Firestorm

and then—nothing. I thought I'd hurt you. Killed you.'

The look in his eyes—God, it made my heart break. I swung my legs over the side of the bed. We were close enough that our knees brushed.

David leaned forward, moving slowly, the way animal trainers do with skittish creatures, and he slowly extended his hand toward me. Traced the line of my cheek. 'I can't stay long,' he said quietly. 'But I want to try to protect you, as much as I can. Help you. Will you let me?'

I couldn't say no to him, not when he sounded like that. Soft and a little desperate. I stayed where I was. I didn't reach back to him, though every cell in my body screamed for me to do it; I just watched him, until he drew his hand back. He put his elbows on his knees and focused on my face with an intensity I remembered from the first time I'd met him. Had I fallen in love with him right then, at first sight? I'd fallen in lust, for sure. Lust had been no problem at all. Still wasn't. But more than that—and I only realized it now, looking back on it—I'd lost my soul to him somewhere along the way.

And I couldn't regret it. Even now.

His fingers moved together restlessly, as though fighting an urge to reach out to me again. 'You're all right?' he asked. 'Not hurt?'

'No. I'm all right.' Minus a few dozen cuts and bruises and minor aches. Nothing to speak of, really. 'What the hell happened?'

His face went still. Masklike, the way Jonathan's had been in the dream. His eyes turned dark and filled with secrets. 'Jonathan decided to play god,' he said. 'He's dead.'

I had a sudden, aching suspicion. 'Did you kill him?'

The flash of anguish, before he locked it down again, was answer enough. David had been an Ifrit for a time, half alive, preying on Djinn for his life force. Damned and doomed and broken… dead, in every way that mattered. He'd gone after the biggest, brightest power source available to survive, and that had been Jonathan. Driven by the basic instinct to feed, he had turned on his own best friend.

Just the way his best friend intended, the coldhearted, calculating, manipulative bastard.

'David, don't,' I said. 'You know he wanted to die. He just—used you. Suicide by Ifrit.'

'No, it was more than that.' He swallowed and looked aside, keeping his thoughts to himself for a few seconds before he continued, 'What Jonathan was, is—necessary. Someone needs to stand where he stood. Nature abhors a vacuum.' He attempted a smile, but it looked painful. 'I was the closest Djinn to him in power, so what he was—it flowed into me. In a real sense, I've become—'

'Jonathan,' I supplied.

He looked agonized about that. Guilty. Horrified. 'No. Jonathan was… special. I don't think any of us could really take his place and do the things he did. But I've become the conduit, the pipeline from the Mother to the Djinn. The only upside is that I've stopped pulling the life out of you, the way I did when I was an Ifrit. If I'd kept on…'

'You wouldn't have killed me.' I wasn't sure of that, but I wanted to be.

'I came damn close.' He stared at me, miserable. 'Jo. None of us can tell what's coming. I don't know if I can control this. I'm not Jonathan. I'm not capable of—staying apart from her needs, her emotions. And when I fail, we all lose.'

Nothing I could say about that wouldn't make him feel worse about it. 'Look, you told me on the beach that the Wardens need to stop the Earth from waking up,' I said. 'That would fix things, right? Give you back free will?'

'No, not really.' He was already shaking his head. 'We never have completely free will. It's not the way it works.'

'Even now that Jonathan's agreement with the Wardens is gone?'

'Even now. We just changed hands, so to speak. Went back to our original master. Mistress. You saw. When it happened—I wasn't prepared to handle it. I didn't know how to try to hold it back, and it spilled through me to the other Djinn.'

His eyes had burned bright red, and bright red was not a color I associated with anything good, except in fashion. Having red eyes staring at you was downright terrifying. Still, it hadn't been only the Goth-bright gaze that had unnerved me; it had been the stillness. The sense of David having been emptied out of his own skin, stripped of individual consciousness and responsibility.

'When she's angry,' he continued, 'when she feels threatened, she can take control of me, and through me, all the others. In a sense, we're her antibodies. And if she wants to destroy you…'

It would be terrifyingly easy for Djinn to do it. They were predatory at the best of times. Given free rein and license to kill? Slaughter. No human could battle them directly for very long, and there damn sure weren't enough Wardens to go around anyway.

'So what are we supposed to do? It's a little late to build a rocket ship and evacuate,' I said, 'no matter what the science fiction movies like to tell us.'

That got a smile. A small one. 'Did you know, that's one of the things we love so much about you?'

'What?'

'Your stories. You remake the world with stories. I don't think you understand how powerful that is, Jo.'

'A story isn't going to fix this.'

The smile died. 'No, you're right about that.'

'Then tell me what to do.'

'No.'

'No?'

'You have to understand—'

'Well, I don't. I don't understand.'

'You're being obstinate.'

'I'm being accurate! Dammit, David, why is everything such a riddle with you guys? Why can't you just come right out and—'

'—tell you how to destroy the Djinn?' he asked, and arched his eyebrows. 'Sorry, but I'm not quite ready to sacrifice my people to save all of yours. I'm trying to find a way that it doesn't come down to that choice. That's what Jonathan left me. Responsibility. It sucks, but that's the way it is.'

I swallowed my comeback, because there was real suffering in his eyes. 'So what can I do?' I asked. 'I can't just wait around for the final epic battle and make popcorn.'

Another smile, this one stronger and warmer. 'You never could, you know. Always in motion.'

'Damn straight. Basic principles of physics. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest. Things in motion require less effort to overcome resistance.'

'I love your mind.'

'Is that all?' I arched my eyebrows back at him, and his eyes sparked bronze.

He smiled, and then the smile slowly faded. 'We can't do this.'

Damn. The warmth inside me, barely felt, began to fade. 'Why not?'

'Because it's dangerous. You begin to trust me; I begin to think you can trust me. That's a very bad idea.' He stood up. 'I shouldn't have come here.'

'Then why did you?' I demanded, out of patience. 'Dammit, don't come here and look—look all perfectly hot and good enough to lick—don't just show up and tell me that I can't trust you, because I do trust you, I always have, even when I didn't have any reason to do it! Don't do this to us! It hurts!'

My vehemence shook him. He honestly didn't expect that outburst—I could see it in the way he drew back inside himself, watching me. The bronze glints died in his eyes, forced back. He looked like a man. A tired, vulnerable, sorrowful man. 'I want to help,' he said.

'Well, pony up, cowboy! Now's the time!'

'All right.' He closed his eyes, as if he couldn't stand to look at me while he said it. 'You can't cut the Djinn off from the Mother. Oh, there's a way, but if you do, you only guarantee your own destruction. The Earth would go mad. It wouldn't just be humanity being wiped away, it would be every living thing in the world. She would just— reset the game and start over. What you have to do is become… Jonathan. Become the conduit for humanity, to her.'