I flattened the pedal and felt Mona jump forward like a champion racing for the finish.
The wind slammed the front left quarter panel like a speeding freight train, and the front wheels lost traction; I was going into a spin. If it had just been a single fast wind shear, that would have been one thing, but this was a fierce continuing blast, and as the car spun, it slammed directly into the back end, shoving the Viper toward the shoulder; I did exactly the opposite of what you should do; I turned the wheel against the skid, gave it more momentum, kept the car turning so that the momentum spun it like a top down the center line. The wind kept buffeting me, but it was only adding to the car's rotational force, not slowing me down.
I gulped and hung on for dear life as the world beyond the windshield turned into a long brown-black-green blur . . . road, shoulder, field, road, shoulder, field . . . and then I felt the pressure of air against the car suddenly drop off.
I turned into the skid, smelled burning rubber and my own nerves frying, and the Viper fought me and fought the road like a bucking bronco.
I hit the brakes gently, gently, struggling with the wheel as we did one last, slow spin and jerked to a stop, still on the road.
I was about two inches over the dotted white line.
It would have been a real good moment to open the door and throw up, but I had no time for any of that. The yellow Xterra had been just a few hundred yards behind me, and a higher-profile vehicle stood no chance at all against that wind wall. The force would flip the truck over like a toy.
No time or energy to do it the careful way, the right way; I just brute-forced an equal and opposite force by slamming cold air down into the stream, and held it there while the Xterra blasted through. There was still enough wind to shake it, but not enough to flip it over.
I slipped Mona back in gear and popped the clutch, and we flew toward the city limits with Marion's SUV right on our tail. I expected trouble. In fact, I counted on it.
You can imagine how spooky it was not to have any at all, not even a hint, all the way into the suburbs, all the way to the merge with I-40. There was more and slower traffic now, and I had to slow Mona down from our breakneck gallop. Every passing car made me flinch, because this was a recipe for disaster; if Star wasn't choosy about the body count, this could end up in one of those spectacular forty-or fifty-car pileups, the kind that make the evening news and have the words "death toll" in the tag line.
But nothing happened.
I got Star's cell phone and dialed it one-handed from memory.
"Crisis Center," said a voice that sounded too young and too friendly for comfort. What kind of grade school had they raided now? Had I been that young when I'd been on the Help Desk? Probably. It just raised chills and goose bumps to think my life and everybody's around me now might rest in the hands of somebody barely old enough to buy a legal drink.
"Hi, this is Joanne Baldwin, Weather. I'm in Oklahoma City, and I need to call a Code One general alert."
Dead silence on the other end of the phone for at least ten seconds, and then a very quiet, "Excuse me?"
"Code One," I repeated. "General alert. Look it up."
"Please hold." She was gone for thirty full seconds this time, and when she came back on, her voice was trembling. "Um, Warden Baldwin? I've been told that you need to surrender yourself to the Wardens who are following you. Please."
"Well, here's what I'm telling you: Oklahoma City is about to be a wide smoking hole in the road if you don't do exactly as I tell you. Call a Code One. Right now."
She sounded stronger. There was probably a supervisor standing over her. "Can't do that, ma'am."
"Do not ma'am me, kid. Let me talk to whoever you've got quoting rules and regulations at you."
I'd been right about the supervisor. There was a click, and a basso profundo male voice said, "Jo, you got any idea how pissed off I am right now at you?"
"Paul?" I couldn't help it; beaten, scared, half-evil, I still grinned at the sound of his voice. "Save it for later. I'm on my way to Estrella Almondovar's house, or I will be as soon as you give me the address. Marion and her crew are on my tail."
"Pull the car over, and let them do their jobs! Jesus, Jo, Bad Bob was right all along about you. You got any idea what kind of hell you stirred up out there? Killer storm, followed by so much hellfire in the aetheric that we might as well call it a day and evacuate the whole friggin' state. And don't tell me it wasn't you. I saw you up there."
"Shut up and listen. I've got a Demon Mark, so does Lewis, and we're about to go at it down here. If you don't want to be cleaning up a whole hell of a lot worse than just some blown-down shacks and road signs, I suggest you get off your ass and call a Code One, right now."
He put me on hold. Bastard. I switched off and tossed the phone into the passenger seat.
Twenty seconds later, as I was squinting at exit signs, the mobile phone warbled for my attention. I flipped it open and said, "Shoot."
"1617 Fifty-Sixth Street," Paul said. "Code One's going in place. You're not serious, right? About going at it with Lewis?"
"I sure as hell hope not."
I dropped the phone and downshifted, whipped the Viper around a family station wagon and two identical red Hondas, and saw the exit sign flash by over head. Fifty-Sixth Street, two miles.
The weather looked clear. Too clear.
It was just too damn easy.
I exited the freeway and took the turn at a screech that should have raised police attention in six states, but my luck was holding; no civilian cops taking a coffee break at the wrong intersection. I scratched the gear change and blasted through two yellow lights, had to stop for a red, and felt every nerve in my body snapping and shaking with the urge to move.
The neighborhood was industrial, mostly blue-collar stuff like stamping factories and printing presses; the buildings were square, gray, and grimy. Saffron-colored streetlamps gave everything a jaundiced look, and there wasn't a soul in sight on the sidewalks, only a few cars still hidden in parking lots behind chain-link and razor wire.
I'd gone four blocks when somebody stepped out into the street in front of me. I jammed on brake and clutch and rode the Viper to a shaking, screaming, smoking halt.
David was standing in front of me. He no longer had the road dude persona; this David was brown-haired, brown-eyed, dressed in a loose white shirt and dark pants that ended in a mist around his knees. This was the look Star had imposed on him, along with her will. I remembered the hot bronze of his eyes and felt a sharp stab of mourning.
Don't mistake foe for friend. Rahel's excellent advice, and yet, looking at him, I could only remember his hands touching me, stroking peace into my fevered skin. He wasn't just Djinn, not just a tool or a tap of power to turn on and off. He wasn't a slave.
And if he wasn't . . . maybe none of them were. Maybe none of them should be.
"Don't do this," I said. I knew he could hear me, even through the closed windows of the car. "Don't make us enemies. Please."
"You made us enemies," he said, and extended his hand, palm first.
I felt gravity increase around me, jamming me into the seat, holding me down.
The air around me turned thick and sweet and poisonous. I gagged and stopped breathing, tried to reach for the automatic window controls, but he was too strong, too prepared. I felt my skin burning. The air had taken on a slight green tinge. Chlorine? Something worse?
He'd turned the car into a gas chamber.
I reached for the wind and slammed him hard enough to disincorporate him into mist, and in the instant before he could re-form, I jammed the window button and rolled all four down. Fresh air whipped in and blew out the poisoned fog, and I hit the gas and burned rubber right at him.
He wasn't there when the front end arrived. I looked behind me, but saw nothing except Marion's Xterra crawling up the road in pursuit. I knew better than to think I'd lost him, but at least I had-no pun intended-breathing space.
I picked up the cell phone again. The line was still open, and I could hear Paul giving muffled orders in the distance. "Hey!" I yelled. "I need you! Pick up!"
"What do you need?" In a crisis, Paul was all about the facts, not the feelings. He'd hate me later, maybe kill me, but right now he'd made a choice and he'd stick to it.
"Djinn," I said. "Yours. Get it out here and tell it to block Star's Djinn, or I'll never make it there. He'll-"
A building tilted over the street in front of me. I screamed, dropped the phone, and twisted the wheel. It was an old, dilapidated thing of fire-ravaged bricks and blank glassless windows, probably due for demolition, but there was no way it should have chosen this moment to lie down right in front of me. I shifted gears and let the Viper scream at full power; a brick hit the roof with a bang, then another, and then we shot out from under the falling shadow and it collapsed behind us with a dull roar and a cloud of white smoke.
A light pole slammed forward into my path. I twisted around it.
A mailbox threw itself, trailing sparks and federally protected letters in its wake. I hit the brakes and slithered past it with inches to spare.
"Paul!" I screamed. "Now would be good!"
Too late. David had mastered the timing now, and the next light pole was falling just exactly right-too far away for me to beat it, too close for me to stop. I hit the curb with enough force that I was afraid the Viper's tires would blow, but we bounced up, flashed by more wooden poles, kissed the finish on a dilapidated bus-stop shelter, and bounced out again into the street.
Into the path of an eighteen-wheel tractor-trailer, which was barreling down the cross street. Nobody was driving it, and the load on the back looked suspiciously like a propane tank.
I went weirdly calm. The Viper was fast, but she wasn't supernatural, and I didn't have enough speed to make it, enough road to stop, or enough luck to avoid it this time.
Sorry, Mona. It was fun while it lasted.
Something flashed into the way. Someone-small, golden haired, dressed in blue and white like a fairytale heroine.
A Djinn had come to my rescue, but it wasn't Paul's; it was, instead, Alice in Wonderland.
She held up one small, delicate hand and brought the truck to a stop. Perfect control. She looked over her shoulder at me as I arrowed through the intersection, and I saw a smile on her lips, a neon-blue spark of life in her eyes that I hadn't seen before.
A whisper came through my car radio. Go. I'll keep him back.
Apparently, she was itching for a rematch from the game of keep-away at Cathy's bookstore. I made a mental note to thank Cathy later-preferably with chocolates and really fine booze-and felt the tension in my shoulders loosen just a little. At least I didn't have to fight David. Not directly.
No, I only had to fight Star. And myself.
I checked addresses when grimy industrial sections gave way to grimy lower-middle-class houses. Universally small, mostly of clapboard and in need of paint and new fences, they were crammed together like sardines with postage-stamp front yards mostly filled with weeds and rusting junk.
Estrella's house shone like a diamond in a sack of coal. Larger, well proportioned, gleaming with fresh paint and a neat white-painted fence. No weeds in the new spring grass, the only concession to lawn ornaments a heavy concrete birdbath with a cherub on top. It didn't look like the place to find somebody willing to kill in order to keep secrets.
I pulled the Viper to a halt at the curb and got out. Lights were on in the house, warm behind the window shades. The muted blue flicker of a TV screen made shadows in one of the bedroom windows.
All too normal. And I'd never expected to reach it this easily. That made it harder, somehow, bringing all my anger and fury had seemed easier when I didn't have to knock politely to do it.
I went up the steps and rang the doorbell.
"It's open," Star's voice rang out. I swallowed hard, looked up and down the street, hoping to see Marion's yellow Xterra, but I was all alone. "Come on in, Jo."
I turned the knob and stepped inside.
The hallway was burnished wood, lovingly polished; a side table had faded photographs lined up, starting with two stiff-looking people in the formal dress of the mid-1800s, progressing by decades through Star's family. Hers was the last photo on the table. High school graduation, a beautiful girl, a winning smile, the devil's own laughter in her dark eyes.
I closed the door behind me and waited.
"In the kitchen!" she called. I smelled the mouthwatering aroma of fresh-baking peanut butter cookies.
Something very wrong about contemplating murder with the smell of baking in the air. As maybe she intended.
I walked down the hallway past a darkened formal living room, a brightly lit family room filled with warm colors and gleaming wood. The kitchen was at the back of the house, an old design, and I stopped in the doorway. Star was standing next to the oven, mitt on her hand, taking cookie sheets off the racks.
"Just a sec," she said, and deposited the last gray pan on top of the bulky avocado-green stove. "Ah. There. Now."
She stripped off the oven mitt, turned off the oven. No more fake scars, not this time. She was showing me her true face. Untouched. Beautiful. False.
"You're wondering how this happened." She touched the smooth bronze skin of her cheek. "I was rotting to death in that hospital, and they couldn't- no, they wouldn't-help me."
"Star-"
"Let me finish. All they had to do was give me a fucking Djinn, but no, they wouldn't do that. I hadn't earned it. They said I didn't have the temperament to handle the responsibility." She glared at me. How had I missed all that hatred in her eyes before? All that bitterness? Had she covered that up, too? "They left me with a face like a melted hockey mask. You remember?"
Of course I remembered. I couldn't move, couldn't speak. She reached for the oven mitt again, grabbed a tray of cookies, and began to savagely shovel the peanut butter rounds off into a white china bowl.
"Well, I didn't have to take that." She finished scraping cookies off and dumped the pan in the sink. "I could feel it out there. Waiting for me. All I had to do was accept it."
She reached into the refrigerator and took out a jug of milk. She lifted it in my direction. When I didn't reach for it, she shrugged and put it on the counter, got out a glass, and poured.
"It felt like I was dying," she said, and took a sip. "Like my soul was burning out. But then it stopped hurting, and it became something else. Something real. Something with a purpose."
"It's not purpose, Star. It's just suicide with a longer fuse."
She picked up a cookie and bit into it.
"Also a really big bang," she agreed. "You think that bothers me? I've been dying a long damn time."
"Looks like you're feeling pretty good to me."
"This?" She stroked her unmarked face. "Yeah. It healed me. But it doesn't stay, not unless I find a way to get the Mark back inside me. I can already feel myself getting slower. Older. Twisting inside."
"So why get rid of it?"
She slammed down the china bowl. "I didn't! All I tried to do was feed the Mark. I needed a Djinn."
Rahel had told me the truth, for once. "The book. Free-range Djinn, yours for the taking. You claim them, feed them to the Demon."
"Yeah." She gave me a bleak smile. "Should have been easy, you know? Only it wasn't. Because the minute I grabbed one, there was Lewis, showing up to smack my ass, and girl, he is one strong Warden. I thought he was gonna kill me."
I'd moved a step closer to her without even realizing it. I came to a stop, haunted by the fact that I'd always let my fondness for her blind me to just how selfish she really was.
"How'd he get the Mark?"
She glared. "He took it. I didn't give it to him. The stupid bastard said he was trying to help me. I didn't want his help!"
Her belligerent tone didn't go with the too-bright shine in her eyes. Pain in there. Deep, anguished self-loathing. She went back to scraping cookies off sheet pans, dumping them into a bowl with quick, nervous motions.
"Then let him go," I said. "You can't get the Mark back from him, you said so yourself. It goes from weaker to stronger. Nobody's stronger than Lewis. It's finished."
"No!" She almost screamed it at me, a raw physical outburst that sounded as if it scraped her throat bloody. "I'll get it back. I have to!"
"How?" I sounded so logical all of a sudden. So calm. Maybe it was just shock, but all I really felt for her in that moment was sheer, sad pity. She'd been so glorious, once. So selfless. Seeing the ruin of that . . . ached in ways that I'd never expected.
Her dark eyes looked blind behind the glitter of fury, but this time her voice came out soft, nearly controlled. "You gave me a way," she said. "I can't take the Mark from him, but your hot boyfriend Djinn can. And then I can order him to give it back to me. I can't make Lewis do shit, all he does is sits there and meditates, like he's thinking the damn thing to death. But I can make David do it."
Fear went solid and slick as glass in my throat. I tried to swallow the lump. "No, it doesn't work that way. If David takes the Mark he can't get rid of it. He'll be infested. Or worse." If her Mark was as mature as it sounded, it might just devour him instead. I'd seen a Demon hatch, before. I didn't want to ever see it again. "Give it up, Star. Please. Let me try to help, try to think of something . . ."