It was trust I required, and trust I received, as Manny let go of his own destiny and put it into my hands.
I shaped his power into a sharp edge, something that gleamed like the blade of a knife on the aetheric. I forced the edges finer, finer still, until it was thin as a whisper, and strong as steel.
Then I threw out my arms and cut through the barrier holding us penned. Not only the storm of force around us, but the iron of the cattle pen itself.
I formed a second sharp-edged plane and slammed it down five feet from the first, through force and metal. The metal fence, chopped at two points, fell in the middle to form an exit, a break in the attack large enough for us to escape.
Except that Manny did not take it. Instead, he began slapping the cattle’s thick hides, driving them to the hole I kept open. “Move!” he yelled. The cows, once prodded, saw the clear space and thundered toward it. I could not dodge out of the way. I was transfixed by the crushing load of concentration; the barriers I’d managed to erect were strong, but holding them against the battering attack was like holding a pane of glass against a hurricane—a doomed effort, but one requiring all my attention.
Manny must have realized that just in time. I felt a sudden surge of power from him—just a small amount, because he had little left to give. Just enough to divert the cattle from my unprotected body.
The beasts streamed around me, hot and bellowing, and thundered through the narrow gap. When the last bawling animal was free, Manny hesitated at the edge.
“Go!” I shouted. He plunged through.
I did not think I could keep the barriers in place while moving, but I tried, walking slowly and calmly with my arms outstretched to either side. My fingertips brushed the slick, cool surface of the walls I’d put in place. I felt them shudder.
I felt them shatter when I was still in the middle.
The storm closed around me and shattered me, too.
I came back to consciousness with my eyes full of cloudless blue sky, tasting dust and metal. When I took a breath, it was thick with the smell of cattle.
It was the stench that convinced me. Ah, then. Not dead, unless the humans are correct about hell.
For a moment, as pain washed over me, I wished I’d been granted that mercy, but instead, a face loomed close, blocking out the sun. I expected Manny, but no. A cow, blinking its huge brown eyes, watched me with as deep a curiosity as something so primitive could muster. It nudged me with a damp nose.
“Hey!” Manny’s sharp voice startled the cow, and it pulled back and away, trotting off to join its fellows placidly cropping the trampled grass. This time Manny’s shadow blocked the sun as he leaned over me. “You’re okay. Thank God.”
I felt strangely . . . light. Empty. I held out my hand to him, and it trembled with the effort.
He looked at it, then past my shaking fingers to focus on my face.
“You saved my life,” he said. There was something odd in his voice. “You really did.”
I had no strength left to voice my needs. Part of me was already fraying at the edges, and I was afraid, the way I’d been afraid as Ashan ripped me from the world of the Djinn and sent me falling into flesh.
This time, I was falling into darkness. No one, not even the Djinn, knew what came after that. I was empty, and fading.
Manny’s hand wrapped around mine in a strong clasp, and he sat down beside me as the power trickled slowly from the wellspring inside him, filling empty spaces inside me. I gasped in relief and pain, and wrapped my other hand around his.
The flow of power seemed intolerably slow. It was all I could do not to rip and tear at his control to get at that life-giving flow, but I forced myself to stay down, stay still, be passive.
And in time, the panic lessened, and the emptiness receded. Well before I was complete, though, Manny’s supply of power failed. He could give no more without endangering himself.
“It’s enough,” I told him, in response to his silent question. He helped me to my feet. I looked down at myself and grimaced, because in my haste to reach him I had crawled through filth. I did not have it to spare, but I used a pulse of power to clean myself.
Manny laughed. “Vanity really is your vice of choice, isn’t it?”
“No,” I said somberly. “I believe it’s pride.”
Manny had no idea who might want to kill him. He was, he said, not a man who made enemies; that might or might not be correct, but I felt he was telling me the truth as he saw it.
This had not felt like an attack from another Warden, though I supposed that was possible. While it had been full of power and energy, there had been a formless sense about it, too. I supposed that it could have been a Djinn, but only if the Djinn was merely toying with us. Testing, perhaps—testing me?
A new thought, and one not entirely comforting. I didn’t like having faceless, nameless enemies.
We drove back to town in silence; Manny, I could perceive, was thinking furiously about what had happened. He had walked to the house and spoken to the rancher about the dead cattle; I have no idea what explanation he put to it—perhaps something to do with freak weather or lightning. He kept his thoughts and suspicions—if he had any—to himself.
Instead of taking me to my apartment, or back to our office, he took me to his home. Isabel was in the front yard, playing some elaborate and complicated game involving three dolls, a large number of scattered building blocks, and a much-abused cardboard box large enough to hide in.
“Papa!” She threw the dolls in the dirt and ran to wrap herself around Manny. He lifted her and kissed her dirty face, settled her on his hip, and turned to face the street. There was a large, gleaming black truck with flames painted in an orange blaze along the sides parked there—a flamboyant, obvious sort of vehicle.
There seemed to be conflict in his expression—delight warring with dread. He shook his head. “I see Uncle Luis is here,” he said. “Right?”
“Right!” Isabel bubbled, and laughed. She stared at me over Manny’s shoulder, smiling, and I waved wearily in return. “Cassie looks funny.”
“Cassiel,” I said reflexively. “Not Cassie.”
Manny grimaced and nudged his daughter. “It’s not polite to say people look funny, Ibby.”
“But she does! She’s white like snow, and her hair’s fluffy. How come she doesn’t look like everybody else?”
“Ibby!”
I summoned up the will to laugh a little. “Don’t. She’s right. I do look odd to her eyes.” And to my own. Definitely to my own . . .
“Hey, bro.” The screen door to the house opened with a creak of hinges, and the man who stood there was a bit shorter than Manny, but far broader in the chest and shoulders. His hair was glossy, straight, and down to his shoulders. He was wearing a gray sleeveless shirt that revealed muscular arms covered with intricate dark tattoos.
Flames.
I had seen his picture, on the mantel.
“You look like hell, man,” he said, and held out a sweating brown bottle to Manny. “Bad day at the office?”
“You could say that.” Manny let Isabel down, and she scampered back to her playground, gathering up and dusting off her dolls before resuming her games. Manny had a certain guarded distance, and I wondered if it was because of this stranger, or me. “Luis, meet Cassiel. You probably heard about her.” He twisted the cap from the bottle Luis had given him, and drank a deep, thirsty mouthful of the beer.
Luis. Brother. Another Warden, and one far stronger than Manny; I could feel his energy like heat against my skin, even from several feet away. An Earth Warden, like his brother. I wondered why he’d gotten tattoos of flames; it seemed an odd sort of choice.
I remembered, too, that when Manny was on the aetheric, he had the ghosts of the same tattoos on his arms. Odd indeed . . . unless his unconscious manifestation on the aetheric wished to be like his brother.