"Ashan," I gasped, and spat out a mouthful of sticky dirt. "He's out there. Go get him."
I couldn't tell if she knew what I was saying, or if she sensed his presence, but she let out a shriek that vibrated at the very limits of my hearing, and disappeared.
Seconds later the dust devil collapsed in a confusion of sand and clattering license plates, barbed wire, and pieces of broken brush. Its demise left drifts of brown sand and chips of red sandstone littering the road in concentric circles around me.
I dropped the shield and spent the next several seconds just breathing
. My whole body was shaking with effort, and sitting down seemed to be the only thing to do, really.
Down the road, about a hundred yards away, Ashan was screaming. Venna had battened on him, and sunk sharp, angular spikes into his pseudobody. When he tried to mist away, she only consumed faster.
I coughed and tasted blood. The bottle was in my hand, and the cork was dangling, ready to be slammed back in place. All I had to do was recall Venna before it was too late.
Ashan screamed, and screamed, and screamed, and I didn't call Venna back to the bottle until his pale, shrieking face had dissolved into bloody mist, and had been absorbed into her twisted, nightmarish alien form.
It broke up into mist, too--black, greasy mist that turned gray, then white, and reformed around the body of a small girl in a pinafore dress, crumpled on the pavement.
"Venna!" I could barely stand, but somehow I managed to run to her side. Her eyes were open and blank. I touched her face, and she felt cold. "Venna, can you hear me?" I wasn't sure that she would be stable in this form; sometimes Ifrits used up their energy and reverted to the primitive form.
But not Venna. She lay there, broken and defenseless, and when I saw her finally blink it brought tears to my eyes.
She didn't get up. I pulled her into my lap and held her, and she felt like a child, like any child. Her arms slowly rose and went around me, and I felt her body start to shake.
I realized after a few more seconds that she was speaking, very softly. Her voice was a thin, anxious thread. "I didn't want this. He was my brother; I didn't want this... ."
Ashan was dead, killed in one of the only ways possible for a Djinn. She'd ripped away his life energy to save herself, and--as a byproduct--me. I couldn't feel nearly as bad about that as she did, but I didn't have to gloat, and I didn't. I just held her and rocked her gently. Even Djinn need help, from time to time, and I was glad to give it.
Until I looked back, and saw more chimeras coming.
"Ven," I said then, and nudged her head off my shoulder. "Venna
."
Her eyes cleared a little, and she regained some of the distance and poise that I was used to seeing in her. "Joanne," she said. "You put me in a bottle." That was a dangerous thing for her to be realizing right now.
"I had to," I said. "You were Ifrit. You could have killed David."
She nodded slowly, processing the information, and then turned her head to look at the oncoming group of chimeras scuttling up the road toward us. She frowned. "Those aren't right," she said, and extended her hand. One by one, the creatures blew up in gouts of blood and some kind of pale fluid. It was nauseating, but effective. In seconds, not one of them remained.
Venna turned her gaze back on me. "You put me in a bottle." I didn't repeat my answer; she already knew what I had to say. The only question was whether she'd actually accept it. I knew I could blow up just as gruesomely, and as easily, as those chimeras littering the road out there, and I knew better than to think Venna wouldn't do it, if she thought it was the right thing to do.
She stared at me with Djinn-fired blue eyes, and finally said, "His powers came to me. I'm the Conduit for the Old Djinn."
I should have seen that coming, but somehow, I didn't. I blinked at her, and bit back an automatic, and utterly suicidal, congratulations.
"I'm sorry," I said instead. "I had to do something."
"Yes," she said, and looked moodily out at the land around us. "Yes, I can see that. She's trying to reach me, but she can't as long as you have me anchored in the bottle. My power flows through you."
"Venna--"
She made some kind of decision, and stood up. I waited as she dusted off her dress--not that it would ever get dirty. She could just be moving away so that she wouldn't be splashed with my gore when she exploded me.
Yeah, I try to look on the bright side.
"Are you going to sit there?" she said. "Or do you want to see Lewis?"
"I want to know what happened to David," I said. "Something must have. He would have come back for me."
"Yes," she agreed. "That's in his nature. Come." She extended her small hand, and pulled me to my feet with such ease she might as well have been a linebacker. When I started to drop the grip, she held on.
"We're going through the aetheric," she said.
"Wait, that's not--"
"Trust me."
And then everything was a rush of color, light, a feeling of being destroyed to a cellular level, pain
, and then, suddenly, I was facedown on the carpet of a casino floor, gasping for breath.
Slot machines were ringing, just like the world was still normal. Just like everything that I'd been through had been a terrible, passing nightmare.
I felt like a sack of overcooked spaghetti, and I wasn't sure I could get to my feet at all, but Venna tugged me back upright. She gave me a long, level look and said, "You should put me back in the bottle now. The longer I'm out, the more of your energy I burn. You can't afford it now."
I cleared my throat and nodded. "Thank you."
"There will be a price," she said coolly.
That was positively chilling, but I tried not to let her see how much that got to me as I said the words, she misted away, and I capped the bottle firmly. She was right. The second the cork slotted in place, I felt better, stronger, and almost capable of standing on my own. But, since there was a handy wall to lean on, no sense in pushing it.
I heard the metallic rattle of guns being readied, and peered around to see a line of men and women facing me with serious weaponry, and even more serious expressions. Most of them were wearing the tailored blazers of security for the Luxor hotel.
All of them were Ma'at, and I could feel the shields being readied against anything I might try to throw at them.
I was too tired for this crap. I held out my fingers in a peace sign--which was one more finger than I was inclined to show them--and said, "Take me to Lewis."
Venna hadn't answered me about what had happened to David, but Djinn were like that.
Lewis would answer, or I'd beat it the hell out of him with my bare hands.
Chapter Eleven
They took me out of the casino area--most of the dedicated players hadn't paid a bit of attention to the sudden show of firepower--and hustled me through a maze of corridors to a salon prive on the second floor. It had the hushed, elegant vibe of a place where only the highest of high rollers was hosted.
The Ma'at guards opened the door--some kind of biometrics--and pushed me inside before closing it after me. It was a large room, and under normal circumstances it would have been exquisitely appointed, but the Wardens had no time for that nonsense, clearly.
Expensive antiques had been shoved like driftwood into corners. A round mahogany table that would have caused those Antiques Roadshow
guys to weep had been unceremoniously loaded down with files, computers, and satellite phones. There were folding tables set up with coffee and food, and cots--mostly full of sleeping people--crammed in at every angle possible. The clear space that was left was where the Wardens were working.
I saw Luis and Cassiel, and made straight for them. "What the hell happened to David?" I yelled. That got almost everyone's attention in the room, even the sleeping ones. I shoved cots out of my way, creating a logjam effect, and scrambled over people to land in front of Cassiel. "He was with you! Where is he?"
She said nothing, but she looked sideways at a tall man pushing his way through the crowd.
I didn't even have to look at him to know who it was--the subdued tingle of his powers was unmistakable against mine.
Lewis.
He grabbed me and hugged me fiercely, which would have normally been nice, but right now I wasn't interested in anyone comforting me. I wanted answers.
The words died in my throat when I focused on his face. He looked terrible, worse than I'd ever seen him. Ages older than he'd been when we'd parted back in Miami.
He was tearing himself apart.
From the look on his face, I wasn't in much better shape. I pushed all that aside, grabbed him by the collar of his rumpled, days-old shirt, and said, "Where is he?"
Lewis closed his long fingers over mine, but he didn't try to take my hands off him. "He's all right," he said. "Jo, I'm sorry. I couldn't let him leave again. I couldn't take the risk.
Ashan is out there--"
"Not anymore," I said. "Ashan's gone. Venna's the Conduit now."
That made him pause, but only for a second. "How--Never mind. It's good that he's gone.
He was poisoning her view of us. Maybe Venna can--"
"I can't let her go," I interrupted. "Lewis, if I do, she'll be as bad as the others. She's probably more powerful than Ashan, and if she gets thrown at us again ..." I couldn't think of words to describe how bad that would be. Ashan had been bad enough, but having Venna bent on destroying us ...
He gazed down at me for a long while, and then said, "Come with me."
I let go of his collar. There was something in the quiet, almost miserable way he said it that made me gulp; I didn't want to see Lewis feel beaten. He'd always been the one who just didn't give up. He cheated, he schemed, he lied, he manipulated--but he didn't give up.
If he did now, I didn't think I could bear it at all.
He took my hand and led me past the silent Wardens. There were only thirty or so in the room, and half of those were wounded, some badly. I stopped to touch a few hands.
Nobody had anything to say. I saw the same beaten weariness in every face. Well, maybe not Cassiel's, but she was always the exception. That would require she actually gave a crap.
Lewis led me into a side room--probably some fancy sitting room where countries were bought and sold, never mind companies. It was empty and still. The air conditioning blew on my face and reminded me of the hot stinging spots that remained on my neck, arm, and leg.
Ow.
He shut the door and turned to face me.
"You left me to die," I said. "Didn't you?"
"Jo, I couldn't risk it. We need David here, and there were no guarantees that we wouldn't lose you both. Rahel told me how bad it was out there, and I put him back in the bottle."
That raised the hair on the back of my neck, and I knew my posture shifted into something that was a hairbreadth short of attack. "You put David back in the bottle. You stopped him from coming to me."
"Yes. I got it from Cassiel. Don't blame her. I didn't give her a choice, and she didn't know why I was asking."
Screw that. Cassiel had known. Deep down, I
had known, too. I'd felt it, I just hadn't wanted to admit it.
Lewis was still talking. I struggled to hear him over the angry buzz in my ears. "Jo, I trusted you. I believed you'd find a way, and you did."
"No," I said. "You left me to die, and you didn't see that out there, Lewis. You didn't see what was going to tear me apart!"
He didn't answer that. I understood the misery, now. He really had stood there at that table and made the cold-blooded decision to pull my rescue party, and consolidate his resources.
And leave me trapped and alone.
"Enough," I said. "Enough.
If this is what it takes to win, fuck it, I don't want to win anymore. Give me David's bottle."
"What are you going to do with it?"
"I won't break it, if that's what you're worrying about," I snapped. I felt that I hardly knew this man anymore, even though I'd spent half of my life thinking of him, loving him just enough to be able to not let go. "I want my husband, and I want to leave."
"And go where? Do what? Jo, this is the end
! There's nowhere to run! She's hunting us down, all the Wardens, everywhere. Most of us are already gone, for God's sake. Did you see them out there? We're dying!
And when we're gone, everyone else dies. Maybe it'll take a few more days, maybe a week, but in the end, she won't let a single human stay alive. I know that. I feel that!" Tears suddenly welled in Lewis's eyes and spilled down his face, and he just--folded up, as if I'd gut-punched him. No, as if a Djinn had gut-punched him. I realized how tired he was, how shaky, as he sank to his knees on that fine Aubusson carpet. Funny how the wine red color looked like blood, as if he had--like me, back in the plant in Amarillo--already spilled every drop he had to give. "I've tried everything. Everything. And they keep coming, killing, destroying. Imara won't let us near her. The Air Oracle is destroying entire islands
out there. The Fire Oracle--"
I knew about the Fire Oracle; I'd seen it in my dream. As angry as I was, his horror and grief struck me, and I sank down to a crouch across from him. He was weeping uncontrollably, the tears of a man stretched too far, asked for too much.
"Listen to me," I said, and reached out to tilt his chin up. He swiped at his face, angry with himself but still unable to stop. He was one step from a complete breakdown, and I could see it in him. "Listen. I know it seems hopeless. I know you think there's nothing more we can do. But we can.