Chill Factor (Weather Warden #3)

The human race had a vast, apparently endless capacity for rationalization. It had always served the Wardens exceptionally well.

I tried to get up and winced at a sharp stab of pain in my shoulder.

"Easy," said a slightly rough male tenor voice somewhere to my right, against the gaudy glare of sunset. "Hairline fracture of the collarbone, not to mention one heck of a whack to the head."

Quinn was back. I started to ask about David, but something made me hesitate. It was still possible I'd dreamed the whole thing, that Quinn had been the one to catch me down in the lobby and carry me back up here. And I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of mooning around over my lost Djinn lover.

I felt the weight of Quinn's body settle next to me on the bed. When I looked, he was leaning over me, staring down. He reached over and lifted my head, then probed the lump at the back with sure and impersonal fingers. I winced. "Oh, don't whine; you're going to live. And it isn't like you didn't ask for it."

"I just wanted out."

"And we put you out. Follow my finger." He moved it around, tracking my eye movements. "Any blurred vision?"

"Well, I think I'm hallucinating, because I see a big talking pile of crap."

"Funny. You're a riot, sweetheart." He sat back and lowered his eyelids to an assessing sleepy look. "Who's David?"

"Bite me. I'm not playing twenty questions; my head hurts." I was being bitchy. I couldn't help it. "You can't keep me prisoner here. I insist that you-"

His hand came down over my lips, stilling them. I continued to make cranky muffled noises for a few more syllables, then fell silent.

"You got no rights here, and you don't insist. You want to play rough, we'll play."

Quinn took his hand away from my mouth. I sucked in a breath and asked, "Why do you want me so bad?"

"Think a lot of yourself, don'tcha?" His smile was gallows-dark. "I don't. Somebody does."

"Who? Lazlo? Ashworth?" I made rude noises. "They already got their pound of electrocuted flesh out of me. Why can't I hit the road?"

"To do what? Get tossed out a window by that kid and his pet Djinn?" Quinn shook his head. "We've got a plan. You're part of it. We'll tell you the rest when you need to know it."

"Yeah. Great plan. Chock-full of foresight. Loved the whole bashing-my-brains-out part."

"I think there was something a little personal in the cane thing."

I couldn't exactly deny that one. Before I could find a suitably snarky reply, there was a knock at the door. Quinn got up and opened it, and a security guy handed over a blue canvas bag. Quinn locked the door again and rummaged around in the bag, looking for something.

"How's the head?" he asked. I shot him a filthy look. "Look on the bright side, sweetheart, you looked terrific. If you're going to go down in flames, you might as well do it in style. Great dress. You buy that here?"

I wanted to throw something at him, but the only thing available was a pretty new shoe, and I didn't have the heart. I settled for a superior hmph and settled down on the pillows again, a forearm over my eyes.

"Want an aspirin?"

"No."

"Good for you, tough guy. Now, you want to tell me what all that display downstairs was about?"

I massaged the bridge of my nose, where the headache seemed to be hiding. "I wanted to get to Kevin. To warn him."

"About...?"

"You're going to kill him."

"Well, yeah." He sounded surprised. "Obviously."

"You don't have to do that. And there's a girl with him. She's got nothing to do with this."

"Siobhan?" Quinn made a raspberry noise. "You're talking out your ass. She's a pro. She's still there, she's there to take him for everything he's worth. I'm not going to worry about a whore getting in the line of fire."

"You know her?"

"Busted her a few times." He shrugged. "She's a tough girl, and no civilian. She gets caught in the middle, I'm not wasting any tears."

He finally found what he was looking for in the bag and brought it out. A long black case about the length of his arm. He set it on the bed, flipped it open, and started assembling pieces.

He meant the line-of-fire thing literally.

He was putting together a rifle, a fine shiny one with a red-tinted scope. I stared at him in silence for a few seconds before I realized what he was showing me.

"You're going to shoot him," I said, and sat up. I didn't let the rodeo-bucking world stop me. When things got uncertain, I wrapped a hand in the collar of Quinn's shirt and used him for a brace. "You're going to just shoot him?"

"You say that like it's easy." Quinn removed my hand and dumped me back on the bed. He continued snapping things together with metallic clicks. "Not like he'll be standing still for it, I'd imagine; probably have to correct for wind, maybe worse. Don't worry, though. He won't feel a thing. As soon as he drops, Jonathan goes back in the bottle, we pick it up, and decide what to do with him after the fact. Zim, zam, zoom. Problem solved."

I had to admit, he was right. It was a solution. So long as you didn't have any qualms about putting a high-velocity round through a kid's brain, it was the perfect answer. "You can't do this, Quinn. He's just a boy!"

"He's a killer," Quinn said. All of the false joviality was gone now, and what was left was hard as bone and ruthless as razors. "This is what I do, sweetheart. I take care of problems. So you just be a good girl, stay in bed, and don't become a problem, and we'll get along just fine. Right?"

"Yeah? Does the AARP executive committee downstairs know what you're about to do?"

Quinn snapped back the bolt on the rifle, sighted down the barrel at the window, and smiled. "Don't play a player. Of course they know."

"They know you're a cold-blooded killer."

"Sticks, stones. You know why you've got a headache? You think too much." Quinn leaned the rifle back against the door. "By the way, somebody's been asking after you."

"Nobody I want to meet, I'll bet."

He ignored me. He picked up the telephone and dialed four numbers. "Yeah," he said. "She's awake. Better get over here. She's kind of feisty."

I subsided, waiting. Realized that I was still wearing the ьber-expensive raw silk dress. Unfortunately, Quinn was totally immune to my charms, so far as I could see; no point in even trying to be seductive, and frankly, with the headache and bruises, I'd be more likely to barf on him than kiss him. Speaking of kisses... had David really been here? It must have been a dream. If he'd really been here, he'd have taken the time to get rid of these little bumps and bruises, wouldn't he? Unless he'd been afraid they'd know.

Maybe David was even deeper undercover than I was.

Knock on the door. Quinn checked the peephole, then opened it for my visitor.

Oddly, I wasn't surprised to see that it was Lewis. Well, I was surprised, but seeing him again seemed inevitable, really. I'd been expecting the other Lewis-shoe to drop, and now, looking at him, it did. He'd made it to Vegas-actually, for him it had probably been easy; the wards would have passed him right through without any Warden powers, and besides, I'd been waiting for him to make an appearance. He'd arranged for me to get abducted. He'd stood by and allowed me to be killed. He had a plan, and it just had to be a jim-dandy one, so long as you weren't on the receiving end of it.

He looked terrible. Grayer in his flesh, and his eyes were bloodshot. Hands trembling as they gripped his cane-unlike Ashworth, his wasn't for flash; it was for support. He moved like an old man. Quinn grabbed an elbow and guided him to a chair; Lewis eased himself down with an almost inaudible sigh of relief.

I would not feel sorry for him. No way. I refused.

"You okay?" he asked me. His voice sounded exactly the same, a warm tenor, slightly rough, like velvet stroked against the grain.

"Oh, hell, yeah. Never better," I said, and tried to look as if I were leaning against the headboard for effect rather than support. "I should've known. This had your smell all over it. I was such an idiot, you know; here I thought all these years you'd spent avoiding the Wardens you'd been out doing good, spreading rainbows and happy horseshit. You were working for the opposition."

"No," Lewis said wearily. "I started the opposition. Not that it was totally my idea; there were a lot of us who saw what was happening with the Wardens. I was just the force that pulled it together. The Ma'at started operation about seven years ago, officially. Since then, we've been doing our best to mitigate the worst of the Wardens' excesses."

"Yeah, you're the hero here. Modest as usual," I snapped back. "So what's your excuse? The Wardens wouldn't let you be king of the world, so you found a bunch of stodgy old farts who would?"

Quinn eyed me grimly. Evidently, he didn't like me bad-mouthing his bosses. "Want me to get Lazlo?"

"No." Lewis continued meeting my eyes solidly. "Jo, after I ran from the Wardens, I spent a lot of time trying to find out just why they were so afraid of me. I found out a lot more than I bargained for. I know you want to believe the Wardens are good... I did, too. We trusted them with everything we are- we let them mold us and train us and shape us. But they shaped us wrong. And what they've done to the Djinn... I know you saw what David endured. That's not the exception, Jo. That's the rule."

One thing I could tell-he believed what he was saying. Lewis was speaking from the heart, speaking with unmistakable passion. He wanted me to understand. To become a true believer.

"They're corrupted," he said. "I'm not talking about individuals... there are still a lot of good Wardens, who believe in what they're doing. But it can't last. Power corrupts. You know that better than most anyone; you faced down Bad Bob and Star. You know it's rotten at its heart."

"You're so full of shit." I wobbled up to bare feet and took up a belligerent stance that was only a little compromised by having to lean myself against the wall. My collarbone shrieked a protest at the move, but I ignored it. A shivering coat of sweat broke out on my forehead. "Listen to yourself, Lewis. You think you're the good guys? You stood by while my heart stopped! Quinn kidnapped me at gunpoint! Your precious Ma'at tortured me!"

"Yeah, but we gave you five grand after," Quinn put in. "And holy shit, can you shop or what?" When I glared, he dropped the cute act. "They interrogated you because you're a Warden. Don't you get it? Half the Wardens Association is Demon Marked, and the other half might as well be. You're the first one I've seen that isn't a fuckin' killer with a rune. They're totally corrupt."

"You're one to talk."

Ooooh, wrong thing to say. Quinn gave me his dead-eyed cop stare. It was effective. "You're gonna want to shut up now before you piss me off."

No, but I was ready to adjust my sails to the prevailing wind. I turned back to Lewis. "What makes the Ma'at any better? They wear more expensive suits? They're all bitter old men too moral to sin?"

"No," he said quietly. "They don't have enough power to be tempted. They're all below the line that the Wardens consider as a material gift."

He walked slowly over to me and put a hand under my elbow. I didn't know why until I realized my knees had started to buckle. He guided me gently back down to the bed, lifted my legs, and got me prone again. My head throbbed so hard I saw flashes of red behind my eyes, and bit back a groan.

"She needs a doctor," Lewis said somewhere beyond the strobe effect of my headache. Quinn grunted. "Got someone we can trust?"

"We've got bigger problems. Look, just patch her up and let's get moving. We don't have time for this."

"I said that she needs a doctor." When Lewis got that particular tone, it wasn't worth wasting the breath to argue. "See to it."

I cracked open my eyelids to look through the lashes. Quinn was staring at me. Stone-faced was his natural expression, but I could see that he was deeply worried. Not for me. About me.

"You don't need to be getting sidetracked here." he said. Lewis didn't answer. "We can't get lost in the details. We're in the game now, and you know the stakes. If she gets in the way-"

"Quinn." Lewis's voice was soft, but inflexible. "Get a doctor. Now."

Quinn turned and left. The door clicked shut behind him. Lewis put his hand back on my forehead, and some of the sick throbbing eased.

"A month ago, I could've fixed this in two seconds," he said.

"A month ago, I wouldn't have needed it," I whispered. "Lewis?"

"Yeah."

"When did being the good guys include contracting murder?"

No answer. He was staring off toward the sunset, his face lit with gold and orange.

The saddest eyes I've ever seen.

"Lewis?"

"You don't understand." He didn't look at me. "Rest."

I didn't want to, but eventually, I slept.

With no sense of transition, I was somewhere else. I was limping, although pain was a distant, muffled sensation. My skin was red and abraded, my white T-shirt tattered and filthy, sweatpants ripped and stained.

I limped along a deserted road, one painful step at a time, and overhead the sun kept staring down. No wind. No birds. No sound at all. It was like being in a dead world, and I was dead too, I just didn't know it yet.