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That made me smile. “Oh, I doubt that,” I said, and looked him squarely in the face. “Are you going to fight with me now?”

They laughed. It was spontaneous and genuine, but there was also an edge of menace to it that might have raised hackles on anyone else.

“Oh, baby, you don’t want to go there,” he said. “You really don’t.”

I smiled.

“If you’re not man enough to fight,” I said, “I think you should get on your bike and pedal away.”

The laughter faded. The smiles died. And what was left was cold, hard, and intense as the night sky overhead.

The leader said, in a low voice, “You are a piece of work, bitch. I ought to smack the living shit out of you. Teach you not to talk back.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Are you trying to frighten me?” I asked. When he didn’t immediately answer, I said, helpfully, “I’m only trying to understand what you want. If you’re hoping to frighten me and make yourself feel mightier, then I’m afraid we’re both wasting time. And I can’t afford that. I’m in a hurry. If I have to kill you, I’d like to do it quickly.”

He stared at me hard for a few seconds, and then one of the other men nudged him and jerked his chin up at the eaves of the store. There was a security camera there, which I already knew. The leader stared at it, then turned back to me. “You know what? You’re fucking brain damaged. Better run on to your crystals and moonbeams and pyramids and stop messing with the real world before you get what you’re asking for.” He smiled, entirely falsely. “Have a nice fucking day.”

Silence. The desert air blew cool over my skin and tossed my pale, pale hair around my face, but I didn’t blink. Neither did the biker standing across from me.

These men had not survived to reach the status of roaming predators by accident. Some sense warned him that I was deadly serious, that I was not someone to toy with idly. Between that, and the silent witness of the camera, they would either let it go, or bide their time.

He looked at his friends, shrugged, and gave a sharp nod. Those blocking my motorcycle backed their vehicles away, a complicated maneuvering done in close quarters, accomplished with skill, grace and efficiency. They left me a clear path from my front tire to the highway.

“Thank you,” I said. I had promised Luis to try to use that phrase more often, and this seemed an appropriate moment. I kicked the Victory to life, donned my helmet, and eased out onto the road, opening up the throttle once I’d gained an opening.

I heard a full-throated roar behind me, and looked in my side mirror to see the entire pack of black-clad bikers spilling out into formation behind me, following. So. They had been biding their time, after all. Well, it was their choice. I had been very clear about the fact that I was in no mood to play games to enhance their egos. I considered the best way to disable their Harleys without undue violence; I could easily shred their tires, for instance. I could soften the metal of the frames, breaking the bikes apart under their own torque. I could simply disengage a few critical connection points to force them out of control.

I was spoiled for choices, and spent a few empty miles considering which of them might result in the least amount of injuries. They pulled steadily closer.

The leader yelled something at me, and I felt a raw, wild excitement in his voice. He meant to take his power back, redeem himself in front of his men.

He meant to fight.

I was not necessarily opposed to obliging him . . . and then I felt a raw surge around me. Wild energy, sweeping through the aetheric and down into the real world like an invisible tornado.

“Get away from me!” I shouted to the bikers, who had closed in around me, engines roaring. The leader leered at me. He thought I was
afraid.
Idiot. “Get out of here or you’ll be killed!”

For answer, he pulled a pistol from under his leather vest and pointed it at me. “Don’t threaten me, bitch.”

I hadn’t been. I’d been warning him.

It happened before either of us had a chance to make our next moves in this pointless chess game. I felt heat, unnatural heat, emanating from the gas tank of the Victory, and realized my time was up. I couldn’t stop combustion, but the gasoline was a product of the Earth, and subject to Luis’s Warden powers. It took only a minor adjustment to render it inert within the tank of my motorcycle, a second of concentration, and I felt the Victory lurch as the inert fuel fouled the engine. It coughed, sputtered, and died.

The biker riding close on my right wasn’t as lucky. His motorcycle simply exploded. Fragments blew out in a terrifyingly beautiful ball, like a flower with a heart of fire blooming lethal, twisted petals. The man riding it simply . . . ceased, as a coherent presence. I felt the psychic blow as the impact rippled the air, but I couldn’t note it in any significant way. I didn’t have the time. I dived off the wobbling Victory just as the other motorcycle exploded and flattened myself; heat rippled over me, and an expanding wave of concussion pressed me into the pavement for an instant, then passed. I had two pieces of luck—first, the Victory took the brunt of the shrapnel. Flying metal shredded the beautiful form of my bike, mutilating it, but it protected me from the worst of it for a critical instant as it was blown out, over me, and spun end over end to crash into the ditch on the side of the road. I curled into a ball, well aware of the danger as the bikers lost control all around me; one thick wheel came within a half inch of my face, but somehow missed doing worse than laying greasy road marks on the edge of my sleeve. Metal shrieked and crashed, men yelled, and I smelled burning rubber even over the stench of burning human flesh.

Another gas tank exploded. Screaming erupted.

I rolled clear, moving fast, and dropped into the ditch where my Victory had landed in a sad and twisted heap. It was good that I did, as more explosions sounded, flinging lethal shrapnel—including human bones—through the air above me.

Someone else landed in the ditch with me . . . the leader of the bikers, his leather vest shredded and torn, skin shimmering with blood, eyes wide and dazed. Not dead, surprisingly. Not even badly wounded, beneath the splatter of blood. Unlike some of his fellows, he still had all his limbs.

“Jesus,” he panted, and crawled to put his back to the raw earth of the ditch. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus! What the
fuck?
”

“They’re not after you,” I told him, and got a blank, uncomprehending look from him. “I told you to leave me alone.”

“Fucking hell, lady, who’d you piss off, the fucking Marines?”

“I wish,” I said. I’d learned the expression from Luis, but from the man’s look, I wasn’t sure I had delivered it properly. “Stay down.”

“Like hell I will. Those are my brothers up there!”

I didn’t know if he meant literally, as in blood relations, or figuratively; it was difficult to determine human relationships at the best of times for me. “Stay down!” I almost snarled it this time, and grabbed him bodily by the shredded leather vest as he tried to put his head up above the road level. “This isn’t your fight!”

It was, however, mine. I looked down at the mournful remains of my beautiful Victory, sighed, and bent my knees to jump up and out of the ditch.

The biker hit me in a flying tackle from the side, taking me completely by surprise. He slammed me down into the packed dirt and scratchy weeds an instant before another motorcycle skidded drunkenly off the road and crashed down right where I had been standing. It had been blown over by another explosion, which hit my ears with a dull
crump
of sound that told me my hearing had already begun to shut itself off in trauma.

The Harley was undamaged, except for some superficial dents and splatters. I stared at it, then shoved the biker off of me without much regard for his shouted concerns. I turned back to reach into the waistband of his blue jeans and pull out a semiautomatic pistol from a holster he’d concealed there. I checked the magazine— full, and stocked with hollow points—and slammed it home before removing the safety catch.

“Stay. Down,” I said, soft and precise, and straddled the Harley, which was still somehow running. The vibration of the engine sent waves of heat through my body, almost sexual in its intensity, and I took a deep breath before backing the Harley out of the ditch, up the other side, and back another few feet.

The road was carnage. Broken bodies, some weakly moving still. Shattered vehicles. Blood and bone.

And nothing else. No enemy. No face to put to my would-be killer.

Without the anchor of Luis’s presence, it was very hard for me to view things on the aetheric plane, where the reality of mere physics took on different aspects; it was like trying to fly while holding a concrete block. I managed it for only a few long seconds, overlaying the burning wreckage and bodies and serene moonlit desert with the floods and flows of intention, power, and truth.

Most of those lying on the road did not benefit from the illumination of their souls; their crimes had warped them into hideous shapes, disfigured their faces beyond recognition. I didn’t linger on their self- mutilations. Energy rose up from the destroyed motorcycles in shimmers of gauzy color, but there was something more.

The hot, glowing presence of two Wardens, drawing power.

I saw something lance at me across the aetheric, straight and intense as it cut through everything in its path. It was narrow, and it looked exactly like a laser beam, save that its lurid red color didn’t exist at all in the real, physical world.

I pulled broken metal up from the road in a rush, building a steel shield between me and the beam rushing toward me. It hit my improvised defense and blasted it to even smaller component pieces, but the shield had taken the energy and dissipated it into a splash that only melted and seared the remains into a ball of slag.

I snarled and throttled the borrowed Harley into a full scream of power. Tires dug sand, then gravel, and then I was airborne as momentum carried me forward over the ditch and onto the surface of the road. I avoided the worst of the wreckage and aimed the motorcycle for the spot where the beam of power had originated.

This time, the Warden was an adult—young, but fully a man, probably only a few years younger than Luis. He looked scared, but determined, and as I came for him, he readied his defenses.

I didn’t hold back. I slammed him backward, off his feet, and the ground opened beneath him. He dropped dozens of feet, and as he fell, the sides of the pit caved in over him. Burying him alive. Pinning him down with tons of crushing weight.

Destroying him.

It took fully a minute for him to die, smothered beneath the sand, but I didn’t wait to watch. This was war, and the Djinn in me had come forth, the part that cared little for the disposable lives of humans.

I went after the second glowing spot of power.

A figure dressed in dull brown started out of concealment behind a low jut of rock, illuminated by the fires glowing behind me. For a frozen moment, as I closed the distance, I felt recognition strike me. It was too far to see her face, but I felt the familiar aetheric sense of her, a warm connection I hadn’t known I’d missed until it returned, overwhelming in its relief.

That was Isabel. Ibby.
Manny and Angela’s child.

My child,
something in me whispered.

Ibby was no longer the sweet, smiling girl I remembered, or even the traumatized one who’d seen her parents die as she shivered and wept in my arms. She looked older than five now, although physically her body hadn’t matured unnaturally; there was something within her that had warped, bringing an adult, cold distance in her expression. A precision to her movements. Confidence, and calculation, although she was afraid.

But she still
looked
like Isabel.

Pearl. Pearl had done this to her. Rage swept through me, turning fear to ash, and in that moment I really
would
have destroyed the human world for what Pearl had done—except that it would have meant destroying Isabel, as well.

I let off the throttle of the motorcycle. Ibby was standing by the side of the road, watching me, body tensed. Ready to attack. Ready to run.

Why? Why was she
here?

Pearl, again. Pearl was training Ibby as a weapon. How better to use her, than to use her against me?

Oh, Ibby.
But she had not led the attack. She’d been here either as hostage, or apprentice, but she was not ready to fight someone like me. She was so young. Too young.

It reduced me to fury and grief.

“Ibby,” I said. I had no doubt she could hear me, even over the throbbing growl of the Harley. “Ibby, it’s me. It’s Cassiel.”

It was a ridiculous thing to say. She knew who I was. I could see that in her face, in the caution and tension, the fear. It shattered my heart to see her fear me; she had always been so accepting of me, so . . . loving.

I kicked the stand of the motorcycle and eased off the bike, walking toward her. I must have looked frightening—stained with smoke and blood, a memory of that terrible day when she’d lost her parents.

She didn’t react, other than to narrow her eyes.

“Ibby,” I murmured. I came closer, moving slowly. “Oh, my girl.”

Her dull brown clothing was a kind of camouflage, a soldier’s gear cut down to fit a child. It should have looked ridiculous, like some sort of costume; instead, she filled it with deadly confidence.

She is only five years old.
I felt that strike me hard as a fist, and I ached to stop time, reverse the hurts that had been done to her, take her in my arms and rock away the anguish.

Even if the anguish was only my own.

“I can help you,” I told her softly. I took another step on the gravel, and I saw her tense, readying herself. I stopped and made sure my hands were loose and un-threatening at my sides. I attempted a smile. “I want to help you, Ibby. Don’t you believe that?”