Joanne was awake and on her feet now, and despite the sudden emergency, she looked almost herself again—tall, strong, confident, with a smile curving her full lips and a light in her eyes. She loved battle almost as much as I did, I thought. That was… unique, in a Warden. “Time to get down to business,” she said. “Let’s do this.”
Rahel evidently did not think our combined talents were enough, as she pushed a massive piece of furniture against it. “It will not hold,” she said. “We should leave now, quickly. Is there a back door?”
“There’s company waiting for us there as well,” David said. “We’re surrounded.”
“Did you not think to warn us of that?” I snapped. “I told you we should have run last night!”
“It wasn’t an option,” David replied flatly. “We can get out of this. It’s just going to take a little creativity.”
Whatever was on the other side of the door hit with such violence that the barrier, even strengthened by three Wardens and a Djinn, bowed inward, almost ripping free of the wall in which it was anchored.
“What the hell is out there?” Luis blurted. Rahel seemed to find the question amusing.
“I don’t think it would do your sanity any good to know. We must go up, not out. Nothing waiting out there strikes me as good at climbing, but they are very good at battering holes in things.”
It was David who ripped an opening in the roof above; the hotel’s guest room tower was seven stories tall, but at this end, the building was a simple one-story affair. Only fifteen feet, straight up.
David, of course, merely flexed his legs and easily made the jump upward. I grabbed my backpack and made sure it was securely against me, then began to think about how the rest of us were to get up to safety.
“Damn,” Luis said. “Forgot my jet pack. Knew I should have packed that.” I made a cradle of fingers and leaned down. He raised his eyebrows. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Do I seem to be?”
“Hardly ever, chica,” he said. He put his booted foot in my cupped hands, and I pulled Earth power to saturate my muscles as I lifted him, straight up. It hurt, that particular enrichment of the very limited capabilities of my human body; I felt the shriek burn its way out of my mouth without my consent, but the effort worked. I threw him high enough that David could grab his arm and lift him onto the surface of the roof.
But I also knew I wouldn’t be able to do that for myself. Not effectively. Which left…
Rahel.
I hardly heard David ordering her to bring me; it was unnecessary that he do so, because after all, I held her bottle. I could have done it just as easily. Only I knew that doing so would open up a million subtle avenues of resistance to her, as irresistible to her as catnip, even now. It was a risk not worth taking, as the door protecting us continued to steadily break under the mindless, violent assault.
“Sistah,” Rahel said. I stared back at her, watching that shark’s smile on her face. There was hate in it, and I understood it very well. I’d always had nothing but contempt for the New Djinn; I’d treated them as not just second class, but other—a mongrel breed of human and Djinn, unworthy.
And she hated me for that, and for enslaving her and so many others, even if it had to be done to save them. No doubt she had other grudges; we all did, we immortals with our endlessly long memories. I had few friends even among the True Djinn, and none among her kind.
Joanne asked, perhaps jokingly, if she had to make it an order for Rahel to save me… and Rahel almost laughed, knowing as well as I did that an order from Joanne carried even less weight than one from me. “No need,” Rahel replied. “And no time. I’ll cleanse myself of her contamination later.”
Before I could respond, she had seized me, and jumped, and in almost the same motion, pushed me away. I landed on the roof, disoriented and off balance, and tumbled. I felt the crashing impact of the backpack hitting the hard surface and rolled back to my feet, rage a comforting warmth inside me, and spun to face her again as the cold desert breeze stirred my hair.
Rahel grinned, and made a little come on gesture. Her bottle had not been smashed, though others certainly had been.
No time for settling our scores now, or even for taking stock of what we’d just lost. Joanne, Weather Warden and in firm command of the winds, levitated easily up through the hole, while Rahel, at David’s terse order, began repairing the rip through which we’d come. Below, the sound of destruction was increasing. Whatever was below, it was angry.
I ventured to the edge of the roof and looked down. Luis joined me, took one look, and quickly stepped back. “Okay, I don’t really want to ask, but… what the hell is that?”
“It’s a chimera, a forced merger of several animal forms. Bear, mountain lion, scorpion.” I said it easily enough; identification was automatic, and he could have done it as well, if he’d been able to overcome his instinctive nausea and horror at what we were seeing. As a human, it was disconcerting enough, but as an Earth Warden, feeling the utter vileness of what had been done… That was what drove him back, sent him reeling and gagging.
And it was what I was fighting, silently, as well.
There were at least four of the chimera in view now; one had a bear’s head clumsily balanced atop a mountain lion’s strong, sinuous body, but there were extra, armored legs erupting from the lion’s sides, and a segmented tail with a vicious stinger curving out from the back and overhead. Nauseating and fierce, and mad.
“This isn’t the Mother,” Joanne said. She was standing with me, looking over, holding her long, dark hair back as the breeze batted at us. She was pale and grim, but not as revolted as Luis was, or I felt. “It can’t be her doing this.”
And it wasn’t. I’d worried at that last night, paced, tried to shake sense out of what the avatar had been doing… and now, finally, it clicked together. This was what the avatar had been doing, under the cover of darkness, shielded from the eyes of the Djinn and even from the Mother. No, not the avatar; the avatar was only a flesh puppet, a conduit for another’s power. And I knew now, looking at these things, who had wielded that power.
“It’s Pearl,” I said. “She’s after me.”
Joanne laughed humorlessly. “Wow. It’s all about you, isn’t it?”
“This time, I believe it is—”
“Watch it,” she warned, and pulled me a step back. There were wolves circling below, too, weaving around the chimeras; they were leaping up, trying to make the jump to where we were. So far, they were unable to do so, but there was no reason to encourage them.
“Yeah, that’s not the worst. Heads up,” Luis said, and pointed up. I moved my head back, and saw a black circle of birds above us, wheeling in the warming air. The first rays of dawn gilded their wings with gold. “We need a shield, now!” He’d sensed something that I’d missed, but I saw it now… the birds shifted, no longer circling, but dropping.
Heading straight for us. I reached out and diverted some of the birds, but it was difficult; they were maddened, like the chimera below, driven beyond their own instincts by the torment that Pearl had inflicted on them. Death would be, for them, merciful.
But I couldn’t destroy them. Birds were, for me, the most beautiful of nature’s creatures… free and fierce. I felt Joanne raise a shield of hardened air above us, and flinched as the first of the birds hit. She’d tried to make it less apt to be fatal, but Pearl’s attack drove them mercilessly into the barrier, waves of them, snapping their fragile bones, painting the sky with their blood.
Tears welled in my eyes at the sight. This was for my benefit, mine alone; Pearl knew me, and she knew what would hurt me. These creatures were dying for no better purpose than to anger me.