Chill Factor (9 page)

‘Lewis!’ I blurted, and felt a spurt of relief like ice water…just as I realised that neither Lel nor Carl looked surprised to see him.

Oh, fuck.

‘You look bad,’ Lel said to him – clinical analysis, not concern. ‘You sure you’re up for this?’

‘Yes,’ Lewis said. He had his cane again, and he was gripping it in a white-knuckled hand as he leant his weight on it. His colour was an unhealthy yellow-grey, and there were hard lines of pain around his eyes and mouth. Pale lips that nearly vanished, they were so colourless. ‘Just don’t take long.’

My hands had come down. A jerk from the gun made them go back up again, grabbing sky. ‘Lewis?’ I asked it very softly, watching his face. He looked at me for a few long seconds, then down at the sand.

‘It’s the way it has to be, Jo.’

‘Wait—’

He nodded to the Terror Twins. Lel removed a test tube-shaped bottle from her coat pocket. Now there was a bottle I wouldn’t have put a Djinn into, under any circumstances. One roll off of a table, and
poof
…unfortunately, I was all out of tables, and Carl was holding the gun like he seriously meant to use it.

‘Lewis! Just tell me what the hell’s going on! Look, I can
help
—’

‘You are helping,’ he said without looking up. ‘Lel. Do it.’

She popped the cork, and a Djinn misted into being next to her. Tall, dark-haired, kind of a business-class version of Raquel Welch. The Djinn’s eyes had a distinct reddish tinge to them, which was unsettlingly demonic, and the red-painted nails on her flawless hands had definite talon potential. She was wearing a suit that damn sure looked like Prada to me, sleek and dark and elegant.

No shoes, disappointingly. Her legs misted down around calf level, in the traditional Djinn way. She didn’t waste her energy on anything as human as feet.

I waited for Lewis to say something.
Anything
. To goddamn well
look at me.

He moved the cane in front of him and braced himself with both hands, staring down. Absolving himself of responsibility.

‘I swear to God, Lewis, I won’t forget this,’ I said. ‘Whatever you’re doing—’

Lel cut me off with a simple, direct command to her Djinn. ‘Stop her heart.’

I sucked in a fast, hard breath, not really expecting to finish it, but then my lungs were full and I was holding my breath and
still
nothing was
happening. The Djinn in Prada and Lel were exchanging looks like nuclear weapons.

‘Did you hear me?’ Lel asked through gritted teeth.

‘Clarification is required,’ Prada said. Ah, it was like that. Apparently, Lel had done something to get on the wrong side of this Djinn. Bad timing: Djinn liked to toy with people, especially ones they didn’t like. And they
really
didn’t like to be used as cheap executioners.

Lel’s fingers tightened around the test tube, then relaxed; she couldn’t risk even a hairline crack in it. Her dimples started looking hollow instead of cute, and her eyes took on a hard, sharp shine. ‘Stop her heart from beating. How much more clarification can you need?’ Lel’s eyes cut to Lewis, but he didn’t comment or move. His head was still down, his shoulders tensed.

Prada had a cruel tilt of a smile. ‘Specify,’ she purred. Carl muttered a soft, exasperated ‘Fuck me!’ and the Djinn’s smile gathered force, as if she were really very amused. I glanced frantically from Prada to Lel to Lewis, and felt a scream building somewhere like fizzy soda at the back of my throat.

‘Lewis, help me,’ I whispered. I got an involuntary look from him, a flash of dark eyes that betrayed how much this was costing him, this stillness and silence.

And he looked away again, leaving me to my
fate. My heart was hammering so fast and hard I thought it was shaking me apart; I was trembling all over, and my knees had gone the consistency of rubber bands. There was some panicked screaming going on in the back of my head, along the lines of
I don’t want to die!
and if this went on any longer, I wasn’t going to be able to keep my cool.

‘If you’re going to do it,’ I said in a surprisingly steady voice, ‘don’t screw around. I’m not going to beg.’ Unless it went on another thirty seconds.

For the first time, Prada’s reddish eyes flicked towards me. Read me like a book. I saw her face go still and blank, and then those flawlessly made-up eyelids went to half-mast and she held out a hand towards me. An open hand.

I felt her power reach out and fold around me, sink deep into my skin, my muscles, my bones. It kept moving, tightening, focusing around the panicked thick drumming of my heart.

‘No,’ I whispered, and tried to back up.

No use. There was a second’s pain, and then my heart just…stopped.

So much silence. I never knew how quiet it could be. The wind whispered over me, brushed black hair over my shoulders, and I knew I should breathe but breathing didn’t seem that important now.
Listening
was important. There was so much to hear…

I fell to my knees. I know that because I heard it
happen, heard the heavy, fleshy thump and each individual grain of sand rolling and scraping.

Lel bent over me. The sun gave her a completely inappropriate and undeserved halo. ‘By the way, they’re
not
knockoffs, bitch.’

Prada kept squeezing the life out of me. I wanted to say something, but I had no idea what, and anyway, there was nothing left now, nothing but the vast silence and a burning desire to see David, one more time…

It all happened so fast.

The cold black glitter of an Ifrit launched itself over me and battened on Prada like a glittering black second skin. It began to feed. Prada reflexively did the only thing that would save her…she translocated. Because she was still sunk elbow deep in me, stopping my heart, I felt the drag as she towed me with her.

‘No!’ That was Lewis, yelling. ‘No, not yet, not yet—’

I felt Lel reaching out, but it was too late; we were already moving, already in that
not there
space between worlds.

My last thought was, O
h shit, my heart isn’t
beating…

And then I hit something, hard, and that all stopped mattering.

I was lying on a tiled floor. It was hard, warm, and damp. The air smelt hot and moist, earthy, heady with the perfumes of a hundred flowers. I saw blackness and star fields streaming away from me, and people were running towards me.

Being dead was oddly painless. Oh, wait, I wasn’t dead yet, was I? Just dying. Takes minutes for the brain to shut down, and meanwhile, I had a fixed-stare view of thick-leafed succulents rustling overhead, of a tracery of milky glass and black iron beyond that. Faces kept appearing and disappearing. They all looked alarmed.

One of them leant over me and did something that made my ribs creak. As he leant over, I thought,
I did
not
give you permission to French
me
, and then I realised what was happening.

I was being revived. Chest compressions. Mouth-to-mouth.

I choked, and felt something flutter in my chest
under the painful stiff-armed pumping someone was giving me. The first hint of a heartbeat.

‘She’s coming back!’ My rescuer had turned away, yelling; he was young, African-American, wearing what looked like an official-type security blazer with a logo on it. Nice cologne. When he turned back, I offered him a loopy smile. ‘Hey, just stay still, OK? We’ve got an ambulance coming.’

‘I’m fine,’ I said, and tried to get up. He was as strong as he looked, and I felt a good deal weaker than I should have. ‘What happened?’

‘You collapsed, ma’am. Look, don’t move. Everything’s—’

Definitely not OK, I saw as I pushed myself up on my elbows. Prada was down flat on the tile a few feet away, and a black, sharp-edged shadow was crouched on top of her like some hideous gargoyle.

‘Hey! Stop it!’ I tried to sit up. I’d been locked in a struggle with an Ifrit when I’d been a Djinn myself; I knew how terrible it felt to have the life torn out of you…‘Rahel,
stop
!’

The Djinn was eerily silent, but the Ifrit was making noises – eager, whimpering noises, like a starvation victim at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Prada’s face was turned away from me, so I couldn’t see the agony in her expression, but I could see her whole body trembling. Shaking apart. Misting at the edges, sublimating into the aetheric.

The Ifrit began to change. Take on shape and form and texture.

Take on colour.

Lel must have finally mastered her confusion and ordered the Djinn back in the bottle, because suddenly there was a sensation of vacuum, and she was gone. The Ifrit, deprived of her feast, fell to humanlike hands and knees on tile, still making those raw, wretched noises. Her form wavered, solidified, became…Rahel.

‘She’s not making any sense,’ my saviour in the security blazer said to an army of paramedics, who arrived wielding tackle boxes and professionally bored expressions. One had a gurney. Not that a bed didn’t look good, but I
really
didn’t have time for this.

I swatted aside his hand. ‘Am too.’ And then it came to me, why he thought I was crazy. I was watching Rahel, and Rahel didn’t exist for them. They couldn’t see her. I blinked and fell back flat, being obliging for all the nice medical folks who took BP and pulse and talked about various things that I didn’t understand but which sounded very official. The world slowly came into focus around me, now that the crisis was passing. We were in a huge greenhouse, a Victorian monstrosity that stretched up at least two or three stories in graceful arches of wrought iron and frosted glass. The place was delirious with flowers and lousy with plants,
but every single one was perfectly groomed. Not a speck of dirt out of place. I couldn’t tell if the birdsong and insect hum were real or pre-recorded; this was so perfect it was more like a simulation of nature than nature itself. We were in the centre of the garden, near the picturesque, dignified gazebo where tourists by the millions had no doubt taken blurry photos to commemorate losing their shirts. I smelt food, and spotted a restaurant about twenty feet away. At the far end of the indoor garden, there was a hallway leading into the hotel lobby.

This all looked familiar.
Really
familiar.

The paramedics and security were keeping gawkers at bay, but there were lots of them. People of all ages, races, classes. Tourists in tacky shirts and walking shorts, complete with fanny packs. Guys in hand-tailored $5,000 suits talking on cell phones. One woman in a dress far too cool to be anything but couture, carrying a Fendi bag and wearing a selection from the Miu Miu fall collection on her feet. Kids in Rugrats T-shirts.

Holy shit. I was in Las Vegas.

It took me the better part of an hour to get rid of the various forms they wanted me to sign. I also had to appease grimly unhappy officials, and discovered I was now a guest of the Bellagio Hotel, courtesy of scaring the crap out of them by dropping dead in their conservatory. They had no way of knowing
that I’d been dumped there out of the aetheric, and I didn’t see any reason to explain it. I whipped up a quick story about coming to town and looking for a good hotel, and they bought it; I accepted a complimentary key card and escaped back to the conservatory as quickly as I could, hoping she’d still be there.

And there she was. Rahel. Sitting on a park bench, waiting. She rose gracefully to a standing position, brushed non-existent dust from the neon-yellow pant-suit she favoured, and straightened to look down at me as I walked up. Her head tilted to one side, cornrows rustling like dry leaves, and in that beautiful, dark-skinned face her eyes blazed yellow as summer suns.

‘Snow White,’ Rahel greeted me. Her voice still sounded strained, as if she’d spent hours screaming. ‘Feeling better?’

‘Not very.’ I extended my hand. She looked at it as if she had to decide whether or not to snap it off, then took it in hers, shook, and dropped it. Her skin felt hot and dry, perfectly solid. ‘Thanks for waiting.’

‘I was about to abandon you. I don’t have long.’ She looked peeved at the reminder. ‘She was weak.’ Meaning the power she’d drained from Prada wouldn’t last long, and then she’d start to revert back to the shadows. ‘I did what I could for you. Be mindful, sistah. You owe me.’

‘Definitely… Ah, quick question, but do you know where David is—’

‘Still in the hands of your
friends,
’ she said. ‘I can help you no more. I must feed to regain my power.’

I grabbed her hand, and quickly let go. It didn’t feel right. It sure didn’t feel as smooth and soft as it looked. ‘Wait. You can’t, Rahel, you know that it’ll wear off. You have to know of a way to cure yourself. Don’t you?’

Hot, predatory eyes met mine, and I had a very hard time holding the stare. She growled out, ‘No. I will exist in this form, feeding from others, or I will die.
Your
doing. Yours and David’s.’

I remembered the last time I’d seen her; like most of the Free Djinn, she’d been trapped by the contamination in the aetheric, poisoned by pretty little blue sparklies that had eaten her from the inside. I’d watched her die, or at least I’d believed so at the time. Her disintegration had looked more like being digested than just temporarily banished.

OK, great, she was holding a grudge. Not good, but then, she’d just saved my life…at least temporarily.

She took my silence for agreement. ‘There will be an accounting. For all of those who are brought down.’

‘But not now,’ I said. Without realising it, I’d started rubbing my chest, over my heart. ‘Right?’

Long, long stare. I broke out in goosebumps, but didn’t let her see it, hopefully.

‘We will speak of it,’ she said softly. ‘If you survive.’

‘Doing OK so far.’ It came out sarcastic. I swallowed my reflexive need to strike out. ‘Rahel, thank you. Thank you for my life.’

She regarded me without blinking, then turned and plucked a bright yellow flower from a nearby plant. The broken stem oozed clear blood; she licked it away contemplatively, fastened the flower in her glossy black hair, and gave me a smile that betrayed razor-sharp teeth.

‘You’re welcome, Snow White,’ she said. ‘But don’t get too comfortable in your new skin. You may not have it for long.’

I held myself very still. She circled slowly around me, walking as gracefully as a tiger, watching me all the while. Sunlight caught in the amber beads at the ends of her cornrows, and glinted on an Egyptian ankh worn around her neck. Soft gold, with a look of antiquity to it. The Djinn were such an odd mix of old and new, like Socrates on a skateboard. ‘Your enemy is coming.’

‘Which one?’ That sounded flippant; I hadn’t meant it to. I mean, it wasn’t like I just had the one anymore.
Lewis, oh, God, what the hell deal did
you make, and what devil did you make it with…?

Rahel grabbed hold of my shoulder, leant closer,
then shivered as if she’d been caught in a mortally cold wind. The shape of her changed, hardened, grew cold, then snapped back into focus, into defiant neon yellow and elegant, tall lines. Into flawless skin and the eyes of a predator, glittering with urgency. ‘Your enemy is coming. Listen to me, Snow White. The Djinn need you. You must not trust…’

Her lips were still moving, but what was coming out was just noise: a kind of grinding, growling screech, fading into silence. Despair sparked once in her expression, and then she blurred like an out-of-focus projection and turned dark, glistening, cold.

Nightmarish and spidery.

I yanked my hand away and jumped back, driven by memories of what it had been like to fight an Ifrit, but she didn’t come after me. Humans didn’t classify as food for something like her. She just…faded away.

‘Rahel?’ I looked around. Filtered sunlight, glossy green leaves, the whisper of flowers and fountains. I turned in a slow circle, stunned by the beauty, by the loss, by the enormity of what I was supposed to accomplish. Just surviving seemed like a heavy load, right about now.

A family of five passed me, consulting maps and pointing in more directions than a compass. They crowded the gazebo for a picture. I had to wait for them to clear the path. I fumbled the key card to my
complimentary suite out of my skirt pocket and wished to hell I’d actually thought to slip a credit card in there…or cash…

I felt a surge of power zip along my spine, smelt ozone, and got up, fast. Something was coming my way, and it wasn’t good.

Your enemy is coming
, Rahel had said. Looked like he was almost here. I cast about for someplace to go, realised it would be pointless, considering who I was up against, and decided to stand my ground.

A blue static spark jumped from the wrought-iron bench across six inches of empty space, and zapped me just as the hum of insect and bird activity in the conservatory went still.

The earth stopped breathing, or at least it stopped where I was, as Kevin Prentiss wandered into the building. He saw me, paused for a few seconds, then stuck his hands in his jeans pockets and sauntered my way. Funny, becoming king of the world hadn’t changed the kid much. He was still plain, acned, surly, shaggy, and badly dressed. From the aroma that wafted my direction – sweat and sour clothes and desperation – he hadn’t taken personal hygiene to heart, either. He was wearing a hooded grey sweatshirt over a T-shirt that read, partially obscured, UCK YOU, with a one-fingered illustration. His sneakers – red Keds – looked battered almost beyond recognition. Greasy too-long blue jeans with the
hems torn out sagged around his shoetops.

He stopped about ten feet away. Gunfighting distance.

‘Been wondering when you’d show up,’ he said. ‘Where’s your boy toy?’ Meaning David.

That stung. I had a hard time keeping my voice even. ‘I’m alone.’

‘How’d you get in?’ Kevin jammed his hands in the pockets of his sweatshirt and made belligerent fists in the fabric. ‘Shouldn’t have been able to. Nobody can get in who’s like you.’

‘You mean Wardens? The Wardens can’t get in?’

‘Just the ones in Vegas here before me.’ He shrugged. ‘Thought this place’d be fun. It’s kinda boring. I mean, it’s cool and all, but…I wanted to be away from all of you, and you just keep on coming after me. I mean, what did I do to you?’

Besides wrecking the Wardens’ vault and screwing around with powers he didn’t understand? ‘I guess they’re worried you’re out of control, Kevin.’

‘I’m not.’

‘And then there’s Yvette,’ I said slowly. ‘Who’s dead.’

Kevin’s eyes flew up to meet mine, wide and defenceless, and I saw the memory unfold in them. He’d done that. He’d ordered her killed, and he hadn’t flinched.

He was flinching now.

‘Bitch deserved it,’ he said. It sounded tough, but it was all ’tude. He had a huge amount of power, and nobody could tell him what to do…but he was alone. More alone than anyone I’d ever seen. ‘You’d better not cross me, yo?’

‘Yo.’ I spread my empty hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘Not crossing you. But maybe there’s something I can do for you.’

‘Yeah?’ He kept it neutral, but I saw the flare of hope in his face. ‘Like what?’

‘Like make a deal for you. You give up Jonathan, give back the powers you stole… I think the Wardens won’t make more trouble for you. You just go on about your business.’ Not that I was empowered to make deals for them, but I was here and he was talking. And with the deep game Lewis seemed to be playing, the faster and simpler I could make this, the better.

Kevin shook his head. ‘No way. He’s all I got.’

‘Sooner or later they’ll get to you. Look, Kevin, I don’t care how much power you’ve got; sooner or later they’ll take you down. You
know
that. Let me—’

‘I don’t need your help.’ He took a shuffling step my direction, probably trying to look menacing; he succeeded in looking like he was going to trip over his ragged hems. ‘You shouldn’t even be here. No Warden alive can get past the city limits; that’s what Jonathan said.’

No Warden alive.

Oh, Lewis. You bastard…you could’ve let me in
on the plan
… He hadn’t wanted Paul and the others to know. He’d been doing this himself, in secret. Hence the abduction by Lel and Carl, and where the hell did my innocent, peace-loving Lewis find a couple of hard-core killers like that? Lovely.