That chain of thought linked, fast as the speed of light, back to David, and I suddenly rounded on him, fists clenched. "Wait!" I said. "Why are you still you?"
The only thing, as far as I knew, that had protected David from becoming subject to the whims and will of the Earth had been the fact that his powers had been taken from him.
Once restored, he should have been dragged into the collective hive mind with the rest of the Djinn.
I hadn't surprised him with my question. He sighed and stopped walking before he could run into me, but he didn't answer. Not at first. Finally, he looked up at the smoke-gray, unnaturally smooth sky. "She can't reach me," he said. "Not here. The Fire Oracle has an excellent shield up. It may not last, but it's kept him safe this far. When I leave here, I won't have that protection."
"You knew this could happen," I said. "You knew, and you did it anyway."
"I didn't have a choice," he said. "I still don't. My options are very limited, Jo. I wish it weren't the case, but it is, and we have to accept that."
"What options?"
"I could stay here with the Oracle. If I go outside the borders of Seacasket he can't help me anymore." David shook his head. "Staying here isn't really an option. I can't do much here to help you, and I can't protect you."
"You can protect yourself."
"Not really my focus."
"There's nothing wrong with--"
"Second," he interrupted, "I could leave with you and try to resist the Mother's call. It's possible I could, for a while; I have before. But that was when she was only partially aware.
You heard what the Oracle said: she's waking up. I won't be able to stay apart from her for long. She'll be much, much stronger."
I swallowed, throat tight, and waited for the other shoe to drop. Presuming there were three shoes.
"Last, I can go directly from here to the aetheric, to Jonathan's house. It's kept Whitney safe and uncompromised. It'll do the same for me. I can do you some good there, as long as the avatar stays with you."
"But--" It was hard to get the words out. "But you won't be with me."
"Staying with you was never a choice," he said. "That's what I meant. My options are limited, and all of them take me away from you. If I'd stayed human, I'd have died in the cavern. If I stay with you, I'll turn against you. If I leave, I won't be able to be with you, to--" Djinn or not, David was distraught. He was just handling it much better than I was.
"But I'll always do what I can. Always. It may not be enough, Jo. I may fail you."
He sounded so unhappy about that, and it broke my heart. "You've never failed me," I said.
"Never. And you never will, because this isn't a pass/fail kind of score, David. I love you. I want you to be safe. That's all."
I meant it, though my knees had started trembling at the thought of leaving this place without his presence at my side. It wasn't even so much the power he could bring to bear on our behalf--it was the sheer comfort of him. I needed him.
And I was going to have to do this without him, or lose everything. David on the opposite side of this was a death warrant for all of us. He was just too powerful.
I smiled. It actually felt warm, and real, and confident, even if I truly was scared to death deep down. "I'll be fine," I said. "We'll be fine. Walk me to the car before you go, okay?"
He took my hand, and for a moment we just stood together, drinking in each other's warmth, the reality of our bodies standing in the same space, the same time.
He kissed me. It felt so warm, so sweet, so real that I felt tears burning in my eyes. It was so perfect with him, and we never had time.
He kissed away my tears, put his hands on my shoulders, and leaned his forehead against mine for a long, lovely moment, and then, without a word, we walked together to the waiting Mustang. David handed me into the passenger seat. He lifted my hand to his lips and kissed it, and I felt his lips against my skin like the warmest summer sun.
"We'll be okay," I told him again. He nodded, shut the door, and as the Djinn behind the wheel gunned the motor and sent the car hurtling down the deserted, silent street, I turned to watch David.
He disappeared into a mist. Gone.
"Wait," Kevin said, and twisted around to look. "Where is he? Where did he go?"
"He's not coming," I said.
"But--"
"We'll be okay," I said again, firmly.
I was, I realized, a damn good liar. I could make everybody believe it, except me.
Chapter Seven
Leaving Seacasket was like living in a jump cut in a movie. One second, the world was still and hushed and silent and perfectly ordered, as if someone had pressed a giant pause button... . The next, we were in chaos.
By chaos, I mean it was worse than when we'd arrived. Much worse. The gray vanished, and suddenly the skies were crowded with black, bloated clouds that bloomed constantly with greenish lightning. Wind lashed the car hard and shoved it from one lane to the other, even with the Djinn's uncanny reaction time. The sides of the road were littered with wrecks, shattered trees, downed power lines. I couldn't see any electric lights at all in the houses and buildings that blurred past us. I could see occasional smaller lights--flashlights and candles--moving inside, and I wondered how terrified those people must be. All they could do was wait.
All we could do was keep moving.
Cherise reached over the seat to try the radio, but no matter where she dialed there was just pure static, or one of those emergency alert broadcasts telling people to stay in their homes and wait for more information.
I imagined Twitter had probably exploded from the strain, if the internet had survived thus far. Not to mention Facebook.
"Where are we going?" Cherise asked.
The radio hissed, and the slider took over on its own like a transistorized version of a Ouija board. I expected to hear Whitney's dulcet Southern tones.
I heard David's.
"Jo," he said. "All right?"
"Yeah, we're fine," I said, which was a brave interpretation, given the outside world.
"Where are you?"
"Jonathan's house, with Whitney."
The station changed, lightning fast. "We are not going to be good roomies," Whitney cooed. "I already want to kick his pretty ass across the room. I wonder if I can."
David regained control of the radio. "From here, we'll do what we can to lessen the dangers around you as you go. Whitney's going to continue to pilot the Djinn who's driving you."
"None of which answers the vital question of where are we going!
" Cherise said, hanging half over the seat.
"You're heading for Sedona," he said. "But be warned--that entire area is under siege. It's not going to be easy."
It never was. "We're going to need to stop," I said. "We can't keep going like this. Rest and food, water and bathrooms. Very important."
"We'll find you shelter," David promised. "Try to rest for now."
Easier said than done, as the thunder crashed and the lightning struck with the regularity of a strobe light to the eyes, as the Djinn driving swerved to avoid first one unseen obstacle, then another. It was like being back at sea again in a full-force gale.
But eventually, inevitably, even that couldn't keep me from sliding away into dark, dreamless sleep. Cars have that effect, even dodging, swerving ones, if you get used to it.
Weirdly soothing. If the Djinn had been on its own, it could have blipped easily from one spot to another by taking a shortcut through the aetheric planes ... but with humans it was tricky at best. Even the Djinn who had the most experience and ability at taking humans through the aetheric in physical form, not just spiritual, had a less-than-confidence-building success rate. Say, fifty percent.
So we traveled the old-fashioned way, miles passing under wheels. It was a lot of miles, because we were moving very fast despite the dangerous and unpredictable conditions. I woke up periodically, prodded by anxiety or bad dreams, hunger or thirst, or the more basic bodily functions. Food and drink turned out to be no challenge at all; shops were deserted, and many had already been looted. I didn't mind drinking store-brand cola if it was all that was left. I tried not to see what it all meant, what all this widespread smoking devastation and desperation meant for civilization as a whole.
Things were falling apart. There were people in small groups, and they ran when we roared by.
The internet on Cher's mobile phone had gone down in a haze of 404 Not Found errors.
Then her mobile had failed, too. And mine. And Kevin's.
We all had different network providers. I assumed that, too, was not a good sign.
We were just heading into the St. Louis area, from the Missouri side--a long and exhausting ride, with as few stops as possible in places that were only marginally dangerous. I'd hoped that maybe the calmer center of the country might still be holding its own.
I was wrong.
You could see the dull red-orange glow of flames coming from St. Louis a long way off against the cold night sky, and low-hanging, constantly rumbling clouds.
"I hate this," Cherise said, fidgeting anxiously. She'd been fidgeting a long time, nervous with the crackle of power in her blood and the fear of actually letting it loose. I'd managed to get that through her head, finally, and we'd done long hours of power exercises, with Kevin as her spotter, to teach her how to use the aetheric properly, how to center her power and ground it, how to use it in more delicate ways than sledge-hammering every problem into smithereens, along with everything that wasn't a problem.
She was actually not sucking at it. I couldn't help but feel that maybe this was a little bit due to my excellence as a teacher, but it probably wasn't.
Over the radio, David's voice said, "I need to prepare you for what's coming." That was ominous, because he'd never said that before, and we'd already been through some rough patches on the way. He sounded very sober. "You're going to come up on some problems in the next ten miles. I'll direct you on the blockage in the road, but we may have to take detours as things get worse."
"That's it? Roadblocks?" I felt a little surge of irritation. "Not exactly news, David."
"It's not cars," he said. "It's people. They're desperate, and they're terrified, and they're angry. They'll attack the car if it gets too close. They think they can run to safety, but there is none."
That was very different, and we all knew it. Cherise asked, in a small voice, "How many people?"
"Right now, there are three main groups," he said. "Two of them are fighting each other for food and transportation. All together, they number about fifty thousand."
"Fifty--" Words failed me. I couldn't even echo the number. I glanced in the back and saw that Cherise was staring fiercely at the radio, tears welling in her eyes. "Fifty thousand people. Refugees."
"That would imply they have some kind of refuge to flee toward," David said bleakly. "They don't. If they try to leave, they'll get picked off by the storms, the fires, the sinkholes.
Animal attacks. And there's no safe harbor for them, not anymore."
"The Wardens--," Kevin began.
"They already killed the Wardens who were trying to help them," David said flatly. "Mob mentality. Just don't get close. If you don't share their beliefs, they'll kill you, too."
"What beliefs?"
Kevin didn't need to ask the question, because we topped the next hill and saw the first of the crowds that David was talking about. They were filthy, ragged, wild-eyed, and armed with rifles, axes, sharp sticks--I didn't see a single person who didn't have some kind of weapon, even if it was just a stone to throw. A few were carrying badly painted signs that looked like they might have been written in dried blood.
REPENT OR DIE.
Oh man.
"You want to know the biggest joke?" Whitney's voice said, echoing through the silence in the car. "These are the Episcopalians. You don't even want to run into the hard-shell Baptists right now, brothers and sisters."
Kevin crossed himself. He did it in a rush, like it came from someplace deep within him, and I wondered how he'd been brought up, in his early days. Catholic, probably. Cherise and I had both been churchgoing girls, too, until recently; I wasn't what I could call committed, but I had always honored God. Wardens never doubted the presence of higher powers.
Heck, we had a direct line to something, even if it wasn't the Head Bearded Guy.
But this ... this was people clutching at straws, using religion as an excuse for murder and destruction. And it made me sad and angry.
"We avoid them," I said. Some of the crowd had already caught sight of us and were streaming in our direction. "If we can't stop them, we have to stay out of their way."
"But they're just people," Cherise said. "The same people who'd help you out if you had a flat tire. What happens to them? What happens to us?"
"Survival," I said softly. "It's selfish, and it's dark, and we've always been a species willing to do anything to satisfy our needs. Individuals have morals. Mobs have appetites."
The Djinn had taken a sharp left turn down a side road and rocketed along it at insane speed, dodging falling tree branches, a wrecked and still smoldering SUV, and some things in the road that it took me long-delayed seconds to realize were actually dead bodies. I started to ask, but then I realized that I didn't want to know how bad this was, how far it had gone. I just wanted to stop it.
