Windfall

Chapter Twenty-seven

"You aren't eternal," Lewis said, and there was something in his words that sounded not quite human in its depth and power. "You were born into this world, and you can die in it. You've got no place to run."
"A human can't threaten..."
"I'm talking to you as someone who can hear the whisper of the Mother as she sleeps. Do you really think that makes me human?"
Ashan's teal eyes flared gray for a second, then darkened again. Not quite under control."The Mother doesn't talk to meat."
"She talks to Wardens like me. Wardens who hold all the keys to power. You should remember that. You were around when Jonathan died as a human."
Ashan's iron-cold grip on me suddenly relaxed, and I overbalanced pulling away from him. Lewis helped me up. I felt cold and shaky and unreasonably weak, as if the Djinn had been sucking something out of me I couldn't afford to lose.
Strength. Independence. Hope.
Lewis's touch brought all of that rushing back. Especially the independence part, which made me immediately pull away from his support. "I'm fine," I said.
His dark eyes flicked to me and were momentarily just a man's again, harassed and short-tempered. "I can take care of myself."
"I know," he said. "Go. Somebody will meet you downstairs."
I couldn't seem to make myself move. Raindrops were pattering and pooling in John Foster's open eyes. "Ashan killed John. Why?"
"Because he could," Lewis said grimly. "Because John had something he wanted."
For a blind second I thought he meant me, but Lewis was looking past me, at the albino, opal-haired rock-'n'-roll Djinn.
"Recruits," Lewis finished. "Right, Ashan? You need cannon fodder. Djinn to toss into Jonathan's path to slow him down, because he's coming for you, and when he finds you it's not going to be a pretty sight."
The other Djinn looked at Ashan and tilted his head to one side. No expression on his face, but I had the sense of a razor-sharp mind at work. Ashan was a user, no question of that. And surely the other Djinn, who had a lot more experience of him than I did, had to know it.
"Go downstairs," Lewis said to me.
"Not without you."
Lewis let out a breathless, near-silent laugh. "Believe me, I'm right behind you. Most of that was bluff."
The albino Djinn took a sudden, pantherlike step forward, hand raised. Ashan fell back, assuming a defensive position.
Lewis urged me in the direction of the stairwell. "Don't wait. Get out of the building. I can't guarantee it won't come down if this turns violent."
"Lewis-"
He didn't waste time arguing, just extended his hand toward me. I felt a burst of wind hit me, precisely in my midsection, knocking me back five steps to bounce against the stairwell railing, and the door slammed to cut us off.
Something hit the roof outside with enough force to shudder the whole building.
I saw dust sift down from the ceiling and heard an inhuman groan go through the place as concrete and steel shifted.
I kicked off my shoes, stuck them in the purse still hanging from my shoulder, and began running down the steps as fast as I could go. On the fifth floor I ran into refugees. Shit. There were tenants still in the building. I abandoned my escape attempt and banged through the fire door, running from office to office rattling doorknobs and yelling for people to get the hell out. A cube farm on the fourth floor yielded up four people wearing headphones, oblivious to everything; I yanked them bodily out of their ergonomic chairs and sent them running for the stairwell. I interrupted a courting couple in a supply closet on the third floor; they ran for the exits still fastening up clothes.
Ella was nowhere to be found. I wondered if she'd had advance warning of the attack, and if so, whose side she was on. If she'd left John to die, it damn sure wasn't my side.
The cops were just pulling up in the parking lot, along with the fire department, when the evacuees began pouring screaming out of the building.
Chaos. I left with them, got into the parking lot, and whirled to shield my eyes from the rain and get a look at what was happening on the roof.
The roof was on fire. Figures struggling in the flames. One hell of a fight going on up there, and a continuous roar of thunder as lightning struck again, and again, and again...
As I watched, the roof collapsed into the seventh floor, and a huge roar of hissing flames shot up into the sky.
"No!" I screamed and lunged for the door. Arms wrapped around me from behind and held me still. I kicked and struggled, but they were strong arms, and besides, I wasn't at my best. I twisted enough to catch a glimpse of who was holding me, and felt the fight go out of my tense muscles.
I didn't know the burly guy who was giving me the modified Heimlich, but I knew the natty old man standing next to him, neatly covered from the rain by a black umbrella. His name was Charles Ashworth II, and he was one of the senior members of the Ma'at. He was flawlessly dressed in a gray Italian suit, a fine white shirt, a blue silk tie. Conservative, that was Ashworth... he reminded me of a bitter, old version of Ashan, actually. He still had an I-smell-something-rotten expression that betrayed exactly what he thought about the world in general, and me in particular.
"Let go," he ordered, and Burly Guy loosened his arms. "Don't be stupid, woman. You're not a Fire Warden. You can't run into a burning building. Lewis, on the other hand, can no doubt stroll out without any problem at all."
He had a point. I resented it. "What are you doing here?"
Ashworth nodded toward the building. "Helping him."
"Helping him do what, exactly?"
"None of your concern." Ashworth tapped his black-and-silver cane on the pavement for emphasis. "You're neither needed nor wanted here, Miss Baldwin. I suggest you go back to your duties, presuming you have them. The Wardens seem to need all the help they can get these days."
He sounded pretty smug about it. I wanted to slug him, remembering John Foster's simple, quiet commitment to the work. His courage. His grace under fire.
Before I could suggest any anatomically impossible sexual actions to him, a figure came walking out of the billowing chaos of the side fire escape door.
Lewis looked smoke-stained, but fine. I took a few steps toward him, winced at the bite of broken glass on my bare feet, and paused to brush them more or less clean and jam on my shoes. When my balance wavered, Lewis was there, a hand steadying my elbow even while his attention was fixed on Ashworth.
Overhead, the rain slacked off noticeably. Lewis again, setting balances. He wouldn't just get rid of it, he'd let it wind itself down. I couldn't feel the energy currents, but I imagined he was grounding it seamlessly through every available safe avenue. He was thorough that way.
"I couldn't get to them in time," he said. "Foster was already dead."
"And the Djinn?" Ashworth asked.
Lewis shook his head. "I don't know. At best, he was badly wounded. But I don't think he's joining Ashan." Ashworth's lips tightened and he turned away, cane tapping, to join a knot of umbrellas standing near the fire engine. The Ma'at had come in force, looked like. Not that they'd be a lot of help in a fight.
None of them were Wardens, per se, except Lewis; they had power, but it wasn't on the level of someone like John Foster, or even me. Training, not talent.
Well, maybe today, they were on the level with little old whipped-puppy me.
Which didn't make me feel any better.
"All right?" Lewis was asking me. I looked up to see his dark eyes focused on me.
"Peachy," I assured him. There was a quaver in my voice. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"Trying to stop the war," he said, and took advantage of his hold on my elbow to steer me out of the way of some firefighters unrolling more hose. The building was still burning, but not nearly as briskly. I could sense a distant, low thrum of power-Lewis was keeping the blaze tamped down, making it manageable. He could have killed it, I was sure, but Lewis was a subscriber to the philosophy of Ma'at. Everything in balance. He would be working to put all of the power that had just been expended back into some kind of order.
"What? You're going to stop the war singlehandedly?"
"Obviously not." Lewis got me into a neutral territory, somewhere between the firefighters, the cops, and the Ma'at, and turned me to face him. "Jo, I need you to promise me that you'll go back to your apartment, pack your bags, and get out of here. Today."
"I can't promise that." Even though I'd been thinking about it, before my car had been blown up.
"I need you to do this for me." His eyes searched my face. "I can't be worrying about where you are, what's happening to you."
And that lit a fuse on my temper. "I didn't ask you to be my babysitter, Lewis! I can take care of myself, I always have!"
"And if you weren't drained so far that you barely register as a Warden on the aetheric, I'd accept that," he shot back. "Did David do this to you?"
I met his eyes and didn't answer. He shook his head, anger sparking in his eyes, and deliberately looked away.
"Fine," he said. "But you can't let him feed off you like this. He'll kill both of you."
"I know."
"I'm serious. You need to let him go. You need to break the bottle."
"I know! Jonathan already made it clear, believe me." I didn't mention Rahel's counterargument. I wasn't sure I wanted him to know I hadn't decided. "I'm fine, dammit. Don't worry about me."
He let go, reluctantly, and turned away to talk to the Ma'at, who were already signaling him impatiently for a confab.
That's when I saw Jonathan standing at the fringes of the crowd, arms folded.
Jonathan himself, Master of the Djinn Universe, in the flesh. Commander in chief of one side of what might turn out to be a world-ending civil war.
He was disguised as a regular guy, dressed in black jeans and heavy boots and a brown leather jacket, ball cap pulled down low over his eyes. As with Ashan, the rain bent around him. I didn't think anybody but me would notice; I doubted anybody but me could see him.
He was a hundred feet away, and there were dozens of people between us, but I felt the shock as his eyes locked onto me. I felt a burn inside, nothing comfortable, nothing like the connection I felt with David, or the purely heat-driven fizz between me and Lewis.
It was as if Jonathan owned me, the way I owned David. Was this how it felt for David? Invasive and sickening? As if his every breath depended on mine?
"I warned you," Jonathan said, and the bill of that ball cap dipped just a fraction.
Time stopped. Raindrops froze into glittering silver threads around me.
I was in Jonathan's world now.
He walked through the silent landscape, moving around statues of humans in his way, breaking rain into fragments against that invisible shield he carried with him.
"I can't do what you want," I said when he stopped just three steps away. My words sounded weirdly flat in the still, dead air. "If I let him go, he'll come after you, and that'll be the end, won't it? The end of everything. You're important. That's what Rahel's been trying to tell me from the first time I met you. You're the key to everything. Without you-"
He cut me off by sticking an accusatory finger in my face. "I told you what would happen. I told you, Joanne. Is this a habit with you, courting death? Because it's getting old. You're carrying around a kid, you know. Could devote a little thought to that while you're walking over the cliff and mooning about your undying love."
"It's not about me. It's you. I can't let David come after you, and he will if I break the bottle."
"Dammit!" His flare of fury was scary. It evaporated rain in a pulsing circle for about fifty feet in every direction. I felt my skin take on an instant burn. "Are you always this stupid, or is it a special feature just for me? Break the damn bottle, Joanne!"
"No."
"Not even to save yourself and the kid."
"No."
"Not even to save David."
Because that's what all this was about, I suddenly realized. Not the world, not the war, not me. David. His constant and pure devotion to David, who'd been his friend since the world was younger than I could even imagine.
Who'd died in his arms, as a human.
"Because I can save him," Jonathan said. "I know how."
"Yeah," I said, and locked stares with him. "I know, too. You die, he lives. And where does that leave the rest of us?"
Galaxies in his eyes. A vast and endless power, but it wasn't his own. He was a conduit. A window to something larger than any of us, Djinn or human.
"He takes my place," Jonathan said. "He lives. You live. The baby lives. He's strong enough to take Ashan. I'm too damn tired for this; I've been running the show for too long. I've made too many mistakes, and we need a fresh start."
Oh, God. It wasn't Ashan suddenly deciding to rebel on his own... Ashan had just picked up on something else: Jonathan's weakness, if you could describe somebody like him as weak. He just didn't want to go on anymore.
"No," I said again. "You can't do this. I'm sorry, but you're just going to have to gut it out and stop Ashan and put everything back the way it was. I'm not helping you commit suicide by David."
He looked at me for a long time, in that still silent place where time didn't exist. And I felt something like a shiver run through the world.
He raised his head toward the sky for a second, listening, and then shook his head again.
"That your final answer?" he asked.
Something about his expression almost made me change my mind, but I couldn't, I just couldn't let his need and his despair drive the game. This was too important.
"That's it," I said. "I'm not letting David go."
"You'll kill him. And he'll destroy you."
"So be it. Now go do your job and get things done. The world's more important than me and David, and dammit, it's more important than your death wish!"
He hated me. I felt it, strong as acid poured in an open wound.
"All I have to do is kill you," he said. It was barely a whisper. "You know that, right? You die, the baby dies, and I can still do exactly what I want. Everybody wins but you."
For a breathless second I thought he was going to do it. I could feel the impulse firing in him, could see the way it would happen-his hands around my head, turning with shocking strength, my spine snapping with the crisp sound of crumpled paper. The work of less than a second.
I remembered Quinn, helpless on the ground, coughing up blood. Terror in his eyes, at the end. Jonathan hadn't even hesitated.
"I know," I said. "Butch up and do it, if you're going to. Don't keep me in suspense."
He stared at me for a second, eyes wild and dark, and then smiled.