Lewis slid free of the clinging sand. His face broke the surface with a gasp, and he started coughing, choking, spitting.
He was holding on to Kevin. As soon as he was free I let go of him and lunged forward to grab Kevin’s wrist as Lewis hauled. The boy’s arm slowly slid free, then the curve of his shoulder. Sand fell in a thick cascade from his bent head.
He didn’t gasp for breath, because he wasn’t breathing.
I choked back a curse and got behind him, grabbed him under the armpits, and pulled like a stevedore, every muscle in my body straining. He finally pulled free. Sand clotted thickly around the open wound on his side, but it wasn’t gushing blood anymore. I wasn’t sure if that was good news, or just the worst possible news. Because you don’t bleed when you’re dead; you leak.
In the white-hot light of another lightning strike I saw that Kevin’s eyes were shut, his face still.
He definitely wasn’t breathing.
Lewis joined me in pulling, and we put the boy down on his back. I bent over him and put my ear to his mouth and nose, listening.
Nothing. Not a single whisper.
“You’re not dying on me, you jerk,” I told him, and pulled down on his chin to open his mouth. When I fitted my lips over his, I tasted grit and fear. I breathed into him. I didn’t have anything left in the way of power, or I’d have superoxygenated his lungs, but simple human methods were all I had left.
I pressed my ear to his chest and heard a faint, fluttering heartbeat.
Breathed for him again. Waited. Breathed. Waited. Saw stars and felt like I might pass out from the exertion.
I felt his chest suddenly convulse under my hand and grab in a breath on its own.
“Dammit!” Lewis rasped, and I looked up to see that the wound in Kevin’s side had begun pumping out blood in high-velocity jets. I clamped my hands down on it. Lewis put his hands over mine, and I felt the power cascade in. Hot and burning and pure as liquid gold… and not enough. Not for an injury of this magnitude.
“I need another healer!” I yelled at the knot of people standing with their hands up, under Rodriguez’s attention. “One of you, get over here! Now!”
None of them moved. None of them. I looked up, desperate, and in the next flash of lightning I saw something terrible on their faces. My friends and colleagues, my fellow guardians of the human race.
They just didn’t give a crap.
Two forms appeared out of the darkness next to me. David, his long coat swirling in the ocean wind, his eyes blazing. Face pale and focused, as if he were holding to this form with his last strength.
Rahel, battered and ragged and bloody, limping. Holding David’s shoulder for support.
“Help me,” I said.
David collapsed to his knees opposite me, on the other side of Kevin’s limp form, and put his hand over mine. His skin was burning hot, enough to make me wince, and his eyes met mine for a long second.
He smiled. It was a terribly weary smile, sweet and defeated and full of indescribable pain.
“Don’t forget me,” David said, and I felt the spark travel through his hand, into mine, into Lewis. Everything he had left. Everything he’d taken from Ashan, and from me. A needle-bright surge of pure healing power, drawn not from me but from that last, tightly defended core of what made David who he was.
Like the spark of life he’d put inside of me, our child, formed of the union of our power.
I heard Rahel’s protest rip the night in half, a high, wailing shriek like the grieving of angels.
The wound in Kevin’s side stopped bleeding.
David distorted, blackened, turned Ifrit. Rahel, closest to him, stumbled backward as the creature’s blunt, razor-angled face turned toward her, like a lion scenting prey. She was too weak. He’d destroy her.
As if he knew that— couldhe know that?—he whirled and lunged for a Djinn barely visible as mist in the darkness. One of the Wardens’ personal stash. It gave out a high, thin shriek of panic as the Ifrit latched on and began to feed.
Rahel, reprieved, lost no time in vanishing.
I moved my hand, carefully. No spurting blood, though I was pretty much soaking in it. There was a massive open wound, and it would make a huge scar that would be a great conversation starter from now on, but Kevin wasn’t in danger of dying.
At least, not from that.
The Wardens weren’t reacting to the Ifrit in their midst, and I finally remembered that they couldn’t actually see him. Only Djinn—or someone like me, with Djinn Emeritus status—could see what was happening. David—the Ifrit—had the Djinn down on the sand, and his black talons were deep into its chest, sucking out power and life.
I might wantthat to happen, but I couldn’t letit happen. Not if I wanted to sleep nights.
“David, get back in the bottle,” I said, and watched as he misted away into a black, howling whisper.
The moon slid free of the cloud layer on the horizon and gilded everything silver.
“Okay, again: What the fuckis going on?” Detective Rodriguez demanded. He was saying it in a loud voice, as if he’d been asking it for a while. I stared at him, then at Lewis, who maintained pressure on Kevin’s wound and gave me a vintage don’t-look-at-me shrug. “Who are these people?”
“Trouble,” I said. “Shoot anybody who comes near this guy. They’re trying to kill him.”
That, he could understand. “Do I want to know why?”
“Not—exactly. Look, I’ll tell you. Just not now, okay?”
Rodriguez settled in next to Kevin, who was breathing more steadily now, color returning to his face. I stood up and walked toward the Wardens, who were regrouping from their confusion in various stages of defiance.
Shirl was still down. I stared at the Earth Warden who was next to her. Didn’t recognize him, but he looked earnest and well scrubbed, in a Fortune 500 kind of way.
“You come after him again, you deal with me,” I said flatly. “Lewis and Kevin are under my protection. And I swear, next time, I won’t call off my Djinn. If you want to make this war, fine. I’m ready. Better bring along body bags.”
He opened his mouth, then shut it. Jerked his head at two of the others standing there, and they got Shirl up and into a fireman’s carry over the bulkiest Warden’s shoulder.
“What about him?” the Earth Warden asked. He had a nice voice, vaguely Canadian, and there was an off-kilter tilt to one of his eyes that made him seem sly. He nodded at Detective Rodriguez.
“What about him?”
“We shouldn’t leave a witness.”
I was dumbfounded. Was he actually saying… ?
Yes. He actually was.
“Over my dead body,” I said flatly. I must have looked like it would be tough to achieve, because he took a step backward. “Get it straight, assholes. Wardens don’t kill people.”
Some of them looked away. Some didn’t. I felt a familiar prickle along my spine.
If I could see the Ifrit, I wondered, could I see Demon Marks? Humans couldn’t, generally, but if I could, I could check out these guys and see if they were under the evil influence. Not that any of these guys, male or female, were likely to bare any chests if I asked.
Lewis joined me, standing at my side. No words. Just a hell of a lot of strength, unmistakable, shivering the air like a quiver of heat. He looked grim and exhausted and haunted, but notweak. Not at all.
And then, unexpectedly, Kevin woke up.
“Yeah,” he croaked faintly. “You want a fight, bring it on, buttwipes.” He accompanied all that with the kind of inept theatrical gesture associated with bad magicians, kind of an awkward, limp-wristed wave. I winced.
“Yeah, thanks, kid,” I said. “Just rest, okay?… Anyway. Hit the road, all of you. You’re done here.”
Detective Rodriguez stood up and joined me on the other side. The sound of his gun slide ratcheting was very loud, even over the continuous roar of the surf.