The Jeep's flare of brakes.
A blur of green. I couldn't even see what it was, but it came out of the underbrush on the left-hand side; suddenly the SUV was lifting, soaring up engine-first into the air as if it had been shot out of a cannon, corkscrewing-
"Shit!" Cherise yelped, and hit the gas hard. The Mustang screamed on wet pavement and whipped around the Jeep. I felt the shadow pass over us and looked up to see the shiny black roof of the SUV tumble lazily across the sky, close enough to reach up and touch, and then the back bumper hit the road behind us with a world-shaking crunch.
When it stopped rolling, it was a featureless tangle of metal.
Cherise braked, too hard, fishtailed the Mustang to a barely on-the-road stop, and Rahel's hands came away from my shoulders. It felt like there'd be bruises, later. I unbuckled my seat belt with shaking fingers and bailed out of the car to run back toward the wreckage.
I was halfway there, pelted by the cold rain, when the wreck blew apart in a fireball that knocked me flat and rolled me for ten painful feet. When I turned my head and got wet hair out of my eyes, I expected to see a Hollywood-style bonfire.
No. There was nothing much left to burn. Pieces of the SUV rained all over a hundred-foot area. A shredded tire smacked the pavement next to my outstretched hand, hot enough that I could feel its warmth; it was melted in places and sizzling in the rain.
Three people were standing in the road where the wreckage of the SUV had been.
No-I corrected myself. Two people, one Djinn. I could see the flare of his yellow eyes even at this distance.
There was a heat shimmer coming off the other two, both in the real world and in the aetheric, that made me shiver in a sudden flood of memories. They were still wearing skin, but Shirl and the other Warden with her were just shells for something else. Something worse.
I remembered the feeling of the Demon Mark hatching under my skin, and had to control an impulse to run. They're after Lewis. They'd be irresistibly drawn to power that way.
I hadn't come to fight Lewis's battles for him. I needed a Djinn, and Shirl had one. Clearly, she'd kept the bottle on her, and it remained miraculously unbroken. Yep, all I had to do now was fight two Wardens with Demon Marks, liberate a Djinn, avoid explaining any of it to Lewis, and...
... and not die.
Simple.
I hadn't had any doubt that it was Lewis driving the Jeep, but I'd forgotten about Kevin; the kid exited the passenger door and ran to my side. He reached down to pull me up to a sitting position.
"Shit, you're alive," he said. He sounded surprised.
"Sorry about that. I'll try to do better next time."
Since I was getting up anyway, he gave me a strong yank and steadied me when I went a little soft on the upright part of standing. He didn't say anything else.
His eyes were on the three facing us-or, actually, facing the Jeep.
Lewis stepped out of the driver's side, closed the door, and sent a quick glance toward me and Kevin. "Get them out of here," he said to Kevin. "Take the Mustang."
"I'm not going," I said. Lewis gave me the look, but he really didn't have time to argue because right then, the yellow-eyed Djinn came at him.
He wasn't fast enough to beat Rahel. The two met in midair, snarling and cutting at each other, and I felt the aetheric boiling and burning with the force of it.
The Djinn was trying to move the Jeep, roll it over on Lewis. Lewis didn't move.
Neither did the Jeep.
"If you're staying," Lewis said, "do me a favor and hang on to my truck a minute."
He sounded utterly normal, like this was all in a day's work for him. Hell, maybe it was. Lewis's life was probably a lot more unexpected than mine. I didn't understand what he was saying for a second, and then I felt him shift his attention, and the Jeep started to shiver.
I hardened the air around it, holding it in place, as Lewis walked forward to within ten feet of where the other two Wardens were standing. Shirl-punk-ass Shirl, with her black goth clothes and bad attitude-was looking pretty rough these days. Lank, greasy hair; dark shadows around her eyes that weren't so much affectation as exhaustion. Her skin was an unhealthy shade of pale, so thin I could see blue veins under her skin. The shimmer in her eyes was full of pain and rage and something else, something inhuman.
"Lewis," I warned. He stopped me with an outstretched hand. He knew the danger of Demon Marks as well as I did, maybe better. The thing inside Shirl would do anything to get into him, to have access to that huge lake of power.
"I can help you," he said to her. "Let me help you."
I wanted to yell No or, more appropriately, Are you insane? but that was Lewis, all right. His first impulse always had been to heal.
Shirl called up a two-handed fireball and slammed it straight into his chest. It hit, exploded, and spread over him like molten lava. Under normal circumstances, Lewis would have simply shaken it off-fire was one of his powers, of course, and he had a natural resistance to it-but this was demon-fueled, and a hell of a lot stronger than usual.
It dug deep into his skin. I saw him stagger, concentrate, and manage to clear it off, but it left blackened holes in his clothes and angry red marks on his skin that looked raw and painful. Before he could do more than take a breath, the other Warden called up the Earth, and I felt the ground shudder as a huge tree toppled, straight toward Lewis. Lewis managed to move, jumping forward, almost close enough to go toe-to-toe with the two fighting him.
Shirl slammed him again, a dazzling orange curtain of flames, and he staggered and fell. Vines whipped out of the underbrush and fastened around his ankles, snaking around his calves, pulling him flat. Before he could focus on fighting them, Shirl was on him again, leaping like a tiger, fireball at the ready.
I hit her with wind and tossed her a dozen feet down the road. "Do something!" I yelled at Kevin. He looked torn, and more than a little scared; I remembered that he'd already been in a dogfight with Shirl and her crew, and come out near death. Dammit. I couldn't blame the kid.
"No, Kevin! Stay out of it!" Lewis yelled, countermanding me, and the vines holding his ankles shriveled and he rolled up to his feet...
... just in time for Shirl to throw another fireball.
This time, he caught it. One-handed, a neat, graceful capture, and he juggled the hell-ball from one hand to the other as he watched Shirl approach. The other Warden was up and moving, too. Both stalking him.
"Dammit, Lewis-" I said.
"Nag me later."
One of the two Wardens must own the Djinn, and I was pretty sure it wasn't Shirl. That meant the other guy-the one who had the clever, off-kilter face and Canadian accent that I remembered from back on the beach-was the proud owner.
One of Shirl's running buddies.
One I needed to take down.
I shook free of Kevin and moved right. Shirl watched me with bright-glimmering eyes. I was more powerful than she was, and that meant the Demon would want to jump to me... but then again, Lewis was the most powerful guy in the world.
No way it would pass him up for me.
Unless, of course, it didn't mind doing a little hopscotching. I watched her carefully as I spiraled in closer to the other Warden.
"So," I said to him, "I don't think we've been properly introduced. Joanne Baldwin. Weather. You are... ?"
Pissed off, apparently. Because we were on an asphalt road, he couldn't do Marion Bearheart's favorite trick of softening the sand beneath my feet, but he had plenty of other stuff to work with. The area wasn't exactly denuded of life.
Sure enough, he found something. Something that sailed out of the dark and landed on the road with a raw growl, and padded into the glow of the headlights.
It was a cougar. Its long, lean body gleamed in the rain, and it had the most gorgeous green eyes I'd ever seen, large and liquid and pure animal power. It paced toward me with unnatural focus, and I could see its back legs tensing for a jump. Oh, yeah, that would keep me busy.
"Um... nice... kitty..." I took a step back, trying to figure out what I had in my arsenal, short of lightning bolts, that was likely to stop a predatory feline.
Nope. I had nothing.
There was a flare of fire, and Lewis was abruptly too busy to help-I felt the heat blaze over my skin, harsh enough to singe my hair. That left me, the cougar, and the Earth Warden.
"No fair, using endangered species," I said, and swallowed hard as the cat began to growl. It was watching me with fixed, hungry, empty eyes. "Seriously. Not good, man."
The cat jumped. I yelped and ducked and called for wind, which was a mistake because the intense fire being summoned up between Lewis and Shirl created updrafts and unpredictable wind shears and, instead of tossing the cat safely off to the side, it landed right on me and knocked me flat on the pavement.
Heavy as a man, warmer than one, smelling of wet fur and fury and blood, claws already digging into the soft flesh of my stomach and oh God...
I sucked the air out of its lungs. Just like that, faster than thought-I admit, I wasn't worried about doing it nicely. The cat choked, opened its mouth, and gagged for air, but it couldn't find any. I rolled. It scrabbled for balance, digging bloody furrows in my flesh. I called another gust of wind. This time, it cooperated, and knocked the big cat off of me onto its side. It rolled up immediately, gagging, head down, shaking in confusion.
"Sorry," I whispered, and swiped bloody hands across my face to drag my wet hair back. I didn't dare take too close a look at my body. The bottom part of my torso felt suspiciously warm and numb. At least my guts weren't falling out. I was counting my blessings.
I couldn't kill the cougar-evil people, yeah, okay, but not cats who were just doing their survival job-so I only had a few minutes at most to get rid of the one controlling it.
And he already had something else lined up. I caught the blur of motion out of the corner of my eye. There was no way I could move in time, and my brain snapshotted a snake-a big, unhappy-looking snake-striking for me with enormous fangs in a flat, triangular-shaped head as big as my hand.
Rahel caught it in midstrike, thumped its head with one neon-polished fingernail, and the snake went limp in her hands. She looked perfectly well groomed. There was no sign she'd been in any kind of a fight, and I didn't see the other Djinn anywhere.
"You should be more careful," she said-to the snake-and set him down in the underbrush. He crawled away with fast convulsions of his body and disappeared in seconds.
Rahel turned her eerie, hawk gold eyes on the Earth Warden, and smiled. Not the kind of smile you'd want to get on your worst day, believe me.
The Earth Warden took a giant step back.
"Djinn are killing Wardens," she said. Again, it might have been a comment to me ... or not. "I don't altogether find this distressing."
"Good thing for me that I'm not a Warden anymore, then," I said. "Busy?"
"Not especially."
"Don't need to, ah, help Lewis... ?"
Her eyes flicked briefly to the enormous fireball that surrounded the other two.
Inside of it, it looked as though Lewis had Shirl in a choke hold. "I don't believe that will be necessary."
"Then would you mind-?"
"Not at all."
The Earth Warden's nerve failed and he bolted. Rahel took him down with one neat jump, carrying him down to the shining, wet pavement, and shoved him flat with a knee in the small of his back. He flailed. It didn't much matter.
"You can let the cougar go now," she called back to me. "It won't harm you."
Oh, right, easy for her to say... I removed the vacuum from around the cat, and it choked in a fast breath, then another, and bounded up and away. Following the path of the snake. I wished them both luck.
Speaking of which... I skinned up my shirt and traced the wounds in my stomach with my fingertips. Blood sheeted wetly down, pink in the rain, but it looked pretty superficial. No guts poking out. Some prime scar material, though.
I gulped damp air and tried not to think how close I'd come to being cat chow, and then moved to where Rahel had the Warden in a position of utter helplessness.
I got down on one knee, which was painful, and he turned his head to stare at me. Yep, there was a definite component of demon-shimmer in his eyes. I didn't know if anyone else could have seen it; I was a pretty unique case, having had the Demon Mark and Djinn experiences. It looked like he was in the early stages.
Probably wasn't even aware yet how the creature growing inside of him under that mark would be influencing his actions, compromising his judgment.
Eating his power even as it stoked the fire and made him feel more in control.
I couldn't help him with that. He had to help himself, and I was about to take away his only way to do that.
"Hold him," I said to Rahel. She shifted her weight off the man, but kept him flat with one hand between his shoulder blades.
"Let go!" he yelled. I ignored him and stuck my hand in his right coat pocket.
Nothing. The left held a ring of keys. I dropped them on the ground.
"Roll him over," I said. The Djinn took one arm and flipped him like a pancake, and this time held him down with her palm on his forehead. Paralyzed. She flicked me a look, and I read unease in it. She reached over and sliced open his shirt with one taloned finger, and folded the cloth back to show me the black, slow-moving tattoo of the Demon Mark.
He started screaming. Whatever she was doing to hold him down, the demon didn't like it. His whole body arched in pain, and Rahel's face went blank with concentration.
I ransacked his pants pockets and came up with-of all things-one of those cheap leather lipstick cases, the stiff kind exported from India or China that snap open and have a mirror built in for touchups. No lipstick inside of this one.
This one held some cotton batting and a small perfume sample bottle, open and empty. The plastic snap-in plug was lying next to it.
I reached in and grabbed the cool glass, and felt the world shift in that odd, indefinable way, as if gravity had suddenly taken a left turn.
A Djinn misted out of the dark, staring at me. It began forming into a new appearance, and I realized that I didn't want to see what effect my subconscious was going to have on it (please, God, don't let it look like David...). I folded it in my fist and said, "Back in the bottle."
It disappeared. I took the plug from the cotton in the lipstick case and slid it home in the mouth of the bottle, and felt that connection cut out, except for a low-level hum. Not nearly as strong as David, this one, but then it didn't really matter.
Rahel was watching me with a frown. It's not good when Djinn frown. In general, Djinn shouldn't be annoyed.
"I thought you didn't believe in slavery," she said. Her cornrows rustled as she cocked her head, and I heard the cold click of beads even over the continuing pounding rain. "Ah. Unless, of course, it's expedient. How human of you."
"Shut up," I said. "And thanks for saving my life."
She shrugged. "I haven't yet."
And she let go of the Earth Warden.
He came up fast and fighting, and we went back to work.
The aftermath was like a war zone, if war zones had spectator sections. The wrecked SUV still smoldered and belched smoke; the whole damn road was buckled and uneven and burned down to the gravel in places. There would be some serious repaving later.
The spectator section was composed of Cherise and Kevin and Rahel, who were over by the Mustang. Cherise and Kevin were sitting on the trunk, huddled together under a yellow rain poncho held like a tent. Rahel paced back and forth, oblivious to the rain, casting looks out to the east, toward the ocean. Her eyes were glowing so brightly that they were like miniature suns.
Shirl and the Earth Warden-I still didn't know his name-were unconscious in the Jeep, restrained with good old-fashioned duct tape. Lewis had also done some fancy Earth-power thing that lowered their metabolisms. He could keep them in a sleep state for hours, maybe days, if he didn't have better things to do.
Lewis and I were leaning against the Jeep, gasping for air and trying not to moan. Much.