Firestorm (Weather Warden #5)

Firestorm (Weather Warden #5) Page 9

The first rental car agency didn't have a huge selection, and mostly it ran to sedate four-door sedans or cramped little economy cars. When I expressed that to the rental agent, a neat little redhead who was just cute as a bug in her dark blue suit, she looked conspiratorial and leaned forward to say, "You should call these guys." She handed over a brochure with the underhanded motion of someone completing a drug deal. I glanced down at the name on the glossy paper: Rent-A-Vette. Holy crap, I'd actually found somebody who understood. What were the odds?

"Thank you," I said with heartfelt sincerity. "You're a lifesaver."

She winked and moved on to the tourist family behind me, who wanted a boxy four-door sedan.

I went to the phone bank and called the number on the paper. Did I have a driver's license? Sure. Major credit card? No problem. I almost wept over the choices the woman on the other end began to reel off: Viper SRT-10, Mercedes SL-500, Porsche Cabriolet, Corvette C6, Porsche Boxster... I stopped her at the BMW Z4, mainly because I'd never driven one and always wanted to. If we were entering the end of days, I might as well indulge myself.

I had a shuttle within fifteen minutes.

Phoenix is pretty. Austere but pretty, in the way that only desert towns can be--the urban part looks pretty much standard, but it's surrounded by rugged country, upthrust hills and mountains, and three hundred days out of the year, it's dry and cloudless.

Unfortunately for the two million residents, I'd flown in dragging one of those not-dry, not-clear days along with me.

The shuttle driver chatted about things to do in Phoenix, which I accepted with a polite smile and a deaf ear. I had deadlines, emphasis on the dead. Hiking probably wasn't going to be on the agenda. Neither was a spa day, tempting as that might be.

Rent-A-Vette was a showplace of heart-stopping automotive delights. I could have wept at the gleaming ranks of muscle cars, but I managed to keep my cool and present myself at the rental counter to claim the keys to my Z4. It required me to pull out a driver's license and credit card, which I did, emptying my pockets along the way. While that was getting settled, I turned away and speed-dialed Sarah's cell phone.

A sleepy warm female voice answered. "Hello?"

"Sarah," I sighed. I managed to keep my voice low, somehow, although I wanted to shout. "I heard from Cherise. Are you okay?"

"Of course," she said, and laughed. It was a drunken, slow laugh, the kind you make right before you succumb to the anesthesia after counting backwards. "Yes, silly. I'm fine. Eamon's taking good care of me."

"Eamon?" I interrupted.

"Didn't I tell you?" Another slow throb of a laugh. "I forgot to mention him. Silly me. But I know you don't like him--"

How had he found her? Oh God... "Listen to me, Sarah. Please. Eamon is not a good man. I need you to start paying attention. You need to walk away from him."

There was a long, long delay, and then she said, "I don't understand."

"Look, just tell me where you are!"

Another laugh. "I can't do that. It's a secret."

And then the phone changed hands. Before he even spoke, I said, "You fucking bastard. How dare you?"

"The rules were that I stay away from you and your daughter, Joanne," Eamon said in that low, pleasant voice that was such a good disguise for him. "Which I am doing. I love your sister. I told you that. And I'm not willing to give her up just yet. So please, do keep on with your no doubt important crisis, and let us have some time to get better acquainted. I'll see you at the next family picnic."

"Eamon!" I hissed it, as much as you can hiss something without sibilants. "You keep your hands off my sister!"

"Love, I can't keep her hands off me." He laughed, and it sounded utterly unaffected. Villains didn't have the right to laugh like that, so infectiously. I could hear Sarah joining in.

I was glad I'd emptied my stomach on the plane.

I hung up without any good-byes before he could cut me off--a little control on my part, anyway--and went back to the counter. They looked happy. Apparently, my credit limit was stratospheric.

I pulled out of the parking lot in a sky-blue convertible Z4, hit the gas, and almost broke the sound barrier. Damn. The thing was little, light, and incredibly maneuverable. It smelled like rental cars smell, only newer; the interior wasn't roomy, but it seemed to make that an asset by cradling my body in an almost sensuous fashion.

I slipped on my sunglasses at the first stoplight and consulted the free map they'd given me. It looked easy enough--a straight shot up I-17 towards Flagstaff, with a quick jog off to the west at the Highway 179 exit. About a two-hour drive, if you obeyed the speed limit.

I was in a Z4, trying to save the world. Did I intend to obey the speed limit?

Hardly.

I've never really thought about why I like to drive fast, but it probably has to do with control. I like being in control, and I like pushing limits, and the adrenaline rush you get from hurtling down a clean, empty freeway--that's like nothing else. Driving felt especially good after the nauseating, disconnected trip in the plane. Not that I didn't have faith in the pilots, but I never liked being in the backseat. Or the passenger seat, for that matter.

The Z4 throbbed around me like a living thing, and we left the stone-and-glass caverns of Phoenix behind. The sun was a weak brass shadow behind gray clouds, and the rain fell in fits and starts. Not as determined as it had been to wash me away, but spitting its contempt nevertheless. The road looked black and shiny as it stretched out due east, toward Sedona and Flagstaff. I shifted gears as the traffic thinned, and felt something primal in my body relax at last. I might be flying toward disaster, but at least I was controlling the trip.

I felt the hair on my arms stir and come to attention, as if an electrical field had formed around me and I was static-charged. Something dark and shadowy formed slowly in the passenger seat next to me... too slowly. Djinn were masters of the now-you-see-them, now-you-don't, and this was way too gradual an appearance.

I backed off the gas, saw a scenic turnout up ahead, and took it in a hiss of tires on damp road, then braked fast as details came clear in the figure appearing next to me. Long black hair hanging limp, half-hiding the face. A shredded black leather jacket. Leather pants split in long cuts, showing pale-gold skin and blood. There was blood on her hands.

"Imara?" I said, and felt my heart freeze solid in my chest. Part of me felt like it was falling backward. "Imara, what happened?"

Her head slowly tilted back to rest against the leather seat, and I saw the blood spattered on her face. She looked far too pale. Her eyes were colorless, pale and clear.

"Help," my daughter whispered, and slithered sideways into my arms. "Mommy, help."

I screamed, calling her name; she didn't answer. Her eyes were still open, and her chest still rose and fell, but that was all. I couldn't even begin to think what to do. Djinn could have human form, but it wasn't real in the sense of mortal flesh; if they got hurt badly enough, they could let go of it, mist away. Their real injuries were metaphysical ones--energy depletions. Had Imara been attacked by an Ifrit? No, that would show up in other ways, not as physical wounds...

I remembered Rahel, coming up out of the surf in Florida not so long ago, looking ragged and half-killed. Who--or what?--had she been fighting? I'd never really had the time to find out. Could it have been a Demon? Imara shouldn't have even tried; our child didn't have the experience of a full-fledged Djinn, or the endurance. Or the powers.

I could barely breathe. When I felt for a pulse I found one, weak and unsteady under my fingertips. Not that a pulse mattered, but as long as she was manifesting physically, it was an indicator of how strong her life force might be.

"Imara, can you hear me? Imara!" It was crazy, but I shook her. Her head lolled. No reaction. She was like a living corpse.

Ashan had allowed this to happen. If he hadn't done it himself. My cold terror turned hot. Incandescent. If he's laid a hand on my daughter...

I cradled her in my arms--she was heavy and warm and oddly human--and braced her head against my shoulder. I pressed a kiss against her temple, and tried to think what to do. If David was... I couldn't let myself really think about David, where he might be, what he might be suffering. Too frightening. If Imara had been human, I could have driven her to a hospital, hooked her up to machines and tubes, let doctors take care of her. But an injured Djinn, even half of one, couldn't be so easily handled. If she couldn't do it on her own, I had no idea how to do it for her.

The Ma'at. The Ma'at had demonstrated some arcane knowledge that the Wardens certainly didn't possess; they'd been able to heal Rahel, for instance, when she'd become an Ifrit. So they had some kind of resources I didn't. The only problem was that, so far as I knew, the Ma'at were off handling things with the rest of the Wardens, or else they'd be hunkered down at their cushy Las Vegas headquarters, safe within the glass and faux-Egyptian sleekness of the Luxor hotel. Probably playing cards. They liked playing cards while things burned down around their ears.

I reluctantly moved Imara, got her upright in the passenger seat and strapped in place. Blood dripped from her hand in a steady rhythm onto the leather seat, but I had no idea whether it was real blood or metaphorical--if I bound up her wounds, would it make her better? Or would it just not matter, one way or another? Dammit. No signal on the cell phone. I had no way to contact Lewis until I got to the next town.

Or I could turn around, go back to Phoenix... It hit me in a sudden rush of comprehension. I was meant to turn back, wasn't I? There was a reason Imara had appeared here, now. She was a vivid, unmissable distraction, an emotional roadblock I couldn't help but consider.

I turned off the engine of the roadster, set the brake, and stepped out onto the crisp gravel of the roadside. The wind was cool and cutting, sharp with the scent of rain in an area that had little of that kind of thing in the normal course of events. I breathed deeper and got an aroma of wet sage. "You might as well come out. I know you're here."

Ashan was as gray as the clouds, and he seemed to just appear out of them, gliding down like some Hong Kong wire artist, landing with perfect poise and walking toward me without hesitation. A perfectly tailored suit around a perfectly proportioned body. Expensive, shined shoes that disdained little things like rain and wet sand. Ashan was twenty feet away, then ten, then five, and he wasn't slowing down.

"You bastard," I said, and I called the wind. It came as if it was waiting, as if it was more than willing. A hard wall of air hit him hard, shoved him back on his heels and dragged him ten feet. He stayed upright, staring at me with fierce colorless eyes. "You did this to my daughter."

He shrugged. "Don't take that tone with me. I could have ripped her into nothing. She's barely Djinn, and yet she's inherited all your arrogance."

He waved a hand. That was all it took to turn the wind around, and it hit me with the force of a sandblaster, driving me back against the car. I instinctively shielded my eyes and gasped for breath as pressure tried to compress me flat. He was playing with me. If Ashan really wanted to, he'd introduce my ribs to my backbone with shattering force and leave me a ruptured bag of meat.

The pressure slacked off enough for me to catch my breath. "How long have you been planning to destroy the Wardens?"

"Not the Wardens," he corrected. "Humans. You're killing us. Draining us of magic, and life. Your kind are a revolting perversion of the Djinn, and you think you are the lords of creation. We are better than you. We were first."

"Some of you were. Some of you came from humans," I said. "That must really piss you off. I mean, how does the inferior create the superior? By your logic, it can't happen. But it does, Ashan. It happens all the time."

"No," he said sharply. "Mongrels came from you, creatures like Jonathan and David. Heavy with humanity. I am not like them. My brothers and sisters are not like them."

I'd forgotten, but David had made that clear, once upon a time: there were Djinn who were created from humans, like the five hundred born out of the destruction of Atlantis, or like Jonathan and David on the battlefield. And then there were the--nobility, if that was the right term. The pure. The ones who'd been spawned directly from the Earth itself.

Ashan, of course, was one of them. And it appeared he had a whole political party behind him, because I could feel the power crackling around him, the hissing presence of others who didn't choose to show themselves.

Who stood between me and the next--the last--Oracle.

"Turn around," he said. "Turn around and go. Die with your people when the Demon turns her mad and wipes your corruption from her skin." "If you put a Demon Mark into an Oracle, how do you know it won't destroy you?"

"It won't," he said. "We are eternal."

"I thought you said we were killing you. Humans. You can't have it both ways, you know. Eternal, not eternal--"

"I control the Demons."

"Sure you do. Ashan, you really have mastered all the basic skills of a bad guy, including arrogance and cluelessness. I'm proud of you. Now, if you can just make an empty, impotent threat--"

"Shut up or I'll destroy you!" he roared, right on cue. Oh, he was mad. Really mad. I'd succeeded in royally teeing off the second most powerful Djinn in the world, and all his invisible allies, when I was all that stood between humanity and destruction.

"Do it," I said quietly, and pushed away from the car to stand in the clear. Facing him with my arms at my sides, hands limp and open. Staring right into his eerie Djinn eyes. "What are you waiting for? Smash me. Destroy me. Rip me to pieces. I'm just a mortal, I can't stop you. Come on, Ashan, kick my punk human ass."

He growled. It was a low, primal sound, and his human form distorted under the pressure of his rage. He misted at the feet, then the legs. The suit disappeared. Everything remotely elegant disappeared, and he was pure flame, pure roaring energy, like the center of a volcano.

He rushed at me. I flinched a little, but I held my ground.

He came to a halt less than two inches from my face. I could feel the burn, the fury, but he didn't touch me.

He couldn't touch me.

And he knew that I knew.

I opened my eyes and smiled. "You said it yourself. Jonathan, Lewis, me. She wants to see me. Hear me. Doesn't she? And she's not going to let you kill me."

He formed himself back into human flesh again, pale and solid as marble, cold as tombstones. His eyes were an unholy shade of teal, glittering with silver. "I wouldn't smile," he said, and there was a grave hint of fury in his voice. "I may not be able to hurt you, but I can take it in trade. Blood for blood. The blood of your lover."

That meant that David was still alive, oh God... Relief made me weak at the knees, but I couldn't let him see it. "David's willing to die for this if he has to. I don't even have to ask him."

"Not just him. I'll destroy every one of the Wardens. If you think to play the game with me, you need to know the stakes. Lives will be lost. I will see to it."

"You already did," I spat back. "Hundreds of Wardens are dead. Tens of thousands are in danger, or dying, and for every Warden that dies, more get put in jeopardy. I know what I'm playing for, Ashan. And you're not going to threaten me into giving up."

I expected him to laugh and bluster--I mean, good villains did, right?--but he just looked at me, and when his comeback came, it was slow and deliberate and scary. "No," he said. "I have never known you to respond to threats against yourself. Or the world at large. And you're quite right about David and his self-sacrifice."

He was looking behind me. I know, I know, it's the oldest trick in the book, but I didn't think that he was all that up on strategy.

I glanced back. Imara was out of the car and standing mute and somehow limp a few feet away. As if she were unconscious, being held up by an invisible hand at the back of her neck. Her head lolled forward, then back, as if someone had tugged hard on her hair.

Her eyes were empty, flat silver.

I turned back to Ashan. His were the same color.

"She's mine," he said. "Until you take her away. Mine to use. Mine to kill, if I want. You can accept your own death. So far as I can tell, you seem to actively seek it out. And like most of humanity, the plight of the distant and faceless doesn't move you. But your daughter is in my hand, Joanne. And I think that means something more."

I swallowed hard. He was right, of course. Every cell in my body screamed at me to do something, anything, to save my daughter. She was part of me, and I wanted to protect her so badly, it was tearing me to pieces. Ashan might not have human ancestry in his background, but he knew what we feared.

"It does," I said softly. My eyes filled up with tears suddenly--hot, hard, aching tears that seemed to pour right up from my heart. "I love my daughter more than my life. But I'm going, Ashan. You do whatever you have to do, but I'm going. I have to."

I got back in the car. I could barely see it for the tears, but somehow I kept myself from sobbing. The wet trails on my face where they'd streamed felt cold in the sudden blast of the air conditioner as I turned the key and started up the roadster.

Ashan was still watching me, with my daughter clutched in one hand like a broken marionette. I couldn't tell what he was thinking. Hell, I could barely tell what I was thinking.

I took a deep, damp gulp of air, pressed the clutch, and put the car in first gear. The engine shifted to a low purring growl, and the car eased forward with a crunch of gravel.

Ashan didn't move. He was ten feet away, with Imara. Around him, I sensed the other Djinn, his twenty companions, the faithful or faithless, depending which side you came down on in this struggle. I could almost see their calm faces, their inhuman eyes.

A jolt of lightning joined sky and earth behind Ashan, a pale pink-and-purple line that unraveled into dozens of thin strings on the way. Beautiful. Alien. Powerful. Terrifying.

I don't know why I said it, but I whispered, "Please." It was a sacred prayer, as much as a request.

And then I hit the gas.

At the last minute, he stepped aside as graceful as a matador, using my child for a cape.

I hit the freeway and shifted gears while my soul burned and crumbled into ruins.

When you give up everything--and I mean everything--there's this eerie sense of calm that comes over you. I didn't have David; I knew now that I couldn't have him. Whatever Ashan had done to him, it was thorough enough that he couldn't be my personal lifesaving God-in-a-bottle anymore. No power on earth could have held him back from coming to Imara's defense, if he'd been able to break free. Ashan had him, and now he had my daughter, too. I'd abdicated the one responsibility that should have been impossible for me to give up: motherhood. I'd turned my back on my own child. I'd let myself count her as a cost of doing business.

It felt like Pompe� on volcano day, and all I could taste was ashes.

I let him have my daughter.

I could hear Lewis's warm, dispassionate voice telling me that I'd made the right choice, the only choice, but it didn't matter. It's written in our DNA somewhere: our children first, the rest of the world second. I couldn't believe I'd done it. Couldn't believe I was that much of a monster.

Ashan was going to kill her, and I was going to let him, and that tore my heart to bloody shreds. I hated this. I hated being strong. I hated understanding that this was the cost of things.

Please. I said it again, with all my heart and soul, letting it fill me up in prayer and desperation. Please God, take care of her. I don't know how you fit into all this--I don't know whether you're in everything or nothing, whether you're an absentee landlord or watching the flight of every bumblebee. But I beg you, don't let my daughter pay the price. Please. I don't care what it costs, but please, find a way...

God must hate our me-me-me whining; like kids sent off to college, we call only when we need a favor. I wasn't sure if I'd built up any credit in the Bank of Miracles. Probably not, given my history, but maybe the Bank of Mercy didn't have such strict lending rules.

I wiped my eyes and opened up the roadster down the clean, straight road. It seemed to go on forever, and then I took the indicated turnoff, AZ-179, to make the last leg of the journey.

It was beautiful. Really, searingly beautiful, even with the gray cotton of cloud cover obscuring that burnished blue sky--the rocks were ancient and powerfully sculpted, and it was a landscape to conjure the old, old gods of the empty spaces. The road looked alien and out of place here. I was no Earth Warden, but even I could feel the power that whispered through the air and ground; this was a place where the skin between the real and aetheric was paper-thin. No wonder New Agers flocked here, not to mention the religious of all faiths and sects. It had a purity that I'd never felt before, not even in other desert spots.

The clouds, already thinning, broke into haze by the time I reached the town of Oak Creek, which according to the rental agency map was just outside of Sedona proper. Behind them was that limitless sky, the bright unblinking stare of the sun.

It occurred to me, rather stupidly late, that I had no street address for the Oracle, and now, with Imara gone (my heart dried up and died at the thought of that, and I felt another flood of tears burn my eyes) I didn't have a native guide, either. AH I had was instinct, and not much of that.

Well, the last Oracle was an Earth spirit, so I didn't figure to find it hanging out at the Old Navy store, but that left a lot of territory.

I kept going, absent any reason to do anything else. Oak Creek passed in a blur of houses and xeriscaped yards, businesses and cars, and was swallowed up again by the desert that outwaited everything. The silence took over again. The sky brightened, and my hands shook on the steering wheel. I kept expecting Ashan to smite me with righteous fury, but he hadn't made a move. I wondered why. Maybe he was still trying to figure out why I'd abandoned my daughter to die...

I shook my head violently to clear it of the images.

The sun was molten out here, pouring energy in syrupy waves, and the ground soaked it up. Shadows were sharply drawn and as cold as black holes where they fell. The flora was angular and beautiful in its austerity, and it passed by in a continuous roll until I topped a rise and saw Sedona up ahead.

At the same instant, I felt the same artificial sense of calm and steadiness here that I'd felt in Seacasket. I was in the right place, all right.

I just didn't know where to go from here.

The sense of panic started to set in when I passed the town limits, because I really didn't know. I suppose I was expecting some kind of magic guidance--a flashing sign that said this way to the oracle to save the world! Not that I'd expect anything so crass in this place. Maybe a discreet, hand-carved art nouveau plaque in native woods.

I pulled in at a gas station, trembling all over, and consulted the map again. Nothing. No helpful Djinn-induced sparks of light. No oracle marked on it, with a pointing arrow. I'd come all this way, given up my daughter, and for what?

Easy, I told myself when I felt the shaking start to get too bad. You can do this. Ashan wouldn't have tried to stop you if there hadn't been a way to get it done.

Logical, but not comforting. Hell, Ashan might have been trying to stop me just for the pure joy of seeing me have to choose between duty and child. He struck me as that kind of Djinn.

I wished, illogically, that Jonathan was still around. Lean, angular, sarcastic Jonathan, with his infinite eyes and shallow patience. David was my love, and he was half my soul, but I needed someone with more perspective. Someone who viewed me as a white knight on a chessboard, not the queen, to be protected.

Someone to move me to the right square.

I got out of the BMW and stretched. A couple of guys gassing up stared. Might have been the car they were lusting after, but I smiled wanly at them anyway and walked over to the telephones. After a futile and maddening search for change in my pockets, I went into the gas station and bought one of those phone card things, then came back and dialed the number of Lewis's cell phone from a telephone booth.

I got him on the first ring. "Jo! I've been trying to find you--"

"Cell phone service is bad," I said. "I'm still saving the world for you. I need a favor, and it's a big one."

Silence for a long few seconds. There was a steady, agitated sound of shouts in the background. All was not quiet on the Warden front. "Go," he said.

"First of all, if you've still got any clout with any Free Djinn, use it. Ashan's got Imara. He's trying to use her to stop me. I need help."

I felt the sudden intake of breath on the other end of the line, as if I'd gut-punched him across the intervening miles. "Ah, dammit, Jo, I'm sorry. I was trying to get hold of you to warn you. Rahel showed up in the New York offices about fifteen minutes ago." "What?" Oh, I had a bad feeling. Bad, bad, bad.

"It's happening again," Lewis said. "They're--turning. Be careful."

I swallowed hard and angled my back to the rough adobe wall, so that I could squint through the glare at the parking lot. It looked calm. My BMW sat glittering in the sun, sleek and beautiful and just a touch arrogant; beyond it, two big-ass SUVs were drinking the pumps dry. A woman was tossing trash in the courtesy cans. Normal human life, nothing out of the ordinary.

"Did she kill anybody?"

"Let's just say it didn't go well."

"How many--"

"Stay focused, Jo." Lewis sounded grim and ragged, very unlike his usual cool self. "You can't afford to worry about individuals right now. I can't do what you're doing, or I'd be knocking down the doors right now, believe me. I've tried. Even though I've got the right mix of powers, there's something missing in me. Something you've got."

"Djinn," I said. "I have a little bit of Djinn."

I heard someone yell his name in the background. "I have to go," he said. "We've got wounded. Jo--about Imara--"

"I understand," I said. The taste of ashes was back in my mouth. "There's nothing you can do."

"Nothing anybody can do," he said. "We're trying to stay alive--that's it and that's all. Keep as many people breathing as we're able."

And that, ultimately, was the mission of the Wardens, wasn't it? The greater good.

"Wait," I said. "I'm in Sedona. Do you have any idea where to--"

"Find the Ma'at," he said, and hung up.

Just... hung up.

I stared at the receiver in disbelief, because that wasn't exactly what I'd call a red-hot clue. The Ma'at weren't listed in the yellow pages under World, Saving Of... and I had no idea if there was even one single person, out of the several Ma'at I'd met, who lived in the Sedona area. As far as I knew, they were all strangers. How the hell was I supposed to find them, send up a flare?

A flare...

I was still thinking it through when one of the big SUVs pulled away from the pump and out onto the road, and revealed three figures standing there, watching me. Focused on me like hungry wolves.

Rahel. Alice. The male Djinn from back at the forest, the one with the long white ponytail.

Their eyes were crimson, burning like the forests up in Canada, and hell if I knew what I was supposed to do to save myself.

I swallowed and carefully replaced the receiver in the cradle on the pay phone. I briefly considered running, but that didn't seem so smart. I couldn't outrun Djinn.

So far, they hadn't moved, but I was deeply scared. The three of them together represented a huge amount of firepower--think China in a pissed-off mood--and I was trying to remember all the advice about what to do with wild animals. Move slowly. Avoid eye contact. Don't run.

They all moved together. I mean, together--not like one started and the others followed, they all just flowed into motion and began walking toward me. Slow steps. Alice had to walk faster, because she was so small, but they were identically eerie.

Clearly, moving slowly and avoiding eye contact wasn't getting me anywhere. I pressed myself against the wall and held up my hands, trying to appear as helpless and pathetic as possible while simultaneously grabbing and gathering up as much power as I could. Not that it would do any good, but I wasn't going down without a fight. Not now. Not after I'd come so far.

If I thought I'd been shaking before, well, this was like standing on a fault line. My heart was hammering. I remembered how many Wardens had already died, and I remembered my name, already carved on that marble wall of the fallen. I'd seen my funeral. It had been nice, but I had no great desire to schedule an encore. At least, not yet. I was fed up with the dying.

I focused on Rahel, looking for some sign--any sign--that she was still even partly in control. Nothing. She was a vessel: Rahel on the outside, and something else entirely on the inside. Did she know? Could she remember how it felt, later, to be so lost to herself? Would she remember killing me later?

Why was the Earth doing this now? What had I done to piss her off? Anything? Nothing? Who could tell?

They stopped moving just as suddenly as they'd started, facing me. Rahel was on the right side, and I kept watching her, willing her to recognize me. The madness hadn't lasted too long last time, had it? Maybe an hour? Lewis had said it had started fifteen minutes ago... that left me forty-five minutes to keep the tigers at bay...

Their mouths opened, and what came out was noise.

I clapped my hands over my ears and tried to keep it out, but it wasn't sound, really, and it didn't come in through my ears. It was something else, a kind of vibration that used the aetheric and the real world, was part of both, part of neither--it was awful and terrible and it was somehow sick, as if I was hearing a physical manifestation of a disease.

The Demon. The Demon had succeeded in getting to another Oracle--probably this one, in Sedona--and the Mother was horribly hurt and angry, unable to strike back in any effective way to protect herself. So she was striking out at anything and everything that moved.

I was like a bacteria trying to talk to Albert Einstein, but I had to try something. Anything. I pried my hands away from my ears and yelled, "Shut up!"

They did.

Wow.

All three of them stared at me, and I blinked back; all three of their heads tilted slowly sideways, considering me. Crimson eyes flickering with flares of orange and yellow and a hot, pale blue.

"I know," I said. My stomach was trying to contract itself into a tight little ball of terror, and my knees didn't want to stay firm. I braced myself against the adobe wall and thought madly that of all the hostage negotiations ever conducted, this had to be the biggest. No pressure. "I know how much it hurts. Can you hear me? Can you understand me?"

Nothing. Their heads stayed tilted. They didn't move, not so much as an inch or a twitch. Frozen, like statues, except for the unsettling, alien furnace in their eyes.

"I can help," I said. "If there's a Demon Mark on the Oracle, I can help. Just take me there. Or at least show me the way."

It wasn't working. They didn't understand me, although they certainly knew I was there--they'd sought me out, which meant she was aware of my existence. Dammit... David was the buffer. Imara said that she couldn't find him, which meant that somehow he'd been taken out of his connection to all other Djinn, and without him standing in that place, no one stood there.

No buffer between the Djinn and the earth. Nothing to keep them sane.

The trio opened their mouths again, and sang. It was indefinable, but I thought it was a lament. Sorrow, deep and jagged and painful. Loss. Horror. It hurt to hear it, made my knees give way; I cried out at the short stab of agony that bolted up from my kneecaps hitting concrete, then stayed down. I wasn't sure I could get up. Wasn't sure I wanted to get up.

I had no way to answer her, except with words. "I know," I said. "I know it hurts. I know you want to stop hurting. So do I."

Maybe there was a coloring of the same anguish in my voice. Maybe she heard the music of that in the words, even if the words meant nothing.

Rahel's eyes flickered. Red, then pale blue, then that fierce predatory gold I was used to.

For an instant I read everything in her--sheer deep terror at what she was doing, helpless rage at not being able to stop it, despair, a tearing pain that was an echo of the earth's.

She didn't have time to speak, and I barely could draw the breath and form the intention to ask before the Mother had Rahel again, hard in her grasp.

The song came again, soft, almost a whisper, and in it was something deadly. Like a mother singing a lullaby to a baby she was about to smother, because the world was too harsh a place, too unbearably sharp-edged for such a fragile life...

I reacted instinctively. I was terrified beyond all reason because I knew, knew my life was about to come to an end, and I had to act or die on my knees.

I wasn't about to die on my knees. I lunged to my feet, crossed the few feet that separated me from Rahel, and slugged her. A strong right cross to the jaw, with as much shoulder behind it as I knew how to commit. And if I may say so myself, it was a hell of a good shot, because I felt every bone in my hand turn to shards of glass, and I was sure I'd broken every damn thing in my body between fingertips and collarbone...

... but she shut her mouth, rocked back a step, and the other two Djinn followed suit.

"That's enough!" I yelled. "Enough! I know it hurts, I know you hurt and it's making you crazy, but dammit, stop! This isn't some teenage soap opera! We live here! We're part of you. Humans matter! The Djinn matter! You can't kill us just because you're--depressed and angry!" It was an impassioned speech. I don't think she got a word of it. Probably sounded like a fly buzzing in her ear as she sobbed in anguish, but for just a second, the Earth was surprised enough by the simple appearance of the nagging fly that she paused in the act of ripping us to pieces.

And the Djinn all looked at me with their own eyes, in varying stages of worry and disquiet.

"And fucking ow!" I yelled, and cradled my right arm. God, that hurt. I mean, really. "How much time do I have?"

"Not much," Rahel breathed. Of the three of them, she looked the least concerned, but I wasn't convinced that meant much. Rahel had always been good at hiding her feelings. "She's waking. It's done, my friend. It's finished. You should let us kill you now, without pain, before the choice is gone for all of us."

"We can't kill her," Alice observed. Her voice sounded preoccupied. "She won't allow it. There's something about this one."

"Venna," Rahel said. I looked around, curious, but there were just the four of us. Alice cocked her head attentively. Oh. That was right, her name wasn't Alice, I'd just gotten to thinking of her that way--she'd kept the Alice in Wonderland pinafore and silky blond hair, but she was a very old, very powerful Djinn. And her name, apparently, was Venna. "Can you sense David?"

"No," she said. "Although part of him is in this plane."

"Part of him?" For a breathless second I thought she meant an arm, a leg, a disembodied spirit...

"The child," she clarified. "Ashan has her."

"Go and get her," Rahel said. "Now."

"He'll resist."

"Yes," she agreed. "Enjoy yourself."

Venna raised one eyebrow--a very odd expression for an Alice look-alike--and smiled coolly. "How much?"

"Until you stop enjoying yourself."

She nodded once, folded her hands primly, and vanished. My hand was starting to feel normal again, though incredibly hot, as if I'd stuck it in an oven to bake all the bones back together. I tried not to move it. As if he felt my pain, the big Djinn reached out to touch my hand. His fingers stroked up and down over the aching cracked or broken bones.

"You shouldn't put your thumb in your fist when you punch someone," he said. My broken thumb reset with a snap, and I yelped. "That's to help you remember."

"Good enough," Rahel said. "Give us a minute."

The big Djinn didn't comment, just shrugged and walked away, around the corner of the convenience store. Maybe he was going to buy a Slurpee. Anything was possible, at the moment.

My legs just flat stopped working, and all of a sudden I was pitching forward, helpless to prevent it, and the asphalt parking lot was coming up fast and straight for my nose. Rahel grabbed me and hoisted me upright, then leaned me back against the wall. I gave a deep-throated moan, let my head rest against the rough adobe, and closed my eyes for a few seconds. Stars. I was seeing stars, and they were moving fast. Too fast for me to keep up.

"It's all happening," I said. "Right? I'm too late."

"A few minutes left," Rahel said. "Not so many, though." She accompanied that with a shake of my arm. "You must finish it," she said. "She won't listen to us, but she hears you. She doesn't understand you, but there's something about you that... sings. Finish it. Make her understand. Go."

"I can't."

"You have to."

"Rahel, I can't!" I wanted to stay here. I wanted to wait to see Imara's face again. I wanted--

I just wanted to be like the rest of the world, filling up my car, buying my Slurpee, unaware I was half an hour or less away from dying.

There was no forgiveness or mercy in her expression. "You will," she said. "Because it's who you are. I have seen this in you from the first moment I saw you."

"Bullshit!" I burst out. "I don't even know where--"

"Get in your car and drive."

"Did you hear me? I don't know where I'm going!"

"Drive!" she snarled, and practically threw me across the parking lot toward the BMW. My legs worked fine this time, holding me upright as I braked my forward momentum against the side of the car. I whirled to face her, and the fear turned white-hot with rage.

"Don't you ever do that again!" I shouted. "Ever! I swear to God, Rahel--"

"Yes," she said, walking toward me with fast, choppy steps. Her hair, intricately braided with beads, swirled and twisted in a sudden hot wind rushing over the parking lot. I felt the patter of sand against my skin. "Swear to God. Pray. Pray."

She was terrifying now, and it wasn't the Earth inside her, it was purely and wholly Rahel.

"Pray," she said again, as if it really meant something, and put her hands together and gave me a full, formal bow.

I blinked against a stinging rush of blown sand, and then... she was gone. Nothing there but discarded paper cups rattling around on the ground, making pointless circles in the wind.

I scrabbled for the door and threw myself inside the car, fastened both hands tight on the steering wheel for a second, and then started up the car.

Pray.

Well, it was a start.

I pulled out onto the highway, still heading through Sedona, looking for... a sign. Overhead, the sky seemed to be getting darker, although it wasn't anywhere near dusk; the cerulean blue was taking on ocean colors. The sun blazed on, brassy-bright, but it didn't seem to be giving any warmth.

I paid no attention to the traffic, and let my instincts and peripheral vision take care of it while I frantically scanned the horizon. Jagged rocks all around, ringing us, and I had no idea what she'd meant except that she'd meant something specific.

And then, up ahead, I saw a sign. A literal exit sign. It said, chapel road, and in a smaller size type, CHAPEL OF THE HOLY CROSS.

Pray.

I took the exit fast, with tires squealing, and followed the winding road.