Gale Force

against the outer wall, smashing a hole the size of a Buick in the brick, and through it I saw . . . the Apocalypse, or at least, as much as could fit in the parking lot of a condemned motel.

A tornado skimmed past the opening, sucking and howling, sparking lightning against every metallic surface. Cars rolled and disintegrated under the assault, then caught fire as Weather Wardens clashed with Fire. I couldn’t tell the good guys from the bad guys, at least until the rest of the wall came down with a heavy slam, and Lewis walked in over the rubble, leading a small but heavily kick-ass army, and joined me and Kevin.

“Surrender,” he said flatly to the group of Sentinels at the end of the hall. “Do it now and we’ll let you live to see a trial. Otherwise, you get buried today.”

He meant exactly what he said. Lewis was giving no quarter today, if they pushed him into a showdown. There was no trace of hesitation in him at all.

Bad Bob must have known it. He winked, jolly as a leprechaun, and blew me a kiss. Then he went to Ortega and wrenched the black spear out of him with his bare hands.

As it came out, it grew, adding inches more to its length. With every death it was fed, it grew more malevolently, horribly powerful.

Ortega was a dessicated corpse. A husk.

Bad Bob reached down and yanked up a small female form that lay huddled at his feet, tied with glittering black ropes. Cherise’s big blue eyes were wide under the confusion of blond hair, but the fury in her was all Rahel.

“You don’t want to risk this one, do you?” Bad Bob asked, and yanked hard on her hair. “Come on, Lewis. I know you better than that. You’re one of the good guys!”

Lewis’s expression didn’t alter by a flicker. “She’s human. Humans get hurt when Wardens clash; you know that. It’s on your head, not mine.”

“My son, you’ve really learned how to operate in the subzero, haven’t you? Well, very fine, but we both know that despite this very pretty shell, what’s inside is no more human than that.” He jerked his head toward Ortega’s body. “Probably a whole lot less human, actually. She’s a wild one, isn’t she?”

Rahel was playing Cherise for all she was worth, and it broke my heart to see my friend so scared, shaking, and crying. “Please,” she choked, “I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m not—”

“You’re a Djinn,” Bad Bob cut in. “Show me. Show me now, or I use this.” He still had the spear in his other hand, and he raised it, prepared to thrust it into her guts.

Lewis let out a low, almost inaudible moan.

Rahel flowed out of her disguise, dark and commanding and imperious, but still restrained by the black ropes. Her eyes snapped violent yellow sparks as she struggled to get free. She subsided, panting, dreadlocks wild around her hawk-sharp face.

“That’s better,” Bad Bob said. “Do tell David that we’ll be in touch, Jo. If he wants to stop me from continuing to kill his people, he should consider giving himself up to us. Very soon.”

The Sentinels crowded around him. Bad Bob grabbed Rahel, and each of them touched the black surface . . . and vanished. All of them together, Rahel included.

He’d taken her.

Kevin collapsed against one of the left-standing structural walls, gagging for breath. He looked terrible. I must have looked a hell of a lot worse, because Lewis took one look at me, gestured, and suddenly there were two Earth Wardens at my side, pouring warm, sticky power into me like syrup.

I felt a rush of presence around me as I started to fall, and David’s arms caught me and held me close. “Oh God,” he whispered against my hair. “Are you crazy? What were you trying to do?”

“Save you,” I whispered back. “Always.” I wanted to tell him that everything was all right here, too, in this warm, soft place I’d reached where nothing hurt. But I couldn’t stay in that place, even though it was so tempting to just give up and let shock take over.

Instead, I forced my legs to stiffen, and I pulled away from him. David let me go. He saw what was in my face, and he let me go.

I walked toward Ortega. When Lewis tried to stop me, I shook him off. When he tried again, I hit him with a lightning bolt. I was insane, but not quite that insane; I pulled the charge at the last moment, feeding just enough through him to knock him back a step.

Ortega was dead. His eyes had gone black, burned and lifeless, and his skin was a dull, dusty gray, as if he’d turned to stone. David joined me, standing close but not touching.

“It’s not your fault,” I told David. I could only imagine that he was thinking about ordering Ortega to come here, because he’d known there was a chance. . . .

But that wasn’t what he was thinking at all. David cocked his head slowly to one side, staring at the dead Djinn, and asked, very quietly, “Who is he?”

Chapter Twelve

None of the Djinn knew him, not even Venna, when I insisted that she be summoned from whatever beach resort Ashan had decided to take his people to for the duration of the crisis. I wasn’t sure that Venna would come, but she’d always been her own master, and that hadn’t changed just because Ashan thought it had. He might be her Conduit, but he’d never own her.

Venna, dressed in her vintage Alice outfit, paced slowly in front of the wall and Ortega’s body, studying him closely. It was eerie, seeing that kind of detachment packaged in the body of a little girl who almost radiated innocence.

She and David were the only ones allowed near the body at all. The entire room had been cordoned off in space-age-looking shielding, and all of the rest of us were being thoroughly checked out by a radiation team. Not surprisingly, we’d all gotten a dose. “Not that it’s as unusual as people think it is,” said the Chatty Cathy in the hazmat suit who was drawing my blood. “The average American gets about three hundred fifty millirems a year, just from the environment. Hey, want to know the weird part? Forty millirems of that comes out of our own bodies. We’re little fusion reactors, you know. Potassium-40 in the brain, Carbon-14 in the liver.” She was chatty because she was scared, though her hands were steady enough. She must have realized it, because she sent me an apologetic glance through the plastic visor of her space suit. “Sorry. I jabber when I’m nervous. This is just—well. They don’t exactly train you for this at NEST school.”

I wondered what the government had been told, or was telling them; the whole thing was founded on need- to-know, and I doubted even this woman had a clue. There were some FBI agents stalking the scene in their trademark dark windbreakers, talking into cell phones. Lots of cops. Fire department.

And reporters. Lots of reporters, a cresting wave of them held back by a sandbar of uniformed police around the perimeter. I could hear the dull thud of news helicopters overhead. No doubt we were in heavy rotation on all the news channels.

In the shielded room, Alice finished her inspection of Ortega and came out. The NEST doctor working on me muttered something under her breath, but she kept her eyes down and focused on what she was doing. Keep on living in denial, I thought. Safer that way, lady.

Venna came up to my side and stared at the needle in my arm. “What is she doing?”

“Taking blood.”

“Is she going to give it back?”

“Venna, what did you sense in there?”

“He is not a Djinn,” she said. There was no doubt in her voice at all. “I don’t know what he is. Or was.”

“He was a Djinn,” I said. Venna slowly shook her head. “Venna, that was Ortega. You know Ortega; you remember him—”

Another slow shake of her head. It was exactly the same response I’d gotten from David, and from two other Djinn he’d summoned. None of them recognized Ortega at all. They didn’t classify him as human; they didn’t classify him as anything. Certainly, not anyone.