I came quickly back to my feet. “Luis,” I said sharply. “Be ready. They would have done this for a reason.”
He looked up at me with dulled eyes, still rubbing his fingers together. Isabel’s blood. He believed she was dead. I showed him the bag, but he seemed not to comprehend.
“They’re coming for us,” I said. “And she’s still—”
I was going to say alive, but I didn’t have the chance.
There was a low growl from the grass; something leapt at Luis’s unprotected back in a dun-colored blur. I heard a chilling roar, one that woke primitive instincts inherited from millions of years of cowering in caves, waiting for predators to attack.
Human instincts, not Djinn.
The beast attacking Luis was a mountain lion, a large one, but I didn’t have time to come to his aid. There were other animals closing in, moving with unnatural stealth and focus. Two more mountain lions. Loping in from the north and the south were two large black bears.
“Down!” I screamed at Officer Styles, as a mountain lion prepared to leap at his back. He didn’t obey me. Instead, he spun around, gun drawn, and fired. He missed. The mountain lion crashed into him with a vicious snarl and slammed him down on the grass. His partner aimed for the animal’s skull.
I knocked his gun aside at the last moment. The report of the shot startled the big cat, and it lifted its head to focus its attention toward the two of us. Huge gray-green eyes fixed on us with terrifying intensity, and it gathered itself for a leap.
“Behind me!” I shouted, and shoved the man into position. “Don’t fire!”
The mountain lion launched itself into the air, scimitar-sharp claws extended to disembowel me.
“Get out of the way!” I heard the man behind me yell, but my attention was fully on the animal. Someone was pushing it, controlling it, overriding its self-preservation instincts. These creatures weren’t the enemy; they were weapons, confused and terrified beneath the surface fury.
I couldn’t condone their deaths, rare as such predators were on the earth since the proliferation of humans. Luis and I could handle them.
It was a risk—a large one—but I slapped my hands down on the creature’s skull as it barreled into me, bearing me to the ground with a heavy thump. Soft fur, hard bone, powerful flexing muscles. I saw the flash of teeth. Its claws ripped at the leather covering my chest, and I felt the sting of cuts.
My leather had slowed it, but I had seconds, at best. I poured my power into the creature, not to dominate, but to free its mind from the cage of power that had trapped it. It seemed easier in theory, because the faceless enemy had all the strength of a top-class Earth Warden and all the ruthlessness of a Demon. I slashed at the bonds holding the cat, and it sprang away from me, snarling in terror and confusion.
It leapt past the trembling policeman behind me and vanished into the grass.
Luis’s mountain lion lay unconscious on its side, breathing in slow, steady rhythm.
I dragged Officer Styles up to his feet. The four of us formed a square, shoulders touching, as the bears loped closer.
“Next time, put it under,” Luis told me. “They’ll just grab the animals again once you let go.”
He was right. The mountain lion I’d freed from control was veering, turning back toward us at a gliding run. It slowed to a cautious, slow stalk, luminous eyes fixed on me. Its huge paws made almost no sound at all on the grass, but I could hear the low sound of its growl on the cooling air.
They would know my power now. They’d tasted it. I wouldn’t be able to be so merciful again without cost. They would kill me if they could. Me, Luis, the two policemen.
All for what? For Isabel? Why?
“Cassiel,” Luis said, and held out his hand. I hadn’t realized that my reserves were sinking, but he was right. I needed power. The golden flow poured into me, waking shivers, and I cut it off as quickly as possible to keep my attention focused outward. “Put them out. Down, if you have to.”
I nodded. The policemen had their guns drawn, but unless they were very fine shots I doubted they could bring down any of these animals before being gutted. The bears were charging, one on Luis’s side, one on Officer Styles’s.
“Go!” Luis shouted, and let go of me. I spun away from him, facing the nearest threat. It was another mountain lion, already in the air. Her muzzle was drawn back, exposing her fearsome sharp teeth, and the roar was meant to freeze me in place.
Instead, I waited until the last instant, stepped aside, and straddled the lion’s back to slap my hands on its skull from behind as it landed. She roared again and twisted, but I found the blood vessels I needed, and squeezed.
She went limp. Still breathing, but down. I kept her at that level as I jumped across her body to veer in front of Officer Styles, who had his gun trained on the charging black bear.
This animal was not as large as some, but large enough—at least half a man’s weight, all muscle and fury. Black bears were, for the most part, good-tempered, but this one had been driven almost to the edge of madness. He was in terrible pain, and he would savage anything that came within reach of his claws and teeth.
I repeated the trick of knocking out the animal, but this time it was more difficult. I had to concentrate on the mountain lion, as well, and the bear was strong and very, very angry. When it finally collapsed into a messy tangle of broken grass, it was breathing heavily and making a noise that sounded terribly like a moan of fear.
I looked around. Luis had brought down the last mountain lion, and the other bear—cannier than the others—was pacing angrily in jerky paths, charging Luis, then backing away. Never quite committing. That one, I thought, was not fully under our enemy’s control.
All in all, we had managed to come out of this well, without unnecessary death.
I should not have been so sure of that.
My first hint of more trouble was from the other policeman—CAVANAUGH, his name tag read—who put a hand on my shoulder and pointed off toward the east. A black smudge of smoke was rising about a hundred feet away. As we watched, it spread into a line, and as the dry grass caught like tinder, flames blazed six feet into the air.
The wind was toward us.
Within seconds, the smoke had reached us, thick and choking. The fire would not be far behind, and grass fires could race faster than a running man. I couldn’t leave the animals helpless to burn alive, but if I freed them from control, they would turn on us.
“Run,” I snarled to Styles and Cavanaugh. “Get to the car!”
They did not argue. They pelted through the smoke, into the grass, heading in the right direction. I hoped there would be nothing there to meet them, but I had other problems.
Luis coughed wetly as he stumbled to my side. “Gotta go!” he shouted. I nodded.
“Go first!”
He clearly didn’t wish to, but he loped into a run and was immediately lost in the thickening smoke. I was coughing now myself, and my nose and eyes were dripping fluids. The air was filthy and thick.
I released the animals all at once, with a snap of power, and three mountain lions and one bear rolled up to their paws.
All oriented on me.
All forced to ignore their natural instincts, which would have taken them from the fire into safety.
They moved to circle me.
I waited until one darted toward me, then dodged and jumped the circle, and ran. Not toward the road—I could not be sure that the others had made it to safety yet, and I didn’t want to draw an attack to them.
I ran to the north, toward the trees. I fed my muscles on pure golden Earth Warden energy, putting on a burst of speed that kept the mountain lions bounding a few feet behind me. The smoke was blinding, and I felt a blast of heat loom at me from the right, hot enough to sear. I smelled my hair burning, an acrid and stomach-turning stench, and veered to the left as flames flickered and took hold in front of me.