Windfall (40 page)

Another pulse of power, this one longer. A couple of answering spurts of gold, weaker and briefer.

“Where am I going?” Cherise asked. She was yelling again, with that edge to her voice that meant she'd asked the question at least once or twice already. “Yo! Jo! Out of the coma already!”

I blinked and dropped down enough to study the real world. Not that there was a lot to study. We'd turned off the main road onto a smaller two-lane blacktop, and apart from the hard, relentless shimmer of the rain and the floating hot gold of the road stripe, we might as well have been pioneering intergalactic travel. Nothing out here. Nothing with lights, anyway.

The Mustang growled up a long hill and, in the distance, I saw a flash of something that might have been lightning.

“There!” I pointed at the afterburn. “See them?”

Cars. Two cars, driving fast. Not as fast as we were, but then, not many people would even think of trying it, especially in the rain. Cherise nodded and concentrated on holding the Mustang on the wet road as it snaked and turned. In the backwash of the headlights, I could see the flapping green shadows of thick foliage and nodding, wind-whipped trees.

Jeez, I hoped there weren't any 'gators on the road.

We took a turn too fast but Cherise held it, in defiance of the laws of physics and gravity, and powered out to put us just about five car lengths behind the other two drivers. They were side by side, matching speeds—or, at least, the big black SUV was matching speeds and trying like hell to drive the smaller Jeep off the road. Every time it tried, it hit some kind of cushion and was shoved back. No grinding of metal.

“Lewis,” I said. Lewis was in the Jeep. I couldn't see or feel him, but he was the only one I could think of to be able to pull off that kind of thing while on the move
and
driving. Driving pretty damn well, too. He wasn't Cherise, but he was staying on the road, even at seventy miles per hour.

“What now?” Cherise asked. I didn't know. The SUV gleamed in our headlights like a wet black bug, nearly twice as large as the Jeep it was threatening. There were Wardens in there. Even if I'd wanted to, I couldn't just go into a straight-up fight—lives at risk, and maybe they were innocent lives, at that. Not to mention that the chaos swirling around us hardly needed another push.

I was coming to the conclusion that there wasn't a hell of a lot I
could
do until the two cars ahead of us resolved their dispute, one way or another, when I felt a surge of power and suddenly there was a presence in the backseat, moving at the corner of my eye, and two hands came down on my shoulders from behind and clamped down hard, holding me in place.

Diamond-sharp talons dressed up as sparkling neon fingernails pricked me in warning.

“Hold on!” Rahel yelled, and it all happened really, really fast.

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.”