“Cassiel—”
“Do it!”
Luis yanked open the door and slid in, and I saw Rashid lower his chin. The glow in his eyes brightened, sparked with fury that was beyond even my experience.
I reached deep into Luis, into the deepest reserves of his power, and pulled all I could without damaging him beyond repair. I heard him cry out, but there was no time, no time at all, not if any of us were to survive the moment, the second.
I hit Rashid with a blast of pure white fire.
It was hardly enough to sting him, but it pushed him off the road and into the dirt, where he hit, rolled, and came to his feet with his skin dripping fire.
“Go!” I screamed, and heard Luis hit the gas. The truck rocketed past me, tires screaming; I felt the bumper brush me out of the way, but I had no time for pain because Rashid was rushing at me, and I knew, without even a hesitation, that I was about to die.
And that was, oddly, all right.
The world went quiet, still, pure, calm. Rashid was an indigo smear against it. I searched for the fear and rage that I needed to sustain me in this fight, but it was gone. Nothing left but a vast acceptance and readiness.
I’d felt this before, the detachment, the lack of fear, the power. Only once, since I’d been cast out from the Djinn, but the single bright spark of that Cassiel had never died, never surrendered.
Some part of me, some normally unreachable core, was yet a Djinn—trapped, limited, maybe even mutilated by what Ashan had done to me, but he couldn’t destroy it, not utterly. And in this moment, when I shed all my human faults, fears, hopes…
The Djinn emerged, and flowed into me again, unnatural, inhuman, perfect. My body glowed with a pure white light, and I caught Rashid’s arms and forced them wide as he rushed upon me. We were locked together, bodies pressed, eyes focused on each other.
And I was not afraid, any more than I’d been afraid when I’d seen an infection crawling up my arm and taken a weapon and brought it down to sever the flesh and bone. I’d known what had to be done, and I’d done it without hesitation. It had been a glorious madness, just like this.
I could hold Rashid here, trapped with me. I would hold him, for as long as necessary to ensure that Luis and the girls got safely away. For eternity, if I must.
No. No. I could do more. Must do more.
I tightened my hold on him. He was brutally strong, powered by the Mother’s rage, but there was something in me, too, something that I’d carried with me. A core that wouldn’t break, wouldn’t yield.
His rage flowed over me, through me, out of me, and back into the Earth from which it sprang.
Rashid, I whispered, my lips kissing close to his. Rashid.
He was there. Unlike Priya, he was not yet gone, not yet burned away. He’d hidden himself deep within, and I could feel him there, his terror and pain, his anguish and rebellion.
He needed help.
He needed…
It came to me with a stunning shock what he needed, and without thinking I released him and stepped back. I couldn’t save him like this, or stop him from going after those I was sworn to protect.
But I could stop him. And save him.
The instant I released him, Rashid flashed away, chasing the truck. I dove into the underbrush and found the thing I’d glimpsed, a single flare of brightness in the dark.
A glass bottle.
It was a beer bottle, still smelling of hops and malt.
Seconds left.
Rashid was in front of the truck now.
Summoning his power.
“Be thou bound to my service,” I said, and concentrated every ounce of the power inside me on his distant spark. “Be thou bound to my service. Be thou bound to my service, Rashid!”
There was a scream on the aetheric, a ripping of the fabric, and power flowed like blood toward me, through me, into the bottle.
I slapped my hand down on the top, trapping him within, and collapsed to my knees on the fallen leaves. A chilly blast of wind made me shake, but it wasn’t only that—the fear came back, and the emptiness, and the fragility of flesh. The Djinn Cassiel had visited me and gone, and left me a human shell full of weakness.
But I had Rashid. I had him.
There was mud caked at the bottom of the leaves, and I slammed the bottle down into it, sealing it tightly. It looked empty, but on the aetheric the glass container swirled and glowed with trapped energy.
I didn’t know if the binding would keep him controlled by my will, or if it had only bound him into a prison; the only way to test it would be to release him, and that was a dangerous risk. Too dangerous, for now. Later, perhaps, it would be worth taking the chance.
The truck was still moving, already out of sight. Safe, for now.
And I was once again on foot.
Chapter 4
TWO MILES DOWN THE ROAD, I found the Victory motorcycle sitting neatly parked on the edge. The tire marks told me that the truck had stopped, unloaded it, and driven on. Good. I leaned against the bike for a few moments, head down. The rain continued, but it was fitful now, and light; no other traffic had passed in either direction.
I mounted the bike and started it with a spark of power, then patted the sleek side with absent fondness. “Let’s find them,” I said. I opened the saddlebag strapped to the side and found men’s clothing, rolled up tightly; the beer bottle with Rashid’s spirit fit nicely inside the curl of a pair of soft blue jeans, and I cushioned it further with a fleece shirt.
Then I eased the Victory out onto the black ribbon of road, and started the ride.
The punishing vibration of the engine felt magically soothing to me, pounding the kinks from knotted muscles and clearing my mind. The wind and rain in my face woke something primal in me, something that thought clearly and coldly about our chances. They were, of course, poor at best. Lewis Orwell himself had admitted that; until the bulk of the Wardens docked from their mission at sea, those of us stranded here were the thinnest possible line of defense. There was no chance we wouldn’t be shattered.
But we had an unexpected, even shocking advantage, if we could actually trap and bottle the Djinn. I’d always loathed that loophole in the freedom and power of my kind, but now I felt grateful for it; without it, the humans wouldn’t stand a chance, and ultimately neither would the Djinn themselves or the Mother. We had to maintain a fragile balance to fight for reason, for peace, and for the defeat of our real enemy: Pearl.
The Mother was experiencing agony and the temporary madness that came of it. If we could soothe her, it would pass. But Pearl… Pearl was a cancer at the very heart of the world, and she had to be burned away.
The bottle in my saddlebags represented a step toward all of that. Perhaps. At the very least, it symbolized a chance we hadn’t had an hour ago.
I saw the white flash of paint ahead on the road, and accelerated around a curve. The truck was just ahead now, climbing a rise. I could catch it in only a moment.
I was still half a mile back when the vehicle made the top of the hill…
… And exploded in a fireball, raining metal and debris into the trees.
“No!” I screamed. It burst out of me in a fury, ripping a blood path down my nerves and flesh, and I pushed the throttle hard over, heedless of the slick road, the dangers, everything except the burning wreck that was overturned there at the top of the hill.
No one could have survived that.
No one.
I found the first body lying in a burning heap on the side of the road. The pine trees were aflame, and the sound of trees snapping as the sap boiled was like war.