Firestorm (28 page)

Not good news. Ashan was a force to be reckoned with, even by David's standards, much less by my own. And with a small army of immortal, arrogant, angry beings…twenty was more than enough to destroy everything in his path.

“I think Ashan's counting on you to give up, actually.”

“I can't fight him.”

“Can't—or won't? That was Jonathan's problem. I thought part of the reason he handed things to you was so that you'd be able to…act.”

He looked so grave that it chilled the lingering warmth inside me. I slipped off to the side and curled against him; his arm went around me, holding me close.

“I need time,” he said. “I need
time
, Jo. What you're talking about is the beginning of the end for us. It's what Jonathan was afraid of all along. War. Death. Destruction. I'm not…” He hesitated. “I'm not ready. I'm not sure I can be what he was. Ever.”

“So you're willing to let humans take the heat for you in the meantime while you debate it?”

His hand, which had been stroking my hair, went still. His eyes closed.

“Yes,” he said softly. “I have to be willing to do that. And so do you. Listen, Jo—you spoke to the Oracle. That's unprecedented. You might have succeeded if the Oracle hadn't been—prevented—”

“Infected.”

“Yes,” he said, and kissed my bare shoulder. “So we try again. We keep trying. And if it comes to a fight with Ashan, I'll do everything in my power to end it with a minimum of bloodshed.”

I rolled up on my elbow, looking down at him. “Human bloodshed? Or are you talking about the Djinn?”

He regarded me with absolute steadiness, and there was that shadow in his eyes, the same one that had been in Jonathan's before him. Power. Vast and unknown power. “I have to be true to my responsibilities, Jo. But you're one of those responsibilities now.”

“I know,” I said, and put my hand on his chest, over his heart. Not really a heart, of course; not really flesh, except by his will. I was touching fire. Touching eternity. “We're just flying by the seat of our pants, aren't we? But then, we've done that from the first moment we saw each other.”

“Yes.” His burning lips pressed on my forehead for a brief second. “It's like your forest fire. The old world is burning. It's hard to see the new one that's coming, under all the destruction, but the green always comes, Jo. It always comes.” He kissed my shoulder again, making a slow trail along my collarbone. “Imara and Sarah's flight touched down in Phoenix without incident, by the way. Safe and sound. Imara's taking Sarah to the Ma'at.”

“Sarah in Vegas,” I sighed. “I'm not sure that's such a great idea….”

“I was thinking the same thing about Imara. I remember how much trouble
you
got into there.”

“Maybe you'd better keep the kid someplace safe,” I said morosely. “Ashan's going to target her to get to us.”

“I know he'll try.”

“But?”

“But that isn't likely to work,” David said calmly. “First, like you, she's too unpredictable. He's never going to understand her well enough to use her. Second…I won't let him touch my daughter again.”

I shivered. Ashan didn't know it, but he was playing catch with a grenade if he crossed David on that one.

I kissed him with wordless agreement, and he held me, and for the moment, these precious few moments, danger was something that existed outside of the safety of this still, quiet room, and the warmth of this bed.

And wrapped in his warmth, even though urgency still beat war drums in my blood, I slept.

 

Morning came with a boom of thunder, and I awoke to feel things spiraling out of control again. I stayed in bed and rose up into the aetheric, struggling to keep the reins on the weather, but it was wild and getting worse.

“We should go,” David said. I didn't want to. Being under soft sheets with him, cupped warm against his heat, was the best heaven I could imagine. “The first flight to Phoenix is in three hours.”

“I don't think anything's flying out of town today,” I said. “Feel the sky.”

He was already moving, sliding off the bed and standing up naked, facing away from me. I watched as he formed clothing.

He turned to face me, pulling his olive drab coat into place on his shoulders. “It's only going to get worse.” An infinity of regret in the words. I couldn't read his eyes; they were human, and hidden behind glasses and shadows. “We'll have to find a way.”

I sighed and looked around. My clothes were neatly folded on the chair next to the bed. I began pulling things on. “So the Oracle is in Phoenix?”

“Not exactly.” He pulled open the drawer in the small desk and took out the slender phone book. At a tap of his finger, it turned into a road atlas. He flipped pages, then handed it to me.

I glanced at it, blinked, and looked at him in exasperation. “You're kidding.”

“No.”

“Please tell me you're kidding.”

“I'm not.” He tapped the open map with his forefinger. A spot lit up, golden even in the glow of the lamp. “I don't make the rules, Jo. This is where the second Oracle can be reached.”

Because the map was of Arizona, all right, but the city that was marked was Sedona. Why had I ever even doubted that sometime, somewhere, I'd have to go there?

“What's so funny?” he asked, frowning. I shook my head, laughing until spots danced in front of my eyes. Waved my hand ineffectively. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” I gasped. “It's just…so New Age-y. What do we do? Meditate in a pyramid? Wear a crystal hat?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh, come on. Sedona?”

He shrugged. “The veil's thinnest there.”

Well, it would be, wouldn't it?

 

David wanted to head straight for the airport. I wanted to stop for breakfast. It was the worst decision of my life. But even before breakfast, we had a fight about the car.

It started innocently enough. We waited for a letup in the rain. Outside, the air was cooler, cleaner, felt more alive, somehow, because of David's presence. I thought it was my imagination at first, but then I wasn't so sure; it seemed as if the flowers out front of the hotel got brighter, opened wider in his presence. Another sign of his strength and connection to the heart of the Earth.

Or of really great sex.

The Camaro was wedged in between a giant-tired Ford pickup and a van the size of the space shuttle.

David stopped a few feet from the car, looking at it with an expression I couldn't read. “This is from Lewis, isn't it,” he said. Uh-oh. I unlocked the passenger door for him, then went around to my side.

“Official transportation,” I said, since I didn't want to think about how deeply obligated I was to Lewis right now. “Warden motor pool.”

He sent me a
drop the bullshit
look, opened the door, and slid inside. I did the same. “Expensive gift.”

“Yes.” I slid the key into the ignition and fired her up. David ran a contemplative fingertip over the dashboard, seeing who-knew-what with his Djinn senses. “It's fast. I needed a fast car. It wasn't personal.”

“Oh, yes it is,” he disagreed. “This is a
very
personal car. A very personal gift.”

“David—”

“You can't see it,” he said. “You would have, when you were Djinn, but he's in love with you. He's been in love with you for a long, long time. It's all over this car, his feelings for you.”

Oh, dear. It wasn't so much that I didn't see it as I didn't
want
to see it. I'd been careful around Lewis. Not careful enough.

“Well, fine, but I'm not in love with him,” I said, and put the car in gear.

“You are,” David said. There was a hard edge to his voice I couldn't understand. “Don't lie to yourself.”

I felt that, all right. It hurt. “David, I'm
not
in love with Lewis!” Except maybe I was. A little. A teeny little traitorous bit of me that still remembered the crush I'd had on him back in the day. And liked it when he crinkled those brown eyes at me and smiled so charmingly. And gave me sexy cars. “I'm
not
! I'm in love with you! Dammit, why are we fighting?”

“Because he gave you a car, and you took it.”

“I
needed
the goddamn car, David! What was I supposed to do, get Cherise to chauffeur me around to the apocalypse? Don't get me wrong, she'd do it, but it's not exactly the best idea ever!”

He set his jaw and looked out the window. I slammed the car into gear with violence unnecessary to such a sweet ride. “You don't have to worry. I'm not sleeping with Lewis.”

“No,” he agreed. “You're not. But you have.”

Oh, ouch. I'd never directly discussed that with him, but I wasn't too surprised that he knew about it. Hard to hide anything from the Badass Head Djinn.

“Can we get over this now? Because frankly, after last night, there's nobody on this earth that I could possibly sleep with except you.”

His eyebrows quirked. “Only last night?”

“Oh, you're pushing it, pal.”

He let it go. “You said you wanted breakfast.” He nodded up ahead. There was a huge sign, rotating with dignified deliberation, showed a tasty-looking artist's rendition of a blueberry pie and announced that
LOUANN'S PIE KITCHEN
was open for breakfast.

I saw no reason that pie didn't qualify as breakfast food, anyway.

The parking lot was half full, which wasn't bad for the oh-my-God hour of the morning; apparently, the place was something of a favored watering hole. It was pouring rain, and the Camaro hadn't come equipped with either rain slickers or umbrellas. I formed an invisible-air version as David and I walked across the wet pavement toward the entrance to the restaurant, represented by double glass doors in a weather-beaten glass-and-wood oversize log cabin structure. Someone—Louann, maybe, if she wasn't apocryphal—had planted a wide variety of flowers around the building in creative tiers of planters. It looked lush and rather sweet. I ducked under the green awning that sheltered the doorway and swung open the door.

When I did, I glanced back and caught sight of David standing rigid, staring off into the distance. “What is it?” I asked. He left me and went out to stand in the rain, still staring. “David?”

“Just a second.”

“What's happening?”

“Don't know,” he said. “Hang on.”

And he disappeared. I hesitated. I didn't want to go in, if there were innocent bystanders around; the Djinn wouldn't care how many bodies they had to go through to get to me, if it was me they wanted….

David reappeared, misting out of the air in midstride. He headed straight for me, grabbed me by the neck of my shirt, and marched me inside.

The door slammed shut behind us and locked. And sealed, in some way that I was not immediately familiar with; my ears popped as if we'd suddenly shot up a few hundred feet. David kept hustling me along.

“Hey!” I protested. It dawned on me about three steps later that something was very, very wrong at Louann's Pie Kitchen.

There was nobody inside.

I blinked. The lights were on, but nobody—and I mean
nobody
—was home. Empty kitchen. Empty lunch counter with pots of coffee steaming on burners. Empty booths and tables. Not a sound of human habitation anywhere. I had an ugly second of memory of some crime documentary I'd once seen, about customers and employees herded into a back room and shot, but in that case there'd be some sign, right? Purses left lying around. Chairs tipped over. Maybe even blood…This looked perfectly ordered, just…empty.

Maybe I was going crazy. Maybe David hadn't been as thorough as he'd thought in cleaning the drugs out of my system, and I was hallucinating. Maybe all of this was a dream. Maybe everything since Eamon had given me the shot had been a dream.

David let go and pushed me into a dull-green leatherette booth, then slid into the other side, facing me.

Oh, bad feelings. Very bad feelings. A fork of lightning suddenly split the clouds outside and cast a harsh white illumination that blanched the warm, homey atmosphere.

And in the flash of lightning, David changed. His body filled out, with broader shoulders, whiter skin. He folded his hands on the table, pale and strong.

When the transformation finished, I was sitting across from Ashan, in his trademark tailored suit. His teal-blue tie looked natty and perfectly tied, his shirt crisp.

When had he taken David's place? Oh
God
, not in the hotel…No, that was impossible. Afterward, in the parking lot? Or just now, outside? I had to believe it was just outside the door of this place, and that David had been lured away to give Ashan this chance at me.

I debated my choices. I could either die facing Ashan, or die running away.

I didn't run.

And oddly enough, he didn't kill me. At least, not right off.

“Hungry?” Ashan asked blandly. “I recommend the strawberry pie.”

He looked down, and he did, indeed, have a plate in front of him with a slice of strawberry pie. The brilliantly red filling was oozing out over the plate like blood over bone. He picked up his fork and took a bite, then took a sip of coffee from a chunky café-style cup.

I might mention that each of these things—the plate, the pie, the fork, the cup—appeared just as he reached for them. A flagrant and unnecessary display of his powers, just for my benefit.

“Where's David?”

“Occupied. I'm sure he'll be back soon,” he said smoothly. “Sure you're not hungry? It may be your last meal.”

I smiled. It felt wrong on my lips, but I hoped it would be good enough to pass his inspection. “Sure. Mind if I serve myself?”