Unbroken

Tío. I wish I could make you understand, but she made me what I need to be right now, and I need to be here. Please believe me. Please.”

“They’ll never understand, Isabel,” Pearl said. She sounded so soft, so compassionate, and no one could see what she really was inside: a murderer, bent on extinction, bloody and complete. Someone who could only lust after death on an ever-grander scale. “They’ll always try to stand in your way. But it’s up to you. If you want to go with them, I wish you well.”

She didn’t mean it, of course; she’d never allow Isabel out of her control now, but Iz didn’t know that, couldn’t know it. To her, it sounded like pure generosity of spirit.

There was nothing I could say that wouldn’t reinforce that impression and drive Isabel further into the arms of my enemy.

I felt a presence behind me, and looked back to see that Lewis Orwell was standing there. He nodded politely to Pearl, equal to equal. “Thank you for maintaining the perimeter,” he said. “It’s much-needed relief.”

“I am happy to assist,” she said. “Cassiel seems to think that these children are here against their wishes. Would you please reassure her, Warden?”

He glanced at me, at Luis, and said, “I’ve spoken to as many of them as I can. They all say they’re fine. None of them have parents here with us.” Meaning, I supposed, that this was a room full of orphans, with no one to come for them. No one to battle Pearl for their hearts and minds. And what else would they say? They’d all been twisted into her creatures. They had no voices of their own.

“If that’s so, not all of their parents died out there fighting the good fight,” I said. “Some were killed by—what do you call it?—friendly fire.”

“Maybe,” Orwell said. “But that’s a moot point now. If we survive, we can sort it all out then.” He didn’t seem to hold out any real hope for that, and he was most likely right. “I need the two of you on duty, right now. Come with me.”

“Not without Isabel,” Luis said.

Isabel disagreed. She crossed her arms and sat down on the floor, unmistakably daring us to drag her off against her will. Luis looked down at her, shaken and angry. When he grabbed for her, I intercepted his hand and shook my head. “Leave her,” I said. “You must. This isn’t over.”

“Damn straight it isn’t over,” he said, and glared at Pearl. “I’m coming for you, bitch. You are not getting that girl. Believe it.”

Her gaze brushed mine, and I heard Pearl’s mocking voice in my mind. And you, Cassiel? No empty threats from you, even as I hold your child in my hands? While I hold her very soul?

I smiled slowly, and said aloud, “No empty ones.”

I pushed Luis out ahead of me, following the most powerful Warden on earth to our assigned battle stations.

I should have known that Joanne wasn’t that easy to kill—even for Pearl.

Luis and I were remotely laying thick blocks of power at the base of a newly emerging volcano in Los Angeles. It was brute-force work, no delicacy to it; we were well beyond that kind of control now, after many exhausting hours.

We’d just finished the last layers of protection for the embattled city, and dropped out of the aetheric back into our bodies, when the shout rang out through the hushed, startled room.

“Cassiel! Luis!”

Joanne Baldwin—bloodied, sweaty, dirty, furious—was standing in the doorway. A stillness fell over the room, a sense of dull surprise; there might have been happiness, if anyone had still had the energy for it.

She ignored everyone except us.

Joanne scrambled over cots, prone bodies, and thumped down to land flat-footed facing us, weight distributed for a fight. She looked wild and almost Djinn-bright in her fury. “Where is he?” she demanded, and I saw glimmers of fire around her hands, evidence she was just barely clinging to her controls. “David was with you! Where is he, damn you? What did you do to him? You had his bottle!”

I think she would have burned me out of sheer terror and frustration, but Lewis Orwell—who’d been lying down on a bunk not far away—rose and came toward her. She had no chance to even speak his name before he put his arms around her, not so much to comfort her as hold her back. She pushed him away, but I saw her freeze, taking in what I’d seen hours ago—the state of the man, the sadness, the exhaustion.

“Where is he?” she asked, but in a much shakier, more vulnerable voice. “God, please—”

He took her arm and led her away. Breaking the news to her, I thought, in private—that he’d taken David, that he’d imprisoned him, that he’d made the decision to leave her to die while he’d used David ruthlessly here instead, to shore up defenses, defend the helpless masses dying out there in the greater world.

I’d felt ill even witnessing the trapped fury in Joanne’s lover; he’d done as commanded, mostly because even he couldn’t deny the necessity of it, but he had never stopped hating Lewis for it.

Together they had trapped and imprisoned almost a hundred Djinn, and those bottles sat locked in a case on the far wall of the Wardens’ room. The only bottle that wasn’t there was Venna’s, the one that Lewis himself still kept.

And now Lewis was going to have to explain all of that to Joanne. That ought to be an interesting conversation… and one likely to lead to violence.

The door closed after them. The small meeting space inside didn’t seem like a place to be having the kind of confrontation that was likely between two Wardens of that level of power, but then again, I supposed that having it here in the middle of innocent potential victims might have been worse.

“Hey,” Luis said. He shook his loose black hair away from his face, grabbed a bottle of water from a cooler sitting nearby, and pitched it underhand to me. I cracked the top and drained several gulps, closing my eyes at the simple ecstasy of fulfilling a basic need. “While they’re occupied, we need to talk.”

“About…?”

“You know what.” He jerked his chin at the second, still larger room, where Pearl kept her children segregated from the Wardens. Where Isabel was. “This is coming to a head, and she’s going to strike. We need to be ready when that happens, and I don’t know what your plan is.”

I’d been working on one, but it was depressingly likely that it, too, would fail. Still, he was right; we had to try. “Make your way over toward the door,” I said. “We’ll need a diversion.”

“What kind?”

“Any kind, so long as it pulls the Wardens away from that wall.” I glanced where I meant, and he saw the locked case with its mismatched bottles neatly lined up there. “I need only about fifteen seconds.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Very.”

“Cassiel…”

“Fifteen seconds,” I said. “Please.”

He finished off his bottled water, grabbed a cheese sandwich from a tray, and took a bite as he considered, frowning. Then he swallowed and said, “You’re damn lucky I love you, you know that?”

Oh, I knew. And he knew I knew, so there was nothing to be said to that.

Luis rose and walked toward the far door, eating his sandwich. I took his empty bottle, and mine, and walked in the opposite direction, vaguely in the direction of the large industrial trash can that occupied the corner. The Fire Warden guarding the case watched me with too much interest. Apparently, I did not imitate casual behavior well.

“Move away,” she said to me. I raised my eyebrows.

“Why?”

Fire formed around her fingers. “Let’s just say that I’m asking nicely. This time.”

There was a shout from behind me, and a sudden smell of acrid smoke. A pillow on an unoccupied bed burst into flame, then another. The Fire Warden acted instinctively, focusing her attention on the immediate threat; while she did, I stepped up beside her and pressed my palm to the back of her head. Sleep, I whispered in her mind, and put her out before she could put her power to bear against me; it had to be fast, because Fire Wardens had the best reactions of anyone in responding to threats.

I caught her on the way down and eased her onto an empty bunk. From the outside, it simply looked as if she—like many other Wardens—had collapsed from exhaustion.