substance to me now. He had lived as I did now; he understood and cherished the pull of the world, the flesh, the strange and quiet beauty of a human life.
He loved Joanne. It was as much a part of him as the flesh that clothed him, or the blazing light in his smile. Something, perhaps, to aspire to be—something like David.
I had no more time to think on it. Two Djinn came for us in the same instant; the reaction from both Joanne and David was almost instantaneous, the stuff of pure, natural communion between the two of them. David might have been the most powerful of the New Djinn, but those he was facing were to be feared regardless, and there were too many of them. He met two of them head-on and was slammed back against debris, momentarily out of the fight—but Joanne didn’t pause. Didn’t even slow as she strode forward.
Weather Wardens had a power uniquely suited to battling Djinn, at least those unwise enough to maintain a form that wasn’t completely founded in flesh… and most of the True Djinn rarely bothered with flesh and bone and blood. They preferred to establish themselves in a less corporeal form, and it left them vulnerable to the one thing that Weather Wardens commanded above all others: wind.
She raised a tearing, howling storm in the debris-choked cave. She was sensible enough to raise a shield to keep the worst of it from us, but the Djinn quickly realized their disadvantage. Some took flesh. Others stubbornly tried to battle her on their own terms—a less-than-winning proposition.
And one of those who had gone to hard, brutal, angry flesh headed straight for me, eyes glowing, head lowered, teeth bared to rip and chew.
Baldwin had pressed an uncapped glass bottle into Luis’s hands, but he clearly was still struggling to process her instructions while simultaneously assessing the dangers coming at us on all sides. There was no time to explain. I grabbed it from him and shouted the incantation that sealed a Djinn into a prison of glass and hatred. “Be thou bound to my service! Be thou bound to my service! Be thou bound to my service—”
As fast as I said it, the Djinn was faster, roaring up on me in a flash of smeared light, and his fist made contact with my chest just as the second syllable of the last word left my lips.
I was incredibly lucky. It would have shattered my rib cage into powder, had that blow landed at full strength, but he was already dissolving into mist as it hit, shrieking his anger and frustration in an eerily metallic wail.
I had just imprisoned one of my own people, and he wasn’t the first I’d subjected to this indignity. I did not have time to feel the guilt of it, not even a second, though I caught my breath on a gasp even as I corked the bottle and tossed it to Luis, then grabbed another empty container from the case that was lying on the rocks in front of us. I picked out another Djinn and repeated the incantation, faster this time, and she blew apart into smoke and dust before she was able to land a blow on me.
The third bottle, though, was already occupied, as I found out when I yanked out the cork and felt the tingling shiver of power speed through me. A Djinn came howling from her prison, and the hissing tentacles of mist solidified into a tall, dark-skinned woman with glossy hair in tiny braids, and a ferocious grin. Her eyes were as golden as a hunting cat’s, and she tilted her head forward, tiny beads swinging and clacking at the ends of her braids, as she considered me, her new master. The grin was just as predatory as her eyes. Her name was Rahel, and she commanded respect throughout all of the hierarchy of the Djinn, because many thought she was utterly insane. She did enjoy making life difficult for anyone she encountered—human and Djinn alike.
I thought for a moment she’d target
That was a very good thing, because although Joanne was still standing, she wouldn’t be for long. I could see the shock setting in on her—given the blood soaking her clothing and smearing her skin, no one could fail to be weak, even if the injuries had been healed. I was expending energy as well in the binding of the Djinn; I’d never realized what a drain it was, but each required an effort of will and power, and I was rapidly growing weary.
Luis was staying alert for any other threats, but when only one maddened enemy was left, he took the bottle from my hand and did the binding spell, slotted the bottle back into the padded box, searched my pockets for the other bottles as well to store them safely away.
And for the first time, it was eerily quiet in this hot, dust-shrouded ruin where fires still burned. The bound Djinn went still, waiting for instructions, and instead of looking to me, who technically held their bottles and their wills, they were watching Joanne.
She fell on her knees to the ground, as if driven there by the pressure. It looked more like a collapse of relief than one of weakness, but David went to her side immediately. She was safe, with him.
“What did we just do?” Luis asked. He sounded shaken. “Fuck.”
“We did what we had to do to survive,” I replied. Unlike the Weather Warden, I felt no relief; I was shaken indeed by what I’d done, and what the price would be for it. I was a Djinn, one of them, and I had just raped their will. There would be no forgiveness for that. I saw it in their eyes. I forced myself to forget that, and focus on more immediate issues. “We won’t survive long if we don’t leave this place. The radiation is too high even for Earth Wardens to stay here much longer.” It was a constant burn now against my skin. A human, unprotected, would have been fatally compromised in minutes.
David gathered up Joanne in his arms; she made some halfhearted protest, and he some response, but I saw the utter relief on her face, as if some endless pain had finally stopped hurting when she was in his embrace. They’d been parted for a time, I realized, and what I was looking at was not just love as humans knew it, but something stronger. Two halves of a whole, being mated.
The faithful, constant love of the Djinn was, I had always believed, unique in the world. I hadn’t known that humans were capable of such things, until I saw how well the two of them fit together.
“Don’t ever do anything this stupid again,” David said to her as I picked up the box of bottles and led the way back over the scattered concrete blocks and up into the tunnel. I heard her scratchy, half-amused laugh.
“If I had a nickel for every time somebody said that…”
He dropped his voice to a low tone, too low for me to overhear, not that I wished to do so. It would be private, and serious, and I had enough of that to carry all on my own, along with the bottles. The box wasn’t heavy, but it was unwieldy, and Luis took one side of it as we started the uphill journey.
“Second verse, same as the first,” he said, panting with effort; we had packed the tunnel’s earth as much as possible, but it was still uneven footing, and easy to slip. An angle that had seemed expeditious and simple coming down was less so when climbing out. “New rule: We don’t do tunnels again. Sound good?”
“Excellent,” I agreed, and meant it. I realized that I’d left the Djinn standing down there at the bottom, waiting for orders. “Should I put them back in the bottles? All of them?”
“Not all,” Luis said. “You don’t have David’s bottle, anyway. I’m pretty sure Joanne does. I’d leave at least one out, in case we need the help.”
“Which?”
He shrugged. “Rahel,” he said. “She’s always been friendlier to humans than most.”
“Not to me,” I said, thinking of her evil grin and the shine of those eyes. But I muttered under my breath, “Back in the bottles, all of you. Except Rahel.” I was relatively new at enslaving Djinn, and it felt deeply wrong to do it, but a surge of power raced through me, and I felt it echoing in those I’d bound. They evaporated into mist, contained by the glass, and I stoppered the bottles quickly before we resumed our climb.
Rahel, in fine Djinn style, elected to leap the distance and wait for us up on the surface, while we toiled every brutal inch of the way. Once we’d achieved the sunlight, Luis braced himself on a toppled wall and crouched down, head lowered. Sweat dripped from the point of his chain until he wiped his face with his equally sweaty bare arm. “Damn. Next time remind me to angle my tunnels better.”
“You were in a hurry,” I said, and patted my pockets again to make sure I had put all of the bottles in the box. Luis added a last one just as David strode out of the tunnel and set Joanne up on her feet. He held her until he was sure she was steady.
“Anything to add?” I asked. Joanne nodded and pulled a few from the torn pockets of her jacket as well—all except one, which she considered, and then kept.
It wasn’t David’s. It was corked. When I gave her a questioning look, she said, “It’s Venna. I can’t risk her getting out again. She’s—” Joanne shuddered a little, and David moved closer again, offering silent support. “She saved my life. And she’s paying the price.”
