Firestorm (Weather Warden #5)

Firestorm (Weather Warden #5) Page 7

There was a sudden blowtorch flare out of the forest, and another human figure staggered out of the inferno. Not burned, though she was smudged dark with smoke and coughing like her lungs might blow out. Emily had looked better. Her clothes were smoldering, but she was keeping it together. Barely.

"Get in the truck!" she screamed. Her eyes skipped right over the glistening twisted form of the Demon, and I realized that she couldn't see it--that Demons, like the dark shadows of Djinn who became Ifrits, weren't visible to normal Wardens. I didn't waste my breath. Emily tried the truck door, found it locked, and cursed breathlessly. She fumbled for keys. I reached in my broken passenger window and unlocked the doors, and we crammed ourselves in. I was sitting on broken glass. Didn't care.

Emily started it up and hit reverse just as a tree began to topple in front of us. She screamed and floored it, and the SUV slalomed, skidded, and grabbed dirt. We rocketed backward. I hoped she was watching behind us, because I was riveted to two things: the torch of a tree that was heading for the roof of the SUV, and the twisted, flickering shadow of the Demon loping after us in pursuit.

"Do something!" Emily yelled at me. She looked scared to death, and she didn't know the half of what I did.

"Do what?" I screamed back, and grabbed for the panic strap as the SUV bounced over rocks. Still moving backward at a speed that no human-operated vehicle was supposed to go, at least in that direction and in the middle of nowhere.

"Anything!" she roared.

The noise of the tree crashing toward us was lost in the constant deafening train-whistle scream of the fire, but there was no doubt that it was going to hit us. And if the truck was put out of commission...

I sucked in a deep breath of air that was almost too hot to breathe, concentrated, and grabbed the dashboard as I stared at the falling tree.

Come on, come on, come on... Updrafts. There were plenty of updrafts, no shortage of those, but they were wild and unpredictable, fueled by an incredible outpouring of energy.

I grabbed hold of a rising superheated column of air and wrenched it free of its source, then directed it at an angle at the falling tree. Twenty feet. It was coming for us fast, and no way were we going to clear it in time. Flames all around us. Ten feet. Heading right for the roof of the SUV...

I let the superheated blast of air go, cooled the outer edge, and it hit the tree like a huge blunt object, hammering it off course. Not by much.

The outer blackened pine branches snapped off on my side of the truck, and the trunk crushed the underbrush just a couple of inches to the right of the SUV's hood.

Emily shot me a disbelieving look. I shrugged and took my hands off the dashboard. Left wet, sweaty handprints behind.

I couldn't see the Demon anymore. Wishful thinking made me hope that Demons weren't impervious to fire, but damn, I pretty much knew better than that. Demons were impervious to everything nature or humans could toss their way. They could be contained by Djinn, but destroyed? Probably not, once they'd achieved full form, as this one had.

We were clear of the fire suddenly. Trees swayed around us, uneasy in the looming smoke, but nothing was aflame around us. Emily had, temporarily, outrun the flames.

She slowed the SUV, stopped, and wiped her hands on her filthy pants. She was shaking all over, and black as a coal miner at the end of a shift. Eyes red and bloodshot.

"That," she said faintly, "was maybe a little too close."

"A little," I agreed. "Nice driving."

"Nice wind management," she replied, and was overtaken by a series of racking, tearing coughs. Sounded painful. I leaned over, put my hand on her back, and concentrated on the air inside her lungs. I oxygenated it as much as possible, then extended it into a bubble within the cab of the SUV. Couldn't do it for long, because we'd both get high and giggly, but it would help, short-term.

"What the hell just happened?" I asked, in between gasps. Emily put the SUV in gear and managed--somehow--to turn it around on the narrow road so we could drive forward instead of backward. Smoke was thick and acrid around us, blowing our direction.

"Something's working against us," Emily said grimly. "Don't know what it is. I thought it was another group of Wardens, but now I don't know. It's not just the typical crap you get in wildfires. You know what I'm talking about?"

I did. Wildfires were dangerous in and of themselves; they hardly needed any villains to come add complications. I still vividly remembered the big Yellowstone fire that had claimed so many lives among the Wardens, several years back... the one that had destroyed Star both physically and mentally. That hadn't been anything but the nature of fire and the cruel purpose of the earth.

I had a good idea of who had been messing with the fire here: a Demon Mark-ridden Warden. And that made sense of why the Djinn had elected to stay away. The hatching of a full-blown Demon out of its human carapace was nothing they'd want to be around. David had fought a full-grown Demon, once upon a time, and I had to assume he'd won, but it couldn't have been an easy fight.

Out of nowhere, I remembered David telling me, We are made of fire. He'd meant Djinn, of course, and he wasn't exactly being literal, but it made me wonder. Djinn reacted to light and heat, to the transformation of energy. I wondered if Demons were the same. If they were drawn to these kinds of events to help them--hatch. If so, there might be more of them out there--Wardens with Demon Marks, moving mindlessly toward something that would finish the process of incubation. Probably they wouldn't even understand why. I remembered how it had felt when my own Demon Mark began to manifest itself in a big way... I'd been euphoric, almost godlike. No thought for consequences. And no sense of self-preservation, really.

I started to tell Emily about it, but then I realized that it wouldn't do any good. Even if she believed me--which was doubtful--there wasn't anything she could do about it. We were on our own out here in the wild Canadian wilderness, apparently. I missed Marion. She'd know, if anybody did, how much trouble we were all in right now.

Emily got us back to a logging road, then out to a paved two-lane road. There were police barricades flashing in the distance. She slowed and pulled over to the narrow shoulder.

"We need more Wardens," she said. "Weather and Fire. Think you can get us anything?"

"No idea. I'll try." I pulled out my cell phone and dialed up the hotline number. Busy. I reconsidered, dialed Paul's personal number.

Busy.

Marion's rang, though. She answered without her typical calm assurance; in fact, she sounded downright sharp. "Joanne?"

"Yeah."

"Where are you?"

"Wildfire across the border in Canada," I said. "Long story. Look, there's a desperate need for--"

"I know," she cut me off. "We've got wildfires breaking out everywhere, and damn few Fire Wardens left to fight it. There's not much I can do for you guys. Do the best you can. Let it burn, if you have to."

I cradled the phone against my chest and looked at Emily's grimy face. "Where's this thing heading?" Under the black oily veil of smoke, she looked troubled. "Ultimately? I'd have to say it's making a beeline for Montreal. But one thing's for sure, it'll take out every town on the way, too. Five thousand, ten thousand homes at a chunk. If this thing isn't stopped..."

I got back on the phone. "No go on the hands-off, Marion. We need to find a way to firebreak this thing."

"I'll get Weather on it," she sighed. It was clearly not a new refrain. "See what you can do from there. And Jo?"

"Yeah?"

"Lewis says that there's a hurricane brewing just past Jamaica. If it forms and comes inland, we could be looking at another very bad time in Florida. There's another one right behind it that looks like it could veer to hit the Gulf Coast, or South America."

"Is there anything that isn't going crazy?"

"No," she said flatly. "Large cave-in in Kentucky, several hundred miners and tourists trapped in the region. Most of our Earth Wardens are converging on that, but we've got warning signs all up and down the Cascadia subduction again."

"So. This would be the end of the world, then."

"We're keeping hitching posts handy for the Four Horsemen. Any luck on the Djinn front?"

"Some," I lied. Didn't seem much point in adding my bad news to the pile. "I'm working on it."

"Then you'd better quit screwing around with the fire and get the Djinn back on our side," she said grimly. "While we've still got enough of us alive to make it matter."

I hung up, took in a deep breath or two, and turned back to Emily. "Right," I said. "Let's get back to work."

There was a ranger station seven miles down another logging road--abandoned, since the rangers were out doing fire spotting, and had field radios with them. Emily and I commandeered the radio that had been left behind--a huge old clunker of a thing, and proof positive that upgrades weren't high on the federal budget triage scale. I tried to figure out the ancient technology. Seemed simple enough. I spun the dials to the right frequency--the Wardens' emergency frequency--and clicked the old-fashioned button on the old-fashioned microphone.

Now, if I could only remember all the codes...

"Violet-violet-violet," I said. "Anyone reading? Respond."

Static. White noise. I looked over at Emily, who was washing her filthy face in the sink; she needed more than a little soap to get clean, but that did a fair job. She only looked like a chimney sweep now, instead of a smoke eater. As she scrubbed a second time, I clicked the button again. "Violet-violet-violet," I repeated. "Respond, please."

This time, I got a sharp metallic click, and a tinny voice that sounded about twelve years old saying, "Hang on!" Not exactly the approved format for responding to emergency calls, but I understood. It wasn't shaping up to be a normal day anywhere in the world, but least of all in the Warden Crisis Center.

I waited. The voice came back, eventually, right about the time Emily finished her third ablution. "Name and location," it said. Not the same voice. This one was male, authoritative, and familiar.

"Hey, Paul," I said. "It's Joanne. They've got you answering phones?"

"I've got damn graduate students answering the phone. You wouldn't even believe the magnitude of the trouble we're in. Where are you?"

"I'm up at the Canada fire, with Emily. Who else is up here?"

"Canada? Fuck if I know. Hang on, let me check." He clicked off. I knew how the Crisis Center worked--there'd be a huge write on-wipe off board with events and Wardens assigned--usually. Today, who knew. I had the feeling that it was all just happening too fast. "Yeah. Jo, Emily's Earth and Fire--you've got a second Fire Warden located about eleven miles away from your current position, on the other side of the fire. Gary Omah. He's not real high on the scale, by the way. Not a lot of heavyweights left up there."

"I don't think we can count on Gary Omah," I sighed. "Who else?"

"Weather Warden out of Nova Scotia. That's what I've got for you."

"Who is she?"

"Janelle Bright."

I didn't know her, but that wasn't unusual; she was probably young, and probably lower level. Those seemed to be the survivors, so far. Probably because they hadn't earned any Djinn, and hadn't encountered any along the way. Also, Nova Scotia wasn't exactly the crossroads of the world. She'd probably be safe enough, if she didn't make a target of herself.

But then again, there were no longer any guarantees of anything, were there?

"Okay," I said, and then remembered to click the button. "Right, Paul, I'm going to organize this one, okay?"

"Fine by me. We're up to our necks around here. You're senior on the ground pretty much wherever you go right now. Take charge."

Now that was a really scary thought. It told me more than a Weather Channel documentary just how much trouble we were in.

I glanced over at Emily. "Um, Paul? One other thing."

"Please, let it be something fluffy and happy."

"Not so much. Demon."

"What?"

"There's a Demon loose. I saw it break out of a dying Warden--Gary Omah, I'm presuming. It tried--" I swallowed hard and kept my voice even with an effort, because the crispy zombie flashbacks weren't easy to suppress. "It tried to get to me, but I managed to fight it off." Paul was quiet for so long, I thought I was having a conversation with static, and then he said, "I can't spare anybody else to help you."

"Make it happen, Paul. I need someone."

He put me on hold. Mercifully, there was no annoying music, it was just straight static. I listened to white noise and thought about Gary Omah, wondered how he'd come in contact with a Demon Mark, wondered whether taking it on had been his own choice or an infection that had happened against his will. I couldn't afford to agonize over Gary, though. If he was the blackened, hollowed-out corpse I'd met in the forest, then he was better off dead, and I had bigger problems.

Paul came back on the line. "Paul, I need--"

He interrupted me by covering the phone and bellowing, "You! Yeah, you in the fucking yellow! I told you, get those people over to the west side of the thing, do you understand me? West!" The muffling came off the phone, not that it had concealed much. "Shit. I've gotta go. Do your best. I've got to go be the first officer of the goddamn Hindenburg." He was trying to sound light, but somewhere underneath I could tell he was genuinely, grimly terrified. "At least Lewis is the one wearing the shiny hat."

"I know," I said softly. "Keep bailing, buddy."

"Jo, just get the fuck out of there. Do what you've gotta do. We can't save everybody. Not this time."

"I can't just walk away."

"Learn how," he said. "People are dying. People are going to die. It's all just a question of how many, and how bad they go. We need the Djinn back, and we need them now. So you've got to stay focused. Do what you can, but stay on mission."

He clicked off before I could respond. I sat back, looking at Emily; she was staring out the window at the orange-colored distance.

"I can't get anybody besides one Weather Warden out of Nova Scotia," I said. "They're swamped."

She nodded. "We're really fucked, aren't we?" she asked, like it was an academic consideration.

"Not necessarily. All we have to do is pile in the Jeep and leave."

She gave me a bleak, absent smile.

"Yeah," she said. "That's likely."

Of course, we didn't leave. We didn't even discuss it. We just went to work. I spent time up on the aetheric, trying to move weather patterns around and layer cooler air over what was increasingly a troubled system. The fire was generating enormous amounts of heat, and that heat was affecting the already-unstable weather. It kept sliding out of my control, finding ways to twist back like a snake trying to strike. Lightning, for instance. Just when I thought we'd gotten things contained at a reasonable level, the energy began churning around and creating vast random pulses. It had to go somewhere. I deflected most of them as sheet lightning, or sent the energy flaring across the sky instead of down to earth, but it only takes one, sometimes.

And one slipped through, hit a giant pine, and ignited it like a torch. Beginning of the end.

"Emily!" I yelled, and pointed. She was busy trying to contain the forest fire itself, but this was a second front, and we couldn't afford to let it get busy at its job. I shot up into the aetheric and looked for the other Weather Warden who was supposed to be helping us. Janelle. She was a weak spark indeed, barely glowing up on the aetheric; she was, I sensed, exhausted. Whatever was going on in Nova Scotia, it wasn't good. She was working the systems from the back, which was about all she could do, with the strength she had at hand. I wasn't about to push her for more. We were all redlining our limits today.

I caught sight of something in the aetheric. No, caught sight of wasn't exactly accurate--I sensed something, although everything looked just about as normal as an unsettled higher plane could look... The fire was a gorgeous lavalike cascade of colors, pouring out over everything in its path, but there was something going on that didn't belong. I couldn't pin it down, exactly. I just knew something wasn't right.

Then the fire arrived at the first human structure, a luxurious hunting lodge that was, luckily, empty of inhabitants, and set to work industriously licking at the propane tanks in the yard as if it had made straight for them.

That hadn't been a natural progression. That had been a choice.

"Crap," Emily said from her post at the window. She sounded matter-of-fact, but she was pale and shaking with strain. I didn't have an up-close-and-personal relationship with fire--well, not until recently--but I understood that the stress of being a Fire Warden was unique. I could see that she was caving under the pressure, and there was nothing I, could really do to help. I had my hands full already; lightning was jumping around in that storm, struggling to find new targets. My newly discovered Fire powers were too raw to be of any real use in a situation like this. Fire Wardens, even more than Weather, needed fine control.

I had no idea how long it had been since my call to the Crisis Center; time is funny when you're in the middle of something like this. It can make minutes crawl, and hours fly; there wasn't a clock in easy view, and I was too busy to consult one anyway. Any little slip in my attention meant the fire gained new ground against the rain I was directing over it. Janelle, my remote support, was weakening further; she wouldn't be able to last long, and when she was gone, the weather system would swirl out of control out to sea, and the winds whipping in would spread this fire far and wide. I remembered how it had happened at Yellowstone, the day Star had gotten burned. The day so many Wardens had paid the price. Once a wildfire took control, it would be coming after anything and everything it sensed might be able to fight it.

This one was right on the edge. You could feel it thinking, and, boy, not nice thoughts, either.

The propane tanks at the hunting lodge blew with movie-spectacular effect. It bloomed white-hot at the center, curling yellow petals toward the sky on a stem of black smoke.

The deafening roar rattled the glass a couple of seconds afterward.

It was warm in the cabin. I realized that I was sweating, and it occurred to me to take a look around; we'd been staring out the front window at the advancing blaze working its way up to slop toward us, but it was still a good half a mile away and moving slowly, thanks to the rain I continued to pour on it.

But I hadn't checked behind us.

I stayed where I was in the real world and turned on the aetheric plane to take a look. Oh, lord.

It was advancing like a lava flow, rolling down the hill; it had crested the mountain, and was eating everything in its path. No wonder it was hot inside the cabin.

The fire had outflanked us.

We were trapped.

"Em!" I yelled. She didn't answer, transfixed on what was going on in the front window. Focused to an extent that was going to get her killed. This was why Fire Wardens died so often; fire could turn so fast, and it required so much concentration. I lunged over, grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her, hard. Her eyes rolled back in her head. She collapsed against me, heavy and loose, and I had to let her slide down to the floor. If she was unconscious, not just entranced, we were so screwed, because the fire would lunge straight for this cabin like a tiger for a staked-out goat. Like called to like, power to power, and fire didn't like being caged.

I grabbed Emily under the arms and began dragging her across the dusty wood floor to the cabin door.

Oh my God. This wasn't happening. It couldn't happen this fast...

I felt a wave of heat across my back, and heard glass shatter; the back window had just blown out. I gritted my teeth and heaved--dammit, why couldn't I get some willowy little girl who was easy to rescue?--and Emily's workboot-clad feet scraped another two feet of board on the way to the door. I was seeing stars. My pulse was hammering, and the air I was sucking in tasted burned and hot and nearly unbreathable.

The cabin was burning. Smoke was flooding in, heavy and black. I tested the doorknob and found it not quite burning hot, so I grabbed it and yanked. The door flew open, letting in a wave of hot air thick with smoke. I crouched down low and grabbed Emily's heavy form under the arms and started pulling. There were four steps to the ground. I wasn't too careful about how gently I was pulling her down them, and then I had to dump her in a heap on the gravel as I opened the back door of the SUV. Her turn to suffer being scraped over broken glass, but I figured she'd rather that than the alternative.

Fire took hold of a tree on the left side of the ranger station with an unholy bright-blue flare and snap. Sap exploding. Everything was superheated, ready to go up at a spark. My clothes were drenched with sweat, plastered to my skin as if I'd been swimming, but I was shivering; the intense heat was evaporating the sweat too fast. I needed water. Badly. The inside of my mouth tasted like dirty cotton, and I was feeling light-headed. I couldn't smell anything anymore; it was all just the same overwhelming smell of things dying.

A hugely antlered buck burst out of the burning forest, plunging past me, head down, blind with pain and terror. No way I could help it. I wasn't even sure if I could help myself.

I shoved Emily the rest of the way into the backseat of the SUV with the strength of the truly desperate. I turned to glance behind me, like Lot's wife, and saw the eeriest, most beautiful thing: fire flowing like heavy syrup down the hill, sliding over every charred, twisted thing its path. This was fire at its most elemental, its most powerful. No wonder Emily had collapsed, if she'd been trying to hold this back.

The stuff was going to roll right over the ranger station, and then right over us.

Cinders blew in my face. I slapped sparks from my clothes, jumped in the driver's seat, and started the truck. The situation called for a fast exit, and I gunned the engine, fishtailed on the loose gravel, and then found enough traction to leap forward down the bumpy fire road.

I was going too fast for the terrain. Gravel banged and rattled on the windshield and grille, and the suspension bounced me around like a toy inside the cabin. Emily was a rag doll in the backseat. The temperature inside the car was like a kiln, and I tried to pull in short, shallow breaths to spare my lungs. I could barely see ten feet ahead, as black smoke swirled across the road, but I kept my speed up. No time to slow down.

In my rearview mirror, fire was flowing down the road like lava.

"Damn, damn, damn," I chanted, and reached for anything to hold it back. I was nowhere near the caliber of someone like Emily or--hell--Kevin. I managed to slow it down, just a little. Or maybe it just did that on its own. Hard to tell, with the chaos on the aetheric.

I broke out of the smoke into a temporary little clearing--green trees swaying with agitated winds, not yet on fire. I wiped sweaty palms on my shirt and firmed up my grip on the wheel, and hit the gas...

... and a massive--and I mean massive--tree toppled over across the road, slamming down with pulverizing force about ten feet from the battered hood of the SUV.

I screamed and hit the brakes. Felt the thump as Emily's limp body hit the back of my seat and fell into the floorboard; she made a weak moan, so at least she was still alive. The SUV fishtailed, tried to yaw left, and lurched to a halt.

Oh fuck.

I turned frantically to look behind. The advancing fire was moving fast again, leaping from tree to tree like some demented flaming Tarzan. I felt the heat notch up inside the car.

We were going to die. If we were lucky, we'd expire of the smoke first, but I didn't think the fire was feeling especially generous about it...

I ducked my head as the tree to my left caught with a bubbling, hissing snap of pine sap combusting. Smoke clogged my throat. I coughed and slid sideways to try to find some clean, breathable air. Panic made it hard to do anything Wardenish with the situation; my body was acknowledging imminent death, and it had no time to spare for rational thought.

I tried to breathe, but it was too hot, and there was a dry, hot, sere blanket pressing down on my mouth and nose and I couldn't breathe...

And then, I felt a breath of fresh, cool air, as if somebody had turned on the biggest air conditioner in the world. I sucked it in with a gasping whoop, coughed, and kept breathing as I forced myself back up to a sitting position.

David was standing in front of the truck, arms spread wide, coat flared out like wings. He looked fragile, standing framed by a curtain of fire, although I knew he wasn't. He reached out and rested his hands lightly on the hood, staring in at me through the haze of cracks in the glass, smoke, and dust.

Cool air filled the cabin of the truck. Sweet and pure as an early spring morning. Except for the surreal roar of the fire outside, we could have been parked for a picnic.

David gave me a faint, unreadable smile, then straightened up and walked over to my side of the vehicle.

"We don't have a lot of time," he said. Master of the obvious, he was. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Other things," he said. "Surprisingly, I don't spend all my time following you, but then, I didn't think I had to. Imagine how surprised I am to see you in the middle of this. Have you lost your mind?"

"You can psychoanalyze me when we're not getting burned alive," I gasped. "For now, could you just help us get out of here?"

"I will. Once I move this tree, don't stop, whatever you see. Understand?" He reached in and traced a finger down the side of my face, a hot sweet touch that ended too soon. "Go now. Time's short. I'll yell at you later."

"But--" I gestured helplessly at the gigantic felled tree in the way.

He walked over, and grabbed a fragile little twig of a branch that should have snapped off in his hand the second he pulled on it.

Instead, he picked up the entire tree, like some balsawood stage prop. Only, clearly, it was the real thing, heavy and groaning, shaking dust and splinters as he hauled it around like a toy. He casually dragged it in a quarter circle, like a gate on a road, and dumped it along the side in a thick crash of pine needles.

"Go!" David shouted. "Don't stop!"

I gunned it. The SUV's tires flailed for purchase, caught, and rocketed us forward. As we passed David, he reached out to touch the truck, just a brush of his fingers across the finish.

The broken and cracked glass healed with an audible, singing crack. I couldn't tell about the other damage, but I was willing to bet that Emily was getting her SUV back in like-new condition.

And then he was gone, a dot in the mirror, vulnerable and fragile next to the rising giant fury of the forest fire, standing in front of the oncoming flood of plasma and flame.

I was shaking all over. Too much information, delivered wrapped up in too much personal death-threat, to absorb all at once. At least I'd seen David for all of thirty seconds. That was something...

Yeah, I'd seen a Demon hatch out of a crispy-baked Warden, too. And been attacked by a burning zombie.

I wished I could say that it was an exceptional day.

"What happened?" a hoarse voice asked at my ear. I screamed, took my foot off the gas, and then jammed it back on as my forebrain caught up with my instincts. "Sorry. Scare you?"

Emily. She was sitting up, looking weary and smoke-blackened and red-eyed, barely better than something from a horror movie herself. Clinging to the seat for support.

"No," I lied. "Are you okay?"

"Fuck no, you've got to be kidding," she said, and let herself drop back against the seats. "Is it out? The fire?"

I checked the rearview mirror. The whole sky was red and black, a churning fury of destruction.

"Not quite," I said bleakly. "It's only a couple of miles from Drumondville. We have to--"

"No," I said flatly. "It's enough, Emily. We can't do any more."

She lunged upright, grabbed the back of my seat, and thrust her face next to mine. I got an up-close look at her red-rimmed eyes, furious and brimming with moisture.

"There are people out there! People who are going to die! We're Wardens! You can't just leave!"

I knew that. I felt it inside me, the same desperate yearning to make everything right, set the crooked straight, save every life and fix every broken thing in the world.

I turned my stare back to the bumpy road, blinked twice, and said, "Sometimes you have to let it burn, Emily."

She stared at me in disbelieving, weary silence for a few seconds. "You coldhearted unbelievable bitch," she said. I didn't answer. I kept driving. She was too weak to try to take the wheel from me--hell, she was too weak to be sitting up for long, and she proved it by letting go and slithering back down to a supine position on the backseat. When I looked in the rearview, she turned her face aside, but there was no mistaking the startlingly pale tracks of tears on her dirty face.

"They were right about you," she said. "You should have been neutered when we had a chance. You don't deserve to be a Warden."

I felt her words like a blunt, cold knife shoved right under my heart. If she'd been trying to rip my guts out and decorate the truck with them, she couldn't possibly have done a finer job. Since the night I'd fought for my life against Bad Bob Biringanine, the surly but beloved old codger of the Wardens, I'd been persona non grata in a big way. The black sheep of the family. Blamed for everything, and praised for nothing.

But I was a Warden, dammit. I loved the sky, the sea, the living air around me in cell-deep ways that only another Warden could ever understand. I wanted to help people so much that the impulse ached inside me. I was a Warden, and the Wardens loved the world. But it was strictly a one-way love affair, and we forgot that, the closer we got to our duties.

"Bitch," Emily mumbled distantly. She was sliding into unconsciousness again, or sleep. Too tired to be angry. I turned on the radio, glided it over to a station that had some decent music, and kept it on for the rest of the bumpy escape from the forest to cover up the quiet, uneven sounds as I gulped back tears.

The SUV growled to the top of the ridgeline, and I had a spectacular view of the inferno of the valley behind us, and what lay ahead.

"Oh ho," I whispered, and the tears finally broke free.

David had warned me. Bad things. There were dead people lying in the road.

The only ones standing were the Djinn--four of them. They were crouched among the dead, studying bodies with varying degrees of disinterest. I jammed on the brakes, remembered what David had said as the Djinn began to turn toward our Jeep.

Don't stop, whatever you see.

I didn't recognize any of these--two males, two females, at least in appearance. Two of them looked very young, almost childlike. One of the male Djinn had a burly, weightlifter-type look. The remaining female Djinn could have sat for a portrait of a Pre-Raphaelite angel, minus the wings... unbelievably, radiantly beautiful.

She was the coldest one of all.

All this went through my mind in a second, and then I hit the gas. The Jeep raced forward. I felt the engine sputter and realized, with a chill, that the Djinn were capable of stopping it dead. David had done it to me, once upon a time. Only not with such a deadly motivation.

Don't stop.

I formed shells of pure air around the spark plugs. The engine sputtered again, caught, and surged, rocking from side to side on the rough road.

"What's happening?" Emily had decided to speak to me again. I didn't have time to answer. I felt her pull on the back of my seat as she hauled herself upright. "What--What the hell?..."

She screamed in my ear as all four of the Djinn--all of them, moving in concert--stepped into the road, blocking us. The kids in front.

Don't stop. No matter what.

I closed my eyes, sucked in a panicked breath and held it. And kept the Jeep hurtling toward them at speed.

"No!" Emily shrieked, rattling my eardrum, and I felt the wheel wrench as she grabbed it over my shoulder and twisted, hard, to the right. I lost my grip. The wheels lost the road, bounced over ruts, lost purchase...

We rolled over. All the way over, in torturously slow increments, as the world spun in a complete 360. The Jeep bounced and groaned as it settled back upright on its springs again.

So much for Emily's SUV being good as new.

"You idiot!" I yelled, and cranked the key. Nothing. Whether it was the crash, or the Djinn, the truck wasn't going anywhere. I wasn't hurt, but I was scared, and my personal terror level got elevated as the driver's side door was wrenched open.

Angel Djinn stood there, staring at me with pure white eyes. Her skin was a delicate, inhuman silver, and her robes like alabaster silk blowing in an unfelt breeze. She had dark, waving hair that cascaded in luxurious waves over her shoulders, past her hips, down to trail the ground and her bare feet.

She reached in, grabbed my seat belt, and ripped it loose with a single tug, then grabbed my arm and dragged me out. Slammed me up against the fender of the Jeep in a flurry of dust and held me there, with her hand poised over my heart.

We froze that way. I didn't dare breathe. She didn't need to. Her head slowly tilted to one side, then came back upright again. I was reminded of the deliberate targeting movements of praying mantises.

"You stink of it," she whispered. I could hardly understand her; her accent sounded odd, antique, as if she hadn't bothered to speak to a human in hundreds of years. "Filth. Reeking filth."

Next to her shining perfection, that's pretty much what I felt like, too. But I knew what she was sensing--the two Demon Marks I'd had on me in the past twenty-four hours. Not to mention the Demon that had been chasing after me like a freight train back in the forest, lighting trees on fire as it came.

But I'm not one to take that kind of thing lying down.

"Do I have a Demon Mark?" I demanded. Not that you should demand anything from a Djinn who's just participating in the slaughter of about--my brain whited out at an attempt at the number. Upwards of fifteen people, at least.

"No," she said, and did the head-tilt back and forth again. Maybe I was like a Magic Eye poster, and she was trying to see the Statue of Liberty hidden inside me. She dropped her hand back to her side. "You may go."

She abruptly turned and glided around the Jeep, over to the other side, where Emily was leaning against the door. Emily promptly scooted over to my side of the car and rattled the handle. Stuck. Stay there, I mouthed. She ignored me, of course. But to be fair, maybe she couldn't see me. The window was fractured into a fine latticework of cracked safety glass.

"Excuse me," a polite voice said, and before I could flinch, much less grant pardon, I was picked up and set gently off to the side by the big male Djinn, who had dark cocoa skin and black eyes, and a whole lot of long pale hair that was tied into a ponytail at his back. He was dressed in more conventional styles than Angel Djinn--blue jeans, a chambray work shirt in fashionable (and daring) light purple. He misted out at the knees. It didn't seem to bother him.

I stumbled on gravel when he let go of me. He reached over, grabbed the handle of the back door of the SUV, and removed the door, handle and all. He set it gently aside, next to the one Angel had dismembered, and leaned in to grab Emily by the scruff of her shirt. She screamed and fought, but it was a little like a puppy fighting a wolfhound, only not so equal. "Shhhhh," he told her, and held a finger to her lips. She went instantly still, and white as bleached paper. "Good girl." He set her on the ground and stepped back, still holding her by one arm in case she might decide to sprint for it.

Angel glided back, barely touching the ground. Her feet looked as if they'd never encountered dust, much less rocky, tough ground.

She held her hand over Emily's heart.

Head-tilt. It stayed frozen in one spot for longer than I liked, and then slowly came back upright.

She moved quick as a tiger, fingernails forming into silver claws, and ripped Emily's shirt open over her heart. Not just the shirt. The jog bra was a casualty, and Angel hadn't been too careful about the skin, either.

Under the pale flesh and the claw marks and the vivid red blood, I glimpsed a tangle of black racing out of sight under her skin.

"No," I whispered. "Oh, no. How--? When--?" Because I knew for a fact that Emily hadn't been infected when we'd left her house. It had to have happened in the woods, when we'd been separated.

The damn Demon Mark was still following me, and when it hadn't cornered me, it had gone for Emily.

Emily's jaw worked nervously, and she looked at me as she fumbled the shreds of her shirt back together.

"It is early," Angel said. She was unquestionably the Djinn in charge here. The two who looked like kids--a matched set, boy and girl twins dressed in identical T-shirts and sloppy corduroy pants, with tangled brown hair--looked at her with a kind of unquestioning worship. The polite male Djinn, too. "Do you want this one?"

She was talking to me. To me. "Do I--uh--what?"

"Do you want this one?" she asked slowly, sounding out each word with heavy care. When I looked blank, Angel turned to the male Djinn holding Emily's elbow.

"Do you want us to take the Demon out of her," he translated. "It's still early. We can do it."

"Um... will it hurt her?" Stupid question. Of course it would. But it would hurt her a lot worse to keep it. "Never mind. Yes. If you can."

He nodded, took a glass bottle from a leather bag at his side, and handed it to Angel. She opened it carefully and held it in her left hand.

"Don't move," she said to Emily, and plunged her right hand into her chest.

Emily shrieked. I think I must have, too. I know I lunged forward, or tried to, but suddenly there were arms around me from behind, although all the Djinn were in front of me.

"No, love." David's whisper in my ear. "This has to be done."

I spun to look at him. Emily was making terrible, agonizing noises, and there were dead people on the ground, dead people... "You killed these people?"

He looked tired. Shadows in those normally bright eyes. "It had to be done."

"You killed them?"

He shook his head. "Let's not do this. Not now."

"Why didn't you want me to stop, if you didn't know this was going on?" But I knew. He must have sensed the lingering presence of my encounters with Demon Marks on me, just as Angel had. He'd been afraid that they'd just assume I was one of the infected. "God, David, how could you do this? These were Wardens."

"Wardens have always passed their infections on to Djinn, and we could never fight back. Now we can."

"So it was them or you. Is that it?"

His eyes held mine, steady. Flecked with amber and full of regret. "Yes. Them or us. And don't tell me the Wardens haven't done the same. Don't tell me that you wouldn't if it came to it."

"Slaughter fifteen people like sheep? No, David, I--" Emily's tortured moans suddenly cut off with the sound of flesh hitting the ground. I spun back toward her, and saw her being picked up from her faint by the big male Djinn, who placed her back in the SUV's passenger side. He removed that door, too, and the back one, as well. Evidently, he liked symmetry.

I rushed to her side and pressed my fingers to her throat. A nice, steady pulse. She moaned weakly and opened her eyes. Bloodshot and unfocused, but it looked like she'd live.

"They were on their way to the fire," David said grimly. "Fire that would have accelerated the Demon Marks and hatched out more than we could handle at one time. We had to stop them before the Demons emerged, and it was too late to remove them safely. We didn't have a choice."

"We could have done something!" I shouted, rounding on him. He didn't back up. "We could have put them in a cell, in a hospital, anything but killing them and tossing them out like yesterday's trash! You don't have the right, David!"

"No!" he shouted back. "I have the responsibility! Now, if we've taken enough of a guilt trip, I have a fire to stop."

He whirled and stalked away, coat flapping in the hot wind behind him. I scrambled after, heart pounding in a bloody, loud fury in my ears. I grabbed his arm, felt heavy wool and the flex of muscles, and dragged him to a stop.

"David!"

He turned, and his expression... Ah, God. The agony was heartrending. "There's nobody else to make these choices. You know."

I did. I remembered all the times that I'd run screaming from the burden of hard choices. Even this time, I'd let myself get distracted from the mission by the opportunity to earn myself a little feel-good glory. It was Emily's job. It hadn't been mine. I'd come out here with good intentions, and hell lay at the end.

"This whole thing won't stop," I said. "It won't stop until we're all dead. Right?"

For answer, he reached out and folded his arms around me, holding me. He smelled of smoke and sweat, real and human, and I wanted nothing but to be somewhere else with him, somewhere free of chaos and responsibility. Somewhere I could hold him against my skin, and we could wash each other clean.

If we could ever be clean again.

"I know you didn't kill them," I whispered against his neck.

"I'm responsible," he said again, and his lips touched the sensitive skin below my ear, a delicate benediction. "That's all you need to know."

Lewis and Paul would shrug it off; fifteen more dead Wardens? A tragedy, sure, but we'd already lost more than we could count. And Demon-infected Wardens weren't an asset to anyone. I knew all the logical reasons, and none of them touched the black, oily guilt that continued to seep into my heart.

I took a deep breath and pulled back enough to look him in the eyes. "Where are these things coming from? What do they want?"

For a second he didn't react, and then his pupils narrowed as he comprehended what I was asking. "The Demon Marks? They're destined to produce adult Demons. They reproduce at will, once they hatch. The Marks--the eggs--are drawn through rips in the aetheric, and they're pulled to the nearest source of power. Djinn or Warden."

"Is that all?"

"No. They're drawn to us because we're part of her, in greater or lesser measure. What they want--especially the adults--is to get to the Mother."

"Like I do." Oh, the irony. "Not... like you do," David said slowly. "If they can get to a place where she's vulnerable, they could kill her. Demons are a disease, Jo. And we have to fight them however we can, especially now. She's vulnerable. And she's hurting."

"The Oracle. The one in Seacasket. He was infected with a Demon Mark--"

"What?" He pulled back, completely back, eyes wide. "No. That isn't possible."

"I--I think it might have been my fault. I got it off him, but I don't know how much damage it did first."

His face went stiff and blank. "I have to go," he said carefully, with exquisite care. "Don't--don't go back to the Oracle. Don't try."

"But--"

"If you go back," he said tonelessly, "I'll have to kill you. Don't even think about it."

I swallowed hard. He'd shifted from the warm, comforting lover to the leader of the Djinn, and the change was terrifying. "Then what do I do? David, you're the one who said--"

"I know what I said. But it's out of my hands now. And yours. Go home, Jo."

I stood there, stunned. He walked away, toward the fire.

One of the other Djinn was standing next to me--the big one, his pale white ponytail fluttering in the wind. He raised an expressive eyebrow.

"You can go," he said.

Something occurred to me, late and hard. "I forgot--there's a Demon down in the fire--"

"We know, love," he said. "That's why we're here. Go."

When I didn't move, he just picked me up and effortlessly carried me back to the SUV, and plumped me into the driver's side. This time, the engine started with a throaty roar. I looked over at Emily, who was firmly buckled in, and fingered the shredded remains of my own seat belt.

"Oh, sorry," he said, and reached in to touch it with a fingertip. It knitted together with dizzying speed. Good as new. He solicitously buckled me in and patted my shoulder. "You do what he says, now. You go home."

I hardly even remembered driving away. I remember staring into the rearview mirror, at the smoke and flame and the battlefield of dead Wardens, until the next hill hid it all from view.

I cried for a while. Tears of fury and anguish and bitter, bitter disappointment. Disappointment in myself, mostly. If I'd stayed in Seacasket... if I'd gone back instead of going into the fire with Emily, maybe things would be different. Maybe those fifteen Wardens wouldn't be dead. Maybe...

Maybe it would all be the same, only I'd be dead, too. No way to second-guess it. I knew only that the path I was on wasn't the right one, not at all.

Emily continued to sleep, and snore, as I piloted the broke-down Jeep back down dirt roads, heading for civilization. The first sign of which was a paved road, black and level, at right angles to the road I was on. I turned left.

It's so strange, how quickly you can go back to normal life. The first shock came as the tires of the SUV hit blacktop. The sudden lack of vibration felt weird and unnatural, and for a second I had a nightmarish vision of myself as a backwoods four-wheeling fanatic like Emily, wearing oversize work shirts and thick-waisted jeans and clunky steel-toed boots. With a collection of trucker gimme caps.

Behind us, the forest fire was a lurid red fury, pouring blackness into the clouds. I felt sick, remembering how I'd left things with David. It already seemed more dream than reality.

I wiped tears from my grimy cheeks and thought longingly of a shower. A long, hot shower, followed by a deep, drug-induced sleep.

Paved road or not, I still had a half mile or so to go before we reached the actual highway. Not out of the woods yet. The fire had turned back, consolidated itself--fighting the Djinn now, instead of the Wardens. It might give us just enough breathing space.

Home. Where was home? Sure, I'd drop Emily off at her house, but where did I belong? Back at Warden HQ, helping Lewis oversee the end of the world? Back in Florida, salvaging whatever was left of my apartment after the big storm, and waiting for the next one to hit?

My home was David, and I couldn't be with him.

I fought the tears again--self-pitying bullshit tears, and I wasn't going to give in--and decided to go with the one-crisis-at-a-time theory. First, get Emily home. I'd saved her, at least. That was something. Not much, but something.

From the backseat, Imara said, "Where are you going?"

I yelped and flinched, and the Jeep veered wildly, tires squealing. I got it under control again and looked behind me in the rearview. Imara was sitting there, black hair blowing liquidly in the wind.

"Isn't this supposed to have doors?" she asked.

"Upgrade," I said hoarsely. "Where were you?"

"Trying to get help." She closed her eyes and rested her head against the upholstery. "I ran into Ashan. I wasn't very successful."

"Help," I repeated. "Wait, Ashan!..."

"I'm fine. It doesn't matter," she said. "But at least you're safe."

I laughed. It turned into a racking, smoky cough and ended up in a sob that I controlled with an effort. "Yeah. Safe," I said. "How's the fire doing back there?"

She didn't even open her eyes. "Father and some of the other Djinn are there, trying to hold it, but it's hard. The Mother's... I suppose the closest description is that she's having a nightmare. He's trying to shelter the Djinn from it, but it's getting stronger. He won't be able to keep it from them indefinitely."

"A nightmare," I said. "About what?"

Her eyes opened. Amber-brown. Very human. "About humanity." Sorry I asked. I remembered the dead Wardens, the suffering on David's face. My responsibility, he'd said. If he'd been trying to hold the Djinn back from whatever bad vibes the earth was trying to send out, maybe he'd slipped. Lost himself.

Maybe I was still trying to make excuses for him, and it had been a cold-blooded choice. Lewis had warned me, not so very long ago, not to underestimate the alien nature of the Djinn. Even the ones I loved.

Of course, the same could be said for people...

"You're thinking about Father," she said. "Right?"

"Why do you say that?"

"You look sad," she said quietly. "He'd hate that he makes you sad."

Oh, dammit. I was going to cry, wasn't I? No. I wasn't. I gulped enough air to make myself belch instead. "Are they going to be able to contain the fire?"

"Yeah," she said, and looked away. "But there's something else in there. Something bad."

Tell me about it. "Don't worry about your father--he's fought bad things most of his life."

"I know," she whispered. "But it's all falling apart, Mom. Why does it have to happen just when I--?"

The second she's born, the world starts to collapse. I bit my lip, furious with Jonathan suddenly; this was too big a burden to give any kid. Even a Djinn-born one. "It's going to be okay," I told her.

"I know," she said. Wind whipped her hair over her face and hid her expression. "I trust you."

I didn't answer. Couldn't. My throat had locked up tight, fighting the tears. Deep breathing helped, and concentrating on the flashing yellow center stripe. Freeway up ahead, and a battalion of flashing emergency lights. I slowed for a barricade. Since there was an exodus from the fire, it didn't appear passports would be an issue. The Mountie manning it nodded to me and moved it aside, and then we were out, racing into the clear day.

Free.

I dropped Emily at her house. She woke up halfway home and subjected me to a foul-mouthed inquisition; she didn't remember anything past her collapse at the ranger station, as it turned out. Convenient, that. I didn't have to answer questions about the Djinn, or the Demon Mark, or any of that crap. She looked ill, but intact, and when I offered to keep her company, she brushed me off as rudely as ever.

The fire was down to normal size, up north, according to the radio, which blamed it on a lightning strike and credited the brave Canadian fire patrols for containing the blaze. No mention of fifteen dead bodies littering the landscape. I wondered if David had cleaned up after his hit squad.

"Where now?" Imara asked. She was behind the wheel of the Camaro when I arrived, and I was too tired and too sore to argue with her.

"Back toward Seacasket," I said. She gave me a long, frowning look. "I know. I said toward, not to. I just need to think for a while." "I'm not taking you back there," she warned, and put the Camaro in gear. "Father doesn't want you near the Oracle."

Having a Djinn driver was pretty damn sweet, I decided. For one thing, she was fully capable of opening up the car to its fullest potential, and simultaneously hiding it from any observant highway patrol cars. The Camaro loved to run, and some of its joy bled off into me, easing the ache in my guts. I closed my eyes and let the road vibration shake some of the despair away.

I must have dozed off; when I opened my eyes again, the car was downshifting, and Imara was making a turn into a parking lot in front of a roadside motel. "What's this?" I asked.

"You could use a shower," she said.

I winced. "Tact, Imara. We'll discuss it later."

"I'm sorry to be blunt, but you need a shower, and real sleep. Also, this is as close as I can take you to Seacasket without attracting Father's attention."

I hated to admit it, but the kid wasn't wrong. I sniffed at myself. Ugh. I did reek.

I sent Imara in to get the room--one look at me, and they'd promptly light up the no vacancy sign--and lounged against the dusty hood of the car, waiting. She came out dangling a clunky-looking key, the old-fashioned metal kind with a diamond-shaped holder blazoned with the room number. Four was my lucky number, at least today.

While I was in the shower, shampooing for the third time, Imara knocked on the door and shouted, "I'm going to get you some clothes!"

By the time I'd rinsed off and strolled out of the heat-fogged bathroom, she was gone. I curled up under the covers and flipped channels on the TV. The news was full of bad stuff: fires, earthquakes, storms, volcanoes. Europe was locked in a sudden, unexpected deep freeze. India was facing floods. So was South America.

I turned it off and remembered the Oracle. I'd come so close... so close. Wasn't there anything I could do, anything at all? I remembered the rich, dizzying, overwhelming sensation that had come over me when I'd been holding his hand. It reminded me of the on-rushing music of my dream, when Jonathan had told me to leave.

I could almost hear it again, washing through me. Wiping every thought from my mind in a white, overwhelming rush. Floating...

There was someone with me in the room. I hadn't heard the door open, but I sensed a presence. Imara was back, I thought, and opened my eyes.

Even in the dark, I knew that wasn't Imara.

"Hello, love," Eamon said. He was right next to the bed, leaning over me. Even as I tried to roll, he grabbed me by the shoulders and pinned me down.

"Hello, Eamon," I said. I sounded calm, no idea why, because my heart was rattling in my chest like dice in a shaken cup. I was having an out-of-body experience, or I knew I'd have felt something more than this ringing, empty amazement. Shock, I guessed. And fear. "How'd you find me?"

"GPS in your cell phone," he said. "The wonders of modern technology. Turns out that it isn't just for law enforcement anymore." His hand slid down my bare arm. "Are you naked under there?"

"Fuck you," I gasped, and tried to wrench away. No luck. He was a wiry bastard, and when I reached for power to even the score, I felt a hot, wet sting in my bicep. I flinched, but it was too late; he'd emptied the contents of a syringe into me with a fast shove of the plunger. Something heavy and sickeningly warm raced up my arm, into my neck.

"That should keep you from doing any parlor tricks," he said, and flicked on the bedside lamp. He looked only a little battered from our adventures in Florida--God, it hadn't even been long enough for his cuts to fully heal--but he was his usual natty self, dressed in a cool marine-blue shirt that looked fresh and crisp. Khaki pants. A dressed-down look, for Eamon, but fully complimentary. His hair was still a little too long, but I didn't let that friendly boy-next-door look fool me. No matter how limpid and sweet his eyes and smile might be, there was something deeply disturbing inside this man.

"There we go," he said soothingly, and he blurred out of focus again. No amount of blinking would help that. The warmth was stealing through my chest now, down my legs, up into my head. Such a nice, safe feeling. "You're all right, love. Just relax. No worries at all."

His voice was so soft and soothing, and I wanted to believe him. I knew better, but it was almost impossible to resist that kindness.

"Sarah," I managed to mumble. The world had turned into a candy-colored swirl of shapes. Strange tastes in my mouth. "Where?"

"Sarah is very safe, Joanne. You don't need to worry at all about your sister. I wouldn't hurt her." His laugh was dry and mocking. "Well. Not without giving you the chance to make good on our agreement first, of course."

I tried to say something, but my tongue was as thick as folded felt. I felt his hot fingers touching my neck, feeling my pulse, and then saw a bright hurtful glare as he lifted one eyelid. The room was doing a slow, graceful swirl.

"Excellent," I heard from a great distance. "A nap will do you good."

When I woke up in the dark, my mouth felt like a litterbox some cat owner had neglected for a month.

I was tied down, as I discovered when I tried to sit up. Ropes around both wrists. My ankles were tied together, but still anchored to something that felt rocksteady. I jerked at my bonds a few times, but got nothing but a steady rasping pain in my wrists for my trouble.

I felt dull and sick, and for a long few moments I didn't remember anything about how this had happened. It came back in flashes. Fire rolling down the road like flaming syrup. David. Dead Wardens.

Eamon.

A light flicked on across the room--a low-wattage bulb, barely enough to throw a yellow circle a couple of feet--but it burned my eyes. I winced, closed them, and then deliberately forced them open again. I wasn't in my room any longer. In fact, I doubted I was even in the same motel.

Eamon was sitting in an armchair next to the light, which was a standard-issue sort of thing with a lopsided paper shade. He wasn't an intimidating presence, generally; tall, lean, with pleasantly shaggy hair and a neat beard and mustache that gave some softness to his angular face. His hair was a color trapped somewhere between brown and blond, and although his eyes looked dark at the moment, I remembered them as that smoky color between blue and gray. He was, in a word, cute. Older than I was, but not more than ten years at a stretch.

In some ways, his hands were the most striking thing about him. Long, restless, graceful hands that should have been doing something artistic, like music or sculpting or neurosurgery. He took good care of them. His manicure was better than mine.

"How long?" I asked. My sense of time was screwed.

He tilted his head slightly, watching me. He looked a little surprised, as if that wasn't the first question he'd expected me to ask.

"An hour," he said. "By the way, congratulations on your escape from certain death back at the fire. That was exciting."

"You were following me."

He shrugged. "I'm not that energetic about it. I was tracking you. I only saw a bit toward the end."

"Why?"

Ah, that was the question he'd been expecting. He smiled. A sweet smile, with a loony's edge. "I had a strange idea that you weren't going to be looking after my interests," he said. "Seemed like a good idea to keep my hand in."

"Well, you've made your point. Very scary. Now let me go." It was scary. I was starting to sweat again, and I really didn't like the ropes sawing into my hands and feet. The threat was implicit and precise, and the ease with which he'd handled me was frightening. He'd had a lot of experience at this abduction thing.

"Have I?" he asked. It was a neutral question, but I sensed the menace behind it. "Love, I haven't even started making my point with you. I warned you before. I need a Djinn, and I need it now. I'm not going to wait politely while you take care of your own affairs. You satisfy me first. Now."

There was a double entendre there that I was quite sure was intentional.

"I'll kill you," I said. "I'll kill you if you--"

"I'm not that crude," he interrupted. He hadn't really even moved since turning on the light, except for tilts of his head; his hands were limp on the arms of the chair. "I'm not Quinn, you know."

He knew. Quinn had told him what he'd done to me. Fury boiled up inside me, hot as plasma, and I didn't know how to deal with it. I'd never told anyone, not about what had happened to me in that darkest place, but Quinn had been shooting off his mouth to Eamon. Laughing about it over beer and chips, or whatever it was those two bastards did for fun besides tormenting others.

"No," Eamon said quietly. "He didn't tell me. I guessed. I wouldn't have done that to you, you know. There wouldn't have been any point. I keep my business and my pleasure completely separate."

He knew me way too well. I closed my eyes and focused on controlling my breathing. I needed calm, and I needed to have full command of my powers. Weather and Fire. I was tired, and I was waterlogged with drugs, but dammit, I wasn't going to take this. Not from Eamon.

"Yeah, but you've still got me tied up on a bed," I said. "Do the words sexual predator mean anything to you, Eamon?" "Mmm. Fifteen to twenty-five, by the laws of this particular state, I believe. If I don't kill you. If I do, of course... does Maine have the death penalty? I'm afraid I can't keep track, as often as you people change your minds about cruel and unusual." He sounded bland and unworried. "You'll notice I tied you with your legs together. I could have done anything I liked. For that matter, I still could. You should be a little more polite."

That edge showed for a second, naked and glittering as a knife. Eamon was a Halloween candy bar full of razors. He terrified me on some level that I couldn't even fully understand.

"Somebody's going to come looking for me," I said to him. That got a stir from him; he sat forward, elbows resting on his knees, and tented his hands with his fingertips resting over his lips.

"The girl?" he asked. "The one who looks so remarkably like you that I had to ask Sarah about younger sisters, cousins, et cetera? I had to conclude that she was a closer relation. Daughter, I think. Very, very pretty." He smiled, and it was an expression that curled my stomach in on itself. "And since I've fairly comprehensively established that there's simply no way you could have conceived and delivered a child without there being some kind of record of it, she's something else. Something... unusual."

I stopped breathing, then forced myself to start up. Calm and casual, that was the only way to do this. "I'm not old enough to have a grown daughter."

"Please, don't force me to be ungentlemanly about it. You're more than old enough. But I think I can assume this is something else. Something to do with your handsome young Djinn boyfriend, for instance, and the desire of all living things to reproduce."

"You're crazy."

"Very likely." He nodded. "But your daughter is Djinn, and I want her. Need her, actually. I promise to return her unbroken, if that will help."

There were lots of answers I could have chosen from, but the most primal one boiled up first. "Touch her and I swear, I'll rip you apart, Eamon."

"I believe that," he agreed. "I don't think I've ever met anyone quite as capable of violence as you, Joanne. You disguise it well, but there's nothing light in your nature when you're at the sharp end. I like that about you."

"I mean it!"

"Oh, I spotted that right off," he said, and suddenly he was standing. He moved that way, unexpectedly, and my heart did a funny little jump as he crossed the short distance to the bed. He stood over me. There wasn't so much light over here, and he was blocking out most of it. I couldn't see anything but a pale oval for a face, and the darkness of his body.

The bed creaked as he sat down next to me.

"I love your sister," he said. Talk about things I hadn't expected... I kept my eyes on his unseen face. "That is very annoying, you know. I hadn't planned on feeling anything for her, beyond the occasional gratitude for being a good fuck--" He smiled at my animal noise of protest. "She's a good woman, Sarah. And she believes that I'm a good man. No doubt that bubble will burst soon, but I'd like to keep the fantasy intact awhile longer. She makes me feel--"

He fell silent. I didn't interrupt his thoughts. "Well," he said, finally. "She makes me feel well."

No question, Eamon was sick on some level I didn't even want to understand. "Don't hurt her."

"I don't want to. But I'm afraid that's really up to you at this point, and your daughter. I've told you what I need, and it's up to you how it gets provided to me. I've made the request nicely--"

"You abducted my sister!"

"Rescued, actually."

"You molested her!"

"Yeah," he admitted cheerfully. "I did, a bit. Sorry about that. Can see how that might rot the trust between us to some extent, but love, I was trying to emphasize to you the seriousness of the situation. Which has, I could point out, become even more serious. So I want my bloody Djinn or I will crush your fucking throat."

The last was snapped out in tones that made me cold inside. Before I could draw breath, his right hand was around my neck.

I wanted to scream, but nothing came out when I opened my mouth except a choked gagging sound. He was an expert at it. He choked me just hard enough to lock the scream in my throat and make it unbearably painful to breathe. The darkness began to spark with fireworks. Oxygen deprivation. He kept holding my throat, steady and sure, and then suddenly the pressure was gone. His hand stayed, loose and cool against my burning skin, and I whooped in a convulsive breath.

"Scream and I'll kill you," he said. It was a whisper, and it was against my ear, and he sounded utterly serious about it.

I didn't scream. I concentrated on breathing and marshaling my powers. It wasn't working. The drugs coursing through my system were interfering with my concentration and control; he must have done some research. These must have been similar to the drugs that Marion and her team used to sedate Wardens who'd proved dangerous.

I couldn't get enough power together to light a match, much less fry Eamon the way he deserved.

"I'm presuming you don't have some other Djinn in your handbag, ready to give me," he said. "No, don't speak. Shake your head yes or no."

I indicated no, silently. His fingertips moved slowly down the column of my throat to the notch of my collarbone, then back up. Stroking.

"Then I'm afraid it's your daughter I will require," he said. "Cross me, and I'll kill your sister and cut my losses. No warnings. I'll just phone you up and let you listen while she dies, all right?"

I managed to croak out some words. "I thought you loved her."

"I do," Eamon said. "I'm afraid that doesn't change anything."

His fingers trailed down into the open valley between my breasts. I didn't dare move. There was a tension in him that I couldn't quite understand, but I feared it. I wasn't sure he was quite in control of what he was doing.

"You and your sister," he sighed after a few silent seconds. "I can only imagine what you'd be like together."

Ewwww, that was an image I could have done without. I gritted my teeth and fought the urge to spit at him.

"Take your hands off me," I said. I wasn't sure how it would come out, but it sounded cool and controlled and furious. Not edged with panic, which was a miracle.

He covered my mouth, and in one swift motion, he swung a leg over me and straddled me. I felt a hot surge of utter despairing terror, a flashback from other times, years ago, when I'd been out of control and utterly lost, and it was only at the last second that I realized he hadn't untied my ankles, and I was relatively safe from the traditional kind of assault.

But then, Eamon didn't strike me as a traditional kind of rapist, either.

"Shhh," he whispered, and I froze as the sharp edge of a huge knife pressed against my throat. "Say hello to your daughter and tell her not to be stupid."

Imara? I gasped and blinked, and saw her face in the darkness, pale as snow. She was crouched in the corner, wild and feral as an Ifrit. Her eyes blazed hot gold.

"No," I croaked out, and waved one bound hand ineffectively. "Don't, Imara."

"That's excellent advice. It takes one little slip to end your mother's life."

No answer. No move from Imara. She just waited, staring, patient as a lion. Eamon's hand was trembling, just a little.

"I just want to establish the ground rules," he said. "First off, I'm keeping this knife in place until I have a clear understanding between us, all right? The drug that I injected in Joanne is toxic. Slow, but sure. I have the antidote. Not on me, of course. Do what I say, and everyone comes out of this alive and happy."

"Mom?"

"I'm okay," I said.

"No, in point of fact, you're not," Eamon said. "As I was saying. And if your offspring rips my heart out, you'll be buying burial plots for two, because your sister won't survive the day, either. I gave her a little shot, as well. Insurance. Now that we're clear about the cost of vengeance, I'm going to remove the knife from Joanne's throat, and you're going to be a very good little Djinn, aren't you?"

Imara's lips pulled back from her teeth in a snarl, but she didn't move. Eamon leaned back, then slipped off me with a creak of bedsprings. He used the knife on the ropes, quick slashes, and I rolled over on my side. I felt hot and sick. Drugged. Too drugged to do much. Eamon patted me on the shoulder. "There, there. You'll feel better--well, if you make me happy. If not, you'll slip into a coma and die."

Imara was up on her feet in one fluid motion. Her hands were at her sides, but I could see the gleam of claws, and threw her a warning shake of my head. "He gave me a shot," I said. "Can't--just wait. Wait."

Eamon hauled me to my feet. Cold air hit my skin, and I remembered with a bleary shudder that I was naked. He barely glanced at me, just shoved me forward into Imara's arms. "Get her dressed," he said. "Don't think of trying anything tricky. If you cooperate, we'll be saying our fond farewells in just a little while." "Mom?" Imara sounded scared, and pissed as hell. "Should I kill him?"

Funny, I'd been blaming David for murder in the name of self-preservation just a little while ago, hadn't I? But if I hadn't had Sarah's life depending on this, as well as my own, I'd have cheerfully watched Imara de-bone the bastard right in front of me. Flexible ethics. The key to a happy life.

"No," I said. "Not yet."

She opened up a bag that was lying on the floor behind her. Clothes. Nice ones. Silky, formfitting underwear. A silky pair of gray microfiber pants. A pull-on black velvet scoop-necked top.

And a pair of elegant black shoes, sculptural and spike-heeled.

"Manolo," my daughter said. "For moral support. There's a more practical pair underneath."

The other pair was Miu Miu fiats. I swallowed hard and slipped them on. Perfect, of course. I kissed Imara on the cheek and smiled at her. Weakly.

"I'll kill him for hurting you," she said.

"Maybe," I agreed. "But for right now, let's just see what he wants."

"What he wants," Eamon said from where he reclined on the bed, "is to get your lovely bums out of here and into the car. Shall we?"

I nodded. The room did a greasy, unpleasant spin, but I hung on.

"Fine," I said grimly. "The faster we can get you out of our lives, the better I'm going to like it."

"Ah," he sighed. "Just when we were starting to bond."