Heat Stroke (14 page)

“Wait a minute, you haven't even told me anything yet!” I said. Why do guys always try to make the decision before they even state the problem? “Come on, Lewis, spill it. What do you need?”

He was still rolling the bottle around in his fingers, focused on it with such precision that I wondered if he was about to try to Copperfield it out of existence. Hey, I wouldn't put it past him. Glass was a pure, if nonorganic, manifestation of earth. He could reconstitute it into a pile of sand, if he wanted. How many degrees of heat did it take to melt sand into glass? I'd slept through most of my basic Earth Sciences classes, since it had all been about the weather for me. I remembered something about trillions of dust particles being used to make a single drinking glass, but apart from the fact that the instructor in the class had been a skinny, obnoxious woman with tortoise-shell glasses and the fashion sense of a lamp shade . . .

“There's something up there,” Lewis said. “In the aetheric. I think it's a rip into the Void.”

“Come again?”

“The Void.” He finally lifted his gaze and met mine. “The place where demons come from. Where they reach through to leave the Mark.”

Oh yeah, I know all about the Mark. Had one, didn't enjoy it nearly as much as you'd think. Something about demons trying to claw their way out from inside me, incubating like baby spiders in the helpless stunned body of an insect . . . ugh. Not a pleasant memory. The thought of a repeat engagement filled me with a sharp-edged sense of anxiety. “There's a demon trying to get through?”

“Not at the moment.” Lewis let the bottle roll out of his fingers onto the tabletop, and prodded it gently around in a circle. “Doesn't mean one won't. We need to shut the door and seal it.”

“And when you say
we
, that's a royal I'm-the-biggest-bad-ass-Warden-there-is-and-I-don't-need-any-help sort of
we
, right?” Because I really didn't much like where this conversational trail of bread-crumbs was leading. There was a witch at the end of it, and an oven, and a really unpleasant fairy tale.

“I mean that I can't do it alone,” he said. He sucked in a deep breath and came out with it. “I need a Djinn.”

“Hey, fine, just pull one out of backstock and fire it up, there, buddy.”

“I freed them. All the ones I had.” He shrugged. “Seemed like a good idea at the time. I agree with David about the slavery issue, and besides, I wasn't planning on needing one any time soon.”

“And yet here you are.”

“Yes.” He stopped playing with the bottle, folded his hands together, and just looked at me.

“Oh, no, don't even,” I said. “I'm nowhere near ready for that kind of thing. Ask Patrick.”

“I did.”

I shot a hot, disbelieving, wide-eyed look at my so-called mentor in his porn Disney getup. He'd manifested some kind of breakfast while I wasn't looking, but it didn't look anything like a traditional bacon-and-eggs kind of thing; some kind of lumpy-looking yogurt stuff, thin little flaps of something that looked like unfolded blintzes, and a weirdly colored fruit mishmash. Whatever country it was from wasn't anyplace I ever wanted to visit, or at least eat breakfast in.

“Patrick?” I demanded.

He took a bite of fruit surprise with no evidence
of discomfort. “Joanne?” He put an entire argument into my name, and I lost. He turned his attention back to Lewis. “She's made progress, but she needs to understand the flows of power. Over time, she could learn, but she doesn't have time. If she's going to make it through this, she has to have a jump start. Such as the one you propose.”

“Hey, pardon me, but nobody's jumping me, okay?” I sucked in a couple of deep cleansing breaths, and tried to be reasonable. “Just to be clear, you want me to agree to be your Djinn? Your slave?”

Lewis had the grace to look appalled at the idea. “No! Employee. And only for a short time, maybe an hour or so. When the job's done, I smash the bottle, you're free again.”

“And even if I believe you, what makes you think I can do this thing you want done? 'Cause I'm not exactly the most competent Djinn on the block, in case you haven't heard. In fact, most of these guys barely consider me half of one.”

Patrick grunted and shoveled in pale gray yogurt with lime green chunks floating in it. “Less than half,” he said. “I'm afraid that to them, you're a parasite. Better off dead.”

“Yeah, see? Parasite. I'm a parasite. You need somebody reliable. Like David.”

Lewis's face had become a still life. How anybody could sit that quietly . . . “I can't find David. Rahel turned me down. Patrick recommended you.”

“And that's your entire list? What about the three you freed?” Because I was thinking hey, talk about owing favors . . . but his tense expression didn't relax. I wasn't breaking any new ground.

“They're gone,” he said. “No longer on this plane of existence.”

I tossed that one to Patrick for an explanation. He gave another insouciant shrug. “They don't want to be imprisoned again. You can understand their point of view. I myself am not willing to risk it, either. And while I trust that Lewis wouldn't even consider it unless it was an emergency, I'm afraid that an emergency to the Wardens doesn't necessarily constitute an emergency to
me
. There are plenty of Wardens equipped with Djinn. Let one of them handle it.”

Lewis's chin set in that stubborn line. A muscle flickered in his jaw. “They can't see it. I think the only ones who can are the Djinn and humans with all three forms of Warden powers.”

“Meaning, only you.”

Lewis nodded.

Patrick slurped through another spoonful of slimy crap. “My, doesn't that just make you indispensable, my friend? Fate of the world, depending on you? Whatever did we do before
you
came along?”

And the award for most cutting sarcasm goes to . . . Even I flinched. Lewis, not accustomed to having people accuse him of megalomania, just blinked and looked a little lost. “I'm just giving you the facts.”

“The fact is that you
want
it to be you.” Patrick leveled a spoon at Lewis like a nun with a ruler, ready to slap hands. “You need to be the hero, boy. A common human failing.”

Lewis opened his mouth, shut it with a snap, and pushed his chair back. “Fine. Sorry to have bothered
you. I'll just see myself out then. Oh, and I love what you've done with the place, Patrick. Kind of a whole Christopher-Lowell-goes-over-to-the-dark-side thing.”

Another shovelful of crap into Patrick's mouth, this time the weird otherworldly-looking flat blintzes. “Oh, don't be so sensitive. I didn't say you were necessarily wrong. Occasionally you
should
be the hero. I'm just saying that it's not a good habit to acquire. No long-term prospects. Cowards live longer.”

Lewis, already standing, wavered indecisively between staying and going. I put my coffee down and stood up, too. “I understand what you're trying to do,” I said. “I just don't think I'm ready.”

“Yeah. I get it. Thanks anyway.”

He turned to go. I grabbed him by the arm. “I didn't say no. Convince me.”

“Of what?”

“Why I'm ready.”

He moved closer, or maybe it just felt that way; he had that kind of aura. Once it grabbed hold, it sucked you in. I felt weightless, drawn in by the intensity of his power and conviction.

“It doesn't matter if you're ready,” he said. “Nothing ever stops you, Jo. Nothing ever has. I need you because you're the only person I've ever known who's completely incapable of losing a fight.”

I felt a blush burn hot up through me—not a human blush, not really, this was more happening on the aetheric level than traveling through capillaries—and I said, with more humility than I probably ever had in my life, “Yeah, well, you don't
know very many people, Lewis. Your communication skills kinda suck.”

He gave me a long, slow smile. “You didn't always think so.”

Which led me to memories that were neither situation-appropriate nor really germane, but were damn nice to recall. Storm energy flaring all around us, two bodies naked and moving in that sweet, hot rhythm, lubricated by sweat and lust and the awesome power of the moment . . .

Not a bad way to lose your virginity, all things considered.

“So,” he said, and raised his eyebrows. There was that cute little line between his eyebrows again, the one I wanted to smooth away with my thumb. “In or out, Jo?”

Patrick, still sitting at the table, rustled his paper as he turned pages to check out the funnies. “She's in.”

Lewis didn't glance at him. “Is she?”

I reached out and scooped the perfume vial off the table. I held it out and dropped it into his open palm, then folded his fingers closed over it. “Guess so.”

 

There was a surprising lack of ceremony to the whole thing. First we waited for Patrick to finish his breakfast, which looked more revolting by the moment, and then for him to shuffle off to another room with his paper and unmentionable bathrobe. Lewis and I played
my-God-how-tacky-is-that?
with Patrick's collection of objets d'crap, finally coming to the conclusion that only a going-out-of-business sale at a whorehouse could really explain a lot of it. When my own personal Obi-Wannabe reappeared, he looked
sober and dressed for action in khaki slacks, a black silk shirt, and around his neck some kind of silvery chain that had a bit of the disco period to it.

Lewis excused himself. I watched him go, then turned my attention back to Patrick.

“Does this have the Jonathan seal of approval?” I asked. It was kind of a joke. And kind of not. Patrick shot me a nakedly assessing look.

“Jonathan doesn't concern himself with the details of the manufacturing process,” he said. His lips twitched into a strange little smile. “Not anymore. Although he once was—how would you say it? A great deal more hands-on in his management style.”

I settled down on the banana couch and drew my legs up more comfortably, hugging the tacky leopard throw close around my shoulders. There was a chill in the air—or, more likely, in me. “You know, nobody's been overly forthcoming about the guy. What's his deal?”

“Jonathan?” Patrick's thick white eyebrows climbed heavenward. “You realize you're asking a foolish question?”

“An obvious no.”

The eyebrows compressed again, this time into a frown. “You can know the history of anything and anyone you wish, Joanne. All it takes is a bit of concentration. You should know this.” He looked woefully disappointed in me. “You tell
me
about Jonathan.”

He reached out and touched me with one blunt finger, right in the center of my forehead.

It was like being hit by a cement truck at eighty miles an hour, head on.

My head exploded into color, light, chaos, pain, heat, cold, fury. I gasped and struggled to hang on to something, flailed around, found a memory. I grabbed it and held to it with iron strength.

Jonathan, handing me the cold, sweating beer bottle.

Jonathan's eyes, dark and endless as space, meeting mine for the first time.

There.
Patrick's silent whisper in my head.
Go there.

He shoved me, hard, from behind, and I tumbled out of control into chaos.

When I got my footing again—whatever footing consisted of, in this place—I was standing on a raw piece of rock, dizzyingly high up, and an ice-sharp wind blew through me. It caught my long black hair and snapped it back like a battle flag. I was different, here. Snow-pale, dressed in filmy black robes that rose on the wind like a cloud.

I faltered when I realized that I was inches from the drop, that gravity was singing at me like a siren. I dropped down into a crouch and put both hands on the cold stone. Lightning flashed in a hot pastel curtain overhead, and far down below, far down in the mud, men were dying.

I could feel that. Feel every wound, hear every scream, taste every drop of blood being shed.

“ ‘And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul,” ' Patrick whispered. He was next to me, solid and flaring white-hot. Beside him, behind him, a black ice-edged shadow. “Although this is not that Jonathan, or that David, the verse is still
true. If you want to know about Jonathan, you will know it here.”

Here.
That was the Ifrit's silent whisper. I looked down, trembling, wanting desperately to go because there was so much death here, so much pain.

So many dying.

There was one who shone. Glittered with power.
Warden.
He was tall, spare, moving with grace and speed as he turned and fought against the ones coming at him. The lightning kept calling to him, but he wouldn't answer. The
Earth
was calling to him, her voice like thunder, like rivers flowing, like the slow rising cry of mountains.

He wouldn't answer her.

“Oh God,” I whispered. “He's like Lewis.”

No, he was
more
than Lewis. The world itself was wrapped around him, through him, like a lover holding him. Not just a man who controlled the elements, but was loved by them.

Fiercely defended.

Rain sheeted down, silver as tears.

He was rejecting her love, there on the battlefield. He was fighting as a man, not a Warden. Sword in his hand, solid blows of metal on metal, his leather and metal armor taking cut after cut. Blood . . .

I felt it coming. The world around me felt it coming.

A lunge. A spear angling up, punching past hardened leather and too-soft bronze, ripping . . .

I cried out. It didn't matter, the whole world was crying out, the Mother crying out for her dying child, and even though I was at the mountain's peak, looking down on a struggle of ants, I could
see
Jonathan,
see him struggling to pull the spear out of his chest with both hands, face fierce and bloody with determination.