Gale Force

Which was exactly how I wanted him to think. My gaze had fixed on something black and glittering, mounted like some exotic trophy weapon on the back wall of the house, right out in the open, almost as a taunt.

The whole house was lethally radioactive. I was, in effect, already dead. Even as an Earth Warden, I couldn’t diffuse that much radiation through my system without damaging my own cells. Maybe Lewis could, but not me. My daughter had cut herself off from me—had been forced to.

The power I was drawing from David in a steady stream was keeping me alive, but it wouldn’t save me over the long haul. It was a treatment, not a cure.

I turned away from Bad Bob and walked to the Unmaking. It was glimmering with its own black aura, sending its poisonous tendrils deep into the house, into the aetheric.

“You don’t want to do that, honey,” he said. “It’s suicide.”

I picked it up.

The outside of it felt shockingly hot. A slightly rough texture when I ran my fingers lightly down, finding the balance point. The horrible thing was heavier than I’d expected, and my muscles began to shake, trying to rid me of the burden.

Bad Bob hadn’t moved. He raised the cigar to his mouth and puffed, eyes half closed. “You got the wrong idea, Jo. You can’t kill me this way.”

“You’re probably right,” I panted. I fought, but lost, the battle for control of the weather system that was rotating in past Cuba, moving high and fast and wild. It collided with warmer air, and the clouds built walls of thick, heavy gray. Lightning burned inside it, living and dying in rapid-fire flares. “But I’ll bet it slows you down for the others to finish.”

“They’ll have their hands full trying to keep half of Florida alive by nightfall. If I make things bad enough, the Djinn will have to show their faces just to keep the balance, and once that happens . . . they’re mine.” His pale blue eyes focused on me. “Put it down, kid. You’re just killing yourself faster.”

I shook my head. Sweat dripped down my face, matted my hair. “No. Make me. I know you can.”

“Why should I?” he asked. “You want to kill me, kill me. Do it. Maybe you’ll be right. Maybe it’ll just be that easy.”

I lunged, both hands barely able to keep hold of the black spear, and as I did I had an involuntary flash of sense-memory, of Jerome Silverton digging that black shard from a dead Djinn, and of my dream of David lying dead in the street, pierced just like this.

I dragged myself to a wild, panting halt, flat-footed, staring at Bad Bob’s blue eyes. The tip of the Unmaking trembled just an inch from his chest. He made no effort to get away.

“Do it,” he said. “Maybe I’m not your enemy after all. You ever think of that?”

Sweat burned down my face, in my eyes, and I felt my hands spasming, trying to drop this thing that was already killing me. It wouldn’t do any good, but you couldn’t blame my body for trying to save itself.

He was trying to tell me something. There was a message under all this, a message unknown and beyond translation, but somehow, one I was receiving.

Bad Bob had expected me. He wasn’t the type to go in for self-sacrifice, and he knew how to set the hook firmly.

How to use the best possible bait . . . himself.

He had the power to stop me, if he wanted. Why wasn’t he?

He’d taunted me. He’d threatened my daughter. He’d done everything he could to drive me to this moment. He’d used my vows with David to open the Djinn up to the Rule of Three. We knew he had Rahel. And Rahel had a gift . . . for mimicry.

The last piece fell into place with a physical shock. This wasn’t Bad Bob.

It was Rahel. It had to be Rahel, forced to take on his shape, be his puppet, his sacrificial goat.

I felt a pulse of power in the black torch on my back. Bad Bob was getting impatient with me. I wasn’t following the script.

I closed my eyes and reached for the cord that bound me to David. Energy was flowing through the connection, thick and golden, a torrent that was racing through my body in a frantic effort to keep me alive. It wasn’t working anymore. I need you to show me, I whispered. I need to see. Help me see.

I went up into the aetheric. It was hard, so very hard that it was like ripping off my own skin; I barely made it into the lowest levels, and my Oversight revealed the room in dull reds and blacks.

It wasn’t Rahel in the chair after all. Rahel was outside, heading to the van. Bad Bob was holding me here, and going after our flank by attacking Lewis.

I needed to act. If Rahel was out there, that meant that Bad Bob was in front of me. Had to be. I just had to strike that last inch. . . .

I saw a bright copper flash, just a flash, with the last fading strength of Oversight before I fell back into my skin, and I knew. I knew the truth.

David hadn’t gone to the aetheric. Bad Bob had used Rahel to lure him here, and he’d bound him, just as he’d bound Rahel.

David was sitting in the chair in front of me, and I was an inch away from taking his life. I’d come so close, so horribly close, to making the wrong choice. One more inch, just one, and my life would have been over, even if I’d survived this day.

David had been trying to warn me all along. Maybe I’m not your enemy.

Oh God.

I tried to keep my expression the same, except for a slight involuntary widening of my eyes. I was barely hanging on; subtleties would be lost, if Bad Bob was— and I knew he would be—watching.

He wouldn’t want to miss seeing me make such a catastrophic mistake.

I know it’s you, I tried to say to David, through our locked stare. Trust me. If Bad Bob had put him in thrall, he wouldn’t have much room to maneuver, and no room to give me any real assistance. All I could hope was that Bad Bob, clever and cruel as he was, hadn’t thought of everything.

And of course, that I had, which wasn’t too damn likely.

“Where?” I shaped the word only with my lips, burning my question into Bad Bob’s eyes, trying to get across one simple, impossible message. For a second I thought I’d guessed wrong, that I’d just destroyed myself for nothing and missed my only chance, but then those blue eyes darted quickly away, to a point just behind me and to my right.

The doorway. Of course. Bad Bob would want to see this up close.

One thing about the Unmaking; it was pointed on both ends. I didn’t have enough strength and control left to turn, so I lunged backward, angling toward the doorway. One step, two, fast and hard, letting my own exhausted weight do the work as I drove the weapon in reverse, straight for the real enemy.

I felt the end of the spear slam home, and felt the whole thing vibrate like a struck bell. It shook my hands off its heated surface, and my whole body threw itself into an uncontrollable spasm, every muscle sparking and spasming and driving me hard to the floor.

In the chair next to the window, the fake Bad Bob continued to sit, watching me—unable to move, because he couldn’t move.

I writhed over on my back. Sweaty hair clung to my face, obscuring my vision, but as I swiped it away I saw Bad Bob—the real one—standing over me, staring down at the black rod that had punched completely through his stomach and emerged glittering and bloody from the other side.

He laughed. “Good thinking,” he said, and blood fountained out over his chin and bubbled in his mouth. “Damn, girl. Still got an arm.”

He fell heavily to his knees, face draining white, and gripped the Unmaking with both hands. I wriggled backward away from him as he began to pull it free of his body, one torturous inch at a time. His hands were shaking, turning gray, but he kept at it with single-minded intensity.

And what he pulled out of his body was thicker. He was creating more of it, generating it from his own body.

But it looked as if it hurt like a son of a bitch.

I crab-crawled back until I bumped into the legs of the man sitting in the chair, and looked up at him. I saw a