Weather Warden - Chill Factor Part 28

Rahel's attention turned my way, but her eyes didn't. She made her reply directly to Lewis. "Because there was death."

"Human death," I said, and then I shut up fast, because I remembered just how Jonathan had become a Djinn in the first place, along with David ... on a battlefield, surrounded by human death. Then the death spreading, spiraling, fueling a transformation .

. . "Death gives life. That's what Jonathan told me." It meant that there might be another way for Imara . . . no. I couldn't think about it now. Not now.

"The power is very strong," she said. "Though if I had not drawn so much from such powerful sources, I could not have managed it.

Human death tipped the scales; it did not balance them."

She leaned very close to Lewis, so close she was inches from kissing him with those lush, glistening lips. "I can give you what you need."

His smile jerked into something oddly humorous. "You're an exhibitionist now?" His voice had fallen into a silky lower range, resonating in his chest. I knew that tone. It had dropped my knickers on the floor in a lab back in college.

"Tell me you want it." Rahel's voice had gone into the dark, too, ripe and s.e.xy and barely more than a whisper. "Tell me what you will give me for it, my love."

"Undying grat.i.tude?"

"You'll have to do better than that." Her lips just grazed his, and I saw his skin flush redder.

The whole room-the twenty-odd members of Ma'at who had trooped in with us, the silent waitstaff, Marion, Kevin, the muscle- bound security men-we all stood, spellbound, watching this. I don't know about anybody else, but I was starting to expect clothes to come off, which would have had the virtue of being completely, wildly inappropriate, and would scandalize the socks off of the Ma'at.

And then Rahel smiled wider. "Tell me what you'll give me."

"Freedom," Lewis said, and kissed her. Big-time. A hungry, openmouthed kiss. I heard the shocked gasp go through the room.

Butler dude-Blevins?-looked so disapproving that I felt like I'd wandered onto the set of a Merchant Ivory film.

Rahel pulled away, standing straight. Lewis's pulse was beating fast; I could see it pounding in his neck. Rahel looked perfectly composed.

"You already gave me that," she said. "I require your love."

I finally saw Lewis look completely idiotic. Yep. That was an utterly blank look, blank as a codfish. "What?"

"Love," she said distinctly. "Devotion. Shall you give it? Or shall I go now and leave you to deal with this as you please?"

He licked his lips. Probably still tasting her there. Myron Lazlo's shock finally wore off enough for him to step forward and say sternly, "This is neither the time nor the place to-"

"Silence!" she hissed, and snapped an open hand his direction, gold talons suddenly looking a lot less like a fas.h.i.+onable manicure and more like something you'd use to gut fish. "I do not speak to you, man. It was not a general invitation."

Lazlo wisely decided to back off. In fact, everyone backed off a couple of respectful, precautionary steps. It was just Lewis, his wheelchair, and the Djinn.

She looked good in black. Strong, lethal, s.e.xy as h.e.l.l. I wondered if it was something she'd picked up from Jonathan or David, in that free-for-all fight for survival.

"Tell me you want to live," she said to him.

"I want to live," Lewis said, and his eyes flicked from her to Kevin, behind me. I heard the kid's feet shuffle on the carpet. He was scared.

The sight of Rahel had clearly given him a bad turn, and now he was starting to really feel claustrophobic. "He doesn't die, Rahel. That's my condition."

"Lewis, I don't know what kind of game she's playing with you, but she can't fix this," I said. "I asked David. He said no Djinn had the power to reverse what Jonathan had done without killing them both ... except Jonathan." It had been a constant topic of conversation for close to a week as we drove around Las Vegas, trying to figure a way to solve the problem. David had been definite about it.

"True," Rahel purred. She turned to face me. Rahel had always had a certain feline quality, something as natural to her as breathing to me, and I felt the force of that again. A cat playing with her food, watching it run and squeak and hide. Djinn were scary people, when they had no reason to regard us with affection. "I can't. But, you see, little flower, I'm not really me anymore. I am more than I was. Less than I will be. And I never said I would do it alone."

It happened so subtly that I almost missed it-did miss it, at first.

It was only when an empty s.p.a.ce behind her filled that I realized she meant it literally.

She really wasn't alone. Not in the least. The gray-haired, gray- eyed man behind her, with the pale, perfect skin ... I remembered him, not fondly. Ashan. Jonathan's second-in-command, with David stuck in a bottle. Chilly b.a.s.t.a.r.d, full of power that boiled off of him in the aetheric like heat waves.

More of them, silently appearing in the room, mixed in and around us. A girl with raven-wing hair and elaborate eye shadow, dressed in crimson. Eyes like neon signs in a peculiar shade of magenta. A little girl named Alice in a blue-and-white pinafore. A skeletally thin, tall creature so androgynous that I couldn't decide what he/she was, except a fas.h.i.+on fatality.

Djinn. Lots of Djinn. Free Djinn.

I focused on little Alice, who favored me with a shy smile. "Hey, kid," I said. "Aren't you supposed to be somewhere?"

"Cathy isn't one of the Wardens anymore," she said. "She had enough. I'm free now." Alice's blond head inclined toward Lazlo.

"She's with them now. Me too."

The room wasn't big enough to hold all this power, all this humming, vibrating potential. I heard gla.s.s rattling in a steady, musical jitter. Too many of them, too close together; I could feel the place heating up.

Lazlo could feel it, too. He said, "Enough. Your point is made, Rahel; there are a lot of you, and I know that you can help or hurt us, as you like. We trust you to make the right decisions, as you trust us.

That's the principle of Ma'at. Balance."

"Balance," she agreed. "The Free Djinn have no quarrel with you.

But we will not allow one of yours to go unpunished. Or ours to go unrescued."

Whatever second wind Lewis had gasped in was fading fast; his skin had taken on that ivory cast again, white around his mouth and eyes, and I could tell he was in pain. Maybe it was the presence of the Djinn. Maybe it was more than that, his body degrading and folding in on itself as it raided its own tissues in a search for power. He was burning himself from the inside out.

Rahel slowly crouched in front of his wheelchair and laid her golden-tipped fingers on his knees.

"Ashan," she said. "Grant me your strength."

He moved to place a hand on her shoulder. Mr. Clean silently came to take Ashan's hand. The black-haired girl in red parted the humans in her way and laid fingertips on the back of Rahel's close- cropped head.

They came, one by one, moving like ghosts. Those that brushed past me made me feel sparks and chills from the contact. Each touching Rahel, or each other. Forming a network of power, in a very specific configuration.

Lazlo realized it first. He grabbed my elbow, hustled me over to Kevin, and said, "Take his hand."

"What? No!" Kevin yanked free. His eyes were huge and panicked.

"You're not f.u.c.king with me, man! You'll kill me!"

"Kevin, shut up and do it." When I reached for his hand, he gave it to me in the form of a punch. It landed solidly in my solar plexus. I felt breath evacuate as if I'd been vacuum-sealed, and croaked for air as I doubled over.

But I grabbed his fist and held it in both hands, tightly. Death grip.

Lazlo, bless him, held on to the kid's other arm. Once gravity and leverage were on our side, I transferred my grip to Kevin's shoulder to keep him down.

"Let me go, you f.u.c.king b.i.t.c.h!" He was screaming it now, writhing, trying to get away. I felt the air curdling. He was las.h.i.+ng out with powers, too panicked to do something targeted, but he could cause a lot of damage even unfocused if we let him. I sharpened my hold on my own energies, began to weight the air around him to damp down the chaos he was causing . . .

. . . and Myron Lazlo said, "No, Joanne. That isn't how we do things. Let him try."

"He isn't just going to try," I gasped breathlessly.

Tough to talk when my diaphragm didn't want to pull in air. "He's going to make what happened at the Bellagio happen here, don't you get it? Only worse!"

"I know." Lazlo closed his eyes. His face went serene. Not empty, just . . . peaceful. Behind him, Ashworth laid a hand on Lazlo's blue- suited shoulder, and then there were more of them, forming a human chain that matched the Djinn's across the room. Two circles of power.

Balancing.

What the Ma'at were putting out wasn't energy; it was absence.

Where the Wardens concentrated on the subatomic world, manipulating molecules, adjusting the vibration speed and makeup to rebuild the world in our image, the Ma'at went deeper. I couldn't see how, until I let myself go still and quiet with them.

Kevin's energy raged like a forest fire on the aetheric, power enough to destroy the city, level forests, break the land into rubble.

And power moves.

But the Ma'at surrounded it. Contained it.

Negated it.

"For every action, reaction," Lazlo murmured. "For every vibration, a cancellation. We don't seek to win the struggle. We seek to stop the game."

I remembered the card game. The cards floating over the table.

Even as it formed in my head, I heard Lazlo sigh. "You see power where no power exists. We didn't float the cards. We simply negated the forces that acted on them to make them fall."

Kevin, furious, screaming, red-faced, tried to rip the walls of the room apart by digging deep into the bedrock below the hotel. He didn't care anymore who he hurt. Maybe he never had.

My instinct was to act, to do something, but I waited, watching.

Marion's hand slipped over my shoulder in a warm, gentle touch, and when I looked at her I saw tears in her eyes.

"I see," she said. "I see what to do. All this time we destroyed them, and we could have saved them. ..." She was talking about the Wardens she'd been ordered to neuter-or kill. This was a revelation for her, and it couldn't possibly be a happy one.

The Ma'at, in their quiet, invisible way, focused their powers to still the vibrations. It was a basic principle of wave motion; hit the right frequency, and the wave disappears. At a molecular level, everything resonates at specific speeds, to specific notes.

Even the earth.

Even Kevin.

The Ma'at didn't fight what he did; they fought what he was, at the source . . . stilling him, quieting him.

Stopping him, as a mother's hand stills a child's lips.

Kevin wasn't screaming anymore, I realized, and I looked down.

His tear-streaked face was open and vulnerable. Defenses gone. I felt him trying to get beyond his own skin; he had Lewis's earth powers, and that meant that if he wasn't particular about how he used it, he could easily blow my heart open or crush my brain into jelly inside my skull. The temptation to do something, anything to protect myself was almost overwhelming, but I had to trust Lazlo. The best I could understand it, if I introduced a chaotic vibration into what the Ma'at were laying down around him, it would destroy any chance of success.

Boy, Kevin wanted me dead. Really, really dead. I could feel it coming off of him in red waves, see it like a poisonous cloud curling around him on the aetheric.

The cool whisper of the Ma'at was keeping that in check. It was a little like a piece of Saran Wrap holding back a heavyweight boxer's punch. I tried not to let the a.n.a.logy make me nervous.

"Now," Lazlo breathed. "Take her hand."

Her, who?

I looked down.

Alice. Her innocent smile clashed with the vastness of the power I sensed in her. She was old, this little one. Far up on the Djinn scale of People You Don't Want to Mess With.

I extended my hand. She wrapped her small fingers around it.

We completed the two halves of the pattern.

Yin and yang.

Human and Djinn.

Positive and negative.

On the aetheric, the pattern swirled, lit up in glorious glowing color, and it was breathtaking. Complex and graceful as a sand painting, each piece in exactly the right place. I watched the colors race around . . . green for earth, blue for air and water, red for fire, sparking off of each human they touched, then shading subtly lighter as they moved through the chain of Djinn, gathering strength . . .

... to cascade through Rachel's touch into Lewis. A rainbow of light, turning brilliant white as it coiled inside of him. His body-a failing ruin of shadow and darkness-took on form and color. Not healed-that would take time-but no longer destroying itself.

No longer dying.

Let him keep what he is. I heard that through the clasp of hands, felt it move through us like a breath. Human and Djinn, formed into one living, thinking thing. Lewis was part of that. So was Kevin.

There was a bright red bonfire burning inside of him-his natural powers, the ones that the Wardens expected Marion to rip away from him. It could be done now, without risk. Even without risk to Kevin, for that matter. He'd survive it. We'd all see to that.

But that was Lewis's voice, whispering, Let him keep what he is.

Because he understood, maybe better than anyone, that Kevin couldn't live without that touch of fire in his soul. He wasn't demanding, or ordering. The Ma'at was a strange kind of democracy-the exact opposite of the Wardens, which was (for good or bad) an a.s.sociation of independents. In this formation, this . . .

symbolic machine ... we debated in silence, on the strength of emotion and feeling rather than words or logic. We argued from our souls.

And, in the end, we knew what we had to do.

Marion took her hand off of my shoulder, and the pattern dissolved into silence. Into forty-odd human and Djinn, each with their own agendas, their own hates, loves, needs. Each separate and apart, as the Wardens were separate and apart.

That was why the Wardens had never truly succeeded. They couldn't. They didn't understand.

This was power.