Total Eclipse

out. Nothing out there strikes me as good at climbing.”

David nodded, looked up, and ripped open a significant hole in the roof, which spilled in predawn light of an uncertain gray color. He flexed his knees and fired his body up, landed easily fifteen feet above us outside the hole, and did a little scouting before nodding down at us.

“Damn,” Luis said. “Forgot my jet pack. Knew I should have packed that.”

Cassiel let out a sound that was too frustrated to be a sigh, and offered him a cradle of her linked fingers for his foot. He raised both eyebrows. “Are you kidding, chica?”

“Do I seem to be?” she snapped. “Hurry.”

He put his booted foot in her hands, and she tossed him straight up, letting out a yell of fury that sounded like it was ripped out of her spine. It was an impressive demonstration of how strong she was when using her Earth powers, and even as solidly built as Rocha was, she got him up high enough that he grabbed the hand David reached down to him. David pulled him up without any effort at all.

“Rahel,” David said. “Bring Cassiel. Joanne can make her own way.” I loved that about him—he knew I wouldn’t want to be evacuated ahead of the others. Besides, he wasn’t wrong. I was a Weather Warden. Lifting myself up wasn’t a challenge.

Rahel looked at Cassiel, and Cassiel looked back. I felt sparks fly, not the romantic kind, and I wondered what kind of unpleasant history there was between these two. Knowing Cassiel’s nature, it didn’t surprise me that she’d clashed with Rahel. It only surprised me that Rahel had survived it.

Rahel looked like she really didn’t want to touch Cassiel, and Cassiel looked pretty much the same.

“Do you want me to make it an order?” I asked Rahel. She gave me an are you kidding? sort of look, and then I remembered that Cassiel actually held the bottles, all of them except Venna’s, which was buried in my own bag. So technically, I couldn’t order Rahel to do squat. Not and have her listen.

“No need,” she said. “And no time. I’ll take my shower later.”

Mee-yow, that was harsh. Cassiel might have scratched back, but Rahel grabbed her around the waist and leaped up, dragging Cassiel with her. She let go as soon as they reached the roof, not even bothering to steady Cassiel, who went sprawling.

Rahel grinned.

“Play nice,” I said, and formed an air cushion under me, then heated it. Low pressure above me, high below, and zap, Bernoulli’s principle was my friend. Up I went, on my invisible elevator pad, and stepped lightly off just as the back door below gave with a metallic shriek.

David and Rahel replaced the roof, rapidly duplicating existing materials over the hole. With any luck, it’d buy us time.

Above us the rest of the hotel rose up in a central column. The pink stucco was, in the light, smudged mostly black, and the windows were all boarded up. In the daylight, the place looked even more derelict than at night.

But what drew my attention were the things pacing at ground level below us. My mouth went dry, and I suddenly wanted to retch. That was just wrong.

“What the hell is that?” Rocha was asking, sounding just as shaken as I felt.

“Chimera,” Cassiel said. She’d rolled to her feet and was studiously ignoring Rahel, although I had the feeling that she wasn’t going to forgive, or forget for the next several millennia. “It’s a forced merger of several animal forms. Bear, mountain lion, scorpion.”

That was what creeped me out the worst, I decided. The bear with the mountain lion’s head I could handle, but the giant curving arthropod stinger that twitched and curled and dripped with venom . . . no, that was just too much. This thing was a killing machine, and there were several of them.

Not only were the chimeras awaiting us, but there were wolf packs, too, thin and half starved and snarling up at us. They made running starts and leaped up the wall, trying vainly to claw themselves up. I knew something about wolves, and that wasn’t normal. Not in the least.

“Above us!” Rocha yelled, and I yanked my attention skyward. There was a small battalion of birds up there, big ones. I didn’t see any more bald eagles, but there were a couple of gigantic hawks, and several smaller ones. One or two turkey vultures were riding the thermals, evidently waiting for the inevitable mop-up operation. “We need a shield!”

I got one up just in time, and I curved it as much as I could, so that as the birds stooped and fell toward us they wouldn’t hit quite so harshly. Even so, at least half of them collided with such hard smacks I knew they’d broken their necks. Blood ran down the sides of the shield, sickeningly bright in the rising sun. The surviving birds took wing again, circling, and I knew they’d make another run. I hated it, and I reached out, trying to find them on the aetheric, trying to turn them aside.

No use. They were being completely controlled by a force far, far more ruthless and powerful than me.

David yelled a warning and ripped a large satellite dish clean off its moorings. He threw it as if it were a discus toward the edge of the roof, where one of the bear/ lion/scorpion things was clawing its way over the edge. The satellite dish hit it squarely and tipped it backward, off balance. I saw the scorpion legs underneath the fur, and once again felt the urge to retch.

The things could climb. Great. That was just perfect.

“We’re in trouble, guys,” I said. “I’m going to have to take drastic measures.”

“By all means,” Rahel said. “I always find that entertaining.”

I shot her a dirty look and readied a fireball. When the next chimera crawled creepily onto the roof and scuttled toward us, roaring out a mountain lion’s snarl with a bear’s boom, I let it fly. The temperature was well into the thousands of degrees, and the bear’s fur burst into flame. The chimera writhed and shrieked, and I pushed it, still burning, off the roof.

When I looked over, the dying chimera was being torn apart by its kin. Ugh. I just love nature.

“There’s more coming,” Rahel said quietly. She had dropped all hint of being amused now, though to her all this was still a highly academic exercise. “I would suggest you find a way out.”

My car was roof-deep in the road out there, and I didn’t think it was ever coming out, or that it would be in any way drivable if somehow it did. It was for damn sure that three of us wouldn’t fit on the motorcycle, and even two wouldn’t survive these things—these chimeras—which would rip anyone apart in seconds once they were at ground level. Even Cassiel. Two Djinn couldn’t carry three of us to safety without taking us through the aetheric, which would likely kill us anyway.

“Right,” I said. “Rahel, take Rocha. David, take Cassiel. Get them out of here. Take them all the way to Vegas if you have to. David, you can come back for me. I can hold out.” I was the logical one to remain; my combination of powers was something that outclassed Luis Rocha’s not inconsiderable talents, and even Cassiel’s, which was limited by her connection to him. I could pull Earth, Fire, and Weather to defend myself, and now that I knew these things were killable, I felt confident I could hold out.

David looked as if he wanted very, very badly to say no, several times, loudly, but he knew I was right. Luis and Cassiel were vulnerable here, and they’d saved our lives before. They deserved our help now.

He gave me a furious look, and I saw the sparks of fire and gold blaze up in his eyes. Truly a Djinn, in that moment, with his skin shading to metallic bronze. “Don’t die,” he said flatly. “Promise me.”

“I promise,” I said. “Get out of here. I’ll wait.”

He kissed me, and it was a hungry, desperate kind of kiss that left my whole body tingling and alive, my lips sunburned with the force of his emotion. My husband. I touched his cheek and said, “I will always love you, David.”

He kissed my palm. “There is no force in creation that will keep me away. You know that.”

“I know.”

“Then wait for me.”

He turned, fury in his movements, and threw his arms around Cassiel.

Then he launched himself up off the roof, into the air, and began to fly.

Rahel watched him go, then turned her attention to me. “Until later, my sistah.” She blew me a kiss, put her arms around Luis, and purred, “Well, this is certainly an upgrade from my last passenger.” I had to laugh at the