Weather Warden - Chill Factor Part 26

"Be thou bound to my service!" I shouted, and crawled backward as the diamond-sharp claws raked at me.

Through me. She couldn't touch me. I felt a hot spark of triumph.

"Be thou bound to-"

She lunged at me and the claws plunged deep, deeper . . . snagged on something.

No! No no no no no . . .

Not my baby.

She could destroy the life inside me, I knew that. I felt that, just as I felt David trying to get to me, determined to protect me or die in the attempt.

Rahel hesitated. Her claws were caged around Imara, holding that fragile spark. One instant's pressure would be enough.

As she hesitated, torn by whatever remnant of reason was left to her, I gasped it out. "Be thou bound to my service!"

She went entirely still. Ice and angles, coal and gla.s.s. A three- dimensional sculpture visible only to Djinn eyes. Living? Breathing? I didn't know, couldn't tell. There was no sensation of power from the bottle I held, and no sense of connection to her. Had anybody ever tried to bind an Ifrit before? Probably not . . . humans couldn't see them, and Djinn wouldn't be able to do it.

I was the only one who could see them, and bind them.

"Let go of my baby," I whispered.

The hand inside of me unclenched. Claws withdrew. It was the only part of her that moved at all.

"Rahel," I said. "Can you hear me?"

No answer. I shuddered and opened the black leather purse still slung around my body; there was enough padding in there for two bottles. I shoved Rahel's in, careful that it wouldn't knock against David's, and left her frozen there to fumble my way to where David was lying.

His torso was a mess of shredded meat. Blood, so much blood. His eyes had gone as brown as dying leaves, and his lips were a light shade of lilac.

She'd almost consumed him whole. I couldn't get my breath as I knelt next to him. He felt so cold to the touch-David, who was always burning warm. Like a fire going out.

I whispered his name, over and over, like a chant. I ordered him to heal himself. He didn't respond, although his eyes fastened on me like I was the only thing in the world.

His hand found mine and held it. There was no strength in him.

His fingernails were the same pallid shade as his lips.

He whispered, "Leave me."

"Like h.e.l.l!" I snapped. "G.o.d, please, don't do this-David, I order you to heal-"

Kevin was standing next to me. "He's dying," he said. "Whoa. I didn't know they did that."

"Shut up, you little b.a.s.t.a.r.d." I looked up, and for a second I thought the dancing red dot on his chest had something to do with the tears distorting my vision, but then I realized late and cold what exactly it was.

I'd forgotten all about Quinn and his sniper rifle.

The red dot was a laser sight, focused on Kevin's heart.

"No!" I screamed, and shoved Kevin with one hand flat against his chest. He tripped, fell on his a.s.s. I stood up, waving my arms. "No, Quinn, stop, it's over, it's over-"

Kevin leaped up, the idiot. A clear target.

The red dot settled over my heart. Steady as a rock.

It was focused on me. Not Kevin, me.

What the h.e.l.l. . . ?!

I had just enough time to throw myself backward, and I swear, I felt the supersonic hiss of the bullet's friction burning the air as it pa.s.sed over me.

Missed, I thought, and then I saw that there had been someone standing behind me. Like her boyfriend, Siobhan had been stupid enough to bounce up like a pop target on a shooting gallery.

Her mouth was open in amazement. She stared down at the red hole-about the size of my thumb-through her chest. She didn't really make any noise. Just a quiet coughing sound, like someone trying to clear their throat, and then there was a sudden shocking flood of red out of her mouth.

She pitched forward over me. I raised my head and saw the hole in her back, the size of a clenched fist, full of blood like a deep well that spilled over in gouts and splashes. She was shaking all over. I yelled something-it might have been Marion's name. Kevin was already there, reaching for her, but I felt her going.

We both felt her die.

Her body collapsed against me, limp and empty, and for the first time I saw that her eyes weren't hazel at all; they were a beautiful spider's-web pattern of moss and brown, flecked with gold.

Her body felt heavy as sin, draped over me.

I don't know how many seconds that was-it felt like an eternity- and then Kevin was there, screaming. He rolled her limply into his arms. I felt the surge of power as he tried to force her body to live; the flesh jumped as nerves conducted electricity, but that was nothing but reflex.

"She's gone," I whispered. There was blood all over me, splattered; I wiped at the mess with shaking fingers. "Kevin, stop. She's gone."

He kept trying. Breathing into her mouth. Flooding dead flesh with jolt after jolt of raw power as he tried to change the immutable.

"Do something!" he shouted at me. His face had gone zombie- white, but his eyes were furious, his lips smeared with her blood from the mouth-to-mouth. "You've got a Djinn! Save her!"

"No," I said.

"I'll kill you, I swear I will!" I could feel the fury coming off of him, but the words were little-boy words, broken and afraid. The power he had was nothing like little-boy power, though; it was Lewis's power, and it could crush me, burn me, rip me apart.

There are three things you aren't supposed to ever ask your Djinn to do. Give you eternal life. Give you unlimited power. Raise the dead.

That's the one that gets most people, if they live long enough. In that first chill of grief, too many turn to their Djinn and blurt out an order they shouldn't. The consequences were tragic and legendary.

Because when you do those particular things, the Djinn act under a totally different set of imperatives. The magic that drives them to obey you also drives them to turn on you.

I bit my tongue, hard, and swallowed a scream.

"No," I finally whispered. "She's gone, Kevin. I'm so sorry."

I thought for a second he really would kill me, kill me with his bare bloodstained hands, but then tears spilled over and he was sobbing hopelessly.

"Stay down," I said, and crawled to where David was still lying on the floor. He wasn't any better. In fact, he looked worse. Breathing in shallow gasps. His eyes weren't brown anymore; they were turning darker.

"Trying to kill you," he murmured. "You. Not them."

"Yeah," I agreed shakily. "I saw. Why would Quinn try to kill me?"

He reached up to touch my face. I felt no warmth, only a faint, insubstantial ghost of contact.

"Don't leave me," I whispered. "You can't leave me, David. I won't let you."

His pale lips parted to shape my name, silently. I felt the love in it.

"I need you," I said. "I need you with me. Stay." My breath was doing something funny in my chest, turning sour and thick. I couldn't seem to gasp in enough air. "G.o.d, David, don't do this to me. Don't you dare."

He tried to answer me, but then his back arched and he cried out.

His open eyes s.h.i.+fted from a violent storm-black to a bright orange, running through the spectrum. I remembered that. I'd seen it before.

Flesh corrupted and melted away, revealing wet stripes of muscle.

Bone. Layer by layer, he died.

What was left turned hard and cold and black.

Frozen.

Ifrit.

Soft human hands were on me, pulling me back into a sheltering embrace, and I was being rocked against someone as I whimpered.

Unable to weep now. Unable to scream and let out the fury and horror.

Cold, cold, everything was cold.

David was a thing of ice and shadow, burned by darkness. Lying on the floor and motionless.

Marion had me. She was saying something to me, but I couldn't understand her; she unzipped the purse at my side and took my strengthless hand and wrapped it around David's blue gla.s.s bottle.

She was telling me to do something. It didn't matter anymore, but I numbly echoed the words. "Back in the bottle," I said. The words sounded odd in my head and tasted flat on my tongue.

The Ifrit that lay like some twisted sculpture in David's place misted into an oily whisper and disappeared. Marion fumbled the stopper in place.

Rahel. No one else could see her, but I couldn't just . . . leave her here. I took the second, empty bottle. I whispered the words. Rahel's frozen body disappeared, too.

There were rescuers coming. Flashlights dancing wildly in the dust-filled air. Marion zipped the purse shut and held me close as the first of them got to us. Paramedics and firefighters. One of them forced Kevin to put down Siobhan's body, and the three of us-the three survivors-were wrapped in blankets and led out through the tangle of steel and broken gla.s.s and darkness.

I remembered the sniper only then. It no longer seemed to matter, but there were no merciful red laser dots coming to dance on my chest. Quinn had missed his chance, and he'd given up the field of battle. I didn't care. If he wanted to shoot me, shoot and be d.a.m.ned.

We walked out a twisted side door into hot sunlight, and I blinked and shaded my eyes.

Oh, G.o.d. I don't know what I expected to see, but not this.

The rest of Las Vegas was untouched. Literally untouched.

Windows intact, buildings still standing. The Eiffel Tower still climbed toward the sky, and the half-scale Statue of Liberty raised her torch.

The Bellagio was barely damaged, overall. Just the casino area, and just our casino area.

The Ma'at had targeted us. They'd done all this just to get us. Or worse . . . maybe, considering who Quinn was shooting at, to get me.

I felt the comforting ice of shock start to break up around me, dumping me in the cold water of reality.

Sink or swim, now. Give up and die, or make it mean something.

"Marion?" I licked my lips and tasted blood, swallowed grit and bitterness. "How many people-"

She looked exhausted under the paling layer of dust. Her hair was coming loose from its meticulous braid, and her leather jacket was ripped and shredded in places. When she wiped her forehead, she left streaks of still-wet blood.

"No fatalities. We were able to minimize it," she said. "Me and the kid." She cut her eyes toward Kevin, who was wrapped in silence and his own blanket, sitting on the curb while a paramedic tried to get information out of him. Miraculous. There'd be news coverage twenty-four/seven for the next few months, going over and over the freak earthquake, the survivors. Pundits would come on the airwaves to talk about all kinds of crackpot theories, everything from international terrorists to James Bond superweapons. None of them would get it right.

Please G.o.d, n.o.body would get it right.

"He could be great, you know. If anyone cared enough to show him how."

Marion was still watching Kevin. I nodded. "If n.o.body kills him first."

"See that they don't."

The paramedics were working their way around to us. "We need to get out of here," I said. "Before they get our names."

Marion nodded. She understood the need for secrecy now, as I did.

"Better use your Djinn," I finished. She looked down at the ground. "Marion?"

"He's gone," she said. "He was taken from me five years ago."

No wonder I'd never seen him. "Why? What happened?"

She heaved in a silent breath. "He was stolen from me."

"And you never told . . ." No, of course she hadn't. Losing a Djinn was practically a hanging offense in the upper ranks of the Wardens.

It was something you kept quiet while you got your bottle back, and your life with it. You were supposed to die before losing your Djinn.

Oh, it happened-bottles broke, bottles were lost in catastrophes-but there were penalties, and very few replacements.

"I was told," Marion said softly, "that if I reported it, they'd torture him. I believed it."

I wanted to ask a million questions, but this wasn't the time or the place. Too exposed. My skin kept crawling, trying to feel the nonexistent pressure of a laser sight.