Unbroken

the need to fidget, shift, relax, or even look away—the Djinn version of a motion sensor. “There’s no need to linger here now. We can defend ourselves adequately, if pressed, now that we can reach the aetheric.”

“Can we?” She smiled a cynical little smile, and lifted her shoulders in a tiny shrug. “Look at her in Oversight and tell me what you think then.”

By her she meant, presumably, Joanne. I leaned against the wall next to Rahel and shifted my eyes into the aetheric spectrum, and saw what she had seen… what David must have seen as well. Joanne was not an especially powerful Earth Warden, able to fight the effects of radiation as part of her natural gifts; Weather Wardens had no such protections, and she’d taken the very worst of the beating down in that pit.

She was saturated with it, cells cooking and dying from the inside out, as if she’d been trapped in an invisible microwave.

“If she and her child are to live,” Rahel said, “then David needs time to heal her. It won’t be easy, and it’s beyond the capacity of Earth Wardens. So we stay. She has to rest.” This time, just for a split second, her eyes veered from their focus to rest on me, a flash of gold and warmth. “And you, mistress, ought to rest as well. You’re not as strong as you believe.”

I settled into a chair then, unwillingly. I don’t need rest, I thought, but as soon as I released my iron hold on my body, it begged to disagree with aches blooming in every muscle. David’s whispering in the Djinn language was a soothing litany meant for Joanne, but it lulled me as well, into an exhausted tumble into the dark.

At the last second, what Rahel had said struck me, rather forcefully. If she and her child are to live…

Joanne Baldwin was pregnant, and it must have been David’s child—the child of a Djinn. And somehow, I hadn’t seen it.

I turned my gaze on her in Oversight, and yes, there it was, the clear though subtle signs of life stirring inside her—curiously, not Djinn life, but something more tethered to the human world. David’s child, but human in form and power.

Joanne and David had something more to fight for, it seemed, than just the world in general. The way that Luis—and yes, me—found strength in our love for Isabel.

David saw me watching them, and looked up. I smiled, just a little, and he returned it. “You think I’m mad, don’t you?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Perhaps,” I said. “And perhaps I’m not mad enough. But I believe that I’m learning.”

Waking up came with a surge of adrenaline and terror, and I didn’t know why. It was utterly silent. Nothing had changed in the room, except that David had fallen silent. I opened my eyes and saw Rahel at the window, looking out, and in the next second I saw her take a step back and allow the blinds to fall closed.

She turned to David, who looked up. They both nodded.

“Wake him,” Rahel said to me, and pointed to Luis, who was blissfully snoring on the couch. “We need everyone now.”

I shook Luis awake and endured his muttering about the lack of coffee, and we were joining hands to assess the situation on the aetheric when the first attack came.

Something wild and very angry slammed headlong into the sealed door. I was surprised that the cheap barrier held; it flexed against the impact, and a thin crack formed down the middle. “Brace it,” I said, and Luis nodded, throwing our combined Earth power into the wood to stiffen it to a packed-steel density. Another, stronger power overlaid ours.

Joanne was awake and on her feet now, and despite the sudden emergency, she looked almost herself again—tall, strong, confident, with a smile curving her full lips and a light in her eyes. She loved battle almost as much as I did, I thought. That was… unique, in a Warden. “Time to get down to business,” she said. “Let’s do this.”

Rahel evidently did not think our combined talents were enough, as she pushed a massive piece of furniture against it. “It will not hold,” she said. “We should leave now, quickly. Is there a back door?”

“There’s company waiting for us there as well,” David said. “We’re surrounded.”

“Did you not think to warn us of that?” I snapped. “I told you we should have run last night!”

“It wasn’t an option,” David replied flatly. “We can get out of this. It’s just going to take a little creativity.”

Whatever was on the other side of the door hit with such violence that the barrier, even strengthened by three Wardens and a Djinn, bowed inward, almost ripping free of the wall in which it was anchored.

“What the hell is out there?” Luis blurted. Rahel seemed to find the question amusing.

“I don’t think it would do your sanity any good to know. We must go up, not out. Nothing waiting out there strikes me as good at climbing, but they are very good at battering holes in things.”

It was David who ripped an opening in the roof above; the hotel’s guest room tower was seven stories tall, but at this end, the building was a simple one-story affair. Only fifteen feet, straight up.

David, of course, merely flexed his legs and easily made the jump upward. I grabbed my backpack and made sure it was securely against me, then began to think about how the rest of us were to get up to safety.

“Damn,” Luis said. “Forgot my jet pack. Knew I should have packed that.” I made a cradle of fingers and leaned down. He raised his eyebrows. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Do I seem to be?”

“Hardly ever, chica,” he said. He put his booted foot in my cupped hands, and I pulled Earth power to saturate my muscles as I lifted him, straight up. It hurt, that particular enrichment of the very limited capabilities of my human body; I felt the shriek burn its way out of my mouth without my consent, but the effort worked. I threw him high enough that David could grab his arm and lift him onto the surface of the roof.

But I also knew I wouldn’t be able to do that for myself. Not effectively. Which left…

Rahel.

I hardly heard David ordering her to bring me; it was unnecessary that he do so, because after all, I held her bottle. I could have done it just as easily. Only I knew that doing so would open up a million subtle avenues of resistance to her, as irresistible to her as catnip, even now. It was a risk not worth taking, as the door protecting us continued to steadily break under the mindless, violent assault.

“Sistah,” Rahel said. I stared back at her, watching that shark’s smile on her face. There was hate in it, and I understood it very well. I’d always had nothing but contempt for the New Djinn; I’d treated them as not just second class, but other—a mongrel breed of human and Djinn, unworthy.

And she hated me for that, and for enslaving her and so many others, even if it had to be done to save them. No doubt she had other grudges; we all did, we immortals with our endlessly long memories. I had few friends even among the True Djinn, and none among her kind.

Joanne asked, perhaps jokingly, if she had to make it an order for Rahel to save me… and Rahel almost laughed, knowing as well as I did that an order from Joanne carried even less weight than one from me. “No need,” Rahel replied. “And no time. I’ll cleanse myself of her contamination later.”

Before I could respond, she had seized me, and jumped, and in almost the same motion, pushed me away. I landed on the roof, disoriented and off balance, and tumbled. I felt the crashing impact of the backpack hitting the hard surface and rolled back to my feet, rage a comforting warmth inside me, and spun to face her again as the cold desert breeze stirred my hair.

Rahel grinned, and made a little come on gesture. Her bottle had not been smashed, though others certainly had been.

No time for settling our scores now, or even for taking stock of what we’d just lost. Joanne, Weather Warden and in firm command of the winds, levitated easily up through the hole, while Rahel, at David’s terse order, began repairing the rip through which we’d come. Below, the sound of destruction was increasing. Whatever was below, it was angry.

I ventured to the edge of the roof and looked down. Luis joined me, took one look, and quickly stepped back. “Okay, I don’t really want to ask, but… what the hell is that?”

“It’s a chimera, a forced merger of several animal forms. Bear, mountain lion, scorpion.” I said it easily enough; identification was automatic, and he could have done it as well, if he’d been able to overcome his