"Oh, I've been fighting," I said. "And I don't forget who I'm really fighting, either. That was your doing, out there in the desert."
She cocked her head slightly, but her utterly polite and blank expression never shifted. "It's good to be aware of one's purpose," she said blandly. "Though I thought the Djinn had a different path for you than this. You could have become something so... different. So powerful."
I had a suffocating flashback to being sealed in that airless tight crystal coffin, pierced by slow, pitiless needles. Changing, as she intended, to something different. Something powerful.
Something that she would control. Her angel of death, stalking the world.
"That's not going to happen," I said, and she bowed her head, just a tiny inclination.
"As you say." It was amusement, not agreement. "You are welcome to stay here with us."
"No. Isabel," I said, "get Esmeralda. We're joining the Wardens."
"I can't," Isabel said. It wasn't a rebellion, it was a statement. "I'm sorry, Cassie, but I can't do that. The Wardens aren't where I need to be. Es, either. They don't understand us, and they don't know what we can do. We're better here, where we can really use our powers to help."
There was the faintest shadow of a smile on Pearl's lips. Delicate, like the shadows of flowers and dragons on her robe. "The children know that I'll care for them," she said. "As I always have."
"Care for them," I repeated. The rage that I kept banked inside, that had driven me to survive despite all the challenges arrayed against me, against Ashan's edict and the Wardens' distrust, against the Mother herself--that rage warmed me now. Sustained me. I did not let it drive me, however. I knew that was what she wanted. "Oh, you care for them. I've seen the wreckage of the children you no longer wanted, could no longer use. You keep those you can put to work, and once they're dry, you'll discard them. And none of them will outlive your rebirth, will they?"
But that, I knew, was a lie. Of all the children that Pearl had abducted, or coerced, or whose parents she'd persuaded to entrust them to her--of all these elite children gathered here with her in this room--she'd keep Isabel to the last breath, purely because I loved her.
Isabel was my punishment. Solely, completely, mine.
"It's my choice," Iz insisted. "Cassie, please understand--this is how I want to help. By being here. With her. I want you to respect what I choose to do."
Luis hadn't spoken, but he was staring at his niece with an expression that told me how heartbroken he was. "You can't want this, Iz," he said softly. "If you do, you're forgetting everything you learned. She took you, baby. She did things to you that hurt you. She made you--she made you believe that Cass was your enemy, that I was dead. Don't you see that? She's not your friend. She's our enemy."
"She's your enemy," Iz said. She looked just as grave, just as sad. "I'm sorry, Tio. I wish I could make you understand, but she made me what I need to be right now, and I need to be here. Please believe me. Please."
"They'll never understand, Isabel," Pearl said. She sounded so soft, so compassionate, and no one could see what she really was inside: a murderer, bent on extinction, bloody and complete. Someone who could only lust after death on an ever-grander scale. "They'll always try to stand in your way. But it's up to you. If you want to go with them, I wish you well."
She didn't mean it, of course; she'd never allow Isabel out of her control now, but Iz didn't know that, couldn't know it. To her, it sounded like pure generosity of spirit.
There was nothing I could say that wouldn't reinforce that impression and drive Isabel further into the arms of my enemy.
I felt a presence behind me, and looked back to see that Lewis Orwell was standing there. He nodded politely to Pearl, equal to equal. "Thank you for maintaining the perimeter," he said. "It's much-needed relief."
"I am happy to assist," she said. "Cassiel seems to think that these children are here against their wishes. Would you please reassure her, Warden?"
He glanced at me, at Luis, and said, "I've spoken to as many of them as I can. They all say they're fine. None of them have parents here with us." Meaning, I supposed, that this was a room full of orphans, with no one to come for them. No one to battle Pearl for their hearts and minds. And what else would they say? They'd all been twisted into her creatures. They had no voices of their own.
"If that's so, not all of their parents died out there fighting the good fight," I said. "Some were killed by--what do you call it?--friendly fire."
"Maybe," Orwell said. "But that's a moot point now. If we survive, we can sort it all out then." He didn't seem to hold out any real hope for that, and he was most likely right. "I need the two of you on duty, right now. Come with me."
"Not without Isabel," Luis said.
Isabel disagreed. She crossed her arms and sat down on the floor, unmistakably daring us to drag her off against her will. Luis looked down at her, shaken and angry. When he grabbed for her, I intercepted his hand and shook my head. "Leave her," I said. "You must. This isn't over."
"Damn straight it isn't over," he said, and glared at Pearl. "I'm coming for you, bitch. You are not getting that girl. Believe it."
Her gaze brushed mine, and I heard Pearl's mocking voice in my mind. And you, Cassiel? No empty threats from you, even as I hold your child in my hands? While I hold her very soul?
I smiled slowly, and said aloud, "No empty ones."
I pushed Luis out ahead of me, following the most powerful Warden on earth to our assigned battle stations.
I should have known that Joanne wasn't that easy to kill--even for Pearl.
Luis and I were remotely laying thick blocks of power at the base of a newly emerging volcano in Los Angeles. It was brute-force work, no delicacy to it; we were well beyond that kind of control now, after many exhausting hours.
We'd just finished the last layers of protection for the embattled city, and dropped out of the aetheric back into our bodies, when the shout rang out through the hushed, startled room.
"Cassiel! Luis!"
Joanne Baldwin--bloodied, sweaty, dirty, furious--was standing in the doorway. A stillness fell over the room, a sense of dull surprise; there might have been happiness, if anyone had still had the energy for it.
She ignored everyone except us.
Joanne scrambled over cots, prone bodies, and thumped down to land flat-footed facing us, weight distributed for a fight. She looked wild and almost Djinn-bright in her fury. "Where is he?" she demanded, and I saw glimmers of fire around her hands, evidence she was just barely clinging to her controls. "David was with you! Where is he, damn you? What did you do to him? You had his bottle!"
I think she would have burned me out of sheer terror and frustration, but Lewis Orwell--who'd been lying down on a bunk not far away--rose and came toward her. She had no chance to even speak his name before he put his arms around her, not so much to comfort her as hold her back. She pushed him away, but I saw her freeze, taking in what I'd seen hours ago--the state of the man, the sadness, the exhaustion.
"Where is he?" she asked, but in a much shakier, more vulnerable voice. "God, please--"
He took her arm and led her away. Breaking the news to her, I thought, in private--that he'd taken David, that he'd imprisoned him, that he'd made the decision to leave her to die while he'd used David ruthlessly here instead, to shore up defenses, defend the helpless masses dying out there in the greater world.
I'd felt ill even witnessing the trapped fury in Joanne's lover; he'd done as commanded, mostly because even he couldn't deny the necessity of it, but he had never stopped hating Lewis for it.
Together they had trapped and imprisoned almost a hundred Djinn, and those bottles sat locked in a case on the far wall of the Wardens' room. The only bottle that wasn't there was Venna's, the one that Lewis himself still kept.
And now Lewis was going to have to explain all of that to Joanne. That ought to be an interesting conversation... and one likely to lead to violence.
; The door closed after them. The small meeting space inside didn't seem like a place to be having the kind of confrontation that was likely between two Wardens of that level of power, but then again, I supposed that having it here in the middle of innocent potential victims might have been worse.
"Hey," Luis said. He shook his loose black hair away from his face, grabbed a bottle of water from a cooler sitting nearby, and pitched it underhand to me. I cracked the top and drained several gulps, closing my eyes at the simple ecstasy of fulfilling a basic need. "While they're occupied, we need to talk."
"About...?"
"You know what." He jerked his chin at the second, still larger room, where Pearl kept her children segregated from the Wardens. Where Isabel was. "This is coming to a head, and she's going to strike. We need to be ready when that happens, and I don't know what your plan is."
I'd been working on one, but it was depressingly likely that it, too, would fail. Still, he was right; we had to try. "Make your way over toward the door," I said. "We'll need a diversion."
"What kind?"
"Any kind, so long as it pulls the Wardens away from that wall." I glanced where I meant, and he saw the locked case with its mismatched bottles neatly lined up there. "I need only about fifteen seconds."
"You're not serious."
"Very."
"Cassiel..."
"Fifteen seconds," I said. "Please."
He finished off his bottled water, grabbed a cheese sandwich from a tray, and took a bite as he considered, frowning. Then he swallowed and said, "You're damn lucky I love you, you know that?"
Oh, I knew. And he knew I knew, so there was nothing to be said to that.
Luis rose and walked toward the far door, eating his sandwich. I took his empty bottle, and mine, and walked in the opposite direction, vaguely in the direction of the large industrial trash can that occupied the corner. The Fire Warden guarding the case watched me with too much interest. Apparently, I did not imitate casual behavior well.
"Move away," she said to me. I raised my eyebrows.
"Why?"
Fire formed around her fingers. "Let's just say that I'm asking nicely. This time."
There was a shout from behind me, and a sudden smell of acrid smoke. A pillow on an unoccupied bed burst into flame, then another. The Fire Warden acted instinctively, focusing her attention on the immediate threat; while she did, I stepped up beside her and pressed my palm to the back of her head. Sleep, I whispered in her mind, and put her out before she could put her power to bear against me; it had to be fast, because Fire Wardens had the best reactions of anyone in responding to threats.
I caught her on the way down and eased her onto an empty bunk. From the outside, it simply looked as if she--like many other Wardens--had collapsed from exhaustion.
And my partner was frantically and obviously extinguishing the fires he'd started. "Sorry, sorry," he was saying. "Got it under control, no problem. Must be more tired than I'd thought.... Damn, sorry. Fire's sort of new for me...."
I backed up against the case.
My discarded backpack was still lying nearby, all its contents dumped out; I grabbed it and dragged it over, and held it in my right hand, still facing away from the glass case. I used my left to reach behind me, and melted the glass in a neat, round hole through which I retrieved two bottles; it was a simple matter of misdirection, to slide them inside, shift slightly over, expand the hole, and grab two more. Then two more. When I had emptied a shelf, I sealed the glass seamlessly behind me and stepped away.
No one was watching me. The Fire Warden I'd put to sleep began to snore lightly.
And from the meeting room into which Joanne and Lewis had disappeared came shouting that penetrated even the world-class soundproofing installed in this wealthy little enclave. I draped my backpack casually over one shoulder by the handle, and picked up one of the piled cheese sandwiches as I watched Luis slowly weave his way around the Wardens, who regarded him with varying degrees of disgust or suspicion, back to me.
He ate another sandwich as I ate mine, and mumbled between bites, "Hope it was worth it."
"It was," I said. "She's getting ready. I can feel it."
"Pearl, or the Mother?"
"Both," I said absently. "The Mother has sensed our interference, pinpointed our location; she'll send everything she can against us to smash us. And that is what Pearl is waiting for." I nodded toward the half-open door into the room where Pearl was hiding like a hunting spider, lying in wait with her apprentices for the right moment to strike. I could see a portion of Isabel, sitting cross-legged and in a relaxed pose of concentration. There had been too many children awake in there, focused on tasks. It wasn't merely energy being expended to keep this place safe. It was... readiness. Watchfulness.
I had to get Isabel away from her before it was too late.
I just had no idea how.
The end came fast and without any warning.
First, the conference room door suddenly burst open, and instead of just Joanne and Lewis who'd gone in there, four came out: Lewis, Joanne, David, and Venna. David looked almost as hard and angry as the last time I'd seen him, when Lewis had confined him to the bottle. I was surprised Lewis had survived releasing him... but the real surprise had to be Venna, who should not have looked so like herself. I was still processing that startling information when I felt a brush of air, and suddenly Venna was standing next to me.
In mortal form, she looked like a small, innocent child, with straight golden hair held back from her face by a simple cloth band. She wore a blue and white dress, neat and proper, very like the illustrations I had seen in the children's book Alice in Wonderland.
It occurred to me a single second later that she shouldn't--couldn't--have looked that way; she'd been sealed into the bottle as an Ifrit, twisted and blackened, unable to heal. A skeleton of her former self.
If Venna had been restored, a Djinn of greater power had been killed to provide that miracle... and there was only one Djinn that it could be.
The magnitude of it stunned me.
"Hello, Cassiel," she said to me, but she was looking off into the distance, in a stare that made it clear she was watching the aetheric. "I'm so glad you are predictable."
"I--what?" That was baffling, until she tugged the backpack off my arm. "You. But I don't understand--"
"Conduits sometimes have the gift of foresight," she said. "It's a curse, really. You can't do anything yourself. You can only try to get others to do it for you. I never realized how bothersome that might be until now." She suddenly turned her bright blue gaze on me, and the power behind it was astonishing. Venna had always been incredibly old, incredibly strong, but this was... different.
"Conduit," I repeated, and closed my eyes briefly, even in the midst of all the chaos. "Ashan's gone."
She inclined her head. "Yes. Ashan is dead. I killed him. I may kill someone else, too. I'm not sure I'm entirely stable quite yet." She was very calm about it, eerily so. "But I probably won't kill you, since you're not really Djinn. I'm going to try to not get hungry unless it's really necessary." In a sudden, startling move, she grabbed my backpack from me, with its load of sealed bottles. "I'll be needing that. I can do this faster than you can."
She flashed from me to another Warden, then another, then another. She gave out all the bottles I'd collected, dropped the backpack, and turned to face Joanne, Lewis, and David. "It's done," she said, and looked up suddenly. "And it's here."
She was right.
A burst of energy hit Las Vegas like a bomb, buckling the floor under us, crashing cots and glass and people into one another, onto the floor, while above us chandeliers swayed, flailed, broke loose, and fell like glass bombs. The walls rippled and leaned, and the entire room twisted as the earth's torment vibrated up in waves.
The Earth Wardens were on it in seconds, controlling the furious shaking, but it was only the beginning of the end of us. Fires broke out in the walls, where the wiring ran, and took hold
in unnatural white blazes that ate through drywall, wood, and steel alike. Luis squeezed my hand in silent apology, and ran to help control the flames that threatened to spill out over the injured who lay moaning on the still-moving floor. One of the Weather Wardens shouted a warning--something about wind shears bringing down high-rises, simply bending them until they broke.
Chaos.
And in the midst of it, I felt Pearl finally make her move.
It came in the form of a surgical lightning strike that blackened a ten-foot circle of space at the end of the room and left slag, dripping metal, and burned flesh behind.
The cabinet where the Djinn bottles had been, and all of the bottles I'd left behind, had just been vaporized.
The Warden I'd left sleeping nearby woke up, screaming in a high, thin, agonized voice, but it didn't last; her entire bottom half had burned to bones, and there was nothing I or anyone else could do to save her. There was an immediate reaction in the room as more Wardens responded, putting out the lingering flames, rushing to more wounded. They were attributing it to the Mother, and indeed, she was attacking us now, fiercely.... There were Djinn materializing in the room, and we had seconds to live, if that.