Rachel Caine - Chill Factor

Lazlo turned his attention back to me. "That was quite a display you put on in our lobby, Miss Baldwin. What exactly was the point of that?"

I was starting to wonder myself; Rahel still hadn't appeared to save my ass, and I was starting to suspect that I'd been robbed. "I wanted out."

"You might have asked nicely."

"You might have said no."

Lazlo's lips curled faintly, and he and Lewis exchanged a look. "We regret the extreme measures taken to subdue you. I trust you are feeling better?"

"Much." I noticed Ashworth wasn't providing the apology. "Nobody else got hurt, right?"

"You were surprisingly adept at rendering our operatives ineffective without harming them. My congratulations."

"It was luck." I stared hard into his eyes. "Next time I may not be so lucky."

"Next time, Mr. Quinn might just have to resort to something more than unpleasant words."

I crossed my legs and made sure they saw the bruises. "Gee. Imagine my debilitating terror. If we're done with the bluster, why don't you explain why you're keeping me here? If your great plan is just to have Quinn put a bullet in Kevin's head, why do you need me? You know I'm not going to sign up for your little club, and I'm damn sure not going to betray the Wardens for you. So why bother?"

Stalemate. Lewis stepped forward, crouched down next to me, and rested his elbows on his thighs. An entirely natural pose for him, but the pallor and strain in his face were disturbing. God, he looked bad. Really bad. Worse than he had earlier.

"I need you to see something," he said. "Are you up to it?"

"Well, I just ate, so use your discretion if it's going to be gross."

He didn't smile. "Laz. If you please."

And then we were moving .

I yelped as the world dropped away. I forgot all about my discomfort, because there was far too much to see up here. My body, for instance. All bright glass, with an aura of blue and gold, and a hard white core of light centered around my abdomen. Lewis, darker than the darkness, like a hole in space shot through with poisonous red lines.

The Three Amigos, up on the aetheric, had the look of-believe it or not-wizards. Their shapes were all flowing robes and tall hats, spangles of dark blue and star white. They had the muted, shadowy flow of regular humans, but the aetheric imaging of Wardens. Eerie.

And then there was the city .

Human emotions sculpt the aetheric. Human actions echo so strongly that the results can be awesome or terrible, beautiful or tragic. Sometimes all of that at once. New York had been layers upon layers of reality-you could read the history of the place through its emotional remains. There had remained an essential core of hope to the place, of fierce and abiding pride. Darkness, yes… but a great, almost sentient presence, too.

Vegas was nothing like that. It was empty . The aetheric was almost flat. There was history here, but it was layers of darkness, not light. Where the city in the real world was a blaze of light, on the aetheric it was shadow and midnight, velvet and silence. Hunger and the death of hope. This place consumed .

The Luxor was a lone blaze of light, burning and shimmering with power. There was a golden mist streaming away from it like a flow of dry ice, heading across an empty stretch of darkness toward… something else.

The absence of fire. A flickering blackness full of shadows, gravity, hunger .

It was consuming light, not producing it. Like a black hole, devouring everything around it in ever-increasing spirals.

We dropped back out of the aetheric. I fell hard back into my body with an all-over jolt that pulled sore muscles. Winced.

"That's Kevin?" I asked. Lewis slowly nodded. He looked mortally tired, even by so brief a journey. "Hey. Sit before you fall."

He lowered himself to a cross-legged position on the floor. "So. You understand?"

"Not really."

"I told you, she's useless," Ashworth said, and gripped the silver head of his cane more tightly, as if he wanted to bean me with it again. "Try putting it in words of one syllable for her."

Lewis put his hands on his knees, palms up, in a lotus pose. "Kevin's not producing enough power anymore," he said. "His natural talent was fire; he exhausted that weeks ago. He's burning through what he took from me too fast, and now in order to sustain himself and Jonathan he's learning how to take power from the world around him."

I felt a sudden chill. "Like a Djinn."

"No. Djinn do it on a much more balanced scale; he's drawing power like a demon. He has to be stopped, Jo. Regardless of his age, he's becoming a threat deadlier than anything that's walked the earth in ages. He has to be stopped, now ." Lewis sucked in a deep breath, then let it out.

Lazlo took up the thread. "We need you to draw him out of hiding."

"Excuse me?"

"He doesn't come out of that room. We were able to act once, to get you out of there, because he was about to kill you, but we can't do it again. He's ready for us now. I need you to draw him out in the open so Quinn can take him. He'll be defending against magical attacks. He won't expect this kind."

I stared at him, stunned. "You want me to be bait?"

"No. We want you to gain his trust and then betray him. And it's very possible he might kill you before we can take him down."

"Wow, I'm just jumping at the chance to help you out now."

Lewis reached out and took my hand. I tensed, waiting for the burn of power that had always passed between us, but felt nothing. Of course… all his powers were gone, drained away, leaving a huge bleeding hole that was killing him. I'd never feel that burn between us again. Even if we succeeded in…

"No!" I yanked my hand back. "Lewis, dammit, if you kill the kid, we can't get your powers back. You know that!"

I wasn't saying anything they hadn't already thought of themselves. None of them had so much as a flicker of shock. Not even Lewis. "I know." He shrugged. "That's how it has to be. He can't be allowed to get any stronger. It's tearing things apart. And that's just him sitting still. If he starts really using those powers, God help us all."

"No!" I practically yelled it. Lazlo glanced at Lewis. So did Quinn. "You've got power, I know it, I can feel it! Combine forces, get over to the Bellagio, and kick his teenage ass! All we have to do is get Jonathan away from him. Hell, you even had the chance when you sent Quinn to get me!"

"Jonathan doesn't want to go," Lewis interrupted me. "Believe me, we've tried. Best we can figure, Jonathan wants to be Kevin's Djinn."

That made no sense at all. Why would Jonathan-who I knew was no one's bitch-stay a slave? Unless there was something in it he wanted…

I had a blinding memory, real as the aching lump at the back of my head. Jonathan, standing in front of a plate-glass window that didn't really exist, watching the world go by, his eyes dark and bitter and angry. There are days when every single one of them deserves to be wiped off the face of the earth .

He'd been looking out at the mortal world.

And Rahel had said, He is the one true god of your new existence, little butterfly .

I said slowly, "Kevin's not doing this. At least, he doesn't know he is, and he probably doesn't want to do it. It's Jonathan. He's found a way to give the world back to the Djinn. As far as Jonathan's concerned, Kevin's the perfect answer-nearly unlimited power, not too bright, not too principled, too young to know that he's being stupid. Too innocent to understand that Jonathan's using him, not the other way around. Jonathan just says 'yes, master' a lot and goes about his own affairs. He's killing Kevin by drawing off every scrap of power inside of him, and he's reaching through Kevin to suck it out of the world around him."