I laughed. My body put itself back together in hot, agonizing snaps and jerks, every nerve carrying every second of the pain to my brain.
And the pain felt so good.
Lewis let go of me, staring in bafflement that was turning fast to grim horror.
David didn’t move, but I saw the same thing in his face—the same revulsion and sickness.
“You think I’d let her go that easy?” It was Bad Bob’s voice, but coming raw from my own throat. “You think I’d let any of you go that easy? She’s the future, boys. My future.”
The laughter that exploded out of me was like a black, nauseating cloud, and this time even David flinched away from it. I rolled up to my hands and knees, covered in fine dust like flour where I wasn’t streaked in blood.
Alive. Whole. Even the radiation sickness had been flushed out of me.
The torch on my back burned, burned so hot. . . .
“So who’s the bad guy now?” I taunted. He taunted.
There wasn’t any difference now.
I turned my face up to the rain, and laughed, and for the first time, I understood why he was as he was, what about this was so intoxicating. No ties. No worries. No burdens. Just power, as pure as it came. People didn’t matter. All that mattered was winning.
I didn’t care about David, or Lewis, or any miserable little collection of cells walking the planet. They were all just meat and fuel for the engine.
And it was so . . . beautiful.
Then Bad Bob let me go, once he’d shown me the world as he saw it, a landscape where flesh and blood were as meaningless and desolate as sand and rock. I felt the fire gutter and die on my back, and my whole body jerked and folded in on itself.
Mourning for what I’d just lost.
I felt tears burning in my eyes and knew that the worst thing of all this was that I couldn’t be sure anymore that if he offered me the choice to feel that again, of my own free will, that I wouldn’t take it.
So who’s the bad guy now?
The circle of people around me waited tensely. I lifted my face again, and said, “He’s gone.” My words were almost lost in a blast of wind flying in from the ocean, blowing dust and debris and tattered palm leaves into the air. “I have to go after him.”
The Wardens shifted, looking at each other, at Lewis. He slowly shook his head. “We’re not doing that,” he said. “Christ, Jo. What just happened to you?”
David knew. He reached around and pulled the back of my shirt down, and I saw Lewis’s face turn a sick shade of white. “Oh God,” he said. “We need to get it off you.”
“I don’t think laser removal is going to cut it,” I said. I felt hollow, cored out. Beyond anything but gallows humor. “It’s deep. I don’t know how to shut him out.”
“Then you can’t go,” Lewis said. “We need to keep you safe. If he can use you—”
“He can use me here. Against you. I need to—I need to finish this.” I swallowed hard. “He’s still got a Djinn. Rahel. And he’s going to use her to make that thing he has even stronger. The next time he puts the Unmaking into the Earth, do you really think any of us is going to survive it?”
I turned and looked at the night sky. Impossible to see how much damage had been done, but I saw fires, heard sirens in the distance.
“I can block him,” David said. “If you’ll let me. But it will hurt.”
He hadn’t said a word about being bound, about my almost killing him in the beach house; I supposed there would be plenty of time for that later. But for now, I nodded.
David put his hand flat against my bare skin on my back, and I felt power surge up from beneath me, racing through my body, concentrating in a red-hot ball around the torch tattoo. Burning. I trembled and felt David’s other hand close around mine, sending me strength and support.
“I’m here,” he whispered. “I’m here, my love.”
I stood it for as long as I could, and then turned with a cry and threw myself into his arms. The white-hot pain in my back faded slowly, but it didn’t go away. I couldn’t see what he’d done, but it felt as if the mark had been overlaid by something else. Contained.
Masked.
“It won’t last,” David said, and stroked my hair. “I’ll have to renew the block when it weakens.”
Joy. “How often?”
“That depends on how hard he’s trying to reach you.” His arms tightened around me. “I’m so sorry.”
That covered . . . everything. For now. I took a deep breath and stepped back, smiling despite the continuing low sizzle of pain. “Can you stay?”
“I’ll try,” he said. “You’re right. My people have to try to stop him. We don’t have a choice. He’s hurting the Mother directly now. We’re her only defense.”
“Not the only one,” Ashan said, striding out of the darkness. Behind him stretched all of the Old Djinn, hundreds of them. The mightiest Djinn force I’d ever seen in one place—maybe the mightiest ever assembled.
On David’s side, the New Djinn began to take shape out of the shadows—maybe just out of self-defense. The Wardens, caught in the middle, looked understandably worried. These two clans had been in cold-war status for ages, but the war had heated up, and I wasn’t sure what Ashan would consider defense these days.
His cold, teal-blue eyes turned on me. I felt him considering whether or not to strike.
“Try and I’ll destroy you,” David said, low in his throat. Lightning ripped the sky again, breaking into dozens of streams of light.
“Amusing as that contest would be, you’re probably right,” Ashan said, and his smile was as cold as the rain. “She’s our guide into the abyss. We can use her to track our enemy. And to tempt him into the open.”
“Wait,” Lewis said. “What are you saying? You’re all going after him? All of you?”
“The New Djinn are vulnerable. The Old Djinn aren’t—at least, not yet. Besides, we have no choice now,” David replied. “We can’t let him go. He may actually be able to destroy the Djinn.” He paused, and looked at the Wardens. “This isn’t your fight anymore. Go home.”
“Hell with that,” Kevin said. “I’m not taking orders from you.”
“Tell him,” David said, spearing Lewis with a glare. “Tell them all.”
Lewis looked around at the Wardens, taking his time. When he spoke, he had the unmistakable ring of command in his voice. “He’s right. I make the decisions for the Wardens. You’ll all follow my orders.” He paused for deliberate effect. “And my orders are that the Wardens will send a support team with Joanne and the Djinn.”
“And where exactly are we planning to send them?” Marion asked.
I looked up at the clouds, then out to sea.
“He’s gone where he thinks we can’t follow,” I said. “To the Cradle of Storms.” As far as I knew, no Warden had ever ventured out to sea in that area and made it back to shore alive. The storms out there were sentient, and they were vicious. And a Warden, any Warden, became a Jonah. Any ship they were on became prey.
And I was about to lead a whole team of them into the jaws of death.
This was not the way I’d planned to take a honeymoon cruise to Bermuda.
Sunrise came. Sunrise always comes, no matter how dark the night—it’s one of those tired truths of life, one you can take as either positive or negative as the situation calls for.
For me, this morning, it was just the morning after the night before. No change, except that there was more light to see the damage.
The burning sensation on my back had faded into a dull buzz, but the whole area still felt warm and tender to the touch. I still felt hollow and empty, and I ached for . . . something—something to feel; something to make this morning worth living through the night.
I felt too disconnected from the others, who had things to do. I wandered away—not too far, watched constantly by an FBI surveillance team—and sat alone on the beach, a blanket around my shoulders. I watched the sun gild the rolling waves and thought about Hurricane Andrew rolling in over these waters; about a Warden named Bob Biringanine wading out into the pounding surf and giving up his soul.