"Is this against the rules?" I asked. I grabbed the edge of the hot tub, one hand on either side of him, and straddled his lap. "Tell me this is against the rules. It feels too good to be legal."
His voice was a hot, breathless growl. "You refused to bind me-I don't have to tell you anything. Ah! . . ."
He was hard as steel, hot as fire, and he felt so good going in that I shuddered and collapsed against him, holding him in me and feeling life pulsing between us. "Tell me," I whispered. His breath was fast and hot against my neck.
"It's forbidden," he said. "And it's stupid. I need to-to stay-don't-"
"Don't what?" I moved my hips slowly, a liquid circle, and felt him tense against me. "Don't do this?"
His hands came up, gliding up over my breasts, my neck, to hold my face like something precious and fragile. No more words. No more anger. We lost ourselves, fire and water dissolving into each other in a perfect union of opposites, and when I cried out, it was into his mouth, and all his strength, all his magic didn't keep him from joining me.
At the very second that I was completely alive, completely alight, I felt the Demon Mark make its move, like a taloned hand clenching around my heart. I came crashing back to reality with a jolt like electrocution, and the sensation of being violated, being ripped away from him, was so real that I panicked. Lost control. Lost myself. I felt it pushing deeper in me, pulsing like some terrible child, and on the outside David's strength kept me from going under the water, but I was convulsing, crying out, and all the fire in the world couldn't melt the ice forming in me, forming in sharp angles and ridges and forming into . . .
"No!" I heard him say, and there was helpless pain and fury in it. Not just flesh, not just fire-passion. "Stay with me. Don't let go!"
My body was going limp, shutting down, all my resources turned inward against the invader. Was this how it had been for Bad Bob? Had it really hurt this much? God, I didn't want to hurt. I wanted to go back to that warm, sweet place in heaven, go back to David's arms.
David put his hand flat above my heart.
Hot gold poured into me, melting ice, forcing the black tendrils of the Demon Mark to a stop, but it held tight to what it had gained. It was bigger now. Darker. Full of cool, malevolent life. Tapped deep into the roots of where I lived.
When the pain receded and I could breathe again, I realized David was holding me against him like a child, my head on his shoulder, stroking aimless patterns on my bare skin. No, not aimless. Where his fingers touched, I felt stronger. Warmer.
"Shh," he whispered, when I tried to speak. "My fault. My fault. Let me help."
"Your fault?" I repeated blankly. It was a huge effort to raise my hand and touch his face, but a rich reward when I saw some of the tension ease out of him. "How the hell is this your fault?"
"You asked me if it was forbidden. I shouldn't have let myself do this-"
I put my fingers over his mouth to shut him up. His lips moved, not with words, but with silent kisses.
"Don't ever say that," I said. "Don't ever."
We stayed like that, him on the ledge, me cradled in his arms, for more than an hour. No words, no impulse for more; he stroked my hair in a slow, hypnotic rhythm.
"I'm waterlogged," I finally said, and raised my head from where it rested against his chest. "Going on raisin skinned."
I caught the edge of his smile.
"You're the mistress of air and water," he said. "I can't believe you couldn't fix a thing like that."
"True. But I'm too tired. Can't you just-blink us back up to the room?"
"No," he said. "I can move myself anywhere I like, but taking you is a bit more difficult."
"You tunneled through the earth with me," I reminded him.
"And I'm recovering my strength," he said gravely. "I assume you want me fully restored."
"Bet your ass."
The Demon Mark was silent again, almost invisible; still, it was hard to move, because I kept waiting for it to strike again. David understood. He let me sit up slowly, watching my face, and reached out to place his hand over my heart again.
"It's quiet," he said.
"What if it gets noisy again?"
"It won't. Not tonight." He didn't make any promises for tomorrow, I noticed. Well, I was getting out of the habit of thinking about tomorrow anyway.
I got out of the water, weak-kneed, my bits of Lycra back in place for the trip upstairs. David surged out of the hot tub next. I found myself fascinated by the way water caught and tangled in his hair, flecked his entire body with light. God, he was beautiful. I couldn't quite believe that I'd drawn passion out of that perfection, because he looked so controlled and untouchable now.
"Put some clothes on," I said, "before I have to fight off the desk clerks to hang on to you."
He reached for my towel and wrapped it around his waist. That did not make him any less attractive. If anything . . .
"Upstairs," he reminded me. I took his arm, and we walked out of the pool area onto the deep pile carpet past the front desk. One of the clerks looked up, frowned slightly, then realized what she was doing and gave us a brilliant smile.
"I'm sorry, I didn't see you in there. The pool area's closed for the night," she said. David-just human David again, brown hair and brown eyes, just another guy-nodded and apologized. We strolled back up the hall to the elevators, where we waited politely until one dinged open for us.
I shivered in the air-conditioning as the doors rumbled closed; David noticed, made a casual gesture, and instantly I was warm and dry.
"Wow," I said, surprised. He raised his eyebrows.
"Nothing you couldn't do yourself."
I moved closer to him and found him dry, too; warm as if he wore summer under his skin. He put his arms around me, but he did it carefully. Too carefully.
"David."
"Yes?"
"I'm not fragile."
He didn't smile, didn't look away from my face. Close up, the color of his eyes was a deep, rich gold-stone. "Compared with me?"
"Okay, granted, more fragile than you. But don't treat me like I'm dying, I'm not dying, I'm just- living until I don't." David still didn't look away. "Promise me you won't let all this stop you from throwing me up against the wall right now and kissing me like my life depended on it."
It was a short ride to the third floor, too short for the kind of reassurance I wanted, but he did manage to make me feel better. And warmer.
In the room, with towels and swimsuits discarded, he proceeded to raise my body temperature considerably. This time, there was no demonic tantrum to spoil it for us, just long, slow, delicious heat that kept building and building until I burned.
I fell asleep curled against him, with his hand over the Mark, holding it still.
I woke up alone in a well-mussed bed, felt the cold hollow in the pillow where David had lain, and I felt that cold certainty sweep over me that it was like the first night: I was going to open my eyes to find him gone as if he'd never been.
But when I looked, he was standing at the window, looking out. He was already dressed in a gold flannel shirt and blue jeans, feet bare, and he had his glasses on again. Human disguise firmly in place.
I stretched and let the sheet slip down. David didn't take the bait. He looked uncommonly sober for so early in the morning, especially after a night that had left me still tingling and vibrating all over.
"No good morning?" I asked. "What's so fascinating? Cheerleaders practicing naked in the parking lot?"
He didn't answer. I got up, wrapped a sheet around me in the best movie-star fashion, and togaed over to join him at the plate-glass window. The sun was above the horizon, but not by much; it was layered in pinks and golds, floating just under a gray layer of low-hanging, rounded clouds. More rain up there. And a darker line to the south that I didn't like.
"Nasty," I said, pointing to it. He still didn't answer. "Earth to David? Hello?"
And then I saw where he was looking, down into the parking lot. For a few seconds, it didn't register-cars, lots of cars, nothing special . . .
. . . and then my eyes settled on a midnight-blue Mustang with a charred driver's side door, parked innocently in the fourth row. Next to the white Land Rover.
Marion's hunters were here.
"Shit!"
I dropped the sheet and ran into the bathroom, scooped up clothes from the floor, and pulled on stretch velvet pants without bothering with underwear. The lace shirt tore at the bottom as I yanked it over my head. Jacket and shoes went on practically simultaneously, and while I was dragging my tangled hair out from under the coat collar, I yelled at David, "Come on!"
He was still at the window. Shoeless. I grabbed his arm and towed him toward the hotel room door.
He stopped two seconds before the knock came. His face was focused and pale, eyes as dark as midnight.
"Get in the bathroom," he said. "Shut the door."
As if that would do any good. "I'm going down fighting, not hiding."
"Just do it!" His fury was sudden and hot as nuclear fire, and before I could even try to argue, he took me by the shirt and shoved me into the bathroom, banged the door shut, and I heard a huge concussion of sound, of pressure. What the hell-?
I opened the door and saw the glitter of glass all over the carpet. The curtains were blowing in, straight in, like gale flags. The windows were completely gone, nothing but a sugar-dusting of glass left at the corners.
David turned, grabbed me by the hand, and pulled me to the window. Picked me up like a toy in his arms. Behind us, the door to the room shuddered and jumped on its hinges, then caught fire with a red-orange whoosh.
David jumped out into open air.
I didn't know how indestructible free-range Djinn might be, so I formed a thick cushion of air under us, an updraft to counter our fall. It was still a jolt of an impact, but even before my mind could register it, David was already running.
"Put me down!" I yelled.
"Shut up!" he yelled back. There was raw ferocity in his voice, too much to argue with. He skidded to a halt next to Delilah. "Get in the car!"
The door was unlocked. He put me down, and I slid into the driver's seat; no keys, but he reached in the open door and touched the ignition to start her up.
"David-"
"Drive! Don't stop for anything!"
Before I could protest, he was running back toward the hotel, looking up at the black gaping hole that used to be our window on the third floor.
Someone was standing there. I couldn't see who it was, because at that moment the curtains fluttered and started to blow out instead of in. I felt the shock wave of it a second before it hit-straight-line winds, running at least a hundred miles an hour. I felt Delilah shudder and roll backwards; I jammed on the brakes. David hadn't moved, but his shirt was being pulled right off him by the merciless pressure. As I watched, buttons popped and the fabric slid down his arms; the wind took it and it whipped away toward the horizon.
There was a terrible concussive pop from the direction of the hotel.
Something coming at us. Glittering. David turned, screaming at me to drive, now, and it was more the stark urgency in his face than understanding that made me scratch rubber in reverse out of the parking space. When I realized what it was that I saw flying toward me across the parking lot, I hit the brakes again and screeched to a bone-crunching halt.
Every window on this side of the hotel had shattered, and the glittering, slicing fragments were hurtling toward me.
Toward a family of four clinging to the door of a red minivan down the row.
Toward a pregnant woman huddling out in the open, caught between rows of cars.
Toward David.
I threw myself up into Oversight and grabbed for what I could reach, which wasn't much; this was brute-force stuff, and my enemy already had control of just about everything there was to use. I grabbed air and forced molecules to move, move, never mind the chaos factors that introduced; that wall of broken glass was going to shred us all to hamburger if I didn't.
I jammed on the car brakes, abandoned the idea of retreat, and focused everything I had on the moment. I superheated the air and released it in a hard, fast, focused pulse. It didn't have to be much, just enough to disrupt the wind for a fraction of a second; glass is too heavy to continue at right angles to gravity without a clear kinetic force acting on it.
My microburst-five hundred yards wide-blew into the opposing wind-wall and shattered the momentum, and for a second there was a haze there of power meeting power, glass turning over and over like windblown confetti, and then the shards rained down to the asphalt with a sound like a hundred bags of dimes breaking open. The hurricane attack started up again, but it was too late; glass isn't easy to get airborne once it's on the ground.
I realized I could no longer see David. God, I'd been too late, too late to keep the glass from hitting him-he was down somewhere, between the cars, down and slashed to ribbons-
The passenger door yanked open, and David threw himself in, bare-chested and bleeding. "I told you to go!" he shouted. I jammed Delilah back in gear, popped the clutch, and squealed rubber in a turn that any stunt driver would have been proud of. We screeched around the corner, heading for the street-
-and almost crashed headfirst into a Winnebago blocking the exit. I jerked the wheel and got us around it, barely, registering the shocked faces of Ma and Pa Retirement as the Mustang roared past.
Hair on the back of my neck hissed and prickled, and I knew it was coming again, could feel those ions turning and connecting overhead. Not just one lightning bolt this time, but hundreds, thousands, a sky full of falling razor blades, and I couldn't stop all of them. People were going to die.
"David!" I screamed. He grabbed my hand, and I smelled the actinic charge in the air, heard the hissing sizzle of it overhead. That power had to discharge, needed to discharge, and it was going to go somewhere fast and hard. It would settle for anything that would form a satisfactory current. Buildings . . . trees . . . flesh and blood and bone.
I felt David's strength pouring into me. Not the same magnitude as what I'd felt from other Djinn, but then David's strength wasn't fully sourced until he was bound.
No time to plan, no time to do anything but what I knew, at heart, was right.
I built an invisible road for the power to discharge, working fast, touching and turning polarities a billion atoms at a time. I'd never worked on such a scale before, but I had to reach, and reach, and reach without stopping to doubt myself. I stretched myself over the aetheric as thin as a spiderweb, armoring the innocent, leaving a clear and unmistakable path for the strike to follow. A lightning rod with a silver ground wire unreeling back to me.
It had to be back to me. It was the direction all the power was being pushed, anyway.
David felt it. "No! What are you doing?"
"Not now," I snapped, and felt the Mark wake and move inside me. I tightened my grip on David's hand. "Keep it still!"
I felt warmth pulse through his flesh and into mine, strike deep. The writhing inside me went quiet.
The last chains of power snapped together. In Oversight, the silver line went white-hot with potential.
"Hold on," I whispered, and closed my eyes.
The lightning flashed blue white, brighter and hotter than the sun-silent, because sound would come later. I opened my mouth to gasp and tasted the bitter tang of ozone. Pins and needles blew over my skin in a wave, from my feet to the crown of my head.
And then the lightning hit Delilah dead on.