Heat Stroke (26 page)

“DVD.”

I gave him that. I also skipped the intermediate steps and gave him a cutting-edge sound system, big honkin' speakers, a full CD rack based on the most
recent Billboard charts, headphones, amplifiers, every movie in the last twenty years (at his age, he wouldn't care about anything else).

“Bitchen,” Kevin said, awestruck. He got up to fiddle with the remote. “Whoa.”

“Let me go,” I said. He froze, hands still twisting knobs. “Kevin, please. I'm asking you as a friend. Let me go and do
something
.”

“Friend?” he echoed. There was something lost and little-boy in that word, something fragile. “I don't even know your real name.”

“Joanne,” I said quietly. “My name is Joanne.”

“Huh.” He pulled out a CD and examined it. “I liked Lilith better.”

“Kevin . . .”

I watched his shoulders hunch together under the threadbare, ripped T-shirt, remembered his stepmother's love of S&M . . . S, probably, in his case. He'd never had a friend, at least not since Yvette came into his life. Alone. Scared. In pain.

I could bully him into anything I wanted. I would, if I had to, for David. But it would haunt me worse than anything else I'd ever done.

“If you're really my friend, you won't go,” he said. “You'd stay here. Take care of me.”

How young had he been, the first time she'd hurt him? The quaver I heard in his voice was the cry of a child too small to understand why it was happening.
Bitch.
I ached with the need to do something to her, anything, to even the score. I understood David's black fury now, when he'd seen her at the funeral. He'd had a close, unclean relationship with her for too long not to hate her.

I walked around the couch to where Kevin was randomly picking up CDs and sliding them back into the rack, hands shaking.

I put my arms around him. For a frozen second it was like embracing a corpse—no response at all—and then I felt his muscles relax and huddle into me, accepting the comfort. He smelled bad, but I didn't have to breathe if I didn't want to. I wondered how much of his slovenly approach to hygiene and housekeeping was designed to keep the perfectly coifed, house-proud Yvette at a distance.

I caressed his oily, lank hair and whispered, “Kevin, I
am
your friend. And I'll come back to you. Just please, let me save him. You don't want to leave him there. You know what'll happen to him. You've seen it. You've
felt
it. You have the power to save somebody, Kevin. Use it.”

He slipped a hand into the pocket that I knew held my bottle, but he didn't bring it out. It was almost like he was clutching a rabbit's foot . . . his own personal lucky charm.

“You'll come back?” he asked. “Promise?”

“I swear.”

I held him for another few seconds, which ended when I felt a palm slide down to my butt. “Hey! Hands!”

“Sorry,” he mumbled, and moved back. “Don't—don't let her hurt you. And come back.”

I reached out and kissed him. One chaste, gentle kiss. When I pulled away he was staring at me with wide, stunned eyes.

Never been kissed. Nothing sweet about the sixteen he was living.

I spread my arms, ready to rise into the aetheric.

“Stop!” Kevin cried. I looked at him and saw that he'd taken the perfume vial out of his pocket. His knuckles were white around it. “Wait. I can't. You're all I have.” A deep, chest-heaving breath, like a sob.

“Kevin, no—”

“Back in the bottle. Sorry.”

I screamed out my frustration, but the gray swirl was already sucking me down, helpless, into oblivion.

 

I didn't want to dream, because I knew what it would be. Something bad. I'd come to the conclusion that the only things Djinn ever dreamed, trapped in oblivion, were really nightmares.

I hate being right.

In my dream, the Djinn were dying.

Each of the three sentient events out there—the forming earthquake, the strengthening fire in Yellowstone, the storm cell gathering in the Atlantic—had drawn Wardens in response. Of those, the top masters of each area had Djinn to focus and amplify their powers. Perhaps a hundred, all total . . .

. . . a hundred victims.

I watched, helpless, as the sparklies saturated in a slow, graceful rain through the aetheric, bathing the Djinn like radiation; the more power each Djinn sourced, the greater the concentration of cold blue rain around them. They knew. They knew it was killing them, and they couldn't prevent it.

Some of the Wardens understood what was
happening. They pulled their Djinn back, sealed them in bottles, hoped that the damage could be contained.

The rest pushed blindly ahead, focused on the objectives.

In California, tectonic plates rippled, shifted, slid. Earth Wardens were pushed aside by the forces at work, their weakened Djinn useless. The first shudders began, working deep in the earth.

In Yellowstone, fire flowed unchecked, like a river; it crested a hill and raced down, leaping from treetop to treetop, lapping the trunks in a molten river of flame. Trees cracked and exploded with sounds like gunshots as sap boiled inside. There were no animals running ahead of it; the superheated air had raced ahead, killing everything in its path.

Fire Wardens were struggling to build containments, but it was useless. Their Djinn were failing.

Yellowstone was going to burn. Again.

I couldn't even bear to look at the raging fury that was forming out to sea.
Please. Tell me how I can stop this.

The combined might of the Wardens couldn't stop it. The idea that I could do anything, anything at all, was sheer lunacy.

I felt a presence with me. Something cool and peaceful.

Next to me sat a tall woman with unearthly beautiful features, hair white as snow, eyes pure amethyst.

Sara,
I said. She gave me a sad, gentle smile.

Am I?
She looked out at the devastation below.
So much pain, for so little. I wish this would end. I wish I could stop it.

Can anyone?
I asked. Rhetorical question. I rested my chin on raised knees like a little girl, and watched the end of the world in fire and flood and the slow rolling of the earth.

Oh, yes.
Sara seemed surprised I didn't know.
Of course.
You
can.

I straightened up and met her eyes. Such cool, deep eyes, all the flecks and facets of a jewel. No wonder Patrick loved her. No wonder he'd do anything, no matter how horrible, to ensure her survival.

Me?

She nodded slightly. Tears formed in her eyes, ran down her smooth, perfectly pale cheeks.

Patrick knew,
she said.
From the first moment he saw you.

That I could close the rift?

That you
are
the rift.

I didn't have time to feel the shock of that, because just then the pain started. Sara winced too, laid her hands over her chest and bent forward. It felt like we were being pulled by a fishhook, right through our bodies . . . tugged somewhere.

What the hell . . .

Sara looked up. Her eyes were flat black now, the jewel color lost, and her hair was twisting and blackening into a burned and petrified ruin.

It's time to go. Remember.
Remember.

And then it was lost, all a gray dream, floating in oblivion.

 

Pop
goes the perfume cork.

I was ready, this time—I came boiling out, took form as soon as I was free of the bottle, was already
moving to grab Kevin's T-shirt and back him up against the wall.

“You!” I yelled. “You treacherous, shallow little—”

He was paler than usual, babbling something that I wasn't listening to, because there were Wardens and Djinn
dying
out there. I'd felt it like the death of a thousand cuts inside that bottle. With every life slipping away there'd been another slice, another piece gone from the world. From
me
.

And there was this
summons
. Dragging at me like an anchor, pulling me apart.

It was still there, throbbing
come home
like a heartbeat inside me.

Kevin was holding my bottle in a death grip. I grabbed his wrist and squeezed. “Drop it!” I snarled. “Drop it or I take your hand off.”

“Don't hurt me.” He managed to blurt that out, and I was trapped, another barrier in the road. Dammit. I let go—no choice—and backed away.

We were still in Patrick's remodeled apartment. The TV was showing something that involved a lot of ships in space blowing up, but the sound was on mute. I spun away from Kevin and stretched out my senses, such as were left, trying to find someone,
anyone
to help, because I absolutely had to
go
. The summons wasn't something that could be denied. The connection to David was still there—faint, but present—and I felt it twisting and vibrating with stress.
God, what was she doing . . .
no. David couldn't be my first priority. Not now.

“Sara!” I yelled. “Sara! Please! I don't understand what to do! Help me!”

The shadow of the Ifrit glided past me, drifting, barely visible. I grabbed for it, but it slipped away.

“Feed,” she whispered.

I couldn't feed her. I had nothing in reserve, and so little coming from David that I was afraid to try to pull more; it might snap the connection altogether, leave him bleeding to death out there.

I turned to Kevin. He was still up against the wall where I'd left him, looking spooked and more than a little angry; I didn't have time for that, or for his adolescent angst, or even for his pain.

There was too much pain, now. His—and mine, and David's—was barely a drop in the bucket.

“Order me,” I snapped.

“To do what?”

“Anything!”

He looked blank for a second, then a sly, oily light came into his eyes. “Take your clothes off and put on the ones I like. The—” He made the corset gesture.

“Sure. Whatever.” I started stripping, using my hands to slow down the process, as the gate opened to his power. I started siphoning for all I was worth, filling myself with that thick dark-syrup flood, and looked for Sara.

She was hovering like a ghost in the shadow next to the massive television. I locked eyes with the black void where I thought her face should be, and began sending Kevin's power into her. Force-feeding. By the time I'd stripped off my pants I'd already formed the lacy undergarments for the Frederick's outfit, so there was no actual nudity involved, but Kevin was looking just as stunned as if I'd done a Full Monty
for him. Good. Stunned would keep him out of my way.

I templated on the French Maid outfit and walked forward, to where the Ifrit had gained dark, smooth substance.
Can you hear me?
I asked her. Somewhere under the shadows, I thought I saw a flash of purple eyes.

I hear.
It was barely a whisper, but it was there. And it sounded like the Sara of my dreams.

Can you take me where I'm supposed to go?

Jonathan.
Such a wealth of sadness in that single word.
Yes. Can.

What about Patrick?

She seemed to flinch.
Gone. Seeking.

I sucked in a deep breath that creaked the corset and strained the engineering of its lacings.
Take me to Jonathan.

Barrier.
The sparklies? No, that wasn't meant to be a barrier. It was far too porous.
Hard to pass.

We had to. I held up a finger to put her on hold as Kevin walked up behind me.

He put his arms around me and pulled me close, and I nearly gagged when I realized how turned on he was. God, how had I gotten myself into this . . .

“I want you to—” Tactical error. I hadn't finished dressing yet, which meant I still had access to his power. He couldn't give me simultaneous commands.

“Sleep,” I said, spun around in his arms and used some of the power that was still flowing through me to turn back on him. “Dream about me.”

For a second I thought it wasn't going to work,
but then his eyes rolled back in his head, his mouth fell open, and he dropped like a bag of bricks to the carpet. The bottle stayed in his hand, clenched tight.
Dammit.
If it had rolled free . . .

I tried working on his fingers, but I couldn't get them to relax. Probably some Djinn rule against it anyway. Couldn't break them, since he'd ordered me not to hurt him. Couldn't kill him—okay, not that I would have, but . . .

I dragged him feet first over to the leather couch, got him comfortably situated, and tried not to listen to the moaning. Oh, yeah, he was dreaming about me. I hoped I'd remembered to Scotchgard the couch.

“Do it,” I said to Sara.

The Ifrit leaped on me, dug talons deep into my chest, and started to feed. After the first few seconds of agony . . .

. . . we were falling through the aetheric. Fast. Balled up together, inseparable, feeding on one another like an ouroboros. Falling like a meteor through the aetheric, up through higher levels, the weirdest sensation of gliding in a direction that wasn't up or down or sideways, here or there. I remembered the weirdness of the journey to Jonathan's house, even in the relatively familiar analog of the elevator. The Ifrit wasn't even trying to cloak this in familiar terms.

The aetheric was a minefield of disasters in progress. To the east, the furious storm was consuming power at a frightening rate; it was a towering whirlwind of coldlight and pure energy, and the few Wardens still fighting it were flickering, weak, and near to breaking. I didn't sense any other Djinn. The fires in Yellowstone lit up the plane like a supernova—
consuming everything in all the realms of our reality, nearly obscured by a shell of the swirling blue sparks. No Wardens at all near that, now. And no Djinn.

We hurtled toward the center of the inferno. I tried to scream, but the Ifrit was drawing everything out of me, every ounce of power and will, and I was deadweight by the time we hit the fires. The pain was so intense I thought that it was over, I was gone, but then there was a sense of pushing through something viscous and thick, of being squeezed, and then a sudden unexpected release.