Ill Wind - Page 20/29

"We're about forty miles from the next town," she said. "I don't like it out here-too open, too much room for ambush-but hey, if you've gotta go, you've gotta go." She fumbled in a fringed leather purse lying like roadkill in the space between the seats, fished out a small metal square, and handed it over. "Cell phone. Hang on to it. Yours was probably toasted, right?"

"Right." Cell phones had gotten smaller and cooler since the last time I checked. Hers flipped up like a Star Trek communicator, complete with color screen and more controls than a 747. "Thanks."

"Just to be safe. If we're gonna split up, even for a few minutes, you got the 911 security blanket." She applied brakes and eased the Land Rover over to the shoulder in a hiss of gravel; the cattle truck she'd passed blasted by us with a car-shaking gust. Star aimed off the road, into the flat grass prairie and toward a stand of scrub trees. "Hope you're not picky about accommodations."

"You're kidding."

"Hey, you said pit stop, I'm getting you a pit stop. Besides, drivers have to pee, too." Star put the truck in park and hopped out to the cheery accompaniment of warning bells for leaving the engine running. On the passenger side, David did the same, then opened the back door for me and handed me out like a gentleman. Good thing he did; my legs felt like water balloons. I clung to his hand for a few seconds until muscles firmed up and informed me they were ready to take my weight.

Star turned, and the sunlight fell down full on her face.

Even though I'd seen it dozens of times, it was still a shock. Half her face gleamed bronze gold, perfect; the other half was seared and scarred the color of old liver. They'd given her a left eyelid, after a fashion. Her lips twisted into a curl on the burned side, and the scar continued down into the neck of her white peasant blouse. I knew it dripped down past her waist on the side and back. It looked like melted wax.

"Still gorgeous, huh?" she asked. There was no hurt, no surprise, no disappointment in her voice. Certainly no embarrassment. "Looks worse instead of better, I know. Not everything improves with age."

She turned on her heel and limped her way toward the scrub trees. I realized I was still holding David's hand, almost crushing it, and I kept my eyes on her as I asked, "What did she see?"

He shrugged. "At the hotel? I don't know. I blacked out when the lightning hit. When I woke up, she was there, pulling you out of the car." David was watching her, too, and I couldn't mistake what was in his eyes for anything but worry. "She kept the car from catching fire until we were both out. Otherwise I think you'd be dead."

I took a breath, let it out, and nodded. "Does she know about you?"

"I don't think so. I've been careful."

That didn't unknot the tension from my shoulder blades. "Yeah, well, keep it up. I love her, but-you be careful."

I went after Star toward nature's Porta Potti. She was already taking advantage of the lack of facilities, and she looked absolutely comfortable doing it, but then she was the outdoorsy L.L. Bean type. Me, I circled around, looking for a comfortable piece of ground free of any hint of fire ants, wasps, or other hazards to my exposed behind. Star finished up and went back toward David. I skinned down my pants.

"Is this a bad time?" a voice asked me when I was halfway to a crouch. I yelped and scrambled back up, tripped over my pants and almost fell. "Over here, Snow White."

I turned while I yanked up my waistband. Paul's Djinn, Rahel, still in her sunshine yellow suit, sat primly on a tree stump, inspecting her nails.

"Please, go ahead," she invited. "You're not bothering me. I have all the time in the world."

"What do you want?" Although I figured I knew. . . . This was what I'd been dreading. Marion, for whatever reason, hadn't used her Djinn against me, but there were plenty of Wardens willing and able to do so-Paul, for one. I couldn't take Rahel in a straight fight. Nobody could, except another Djinn.

Which was why there weren't a lot of territorial disputes at the upper levels of the Wardens. I was worn out, maybe David-no, it would be suicide for David to get into this. He was depleted, and he was masterless; she'd break him with a snap of her well-manicured fingers.

"Your attention, please," she said, and clicked her nails together. They looked glossy and sharp. Her hundreds of braids rustled as she turned her head toward me, a dry sound, like bones rattling. "You're going the wrong way."

Not what I'd expected. I was braced for a fight, and the lack of one threw me. "Excuse me?"

Rahel hopped down from her perch and slinked in my direction. I fought the almost uncontrollable urge to back up; my heels were already sinking into damp ground. "I said . . . you're going . . . the wrong . . . way. Snow White. Go back where you were told to go."

I was feeling difficult. "Or?"

She lunged at me, caught my arm in one hand, and leveled the other right in front of me, claws out an inch from my eyes. "There is no or, fool. You do what I tell you, when I tell you."

I kept my chin up and looked past those razor-sharp, carefully manicured nails to her beast-yellow eyes. She was doing something with her lips, but it had only a superficial resemblance to a smile.

"Death lies ahead," she said. "Certain and unforgiving. Behind you lies opportunity."

"Opportunity for what?"

"To choose as you wish."

I didn't get it. "Did Paul tell you to be deliberately obscure, or is this just a personal preference with you?"

No answer. Just that steady, predatory stare.

It clicked together in my head. Duh. "You're not Paul's Djinn at all, are you? I just assumed you were, and you never told me different. Right?"

"Yes." Teeth flashed. "Now you can decide which question I've answered."

"Doesn't matter, I didn't ask any of them in ritual. Let me try again. You're not Paul's Djinn at all, are you?"

"You can't outrun what's coming. Go back. You must make a choice."

"Third time's the charm, sunshine. You're not Paul's Djinn at all, are-?" Before I could finish asking the ritual third, her hand was around my throat, choking the question off. I gagged, tried to pull free, and couldn't. Her eyes were full of fury.

"Ask me no questions," she purred, "and I'll tell you no lies, Child of Demons. Go back the way you came."

She let the pressure ease enough for me to gulp in a breath and ask, "Why should I?"

Rahel let go of my throat and snapped her fingers. "You have two paths ahead of you. One lies down. One goes up. Choose."

"Which one gets rid of you?" I croaked, and rubbed my throat. "Look, enough with the Sphinx act. Just tell me what I'm supposed to do. Are you Marion's Djinn? Did she send you to get me to surrender? Well, I'm not giving up. Not yet."

Rahel stopped and became utterly still. If I'd thought her eyes were unnerving before, they were downright creepy now.

"You are a fool," she said very softly. "I have done all I can. You have been set on the path, you have been given signs."

"Yeah? Like what? The radio in Westchester, telling me to come here?" Oh, boy. Her silence had the weight of a confession. I swallowed hard and kept going. "The salt shaker back at the diner? Why send me into a trap?"

This time, she shook her head. "If you can't see the yellow brick road, little Dorothy, then you are a fool, and there is no saving a fool. I only wish you weren't taking him with you."

Him? Too many persons of the male gender involved in this. I didn't know which one she was talking about.

Before I could ask, brush crackled behind me. Rahel's eyes jumped from me to the person coming through the trees. It was David, and he didn't look surprised to see her. Or happy. He said something to her in a language I didn't understand, liquid and warm and beautiful as stars; her reply was long and sparked with harsh accents.

They glared at each other, stiff with tension, and then Rahel just-vanished. No showy exit, this time. She just went.

David stared for so long at the place where she'd been, I wondered if she'd really gone. "Rahel," he said finally. "Here."

"I'm guessing that's bad? Look, who's Djinn is she?"

He didn't answer me. Didn't look at me. "Hurry." He turned and walked away, back toward the truck.

I hurried.

After Star was burned, she lingered on in the hospital for weeks, fighting for her life. Every day her breath came a little bit shallower; her heart raced a little bit faster. Pseudomonas cruised her blood. Pumping her full of antibiotics didn't seem to be working, and the Earth Wardens who'd tried to repair the damage had been completely defeated.

Sitting there at her bedside, holding her undamaged right hand, a thought came to me. I knew someone who could save her.

If I could find him.

Like Star, I'm not big on debate and thinking things over; the minute Lewis's name popped into my head, I went up into Oversight, far up, far enough that the planet curved away beneath me and night settled its cloak of stars around my shoulders. From up there, I could see little jets of flame that represented Wardens using their powers . . . little flicks like sparks from a flywheel. I waited up there, watching. It was impossible to distinguish the signatures of most Wardens-they were too similar, too homogenous. A few had characteristics, though. Marion, for one; her powers glowed stronger and in a deep blue green. Martin Oliver, when he exercised his power-which was rarely-vibrated in a hot orange part of the spectrum.

I waited, and waited, and waited. The world turned, and I turned with it, watching.

Finally, I saw a soundless bloom of pearl-white. Not a jet, not a spark, but a bloom, like a fireworks blast expanding in all directions.

I fell toward it at top speed and stopped myself when I was close enough to determine where Lewis was at the moment.

I don't know why I didn't expect it, but I didn't, really.

He was in Yellowstone.

Six hours later, after enduring commercial air travel and two hours of jouncing around in a well-broken-in rental SUV, I came up on the area of Yellowstone that was blocked off to the public. The Warden on duty knew me. We exchanged the secret glowing-rune handshakes, and I went on in.

I smelled it before I came over the rise and saw it-a thick, ashen smell of death and bitter smoke. But nothing really prepared me for the devastation. Nothing could.

The valley stretched out as far as I could see, a black valley streaked with gray. No forest, nothing but ash and the skeletal black stubs of trees. There was a sense of ... stillness. Of death so vast that no life could ever come there again, or would want to.

A sense of utter sadness.

Lewis was a dot of human color in the middle of it, sitting on the hood of an SUV that looked like the mate to the one I was driving, only gray. Mine was red, but as I crawled it slowly over the ruined landscape it turned ash-gray, flecked with black. By the time I parked next to him, they were both camouflaged.

He looked . . . good. Filled out, no longer starving and sick. There was a sense of peace around him, and power. He was still tall and gawky, but somehow that fit now. He'd grown into it, and the gawkiness had become grace.

He didn't look surprised to see me as I climbed down out of the SUV and came around to face him. In fact, he smiled like he'd been expecting me for a while.

"Jo." He nodded. I nodded back. "Been a while."

"You shouldn't be using all that power," I said. "You burn like a nuclear explosion in Oversight, you know."

He shrugged. "I knew you were watching. If I hadn't wanted you to find me, you wouldn't have found me." He patted the hood of the SUV next to him. It was filthy, but I climbed up anyway. We didn't touch. "Not too many people can see it, you know."

"Really?" That boggled me; he'd lit up like Vegas in my eyes. "Weird."

"A bit," he agreed. "I'm guessing you didn't come out here just to catch up on old times."

He was looking at me, but I felt the soft caress of power everywhere around me. Nothing I could understand, just a hint; I looked away from him at the burned, blackened crematory of the forest and didn't see anything.

"You're doing something," I said.

"Yes."

"What?"

He gave me a slow, very slightly wicked smile. "Seducing someone."

If I kept very still, I could actually see it now. It was a mist, very faint, glittering gold in the sun. It was moving over the ground as softly and slowly as a lover's hand, spreading out from the epicenter of Lewis. I slid off the hood of the Jeep and reached down to touch my fingers to it, and felt a slow stirring of ... life.

Lewis was pouring out life, like seed, across the mourning graveyard of Yellowstone.

"She needs help," he said. "She wants to live, but it's too much for her. I'm just helping her along."

I felt the slow, warm tingle of it clinging to my fingers even after I climbed back up on the hood of the Jeep next to him. We sat in silence, watching the golden mist thicken and swirl and creep out across the land.

It was so beautiful, I wanted to weep.

"This is what you do," I whispered. "Oh, God, Lewis."

"Some of it. You guys do a good job with the weather, but I pitch in now and again with Earth and Fire. I should've been here earlier. It wouldn't have been so-" He shook his head.

"You wouldn't have stopped it?"

"The fire? No. Things need to burn sometimes, and you have to know when to let them. But this got out of hand." In the sunlight, his eyes were the color of fine dark ale. "There's a Demon trying to come through."

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Although I did, a little; there were whispers about Demon Marks, but nobody was very clear about them or what it meant. Lewis, however, sounded authoritative.

"Things like this happen because there's a kind of force acting on our world. Hurricane Andrew, that was another one. The floods in India. Those are signs that something's trying to break through into the aetheric." He was holding a stick in his hands, turning it over and over, learning it with his fingers. "Sometimes it succeeds in finding one of us to build the bridge. I think that's what this was. One of them trying to touch one of us."

"Anyone in particular?"

"Don't know," he confessed. "Probably not. The problem is that the energy from the Demon's efforts doesn't go away, it accumulates up there, in the aetheric." He shook his head. "Never mind. Not important-you didn't come out here to get a lecture. What's up?"

"Star," I said. All around me, the ground glittered with gold, with power, with potential. "I need you to help her. She's dying."

Lewis stopped turning the stick in his hands. He looked down at it as if surprised to find it there. "Friend of yours?"

"Friend of yours, too. I remember her saying she knew you."

He nodded. "I met her here. I was young and stupid then; I didn't realize how much energy there was here. I nearly got myself toasted."

It was so similar to the way I'd met Star that I had to smile at the memory.

"I can't help her," he said. "I've thought about it. I know she was-burned."

"Worse," I said. "Her power core was broken. That's what they tell me, anyway. That's what's keeping her from healing."

He shivered a little. The color of the mist around us changed subtly, from gold to silver, then back to gold. It clung to the skeletal limbs of trees like a coating of early frost.

"Can you help her?" I asked.

"It's not a question of can, Jo. Sometimes-"

"Sometimes you just have to let things burn," I finished for him. The air was warm and thick with the taste of smoke and death, and the hard metal hood of the Jeep felt too warm under me. "But this is Star."