Rachel Caine: Firestorm

"Hey, kid," said a low voice. I blinked and focused across the room.

"Jonathan?" I asked, and slowly sat up. "Am I—? Aren't you—?"

"Dead?" the mack daddy of the Djinn supplied, and popped the tops on two brown, label-free bottles of beer. He held one up, and it floated toward me. Heavier than I expected. I nearly fumbled the bottle when I grabbed it out of the air. Cold. It felt heavy and real.

"Aren't you? Dead?" I asked.

"Yeah, well. Kinda."

I blinked again and sipped the beer. Seemed like the thing to do. Jonathan looked exactly the same as he had last time I'd seen him: human, tall and lean and whipcord-strong. Tanned. He was wearing khaki pants and a loose off-white T-shirt, not tucked in, and his booted feet were crossed at the ankles. He sipped his beer, unsmiling.

I put my bottle down on the polished wooden coffee table after shoving aside issues of magazines in languages that I didn't recognize to make room for it. "You're dead," I repeated. "So why are you in my dream?"

He raised the bill of his olive drab ball cap with one finger. "Good question. Morbid, isn't it?"

"What?"

"Dreaming about dead people. Creepy. You ever see a therapist about that?"

"I'm not—" Even in dreams, I couldn't win an argument with him. Even when he was dead. "What are you doing here?"

Jonathan took off his cap, tossed it toward a coat-tree (and missed), and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. He met my stare. That was a frightening thing. Dream or not, he had the exact same eyes—dark, lightless, limitless, filled with an infinity of things I could never understand in my short human lifetime. Stars were born and died in those eyes. "I think the real question is, what are you doing here? This is the end of the world, kiddo. Or the beginning. Tough to tell the difference. It's all one big turning circle, and where we are depends on who we are."

I clutched the blanket closer. "I—don't understand."

"Yeah, didn't figure you would. But I thought I'd give it a shot." He took another swig of beer, but those inhuman eyes never left me. "Take a look outside."

I rose, dragging the blanket with me wrapped around my shoulders like a bulky shawl. Not that I wanted to get up from that obscenely comfortable couch, but this was a dream, and I was going to do just what he wanted me to do. No real will of my own. My hand reached out for the drapery pull, and I yanked, and the heavy maroon curtains slid back, revealing…

A big field of nodding yellow flowers. Blue sky. A few clouds drifting lazily over the horizon.

I turned to look at him, a question on my face.

"Keep looking," he said. "Little more to the picture than meets the eye."

I narrowed my eyes, and it was like going up in to the aetheric, only I never left my body; the horizon zoomed toward me, clarifying itself as it came. What looked like a shadowy mountain range resolved into something else entirely.

Death.

I was looking at the skeletal remains of a city. Whatever skyline shape had once made it memorable was gone, so I didn't know if I was looking at Paris or New York or Dallas; it was a twisted bare mass of metal now, corroding and twisting together, being beaten down by the gentle, remorseless rain and wind. That was how the planet triumphed, in the end. With patience. With stillness.

Without mercy.

"You're getting there," he said. "Closer."

And he was closer, too—across the room and standing right behind me. His hands closed on my upper arms, holding me in place against him. I didn't want to see, but it came to me anyway.

Bones. So many bones, sinking deeper into the hungry ground. Flesh liquefying and returning to the soil, bones taking longer to flake away into bleached splinters.

Bones were all that was left of humanity, I knew that. I could sense that. Nothing remained. Not a city untouched, not a family huddled in a cave, waiting out the disaster. We'd been completely, utterly removed from the Earth.

"You see?" Jonathan's voice rasped, soft as velvet against my ear. I could feel the warm whisper of his breath stirring my hair. "It's like bowling. When the match is over, you have to return the rented shoes. Sorry, kid. Game over."

Six billion lives, snuffed out. I wanted to fall to my knees, but Jonathan was holding me up. There was a certain lazy cruelty in the way his fingers dug into my skin.

"Don't go all weak on me now," he scolded me. "Bones and dust. That the way you want it?"

"No," I said, and firmed up my knees and spine. Weak ? I wasn't weak, and I wouldn't let him see me that way. "So you tell me, how do I stop it?"

"What makes you think it's your job to stop anything?"

I shook free of his hands and whirled to face him. My fists clenched at my sides. " Because you brought me here !"

His face smoothed out, became as rigid and emotionless as a leather mask. Those eyes, God, those eyes . Fury and power and anguish, all together.

"I didn't bring you here," he said. "You think you're Miss Special Destiny of the year?"

"No," I shot back, furious. "And I don't damn well want to be, any more than you wanted to be—whatever the hell you are. But sometimes there isn't a choice. Right?"

"Careful. You might accidentally make some sense. Ruin your reputation."

"You are infuriating !"

"Yep," he agreed. "It's been said."

Arguing with him was getting me exactly nothing. I controlled my temper with a tremendous effort of will. "So how do we stop this?" Because I was not going to sit by and let a future roll toward us that contained six billion corpses turning to petroleum under the ground.

"That's the funny thing," Jonathan said, and stepped back. He tugged his cap more firmly in place, one hand at the back, one on the bill. "You want to survive, you need to convince Her that you're worth the favor."

"How?" I practically yelled it.

"You'll know it when you see it. But first you have to get yourself to the right place."

"Which is?"

"Someplace you've already been," he said. "Once. Neat little place, kinda quaint. You'll think of it."

"Don't do that. Don't go all vague on me just when I need—"

"Not my business to save your ass," he pointed out. "Hell, I'm kinda dead anyway. Not my problem. And you look so cute with your face all red."

"Jonathan—" I was all out of smart-ass. " Please ."

He cupped an ear toward me.

"Please," I repeated. "Do you want me to beg?"

"Well, it'd be nice, but… nah. Can you sing?"

"What?"

"Sing. Notes. Usually up and down, unless you're into that rap thing, which"—he eyed me—"I wouldn't recommend. A little too much vanilla in the ice, if you know what I mean."

"Believe me, I have no idea what you mean!"

He sighed. "Humans. No sense of what's going on around them…"

He stopped in midcondescension. His face went blank again, but not as if he was trying to conceal anything this time—more as though he was entirely focused on something beyond the two of us.

There was a sound. It started as a kind of moaning, like a breeze beyond the window. It got louder. Stronger. Became an eerie tangle of whispers.

No, not whispers. Something… musical.

I reached for the latch on the window, suddenly desperate to hear what it was. Jonathan clapped his hands down over mine, hard. "No," he said grimly. "Do it and you're dead."

I fought him. I had to open the window. I had to know . I could feel it coming, and oh it was glorious and terrible and beautiful as liquid fire, and it was going to burn me to ash where I stood with the fire of creation and joy. Spirit moving upon the earth …

I clawed at the window latch, got hold of it, and yanked up.

Stuck. I screamed and battered at the window glass, but it didn't break, didn't even rattle…