Rachel Caine: Gale Force

And when the flood receded, there was an ominous silence. The aetheric felt clean and very empty.

I drew in a whooping, gasping breath and sobbed it out, then breathed in again. Some of the black spots dancing in front of my eyes started to recede . . . not all, by any means. I felt one half step from unconscious, but I kept myself on my feet, facing Bad Bob.

“There,” he said. “That’s better.” He chucked me under the chin, as if I were his favorite niece who’d just performed a cute trick. Or a puppy. “Oh, you have questions, don’t you?”

I managed to get enough breath to gasp, “What— did—you—”

“You had a Demon Mark, once upon a time,” he said. “You may have gotten rid of the Mark, but it left you stained. Vulnerable. Mine. ”

The Wardens burned through the shield and launched their assault, with or without the Djinn, and the doors of the penthouse blew off the hinges. Lewis strode in, surrounded by a barely visible nimbus of red light, and behind him came a grim-faced phalanx of my friends: Marion Bearheart, walking with a cane; Kevin, scared but determined; Luis Rocha, the Earth Warden I’d first met during the original Fort Lauderdale event. Dozens more, people I knew and liked, people I hadn’t even known would put themselves at risk for me.

David stepped out of the center of the group.

“Whoops, Daddy’s home,” Bob said. “Time for me to be leaving. You will come see me, won’t you? I’ll expect you around sunset. Love that bloody color on the water.”

My muscles were working again. I shakily reached for power and pulled it down, pulled it from all around me, every surface. The room lit up with miniature lightning strikes, all bleeding toward me.

“Bride of Frankenstein,” Bad Bob said. “All right, all right, I’m going. Don’t set your hair on fire.”

He crooked his little finger and vanished with an audible pop of air. I stared at the spot in the aetheric; the writhing black tentacles took longer to leave, finally slipping through a raw wound in the world.

I didn’t drop, though I’m sure everybody expected me to. Instead, I turned to David and asked in what seemed like a very normal tone of voice, “How badly are we screwed?”

He should have rushed to me, taken me in his arms. It was what he always did—what I expected him to do.

But he stayed where he was, watching me, and I no longer understood what I saw in his bright, burning-penny eyes.

He said, “Ashan was right. The vow we exchanged has made the New Djinn vulnerable again to the Rule of Three. My people are at risk now. From yours. We did this, the two of us.”

He sounded . . . distant. Almost cold. I couldn’t control a shiver. Go to him, I told myself, but I couldn’t seem to move. If I moved, I’d fall down.

“He’s already turned Rahel to his cause,” he continued. “She belongs to him. You can’t trust her anymore. Remember that.”

He sounded so alone . I got myself steadied, a little, and took a step toward him.

He stepped back . Keeping plenty of space between us.

“I can’t,” he said. “I’m sorry. I have to see to the safety of my people now.”

“David—”

For an instant, I saw the torment inside him, and it stopped whatever I was going to say dead in my throat. “I can’t,” he whispered. “He’s destroying her. He’s taking great pleasure in it. How many more of my people have to die, Jo? We’re not mortal. This shouldn’t be happening to us. It should never have happened.” He blinked, and the metallic shine came back in his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

The Djinn left. Just . . . left. All of the Djinn, gone without a sound, including David.

He hadn’t even said good-bye.

I collapsed to my knees. Someone—I didn’t even see who—helped me up. I told everyone to get out, but they wouldn’t. Understandable, I supposed.

I went into the bathroom, slammed and locked the door, and skinned down the fabric of the dress to get a look at my right shoulder blade.

Bad Bob had branded me, the same way he’d branded his Sentinels. It was a mark in the shape of a torch. The old stains left from the Demon Mark I’d once carried had given him a gateway . . . like a cut letting in bacteria. And now I was infected.

The proof was right there on my skin.

I stared into the mirror at the black mark, hideously reminded of the Demon Mark that had once grown inside me, and how that had felt.

How good that had felt.

I flinched at a hesitant knock on the door.

“You okay in there?” Lewis asked.

My eyes, in the mirror, were wide and empty. He can have me, any time he wants me. I couldn’t allow that. If David wasn’t going to fight Bad Bob . . .

Then I had to.

We settled up damages with the Palms; nobody acquainted me with a final figure, for which I was very grateful. I hoped the Wardens’ bank account wouldn’t snap under the strain. I changed out of the lovely wedding dress alone, not daring to let anybody— especially Cherise—catch a look at the brand-new black tattoo I was sporting. When I came out of the bedroom dressed in jeans and a purple knit shirt, the entire crowded roomful of Wardens stopped talking.

“What?” I snapped. “Never saw anybody left at the altar before?” Wow. Being dumped made me bitchy, which was, of course, a brave front. I didn’t feel bitchy; I felt . . . alone. I felt as if my whole world had gone the dead, burned color of the torch on my shoulder.

Looks were exchanged among my friends. I wanted to kick and punch something, preferably Bad Bob, until the sun burned out, but I’d have settled for anyone who said something flippant right at that moment.

Nobody did. Cherise finally stood up and said, “Let me take that.”

Oh. The dress. It was draped over my arm like a limp silk corpse. I held it out to her, and she zipped it safely back in its protective plastic cocoon.

“Probably should get that back to the store,” I said. I was trying to disconnect, trying to shut off all my emotions. I was being pretty successful at it, too.

Cherise looked devastated, as if I’d admitted defeat. “No,” she said. “Um—can’t return it. There was a smudge.” She put on her determined face, which was just cute, and dared me to say otherwise. “You’ll have to keep it.”

“What for?” I asked. “Not like we’re going to get a do-over on the wedding.” And that nearly broke me. I wanted David. I wanted him to manifest out of the thin air and sweep me up in his arms and carry me off. I wanted Bad Bob to be gone and all to be right with the world, for once.

That wasn’t going to happen. At least, it wasn’t going to happen unless I made it happen. All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. I supposed old Edmund Burke had meant to include women in that. And if he hadn’t, well, screw him.

“What’s the plan?” I asked Lewis. Lewis seemed lost in thought, but that was probably because, in his typical fashion, he was manipulating a dozen different things at once. Now, he looked up, met my eyes, and I had a second of icy doubt. Could he see what Bad Bob had done to me? No. If he could have, Paul would have been busted for a Sentinel the second Lewis laid eyes on him. Whatever Bad Bob had done to me, it was invisible to the Wardens. And the Djinn, I reminded myself. David hadn’t tipped to Paul’s betrayal, either.

I knew I should say something, but if I did, I’d be making it real.

I’d be admitting defeat.

“We have to go after him,” Lewis said. “We got most of his support, I think; he’s isolated, maybe even alone. We need to get him before he can recruit more followers.”