I corked the bottle and slotted it back into the box. The avatar, in turn, threw me the next empty. This time, I targeted Ashan.
Ashan snarled and misted away before I could complete the incantation. Coward.
Rahel didn’t run. She leaped like a spider out of the shadows as I turned my concentration on her, and sent me, and the bottle, flying before I could stammer out more than half the incantation. The avatar dropped what he was doing and grabbed her, wrestling her to a halt before she could rip my head off, and I finished gasping the last iteration out: “—bound to my service.”
Screams. Mist. A cork in the bottle, which went back in the box.
But the rest of the Djinn weren’t going to let me continue this; most of them had been corked before, and even if they hadn’t been under the Earth’s control they’d have come after me in earnest. They’d killed Wardens for far, far less.
David broke free of a knot of them and backed up to stand over me. He dragged me to my feet and said, “Get us help.”
He meant Rahel and Venna, locked in the bottles. According to the rules that governed bottled Djinn, neither he nor any Djinn could touch the containers once they’d been filled. I had to open them myself.
One of the other Djinn thought faster than I could move. She couldn’t touch the bottles, but she could touch the box they were stored in, and she overturned it, sending dozens of bottles—all corked, all identical—skittering over the debris. Two of them were full. I just had to find those two.
It wasn’t quite a needle in a haystack, but hanging as I was on the edge of death, it was close enough.
“Keep them off me!” I shouted to David and the avatar—whether Imara or Whitney was piloting it now, I couldn’t tell—and lunged for the first bottle. I uncorked it. Nothing. I dropped it where it lay and went to the next. Nothing, again.
One of the bottles was smashed. I hoped that wasn’t one of the two I was looking for, but I didn’t see either Rahel and Venna coming to wreak unholy vengeance on me, so probably not.
A Djinn grabbed my ankle as I reached for the next bottle, and yanked me toward him. I managed to close my fingers around it as I was dragged backward, and as I felt him take hold of the other leg, I knew he was going to wishbone me—just rip me in half with one pull.
I uncorked the bottle, and felt that rush of power and control settle in.
Venna formed, blue eyes calm and utterly in control. She looked down at me, nodded, and grabbed hold of the Djinn who was about to subdivide me. Venna didn’t mess around. She couldn’t kill him, but she could—and did—rip enough out of his physical form that he had to mist away and recover.
Then she turned to me and helped me up. I was now holding two open bottles, hers and David’s, and it occurred to me that balancing another one was going to be problematic—but I needed to throw Rahel in on their side. There were far too many possessed Djinn, not enough defenders, and already David had bloody cuts on him that weren’t healing. It was a sign of how much power he was expending.
Plus, I needed healing, and I needed it fast, so that I could funnel power to my Djinn before it was too late.
Under normal circumstances, David could have healed me, and I could have replenished his power after I was feeling better—but these circumstances were far from normal. We were in a smoking, radioactive hole in the ground, fighting for our lives against an enemy that could, at any time, destroy us all.
I went up into the aetheric, looking desperately for something, anything to help . . . and found it, heading our way at a very fast clip. Two bright, shimmering spots that radiated power.
Wardens.
They were still minutes away, but they were coming, and they were powerful. It would help. With two more Wardens to anchor the bottled Djinn, and capture others . . .
But first I had to make it until they arrived.
Venna and David suddenly left their individual fights, heading for the same spot at the same time, which looked like a recipe for disaster. I should have known better. One of the Djinn had picked up a massive section of concrete, and was pitching it out of the shadows and smoke at me. It would have flattened me like a cartoon if it had landed.
David and Venna caught it and threw it back into the Djinn, bowling a few of them over. But David staggered, and I saw his wounds start to bleed more heavily. Venna also was looking less than steady.
Because I was losing ground, too. Adrenaline had sustained me for a while, but now I could feel my body starting to lose its way. Having the additional drain of the Djinn didn’t help, either.
I didn’t think I was going to make it until help arrived. That might have been a character flaw, but I could feel the resignation growing inside of me, the willingness to finally, ultimately just . . . let go.
David looked at me, and I saw the emotion in his face, the knowledge. He understood what I was feeling, and thinking, and he couldn’t bear it. He couldn’t.
He exchanged a look with Venna and backed up next to me, took me in his arms, and poured energy into me, healing me in a hot, burning rush that made my body arch against him in a parody of love. I heard myself screaming, I heard him whispering to me, frantic and desperate.
“No!” Venna said sharply, and grabbed David and pulled him off me. She shoved him away, at the oncoming group of three Djinn who were coming at us. “Stop them!” He let out an anguished yell and hit them head-on.
Venna grabbed my hands and took up what David had started. She poured power into me in a burning wave, forcing my body together and sealing it with more power than I’d ever felt. It hurt, oh God, it felt like being boiled alive, and I knew I was screaming but I couldn’t stop.
She wasn’t just healing me, she was undoing what she’d done to me before—and that was some serious magic. Whatever she’d done to suspend me at the edge of death, it had been significantly more powerful than I’d thought.
Venna drained herself dry. I saw the blaze in her blue eyes die down, go dim, and then go out. She released my hands and started to disappear—but not into mist. Into sharp-edged shadows, angles, an alien and terrifying geometry that I recognized instantly.
She had just given up so much of herself, so fast, that she was becoming a creature made up of hunger. She was losing herself, but not to the Mother; she was losing herself to desperation.
Her eyes turned black, all black.
Ifrit.
I think that some part of Venna was still aware, because instead of battening on the closest possible Djinn—David—she bypassed him, grabbed hold of one of the three he was fighting, and hooked her oddly angled, blackened limbs around the other Djinn. Ifrits fed by ripping away aetheric energy, draining their victims as they voraciously and endlessly fed, to sate a hunger that couldn’t really be stopped, not by any power short of an Oracle’s.
Venna had brought all her primitive fury and power to it, and within a matter of seconds, she’d reduced the screaming Djinn she was holding to ashes. Ashes.
She’d destroyed him utterly.
The stronger the Djinn, the more viciously predatory the Ifrit could become—and Venna was, without question, the most fearsome Ifrit I could dare to imagine. She went after another victim, who prudently misted away and left the fight.
I was still shaking and sweating, on my hands and knees. I felt better, and much worse, at the same time; light-speed healing will do that to a human body. I’d be dealing with the aftereffects for days. For now, though, I needed to overrule my body’s shock, and just get on with it.
David helped me stand. He was watching Venna’s rampage, lips parted as if he literally couldn’t believe it. I wasn’t sure I could, either.