Firestorm

The broken and cracked glass healed with an audible, singing crack. I couldn't tell about the other damage, but I was willing to bet that Emily was getting her SUV back in like-new condition.

And then he was gone, a dot in the mirror, vulnerable and fragile next to the rising giant fury of the forest fire, standing in front of the oncoming flood of plasma and flame.

I was shaking all over. Too much information, delivered wrapped up in too much personal death-threat, to absorb all at once. At least I'd seen David for all of thirty seconds. That was something…

Yeah, I'd seen a Demon hatch out of a crispy-baked Warden, too. And been attacked by a burning zombie.

I wished I could say that it was an exceptional day.

'What happened?' a hoarse voice asked at my ear. I screamed, took my foot off the gas, and then jammed it back on as my forebrain caught up with my instincts. 'Sorry. Scare you?'

Emily. She was sitting up, looking weary and smoke-blackened and red-eyed, barely better than something from a horror movie herself. Clinging to the seat for support.

'No,' I lied. 'Are you okay?'

'Fuck no, you've got to be kidding,' she said, and let herself drop back against the seats. 'Is it out? The fire?'

I checked the rearview mirror. The whole sky was red and black, a churning fury of destruction.

'Not quite,' I said bleakly.

'It's only a couple of miles from Drumondville. We have to—'

'No,' I said flatly. 'It's enough, Emily. We can't do any more.'

She lunged upright, grabbed the back of my seat, and thrust her face next to mine. I got an up-close look at her red-rimmed eyes, furious and brimming with moisture.

'There are people out there! People who are going to die! We're Wardens! You can't just leave!'

I knew that. I felt it inside me, the same desperate yearning to make everything right, set the crooked straight, save every life and fix every broken thing in the world.

I turned my stare back to the bumpy road, blinked twice, and said, 'Sometimes you have to let it burn, Emily.'

She stared at me in disbelieving, weary silence for a few seconds. 'You coldhearted unbelievable bitch,' she said. I didn't answer. I kept driving. She was too weak to try to take the wheel from me—hell, she was too weak to be sitting up for long, and she proved it by letting go and slithering back down to a supine position on the backseat. When I looked in the rearview, she turned her face aside, but there was no mistaking the startlingly pale tracks of tears on her dirty face.

'They were right about you,' she said. 'You should have been neutered when we had a chance. You don't deserve to be a Warden.'

I felt her words like a blunt, cold knife shoved right under my heart. If she'd been trying to rip my guts out and decorate the truck with them, she couldn't possibly have done a finer job. Since the night I'd fought for my life against Bad Bob Biringanine, the surly but beloved old codger of the Wardens, I'd been persona non grata in a big way. The black sheep of the family. Blamed for everything, and praised for nothing.

But I was a Warden, dammit. I loved the sky, the sea, the living air around me in cell-deep ways that only another Warden could ever understand. I wanted to help people so much that the impulse ached inside me. I was a Warden, and the Wardens loved the world. But it was strictly a one-way love affair, and we forgot that, the closer we got to our duties.

'Bitch,' Emily mumbled distantly. She was sliding into unconsciousness again, or sleep. Too tired to be angry. I turned on the radio, glided it over to a station that had some decent music, and kept it on for the rest of the bumpy escape from the forest to cover up the quiet, uneven sounds as I gulped back tears.

The SUV growled to the top of the ridgeline, and I had a spectacular view of the inferno of the valley behind us, and what lay ahead.

'Oh ho,' I whispered, and the tears finally broke free.

David had warned me. Bad things. There were dead people lying in the road.

The only ones standing were the Djinn—four of them. They were crouched among the dead, studying bodies with varying degrees of disinterest. I jammed on the brakes, remembered what David had said as the Djinn began to turn toward our Jeep.

Don't stop, whatever you see.

I didn't recognize any of these—two males, two females, at least in appearance. Two of them looked very young, almost childlike. One of the male Djinn had a burly, weightlifter-type look. The remaining female Djinn could have sat for a portrait of a Pre-Raphaelite angel, minus the wings… unbelievably, radiantly beautiful.

She was the coldest one of all.

All this went through my mind in a second, and then I hit the gas. The Jeep raced forward. I felt the engine sputter and realized, with a chill, that the Djinn were capable of stopping it dead. David had done it to me, once upon a time. Only not with such a deadly motivation.

Don't stop.

I formed shells of pure air around the spark plugs. The engine sputtered again, caught, and surged, rocking from side to side on the rough road.

'What's happening?' Emily had decided to speak to me again. I didn't have time to answer. I felt her pull on the back of my seat as she hauled herself upright. 'What—What the hell?…'

She screamed in my ear as all four of the Djinn—all of them, moving in concert— stepped into the road, blocking us. The kids in front.

Don't stop. No matter what.

I closed my eyes, sucked in a panicked breath and held it. And kept the Jeep hurtling toward them at speed.

'No!' Emily shrieked, rattling my eardrum, and I felt the wheel wrench as she grabbed it over my shoulder and twisted, hard, to the right. I lost my grip. The wheels lost the road, bounced over ruts, lost purchase…

We rolled over. All the way over, in torturously slow increments, as the world spun in a complete 360. The Jeep bounced and groaned as it settled back upright on its springs again.

So much for Emily's SUV being good as new.

'You idiot!' I yelled, and cranked the key. Nothing. Whether it was the crash, or the Djinn, the truck wasn't going anywhere. I wasn't hurt, but I was scared, and my personal terror level got elevated as the driver's side door was wrenched open.

Angel Djinn stood there, staring at me with pure white eyes. Her skin was a delicate, inhuman silver, and her robes like alabaster silk blowing in an unfelt breeze. She had dark, waving hair that cascaded in luxurious waves over her shoulders, past her hips, down to trail the ground and her bare feet.

She reached in, grabbed my seat belt, and ripped it loose with a single tug, then grabbed my arm and dragged me out. Slammed me up against the fender of the Jeep in a flurry of dust and held me there, with her hand poised over my heart.

We froze that way. I didn't dare breathe. She didn't need to. Her head slowly tilted to one side, then came back upright again. I was reminded of the deliberate targeting movements of praying mantises.

'You stink of it,' she whispered. I could hardly understand her; her accent sounded odd, antique, as if she hadn't bothered to speak to a human in hundreds of years. 'Filth. Reeking filth.'

Next to her shining perfection, that's pretty much what I felt like, too. But I knew what she was sensing—the two Demon Marks I'd had on me in the past twenty-four hours. Not to mention the Demon that had been chasing after me like a freight train back in the forest, lighting trees on fire as it came.

But I'm not one to take that kind of thing lying down.

'Do I have a Demon Mark?' I demanded. Not that you should demand anything from a Djinn who's just participating in the slaughter of about—my brain whited out at an attempt at the number. Upwards of fifteen people, at least.

'No,' she said, and did the head-tilt back and forth again. Maybe I was like a Magic Eye poster, and she was trying to see the Statue of Liberty hidden inside me. She dropped her hand back to her side. 'You may go.'

She abruptly turned and glided around the Jeep, over to the other side, where Emily was leaning against the