Rachel Caine: Total Eclipse

I got to my feet to help, but David was already there, taking the tray and setting it on a side table. Cherise let out a long sigh and shook her hands and arms to release the stress. “Man,” she said. “I forgot how hard it is to be a waitress. Remind me not to work for tips again, unless it involves a pole.” She looked up at David and flashed him an infectious smile. “You get what that means, right?”

“Do pole vaulters get tips?” he asked innocently, and lifted the silver cover on one of the large platters on the tray. He reached in and snagged a piece of bacon, which made my mouth water suddenly; I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. Ever.

Cherise stared at him with a wounded expression. “That’s a joke, right? Please tell me you are joking, because if you’re not joking, that is just tragic, and I’m going to have to stage an intervention.”

David munched bacon and explored the rest of the buffet she’d delivered as I got up from my chair. “Strippers. Poles. I understand.”

“Thank God. Because if a hottie like you had never seen a stripper, my faith in God was going to . . .” Cherise suddenly clammed up, which wasn’t like her at all. She looked down, then around at the silent, still Djinn. “Yeah,” she finished very quietly. “Guess that ship has sailed. And, oh look, we’re on it.”

It wasn’t like Cherise to fail to find the sunny side of the cloud, but then again, we’d been under clouds for what seemed like years at this point. I guessed that even the eternal optimist had to reevaluate, given the circumstances.

“How is everyone else?” David asked. I reached over him to take a slice of bacon as he poured coffee from the small thermal pot.

“The Wardens are all freaking out because they’re Joe Normals,” Cherise said. “For me, it’s just another sunny day in paradise, really. Not that I’m in the mood to tan or anything.”

She really was depressed. Well, I could see why. . . . She was probably the only person on the entire ship, other than the hired crew, who couldn’t feel anything odd about the area through which we sailed. The Wardens were reduced to shakes and panic, feeling suffocated by their isolation, and they probably resented her for her lack of suffering.

I was starting to actually get used to it. A little.

The food helped steady me, and I could see David’s body language easing a little as well. He hadn’t needed to pay careful attention to his metabolism in, oh, about five thousand years or so, and since he’d originally been killed and reborn as a Djinn at the tender age of what was probably his early twenties, if that, it wasn’t too likely he’d ever experienced the kind of human trials I was already starting to put up with.

My mother used to say that getting old isn’t for sissies. Neither is being human, for that matter. And the fact that David had managed to pull himself together so fast, and so gracefully, was humbling. I hadn’t functioned nearly so well when I’d, in turn, been pulled over to the Djinn side. That should have been a lot more fun than it turned out to be.

The ship’s motion had increased a little—difficult to tell, in a ship this big, but I could feel the pitch and yaw deep in my guts. If I’d still been a Weather Warden, I’d have been able to tell a whole lot more—how the air was moving, the tides, the deep and complex breathing between the water and the air above. Two kinds of fluids, moving as one. Symbiotic.

Now all I could tell was that my stomach was rolling with the motion. Great.

“The captain says we should be able to dock in a couple of days,” Cherise said. “I don’t know about you guys, but I could dig my toes in some sand. I’m starting to feel like I’m lost on Gilligan’s Island . And I can’t even be Ginger, because I don’t have any evening gowns.”

David stopped in the act of lifting a grape to his mouth. Just . . . froze. And I thought maybe he was confused about the pop culture reference, but that wasn’t like him, and anyway, he didn’t usually just . . .

Every Djinn lying in the beds suddenly sat straight up and screamed .

It was an eerie, tormented, unearthly wailing sound, and shockingly loud. I staggered, dropping my glass, pressing both hands to my ears, and setting my back against the wall for primal protection. There was something wrong with that sound, deeply and horribly wrong . Cherise crouched, covering her head; if she was screaming I couldn’t hear her over the incredible, deafening sound of raw pain coming from every one of the Djinn.

Every one of them but David, who was pale, standing frozen in place, and unable to make a sound or movement. His eyes, though—his eyes were screaming.

It seemed to go on forever, the needle-sharp sound piercing the fragile barrier of skin and bone I’d put over my ears. It shattered into my brain, filling it with a horror I’d never experienced and wasn’t sure I could survive. I felt my heart racing, thudding in panic against my ribs, and my knees failed me. I slid down the bulkhead wall.

I was weeping hysterically, struggling to catch any hint of a breath. It felt as if the sound itself were a weight on me, driving the air from my body. . . .

And then, as suddenly as it had started, it cut off. Not because the Djinn stopped screaming.

Because the Djinn, every single one of them except David, had vanished in a flicker of cold blue light.

Gone.

David fell hard, eyes still wide and locked in a terrible, panicked stare. I peeled my hands away from my ears, gathered strength, and managed to crawl on shaking hands to where he lay. I sat and pulled his head and shoulders into my lap as I stroked his hair and face. His skin felt ice-cold and clammy. His color was awful.

I couldn’t hear anything, just the ringing echo of that awful, eternal scream. I wondered whether I’d gone deaf. I thought I’d hear that sound for the rest of my life, or until I went mad, but I realized it was slowly fading. I could hear Cherise gasping and crying a few feet away. She’d collapsed on her side, curled into a ball. Her hands were still pressed to her ears.

“Baby,” I whispered to David. “Baby, talk to me. Talk to me.”

He tried. His lips parted. Nothing came out, or if it did my damaged ears couldn’t separate it from the still-ringing echoes of the screams.

He was shuddering. As I watched, he curled himself on his side, like Cherise, and pulled his knees up.

What just happened?

In seconds the sick bay door slammed open, and at least a dozen Wardens pelted into the room, with Lewis in the lead. He looked as shell-shocked as I felt, but at least he was on his feet and moving. He took it in at a single glance—Cherise, me, David, the empty beds where the Djinn had been.

The breath went out of him, and he went pale. Lewis took a slow, deliberate second, then turned to face the other Wardens. “Kevin, see to Cherise,” he said. “Bree, Xavier—get David into a bed. Warm blankets.” He crouched down to put our eyes level, and whatever he was seeing in my face, it obviously didn’t comfort him. “Jo?”

I tried to speak, then wetted my lips and tried again. The two Wardens he’d delegated were taking hold of David’s arms and helping him rise. He wasn’t able to offer much in the way of assistance. “I don’t know,” I finally managed to say. “Something—happened.”

“Where did the Djinn go?”

I just shook my head. My eyes blurred with tears. I felt lost, alone, cut off, horribly frightened. Lewis reached out and gripped my hands in his.

“Jo,” he said. “Jo, listen to me. I need you to focus. You need to tell me what you saw. Tell me what you heard.”

I tried to remember, but the instant I did, that sound filled my head again, as fresh and hot and painful as before. Shatteringly loud. I clapped my hands over my ears again, and dimly heard myself screaming, begging him to make it stop.