Rachel Caine: Total Eclipse

Until I looked back, and saw more chimeras coming.

“Ven,” I said then, and nudged her head off my shoulder. “ Venna .”

Her eyes cleared a little, and she regained some of the distance and poise that I was used to seeing in her. “Joanne,” she said. “You put me in a bottle.” That was a dangerous thing for her to be realizing right now.

“I had to,” I said. “You were Ifrit. You could have killed David.”

She nodded slowly, processing the information, and then turned her head to look at the oncoming group of chimeras scuttling up the road toward us. She frowned. “Those aren’t right,” she said, and extended her hand. One by one, the creatures blew up in gouts of blood and some kind of pale fluid. It was nauseating, but effective. In seconds, not one of them remained.

Venna turned her gaze back on me. “You put me in a bottle.” I didn’t repeat my answer; she already knew what I had to say. The only question was whether she’d actually accept it. I knew I could blow up just as gruesomely, and as easily, as those chimeras littering the road out there, and I knew better than to think Venna wouldn’t do it, if she thought it was the right thing to do.

She stared at me with Djinn-fired blue eyes, and finally said, “His powers came to me. I’m the Conduit for the Old Djinn.”

I should have seen that coming, but somehow, I didn’t. I blinked at her, and bit back an automatic, and utterly suicidal, congratulations. “I’m sorry,” I said instead. “I had to do something.”

“Yes,” she said, and looked moodily out at the land around us. “Yes, I can see that. She’s trying to reach me, but she can’t as long as you have me anchored in the bottle. My power flows through you.”

“Venna—”

She made some kind of decision, and stood up. I waited as she dusted off her dress—not that it would ever get dirty. She could just be moving away so that she wouldn’t be splashed with my gore when she exploded me.

Yeah, I try to look on the bright side.

“Are you going to sit there?” she said. “Or do you want to see Lewis?”

“I want to know what happened to David,” I said. “Something must have. He would have come back for me.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “That’s in his nature. Come.” She extended her small hand, and pulled me to my feet with such ease she might as well have been a linebacker. When I started to drop the grip, she held on.

“We’re going through the aetheric,” she said.

“Wait, that’s not—”

“Trust me.”

And then everything was a rush of color, light, a feeling of being destroyed to a cellular level, pain , and then, suddenly, I was facedown on the carpet of a casino floor, gasping for breath.

Slot machines were ringing, just like the world was still normal. Just like everything that I’d been through had been a terrible, passing nightmare.

I felt like a sack of overcooked spaghetti, and I wasn’t sure I could get to my feet at all, but Venna tugged me back upright. She gave me a long, level look and said, “You should put me back in the bottle now. The longer I’m out, the more of your energy I burn. You can’t afford it now.”

I cleared my throat and nodded. “Thank you.”

“There will be a price,” she said coolly.

That was positively chilling, but I tried not to let her see how much that got to me as I said the words, she misted away, and I capped the bottle firmly. She was right. The second the cork slotted in place, I felt better, stronger, and almost capable of standing on my own. But, since there was a handy wall to lean on, no sense in pushing it.

I heard the metallic rattle of guns being readied, and peered around to see a line of men and women facing me with serious weaponry, and even more serious expressions. Most of them were wearing the tailored blazers of security for the Luxor hotel.

All of them were Ma’at, and I could feel the shields being readied against anything I might try to throw at them.

I was too tired for this crap. I held out my fingers in a peace sign—which was one more finger than I was inclined to show them—and said, “Take me to Lewis.”

Venna hadn’t answered me about what had happened to David, but Djinn were like that.

Lewis would answer, or I’d beat it the hell out of him with my bare hands.

They took me out of the casino area—most of the dedicated players hadn’t paid a bit of attention to the sudden show of firepower—and hustled me through a maze of corridors to a salon privé on the second floor. It had the hushed, elegant vibe of a place where only the highest of high rollers was hosted.

The Ma’at guards opened the door—some kind of biometrics—and pushed me inside before closing it after me. It was a large room, and under normal circumstances it would have been exquisitely appointed, but the Wardens had no time for that nonsense, clearly. Expensive antiques had been shoved like driftwood into corners. A round mahogany table that would have caused those Antiques Roadshow guys to weep had been unceremoniously loaded down with files, computers, and satellite phones. There were folding tables set up with coffee and food, and cots—mostly full of sleeping people—crammed in at every angle possible. The clear space that was left was where the Wardens were working.

I saw Luis and Cassiel, and made straight for them. “What the hell happened to David?” I yelled. That got almost everyone’s attention in the room, even the sleeping ones. I shoved cots out of my way, creating a logjam effect, and scrambled over people to land in front of Cassiel. “He was with you! Where is he?”

She said nothing, but she looked sideways at a tall man pushing his way through the crowd. I didn’t even have to look at him to know who it was—the subdued tingle of his powers was unmistakable against mine.

Lewis.

He grabbed me and hugged me fiercely, which would have normally been nice, but right now I wasn’t interested in anyone comforting me. I wanted answers.

The words died in my throat when I focused on his face. He looked terrible, worse than I’d ever seen him. Ages older than he’d been when we’d parted back in Miami.

He was tearing himself apart.

From the look on his face, I wasn’t in much better shape. I pushed all that aside, grabbed him by the collar of his rumpled, days-old shirt, and said, “ Where is he? ”

Lewis closed his long fingers over mine, but he didn’t try to take my hands off him. “He’s all right,” he said. “Jo, I’m sorry. I couldn’t let him leave again. I couldn’t take the risk. Ashan is out there—”

“Not anymore,” I said. “Ashan’s gone. Venna’s the Conduit now.”

That made him pause, but only for a second. “How—Never mind. It’s good that he’s gone. He was poisoning her view of us. Maybe Venna can—”

“I can’t let her go,” I interrupted. “Lewis, if I do, she’ll be as bad as the others. She’s probably more powerful than Ashan, and if she gets thrown at us again . . .” I couldn’t think of words to describe how bad that would be. Ashan had been bad enough, but having Venna bent on destroying us . . .

He gazed down at me for a long while, and then said, “Come with me.”

I let go of his collar. There was something in the quiet, almost miserable way he said it that made me gulp; I didn’t want to see Lewis feel beaten. He’d always been the one who just didn’t give up. He cheated, he schemed, he lied, he manipulated—but he didn’t give up.

If he did now, I didn’t think I could bear it at all.

He took my hand and led me past the silent Wardens. There were only thirty or so in the room, and half of those were wounded, some badly. I stopped to touch a few hands. Nobody had anything to say. I saw the same beaten weariness in every face. Well, maybe not Cassiel’s, but she was always the exception. That would require she actually gave a crap.