Rachel Caine: Thin Air

“They don’t come from Hell,” he said very earnestly, which only made him seem even nuttier. “At least, not as I understand it. They’re not from this plane of existence. They come from somewhere else. They’re drawn here to our world because of power; they need to feed on the aetheric, and the best way they can do that is to grab hold of a Warden, because we’re the equivalent of a straw to them-they can pull power through us. The more power they draw, the more dangerous they get.”

We’d been talking for a while. I wasn’t exactly believing in the whole Demon idea, but he was scarily matter-of-fact about the whole thing, and besides, I’d seen a few impossible things in the past couple of days. Including, well, him.

But really. Demons? How was that right?

I took a deep breath, put my doubts aside, and said, “So isn’t there some kind of, I don’t know, spell or something? Pentagrams? Holy water?”

“The only way we’ve ever found to stop a Demon, a full-grown Demon, is a Djinn,” Lewis said slowly. “The Djinn and Demons are pretty evenly matched.”

Great. David was coming back, right? Problem solved. Lewis must have seen it in my face, because he shook his head. “Not that easy,” he said. “Any Djinn that engages with a Demon directly is probably going to die, and die horribly. The only thing we can do to contain the fight is seal the Djinn, and the Demon, into a bottle. It traps the Demon so it can’t do any more damage.”

My insides felt like they pulled together in a knotted ball. “But what about the Djinn?”

“Like I said, they die horribly. And it takes some of them centuries.” Lewis’s face was hard, his eyes bright. “I didn’t say I liked it.”

“That’s-horrible.”

Lewis looked away. “Yeah,” he said. “Which is why we have a problem. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t let David-”

“Let David what?” said a voice from the shadows, startling me. David, of course, had arrived just in time to pick up his name being taken in vain. He stepped out of the shadows and stood there, watching us both, and whatever that was in his eyes, I couldn’t read it. “Let David make his own decisions? Thank you, Lewis. I thought the Wardens never let Djinn think for themselves.”

He was angry, and he was-I thought-scared. I didn’t know how much he’d heard, but clearly enough to disturb him.

Lewis didn’t answer. Probably a good move.

He dropped a thick forest green down jacket, complete with hood, on the floor next to Lewis. “Here,” he said. “Something to keep you warm. We don’t need you dying on us.”

Lewis let out a slow breath and sat back, bracing himself against the wall. “Thanks,” he said. “Nice to know you still care.”

“To a point,” David said, and turned to me. “Are you all right?”

I nodded, still shivering, but the last thing I wanted from him at this moment was a hug, which clearly he was thinking of offering. David slowly crouched, putting our eyes on a level. Not too close. He understood body language, at least, even if he wasn’t human; I could feel the yearning in him, the frustration, the anxiety. I wondered if he could tell what I was thinking, and decided that he couldn’t. He didn’t look worried enough.

“Is there anything you can do for him?” I asked, and jerked my chin toward Lewis. “Heal him?”

“He wouldn’t welcome that,” David said. He edged just a bit closer. “That is the stubbornest Warden I know, and considering I know you, that’s saying something. Here. Put these on.” He reached behind him and retrieved my damp clothes from the floor-when I took them, they were soft and warm, like they’d come straight from a dryer. Something hardened in his eyes. “Did you take these off yourself?”

Lewis laughed, a bitter sort of sound. “David, if you think I’m in any shape to seduce her, you’re giving me way too much credit,” he said. “She was freezing, she was soaked, and I didn’t even look. Can we move on to the next problem, which is a damn sight worse than your jealousy?”

“You think there’s a Demon,” David said. “I heard.”

“Worse than that,” Lewis replied. “I think there’s a Demon that’s managing to control Wardens and walk them around like puppets. You got any idea how bad that is?”

David looked profoundly troubled. “That means we can’t trust the Wardens, either. Something’s very wrong.”

I snorted. “ Wrong? I’ll tell you what’s wrong. I saw Lewis put three bullets into one of them-a girl named Cherise-and she didn’t go down. That’s wrong. She’s little !”

“Cherise?” David echoed, and looked to Lewis for confirmation. He nodded. “The human girl? Why would a Demon be using her? Why would it bother? There’s nothing in her to feed off of.”

“I don’t know, but she was definitely in on it,” I said. I was tired now, though considerably warmer; pulling on the clean, dry clothes had definitely helped. I leaned back to zip up the blue jeans and wrapped the tinfoil blanket around me again. “So she’s not a Warden?”

“Not remotely,” he said. “The boy is, Kevin, but not her. She was just-”

“My friend,” I said slowly. “She was my friend. That’s what she said. God…Why is this happening to her? To all of us?”

Lewis didn’t even try to answer. If David could have, he held back; I couldn’t tell what he was thinking at all.

“There’s got to be people we can turn to,” I said. “Hell, if not the Wardens, what about the police? The army? The forestry service?” I was getting bothered by their shared silence. “Dammit-David, you could bring help to us, right? Rescue?”

“If the Demon can puppet humans, it wouldn’t be wise,” he said. “It only adds more potential victims. The fewer we have to worry about, the better.”

“But we have to get out of here !”

“And we will,” Lewis said, and leaned his head against the wall with his eyes shut. His skin was the color of old, wet paper. “But David’s right. Bringing people into this is a bad idea, both for them and for us. We need to find our own way out, and to do that, we need rest.”

“But-” Lewis needed rest, that much was clear. I turned to David. “Seriously, can’t you see he’s hurt? Can’t you do anything for him?”

“If he’d let me,” David said. “Which I doubt.”

“I’m fine,” Lewis growled.

“See?”

“Lewis,” I pleaded. “Don’t be a dick. Okay, if you’re going to be a dick, at least be smart . You’ll slow us down. I need you in shape to get me out of here, right?”

Lewis didn’t open his eyes, but after a long moment, he nodded. David stood up and walked to him, put a hand lightly on his shoulder, and then moved it to the back of his neck. He crouched down next to him, and his eyes burned like lava in the darkness, nearly bright enough to read by.

Lewis made a sound. Not a happy one. His face went an even more alarming shade of gray. “Sorry,” David said quietly. “You should have let me do this sooner. There’s damage to your lungs.”

Lewis just nodded, tight-lipped. He was sweating from the pain, and his hands were trembling where they gripped the foil blanket around him.

With a glance at me, David brushed his other hand across Lewis’s forehead, and with a sigh, the man’s long body relaxed against the wall.

Out like a light.

“He’ll be better when he wakes.” David settled Lewis more comfortably, then turned back to me. “He was afraid to let go. He didn’t want to leave you alone with me.”

“What?” I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing. “Why?”

David smiled slowly. “Because like most Wardens right now, Lewis doesn’t fully trust the Djinn. Even though I have more reason than anyone else to want to keep you safe.” David eased down on the rock next to me, not quite close enough to touch. “He thinks my loyalties are divided. He’s right, of course. And the Djinn certainly aren’t making any of this easier.”