Rachel Caine - Firestorm

"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.