Thin Air

bottle, and I just had to get away from it in an awkward scramble. David’s face was like cast metal, no softness there, and no mercy. My doppelganger was screaming, but it was too late; he held her down, slammed her mouth shut to lock the thing inside, and I watched as the Demon shed her human disguise in the extremity of her fear and rage.

The skin simply shredded into a mist of blood and tissue, and underneath red muscle hardened into black, crystalline shell. Insectile and unsettling.

Her eyes stayed blue. My eyes, and she defiantly focused them on me as she struggled to throw off David’s hold and expel the poison he’d just forced down her throat.

But not even the strongest Demon could fight Mother Nature-their Mother Nature, not mine. Theirs dictated that they hunted by territory, and they’d hunt each other if forced together, to the exclusion of other prey.

Two Demons, one body.

I watched them rip each other apart, screaming, into a black shredded mist, and didn’t realize I’d fallen down until David cradled me in his arms, partly shielding me from the heat. I was shaking all over, partly from dehydration, partly from the horror of what I’d seen. Partly from realizing that she’d just been destroyed by the same thing that had once killed me, and my mind had blocked out the details until Ashan had brought it all back.

A stream of blue fog poured from the mouth of the open bottle, and a Djinn formed out of the air and collapsed on his side on the floor, trembling. Wounded, haunted, hurt-but alive. The others closed protectively around and helped him rise.

David didn’t speak. He tossed the bottle to another Djinn-a tall, dark-skinned guy dressed in classic Arabian Nights costume, whose legs misted into fog about midthigh. I recognized him, complete to the one gold hoop earring. He’d once guarded Lewis’s house in Westchester. The Djinn set the open bottle on the floor and stepped away, and the black mist swirling above the remains of the Demon formed a vortex about the bottle.

It fought hard to stay out, but gradually it was pulled in, a steady stream of black fog condensing and rushing into the open mouth.

As soon as the last of it had vanished, the Djinn slammed the wax stopper back into the opening, tied the ribbons, and nodded to David. Who nodded back gravely.

The Djinn vanished, along with the bottle.

“Where’s he taking it?” I asked. My lips were dry and cracked, and my tongue felt like old paper. I didn’t recognize my own voice.

“Someplace safe,” David said, and frowned at me. “Let’s get you out of here.”

But when he opened the door of the mausoleum and we stepped out into the cool, soft air, we had a surprise.

The graveyard was full of Djinn. My first thought was, Wow, when he calls for backup, he calls for backup! But then I realized, with a sick twisting sensation in my guts, that David looked just as surprised as I did.

And then his gaze focused on something in the midst of that crowd of several hundred, and a path formed to let two people walk out of the center.

Venna, in her Alice costume.

And, holding her hand like a father taking his favored child for a stroll, Ashan.

David didn’t speak. Neither did Ashan nor Venna. I shifted my gaze back and forth, worried, because I could feel the battling tides of power and purpose all around us.

Finally David shook his head. “Let her leave,” he said. “She’s got no part in this.”

“But she does,” Venna said, and her hot blue eyes locked on mine. “It should never have gotten this far, David. You put the Oracle at risk.”

“Not the first time that’s happened, Ashan. Is it?” David was growing brighter, more Djinn-like, less human. I let go of his hand and took a step back. “Don’t pretend you’re the savior of the Djinn now. You were more than willing to destroy half of us and all of humanity to go back to being the favored of the Mother. Who gave you the right, you cold bastard? Just because you’re older?”

Ashan’s eyes had turned silver, and they looked like cold pools of mercury, still and uncaring. “Yes. Because I’m older,” he said. His voice resonated with assurance and cool, still energy. If other Djinn were fire, Ashan was pure air and water…nothing hot about him at all. You could drown in his deadly calm. “The Mother makes her own rules, but we choose how to obey them. I have a message for you, David.”

“You have a message.” David looked wary. Worried.

“Through the Air Oracle,” Ashan replied. “We will no longer be one. You may have the New Djinn, but I will command the Old Ones. Two conduits.”

David’s glow cooled. It was a slow process, but definite, and when it was over he stood there looking at Ashan with an odd, vulnerable intensity I didn’t really understand.

“I see,” he said. “You mean to destroy us.”

“No. I merely mean to protect those of my own kind,” Ashan said. “We will not fight you, nor the humans, unless attacked. If the Mother asks, we will answer. But we will have nothing to do with mortals. If you and yours choose to do so, that’s your affair, but no agreements you make will bind us.”

“You’re leaving,” David said, and frowned.

“Not quite yet,” Ashan said, and looked down at his feet. No, at the ground. And I felt that strange slip-sliding again, the rapid movement of the planet’s magnetic force. I heard a distant hum of metal trembling, and felt the metal parts on my clothing, like zippers, pull just slightly away from me. “The magnetic field is shifting.”

“It can’t be. It’s not time,” David said, but like Ashan he was staring down, and I sensed it was more of a pro forma objection than a real argument. “Jonathan had plans for handling this.”

“Yes,” Ashan said. “And we will need all of our strength to carry them out. Get the New Djinn. Gather the Wardens and the Ma’at. Get them here soon.”

“Here?” David asked. They were suddenly talking reasonably, two professionals approaching a problem. They’d blown past the personal-that Ashan was a conniving, evil bastard who’d killed my child and tried to kill me-and gone straight to the job at hand with dizzying speed. I couldn’t keep up with the shifting currents.

Venna sent me a pitying look that indicated she knew that feeling all too well.

“It should be here. Sacred space.” Ashan said, and tugged on Venna’s hand. She looked up at him and smiled, and that smile was pure pleasure. “This will be our place. Held by the Old Ones.”

“Here won’t work unless you release the shields that keep us from touching the aetheric,” I pointed out. “And…unless you’re willing to let us mere mortals enter.”

I got a glare. Ashan was angry at the reminder. Wardens weren’t meant to be here. It was, for him, an offense that one had ever stepped onto the sacred ground.

He wasn’t the only one, I sensed. There was a definite energy coming from the crowd, and it wasn’t good, and most of it was directed toward me. I suspected a lecture on tolerance and the evils of bigotry wasn’t really going to be all that well received, so I kept my mouth shut and let Ashan think about it.

“Yes,” he finally said. “We’ll lower them. Bring them here. Bring everyone here.”

David nodded, took my hand, and walked me through the crowd of Djinn-who silently moved aside, although some of them, staring at me, looked like they were holding ancient grudges. I was the Wardens personified, at the moment, and burning in effigy was a tradition going back to when my people were just a gleam in Mother Earth’s eye.

I held my silence until we reached the cemetery gates. Miraculously, the Djinn held their peace. I couldn’t tell that David was worried until we reached the relative safety outside on the sidewalk, where the other Wardens were clustered around, some still shaking off the stun effects, and then he let out a breath that told me everything about how he’d been feeling.

“What the hell was that?” I asked. He didn’t meet my eyes.

“That was a coup,” he said, “and Ashan has effectively been declared the leader of more than half of the Djinn. The Old Ones outnumber my…I guess you’d call it my generation-and they’re more powerful. When Jonathan was in charge that balance of power evened out, but I’m not Jonathan.” He shook his head slowly. “Not even close. I don’t know what it will mean.”