"Don't move," she said to Emily, and plunged her right hand into her chest.
Emily shrieked. I think I must have, too. I know I lunged forward, or tried to, but suddenly there were arms around me from behind, although all the Djinn were in front of me.
"No, love." David's whisper in my ear. "This has to be done."
I spun to look at him. Emily was making terrible, agonizing noises, and there were dead people on the ground, dead people… "You killed these people?"
He looked tired. Shadows in those normally bright eyes. "It had to be done."
" Youkilled them?"
He shook his head. "Let's not do this. Not now."
"Why didn't you want me to stop, if you didn't know this was going on?" But I knew. He must have sensed the lingering presence of my encounters with Demon Marks on me, just as Angel had. He'd been afraid that they'd just assume I was one of the infected. "God, David, how could you do this? These were Wardens."
"Wardens have always passed their infections on to Djinn, and we could never fight back. Now we can."
"So it was them or you. Is that it?"
His eyes held mine, steady. Flecked with amber and full of regret. "Yes. Them or us. And don't tell me the Wardens haven't done the same. Don't tell me that youwouldn't if it came to it."
"Slaughter fifteen people like sheep? No, David, I—" Emily's tortured moans suddenly cut off with the sound of flesh hitting the ground. I spun back toward her, and saw her being picked up from her faint by the big male Djinn, who placed her back in the SUV's passenger side. He removed that door, too, and the back one, as well. Evidently, he liked symmetry.
I rushed to her side and pressed my fingers to her throat. A nice, steady pulse. She moaned weakly and opened her eyes. Bloodshot and unfocused, but it looked like she'd live.
"They were on their way to the fire," David said grimly. "Fire that would have accelerated the Demon Marks and hatched out more than we could handle at one time. We had to stop them before the Demons emerged, and it was too late to remove them safely. We didn't have a choice."
"We could have done something!" I shouted, rounding on him. He didn't back up. "We could have put them in a cell, in a hospital, anything but killing them and tossing them out like yesterday's trash! You don't have the right, David!"
"No!" he shouted back. "I have the responsibility! Now, if we've taken enough of a guilt trip, I have a fire to stop."
He whirled and stalked away, coat flapping in the hot wind behind him. I scrambled after, heart pounding in a bloody, loud fury in my ears. I grabbed his arm, felt heavy wool and the flex of muscles, and dragged him to a stop.
"David!"
He turned, and his expression… Ah, God. The agony was heartrending. "There's nobody else to make these choices. You know."
I did. I remembered all the times that I'd run screaming from the burden of hard choices. Even this time, I'd let myself get distracted from the mission by the opportunity to earn myself a little feel-good glory. It was Emily's job. It hadn't been mine. I'd come out here with good intentions, and hell lay at the end.
"This whole thing won't stop," I said. "It won't stop until we're all dead. Right?"
For answer, he reached out and folded his arms around me, holding me. He smelled of smoke and sweat, real and human, and I wanted nothing but to be somewhere else with him, somewhere free of chaos and responsibility. Somewhere I could hold him against my skin, and we could wash each other clean.
If we could ever be clean again.
"I know you didn't kill them," I whispered against his neck.
"I'm responsible," he said again, and his lips touched the sensitive skin below my ear, a delicate benediction. "That's all you need to know."
Lewis and Paul would shrug it off; fifteen more dead Wardens? A tragedy, sure, but we'd already lost more than we could count. And Demon-infected Wardens weren't an asset to anyone. I knew all the logical reasons, and none of them touched the black, oily guilt that continued to seep into my heart.
I took a deep breath and pulled back enough to look him in the eyes. "Where are these things coming from? What do they want?"
For a second he didn't react, and then his pupils narrowed as he comprehended what I was asking. "The Demon Marks? They're destined to produce adult Demons. They reproduce at will, once they hatch. The Marks—the eggs—are drawn through rips in the aetheric, and they're pulled to the nearest source of power. Djinn or Warden."
"Is that all?"
"No. They're drawn to us because we're part of her, in greater or lesser measure. What they want—especially the adults—is to get to the Mother."
"Like I do." Oh, the irony.
"Not… like you do," David said slowly. "If they can get to a place where she's vulnerable, they could kill her. Demons are a disease, Jo. And we have to fight them however we can, especially now. She's vulnerable. And she's hurting."
"The Oracle. The one in Seacasket. He was infected with a Demon Mark—"
"What?" He pulled back, completely back, eyes wide. "No. That isn't possible."
"I—I think it might have been my fault. I got it off him, but I don't know how much damage it did first."
His face went stiff and blank. "I have to go," he said carefully, with exquisite care. "Don't—don't go back to the Oracle. Don't try."
"But—"
"If you go back," he said tonelessly, "I'll have to kill you. Don't even think about it."
I swallowed hard. He'd shifted from the warm, comforting lover to the leader of the Djinn, and the change was terrifying. "Then what do I do? David, you're the one who said—"
"I know what I said. But it's out of my hands now. And yours. Go home, Jo."
I stood there, stunned. He walked away, toward the fire.
One of the other Djinn was standing next to me—the big one, his pale white ponytail fluttering in the wind. He raised an expressive eyebrow.
"You can go," he said.
Something occurred to me, late and hard. "I forgot—there's a Demon down in the fire—"
"We know, love," he said. "That's why we're here. Go."
When I didn't move, he just picked me up and effortlessly carried me back to the SUV, and plumped me into the driver's side. This time, the engine started with a throaty roar. I looked over at Emily, who was firmly buckled in, and fingered the shredded remains of my own seat belt.
"Oh, sorry," he said, and reached in to touch it with a fingertip. It knitted together with dizzying speed. Good as new. He solicitously buckled me in and patted my shoulder. "You do what he says, now. You go home."
I hardly even remembered driving away. I remember staring into the rearview mirror, at the smoke and flame and the battlefield of dead Wardens, until the next hill hid it all from view.
I cried for a while. Tears of fury and anguish and bitter, bitter disappointment. Disappointment in myself, mostly. If I'd stayed in Seacasket… if I'd gone back instead of going into the fire with Emily, maybe things would be different. Maybe those fifteen Wardens wouldn't be dead. Maybe…
Maybe it would all be the same, only I'd be dead, too. No way to second-guess it. I knew only that the path I was on wasn't the right one, not at all.
Emily continued to sleep, and snore, as I piloted the broke-down Jeep back down dirt roads, heading for civilization.
The first sign of which was a paved road, black and level, at right angles to the road I was on. I turned left.