God, those eyes. So empty. It was like looking into a grave.
“You left me,” he said. “I told you to come back. I screamedfor you.”
I didn’t dare answer. Or move.
“You said you wouldn’t let anything happen to me,” he whispered. “I don’t like liars.”
He had my bottle. He dug it out of his pocket and held it in his left hand—such a small thing, to rule everything about me, life and death—and smiled at me and said, “I want you to burn. Burn yourself alive. Burn until I get tired of hearing you scream.”
I felt a flash of pure, nauseating fear, waited for the compulsion to take over, but…
… nothing happened.
I slowly uncoiled from my protective ball. Kevin looked furious. “Did you hear me? I said burn, you bitch!”
I got up, flexed my right hand. It hurt. There were cuts in my skin from Yvette’s teeth when I’d punched her.
“Sorry,” I said, with a kind of slow wonder. “Don’t think that works anymore.”
I looked up and saw David’s face touched by the same sense of intense, odd awareness.
“You’re alive,” he whispered. “You’re… human.”
And then his expression changed to utter horror, and he started to batter at the barrier between us.
I was human, and I was trapped in here with Kevin and the most powerful Djinn in the universe, who was completely under Kevin’s control.
Trapped with a kid who’d just killed his stepmother without blinking.
Kevin echoed David’s whisper. “Human?” I didn’t like the hard, wet shine in his eyes. “Good. Maybe you can hurt the way you let mehurt.”
Lewis crawled over the threshold of the barrier, dragging David’s bottle with him. David reached down and pulled him out of the way, crouched down and exchanged a look with him.
They both looked at me.
Lewis drew in a painful, hitching breath, and said, “Do whatever you have to do, David, but get her out of here. Do it now.”
David blew through the barrier like it wasn’t even there, slammed into Kevin from behind and sent him flying. Kevin, off balance, tripped over Yvette’s bloody corpse and into the rows of shelves that were still trembling from their last hard slam.
They tipped.
Black-sealed bottles fell. Some broke, hitting metal edges or each other, and even though I couldn’t see any Djinn I could feel them, swirling like a hot wet storm in the room.
David grabbed me. He pulled me past Kevin, who was still squirming to get up. I tried to slow down, because I had the opportunity to grab Jonathan’s bottle, but David’s imperative was clear. Get me out. Don’t stop for anything.
He shoved me forward, and I passed the barrier just a heartbeat ahead of him.
That was enough. His command was fulfilled, and the barrier slammed in place, knocking him backward. I reached out and touched him, but I couldn’t pull him through, couldn’t drag him to safety…
Kevin rolled over, still clutching Jonathan’s bottle, and yelled, “You! Kill him!”
“David, come here!” Lewis yelled, virtually at the same second. The barrier dissolved. David lunged through.
Jonathan grabbed, and missed.
Something was happening inside the vault. I couldn’t see it, not with human eyes, but when I used Oversight it looked like hell in there—tortured, writhing bodies, Djinn fighting each other on the aetheric, Kevin and Jonathan blazing like a white star in the center. I felt a chill of premonition and turned to Lewis, who was propped against the wall, looking worse than I’d ever seen him.
“I can’t,” he whispered, even though I hadn’t asked. “I’ve got nothing.”
If he had nothing left, David had nothing. We all watched as the black-sealed Djinn, free of their captivity, started manifesting in the real world.
Nightmares. They looked horribly disfigured, half demon, and they made a terrible sawing noise like metal tearing. Screams. A kind of scream I never wanted to hear again.
“Get out of there!” I blurted, and held out my hand to Kevin. “You have to get out, Kevin! Please! You don’t know what you’re doing!”
He could have. All he had to do was walk two feet forward, take my hand. Make the choice.
There was such a horror of devastation in his eyes. A dawning awareness that what he’d done had consequences, had a kind of history that was never going to let him go. Sin is like a stalker— you may learn to ignore it, but you can never hide from it.
He took one step, stopped, and gave me the emptiest smile I had ever seen. He said, “Concerned about me now? Too late, Joanne. I’m not gonna be anybody’s bitch anymore. Not hers, not yours… I’m gonna have power. So much power none of you can do anything to stop me.”
He looked past me, to Lewis. “You’re that guy. The one she was so afraid of. The one with the big mojo.”
Lewis didn’t blink. “Maybe.”
“Huh.” Kevin swept him up and down with a look. “No shit. Thanks, man. For saving my life.”
“You didn’t have to pay me back by killing her.”
Kevin’s face flushed a dull, mutinous red. “You don’t know anything about it.” He turned to Jonathan. “Can you get me out of here?”
Jonathan’s eyebrows quirked over his empty stare. “Where do you want to go?”
“Anywhere.” Kevin, under the stress of the moment, was forgetting the rules. He looked at Jonathan, who stared back, waiting. “Anywhere but here!”
“You have to be specific,” Jonathan said. And, as Kevin’s mouth started to shape something—something I was pretty sure would have been home—Jonathan said, “Might as well make it someplace fun. Disneyworld. Las Vegas. Something—”
“Vegas!” Kevin crowed. He looked pleased with himself for seizing on it. “Hell yeah. Definitely Vegas.”
Jonathan, I thought, what the hell are you doing? He could have detailed the kid to death, could have asked him to define his designation down to a few square inches of ground, but I could see that he’d gotten what he wanted. “You have to order me,” he reminded.
“Oh, right. Uh, take me to Las Vegas—Wait!” Kevin threw up a hand. “What the hell are these things?”
He was looking at the barely visible Djinn swirling in the air. Jonathan didn’t shift his gaze. Probably didn’t want to look at them for long. I wouldn’t have.
“Djinn,” he said. “They’re sick.”
“Yeah? Fuck me. Well, let them go, they’re creeping me out.”
“No!” I yelled, and lunged forward. Too late. The barrier holding the Djinn back popped with an almost physical sensation, and the infected, tormented Djinn vanished. Kevin looked around the vault art all of the bottles lining the shelves. The ones on the right were all sizes and shapes, unsealed; the ones on the left were marked in black with the glyph that signified a demon infestation.
He grabbed some of the black-sealed bottles and stuffed them into his baggy pants pockets. “Let’s go,” he said to Jonathan. “Vegas. Move your ass.”
Lewis said, very grimly, “David, stop them from leaving.”
I was looking at David when he said it, and I saw the flicker of agony that crossed his face; Lewis didn’t know what he’d just asked him to do. Fight Jonathan. Fight someone he had loved and respected for a thousand years or more.
Someone he knew he couldn’t beat.
Kevin threw a sideways look at Jonathan, clearly realizing that Vegas, move your assdidn’t qualify as a proper command. Which meant David had the upper hand. “You. Mojo guy. You think you can take me?”
Lewis said, “I didn’t save your life to arm wrestle with you.”
“But you’re strong, right? Stronger than anything?”
“Not anything.”
“But almost anything.” Kevin looked sly, shot a greasy look at Jonathan. “Hey, I’ve got a better idea. We can do Vegas anytime.” He looked over at me, and the craziness in his eyes made me feel weightless and sick. “You should’ve been nicer to me, bitch.”