I needed her to back off from using them until a specialist, an Earth Warden with real knowledge, could get a look at what was happening inside of her. But if she allowed instinct to dictate how those powers were used, we were all in serious trouble, and there was no way she'd be able to control any of it. I didn't feel much like Yoda, but I'd have to do as a mentor.
"There is no 'try,' " I said, and then swallowed a laugh. "Okay, how is it now?"
"Better," Cherise said. "I feel better. Not as cold."
And sure enough, overhead, the shield holding the rain off us cut in and out for a few seconds, then collapsed completely. Instant white noise, from the rain pounding on the Boss's metal, and I engaged the wipers on full. No trouble seeing the road ahead, even with the torrential downpour... . Lightning was a constant event, strobing everything into horror- movie shadows and glares. "Good," I said, and put warm approval into my voice, even though I was freezing, still. "Good work, Cher. Did you feel it when it let go?"
"Yeah, I think so."
"All right, here's your first test. Try putting the shield back up again."
It took about thirty seconds, but she reestablished a flickering, uncertain rain shield above the car, then, at my direction, let it go. We did that three times, until she could put up and take down the shield on command. "Good," I said. "Now you're controlling it; it's not controlling you. You feel that pulse of power that comes when you call? If you feel it coming when you didn't
mean to call it, stop it. You know how. It's the same way you dropped the shield."
As teaching went, this was desperately inadequate. She ought to be sitting safely in a secured facility, hooked up to biofeedback equipment, getting instruction from a qualified Earth Warden who could walk her through things properly. But this was the Warden equivalent of first aid to the injured... . I just needed to get her stable for now. That meant teaching her whatever I could, as quickly as I could, while limiting her use of powers to the smallest expenditures possible.
It also meant outrunning this storm.
I opened up the Mustang and let him fly, and oh man, could he fly.
The road vibration that was noticeable at lower speeds vanished as he hit his stride, and then it settled into a power glide so smooth it was like levitating as the speed needle hit a hundred.
This was dangerous. It wasn't that I hadn't driven this fast, under these conditions, before; I'd even done it while splitting my attention between controlling external supernatural forces and the road. But now I felt acutely human, powerless, and exposed.
David couldn't cover me. Cherise was now as much of a hindrance as a help, and Kevin--God only knew what Kevin could do, other than blow things up. Which he would do with great enthusiasm, of course. That wasn't always a downside... .
"Something's happening," Cherise said suddenly. There was suppressed panic in her voice, and when I looked in the rearview mirror I saw that her eyes had gone wide, her face tight with fear. "I feel--it's like a spike, in my head, this feeling--something's looking at me...."
I knew that feeling. It was the storm, and it had found her. We were about to be targeted.
"Easy," I said, in my most calm and soothing voice. I gripped the steering wheel tightly to keep my hands from shaking. "That's okay, that's normal, all right? Take a deep breath. I need you to close your eyes now, and tell me what you see."
"What I see? With my eyes closed?" She laughed wildly. "I can tell you that right now. Black!"
"Just do it, Cher."
"Bitch, you are on my last nerve right now."
"I know. Just do it."
She shut her feverish, terrified eyes, and said, "Okay, happy now? It's dark. And--" Her words fell away into a sudden silence, and then she said, "Oh," in an entirely different voice. "What the hell is that?"
"Oversight," I said. "It's sort of the heads-up display version of going up into the aetheric, the energy realm. In the beginning you have to close your eyes to see it so you can concentrate. What do you see?"
"Uh ... colors? Lots of colors. It's a trippy lava-lamp groove thing up in here. Which is cool, I guess." She was back on firmer ground now, and I could hear the relief in her voice.
"What am I looking at?"
"Remember those Doppler radar maps we used back at the TV station?" I asked, and that helped steady her, too: the reference to our time together working at that low-rent local station as your stereotypical weather girls. Not that we hadn't gotten our own back on that one. "The neon-colored ones?"
"Oh yeah. Those things. So this is the storm I'm seeing."
"You're seeing the energy flows. I need you to tell me where it looks worst."
"Worst how, exactly?"
"You'll feel it." I couldn't explain it any better than that; I wasn't sure that how I'd perceive it would be a guide to how she would be able to process the information.
After a few seconds, she said, "That spot looks radioactive."
"Where?"
Without opening her eyes, she lifted a hand, and pointed.
Straight through the front window.
Ahead of our speeding car.
I jerked my attention away from her and took my foot off the gas exactly one second before the next lightning flash revealed what Cherise had seen in Oversight... .
A person.
Standing in the road.
Waiting for us.
"That's a Djinn!" Kevin yelled.
Like I didn't know that already, even without powers.
Chapter Four
"Hold on!" I screamed, and tried to change lanes. It was deadly at this speed, on wet roads, but I didn't have much choice; I had the distinct impression that hitting this particular Djinn would be like slamming full speed into the side of a mountain. Car versus mountain: never a good thing.
Unfortunately, physics was not my friend on either side of the choice just now, and as soon as I changed direction, the seal broke between the tires and the road, and we began to hydroplane. No antilock brakes on a vintage Mustang--it was all up to me, and it was happening in hypertime, speeded by adrenaline and sheer, massive momentum. I acted on ingrained training, turning the wheel gently into the skid, letting off the gas, staying off the brake. I kept us out of a spin and managed to keep us on the road, but we'd gone into a Tokyo drift sideways, sliding past the motionless Djinn at better than eighty miles per hour.
It turned, tracking to follow us.
"David!" I yelled.
"Old Djinn!" he said back. "Not one of mine!" Not good news under the best of circumstances, and these were far from the best.
The Djinn suddenly turned as we slid along, leaving it behind, and ran after us. In only three long strides it had hold of the bumper of the car, and I felt the slamming jerk of it stopping our skid. We were all thrown forward, hard enough to make my head feel a little fuzzy. Before I could blink, my driver's-side door was open, and the Djinn was leaning over me, close enough to bite my throat out. Which they had been known to do.
I yelped and flailed, but the Djinn put a hand flat on my chest and shoved me firmly against the seat. I thought for sure he was going to lean in and smash me like a bug, but the pressure seemed just enough to keep me still, not enough to shatter bone.
He unhooked my seat belt, picked me up like I weighed no more than a bulky bag of feathers, and came around to David's side of the Mustang. David was fumbling for the door latch, just about as out of it as I felt. The Djinn got there first, dumping me unceremoniously on my husband's lap. I pulled my legs in as he started to close the door again, and put my arms around David's neck.
"What the hell is going on?" David asked. I shook my head, mystified, as the unknown Djinn got in on the driver's side, ignored seat belt laws, and slammed the car into gear.
Whoever he was, he could drive like the proverbial devil. The Boss roared like a lion as he opened the engine up, and no matter how fast I'd gone, this was faster, wet roads be damned. I tried not to look. It was way too scary.
"Hey," Cherise said, in an out-of-it kind of voice that gained strength as she went along.
"Who's driving this thing?" By the end, she sounded positively paranoid, which was a very bad thing. A scared Cherise was a dangerous one right now. I shook away my lingering bleariness and looked at her over the seat.
"It's okay," I said. "Everything's fine. We're in good hands." I dropped back down on David's lap and looked him in the eyes as I moderated my tone to a whisper. "We are, right?"
David cleared his throat and addressed himself to our new driver. "I don't know you." That was a neutral opening gambit, neither aggressive nor friendly. Considering the dude had just supernaturally carjacked us, I thought it was quite thoughtful. It was also quite useless, though. The Djinn didn't even glance at us. He just drove like a machine--like some extension of the car itself. He didn't even blink. His eyes were glowing, an unsettling color that hovered somewhere between green and gold, and--like most Djinn--he was striking in features. His were prominent and blunt, not handsome as most chose to be. A face of strength and immovable power, and a body to match. Greek sculptors would have adored him.
"Chatty," I said. "So what do we do?"
David shrugged very slightly. "He's taking us in the direction we were going anyway," he said. "He's better protection than we could ask against whatever might want to get in our way, including bad drivers. I suppose we wait and see just what he wants." He shifted a little, settling my weight better on his lap.
"Sorry," I said. "I know I'm not that light."
"You're fine," he said, and dropped his voice to an intimate whisper by my ear. "This is going to be a very enjoyable ride for me, you know. But frustrating."
I smiled and touched my lips gently to the pulse point below his jaw, where I knew he was especially sensitive, and felt him shiver. His hands tightened around me. "Well," I whispered back, "we'll just have to see about that once we have some privacy."
"Time was I could make our privacy."
I didn't say anything to that, just put my hand flat on his cheek and looked into his eyes.
He was tired, and still, on some level, quite sick. Lewis had done his best, but David's nature had been Djinn for a long, long time, and being human wasn't something he was good at dealing with long term. Some essential core of him couldn't deal with it. I could no longer feel the slow, inevitable drain of energy inside of him, but I knew very well that it was there.
Nice as it was to pretend that everything was going to be fine, we needed to get David's powers back where they belonged. That was much more important than recovering mine, at the moment. I could live without them for now. Not well. But ... live.
"I'm okay," he said, and kissed my palm. I rested my head against his shoulder, content for the moment to be cuddled in his warmth as we hurtled at Djinn- inspired speed toward ...what?
I couldn't begin to guess.
And somehow, with him, that was okay.
I fell asleep, and when I woke up the sun was blazing in the window like the fiery wrath of God. I winced and groaned, shifted my weight, and felt uncomfortably locked muscles protest. David woke up, too, and must have felt identically horrible, because he winced and tried to stretch out his legs.
The Djinn at the wheel hadn't blinked, moved, or otherwise communicated, as far as I could tell. I looked over David's shoulder. Cherise and Kevin were tangled together on the backseat. Kevin was snoring. Cherise was drooling on the knee of his blue jeans.
"Where are we?" I mumbled, and swiped hair out of my eyes. How the hell did my hair get messed up when I had nowhere to move? Mystery of the universe. I didn't seriously expect anyone to answer--Kevin and Cherise were obviously in La-La Land, and David wouldn't have any more of a clue than me--but I got a response.
The Djinn who was driving opened his mouth, and said, "I'm taking you to the Oracle." He had a very odd voice--almost a chorus of voices, as if some group was speaking through him. Chilling, in fact. "We'll arrive in a few moments."
I felt a bolt of pure adrenaline that sent my heart racing at uncomfortable speeds. "Which Oracle?" There were three to choose from, and only one of them could be said to be on our side, even a little. The Earth Oracle was my daughter, Imara... . But we hadn't magically sped across half the country overnight, either. This still looked like eastern seaboard, to me, not the desert around Sedona. Which meant one of the other two Oracles, most likely... Air, or Fire.
God, I hoped it was Fire. Please.
David was looking ... odd. I guessed he didn't know how to feel, considering that he used to have every right to talk to the Oracles, and now--being busted back to human--he wasn't sure whether he'd even be allowed to enter their presence. Or survive the experience.
"Relax," I said. "If whichever one it is hired us a driver, I'm guessing they're not going to just kill us on sight."
But it was a guess, pure and simple, and he knew it. I turned to Cherise and Kevin, who were waking up, yawning, stretching, and groaning just like David and I had done. "Before you ask," I said, "we're almost there. Wherever that is. And when we get there, the two of you are going to stay in the car. I don't want you anywhere near this."
"This what?" Cherise mumbled around a jaw-cracking yawn. "Ow."
"You don't need to know," I said. "And you don't need to do anything stupid, like try to rescue us, no matter what happens. Understand?"