Chill Factor

Page 29

She looked royally pissed off.
Kevin hesitated, looking back. His fingers were just a couple of inches from Marion's beckoning hand. Go, I begged him. Learn what the real Wardens do. See what a difference you can be in the world.
I wished I'd duct-taped the girl to a chair. Hindsight.
"Kevin," Marion said, in a much more adult tone. Not commanding, not wheedling, just reminding him of what was important.
The light faded out of his face, and he took a step back. "Why should I help them? What'd they ever do for me?"
Marion dropped her hand back to her side, turned, and walked away to kneel by the side of the first person she saw. Marion was an Earth Warden. Healing was so much a part of her that she couldn't deny it, and I could see from the torment in Kevin's face that he was feeling that part of the heritage he'd stolen from Lewis, as well. Earth powers had a hell of a lot of strength, but also a carried a great load of compassion and responsibility.
I watched as Kevin turned back to Siobhan, and I felt myself mourn inside for the lost opportunity.
"Joanne." David's voice drew me back to the here and now, to his body pressed against me in the narrow space. "Are you hurt?"
I shook my head and saw dust sift off my hair. Sneezed. "Just my image. Go help Marion. Save whoever you can."
He kissed my forehead without comment, and left me. I picked my way across rubble and almost slipped on a wide round plastic tray piled with glasses; I looked around for the waiter, but he was gone. At least it didn't look like there were too many casualties. Amazing.
Jonathan had righted one of the unsplintered chairs and seated himself, staring out at the mess. I stopped next to him. Siobhan and Kevin were hovering nearby, Siobhan whispering, Kevin listening.
"Not your bottle?" I produced the one I'd been clutching. He shook his head mutely. I took a closer look-not that I'd memorized the one I'd taken from the decanter, but this one did seem different. And I no longer had the sense of Jonathan's presence in me, either. "Then who's got it?"
Jonathan gave me a bleak smile. "You already know who-" He stopped short. Someone was approaching through the rubble, walking with the fluid ease of a tiger. Even through the dust-choked haze, her clothes blazed with color.
Neon yellow.
Rahel sidestepped the wreckage of a slot machine bleeding tokens, and walked toward us. Beautiful as ever, confident and easy.
Smiling.
Her eyes were black. Jet-black, lid to lid.
"Crap, I don't have time for this. Rahel, dammit-" Jonathan said, and that was all there was time for, because she threw herself on him, turning into angles and glittering coal, a thing made of cutting edges and teeth.
The Ifrit had just found the meal of her life.
I screamed and tried to grab her, but I wasn't a Djinn any longer, even if I still had some kind of Djinn second sight; my hands went through her like a ghost. And through Jonathan, too. He'd become ghostly, trapped in her embrace. They fell and rolled over rubble, fighting and clawing. Jonathan lost his human state and turned to something brilliant and hotly dangerous as a star, but the darkness engulfed that heat.
"David!" I screamed, but I didn't really need to; he was already on the move, leaping over obstacles and landing on the back of the Ifrit. Taking her sharp-edged head-was that her head?-in his hands and twisting with vicious strength.
She didn't so much turn as just... reverse. What he was holding grew teeth, the back of her grew claws and spikes and arms. They pierced him and held him, and I felt the sharp vibration of agony go through me, too. It made me stumble and fall to my knees.
"Rahel, no!" I cried. "Stop! God, stop!"
She couldn't. She was totally out of control.
There was a sudden odd sense of pressure changing, and my ears responded with a painfully abrupt pop. I lurched forward, falling, and caught myself as I felt David scream. It rang through the aetheric like a shattering bell, and I knew there was no time, no time, he was being torn apart by her hunger...
I had no idea if it would work, could work, but I had to try.
I held out the empty bottle-the decoy bottle-in one shaking fist and yelled out the first iteration of the ritual. "Rahel! Be thou bound to my service!"
The Ifrit turned on me with a roar. David was bleeding. That wasn't real blood, any more than his was a real body; it was a physical representation of an aethereal energy; he could heal himself from anything so long as he had enough power left to form flesh...
But it looked so real. He was pallid, shattered, broken. The copper of his eyes was dying.
"Be thou bound to my service!" I shouted, and crawled backward as the diamond-sharp claws raked at me.
Through me. She couldn't touch me. I felt a hot spark of triumph.
"Be thou bound to-"
She lunged at me and the claws plunged deep, deeper... snagged on something.
No! No no no no no...
Not my baby.
She could destroy the life inside me, I knew that. I felt that, just as I felt David trying to get to me, determined to protect me or die in the attempt.
Rahel hesitated. Her claws were caged around Imara, holding that fragile spark. One instant's pressure would be enough.
As she hesitated, torn by whatever remnant of reason was left to her, I gasped it out. "Be thou bound to my service!"
She went entirely still. Ice and angles, coal and glass. A three-dimensional sculpture visible only to Djinn eyes. Living? Breathing? I didn't know, couldn't tell. There was no sensation of power from the bottle I held, and no sense of connection to her. Had anybody ever tried to bind an Ifrit before? Probably not... humans couldn't see them, and Djinn wouldn't be able to do it.
I was the only one who could see them, and bind them.
"Let go of my baby," I whispered.
The hand inside of me unclenched. Claws withdrew. It was the only part of her that moved at all.
"Rahel," I said. "Can you hear me?"
No answer. I shuddered and opened the black leather purse still slung around my body; there was enough padding in there for two bottles. I shoved Rahel's in, careful that it wouldn't knock against David's, and left her frozen there to fumble my way to where David was lying.
His torso was a mess of shredded meat. Blood, so much blood. His eyes had gone as brown as dying leaves, and his lips were a light shade of lilac.
She'd almost consumed him whole. I couldn't get my breath as I knelt next to him. He felt so cold to the touch-David, who was always burning warm. Like a fire going out.
I whispered his name, over and over, like a chant. I ordered him to heal himself. He didn't respond, although his eyes fastened on me like I was the only thing in the world.
His hand found mine and held it. There was no strength in him. His fingernails were the same pallid shade as his lips.
He whispered, "Leave me."
"Like hell!" I snapped. "God, please, don't do this-David, I order you to heal-"
Kevin was standing next to me. "He's dying," he said. "Whoa. I didn't know they did that."
"Shut up, you little bastard." I looked up, and for a second I thought the dancing red dot on his chest had something to do with the tears distorting my vision, but then I realized late and cold what exactly it was.
I'd forgotten all about Quinn and his sniper rifle.
The red dot was a laser sight, focused on Kevin's heart.
"No!" I screamed, and shoved Kevin with one hand flat against his chest. He tripped, fell on his ass. I stood up, waving my arms. "No, Quinn, stop, it's over, it's over-"
Kevin leaped up, the idiot. A clear target.
The red dot settled over my heart. Steady as a rock.
It was focused on me. Not Kevin, me.
What the hell...?!
I had just enough time to throw myself backward, and I swear, I felt the supersonic hiss of the bullet's friction burning the air as it passed over me.
Missed, I thought, and then I saw that there had been someone standing behind me. Like her boyfriend, Siobhan had been stupid enough to bounce up like a pop target on a shooting gallery.
Her mouth was open in amazement. She stared down at the red hole-about the size of my thumb-through her chest. She didn't really make any noise. Just a quiet coughing sound, like someone trying to clear their throat, and then there was a sudden shocking flood of red out of her mouth.
She pitched forward over me. I raised my head and saw the hole in her back, the size of a clenched fist, full of blood like a deep well that spilled over in gouts and splashes. She was shaking all over. I yelled something-it might have been Marion's name. Kevin was already there, reaching for her, but I felt her going.
We both felt her die.
Her body collapsed against me, limp and empty, and for the first time I saw that her eyes weren't hazel at all; they were a beautiful spider's-web pattern of moss and brown, flecked with gold.
Her body felt heavy as sin, draped over me.
I don't know how many seconds that was-it felt like an eternity-and then Kevin was there, screaming. He rolled her limply into his arms. I felt the surge of power as he tried to force her body to live; the flesh jumped as nerves conducted electricity, but that was nothing but reflex.
"She's gone," I whispered. There was blood all over me, splattered; I wiped at the mess with shaking fingers. "Kevin, stop. She's gone."
He kept trying. Breathing into her mouth. Flooding dead flesh with jolt after jolt of raw power as he tried to change the immutable.
"Do something!" he shouted at me. His face had gone zombie-white, but his eyes were furious, his lips smeared with her blood from the mouth-to-mouth. "You've got a Djinn! Save her!"
"No," I said.
"I'll kill you, I swear I will!" I could feel the fury coming off of him, but the words were little-boy words, broken and afraid. The power he had was nothing like little-boy power, though; it was Lewis's power, and it could crush me, burn me, rip me apart.
There are three things you aren't supposed to ever ask your Djinn to do. Give you eternal life. Give you unlimited power. Raise the dead. That's the one that gets most people, if they live long enough. In that first chill of grief, too many turn to their Djinn and blurt out an order they shouldn't. The consequences were tragic and legendary.
Because when you do those particular things, the Djinn act under a totally different set of imperatives. The magic that drives them to obey you also drives them to turn on you.
I bit my tongue, hard, and swallowed a scream.
"No," I finally whispered. "She's gone, Kevin. I'm so sorry."
I thought for a second he really would kill me, kill me with his bare bloodstained hands, but then tears spilled over and he was sobbing hopelessly.
"Stay down," I said, and crawled to where David was still lying on the floor. He wasn't any better. In fact, he looked worse. Breathing in shallow gasps. His eyes weren't brown anymore; they were turning darker.
"Trying to kill you," he murmured. "You. Not them."
"Yeah," I agreed shakily. "I saw. Why would Quinn try to kill me?"
He reached up to touch my face. I felt no warmth, only a faint, insubstantial ghost of contact.
"Don't leave me," I whispered. "You can't leave me, David. I won't let you."
His pale lips parted to shape my name, silently. I felt the love in it.
"I need you," I said. "I need you with me. Stay." My breath was doing something funny in my chest, turning sour and thick. I couldn't seem to gasp in enough air. "God, David, don't do this to me. Don't you dare."
He tried to answer me, but then his back arched and he cried out. His open eyes shifted from a violent storm-black to a bright orange, running through the spectrum. I remembered that. I'd seen it before.
Flesh corrupted and melted away, revealing wet stripes of muscle. Bone. Layer by layer, he died.
What was left turned hard and cold and black.
Frozen.
Ifrit.
Soft human hands were on me, pulling me back into a sheltering embrace, and I was being rocked against someone as I whimpered. Unable to weep now. Unable to scream and let out the fury and horror.
Cold, cold, everything was cold.
David was a thing of ice and shadow, burned by darkness. Lying on the floor and motionless.
Marion had me. She was saying something to me, but I couldn't understand her; she unzipped the purse at my side and took my strengthless hand and wrapped it around David's blue glass bottle.
She was telling me to do something. It didn't matter anymore, but I numbly echoed the words. "Back in the bottle," I said. The words sounded odd in my head and tasted flat on my tongue.
The Ifrit that lay like some twisted sculpture in David's place misted into an oily whisper and disappeared. Marion fumbled the stopper in place.
Rahel. No one else could see her, but I couldn't just... leave her here. I took the second, empty bottle. I whispered the words. Rahel's frozen body disappeared, too.
There were rescuers coming. Flashlights dancing wildly in the dust-filled air. Marion zipped the purse shut and held me close as the first of them got to us. Paramedics and firefighters. One of them forced Kevin to put down Siobhan's body, and the three of us-the three survivors-were wrapped in blankets and led out through the tangle of steel and broken glass and darkness.
I remembered the sniper only then. It no longer seemed to matter, but there were no merciful red laser dots coming to dance on my chest. Quinn had missed his chance, and he'd given up the field of battle. I didn't care. If he wanted to shoot me, shoot and be damned.
We walked out a twisted side door into hot sunlight, and I blinked and shaded my eyes.