Rachel Caine - Unbroken

“We’ve had some differences lately,” Luis continued. “Said things, done things… but, Cassiel, I want you to know that it doesn’t matter now. None of that. All that matters is that I love you. Understand?”

He meant it. I could feel the warm, steady pressure of his stare, and the surge of emotion inside him. He did love me, with all the fragile power of his human soul.

I smiled slowly and said, “I understand.” I did not tell him I loved him, but I did not need to do so; he could feel it, flowing between us like the golden-hot energy of the Earth. The Djinn love intensely, and rarely, and I was still shy of admitting what I felt aloud… but he knew.

He leaned forward and kissed me, a warm, damp brush of his lips that turned serious and deep as I leaned forward into it. It was not the time, or the place, for such things, but I felt frantic with the need to tell him, without words, how valuable his life was to me.

“Easy,” Luis whispered, and put his warm hands on either side of my head. “Peace, Cass. This isn’t the time for any good-byes.”

I took in a deep breath and nodded. Here, in the calm before the storm that was to come, was the only time to say our good-byes, but I understood that once we did, once we let go of each other on some fundamental level, it would rob us of energy we might need to survive. As long as we fought for each other, for Isabel, we had a chance.

“Then we should be moving,” I said, and got to my feet. I offered him a hand, but he rose easily, testing his leg and nodding approval. “No pain?”

“Eh, a little. Not enough to matter. Good job. So… where are we going, exactly?”

It was a dangerous tactic, but I decided to forego Oversight and rise up directly into the aetheric; it took a frightening lot of effort to do so. I’d spent most of my reserves of power in healing Luis, and detaching myself from physical form and drifting into the next realm seemed a huge accomplishment. I drifted there, recovering, and then propelled myself up, higher, deeper into the aetheric plane.

The forest in which we were physically located was unchanged… a deep well of living green, shot through with vertical splashes of brown and gold, an impressionist’s view of trees and grass. Living things glittered and shimmered as they moved through the protection of the branches. I saw Luis’s aetheric form there below, glowing in blues and whites. Next to him was my own physical form, but gone gray without my inhabiting spirit. Isabel was an opal-brilliant swirl of colors a few feet away, and there, streaking smoothly through the trees, was a poisonously green figure that could only be Esmeralda.

We were alone here.

I turned my gaze outward, over a confusing jumble of colors and shapes, ever changing, driven by human events as much as nature. Change is the fundamental principle of all living things, but humanity makes it an obsession, a religion. Today, however… Today it was dwarfed by the explosion of bloodred, bruise black energy cascading up from all sides. Mother Earth’s rage and pain glittered in the heavens like cutting-hard rain. It turned in angles in the air, held high and ready to fall.

I felt cold and small, seeing that. When that storm fell, the world would end for mankind, in blood and slaughter.

I saw the roil of colors on the horizon that marked a Warden battling back the powers of the Mother—a useless victory in an entirely foregone war, but the Wardens, like all humans, simply never gave up. They couldn’t. Djinn could, and did, withdraw to other realms. Humans had only this one. They were committed, until death.

And some were dying, right now, as I watched. I could see the vicious snaps of Djinn responses to the Wardens’ attempts to control the fire that was blazing its way relentless toward a helpless population center. With the fuel of Mother Earth’s anger behind it, the flames couldn’t be contained by normal human firefighting methods; it would burn things that ought not to burn, and spread like oil on water.

The Wardens were few, and brave. And they were dying.

As I watched, more Fire Wardens joined in, though their powers were limited by distance. It would not be enough, and surely they all knew it. Any effective defense would be smashed by the shock troops of the Djinn, now fighting not for themselves and their own agenda, but in defense of, and at the command of, Mother Earth.

I had felt it before, that ecstatic possession, the loss of self and identity. It was, for the Djinn, euphoric and beautiful—for most of them, at any rate. Those with a fondness for the human race, of specific individuals… those would be trapped in a miserable horror, forced to feel pleasure at their own actions against humanity, yet still retaining some core of self deep inside that fought. I thought of David, reluctant leader of the Djinn descended from humans, and shuddered. His ties to the human world were deep and constant. He loved a Warden, a woman whom he would inevitably face in a battle to the death now.

All stories eventually end in tragedy, but that was more tragic than most.

Luis’s touch on my shoulder drew me back down, and I fell into my body with a snap of sudden sensation as nerves and muscles woke and complained of my absence. “How bad?” he asked quietly.

“A wildfire in the forest. The city’s already lost, though they’ll fight to the last.” My voice was soft, and a little sad. Some part of me, some Djinn part, craved that experience, the wild and furious power, the lack of responsibility for my own actions. Glorious destruction.

“What city?” Luis was already digging out his map from the pack he’d somehow managed to carry strapped on his shoulders during our mad run through the forest last night. The map was waterproofed in plastic, which was a lucky thing, as rain was starting to fall now from the gently gray sky in a soft, steady mist. Luis spread it out on a log and looked at me questioningly.

My knowledge of human geography was sketchy, at best, and I studied the flat lines and names uncertainly.

Isabel appeared at my shoulder and pointed decisively. “Portland,” she said. When we both glanced her way, she shrugged. “Fire Warden,” she said. “I can feel it.” She frowned a little, at the dot on the page, and her fingertip touching it. “I’ve been sending them power, but I don’t think it’ll be enough. Do you?”

I silently shook my head.

“Any Earth Wardens working it? Weather?” Luis asked.

“Five Earth Wardens,” I said. “And Lewis Orwell is working from a distance. I could see his aura from here.” Lewis was the most powerful Warden alive today, but even he couldn’t stop what was coming. Not by brute force. “He’s managing the evacuation, such as may be possible. But there will be loss of life.”

It was a still, quiet morning, and it was the beginning of the end of the human world.

The three of us stood in silence for a moment, considering that, and then Luis cleared his throat and said, “We need a plan, and I got nothing.”

“I do,” Ibby said. “You won’t like it, but—”

“Hush,” I said, but I didn’t even know why, in that moment, except that a feeling had crawled over my skin, an instinct as primitive as fear of the dark. Predator, something whispered to me. Danger.

The forest had gone quiet. Luis started to speak, but I held out my hand to silence him and listened, head down.

When the attack came, it came with the suddenness and ferocity of a bolt of lightning. There was no gradual gathering of power, no sense of a warning—only a sudden, shocking, overwhelming blast of fury, power, and hatred.

I had no time to prepare, but something in me, some vestige of Djinn, had gathered up such power as I still had, and flung it outward in defense. It wasn’t much, and it didn’t stop the Djinn that rushed at me, but it did slow her, just enough to allow me to grab Luis and Ibby and drag them down, straight down, into the living earth. I didn’t have enough power left to sustain us, and unlike a Weather Warden, I couldn’t draw air to us once we were buried in the smothering, softened ground.