Rachel Caine: Heat Stroke

David grabbed me. He pulled me past Kevin, who was still squirming to get up. I tried to slow down, because I had the opportunity to grab Jonathan’s bottle, but David’s imperative was clear. Get me out. Don’t stop for anything.

He shoved me forward, and I passed the barrier just a heartbeat ahead of him.

That was enough. His command was fulfilled, and the barrier slammed in place, knocking him backward. I reached out and touched him, but I couldn’t pull him through, couldn’t drag him to safety…

Kevin rolled over, still clutching Jonathan’s bottle, and yelled, “You! Kill him!”

“David, come here!” Lewis yelled, virtually at the same second. The barrier dissolved. David lunged through.

Jonathan grabbed, and missed.

Something was happening inside the vault. I couldn’t see it, not with human eyes, but when I used Oversight it looked like hell in there—tortured, writhing bodies, Djinn fighting each other on the aetheric, Kevin and Jonathan blazing like a white star in the center. I felt a chill of premonition and turned to Lewis, who was propped against the wall, looking worse than I’d ever seen him.

“I can’t,” he whispered, even though I hadn’t asked. “I’ve got nothing.”

If he had nothing left, David had nothing. We all watched as the black-sealed Djinn, free of their captivity, started manifesting in the real world.

Nightmares. They looked horribly disfigured, half demon, and they made a terrible sawing noise like metal tearing. Screams. A kind of scream I never wanted to hear again.

“Get out of there!” I blurted, and held out my hand to Kevin. “You have to get out, Kevin! Please! You don’t know what you’re doing!”

He could have. All he had to do was walk two feet forward, take my hand. Make the choice.

There was such a horror of devastation in his eyes. A dawning awareness that what he’d done had consequences, had a kind of history that was never going to let him go. Sin is like a stalker— you may learn to ignore it, but you can never hide from it.

He took one step, stopped, and gave me the emptiest smile I had ever seen. He said, “Concerned about me now? Too late, Joanne . I’m not gonna be anybody’s bitch anymore. Not hers, not yours… I’m gonna have power. So much power none of you can do anything to stop me.”

He looked past me, to Lewis. “You’re that guy. The one she was so afraid of. The one with the big mojo.”

Lewis didn’t blink. “Maybe.”

“Huh.” Kevin swept him up and down with a look. “No shit. Thanks, man. For saving my life.”

“You didn’t have to pay me back by killing her.”

Kevin’s face flushed a dull, mutinous red. “You don’t know anything about it.” He turned to Jonathan. “Can you get me out of here?”

Jonathan’s eyebrows quirked over his empty stare. “Where do you want to go?”

“Anywhere.” Kevin, under the stress of the moment, was forgetting the rules. He looked at Jonathan, who stared back, waiting. “Anywhere but here!”

“You have to be specific,” Jonathan said. And, as Kevin’s mouth started to shape something—something I was pretty sure would have been home —Jonathan said, “Might as well make it someplace fun. Disneyworld. Las Vegas. Something—”

“Vegas!” Kevin crowed. He looked pleased with himself for seizing on it. “Hell yeah. Definitely Vegas.”

Jonathan , I thought, what the hell are you doing ? He could have detailed the kid to death, could have asked him to define his designation down to a few square inches of ground, but I could see that he’d gotten what he wanted. “You have to order me,” he reminded.

“Oh, right. Uh, take me to Las Vegas—Wait!” Kevin threw up a hand. “What the hell are these things?”

He was looking at the barely visible Djinn swirling in the air. Jonathan didn’t shift his gaze. Probably didn’t want to look at them for long. I wouldn’t have.

“Djinn,” he said. “They’re sick.”

“Yeah? Fuck me. Well, let them go, they’re creeping me out.”

“No!” I yelled, and lunged forward. Too late. The barrier holding the Djinn back popped with an almost physical sensation, and the infected, tormented Djinn vanished. Kevin looked around the vault art all of the bottles lining the shelves. The ones on the right were all sizes and shapes, unsealed; the ones on the left were marked in black with the glyph that signified a demon infestation.

He grabbed some of the black-sealed bottles and stuffed them into his baggy pants pockets. “Let’s go,” he said to Jonathan. “Vegas. Move your ass.”

Lewis said, very grimly, “David, stop them from leaving.”

I was looking at David when he said it, and I saw the flicker of agony that crossed his face; Lewis didn’t know what he’d just asked him to do. Fight Jonathan. Fight someone he had loved and respected for a thousand years or more.

Someone he knew he couldn’t beat.

Kevin threw a sideways look at Jonathan, clearly realizing that Vegas, move your ass didn’t qualify as a proper command. Which meant David had the upper hand. “You. Mojo guy. You think you can take me?”

Lewis said, “I didn’t save your life to arm wrestle with you.”

“But you’re strong, right? Stronger than anything?”

“Not anything.”

“But almost anything.” Kevin looked sly, shot a greasy look at Jonathan. “Hey, I’ve got a better idea. We can do Vegas anytime.” He looked over at me, and the craziness in his eyes made me feel weightless and sick. “You should’ve been nicer to me, bitch.”

I think I knew, somewhere deep inside, what he was about to say, but there was no way to stop him. No way any of us could have stopped him.

Kevin pointed at Lewis and said, “Give me all his power. I want it all.”

A clear, unequivocal command, one Jonathan wouldn’t have any choice but to follow.

Lewis cried out, arched forward, and a river of white light flooded out of him, slammed across the empty space and into Kevin’s narrow T-shirt-clad chest. David, still held by the previous command, couldn’t act, and this was so far outside of my area of expertise that there was nothing I could even think to say, much less do.

Lewis went utterly limp. Unconscious. Out of the fight. Which meant that David was powerless.

Kevin opened his eyes, and smiled. Smiled . Flexed his arms like a weightlifter striking a pose.

“Kevin, don’t do this. You can’t hide,” I said. My voice was shaking. I gathered Lewis’s limp body in my arms and felt how hot he was, how fragile. How human . Like me. “Kevin, they’ll never forgive you for this. Humans or Djinn. They’ll hunt you down. They’ll destroy you.”

He lowered his arms and looked like a sixteen-year-old kid again, scrawny, nervous, arrogant. “Yeah? Well, you tell them, they try it, I’ll kick all their asses. Count on it.”

I just shook my head. He didn’t know. He didn’t understand.

Kevin snapped his fingers at Jonathan. “Now. Today. Take me to Vegas. We’ve got some fun to be having.”

“Stop him!” I pleaded with David. He looked stunned, angry, and completely baffled.

“I can’t. Lewis—” He looked down at the man I held in my arms. “It’s gone. All his power. There’s nothing to draw from.”

Too late, anyway. A sensation of rushing wind, and Jonathan and Kevin were gone.

“Can you track them?” I asked. David crouched down next to me and nodded. “Oh, God, David… can you fight them?”

“Not alone,” he said. “Not like this.”

I closed my eyes and looked inside myself, felt the warm red swell of power. I’d been put back into human form with all my potential included, which meant that maybe I was the only one qualified to do this thing. The only one with enough raw energy.