Undone (30 page)

Human instincts, not Djinn.

The beast attacking Luis was a mountain lion, a large one, but I didn't have time to come to his aid. There were other animals closing in, moving with unnatural stealth and focus. Two more mountain lions. Loping in from the north and the south were two large black bears.

“Down!” I screamed at Officer Styles, as a mountain lion prepared to leap at his back. He didn't obey me. Instead, he spun around, gun drawn, and fired. He missed. The mountain lion crashed into him with a vicious snarl and slammed him down on the grass. His partner aimed for the animal's skull.

I knocked his gun aside at the last moment. The report of the shot startled the big cat, and it lifted its head to focus its attention toward the two of us. Huge gray-green eyes fixed on us with terrifying intensity, and it gathered itself for a leap.

“Behind me!” I shouted, and shoved the man into position. “Don't fire!”

The mountain lion launched itself into the air, scimitar-sharp claws extended to disembowel me.

“Get out of the way!” I heard the man behind me yell, but my attention was fully on the animal. Someone was pushing it, controlling it, overriding its self-preservation instincts. These creatures weren't the enemy; they were weapons, confused and terrified beneath the surface fury.

I couldn't condone their deaths, rare as such predators were on the earth since the proliferation of humans. Luis and I could handle them.

It was a risk—a large one—but I slapped my hands down on the creature's skull as it barreled into me, bearing me to the ground with a heavy thump. Soft fur, hard bone, powerful flexing muscles. I saw the flash of teeth. Its claws ripped at the leather covering my chest, and I felt the sting of cuts.

My leather had slowed it, but I had seconds, at best. I poured my power into the creature, not to dominate, but to free its mind from the cage of power that had trapped it. It seemed easier in theory, because the faceless enemy had all the strength of a top-class Earth Warden and all the ruthlessness of a Demon. I slashed at the bonds holding the cat, and it sprang away from me, snarling in terror and confusion.

It leapt past the trembling policeman behind me and vanished into the grass.

Luis's mountain lion lay unconscious on its side, breathing in slow, steady rhythm.

I dragged Officer Styles up to his feet. The four of us formed a square, shoulders touching, as the bears loped closer.

“Next time, put it under,” Luis told me. “They'll just grab the animals again once you let go.”

He was right. The mountain lion I'd freed from control was veering, turning back toward us at a gliding run. It slowed to a cautious, slow stalk, luminous eyes fixed on me. Its huge paws made almost no sound at all on the grass, but I could hear the low sound of its growl on the cooling air.

They would know my power now. They'd tasted it. I wouldn't be able to be so merciful again without cost. They would kill me if they could. Me, Luis, the two policemen.

All for what? For Isabel?
Why?

“Cassiel,” Luis said, and held out his hand. I hadn't realized that my reserves were sinking, but he was right. I needed power. The golden flow poured into me, waking shivers, and I cut it off as quickly as possible to keep my attention focused outward. “Put them out. Down, if you have to.”

I nodded. The policemen had their guns drawn, but unless they were very fine shots I doubted they could bring down any of these animals before being gutted. The bears were charging, one on Luis's side, one on Officer Styles's.

“Go!” Luis shouted, and let go of me. I spun away from him, facing the nearest threat. It was another mountain lion, already in the air. Her muzzle was drawn back, exposing her fearsome sharp teeth, and the roar was meant to freeze me in place.

Instead, I waited until the last instant, stepped aside, and straddled the lion's back to slap my hands on its skull from behind as it landed. She roared again and twisted, but I found the blood vessels I needed, and
squeezed.

She went limp. Still breathing, but down. I kept her at that level as I jumped across her body to veer in front of Officer Styles, who had his gun trained on the charging black bear.

This animal was not as large as some, but large enough—at least half a man's weight, all muscle and fury. Black bears were, for the most part, good-tempered, but this one had been driven almost to the edge of madness. He was in terrible pain, and he would savage anything that came within reach of his claws and teeth.

I repeated the trick of knocking out the animal, but this time it was more difficult. I had to concentrate on the mountain lion, as well, and the bear was strong and very, very angry. When it finally collapsed into a messy tangle of broken grass, it was breathing heavily and making a noise that sounded terribly like a moan of fear.

I looked around. Luis had brought down the last mountain lion, and the other bear—cannier than the others—was pacing angrily in jerky paths, charging Luis, then backing away. Never quite committing. That one, I thought, was not fully under our enemy's control.

All in all, we had managed to come out of this well, without unnecessary death.

I should not have been so sure of that.

My first hint of more trouble was from the other policeman—CAVANAUGH, his name tag read—who put a hand on my shoulder and pointed off toward the east. A black smudge of smoke was rising about a hundred feet away. As we watched, it spread into a line, and as the dry grass caught like tinder, flames blazed six feet into the air.

The wind was toward us.

Within seconds, the smoke had reached us, thick and choking. The fire would not be far behind, and grass fires could race faster than a running man. I couldn't leave the animals helpless to burn alive, but if I freed them from control, they would turn on us.

“Run,” I snarled to Styles and Cavanaugh. “Get to the car!”

They did not argue. They pelted through the smoke, into the grass, heading in the right direction. I hoped there would be nothing there to meet them, but I had other problems.

Luis coughed wetly as he stumbled to my side. “Gotta go!” he shouted. I nodded.

“Go first!”

He clearly didn't wish to, but he loped into a run and was immediately lost in the thickening smoke. I was coughing now myself, and my nose and eyes were dripping fluids. The air was filthy and thick.

I released the animals all at once, with a snap of power, and three mountain lions and one bear rolled up to their paws.

All oriented on me.

All forced to ignore their natural instincts, which would have taken them from the fire into safety.

They moved to circle me.

I waited until one darted toward me, then dodged and jumped the circle, and
ran.
Not toward the road—I could not be sure that the others had made it to safety yet, and I didn't want to draw an attack to them.

I ran to the north, toward the trees. I fed my muscles on pure golden Earth Warden energy, putting on a burst of speed that kept the mountain lions bounding a few feet behind me. The smoke was blinding, and I felt a blast of heat loom at me from the right, hot enough to sear. I smelled my hair burning, an acrid and stomach-turning stench, and veered to the left as flames flickered and took hold in front of me.

It was no use. The field was fully in flame now, driving me toward the road in a broad, shrinking arc.

Out of desperation, I softened the ground beneath my feet and dropped into a sinkhole of powder-soft sand, plunging grave deep into the earth. I hardened the top as quickly as possible, and felt the thunder as the animals charged on, chasing shadows.

The pressure of the sand and earth around me was intense—cool, insistent, constant. I struggled not to fight it, concentrating instead on holding my breath and staying calm, calm, calm. Seconds ticked by, slow as torture. I counted every pulse beat.

When I could no longer resist the need to struggle for breath, I reversed the process, hardening the sand beneath my feet in stages, and rose from the ground like a dusty, pink-haired Aphrodite. . . .

. . . Into a blackened, stubbled, smoking emptiness like the shores of hell. The fire had passed over me and was sweeping toward the road, leaving smolders and sparks behind, and little else.

There was no sign of the mountain lions or the bears. They had lost me, and continued to race on to the safety of the trees, or veered toward the road.

I felt exhausted, bruised, and smoke soaked as I limped toward the line of flames and black billows. Before I reached it, the last of the grass was consumed to twisted ash, the wind carried sparks across the road, and the field on the other side of the pavement began to burn.

As smoke cleared, blown by the constant wind, I saw that the patrol car was intact, though smoke stained, and so was the Victory. The car doors opened.

Both policemen were safe.

There was no sign of Luis.

Chapter 13

I SEARCHED UNTIL
my strength failed, but there was no trace of him. No sign of his body, either. It was dimly possible that he had been caught by the animals and dragged into the trees, but I thought he was too good an Earth Warden to have gone without a trace. And without a fight.

He had simply vanished into thin air, like his niece before him.

And now I was alone.

I had, at least, earned the respect of the two policemen. Styles required no explanations of me; he simply accepted it, perhaps too focused on the enormity of his missing child to care about any abilities Luis and I might have displayed. He would, I thought, find some logical reasons to forget or dismiss it all. Humans were well-practiced in the art of denying what did not fit their neatly ordered view of the world.

His partner Cavanaugh, however, seemed less willing to shrug it off. “But
how
did you take down a cat like that? I mean, it's a friggin'
mountain lion
, not a tabby, and I can't even get my cat to the vet without getting my face clawed off.” We were standing at the edge of the road, staring out at the blackened field. I had given up roaming in search of my missing Warden, and simply waited.

What I waited for, I couldn't say. Perhaps I was just tired of losing people.

“It's a simple thing,” I said wearily. “Any vet could do it. Pressure points.”

“Pressure points?” he echoed, eyebrows rounding in disbelief. “You're kidding. I watch the Discovery Channel, and I never heard of anything like pressure points on a mountain lion. And, anyway, those big cats aren't like African lions—they don't travel in packs like that. It's not natural. And the bears—what the hell was going on? I've never seen black bears attack like that.”

“The fire,” I said. “Driving animals out into the open.”

He was already shaking his head. “Panicked animals keep on running—they don't stop to attack everything in their path. I don't get it, but I don't think I want to, right? This is some kind of CIA thing—you'd tell me but you'd have to kill me?”

And then Officer Styles turned and said, “You're an Earth Warden.” I was temporarily surprised into silence. He didn't wait for my answer in any case. “Christ, I can't believe this.”

“How do you know of the—”

He made a sharp, angry gesture. “My wife opted out of the Wardens about ten years ago. She was a Fire Warden. They did that surgery on her, the kind that blocks powers.”

The world took on a different reality to me in that moment. There
was
a connection: Wardens.
Children of Wardens.
“Has your son displayed any kind of talents?”

“No, of course not. He's
five.
”

Neither Manny nor Angela had referred to Isabel having such abilities, either, and it would be extremely rare for them to manifest so early.

But not impossible. Luis had told me himself that his abilities had begun to make themselves known at an early age.

Styles was watching me closely. “This kid you're chasing, she's his niece. He's a Warden, right?”

“His brother also was,” I said. “There is a strong genetic disposition for the abilities to run in families, although it does occur spontaneously, as well.” I had studied the phenomenon of Warden abilities in humans for a long time, seeking to discover why they developed, and how to stop them from doing so. I had found no answers.

Officer Cavanaugh was looking at the two of us as if we'd sprouted tentacles. “What in the hell is a Warden? You mean, like a prison warden? Wait, are you talking about those crazy con artists who put on that show for the news in Florida?”

Neither of us paid him any mind. “You think these people—whoever they are—are grabbing Warden kids,” Styles said. Muscles jumped along his jawline, as if he were resisting the urge to bite. “My God. How widespread is this?”

“I don't know. The Wardens are—” Secretive. Devious. Embattled. “Not inclined to share their information with those beyond their circle. If there have been other Warden children abducted, the fact that the parents were Wardens would not have been noted in any police reports. We would have to cross-reference lists of Wardens with parents who have reported their children as missing.” It was a difficult time for the Wardens, and that made it a perfect time for their enemies to strike. Many parents, if they were off traveling with Lewis Orwell's party, might not even know yet that their children were missing, but I couldn't believe it to be so widespread. This had the feeling of cold, clinical planning, and a laser focus.

Luis could gain access to Warden records.
If he's still alive,
part of me whispered mockingly, but I hushed it. He was alive. I had taken energy from him, and our bond had grown steadily stronger. I would have known if his life had been snuffed out. I had known when Manny . . .