"You speak for them."
"They'd say the same."
The child's smile was, this time, truly unsettling. "You think so? Really? We'll see, my sister. But the truth is, I don't need you. You are an annoyance with which I no longer wish to contend. I gave you a chance. Now I hope you enjoy the consequences. Good-bye, my sister. Say hello to our mother."
I had a second's warning this time, purely because Pearl couldn't help but gloat; it was just enough time to drop to one knee on the muddy ground and punch power down into the water-drenched soil. I had no dominion over the water, but the soil responded to me, sluggish but powerful. It rose up in a thick, slippery wave under the child's feet, throwing her--him?--off balance with a high, surprised cry. The attack that was blasting toward me missed, but only just; I felt the incredible heat of it blister my skin and sizzle my hair, and completed my forward motion to fall flat on the mud. My shirt was blazing, and I rolled over to kill the flames. As I did so, I kept moving the ground under the child's feet, and riding the thick, shifting sludge kept the Fire Warden from launching another effective assault.
The rain shield overhead collapsed, and ice-cold water hit my burned skin in a punishing, breathtaking slap. I felt power shifting on the aetheric, and desperately kept pushing the earth around, trying to buy time. This child's power was enormous, and extremely well controlled; if I gave a second's pause, she would respond with a blistering assault that would burn the skin right off my body and leave me dying in the mud, or worse. I was fortunate that the child was strong in fire; earth was a good defense against that, if I could stay ahead of her and anticipate her moves.
It was hard to do, but while rocking her off balance yet again, I simultaneously pulled the mud up in a counterwave that buried me but left a tiny hole through which I could catch a breath. I sucked in a deep one, and rolled even as I sank deeper into the muck, reaching, reaching....
I felt the mud suddenly harden around me, and the heat against my back was sudden and stunning, as if I'd been shoved beneath a giant broiler. She was trying to bake me, if not burn me. I sank deeper to avoid it, then twisted up, hands outstretched.
My fingers closed on the stick-thin legs of the child, and I sent a massive burst of power up through her nerves to force an overload and shutdown.
The child toppled over in a sudden, helpless heap.
I clawed up from the mud and flopped next to her, gasping and letting the rain pound me as it sluiced the grit from my face and eyes. Then I checked the child for signs of life. She was breathing, but unmoving. Her heart was speeding too fast, trying to fight me as I held her in that state. I put my palm flat on her forehead, closed my eyes, and eased her into a deeper state of calm and then, finally, unconsciousness.
"Cass?" Luis lunged out of the rain. He looked frantic as he dropped to his knees beside the two of us. "What happened?"
"One of Pearl's," I said wearily, and almost pitched forward as I lost my balance. Luis's warm hands grabbed my shoulders, and he pulled me back against him, arms wrapping me in safety. "She's going to the Wardens to offer her help to them against the Mother. And they'll accept; they're bound to. They don't understand what she is. What she wants."
"Then we have to tell them," he said. "She tried to shut you up, right?" He looked down at the small form of the girl. "Cass, did you--"
"She's alive," I said, and coughed up a mouthful of dirty water, retching mud up from my stomach in a sudden rush. I didn't feel better for the purge.
"Well, we can't just leave her here. She'll freeze."
"We can't take her, either. She's dangerous."
But now Isabel was there, too, and she reached out with a cry for the little girl. "What did you do?" she shouted at me, glaring, and I didn't have the energy or the heart to explain. "You're always hurting people! Always!"
"Iz, stop, hang on a minute--"
But she avoided Luis's outstretched hand, picked up the little girl, and carried her off toward shelter. The look she shot me was full of dark fury and distrust.
"Iz!" Luis yelled, but if Isabel could hear him, she didn't care. He turned his anger on me, instead. "Cassiel, do you have some kind of death wish? You can't just walk off and have a chat with that evil bitch without backup--you know that! What were you thinking?"
It was as if his frightened, protective anger was contagious, because suddenly irritation inside me sparked into rage, and I shoved free of him and stumbled up to my feet. The rain no longer felt cold; it seemed soothing as it slapped down on my face and hair, soaked into my clothes. I was still shaking, but the chemicals in my body driving it were from a far different source.
"I was thinking that there's no point!" I shouted back at him, and shook my head so forcefully that spray flew in a mist. "It's the end, Luis! And there's no point in being careful now. It's all risk, and loss, and I can't--" I ran out of breath, and the anger wasn't enough to cushion me against the sudden, horrible reality of the losses, and the ones that were to come. "I can't live through this. There's no point."
He felt sorry for me; I could see it. Fool. He didn't understand, didn't see what I saw, didn't understand the gulf that yawned black and hungry beneath our feet. We were rolling down a steep hill into a chasm, and there was no stopping it now. The Mother would destroy us, or we could cling to the false comfort held out by Pearl, and die later, and more horribly.
Ashan had exiled me from the Djinn because I'd refused to kill humanity--a clean masterstroke of strategy that would have destroyed Pearl along with them. His response had been to cast me down into human form, but I had grown to realize, over this time with them, that it hadn't been punishment so much as another, long-game strategy. I was the miserable hope that Ashan had placed in the center of this, placed to bring about the end of the game if I had the courage... a useless, fragile, broken human. I couldn't save anyone. I couldn't even save myself.
Ashan had thought far too much of me. It was all useless, and shattered, and wrong, and the hope and love in Luis's eyes were tragic now.
I pushed past him and slogged through the clinging mud toward the truck.
Esmeralda was coiled up in a loose tangle of scales and limbs near the back door, looking as drowned and annoyed as I felt. Her tail rattled as I passed her. "Saw you out there," she said. "Have fun with your hermana?"
"Shut up," I snapped.
"You can't let Isabel keep doing that, you know," she said. "Picking up strays."
"Like you?"
Esmeralda smiled, but there was a hint of the snake in that smile. "Some strays bite. This one will. You can't save them all. Got to make sure Iz understands that."
Esmeralda wasn't saying anything that I didn't feel myself, gut-deep, but it offended me that she was echoing my own thoughts. I didn't want this Djinn-killing sociopath on my side, or in my head.
"Saving children may not be your priority," I said coolly, "but perhaps it should be ours. Keep away from the girl. She may yet be salvageable."
"Keep telling yourself that!" she yelled back, as I climbed into the truck's cab. "She's going to melt your faces off, and don't say I didn't warn you!"
Isabel was already inside, sitting stiffly in the center of the bench seat with the little girl in her arms. She'd wrapped her in the blanket I'd used before, and asleep, the child seemed innocent and heartbreakingly vulnerable. I slammed the door. Isabel edged away from me, putting clear space between us, as Luis got in the driver's side. I heard the back door slam as Esmeralda took her place.
Nobody spoke at all as we drove away, into the storm.
Luis still had a working cell phone, and charged it using the plug-in port in the truck. His first call, once we were safely out of the heart of the storm and into something more like normal rain, was to the Wardens.
"Crisis Center," said a sharp male voice on the other end of the line. "Name?"
"Luis Rocha, Earth. Checking in," he said.
"You mobile and able to take work?"
"Yes," he said, and gave
me a quelling look when I started to speak. "Are they back?"
"They who?"
"The ones who went off on the cruise," he said. The cruise in question had not actually been a vacation; a large number of the most powerful Wardens had boarded an ocean liner and sailed away from the coast of Florida, trying to prevent a major disaster. So far, there had been no word of their return... but then, we'd been preoccupied.
"Not yet," the voice said. "They should be docking in a few days, though. We've made contact and told them how dire the situation is here. They're making best possible speed, but it's up to us to hold until they get here."
From the stress in the man's voice, he didn't think that was very likely. I didn't hold out much hope, either. Mother Earth, conscious and angry, could destroy much of human civilization in a day, never mind a week. The Wardens remaining wouldn't be able to stop it, especially with the Djinn co-opted against them.
"I need to speak with Lewis Orwell," I said. "Now."
"Who's this?"
"Cassiel, who was once a Djinn. Put me through." I had, I thought, learned my humility lessons well; I had at least thought to give some context to my name, instead of presuming that it still held a resonance of power on its own.
"Can't do that, lady."
My voice went lower and colder. "Put me through."
"Warden Rocha, please tell her that--"
"He tells me nothing," I interrupted. "Put me through to Lewis Orwell now."
A heavy sigh rattled through the phone, and the unfortunate in the Crisis Center said, "I'll try. Hold."
Luis said, "You really think you're going to get the fucking Lord High Master of the Wardens to chat with you right now? Jesus, Cass, get a grip."
"If Pearl wants to form an alliance with the Wardens, it will have to be stopped, and he's the one to stop it," I said. "He needs to know. Now."
"Sometimes I think you just don't get the concept of boss. He's not going to--"
These was a click, and a different voice, scratchy with distance and a fragile connection, came on. "Orwell," he said. "And it had better be breaking news, Cassiel."
"It is," I said. "You remember why I was cast down."
"Well, I don't know if down is very flattering to the rest of us. Cast out might be a better term. But yes, I remember. Ashan wanted you to kill the human race, and you said you wouldn't. I hope you're not calling to ask for a thank-you, because we're just a little busy." He sounded very grim, far more so than I'd expected. Orwell was one of those perpetually confident men, and yet now... "The Djinn who came with us are dying. Cut off. We're in a black corner."
A black corner was a Warden term for one of the burned-out areas of the world, where such an explosion of power had taken place that it destroyed the aetheric, and prevented Djinn from accessing their power. Djinn stranded in one of those areas would starve to death, slowly or quickly. Most black corners were small, isolated areas; even an injured Djinn could crawl out before permanent damage was done. But out on the ocean, when the aetheric was so ripped and bloodied... they might not survive. Any of them. They were New Djinn, most of them, but there was one.... "Venna," I said aloud, and felt a surge of dread. "Is Venna--?"
"She's sick," he said. "Very sick."
"No." I said it softly, and almost involuntarily. Venna was a True Djinn, like me; she was ancient and incredibly powerful. I'd been puzzled by her recent affiliation with humans, but then, she'd always been intrigued by the strangest things. "Not Venna." The loss of someone such as she would bring down the heavens, I thought.
What hurt more was the realization that I hadn't felt her distress. Venna and I had links that went back farther than the human race, and yet... yet I felt nothing of her danger, or pain.
Lewis sighed. "Get to the point, Cassiel."
I gulped back my pain, my shock, and focused hard to say, "Pearl. The enemy I've been fighting. She's become very powerful, and now she will approach the Wardens, offer to fight by their side. You must not take her offer, Lewis."
"Is it a trap? Is she going to not fight on our side?"
"No--she will. She must. She needs humanity to live, for now, until she achieves her ultimate goal... but then she'll turn on the Wardens, destroy you all. When she no longer needs them, she'll kill the rest of humanity as well."
He was silent a long time, long enough that I feared the connection lost, but then Lewis said, "Good to know. Thanks, Cass. We should make landfall in a few days, but meanwhile, I need every Warden out there to fight, understand? Don't give up. Shield all that you can."
"You must promise me that you won't accept any help from her!"
"How can I?" Lewis sounded--not himself. That was a cry of bleak despair, and the words that followed were just as dark. "I had twenty-five thousand Wardens when I started, to protect almost seven billion people. Know how many I have now? It's tough to get a real count, but I was down to about ten thousand, and now--now it's maybe half that. The Djinn are either dying or puppets for Mother Earth. We've got nothing. You expect me to throw back the only possible ally we have?"
"She'll kill you," I said softly. "She'll kill you all."
"Listen to yourself," he replied. "Even after all this time, you can't think of yourself as one of us."
He hung up the call, and I sank back in the seat, feeling weary and utterly defeated. Luis silently put the phone away and concentrated on driving for a while.
"Well," he finally said, "at least you warned him. But I've got to be honest: He's right. He's got to pick the lesser of two evils right now."
"Pearl isn't the lesser. She only appears to be, from the Wardens' perspective right now."
"Yeah, well, you can argue it when we see him." He yawned, shook himself out of it, and said, "We can't keep this up. We're burning power every time we turn around, and it's going to wear us down, Cass. We haven't even made it to an actual fight yet, and already I'm drained. So are you." He checked his watch and the fuel gauge. "We've got at least another eight to ten hours before we get to Seattle, and that's if the roads hold out and we don't run into trouble, which we damn sure will."
"And your point...?"
"We need rest. We need to figure out what to do with Pearl Junior there, because you can't keep her unconscious from now until this all shakes out, and having her at our backs is the definition of a bad idea."
"What are you saying?" I half turned in the seat now, staring at him.
"I'm saying that we've got the hell beat out of us more than we can handle already, and we're going to have to handle a lot more. We need to refuel, recharge, get ready. Going in drained means we ain't helping anybody."
"They'll bring the fight to us!"
"Maybe," Luis said. "But out here, away from the cities, it's still quiet. And we're stopping to rest before we do something stupid, because we're too tired to think straight."
He took his foot off the gas.
I flooded power through the metal, and the engine growled deep. The truck lunged forward, inciting a chorus of yelped protests from the others. I held Luis's stare with mine, and then said quietly, "Watch the road. We're not stopping. We cannot stop. There's no more rest, no more time. Do you understand?"
"You're crazy. We're human, not Djinn. We can't just-- Let go of the pedal, Cass."
I said nothing. There was something in my stare that made him go quiet in the end, and he faced forward.
We kept driving.
Thirty minutes later, we slowed for the first signs of trouble--a tangle of wreckage in the middle of the road. Luis stopped the truck, and we both went to examine the damage. It had been a car once, but there was nothing left of it now to identify it as such, save one mangled tire still visible. From the fluids leaking from the crushed object, there had been occupants. They were beyond saving.
"Any idea what did that?" Luis asked me. I shook my head, but that was a lie. There was no damage to the close-crowding trees on either side of the road, which argued against an attack by weather; I could visualize
a Djinn easily compacting the vehicle with careless blows, driving the metal in on the occupants. But why this car? Why...
I found a severed hand by the side of the road, a perfectly undamaged specimen sheared cleanly by some incredible force. It was a woman's hand, with manicured fingernails that had seen better days, and a great deal of recent abuse.
In the palm, when I checked it in Oversight, there shimmered the ghost of a stylized sun--the identification of a Warden. I looked at the crushed car, startled, and the agony and violence that bloomed on the aetheric made me shudder. A Djinn had done this. A powerful, furious, mad Djinn.
Because they were Wardens, headed--as we were--to battle.
"Luis," I said softly.
"I know," he said.
"Wardens."
"I know. Get in the damn truck, now."
We ran for it, but I slowed as I felt the aetheric bending around us. Something had just arrived. The hot, intangible rush of power blasted through me, and left me scorched and trembling inside.
I stopped and turned to face it. Luis made it to the door of the truck, but turned as well. I heard him whisper, softly, "Madre de Dios."