Rachel Caine - Ill Wind

She jolted in surprise and looked around the room where she was, taking in every corner, every shadow. As she turned, I saw that indescribably alien beauty in her again. The beauty a Demon had given her.

"Jo? Jesus, you're slippery. I figured you'd be dead by now. No can do, babe. I need him."

"You don't!"

"I need him."

"You don't even have the Mark anymore! You're free!"

That pretty, false face distorted in anger. "Yeah, exactly. I'm healed. Well, that's just great, isn't it? Except I can't go back to what I was. Scarred. Crippled. Useless. I need this one, Jo. I need him to live."

I remembered the incredible strength of the fire jetting across the field toward me. A thing like that didn't come cheaply. She was weakened, and she needed a fresh source of power.

She needed David.

"I love him, Star," I said. "Please. Please, don't."

She laughed. The same laugh, the same sweet, happy laugh that had kept me sane all these years, reminded me there was a normal world and normal friends and the hope of something beyond the Wardens.

The same lying laugh.

She walked up to David and trailed her fingers over his face, down his neck. I felt an overwhelming urge to bitch-slap her into next week. She tucked the phone between her ear and shoulder and flipped pages in the book he held. "Let's say I know what— and who—you're talking about."

"I'm not fucking around, Star. You either let him go, or I come and take him from you. Understand?"

She found what she was looking for. She looked down at the words for a few seconds, then stepped back.

"You have no idea," she said. "No idea what I've done, or how hard I worked. I was a fucking cripple, Jo. Ugly, maimed, burned out. Even Marion thought I wasn't worth bothering about. I barely had enough power left to light a match."

I swallowed my anger and tried to sound reasonable. "But you got better."

"Oh, yeah, I got better. No thanks to any of them." She was smiling now, but it was a hot, tight smile that looked like it hurt. "No thanks to Lewis. He left me looking like a Halloween fright mask, you know. I felt him healing me, but he didn't have the guts to take it all the way. Just like you."

She put the phone against her chest and said something to David, but there was no sound in the illusion. David didn't—couldn't—answer. Star finally put the phone back to her ear.

"Got to go, Jo," she said. "Things to do, Djinn to claim."

She hung up and tossed the phone down on the table. I screamed into the cell phone, but it was too late, too late, too late.

Estrella took a Mason jar down from a shelf and set it on the floor next to David's feet. I don't know why I kept looking, except that not looking would have been a betrayal of everything he'd shown me about honor and loyalty, about forgiveness and responsibility.

I read her lips as they moved.

Be thou bound to my service.

Oh, Star, no. Please.

Be thou bound to my service.

Please stop.

Be thou bound to my service.

I felt the David I'd known snuff out like a candle, his personality and presence obliterated by the bonding.

He was Star's.

His eyes shifted spectrums, became a dark, lightless brown.

She took the book away from him and put it down, and his gaze followed her with the unsettling attention and devotion he'd once given me.

"He's lost," Rahel said. Her voice had turned ice cold, hard enough to cut. "Trust him no more. He cannot go against her."

She let the illusion snap to darkness. I felt my knees give way and sank down in the grass again. I rested my forehead against my braced knees.

Rahel's hand rested briefly on my shoulder. Comfort? I don't know. But it did give me strength. I fought off the weight of panic in my chest and blinked against tears. My face felt hot, my skin too tight.

"I don't understand," I said. "Why is she doing this?"

"She doesn't have the Mark anymore," Rahel said. She crouched down, fluid as a shadow, to look me in the face. "She must have something to fill her emptiness."

"Then where did the Mark—?"

The answer was in her sad, furious, outraged eyes.

"Oh, God," I breathed. "Lewis tried to save her. He took it from her. And now she wants it back."

"Now you see," Rahel said soberly.

I did. Vividly. Horribly. Lewis had so much power… more power than me, than anyone. Lewis had done exactly what his nature demanded he do—he'd stepped in to heal her. In doing so, he'd been vulnerable to the Mark, and that was… horrible. Lewis corrupted, without a conscience, with unlimited power…

Apocalypse never seemed like such a personal word before.

"Is he still with her?" I asked. She tilted her head to one side, then back. "C'mon, Rahel, spill. I don't have time for Djinn games."

"I think so. We have found no trace of him."

"Why doesn't he leave?"

She blinked slowly. "I think he can't."

"Shit!" I slapped the ground hard enough to make my hand hurt. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"What would you have done differently?"

"Well, crap, maybe I wouldn't have blundered right into the trap, you idiot!"

Rahel gave me a long, offended look that reminded me I was dealing with Power. Capital P. "I am not responsible for the short-sighted nature of mortals, Snow White. I deal with you as we have always done with humans. It is not our nature to explain ourselves. We expect you to understand this."

"Whatever. Man, if I make it out of this, we're going to have some classes in interspecies communication, 'cause you guys suck at it!" Shit. I didn't have time for this, the situation was out of control, and as somebody already falling, I had a bird's-eye view of the nasty landing. "I need to get to Oklahoma City."

"I can't take you there," she said. "I'm—"

"Yeah, free, I know. You can only travel the speed we do." She looked pleased and surprised that I already knew. "Get me to the closest car lot."

She nodded. "Hold on," she said. She threw her arms around me in a full-body hug.

And my feet left the ground.

Now, I've flown in Oversight hundreds of times, maybe thousands—and I'm used to the sensation of the world falling away. But this was different. My body wasn't safely down on the ground waiting for me; my body was dangling in midair, at the mercy of a Djinn with an ugly sense of humor.

I let out a scream that came out more like a helpless meep and threw my arms around her, too, hanging on for dear life as we soared up into the cool air. Heat battered my skin, and when I dared to look down, we were passing over the blazing orange pyre of the Land Rover.

A bird dipped wings and darted closer to check us out; I read confusion in his dark little bird eyes and absolutely felt for him. I didn't know I was doing in his airspace, either.

"You know so much of the Djinn," Rahel said, grinning. "Did you know we could do this?"

I shut my mouth before I could catch a bug in it.

Rahel touched us down on the corner of an intersection in Norman, about ten miles from where we'd started, and let me sit down and put my head between my knees to fight off the urge to puke. She found it amusing.

"You walk the worlds," she said. "Yet a little levitation bothers you?"

"A little? Hello, a lot," I shot back, and swallowed. "What are we doing here?"

Here being a closed, deserted car lot called Performance Automotive. Rahel gave me a look so exasperated, I was surprised she didn't just snap her fingers and make me into a white rat.

"Clearly, we are getting you transportation."

Right, the Land Rover was a pile of smoking crap. "We're stealing a car."