver, purely out of personal curiosity. He was a Djinn—or at least, that was my first and vivid impression, but then I had to wonder, because there was something not quite… right. The form of a Djinn, but when I checked in Oversight I saw no sign of a Djinn presence inhabiting that form. It was like a lifeless robot—the kind of hollowed-out shell that Mother Earth was using to deliver her plagues, but this one showed no such signs of infection.

Merely… emptiness.

As I was staring, the creature turned its head and met my gaze. Not vacant, after all. It was definitely being—piloted, I supposed, was the only word for it.

The Djinn’s lips moved, and I shouldn’t have been able to hear the words, but they came through clearly. “Don’t you worry about it,” said a clear, Southern-accented feminine voice. “He’s not connected to the Mother. He’s connected to me.”

“And who are you?”

“Whitney,” she said. “Djinn conduit for the younger side of the family. Pleased to meet you, Cassiel. I’ve heard all about you.”

I’d heard little to nothing of her, but there wasn’t time for chat. I just nodded, accelerated, and pulled smoothly into the lead.

We stood to make good time, I thought. It would not be too comfortable for Luis on the backseat of the bike, but he had a high padded back support, at least. He wasn’t holding on to me, because that would have put his face in range of my loose, whipping hair, and the backpack I wore prevented closer contact in any case; it would be tiring for him to keep adjusting his balance and keep his alertness up for any emergencies.

As for me, I knew I’d enjoy the ride, no matter how dangerous it might become.

I checked the gas. We had an almost full tank; the Mustang that Joanne and David used would burn through fuel much faster; but then again, with a Djinn driver they wouldn’t need to stop to refuel. Neither do I, I realized with a start. While as a Warden I could extend the life of the fuel, I couldn’t necessarily create it… but a Djinn could, and I now had one uncorked, and ready for my call.

Rahel wouldn’t be at all pleased with being put on such mundane duties, but that was hardly my concern now; I’d be dealing with the revenge of my fellows for a human lifetime, if I didn’t manage to recapture my Djinn status… or, of course, for much longer, if I did. Now didn’t seem to be the time to worry about it.

We negotiated roadblocks, both police and military, several times as sunset blazed red and faded to purple, then blue, then black. The desert night was chilly as we raced onward, following the Mustang… which seemed to be heading in the right direction, at least. The vibration of the engine beneath me soothed and invigorated me, although Luis seemed to doze behind me as he rested his head against the padding of my backpack.

Just when I’d begun to feel complacent, Rahel appeared in front of me, cross-legged, her back to the road. Floating mid-air, easily keeping pace three feet from the front tire of the Harley as it bit the asphalt in a blur. She was wearing a particularly objectionable color of lime green, something that made me think of the radiation we’d left behind us and cleared off our persons and equipment. Perhaps it had all been drawn to her clothing.

“Sistah,” she said. “Or should I call you mistress, Cassiel?”

“As you like,” I said. I didn’t raise my voice; I could whisper and she’d have no difficulty hearing me, despite the engine noise and wind. “You do enjoy showing off, don’t you?”

“Utterly,” Rahel said, and laughed. “You should try it sometime. Being Djinn doesn’t mean you have to lack a sense of drama. Or humor.” The wind blew her thin braids into a clacking, twisting, eerily snakelike mass around her head, and in perhaps conscious mockery of popular culture’s idea of a proper Djinn, she’d crossed her arms. I half expected her to give a nod and a wink, but the sharp amusement in her smile faded, leaving something more serious. “I have a message for you.”

“From whom?”

“From your big, bad boss man,” she said. “Ashan. He’s still a bastard.”

“Why would he speak to you?” I didn’t mean it in a dismissive way, but it sounded so as I spoke it; I meant only that Ashan was a True Djinn, a conduit, and the True Djinn had little interest in, or interaction with, the New Djinn unless forced. The idea that he would seek out Rahel, speak to her, seemed… highly unusual.

“Perhaps because with the end of us all imminent, our family squabbles mean little these days,” Rahel said coolly. “It cost him a great deal to regain enough control, even for a moment, to summon me and speak. You might at least have the courtesy to listen to what he felt was so important.”

I nodded stiffly. It wasn’t that I was unwilling to hear her, more that I was dreading what the words would be—and the trouble that they’d bring with them.

I expected her to simply recite the message, but as Rahel had pointed out, she did not lack a sense of drama. Her eyes flashed through with a sudden gleam of color… a faded teal blue, then a moonlit steel. Ashan’s colors. And Ashan’s voice issuing from her mouth, in an eerie puppetry. “The time is coming for you, Cassiel,” he said, and that was Ashan, looking out from the shell of Rahel’s form. Ashan’s cold, certain voice, speaking to me from beyond time, from another place altogether. “Your little vacation from duty is almost over. Face your fears now. Face yourself. See what I know to be true about you… that you are not one of them, and never will be. If you value the continued existence of the Djinn, you will act. Soon. Unless you’ve grown too weak with your love of humanity.”

He smiled, and it was not a pleasant expression, or a kind one. It woke rage in me, and fear, and a desire to throttle him blue, not that in his case it would make much impression on him at all.

And then, with just as much speed as he’d appeared, Ashan was gone, and Rahel was back in her own form, cocking an eyebrow at my expression. “I see you didn’t care for what he had to say,” she said. “How surprising. And you’re usually so good-natured.”

“Silence,” I snapped. “Go do something useful.”

“Not unless you have a highly specific order for me.” She stretched herself out sinuously on thin air, propped up on one elbow, and yawned, showing pointed catlike teeth. Her eyes slitted vertically, and the pupils glowed an unnatural green in the Harley’s headlights. Her skin had a warm matte glow to it, and in her own way she was as beautiful as anything I’d ever seen.

I wanted to rip her to pieces, and she knew it, and it amused her deeply. Anything I ordered her to do, she’d pick it apart, pull it to pieces, bend it all out of meaning and to her own benefit—and she’d waste my time, endlessly, in definitions.

“Please yourself, then,” I said, and gritted my teeth as she rolled over to float on her back.

Then she began to sing obnoxiously cheerful popular songs to the burning stars and rising, orange-stained moon.

It was a very long ride.