Firestorm (34 page)

A flare…

I was still thinking it through when one of the big SUVs pulled away from the pump and out onto the road, and revealed three figures standing there, watching me. Focused on me like hungry wolves.

Rahel. Alice. The male Djinn from back at the forest, the one with the long white ponytail.

Their eyes were crimson, burning like the forests up in Canada, and hell if I knew what I was supposed to do to save myself.

 

I swallowed and carefully replaced the receiver in the cradle on the pay phone. I briefly considered running, but that didn't seem so smart. I couldn't outrun Djinn.

So far, they hadn't moved, but I was deeply scared. The three of them together represented a huge amount of firepower—think China in a pissed-off mood—and I was trying to remember all the advice about what to do with wild animals. Move slowly. Avoid eye contact.
Don't run.

They all moved together. I mean,
together
—not like one started and the others followed, they all just flowed into motion and began walking toward me. Slow steps. Alice had to walk faster, because she was so small, but they were identically eerie.

Clearly, moving slowly and avoiding eye contact wasn't getting me anywhere. I pressed myself against the wall and held up my hands, trying to appear as helpless and pathetic as possible while simultaneously grabbing and gathering up as much power as I could. Not that it would do any good, but I wasn't going down without a fight. Not now. Not after I'd come so far.

If I thought I'd been shaking before, well, this was like standing on a fault line. My heart was hammering. I remembered how many Wardens had already died, and I remembered my name, already carved on that marble wall of the fallen. I'd seen my funeral. It had been nice, but I had no great desire to schedule an encore. At least, not yet. I was fed up with the dying.

I focused on Rahel, looking for some sign—any sign—that she was still even partly in control. Nothing. She was a vessel: Rahel on the outside, and something else entirely on the inside. Did she know? Could she remember how it felt, later, to be so lost to herself? Would she remember killing me later?

Why was the Earth doing this now? What had I done to piss her off? Anything? Nothing? Who could tell?

They stopped moving just as suddenly as they'd started, facing me. Rahel was on the right side, and I kept watching her,
willing
her to recognize me. The madness hadn't lasted too long last time, had it? Maybe an hour? Lewis had said it had started fifteen minutes ago…that left me forty-five minutes to keep the tigers at bay….

Their mouths opened, and what came out was noise.

I clapped my hands over my ears and tried to keep it out, but it wasn't sound, really, and it didn't come in through my ears. It was something else, a kind of vibration that used the aetheric and the real world, was part of both, part of neither—it was awful and terrible and it was somehow
sick
, as if I was hearing a physical manifestation of a disease.

The Demon. The Demon had succeeded in getting to another Oracle—probably this one, in Sedona—and the Mother was horribly hurt and angry, unable to strike back in any effective way to protect herself. So she was striking out at anything and everything that moved.

I was like a bacteria trying to talk to Albert Einstein, but I had to try something. Anything. I pried my hands away from my ears and yelled, “Shut up!”

They did.

Wow.

All three of them stared at me, and I blinked back; all three of their heads tilted slowly sideways, considering me. Crimson eyes flickering with flares of orange and yellow and a hot, pale blue.

“I know,” I said. My stomach was trying to contract itself into a tight little ball of terror, and my knees didn't want to stay firm. I braced myself against the adobe wall and thought madly that of all the hostage negotiations ever conducted, this had to be the biggest. No pressure. “I know how much it hurts. Can you hear me? Can you understand me?”

Nothing. Their heads stayed tilted. They didn't move, not so much as an inch or a twitch. Frozen, like statues, except for the unsettling, alien furnace in their eyes.

“I can help,” I said. “If there's a Demon Mark on the Oracle, I can help. Just take me there. Or at least show me the way.”

It wasn't working. They didn't understand me, although they certainly knew I was there—they'd sought me out, which meant she was aware of my existence. Dammit…David was the buffer. Imara said that she couldn't find him, which meant that somehow he'd been taken out of his connection to all other Djinn, and without him standing in that place,
no one
stood there.

No buffer between the Djinn and the earth. Nothing to keep them sane.

The trio opened their mouths again, and sang. It was indefinable, but I thought it was a lament. Sorrow, deep and jagged and painful. Loss. Horror. It hurt to hear it, made my knees give way; I cried out at the short stab of agony that bolted up from my kneecaps hitting concrete, then stayed down. I wasn't sure I could get up. Wasn't sure I
wanted
to get up.

I had no way to answer her, except with words. “I know,” I said. “I know it hurts. I know you want to stop hurting. So do I.”

Maybe there was a coloring of the same anguish in my voice. Maybe she heard the music of that in the words, even if the words meant nothing.

Rahel's eyes flickered. Red, then pale blue, then that fierce predatory gold I was used to.

For an instant I read everything in her—sheer deep terror at what she was doing, helpless rage at not being able to stop it, despair, a tearing pain that was an echo of the earth's.

She didn't have time to speak, and I barely could draw the breath and form the intention to ask before the Mother had Rahel again, hard in her grasp.

The song came again, soft, almost a whisper, and in it was something deadly. Like a mother singing a lullaby to a baby she was about to smother, because the world was too harsh a place, too unbearably sharp-edged for such a fragile life….

I reacted instinctively. I was terrified beyond all reason because I knew,
knew
my life was about to come to an end, and I had to act or die on my knees.

I wasn't about to die on my knees. I lunged to my feet, crossed the few feet that separated me from Rahel, and slugged her. A strong right cross to the jaw, with as much shoulder behind it as I knew how to commit. And if I may say so myself, it was a hell of a good shot, because I felt every bone in my hand turn to shards of glass, and I was sure I'd broken every damn thing in my body between fingertips and collarbone…

…but she shut her mouth, rocked back a step, and the other two Djinn followed suit.

“That's enough!” I yelled. “
Enough!
I know it hurts, I know you hurt and it's making you crazy, but dammit,
stop!
This isn't some teenage soap opera! We live here! We're part of you. Humans
matter!
The Djinn
matter
! You can't kill us just because you're—depressed and angry!”

It was an impassioned speech. I don't think she got a word of it. Probably sounded like a fly buzzing in her ear as she sobbed in anguish, but for just a second, the Earth was surprised enough by the simple appearance of the nagging fly that she paused in the act of ripping us to pieces.

And the Djinn all looked at me with their own eyes, in varying stages of worry and disquiet.

“And fucking
ow!
” I yelled, and cradled my right arm. God, that hurt. I mean, really. “How much time do I have?”

“Not much,” Rahel breathed. Of the three of them, she looked the least concerned, but I wasn't convinced that meant much. Rahel had always been good at hiding her feelings. “She's waking. It's done, my friend. It's finished. You should let us kill you now, without pain, before the choice is gone for all of us.”

“We can't kill her,” Alice observed. Her voice sounded preoccupied. “She won't allow it. There's something about this one.”

“Venna,” Rahel said. I looked around, curious, but there were just the four of us. Alice cocked her head attentively. Oh. That was right, her name wasn't Alice, I'd just gotten to thinking of her that way—she'd kept the Alice in Wonderland pinafore and silky blond hair, but she was a very old, very powerful Djinn. And her name, apparently, was Venna. “Can you sense David?”

“No,” she said. “Although part of him is in this plane.”

“Part of him?” For a breathless second I thought she meant an arm, a leg, a disembodied spirit…

“The child,” she clarified. “Ashan has her.”

“Go and get her,” Rahel said. “Now.”

“He'll resist.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “Enjoy yourself.”

Venna raised one eyebrow—a very odd expression for an Alice look-alike—and smiled coolly. “How much?”

“Until you stop enjoying yourself.”

She nodded once, folded her hands primly, and vanished. My hand was starting to feel normal again, though incredibly hot, as if I'd stuck it in an oven to bake all the bones back together. I tried not to move it. As if he felt my pain, the big Djinn reached out to touch my hand. His fingers stroked up and down over the aching cracked or broken bones.

“You shouldn't put your thumb in your fist when you punch someone,” he said. My broken thumb reset with a snap, and I yelped. “That's to help you remember.”

“Good enough,” Rahel said. “Give us a minute.”

The big Djinn didn't comment, just shrugged and walked away, around the corner of the convenience store. Maybe he was going to buy a Slurpee. Anything was possible, at the moment.

My legs just flat stopped working, and all of a sudden I was pitching forward, helpless to prevent it, and the asphalt parking lot was coming up fast and straight for my nose.

Rahel grabbed me and hoisted me upright, then leaned me back against the wall. I gave a deep-throated moan, let my head rest against the rough adobe, and closed my eyes for a few seconds. Stars. I was seeing stars, and they were moving fast. Too fast for me to keep up.

“It's all happening,” I said. “Right? I'm too late.”

“A few minutes left,” Rahel said. “Not so many, though.” She accompanied that with a shake of my arm. “You must finish it,” she said. “She won't listen to us, but she hears you. She doesn't understand you, but there's something about you that…sings. Finish it. Make her understand. Go.”

“I can't.”

“You have to.”

“Rahel, I
can't
!” I wanted to stay here. I wanted to wait to see Imara's face again. I wanted—

I just wanted to be like the rest of the world, filling up my car, buying my Slurpee, unaware I was half an hour or less away from dying.

There was no forgiveness or mercy in her expression. “You will,” she said. “Because it's who you are. I have seen this in you from the first moment I saw you.”

“Bullshit!” I burst out. “I don't even know where—”

“Get in your car and drive.”

“Did you hear me?
I don't know where I'm going!
”

“Drive!”
she snarled, and practically threw me across the parking lot toward the BMW. My legs worked fine this time, holding me upright as I braked my forward momentum against the side of the car. I whirled to face her, and the fear turned white-hot with rage.

“Don't you
ever
do that again!” I shouted. “Ever! I swear to God, Rahel—”

“Yes,” she said, walking toward me with fast, choppy steps. Her hair, intricately braided with beads, swirled and twisted in a sudden hot wind rushing over the parking lot. I felt the patter of sand against my skin. “Swear to God. Pray.
Pray.
”

She was terrifying now, and it wasn't the Earth inside her, it was purely and wholly Rahel.

“Pray,” she said again, as if it really meant something, and put her hands together and gave me a full, formal bow.

I blinked against a stinging rush of blown sand, and then…she was gone. Nothing there but discarded paper cups rattling around on the ground, making pointless circles in the wind.

I scrabbled for the door and threw myself inside the car, fastened both hands tight on the steering wheel for a second, and then started up the car.

Pray.

Well, it was a start.

I pulled out onto the highway, still heading through Sedona, looking for…a sign. Overhead, the sky seemed to be getting darker, although it wasn't anywhere near dusk; the cerulean blue was taking on ocean colors. The sun blazed on, brassy-bright, but it didn't seem to be giving any warmth.

I paid no attention to the traffic, and let my instincts and peripheral vision take care of it while I frantically scanned the horizon. Jagged rocks all around, ringing us, and I had no idea what she'd meant except that she'd meant something specific.

And then, up ahead, I saw a sign. A literal exit sign. It said,
CHAPEL ROAD
, and in a smaller size type,
CHAPEL OF THE HOLY CROSS
.

Pray.

I took the exit fast, with tires squealing, and followed the winding road.

There was a parking lot at the top of the hill, and a sign told visitors that it was a steep climb up to the Chapel of the Holy Cross. I closed the car door and stood there, shivering in the suddenly cold breeze, staring up at the place. It was…beautiful. Built into the rocks, organic, angular. Strikingly memorable. The shape was oblong, the sides sloping in with a short line connecting them at the top—all plain gray concrete, contrasting sharply with the red sandstone around it. The front was all glass, reflecting the sun and the beautiful eternity of the desert around it. It wasn't as large as I'd have expected, but then it was a chapel, not a church. It was a place pilgrims came to ask for favors, and to leave a gift of worship.

There were a few other cars in the parking lot. I was hoping there wouldn't be unsuspecting visitors caught up in this, but it was too late to worry. Everybody was in the crossfire now. Six billion potential innocent bystanders.

I took the steep stairs toward the chapel at a run.

Sweat dried on my skin as I pounded up the steps, and I was about halfway up when I realized that somebody was right behind me, and gaining. I glanced back.

It was Ashan, feral and bloodied, and as I looked, he changed himself to mist and flew at me. He surrounded me, and coalesced, yanking my head back by the hair and catching me off-balance. It would be a long, bruising fall. A broken neck, at best.

But he didn't fling me over the edge, or down the steps. Again, I got the weird sense that he just couldn't, no matter how much he might have wanted it. Something prevented him. While he was fighting against that instinct, something hit him like a small pinafore-wearing freight train, and he went sailing over the edge of the drop, with little Alice/Venna on his back and riding him like a struggling surfboard toward the rocks. He had time to mist. So did she. They reappeared at ground level, and I had the sense that Ashan was trying to get free to come after me, but she circled to counter him at every turn.

It was fun for her. There was a terrible tiger's smile on her innocent little face that made my stomach lurch.

“Go!” she called to me, and extended a little-girl hand toward Ashan.

And blew him past five parked cars to slam up against a concrete retaining wall. He bounced off and came back at her like a man-eating rubber ball.

I turned my attention back to the steps, taking them two and three at a time. My calf muscles screamed in protest. I hadn't run stairs in…well, years. Since evil Coach Hawkins in high school, who'd made it the start to every PE class. I'd never been all that good at it then, come to think of it….

The stairs shouldn't have been this tall. It felt as if I were trying to run the stairs at Chichen Itza, not just a few dozen up to the local chapel. I couldn't see the top. I couldn't tell that there
was
a top.

And then I felt it…a whispering sense of presence. Something vast and powerful and not like me, not at all.

Not even like the Djinn.

I stopped on the stairs, grabbed the railing in one hand, and listened.

It was…whispering. I couldn't tell what it was saying, but I heard the voices. Lots of voices. Male, female, neither, all swirling. All questioning.

All crying out in pain.

“Let me in!” I yelled. My voice echoed from the rocks, from those lovely, silent, patient rocks. They'd heard it all, those rocks. Listened to lovers whispering, to warriors killing and dying, to speeches and preachers and songs. It was just noise. It didn't last.

I slipped under the railing on the side away from the drop and clambered drunkenly up a pitch, my shoes unsteady on the footing. I put my hands directly on the blood-warm stones. They felt rough as sandpaper, and flecks of mica glittered in them like flecks of gold.

Please,
I prayed.
Please let me in.

It wasn't going to work. I was just too small, too frail, too temporary…

“Venna!” I yelled. “Quit messing around and
get up here
!”

She didn't respond. When I looked down—risking a broken neck in the process—there was no sign of any Djinn at all in the parking lot.
Dammit.

“Rahel! Dammit!” I yelled it without any hope at all. “David!” The echoes mocked me, ringing off into the distance. Losing his name in the empty spaces.

It was all going to be lost because I couldn't get up the damn stairs. I took two more steps, but it was like forcing myself through molasses, then drying concrete.

I froze in place, sweating, trembling, and clawed at the stone for another few inches.

Something pushed me back. I half slid, half fell back to the railing, skidded underneath, and began pounding up the steps again. No barrier this time. Two steps at a time, a regular, even rhythm. If the spirit of this place needed sacrifice, I'd give it. I'd run until my feet bled, if I had to. Until my heart burst. Until it damn well saw that I wasn't going to quit.

There was nothing in the world for me but the steps, and that simple stone landing at the top of them, with the enamel-blue sky heavy overhead.

Ashan was standing at the top, waiting for me. He wasn't Mr. Neat anymore. His suit was rags, his tie missing. Alabaster skin and fresh road blood showed through the rents in the fabric. It was just representation, I knew that, but he looked bruised and trashed and thoroughly pissed off. He'd defeated Venna, then. Probably Rahel as well. And David, David, oh God…

I put my head down and kept running. Screw Ashan. He was just another obstacle, and I
would
get past him. I could feel things changing in the air, feel polarities shifting. There was something coming alive in the Earth, and there could be no fighting that. The Wardens were useless. The Djinn were—or would be—hers. And human beings were just a resource-consuming problem, like an overpopulation of wood lice and just about as important to her.

And there was a corruption in it, too. A black, spreading, cold corruption that meant the Oracle had been infected, and the infection was spreading.

Please.

I sent my prayer up, up into the sky. Up to a heaven I wasn't sure even existed. Wardens were literal. Scientific. We weren't into the spiritual, and our theology tended to start and stop with the idea that nobody really knew what the hell was going on, beyond the aetheric level.

But if God was out there, if he cared, this was the moment for that hands-off policy to be rescinded.

I ran my heart out. Ran until my leg muscles felt like overcooked noodles. Until my heart was hammering so fast, it felt like one continuous long reverberation in my chest. Until I was soaked with sweat and spots danced in front of my eyes.

Until I could barely lift my feet for each endless step.

And then, I couldn't.

I tried, made it halfway, and tripped. I instinctively put my hands out to break my fall…and someone grabbed my wrist. I still banged a bruised knee painfully against a stone step, but the pain barely registered as I looked up to see who had hold of me.

Imara. Bruised, bloodied, but not beaten.

My daughter gave me a slow, lovely smile, and reached down to take my other hand in hers. “One more step, Mom,” she said. “Just one more.”

There was always one more.

I raised my foot, trembling, and set it on the step. Imara pulled, and with her help, I raised myself up.

One last step.

And then I was at the top.

Ashan stood between me and the door. Imara still had hold of my hands, and she was smiling so sweetly, so luminously, that tears flooded my eyes. Oh
God
she was lovely. She was all that was good about me, about David, and I barely knew her, I wanted to have time to understand her, who she was, what she meant…

“I love you, Mom,” she said, and let go.

Ashan lunged at her from behind. He took her in both hands, snarling with raw fury, and snapped her neck with a dry, terrible crackle. I saw it happen, right in front of me, and I saw her eyes go wide, the pupils spreading.

I saw my daughter die.

He threw her down the steps as if she was
nothing.
As if she wasn't worthy of respect and love and devotion. A broken doll thudding down those steep concrete stairs to flop limp and shattered at the bottom, small and human and mortal after all.

I didn't scream. I had nothing left to scream with. I stared at Ashan. He was primal. He'd defeated everything and everyone who'd come against him, from David to Venna to Rahel.

But none of that mattered now. He'd
killed my daughter.
And I was not backing down.

“No allies?” he said, and grinned. “No Djinn to rescue you? No Wardens to fight on your side?”

“No,” I said raggedly. “No one.”

He'd kill me if he could. If there was even the slightest chink in whatever was holding him back, it would break now, and my blood would soak into these thirsty, eternal stones, and it would be over.

Just…over.

I extended my right hand and walked toward him with deliberate steps. He snarled, and it was such a low, vicious sound that if I'd still cared about living or dying, I'd have stopped. But it was all or nothing, now. David had put my feet on the path. Rahel and Venna had defended me. Imara had pulled me when I couldn't make the last effort, and she'd—she'd—

My turn to sacrifice all, if I had to.

My hand was in his space. I waited for the blow that would snap my neck and send me to my death, but it didn't come. My fingers reached, moving forward, then flattened against his chest. His shirt was ripped, and my fingertips registered the difference between hot skin and cool fabric.

We were close enough to be kissing.

“You don't understand,” he said, and suddenly I was talking to a man—an entity, anyway—not just a force of nature. Someone with flaws and fears and longings. I heard them trembling in his voice. I saw them in his inhuman eyes. “We were
gods
. We were kings of this world. Then
you
came, and we were slaves, slaves to
you.
You took our birthright. You took away our place.”

As if he wanted me to
understand.
Forgive. Wind blew cold over us, swirling the rags covering him, tossing my hair back in a banner. The Chapel of the Holy Cross was ten steps behind him, and the doors were open.

“The Mother forgot us,” he said softly. “Heat. Pain. Birth. A slow and quiet cooling. We were her children, but she forgot us.”

“She remembers you now.” I looked over his shoulder at the open doors, the glow of light through the huge expanse of glass window at the far end of the chapel. It was a simple place, with polished wood benches, a plain altar. I could hear the whispering again, stronger now. A union of voices. The Oracle was within. “You've killed your own, right in front of her. I don't think she'll ever forget you again.”

He couldn't get paler, but I think he might have, at that. “Nature is selfish,” he said. “Sacrifice is meaningless. Only survival matters.”

I couldn't think about Imara, about sacrifice. “I'm not fighting you anymore.”

His eyes filled with a silver sheen of tears, and he pulled in a sudden breath. “No,” he said. “I choose this. I choose to stop you, now, here.”

“Don't.”

“I choose!”
He screamed it, and reached out with all the power that was inside of him to destroy me.

Stop.

It was a pulse of intention, not a word, and the world froze between one pulse beat and the next, waiting breathlessly. I thought it was Ashan's doing for a second, but I saw the wild fury and fear in his eyes, and I knew.

I turned. The air dragged at me, slow and thick as molasses.

The Oracle was doing this. She was giving me a chance, and I knew it was my very last one.

I walked into the chapel.