Rachel Caine: Gale Force

“I think that’s my cue.” I didn’t wait for them to approve; I didn’t wait for the protests. I just jumped down onto the road and walked up to the gates. I looked up at the perimeter camera, and felt Bad Bob’s smile like a fetid ghost all around me.

“Jo, wait !” That was Lewis, trying to order me back.

“For what?” I asked him, and he had absolutely no answer to that. I read it in his eyes, though.

He wanted me to say something, anything, to make this easier. But I didn’t have it, and neither did he.

So I went on.

The gates creaked open, and I walked alone, shadowed by the SWAT commandos and FBI tactical units, up the winding path. I remembered walking it with David, in happier times; Ortega was still alive then, still delighting in all his lovely things. I hadn’t feared Bad Bob, except as a ghost safely sealed in my memories.

The night was cool, and there were clouds blowing up at the horizon. A natural front, nothing sinister about it. Overhead, the stars were chips of ice, sharp enough to cut.

If I’d been walking with my lover, with my husband, it would have been magical. I love you, I whispered to him, along the bond between us. I will always love you. I’m sorry.

I felt nothing in response.

I walked up the steps, moving steadily and without hesitation. I reached for the knob, and opened the front door. It was unlocked. I’d known it would be.

Bad Bob was sitting in a leather wing chair next to the fireplace, feet up, puffing on a cigar. He had a bottle of liquor next to him—scotch, this time. He raised the bottle, and I levitated it to me. The taste of liquid gold burned the roof of my mouth, then poured down my throat and started a sickening burn in the cold pit of my stomach.

“It’s not poisoned,” I noted, and sent it back. He caught it effortlessly out of the air and chugged a few mouthfuls, then put it aside.

“Wouldn’t waste good scotch. Or good poison,” he said. “Wouldn’t kill you, anyway, would it? Nothing kills you. Goddamn cockroach, you are. You’ll survive a nuclear winter.”

“Look who’s talking,” I said. I sat down on the edge of the couch across from him. There were a few lights burning, not many, and the whole effect was ghostly. Outside the windows, the beach was dark, the water slick and almost flat—a calm sea. “You’ve been dead a few times, I hear.”

He chuckled. “Hurricane Andrew should’ve killed me,” he said. “Came damn close, actually. But there was always just one more damn challenge, one more thing to do. One more life to save. You know how it is.”

“That’s your story? That you were in the business of saving lives?” I leaned back and folded my arms. “Oh, come on.”

“I’ll put my scores up against anybody’s. Including yours.”

“You killed people!”

“How many collateral goddamn damages have you had over the past few years, girl? What the fuck makes you the hero of the story? No, more to the point: What makes me the villain?”

I stared at him, not exactly sure what he was doing. I’d come here intending to make him kill me, or to destroy him in the process, if that was possible; to wound him badly enough that Lewis could finish him off. I hadn’t expected him to be so damn defensive about, of all things, his record as a good guy .

“Your hands aren’t clean,” he pointed out. “Hell, you’ve stood by and let people die, if nothing else. How come I’m the bad guy?”

“Because—” I ground my teeth together. “Because nobody ever became evil overnight. Because the bad guys don’t see what they do as evil; they see it as their own personal good. Sound familiar?”

He took another slug, straight from the bottle. “Joanne Baldwin, big-time hero. If I hadn’t given you that Demon Mark, you’d still be paddling around the shallow-personality pool, wondering if you could destroy a tornado fast enough to make the shoe sale at Macy’s. Not good, not evil. Not anything.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Yes, you do.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, hands clasped. “I’ve made you strong. I’m going to make you stronger. Stronger than any goddamn Warden in history. And I’m going to do that by changing the whole ecosystem of the planet— by destroying the Djinn. Makes humans the real apex predators of this little ball of rock. And I’m putting you in charge of it.”

It hit me what he was trying to say. “You—you think this is a good thing for me. For the Wardens.”

“I don’t give a shit if it’s good or bad. It’s what’s necessary. I always do what’s necessary.” Bob’s grin flashed. “Sometimes that’s also fun, though.”

I didn’t want to hear any more. Outside the windows, the seas began to chop as the wind moved faster, as temperatures shifted and swirled. He was playing with the weather. Taunting us. Sending temperatures into a downward spiral out near Cuba, creating an imbalance that would surely force intervention.

“I’m going to kill you,” I said. “Demon or not. Dead or not. You’re not walking away today, not if it costs me every last breath I have. If you made me what I am, then what I am is coming after you.”

He sighed. “Ah, Jo. Wave a red flag, and you run at it like a bull, every time. You think I didn’t know that?”

Which was exactly how I wanted him to think. My gaze had fixed on something black and glittering, mounted like some exotic trophy weapon on the back wall of the house, right out in the open, almost as a taunt.

The whole house was lethally radioactive. I was, in effect, already dead. Even as an Earth Warden, I couldn’t diffuse that much radiation through my system without damaging my own cells. Maybe Lewis could, but not me. My daughter had cut herself off from me—had been forced to.

The power I was drawing from David in a steady stream was keeping me alive, but it wouldn’t save me over the long haul. It was a treatment, not a cure.

I turned away from Bad Bob and walked to the Unmaking. It was glimmering with its own black aura, sending its poisonous tendrils deep into the house, into the aetheric.

“You don’t want to do that, honey,” he said. “It’s suicide.”

I picked it up.

The outside of it felt shockingly hot. A slightly rough texture when I ran my fingers lightly down, finding the balance point. The horrible thing was heavier than I’d expected, and my muscles began to shake, trying to rid me of the burden.

Bad Bob hadn’t moved. He raised the cigar to his mouth and puffed, eyes half closed. “You got the wrong idea, Jo. You can’t kill me this way.”

“You’re probably right,” I panted. I fought, but lost, the battle for control of the weather system that was rotating in past Cuba, moving high and fast and wild. It collided with warmer air, and the clouds built walls of thick, heavy gray. Lightning burned inside it, living and dying in rapid-fire flares. “But I’ll bet it slows you down for the others to finish.”

“They’ll have their hands full trying to keep half of Florida alive by nightfall. If I make things bad enough, the Djinn will have to show their faces just to keep the balance, and once that happens . . . they’re mine.” His pale blue eyes focused on me. “Put it down, kid. You’re just killing yourself faster.”

I shook my head. Sweat dripped down my face, matted my hair. “No. Make me. I know you can.”

“Why should I?” he asked. “You want to kill me, kill me. Do it. Maybe you’ll be right. Maybe it’ll just be that easy.”

I lunged, both hands barely able to keep hold of the black spear, and as I did I had an involuntary flash of sense-memory, of Jerome Silverton digging that black shard from a dead Djinn, and of my dream of David lying dead in the street, pierced just like this.