Cassiel picked up her backpack, and we ran for the vehicles. The ground was pitted and treacherous from the blast, but we made good time and got to the fence just as David blew it open for us. David and I piled into the car, and found—to neither of our surprise—the Djinn avatar sitting at the wheel, ready to go. Cassiel and Luis mounted the motorcycle; interestingly, she was the one driving. I wondered how that negotiation had gone.
“Drive,” David told the Djinn, and no sooner had he spoken than the engine fired up and the car leaped forward, spitting sand as it dug in and raced for the road. We hit asphalt a few seconds later, and when I looked back I saw the motorcycle turning in behind us. “Whitney!”
“You rang, boss?” She sounded just the same as before, amused and none too concerned with our lives. “That was a rock-stupid thing to do, you know. And now I’m stuck back being the damn Conduit, because you went and got yourself claimed. Again.”
“It was that or end up on the Mother’s chain,” David said. “I’ll take a slightly limited version of freedom.”
“You’d better hope it’s slightly limited.” Whitney’s voice cooled, and all of a sudden her rich Southern accent dropped completely away. “Let me make it clear, both of you: I’m not standing for Djinn being stuck in bottles. I know why you did it, but it’s filthy betrayal and I’m going to see you burn for it. Understand?”
“Of course,” David said. “I need you keeping a look-out for Djinn coming in for us.”
“Maybe,” Whitney said. “And maybe I’ll just think about it, boss man.”
That didn’t sound good. Whitney was crazy but consistent, and if she meant what she said, we had a fifty-fifty chance of her just washing her hands of us and letting the Djinn in without a fight.
Granted, we had resources, but I didn’t like losing Whitney’s support. We were in enough trouble as it was.
“Please,” I said. “It’s my responsibility, Whit. Take it out on me if you have to.”
Whitney made a sound that I found particularly irritating. “Oh, I will,” she said, and the Southern accent crept back into her voice. “Believe me.”
“Whitney,” David said. “Hide us. Now.”
“Oh, all right.” I felt something pass over us, like a shimmer of heat, and I knew that she’d done as he asked. From now on, we were traveling unseen by anyone without Warden powers—and probably by most who actually had them. It wouldn’t fool someone of Lewis’s quality, but it would serve to get us past any roadblocks, helicopters, and sharp-eyed patrols.
We zoomed past a road five miles out where several shining military-style vehicles were parked in neat lines. I got a flash of Dr. Reid’s face as he spoke to a group of people. He’d done it. He’d evacuated the compound.
That made me feel better, and also, oddly, very tired. Maybe the anxiety had been keeping me alert, but now I felt like I was dropping fast toward exhaustion. Not too surprising. It had been a big afternoon, what with nuclear explosions and getting shot and bleeding out.
I must have yawned, because David smiled and pulled me close. He felt better than one of those memory foam mattresses.
“Do you want to sleep somewhere more comfortable?” he asked, and touched his lips gently to the skin just beneath my ear. I couldn’t work up much in the way of sexual excitement, but I shivered a little and gave him a weary smile of my own.
“I’m going to dream about hotels. Fancy ones, with the nice fluffy bathrobes and slippers and expensive soaps. None of this window-unit air conditioner crap.” I stopped and thought about it for a second. “Does that sound self-absorbed, given the ending of the world and all?”
“Maybe a little,” he said. “But I understand. And I wish I could give it to you. The best I can do is the backseat, for now.”
I sighed. “That’ll do.”
And truthfully, a fabulous hotel would have been wasted on me, because after I’d climbed over the seat and pulled David’s warm, long coat over me, I was asleep before a mile passed under the fast-turning wheels.
I’d like to say I didn’t dream, but I did. It was vivid, and shocking, and it felt, well, real.
It felt like I’d stepped out of a dark place and into a bright, harsh sun, and I raised my hand to block out the glare. Only it wasn’t the sun at all.
It was a giant, vaguely man-shaped form stalking toward me, and everything it touched in its way—rock, trees, fleeing animals, a car full of people—burst into instant and immediate conflagration. It was the Fire Oracle, but pulled out of his hidden sanctuary and made subject to the will of the Mother.
It was burning everything.
I watched from my frozen, helpless spot as it stalked toward a town in the tree-lined valley below me. That was when I got a sense of scale, and realized that this glowing, terrifying creature was towering hundreds of feet in the air, taller than any building in the modest downtown. I could hear the screaming coming up out of the town, like birds sounding an alert. I could see tiny forms of people running, but there was nowhere to hide. The Oracle walked, and everything, everything turned to slag and ashes. It left behind nothing alive. This was what the Djinn and the Wardens had feared for so many thousands of years.
The extinction, without mercy, of the entire human race, done systematically and thoroughly.
I was watching tens of thousands of lives end, and I knew it would happen over and over and over, and it was so neat, so clean. Nothing left to bury. The charred land would heal itself, as it so often did; nature would take over the abandoned ground. Animals would return, free from being hunted out of existence by humans.
I felt a hand on my shoulder, and turned to face . . . myself. No, it was my daughter, Imara. She looked haunted, the way her father did. The way my own face appeared now, seeing this horror unfolding in front of me.
Imara’s face was mine, but her eyes were different, more like David’s. She was dressed as she was when I’d seen her in Sedona, in a dress made of shifting red sand. It flowed around her, constantly in motion, and flashes of her bare skin showed through. It might have seemed somehow flirtatious, but instead, it was stunningly beautiful. There was a peace and power that radiated from her the same way that heat radiated from the Fire Oracle, or menace from the Air Oracle.
She silently put her arms around me, and I felt the sand move around both of us, whispering secrets.
“Baby,” I said, and felt the hot pressure of tears. “Oh, sweetheart. Thank you. I wanted to see you.”
“I know. I wanted to see you, too.”
I looked back over my shoulder. The town was still dissolving in flames and screams, and my entire body ached with the intensity of the horror I felt. Imara’s arms tightened around me.
“No, Mom, don’t try. You can’t stop it. You can’t help it. This is why it’s so important for me to stay where I am, and not let anybody close. I know you didn’t mean to do it, but you breached the Fire Oracle’s barrier when you broke out of there. You weakened it. And once you did, the Mother’s influence got through to him. He lost himself. That’s why I need you to stay away from Sedona, and I’m so sorry—I know that sounds terrible, and I wish—I wish—” Imara took in a deep breath. “I wish I could keep you safe with me. But I can’t.”
“Is all this happening now?” I asked. The smoke and flame and screams kept rising, and now I started dreading the moment when the screaming would stop. “Is this a dream, or is this really happening?”
“Mom—”
“Tell me.”
Imara looked at me with pity in her eyes, and said, “It’s why the Wardens needed you to distract those of the Djinn you could. And you did; you took out some key players. But it’s not going to be enough.”