I couldn't speak, but I nodded, or tried; my head jerked unevenly as the muscles seized in protest.
Together, the three of us had just killed a Djinn. And not any Djinn... one fueled with the direct, angry power of the Mother. I could understand what Luis had done, but Isabel... At her age, with her experience, she should never have been able to try it, much less succeed in saving me. Not from a disease that had never been seen before on this world, something clever and aware on its own.
Isabel was still smiling as she said quietly, "It was a weak one."
"What?" I concentrated on breathing in slow, steady rhythm as the waves of pain began to recede.
"The disease the Djinn was carrying. It wasn't as bad as it could have been. There'll be more. Worse. You know that."
I did, but I'd tried to avoid thinking of it. Priya had appeared out here in the woods, not in the center of a populated city. Why? My only answer was that some last vestige of the old Priya still fought, however inadequately. She'd managed to avoid catastrophic loss of life.
But others might not have fought so hard. Even now, it could be happening.
As if she'd read my mind, Isabel said, "It's happening all over. There's one like her in Boston right now. Four more that I can see on the aetheric around the world--two in Europe, two in China. I don't think Crazy Bad Mommy Earth can make too many at once, though. She can't afford to; it destroys the Djinn, and she needs them for other things." Isabel sounded utterly certain of this, unnaturally so, as if she were a Djinn herself. She blinked, and some of that eerie gleam left her eyes as she extended her hand to me. "Come on. We need to get Uncle Luis and get out of here. They need us in Seattle."
I was hardly capable of helping anyone at the moment, and to my humiliation I did need her assistance in finding my feet. When we found Luis, he was groggily scrambling up, avoiding the area of dust that had once been a Djinn's physical manifestation. When he saw me, he lunged for me and wrapped his arms around me. "Damn," he whispered, and his warm breath caressed my neck and ear like an intimate touch. "What were you thinking, chica? Could have gotten yourself killed!"
"As could you," I said. "If I hadn't stepped in."
Isabel snorted. "Yeah, and I had to save both of your butts," she said, and then, oddly, giggled. "I don't think you ever let me get away with saying that. Butts!"
She broke into gales of laughter, in a room full of the dead, in the ashes of a destroyed Djinn, and a chill came over me. The sound was so like the old Ibby, the innocent child, but I couldn't shake off the feeling that there was nothing innocent about this now. She was a child, still, in the body of a teen, and a power almost equivalent to a Djinn--some of that had been her inheritance, a genetic code that would have made her an extremely powerful Warden in the fullness of time, but it had been wildly enhanced by Djinn intervention--by Pearl's treatments that Ibby had endured while her prisoner. It was such a dangerously volatile combination that I could not see, could not imagine, how it would not blow up in all our faces.
Luis still had his arm around me, and I felt his shudder through my skin.
Yes.
We had a lot to fear today.
Chapter 3
THE DEAD DID NOT need their vehicles, at least. Isabel took an unsettling amount of satisfaction in burning the roadhouse, and as the flames billowed high into the air, waving flags of black, acrid smoke, I checked out the Victory I'd coveted before. Over the past few weeks Luis had developed his latent power as a Fire Warden; as we were partners, linked at the aetheric level, it was simple enough to tap into his power, and a stroke of my fingers on the ignition fired it to rumbling life under me. The familiar throbbing purr of the engine made something tense in me relax, made me remember that mankind had survived on this powerful and dangerous earth for a long time... and not only survived, but thrived. They had taken steps no other species had done--they had refined nature, rivaled it, harnessed it, and conquered it in small ways. The motorcycle I had mounted was an incredibly strong yet precise piece of engineering--as much of a miracle as the workings of a cell, or the vast and ceaseless wandering of the wind.
Humans simply couldn't see it.
"You don't need that," Luis said. He was leaning against the truck, watching me with his head cocked to the side. "You can ride with us."
I shook my head and revved the engine, just a little. "I prefer to be more... mobile. You can use a scout driving ahead, spotting for trouble." That, and I wanted my freedom. Being walled up in the cabin of a truck, especially if I was not driving--it was not how I cared to spend what would likely be my last day alive.
Luis smiled. "You never look as happy as when you're on one of those," he said, and then gave it another second's thought. "Okay, I can think of one other time you're happy, but the position is kind of similar."
That woke memories that merged pleasantly with the steady, low vibration of the motor between my legs, and I raised my eyebrows and challenged him with a stare. He gave me a small nod and climbed up into the cab. Isabel was sitting beside him now, with Esmeralda still coiled up in the cargo area.
I eased the Victory out behind the truck, then thought better of it and leaned into a wide arc as I accelerated, whipping smoothly past and out in front before the first broad, sloping turn of the road came about. The day was still bright, the wind cool and fresh, the air scented pleasantly with winter pine... but I could smell the smoke of the pyre left burning behind us, and I knew that the death we'd just witnessed was happening now, on a devastating scale, in places far distant from this.
The end of the world would not happen all at once, and that made it all the more appalling.
The weather turned on us within an hour; the clear, cold skies were covered fast by a rising curtain of bruise black, punched with brilliant stabs of lightning. I did not like the look of that, and even without a true Weather Warden sense to guide me, I could tell that it was full of anger, violence, and power. The first drops began falling in an ice-cold rush. I was without much to protect me, and was almost instantly chilled, first to shivering muscles and then to aching bones. My flyaway pale hair was plastered flat to my face, and I could not feel the fingers of my real, flesh hand where they gripped the throttles. Curiously, I could feel my other hand, the false one I'd fashioned with the last of my Djinn power to replace one corrupted by my sister's black powers. If thy hand offend thee, cut it off. Most humans treated that as a metaphoric saying from the Bible. I had taken it quite literally, and it should have crippled me.
Sometimes the odd metallic gleam of that arm and hand startled me, but just now, I was grateful for it; in a hostile world of cold, it felt... warm. Soothing, somehow, powered by a tiny spark of what I'd once been.
But the rest of me was suffering badly, and over the next hour I was so concentrated on staying on the bike that my vision had tunneled to an intense focus on the blurred road ahead. I failed to hear the horn honking behind me over the roar of the engine and the rain until Luis flashed his lights, illuminating the black, shadowed rain in glowing strobes. I forced my clenched fingers to respond, and slowed the bike as I pulled it over to the side. The truck eased in behind me, and Luis got out and ran to my side. He'd found a jacket in the truck, a thin blue windbreaker, which he tossed over my shoulders. "Let's get your bike in the truck!" he yelled. "You can't stay out in this!"
I felt immense, stupid relief at this; it hadn't occurred to me, in my focus, to give up and seek shelter. I almost fell in getting off the bike, and Luis had to catch and stabilize me. "You're ice cold," he said. "Go on, get in the cab. I'll get the bike loaded."
I stumbled to the truck and opened the door as he jogged by with the rolling Victory to the back of the truck. I supposed that there was a ramp of some sort, but the mechanics of it fled my mind as soon as I crawled into the warm, dry cab and slammed the door. I was shuddering with cold, and the blast of warm air from the vents felt like a lost, tropical paradise. Only gradually did I become aware that Isabel was sitting next to me,
her hand tucked in my metallic one.
"Do you want me to help?" she asked. "I can."
"No," I said through chattering teeth. "You've used enough power today. Rest. It isn't necessary."
She immediately pulled her hand free and crossed her arms. I recognized the line that formed between her brows, and the harder jut of her chin. She'd inherited that from her father, Manny, and for just a flash, I felt the loss of him all over again. He'd been my first partner, my first human friend. My ally. And I'd let him down. "Fine," Isabel said coldly. "Then freeze. I don't care."
She did, I knew that; it was a child's anger, a child's acting out, but it still stung deep. As she meant it to do. I said nothing, just closed my eyes and drank in the warm, hot-metal scented breeze that was slowly beginning to ease the chill. Isabel, not getting the reaction she'd wished, busied herself with twisting the radio dial. Bursts of static flared in time with lightning as it laddered overhead, but she finally landed on a relatively clear signal.
It was not good news.
The radio announcer was shaken; that was clear even through the grainy, static-hissed connection. "--Desperate situation right now as the area has been hit with both extremely violent, wind-whipped fires and a damaging earthquake that seismologists report measured at least an eight point five. Surrounding states are sending assistance, as is the federal government, but there is news pouring in of flooding and extreme tornado activity in other areas, and frankly, there's a limit to what rescue and volunteer efforts can accomplish at this point. The focus has turned to evacuations and saving those in the path of the destruction. In other news, in Boston, a spokesman for the CDC has confirmed the outbreak of a dangerous new virus, and the city government has called for an immediate, city-wide quarantine. While there has been speculation that this illness, which has claimed an unknown number of victims over the past twenty-four hours, was some type of bioterrorism, the spokesman stressed that they are conducting a thorough and speedy investigation to determine the point of origin of the virus."
Isabel said nothing. She just turned the radio off as Luis opened the door and threw himself into the driver's seat. He was soaked as well, despite his jacket and the oily trucker's hat he'd thrown on, but he still flashed me a concerned look. "You okay?" he asked.
"She's fine," Isabel answered before I could speak. "There are lots of fires and earthquakes. What do you want me to do?"
"Nothing," he said. "Rest. You're going to need your strength, Iz."
"I'm not tired!"
"Yes, you are; you just don't know it. You can't burn through power like that and not have consequences--not even you. Just relax and let yourself heal inside."
"But--"
"Iz. I said no."
She slumped down in the seat, glaring at nothing, and Luis exchanged a look with me over her head as he started the truck again. He didn't need to speak; I could understand his thoughts well enough.
It was going to be difficult with her from here on out.
Luis sighed and said, "We're going to need beer."
*
Esmeralda had been quiet--dangerously so--in the back of the truck, but as we drew nearer to Seattle, I heard her rustling and banging in the back. Finally, there was a sharp, annoyed rapping against the wall behind our seats, and Luis pulled the truck in at a closed, but covered, gas station. "Need a fill-up anyway," he said. "Thank God for credit cards at pumps. You check on Reptile Girl back there, Iz."
She had been steaming and glowering the entire drive, and now she gave him a frosty stare. "Say please," she said.
"I thought you wanted to be treated like an adult, not a little kid," he shot back. "Get your ass out and check on Esmeralda. Please."
It clearly didn't improve her mood, but she wiggled across the seat and darted toward the back. The rain was still pounding down, and the sound it made on the tin shield above us was a continuous, metallic din. Still, we were dry, and I couldn't really say I was displeased with the trade. I stood outside with Luis, enjoying the smell of the rain, as he filled the gas tank. Isabel reappeared and said crankily, "She had to pee. So do I."
"Open the store and go to the bathroom."
Isabel rolled her eyes. "She's a snake, Tio; she doesn't use a toilet. She's out there in the rain. She's pretty angry about it, too."
"Just go do your business and get back here," Luis said. "Lock it back up when you're done, okay?"
She didn't answer. I had to smile at the thought that Luis had felt a need to lock a store during what would be, most likely, a time of chaos; Earth Wardens did tend to be more responsible with their powers than others. Most Fire Wardens would have melted the lock in their quest to get relief, and I didn't like to think what a Weather Warden might have done.
Isabel vanished inside the store.
"How about you?" Luis asked me. "Need to go?" When I shook my head, he said, "Okay, then watch the pump. I'm hitting the head."
He moved in that direction. I concentrated on the boring task of watching the numbers spin meaninglessly on the pump; Luis had--probably uselessly--given his credit card for the payment, but economies across the world would stumble today, shatter tomorrow. Soon, it wouldn't be how many imaginary dollars, or pounds, or yen, were in an imaginary account.... It would be about survival, and survival required tools. Things to barter, things to use. I began making a list of what would be good to acquire.
The pump stopped with a thud and click, and I replaced the nozzle where it was meant to go... and then realized how alone I was. Esmeralda was still missing, somewhere out in the rain; Luis and Isabel were in the store itself. It was just me, and the constant, punishing rain.
But there was someone watching me.
I stayed very still, facing out toward the downpour-obscured road. I saw nothing, but I sensed... something. A presence. The damp hair on the back of my neck prickled, and I felt the need to back up, but I stood my ground.
There was a sigh of wind, and the curtain of rain parted in a clear, square corridor. Water sluiced off the invisible top and down the sides. It was a precise, dangerously controlled use of power, and at the other end of the opening stood a child. Small, delicate; girl or boy, I couldn't tell, and it didn't matter greatly at that age.
"Sister," the child said, and that voice echoed out, too large and powerful for that frail form. "I need to speak with you."
I didn't know the child herself, but she was only a vessel. The power that loomed larger around her was familiar, and dangerous indeed. Pearl had come to see me--not in the flesh, but occupying it, piloting it from afar.
The open, rain-free corridor was an invitation, an obvious one that lured me toward the child. It was stupid of me to consider going toward the danger, but I was in a blackly strange place, and danger was all around me now.
So I went.
The sound of the rain drumming against the child's shield was punishingly loud, until I stopped a few feet away. Then, the roar cut off cleanly, leaving a silence so charged with tension that I could feel the hair on my arms stir and shiver.
The child had dark eyes, short-cropped silky hair, and a secretive little smile too old for her years. I thought of Ibby, of the destruction of her childhood, and forced the anger away. "Sister," I said. "Too weak to form your own flesh now?"
"Too careful," she said, in that lazily amused tone. "What a judgmental thing you've become, Cassiel. Humanity has corrupted you quite to the core. Did you like your taste of the Mother's love? She'd have killed you, you know. Supped on your blood and gnawed the power from your broken bones. She's a cannibal. And all your human friends will be food for her feast."
"Hers or yours," I said, and shrugged. "Death is death, Pearl. You offer nothing better."
"I offer a stay of execution. A partnership to keep humanity alive. You need me, sister. You know that you do."
"For what? You're only seeking to save your own existence. If the Mother destroys the human race, you go with it; you've hidden yourself very well, I have to admit,
and you did what all the Djinn thought impossible--you hid yourself away and drew power from humans, growing in power as they did. I'd applaud, but I doubt you can successfully root yourself so well in the power of the cockroaches who survive after them, although that would certainly be apt."
The child's eyes sparked with a sudden red glow, and power crackled around me in blue-white zaps along the edges of the corridor. "Softly," she said. "I may not love you so much as all that, Cassiel."
We fought like humans, I realized then... like siblings. Bitter and acrimonious, too sensitive to each other's moods and vulnerabilities. The most violent hatreds came from families.
I took a step back and forced myself to stay silent. The glow faded slowly, and the crackling power hissed and fell silent, although a burnt-ozone smell filled the space around me.
"I came in peace," Pearl said. "I came to save you."
"We don't need you," I told her. I said it firmly, but without anger, and I even gave her a small nod of respect. "If you wish to fight, do so. But the Wardens fight alone, as they always have."