“Out!” It was a white shadow at the window—Cassiel—and she didn’t wait for my agreement, just reached through the open window and dragged me unceremoniously through. She was sinking into the road, too, and slung me through the air to the side. She was stuck, but she pulled herself free with a wrenching effort and jumped for the safety of the gravel at the freeway’s shoulder. Luis Rocha, already there, caught her as she landed.
David was off the road, but down, and I scrambled to get to him. He was panting, eyes wide and blind, pupils very large.
“What is it?” I asked, and ran frantic hands over him looking for injuries. “David, what’s wrong? What’s happening?” Because I couldn’t see it in Oversight. I couldn’t see anything. . . .
It was as if the aetheric had gone completely dark.
The breath went out of me, and I felt utterly, completely alone in a way that I hadn’t since I’d been stripped of my powers. I still had them—I could feel them inside me—but I was blind, in a magical sense. I heard a surprised sound from Cassiel, and a curse from Luis. It wasn’t just me, then. We were all stricken with this supernatural blindness.
And something was very, very wrong with David.
He managed to focus on my face, and said, very faintly, “Kill him.”
I looked over at Luis Rocha, who held up his hands in defense. “Not me, man. I’m not doing it!”
But who did that leave? Not Cassiel, not me . . .
I looked over my shoulder at the car, which was still sinking—it was up to the door level now, embedded in the road’s soft surface. It was as if the road was
But the avatar wasn’t inside it anymore.
“It’s the Djinn,” I said to Luis and Cassiel. “Watch out. He’s not channeling Whitney anymore.”
“Who
“No,” she said tersely. “I hear the bird. It may be coming in for us again.”
If she could hear the whisper of feathers in the wind, I couldn’t. But she was right, because a second later I saw the blur of feathers, and the bald eagle dive- bombed Luis. He wasn’t fast enough, and the claws ripped bloody furrows in his upraised right arm. I felt the force of the wind from the eagle’s furious wing beats as it hovered, snapping its hooked beak at his face.
Cassiel was faster. She reached out and grabbed the eagle’s body below the widespread wings, and as the bird shrieked in alarm and battered at her, she summoned up power, and I felt myself sway with weariness.
The bird went quiet. Not dead, just stunned and sleeping. “Hush, child of the sky, I won’t hurt you,” she told it, and I saw a kind of tenderness in her that was . . . unexpected. She’d always struck me as pretty damn pragmatic, but maybe that was only when dealing with humans. She took off her jacket and wrapped the bird securely, with its head sticking out. It made an effective straitjacket. “We need shelter. There were more on the way.”
She’d also said something about bears, and wolves, and mountain lions. I didn’t want to deal with that out in the open, either, especially since the normal Earth Warden defenses weren’t working.
Cassiel’s motorcycle, which had been parked on the side of the road, suddenly tipped over and began sinking into the black tar. She let out a curse that I was pretty sure she’d learned from Rocha and ran to muscle it away from the asphalt and onto the sand—not that that was going to help, I wanted to tell her. There was no safe ground, not really.
But I’d feel better with a roof over our heads and something like walls giving us some defensive shelter.
“Right, the hotel,” I said. “David, can you get up?”
He nodded, but his face had gone pale under its metallic luster, and I didn’t know how much he could do on his own. Rocha and I each took a side and helped David stumble across the long parking lot, heading for the doors. They were blocked off with DO NOT ENTER yellow tape and plywood across what had once been a glass entry. I burned the padlock into slag and unlocked the hasp, left David leaning on Rocha, and stepped inside the ruined casino and hotel with the battery-powered lantern upraised.
The light couldn’t reach far, but it looked like a typical Vegas sort of lobby—ornate carpet (stained by black smoke and loads of footprints), marble counters that still looked intact, some kind of fancy ceiling overhead but probably not as nice as one of the name-brand casinos, like the Bellagio or the Venetian. This was where your grandmother’s bingo club, not the high rollers, stayed when they went to Vegas. Whatever guest rooms still remained were probably no better than an anonymous chain hotel on the cheap.
The fire had consumed most of the casino, it looked like; the damage got worse, and the smell of burnt wood and plastic was chokingly strong, still, even though there was no hint of embers around. This place was a total loss. I imagined they were waiting on insurance before demolition, but in the current dire circumstances every insurance company in the world was probably out of business already, no matter how well funded. This place had just seen the Reaper early, that was all.
But it was still standing, and it would do.
“Right,” I said. “Looks like this part of the building is the least damaged. Follow me.”
It was horror-movie spooky as we moved in our own little island of light through the silent, dark, cavernous lobby. Carpeting squished in places under my feet—still not completely dried from the hundreds of gallons of water that had been dumped in here to finish off the fire, I presumed. The smell of mold overtook the stench of smoke as we went farther in, and I saw black swathes of the stuff on baseboards and in corners. Yeah, this place was finished, even in less apocalyptic circumstances. In Las Vegas it was always considered easier to demo and rebuild than renovate.
At the far end of the lobby was a long marble concierge’s desk, and behind it was an almost undamaged door that said STAFF ONLY. I felt like breaking rules. I opened it a couple of inches and peered inside, and saw a big lounge area with nice chairs and sofas, a big- screen TV (dead, of course), and coffeemakers with glass carafes full of molding brew. Snack machines, phones, even an internet portal in the corner. And beyond that . . . showers and lockers.
It looked perfect, and I led them all inside.
“Oh,” I sighed. I couldn’t help it; the sight of those gleaming bathroom fixtures was just about more than I could take. I forced myself to check for security. It being a casino hotel, there weren’t any large windows, only slits up near the ceiling too narrow to crawl through. There was an emergency exit at the back, but it was secure. I summoned up more power in the form of fire and used it to hard-seal the metal door to its frame. If I had to undo it, it might slow us by critical seconds, but better to be safe. I didn’t like having easy access at our backs.
“Clear,” I said, and came back with the light. Cassiel and Rocha were easing David down into a chair. “I think the coffee’s past its sell-by date, but there’s shelf-stable food, water, and sodas. And showers.” I put the lantern on a coffee table and knelt down next to David to take his hand. “Talk to me. What’s happening?”
“Darkness,” he said. “Can’t see anything. Feel—drained. Like there’s something trying to pull my power away from me.”
That wasn’t good news, not at all. And the fact that Whitney had so precipitously deserted us wasn’t good, either.
“He’s right,” said a new voice from behind me. I whirled around, ready to blast something with a fireball, but then I held up as the speaker walked into the light. Rahel, back to her old golden- eyed self, but subdued. She seemed as uncertain as David. “I was following on the aetheric. I hit—something. A block. I had to take physical form to get this far. I don’t think I can reach much of my power. It’s like—”
“Like a black corner,” David said. “But only at half strength. It feels artificial. Imposed.”
Rahel walked over to a candy machine, smashed a hand through the glass, pulled the whole thing out in a spray of fragments, and contemplated the selection. She chose a Three Musketeers bar, which I found weirdly amusing, and I watched as she peeled it and bit. I didn’t think I’d ever seen Rahel eat before.
She chewed for a few seconds before swallowing and saying, “It’s coming from the avatar. You know this?”
