Total Eclipse

It felt vile, somehow, and I couldn’t shake it off. But he was right, I’d be destroying a shell, not a person.

Not a person who’d driven me halfway across the country. Who’d saved my life.

I couldn’t stand to think about it any longer. I picked up the gun from where I’d left it sitting next to the sink, cocked it, and aimed at the avatar’s head.

David put his hand on my shoulder—not to stop me, but to steady me.

And I fired.

It was the worst thing I had ever done.

Chapter Ten

The aetheric blindness was gone immediately, and David’s powers came flooding back, restoring him. Everybody was happy.

Everybody but me. I kept reliving the kick of the gun in my hand, and the sight of the avatar’s head—

“Jo.” That was David, sitting down next to me on the couch. I had been silent for a long while, and they’d been sensible enough to let me be, but David clearly thought I’d brooded enough.

“Leave me alone,” I said.

“You did the right thing.”

“I know that. Just leave me alone.”

He sighed and kissed my temple, very gently. “I would have done it for you.”

“You think I’d have felt better watching you kill one of your own?” I swallowed a bitter mouthful of stomach acid and wondered vaguely where I’d left the M&M candies. I thought I could have used one right now to get the terrible, bloody taste out of my mouth. “No thanks. I’ll handle my guilt like a big girl.”

David hesitated, then put his arm around me. I opened my eyes and saw that Luis Rocha was slumped in a chair, snoring (somehow, adorably), and Cassiel was pacing, looking like a caged beast with claustrophobia. I didn’t think she would have hesitated to pop a cap in an avatar, but then again, I didn’t really want to be her, either.

She bugged me.

“I should tell you who he was, once,” David said, and that made me turn and look at him in surprise. His brows went up. “You thought he’d always been an empty shell?”

“Well—yeah. Kind of.”

“He was Old Djinn, once—but not like Ashan. More like Venna. He was curious about humans, and liked to help them. He was caught in a convergence of forces, very rare, while trying to save humans from an earthquake. It destroyed the Djinn he had been, and left the shell behind. Since then, he’s been wandering. Empty. Jonathan thought about destroying him, but he said—he said—” David stopped, thinking, and then continued more slowly. “He said that we’d need him someday.”

“Oh Jesus, David!” I found myself covering my mouth with both hands, appalled. Jonathan had demonstrated a turn for prophecy, more than once. “Why didn’t you stop me?”

“Because I think what Jonathan saw was how much you were going to need him. I think he did what he was—designed to do.” He shook his head. “That sounds wrong. That’s not what I meant. But I feel that his destiny was already over.”

Again, that didn’t make me feel better. I wasn’t sure anything right now could make me feel better because Jesus Christ I’d just pulled the trigger and killed someone, even if it hadn’t been a person, a real person, or even a real Djinn.

My body still replayed it, over and over. And it hurt.

“You need to rest,” David told me, in that tone that husbands get sometimes. He meant it, and when I opened my mouth to protest, he covered it with one hand. “Stretch out. Come on. All the way. Legs up. There you go.”

I still felt miserable, but I had to admit that being down felt a whole lot better than sitting up. Cassiel had gotten adventurous and raided a linen closet, and found bags of clean sheets, towels, and blankets. They weren’t the kind of high-thread-count stuff you’d get at the tonier hotels, but they felt good on my skin.

Like the clothes Ashan had gifted me with. Bastard. Well, at least he hadn’t dressed me in knockoffs. Could have been worse.

I flinched again as the sound of the shot rang in my ears, and David’s warmth settled in behind me, holding me close. His hand stroked my forehead, then glided down my neck, over my shoulder, down my arm. . . . It wasn’t erotic, but damn, it really was. Just being touched relaxed something in my body that seemed to have been permanently knotted up, fused into a hard mass.

I let out a slow breath, and with it went some of my grief, my anger, my disappointment. I remembered the first night that I’d insanely decided to sleep with David; I hadn’t known his name then, or that he was a Djinn, or that he was going to alter the trajectory of my life on a course up, toward the stars. He’d been so kind to me then. And he’d touched me exactly the same way, and despite all my best efforts at seduction, he hadn’t touched me any other way. Not then.

It occurred to me now that I should have valued that more. I should have realized right then that he was something . . . special.

But at least I’d been smart enough to hang on to him once I did realize what I had.

“Why are we waiting?” I asked. “The avatar’s gone. We can go now.”

“We will,” David said, and his mouth was so close to my ear that his lips brushed teasingly over its curves. “You need to rest. You picked up a big dose of radiation outside of Amarillo, and I can’t heal you properly if you’re awake. So sleep. Once morning comes, we’ll move on.”

Cassiel paused in her pacing to look at us in a guilty sort of way, as if she just realized she was probably being annoying, and settled into a chair close to where Luis was sawing logs. Rahel stood at the door, a silent statue, watching and waiting.

I don’t think I intended to fall asleep, but between the seductive warmth of David’s hands and the exhaustion buried deep in my bones, I really didn’t have a choice.

I woke up to David’s hands, again, but this time they were shaking me, and when I started to speak he put a finger to my mouth. Unmistakable warning. I went still, fighting my way back toward some kind of alertness, and saw that Luis Rocha and Cassiel were already up and on their feet, hands clasped. Rahel was closing the door with calm, competent motions, locking it, and waiting with her entire body radiating tense expectancy.

We were all very, very quiet. I don’t know why, but I felt that primitive kind of terror, the kind our ancestors probably felt hiding in caves and hoping the lions and tigers passed them by.

Something slammed into the locked door with a shocking roar, and the wood jumped and bowed inward.

The being quiet strategy hadn’t done much, clearly. I got up, and David unfolded himself from the couch as well, both of us laser focused on the door, which wasn’t going to hold. I threw Earth power into it, along with Rocha and Cassiel, and that helped, but whatever was on the other side of it had Earth power as well, and man, was it pissed.

Rahel, with a negligent wave of her hand, ripped the heavy serving bar loose from the left-hand wall and slammed it against the failing door like the world’s largest burglar bar. “I think it’s time to go,” she said. “Back door?”

Oh yeah, I’d sealed it. Good planning. But then, it was probably good that I’d done it, because I was no more than halfway through undoing my melted metal seal when another pissed-off, very large thing slammed into that door as well. If I’d undone it faster, it probably would have sliced me open on its way to destroy everyone else.

“Not that way,” I said. “What the hell is out there?”

“I don’t think you want to know,” Rahel said, as if it was amusing to her—and it probably was. “Go up, not