the color of the dark blue sky, eyes like moons. He said, “I’m devastated that you didn’t keep me for yourself, Cassiel,” but then he went just as still and quiet as the others. I recognized most of them, True Djinn and the newer, human-born ones; they were all powerful, and all dangerous in their own rights.
“Scaravelli’s down!” someone shouted. “Orwell’s gone! Who’s next in chain of command?”
“Get Shinju!” someone else yelled, and that made me thrust myself forward, more out of dread than anger.
“No,” I said. “Not her.” I took in a deep breath and nodded to Luis, who raised his eyebrows, but turned to the scared and confused Wardens and began barking out quick, simple orders. Fix this; hold that; do this.… Tasks to keep them moving and focused. We couldn’t afford the chaos. Chaos would feed Pearl even more.
I felt Pearl’s power stirring beyond the wall, and remembered that she had a plan of her own—one that did not include the Djinn. She and her Void children had the power to devastate these last few Djinn who were under our control; she’d hunt those who’d gone wild at her leisure, but these were tethered for the slaughter.
“You!” I barked, and pointed at the woman who’d been handed Rashid’s bottle. “Give him back!”
“Back?” she said, mystified, and shook her head. “I’m not giving—”
I hit her with a neat blow to the chin. It hurt like punching the edge of a knife, but I think it hurt her more; she staggered, and the Djinn bottle slipped out of her hands and bounced harmlessly on an unmade cot.
I got to it first, closed my hands on it, and Rashid said, in a voice full of plummy satisfaction, “If you wanted me so badly, you should have asked, love.”
I couldn’t answer him, or even look at him directly. What I was about to do was full of pain. “I’ve fought for you, Rashid,” I said. “Now I expect you to fight for me.”
“It wasn’t much of a fight,” he said, “but I’ll do what you wish. Mistress.” He leered at me, and bowed a little.
“Put on pants,” I said, “and be ready at my command.”
He seemed disappointed that it was my first order, but he nodded, and in the next blink his naked loins were covered in tight-fitting black leather… so tight they might as well have been a second skin. Well, he had technically obeyed. I let it go.
“Here we go,” Luis breathed, and grabbed my hand to draw me up a level to the aetheric. There was a storm forming there, and in the human world, one huge enough to swallow entire countries. It was coming into existence now, all around us, and on the aetheric the pearl gray skies had turned rotten black, bloody red, with flashes of unclean greens and yellows like suppurating wounds.
The Djinn vanished, heading out to do battle with our destruction… all except Rashid, whom I kept tethered to me with a pulse of will. As I watched on the aetheric, the Djinn formed a circle around the city, and a network of brilliant, complex light wove through them.
The storm hit that barrier, erupted in angry waves, sparks, flares… but stopped. For now. I could sense the intense power flowing from the Wardens to the Djinn, outlays that human bodies weren’t meant to take; even then, the storm on the aetheric was stronger, far stronger, and already it was beginning to rip at the Djinn’s wall, sending pieces flying away into the dark.
“It’s not going to hold,” Rashid said. He sounded muted now, shaken for all his traditional remote mockery. “You have less than a day, probably only hours. There are billions at risk now. Once the Djinn fall, there’s nothing to stop it from devouring everyone.”
“Get Orwell back here!” someone screamed, and Luis let go of me and dropped back into his body, striding across the littered and chaotic room to grab the Warden who was starting to panic. “They
The artificial discipline of the Wardens turned to panic as if a thin sheet of ice had cracked, plunging us all into freezing waters. The Wardens channeling for the Djinn were locked in place; they, at least, were not panicking, but the others—it was leaping from one human to another, this knowledge of their own destruction, and the cries and wailing took on an eerie, crazy edge.
Luis jumped up on an antique table that had been shoved against the wall, took an exquisite crystal vase from the top of it, and shattered it. Loudly. “Shut up!” he roared. It was a shockingly loud voice, and forced silence down on the room, in subsiding whimpers and gasps. “Orwell and Baldwin don’t
You might have heard a rose petal drop, so quiet were they, and then one of the Wardens at whom he’d pointed took in a breath and clapped another on the shoulder. “Right,” she said. “Back to work. Alan? Join us?” The third Warden moved slowly to join them, joining hands.
The rest of the Wardens glanced at each other. Exhausted they were, and terrified, but he’d shocked them enough to remind them of duty, and there was a good deal of shame in the way they nodded to one another. One young man stuck his hand in the air. “Earth,” he said.
“Earth Wardens, follow his example,” Luis said. “Hold up your hands. Fire, Weather, find your partners. Hurry up.” He jumped down, landing with a heavy thump of boots on carpet, and put up his own hand. Our eyes met, and he shook his head. “No, Cass. Not you. You said Pearl was on the move. It’s time to stop her. I can’t—I can’t do it with you. If they see me take off, it’s all going to come apart. I’m sorry, but… this is where our paths part. When we— When this is done, I’ll see you again.” He smiled, but there was an ending in his eyes, a quiet resignation and grief. “I love you.”
“I love you,” I said to him, and kissed him one last, sweet time. I traced the warm skin of his face, the roughness of his emerging beard, and stepped away. “I don’t want to leave you.”
“You can’t always get what you want,” he said. “The great philosopher Mick Jagger said that. Go, babe. I got this.”
I blinked away a blur of tears, turned, and ran for the half-open doorway that led to Pearl’s children.
The door slammed shut in my face. I hit it, extending Earth power ahead of me, but the door held, bouncing me back. “Rashid!” I yelled, and despite how the Djinn felt about the practice of slavery, despite all of the games and the carefully worded, treacherous game they played, he didn’t wait for my command. He hit the door in a dark blue rush, and it splintered, vaporized for three quarters of its width. Only the hinges remained, clinging to a glossy strip of wood as they flapped wildly.
Inside, Pearl stood at the center of a circle of children, all dressed in white. They were silent, eerily so, not one of them shuffling or fidgeting, and Pearl’s face was turned toward the ceiling, and her smile was broad, peaceful,
“Now,” she whispered. “Now go and take your rightful places. She’s vulnerable, never more than
The circle of children turned in their places, facing out now instead of in, and next to me Rashid shifted uneasily. “Cassiel—” The children were advancing now, walking toward the door, toward me, and the foremost in that ring were boys and girls who radiated that special kind of darkness. Whatever inhabited them, it was akin to a demon, and it did not belong here, in this world. There were young ones, no older than five or six; there were older children, as old as twelve or thirteen. Not one of them deserved the fate that had come on them; they’d been abducted, converted, abused, deceived, tortured, and mutilated. Not one of them deserved anything from me but rescue, help, love, kindness.
But this was war.
“Cassiel,” Rashid said, and a warning was plain in his voice. “They’re coming for you. For the Wardens and the Djinn outside. You have to stop them.”
“I know,” I said.
“You have to
She’d sent the Void children first, because Rashid still presented a significant threat, and she wanted him gone, destroyed, unmade. The howling darkness contained inside them had grown, and I wasn’t sure there was
