Firestorm

I felt it happening in slow motion—the hammer striking the cartridge, the blooming flare of explosion inside the metal jacket…

I felt it. The same way I usually felt the flare of lightning bursting out of the sky, or the swirl of air and water.

I not only felt it, but I could… touch it.

It didn't take much, just a whisper, and I killed the spark before it ignited the powder in the cartridge.

Click.

My would-be assassin looked baffled, then angry, and pulled the trigger again, with the same results. I smiled thinly at her, reached out, and took the pistol away. While I was doing that, Nathan, the tall security guard, pelted breathlessly around the corner. I emptied the clip out of the gun—well, it always looked cool in the movies—and Nathan took it away from me the way you'd take a semiautomatic away from a teething baby.

He also took possession of the Warden, and handcuffed her.

She still had that same eerily calm, predatory light in her eyes, and she hadn't taken her eyes off me. I recognized that starvation in her. I'd had it eating through my own veins not so very long ago.

I was staring at her, wondering how to go about handling this particular problem, when an arrival at the end of the hallway stole my thunder. Heads popped out of conference rooms, and whispers flew down the hall, contagious as the flu. 'Lewis!'

Well, well, well… Elvis was back in the building.

Lewis Levander Orwell wasn't looking his best, but then, who was? Rough and tired, but intact except for some livid dry cuts and scrapes that looked suspiciously like road rash, as if he'd gotten dragged over asphalt. At least a three-day growth of beard. Still, much improved from the last time I'd seen him. There was a palpable sense of relief as he walked down the hall toward us, a feeling that at last, stability had arrived. Lewis had that effect. He was, without question, the most powerful living Warden, and he was the proverbial triple threat—weather, fire, and earth powers, all in one package.

He didn't look like the big head cheese, really—tall, long arms and legs, a kind of lanky grace and an ironic smile, brown hair that badly needed a trim, a worn pair of close-fitting blue jeans and a loose flannel shirt folded up to expose the aforementioned cuts and road burns, and corded, sinewy arms. Hiking boots. Competence and authority in a handy carrying case.

A little like Jonathan, now that I thought about it.

He gave me a bare, welcoming nod, and took a good look at the imprisoned Warden, whose eyes had started glowing even more brightly at the sight of him.

'Hey, Joanne.' He nodded to me. 'What have we here?'

'Guess,' I sighed.

Lewis always did have an economy of words. He reached over and yanked down the collar of her shirt.

It was only a glimpse, but I saw it—a black tangled mass that writhed just under her skin, and then burrowed deeper, hiding from view.

Demon Mark.

I had an instant nauseating sense-memory of how that felt. How seductively warm it could feel. How the power of it pulsed so brightly in your veins. You felt like you could do anything with one of those, and sometimes, you really could.

I couldn't save her. So far as I knew, there was no way to save any of them.

'Marion,' Lewis said. 'Got anything in this building that will hold somebody with a Demon Mark?'

He didn't trouble to keep his voice down, and it sent shock waves through the assembled Wardens. Demon Marks, like Free Djinn, weren't supposed to exist. Hell, even if they did exist, they were supposed to be dealt with quickly and quietly, off behind the curtains.

'There's a secured cell two floors down,' she said. 'We usually augment it with Djinn guards, but—'

'Yeah, that's not going to happen.' Lewis's eyes assessed those standing around, lightning-quick, and he pointed at Nathan and two other Wardens. 'You three. Go with Marion. Get her secured. Marion, we'll talk later about what we can do for her.' He watched as the parade organized itself, then put his lips close to my ear and said, 'Come with me. We need to talk. Privately.'

I stepped back and nodded, then led him around wreckage and repairs and down around the corner, to an office that had remained mostly intact. There was a junior-level Warden working on forecast maps. I evicted her with a significant nod of my head, and closed the door behind her, then turned to face Lewis.

'Senior management?' he asked.

'Mostly dead,' I said. 'Paul's on the walking wounded list; Marion isn't even that good. Morale's in the toilet, of course. I haven't seen any other faces I recognize from the higher ranks.' I stopped and looked straight into his eyes. 'We're in big-ass trouble, Lewis.'

'No kidding.' He leaned against the desk and folded his arms, looking down. Hiding whatever he was thinking. 'You know about Jonathan?'

'Imara and David say he's dead.'

'Imara?' Lewis looked up, curious.

'Ah—long story. Short version, she's my daughter. Mine and David's.'

His lips parted, and his eyes widened, and I had the rare pleasure of seeing Lewis Orwell rendered… speechless. For a moment, anyway. 'That's—surprising,' he said, finally. 'Congratulations. Where is she?'

'Safe, I hope. Away from here, anyway; the Wardens were a little trigger-happy, and even if it isn't too likely they could hurt her, I didn't really want to put it to the test. She's—' Precious. Special. Unique. Strange. Amazing. 'She's my kid. Okay, she looks like a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, but…'

He blinked. 'I thought you said she was a kid?'

'Don't ask me how Djinn biology works. First she's a gleam in her father's eye; then she's borrowing my clothes.'

He made a low-throated sound of amusement. 'So in other words, it's been a busy couple of days.'

I gestured around at the wreckage in the office, piled like driftwood in the corners. By extension, at the chaos swirling around in the world. 'You could say.'

'Come here.'

I frowned, but took a step closer. He reached out and took my hand, then pulled me into a body-to-body hug. I relaxed against him, letting the comfort of his warmth sink deep. He needed a shower. Hell, so did I. We were well beyond little things like that. After a few seconds, I felt the surge of power building between us… a cell-deep vibration, like calling to like. We had harmonics, we always did have, and the one time we'd allowed it to build out of control, we'd called up storms and shattered windows.

It built so fast, it was breathtaking. Glass and steel rattled around us. I took control of myself and stepped back, breaking the circuit. I glimpsed something wild and a little desperate in Lewis's eyes, quickly covered.

'Did you feel that?' he asked. 'Looks like we're getting stronger.'

'Just the two of us?'

'No idea, I'm afraid; I could feel it happening to me, but I've always been kind of the far end of the curve.' That wasn't ego, just fact. 'Still, nothing's what it was yesterday. Not the Djinn, and not us. Maybe in breaking the contract, Jonathan reset some kind of equilibrium. Maybe the Wardens were originally a lot stronger on their own. It could be that we've been bleeding off some of our own power to feed the Djinn.'

Interesting notion. 'So maybe we don't need the Djinn after all, if this keeps up.'

'Oh, I wouldn't go that far.' He was still watching me. Warm brown eyes, always fired with a little bit of amusement. 'It's also possible that maybe you and I are a little more connected to the source.'

'Meaning?'

He stretched out a palm, and a tiny flame flickered into life, lemon-pale and growing redder as I watched.

Redder and larger. Lewis wasn't watching this minor miracle; he was watching me, still with that sly bit of amusement lighting his eyes.

And then he pitched the softball-size ball of fire straight at me. Not a girly pitch, either. He put some English behind it.

I yelped, ducked, and felt the heat singe my hair as the fireball streaked past me. It hit the wall, bounced, landed in a pile of scattered papers, and ignited.