Heat Stroke (8 page)

David had eased himself down to a sitting position on the edge of a brown sofa with worn spots on the arms. He held the beer between his palms, rolling the bottle slowly back and forth, and now he glanced at me and I saw something unsettling in his eyes.

It might have been fear.

“Jonathan,” David said.

“David. Glad we're still on a first-name basis,” Jonathan replied, with a half-inch nod that conveyed
nothing. His eyes flicked to me, then away, so brief you couldn't even call it a look. “You. Sit your ass down.”

I did, feeling gawkish and stupid and so much like an intruder it stung. There was something between these two; it was so powerful that it warped space around them, tingled in my skin like electric shock. Love? Hate? Bitterness? Maybe it was all that. Certainly it wasn't a passing acquaintance. It had the ancient feel of something long-term and deep as the ocean.

Jonathan took a swig of beer. “Well, she's pretty,” he said to David, and jerked his head at me. “You always did like the dark-haired ones.”

David raised his eyebrows. “Is this the part where you try to embarrass me in front of her?”

“Enjoy it. This is as fun as it's likely to get.”

The fire popped like a gunshot. Neither of them flinched. They were locked into a staring contest. David finally said, “Okay. I'm only here as a courtesy. Tell me what was important enough to send Rahel around after me like your personal sheepdog.”

“Well, you don't call, you don't write . . . and you're offended on Rahel's behalf? That's new.” Jonathan waved it away, tipped his bottle again and swallowed. “You know what's so important. I've never seen you do anything so . . . incredibly, brainlessly stupid. And hey. That's saying something.”

God, it all looked so
real.
I knew that the room around me had to be stage dressing, built out of Jonathan's power, but it felt utterly right. The pop and shimmer of the fire in the hearth. The woodsy smell of smoke and aftershave. The texture of the slightly
rough couch fabric under my fingers. There was even frost on the windowpanes, and a localized chill from that direction—it was winter here, deep winter. I wondered if that was any indication of his mood.

David said lightly, “You're keeping score of my screwups? Must get boring for you down here, all by yourself. But then that's your choice, isn't it? Being alone.”

A flash came and went fast in Jonathan's eyes, and sparked something in response in David. Silent communication, and very powerful. Ah. Whatever was between these two wasn't hate. It looked a lot—uncomfortably—like love.

Jonathan let that flash of emotion fade into a still, empty silence, set his beer aside, and leaned forward with his hands clasped. “Don't try to change the subject. What you did wasn't just selfish, it was nuts. You put us in danger.” Jonathan's eyes were changing color, and I looked down, fast. I knew, without anybody telling me, that it wasn't safe to be facing that particular stare. His voice went quiet and iron hard. “Do I really have to tell you how serious this is?”

“No,” David said. “Let's just get on with it.”

“You want to at least explain to me why you did it?”

David's voice was warm, intimate, almost compassionate. “Jonathan, I don't have to explain a damn thing. You already know everything I'm going to say. You always have.”

“Not true. You were always full of surprises.”

“Good ones, occasionally. Maybe this will be one of them.”

“Oh, you'd
so
better hope.”

It was a very heavy silence that followed. I listened to the crack and pop of logs on the fire and focused on the smooth pebbled leather of my skirt.
Eyes down. Mouth shut.
I could do that.

Jonathan sighed and stirred. “You gonna drink that beer or what?”

“No. You know I hate the stuff.” David held out the untouched bottle.

Jonathan leaned across the empty space and took it. “How about you, Snow White? You drinking?” He was talking to me. I'd almost forgotten about the sweating cold Killian's in my hand, except as something to hold on to; I took a fast, mute sip and glanced up.

Mistake. He was staring at me. I fell into those eyes, like Jonathan had his own dark gravity, and for a few seconds I
knew
him. Old. Wise. Limitlessly powerful. Funny. Sarcastic. Cold. Merciless. Sentimental. Sad. Lonely. I could see history stretching back to a dizzying distance, just a blur of days . . .

But the door swung both ways.

I knew him.

He knew me, too.

There was nothing,
nothing
he didn't touch inside of me, and yet it wasn't like the raping intrusion you'd think. I had the sense of compassion, of amusement, and a kind of strange gentleness as he gathered me in, learned me, lived in me.

“Jonathan! Dammit, stop!” I heard David's shout, but it was too far, too far to travel to answer. Was it possible to be consumed like that, and still be whole? I felt like I was unraveling, spreading thinner,
thinner . . . there was no pain, but a vast sense of
becoming . . .

Something sliced across that connection like the blade of a knife, and I felt the bottle in my fingers sliding free, out of control, heading in frozen ticks of time for the floor.

David caught me as I fell. I heard the bottle hit the floor. Every nerve in my body fired as if a bolt of lightning hissed up from the ground, down from the clouds, caught me in its current and burned me into nothing.

The bottle shouldn't have broken, but it did, it shattered into a million glittering pieces. I felt myself breaking, too.

I heard Jonathan say, “You should know better, David.” He was still sitting on the couch at ease, watching the two of us. “They're too fragile. You're working with flawed material. Talk about your lost causes—”

“Leave her alone!” David yelled. He lifted me in his arms, and I felt the solid weight of him, the flaring pale beauty of fire reaching out to wrap me close. “Jonathan, please
stop
!”

“No.
You
stop me.” Jonathan wasn't just a guy on a couch now, he was more than that, he was a vast power moving through the aetheric, a shadow on the wind, a storm on the air. “C'mon, David. Stop me. It's easy, you've done it a thousand times. No big deal.”

I was . . . unraveling. Breaking apart. Being subsumed into something vast and unknown and deep as space, sweet as pure cold mountain air . . .

I felt David grabbing for me on the aetheric,
struggling to hang on, but it was like trying to hold sand in the wind.

Stop me,
Jonathan said, in the aetheric, in the world, in that other place I couldn't even name yet.
Come on, David. Just do it.

“I can't!” David's raw scream of rage sounded torn out of him with pliers. “Jonathan, I'm begging you,
please stop
!”

And Jonathan let go. I fell back into flesh, into David's arms, into pain. Oh,
God,
that hurt. Everything too bright, too sharp, too cold, too hot. For a few aching seconds I wanted to go back to that place where Jonathan had taken me, the place on the edge of nothing. I wanted oblivion with an intensity that scared me.

Jonathan picked up a beer bottle and took a long, throat-working gulp, put the empty down, and sat back with his arms crossed. Looking at the two of us. I couldn't tell anything at all from his expression. Had all of that, all of
me
meant anything to him at all?

“So, did you tell her?” he asked. No answer from David, but I could feel the trembling of his muscles. “Of course you didn't. Look—what's your name? Joanne?—Djinn live by rules, and one of the rules is that humans die while we go on. Like it or not, there's nothing we can do about that.” His dark, dark eyes moved to David's face. “We can't create energy, all we can do is translate it from one form to another. The demons that killed you ate the energy that kept you alive, and you died. So David stole life energy from another source to bring you back.”

David let me slide down to stand on my feet, but
he kept a hand on my arm, steadying me. I felt sick, lightheaded. “What?” I whispered.

Jonathan sighed. “He stole life energy and gave it to you.”

“Stole it?”
Oh, God, don't tell me he killed someone else. Don't tell me that.

Jonathan's eyes flicked past me to David, who said, “I didn't steal it. I took it. From myself.”

Jonathan nodded. “Yeah. David ripped out half of his life and gave it to you. Which means . . . what exactly does that mean, David? Enlighten us.”

“Nothing.”

Jonathan rolled his eyes, reached for David's untouched beer, and took a swig. “You know, you've got one hell of a martyr thing going, maybe you ought to drop by and try it out on the pope.
Nothing.
Bullshit. You're committing suicide by girl.”

David cut in, sounding very reasonable. Too reasonable; I could feel the wire-fine tension still singing in his muscles. “You're overstating things, Jonathan. I'm not committing suicide. So I went from the second most powerful free Djinn to a middle-ranked spear-carrier. So what?”

“Oh, for crying out loud . . .
so what
?” Jonathan squinted, rubbed his forehead, and stood up to pace. Back and forth, restless energy crackling like the fire that wasn't really burning in the fireplace, on creaky floorboards that didn't really exist in any way that humans could understand. “That's like saying giving Albert Einstein a lobotomy wouldn't matter because he still had a pulse.
We need you.
And we need you full strength.
We're at war, David!
I have to remind you of that?”

David didn't answer. His hand on my arm was tight enough to hurt.

Jonathan stopped pacing to stand right in front of me, glaring. “What David did was about as smart as ripping his heart out with his bare hands and calling it organ donation. It's
possible
to do what he did. It's just pathetically stupid.”

“I'm fine,” David said.

“You're
not
!” He rounded on him and leveled a finger at David's face. “Don't even start with me. You're bleeding energy all the hell over the place. You tell me . . . can you stop it? Or are you just going to bleed yourself dry to keep her alive? It's like trying to fill a dry lake with a teaspoon, David. You can't do it. You can't make a human into a Djinn because they don't goddamn well
work that way
!”

David didn't answer. Jonathan's face tightened up.

“And you don't give a crap what I say,” he said, resigned. “Well, that's kind of what I thought.”

He turned away, walked to the fireplace and picked up a vicious-looking black poker that he used to jab at inoffensive logs. Flames crackled, popped, and swirled. I looked back over my shoulder at David, who was quiet, steady, focused.

“Is he right?” I asked.

“No,” David said. “I've been losing some energy, the same way a human might lose blood from an injury before it heals. It's nothing.”

Jonathan whirled and tossed the poker back in the wrought-iron holder with a sharp clang of metal. “It's been
seven days
.” Jonathan's dark eyes were fierce with emotion. “I've sat here and watched you
bleed into the aetheric for
seven damn days!
I'm not sitting on my all-powerful ass while you die.”

“Not your business.”

“David—”

“
Not your business,
Jonathan!” David's copper eyes were blazing, furious, molten. Jonathan's were as black and cold as space. Neither one of them moved, but I felt defenses snapping into place, and my whole essence screamed at me to get the hell out of the middle.

Not that I ever listened to sensible advice anyway.

I rounded on David. “What cheap-ass archetype hero myth did you step out of? I didn't ask you to kill yourself for me! I would
never
ask for that! You can't just make me a Djinn and
die
, dammit! Hear me? You can't!”

Jonathan laughed. “Please. He didn't make you a Djinn, don't you get it? He made both of you
half
a Djinn.”

I felt my hair start to curl again as my concentration slipped. I lost that dove gray focus David had tried to get me to keep, and felt my eyes change—flare—go silver. “Half?”

“Half. As in, two halves make a whole.” Jonathan's mouth twisted into bitterness. “A whole what, I have no idea. Probably an idiot.”

“Fine. Then fix it,” I said. “Undo it.”

“No!” David again, and this time he moved, took me by the shoulders and physically moved me out of the way. Sat me down on the couch with a decisive shove. “You don't understand. I
told
you to keep quiet.”

“Hey, she asked nicely,” Jonathan said, and pointed at me.

“No!” David flung out a hand, palm out, pushing Jonathan away even though Jonathan hadn't taken a step in our direction. He stepped forward, sank down on one knee in a puddle of olive drab wool coat, and took my hand in his. Warm skin on skin, truth shining in his eyes. “Joanne, this is between me and him. Let us solve it.”

Jonathan upended his beer, drained it, and tossed the bottle into the fireplace. The crash of glass was lost in the roar of flames as the fire leaped up, eager as a pet. “
Fuck
. Heartwarming as this is, David, it's totally screwed. You can't make her one of us. You can keep her alive, you can give her power, but the price is too damn high. You really think I'm going to stand by and let you do this?”

David smiled, but I could tell he wasn't smiling at me. This was bitter, private, and painful. “ ‘Behold, thou art fair, my love, behold, thou art fair . . .” '

“Hey!
Don't
quote that to me. You know I hate that.” Jonathan stalked back over, stared down at the two of us. After a long, silent moment, something melted out of him. The anger, maybe. Or the determination. “You'd really do this.”