Unbroken

“There,” I said aloud, as a long, silvery truck edged around the curve below and onto the straight descent. “That will do.”

Luis nodded. “You need me?”

“Not for this,” I said, and stood up. “Stay with the girls.”

“I know you didn’t just mean that the way it sounded, chica.”

I flashed him a smile, raised an eyebrow, and stepped onto the steep slope of the hill on which we had paused. It would have been risky for anyone except an Earth Warden, or a crippled Djinn channeling such power; I broke off a large piece of rock and rode it in a rushing, hissing curve down the slope. It was a bit as I imagined surfing to be, only with more dust and bumps; still, when I kicked free of the rock and landed on my feet on the road, I was smiling with the adrenaline rush of it.

The truck was just coming up on me.

Locking a vehicle’s brakes is easy, since almost all of the mechanical components of a truck fall within the control of Earth Wardens; this truck was just below the size of one needing air brakes, and I pressed abrasive pads to drums and brought it smoothly to a halt as the baffled driver pressed his gas pedal, which roared the engine and caused the truck to shake uselessly.

I opened the passenger side, climbed into the cab, and said, “Perhaps you should stop that.”

He stared at me, openmouthed, and pressed the gas harder. I sighed, put the truck in park, and turned off the engine.

“Hey!” he said, voice shaking. “What the hell is this, lady? What are you—”

I reached into the vehicle’s glove compartment—in which gloves were rarely found—and pulled out a rental agreement, maps, and, finally, a holstered handgun. I unholstered it and pointed it at him. “I’m taking the truck,” I said. “I apologize. We’ll try not to damage it, but I can’t promise much.”

“But I—you can’t—!” He was babbling now, and quite pale beneath his straggly beard. He smelled of unwashed sweat, stale clothes, and fear. “I got stuff in the back!”

Stuff that was utterly unimportant, but he hadn’t yet realized it. “We’ll be careful with it. Now get out.”

“Here?”

“There is a ranger outpost two miles in that direction.” I pointed with my free hand, then used power to unlock his door and crack it open with the latch release. “Out. Now.”

He blinked, but he must have seen in my face how very serious I’d become, because he didn’t try to argue, or take the gun from my hand. He simply slid off the seat and ran.

Satisfactory.

I closed the door, strapped in, and started the truck as I heard the back door sliding up. The truck shifted a little with the addition of more weight in the cargo area. Esmeralda was on board, and I heard the flexible metal rattle down again.

Luis slipped into the passenger seat beside me, strapped in, and nodded. “Good to go,” he said.

“Isabel?”

“In the back with Es.” He shrugged. “Couldn’t see any reason to insist.”

He was right, of course, but it did sting a little that she preferred the musty interior of the cargo area to sitting in the front with us. I rolled down the windows to clear the stench of the former driver out as the truck started its roll down the long decline. I’d never driven something this large, but it wasn’t difficult, other than adjusting to the increased mass and wind surface. I still missed my motorcycle, abandoned somewhere behind on the trail; there was so much freedom in that kind of travel, in being one with the machine, the free and open air.

I disliked enclosed cabins.

The icy blast of the winter air was bracing, or so I told myself; my breath steamed in the chill, and Luis was shivering. “Seriously?” he asked, staring at me steadily until I sighed and grudgingly rolled up the window to a compromise halfway position. Luis shook his head and looked behind the seats, which search yielded an ancient, untrustworthy-looking blanket that he settled around his shoulders with a sigh of satisfaction.

“You could make yourself warmer,” I pointed out. “You are an Earth Warden.”

“Try it sometime,” he said. “Takes a lot of energy conversion, and we’re supposed to be keeping it on the down-low right now, so I’ll take the blanket. Besides, first rule of having Warden powers: Don’t default to them without checking for a nonmagic solution first. Blankets work.”

“I was a Djinn,” I said. “Mundane solutions don’t come naturally to me.” Like many things, the simplest possible things humans adjusted to from birth. The overwhelming power of their senses, for one. Someone in this truck had eaten far too much cabbage, and quite recently. I inched the window down just a touch more. Luis had a blanket, after all. “Luis… you understand that what we’re doing will likely end in disaster. We’re fighting the Djinn and the Mother herself. This can’t end well for the Wardens, or for humanity.”

“Well, if it goes bad, your Pearl problem is solved,” Luis said. “Since we’ll all be dead, she’ll lose her power supply. End of game for her. She’ll want to keep us alive.”

“For now, but only until she finds the right moment to strike at the Mother. If she’s able to do what she intends, she won’t need us. She’ll be able to tap directly into the lifeblood of the planet. Her consciousness would replace the Mother’s.”

“And that would be bad,” Luis said in a bland tone that reeked of understatement. In essence, a mad, violently selfish Djinn would become the consciousness of the Earth—a vast, sentient creature carrying us all on her skin. One thing I knew about Pearl: She enjoyed the suffering of others.

Humanity wouldn’t be cleanly destroyed, as the Mother so clearly intended; under Pearl’s control, there would be horrible plagues, slow destruction, deaths that might make the worst sadists flinch.

I shifted gears as we reached a long, straight curve; dark green pines brushed the dull sky, and far overhead, a thin silver shard of a plane scratched the sky. That, too, would stop soon; airplanes were far too vulnerable to the Mother’s anger. But then, so were all manmade things: Trains would be twisted off the tracks. Cars would be swallowed up by roads. Houses would be crushed. Cities would burn.

All starting… today.

“Cass,” Luis said. “What are you thinking?”

I reached over and took his hand in mine. Warm, strong, human. Fragile and temporary as a breath, yet strong and resilient as a river.

There was hope. Always hope. And it was those like Luis who would be the bearers of that hope, and the victims of it; heroes they were, and heroes died so that others might live.

I took a deep breath and said, “I wish we had more time, Luis.”

He misunderstood me. “Yeah, things are happening fast. Can’t travel much faster, though. Not unless you intend on hijacking a plane, which I’m pretty sure would not be a good idea, either.”

I’d meant something far different. Far more personal. When he touched me, my mind flashed to sensations… the stroke of his fingers along my eager flesh, the indrawn breaths, the taste of sweat on his skin. The quiet, hushed, beautiful moment at the top of the pleasure curve, when the universe expanded before me with the beauty of a Djinn’s dreams.

I wished we had more time together. Not like this, not tired and dirty and exhausted, speeding to another confrontation. Together.

I started to speak, but then I caught the sad, gentle look in his eyes, and realized that he hadn’t misunderstood me at all. The echo came through the link between us, soft and subtle, a sense of loss. Of letting go.

“Survival tactics,” Luis said aloud. “It’s what humans do. We either cling to things so desperately we can’t let go, or we let go before we get hurt. It’s not that I don’t want… us. It’s that we can’t afford to put us ahead of them, Cass. We can’t.”

He was right, but it was because he was, in his deepest heart and soul, a hero. I was not. I wanted to cling to him with all my strength and not allow anything to come between us, not even the fate of the world and humanity.

But instead, I smiled. “I know,” I lied. I’d become very good at the lies, I realized. “We should focus on the mission at hand.”

“No distractions,” he said.