Undone (9 page)

I felt my pale cheeks heating—a human response. Pulse beating faster. I didn't know if it was fright or something else. Something just as primitive.

“Leave.”

“Tell me again.” His eyes took on a brilliant gleam, sharp enough to cut.

“Leave.”

“Again.” He took a step toward me, and I felt the heat of him, the smoke, the fire. “Once more and it's done, Cassiel. Once more and you'll never see me again.”

The word locked in my throat. Threes are powerful to us, compelling. I could dismiss him, and he would go.

I could not say it.

Another step brought him even closer to me, close enough to raise a hand that trailed light at the edges of my vision. He stroked my cheek, and I shuddered.

Gallan leaned closer, so close he eclipsed the world, and those eyes were as hungry as gravity.

“Do what he wants,” he whispered, barely a breath in my ear, “and come home, Cassiel. Come home.”

He melted away into mist. I caught my breath on a cry—rage, loss; I wasn't certain what emotion tore a hole through me, except that it was violent and painful.

Manny put a hand on my elbow. “Who the hell was that?”

I barked out a sound that was not quite a laugh. “A friend.” I got a look of utter disbelief in return. “A very old friend.”

The human world seemed so limited and lifeless, after the glitter in Gallan's eyes. I felt sick and faint and lost. It must have shown, because Manny's grip tightened on my arm.

“Yeah,” he said. “Let's get you home.”

 

Days passed, and Manny was right: I did build up endurance over time. Soon the clumsy process of entering and exiting the aetheric felt natural to me, and I learned to ration my own resources until I could stay with Manny until
he
, not I, tired.

“I couldn't do this before,” he admitted to me one afternoon, after a long day of working with a team of Fire Wardens to help contain a major conflagration across the border in Arizona. “Work all day like this, I mean. You help a lot. You're learning fast.”

It was surprisingly touching, receiving even such a casual compliment. I nodded carefully, wiping my forehead free of a light beading of sweat. We were outside at the fire, not in the office, and we stood at the boundary of the area in a section deemed safe. I had not seen the Fire Wardens, but that was because (Manny assured me) they were in the thick of the blaze, fighting it from within. That seemed a grim risk to take, but this time, at least, they were successful. The flames were dying.

No doubt the human firefighters around us were a part of that, as well—they were filthy, exhausted, hunched empty-eyed on camp chairs as they drank cold water or ate what the volunteers had brought for them. Brave, all of them. None of them had to be here, and I was only now beginning to realize
why
they were here. Some of them because it was a job, most certainly, but some because it was a calling. A thing of honor.

I could not help but honor them in turn.

Manny checked the fire again—we had raised fire-breaks of earth and green vegetation, which a faraway Weather Warden had saturated with steady downpours—and said, “I think we're done here. Looks like they're mopping it up now. Come on, I have a stop to make.”

Another one? I had been hoping for home, a bath, and bed, but I kept silent as we walked to Manny's battered pickup truck. It wore a new layer of ash and smudged smoke over the old dirt; he shrugged and, with a slight pulse of will, cleared the windshield, leaving the rest of the dirt intact. “Looks strange to have a clean vehicle out here,” he told me, when I sent him a questioning look. “You get noticed. Better to blend in.”

I was getting used to the stink of the internal combustion engine, but it still seemed wrong after the cleaner organic compounds in the smoke of the forest. I rolled down the window and took in slow, shallow breaths. After a moment, I realized that I was covered with a faint layer of soot, and the need for a bath climbed higher on my priorities.
Just a little,
I thought.
Just enough to make myself clean.

It was a selfish use of my hoarded power, but I couldn't stand being dirty. I used a light brushing of it to sweep off the soot, just as Manny had cleaned his windshield.

Manny glanced my way. “You okay?”

My power levels were still adequate, if not strong; I wouldn't need to draw again for some time. “I'm fine,” I assured him. “Where are we going?”

“You'll love it,” he said, and grinned in a way that convinced me this was one of his attempts at a joke.

“The fire,” I said. “I thought there would be more attention put to it by the Wardens.”

Manny sent me a cautious glance. “Yeah, usually there would be. There's something going on, on the East Coast. Most of the stronger Wardens are out there, or heading there. So we're on skeleton crew, working with whatever we can.” His smile reemerged. “That's why we have to make this stop.”

We drove fifteen miles on a rutted dirt road and turned into an equally rutted dirt driveway, crossing a metal grating with bone-jarring thumps. When Manny braked in a cloud of dust, I looked around for landmarks.

There were none, except for a small house and a large storage building—a barn?—still distant. No sign of anyone nearby.

Manny got out of the truck and walked away. I frowned, debating, and then followed without being summoned.

“Where are we going?” I demanded again, more sharply. Manny pointed.
“Where?”

“Right there,” he said, and I heard that tone again, as if this was providing him some subtle amusement. And he kept walking toward the area he'd indicated.

Which was, in fact, a
cattle pen.
Inside of it, the huge beasts milled, bumped against each other, made low sounds of either contentment or distress.

As I walked nearer, I began to perceive the smell.

I stopped. “No.”

“Part of the job, Cassiel,” Manny said without pausing. He vaulted up on the metal bars and over the railing, landing with a thump inside the pen, his boots barely avoiding a thick clump of cattle waste.

The beasts took little notice of his arrival. I held my breath, hovering at the barely acceptable limits of the rich, earthy stench, as Manny touched each creature. He was marking them, I realized, each with a touch that showed in the aetheric. “What are you doing?” I choked, and put my hands over my nose and mouth as the smell threatened to overwhelm my defenses.

“Checking them out,” he called back. “We've had some outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease around here, and even one case of mad cow we were able to cure. But we have to stay on top of it. One scare like what happened in Britain, and the beef industry is in real trouble. Used to be another Earth Warden around here who specialized in this stuff, but he's gone.”

“Can't you do it from a distance?”

“Yes.” He flashed a grin in my direction. “It just isn't as much fun as seeing the look on your face.”

I gave him a long, long stare. I imbued it with all the Djinn haughtiness at my command, which was quite a bit, even now. “I will wait in the truck,” I said, and turned to go.

A strange silence fell over the land, a hush that prickled along my nerves like a storm of needles, and I stopped, turning my head, searching for the cause of it.
Something . . .

“Cassiel!” Manny cried.

I whirled, heart pounding, as I felt the surge of power roar through the air, swirling around the cattle pen.

A whirling, invisible cyclone of energy separated me from Manny.

A cow trumpeted in panic and pain, shook its head, and toppled to its knees. It hit the trampled ground with a thud and thrashed, screaming.

Another.

“Manny!” I screamed it, and although it was an enormous effort without his help, I launched myself up into the aetheric with all the power I had in reserve.

It didn't help. Djinn senses were beyond me; what was left was inconsistent, confusing, a blur of forces that twisted in on itself like a hurricane, spiraling tighter and tighter. Manny was backing away from it, but there was nowhere to go; the cattle were panicked, as much of a danger to him and each other as the power encircling them. He could have fought through them to the metal fence, but not beyond, with the forces swirling just outside and moving inward.

It was a noose, and the noose was drawing tighter. I did not stop to think. I plunged into the storm.

The force hit me with staggering intensity, whipping my fragile body, punching into my head and soul like red-hot needles. I struggled on and felt cold metal under my searching hands.
The fence.
I wriggled between the bars and fell into soft dirt, bathed in the stench of the cattle and their leavings. That no longer mattered.

I crawled. The pressure against my head eased first, and then my shoulders, as I inched farther into the temporarily safe area inside the cattle pen.

Not so safe as all that. I heard the panicked bellows of the cattle, and massive sharp hooves stomped the ground beside my head. I heaved myself up just as Manny's hands closed around me, whirling me around to face him.

“What the hell are you doing?” he shouted at me, and swung me out of the way as a massive cow charged the rushing band of power edging in over the fence.

The cow entered the wall, wailed an eerie cry, and toppled to its knees, then to its side.

Dead.

I felt the breath stop in my lungs.
I might have died.
It had not occurred to me because Djinn didn't think of such things, of the way fragile bodies could so easily shatter. Suddenly, Manny's anger at me made sense.

The power took on a reddish hue and crept in another foot, forcing the cattle back. Whether we risked the barrier or not, we would eventually be injured, and probably killed, by the panicked beasts.

My once-Djinn nature
might
protect me a second time, but I couldn't rely on it, and I couldn't risk Manny's life.

My hand slipped down his arm to grab his hand. He flinched, then nodded, tight-lipped. “Do it,” he said.

“Together,” I replied.

Compared with the white-hot geyser of Lewis Orwell's abilities, Manny was weak, but strong enough—and canny enough—to allow me to take his power,
all
his power, amplify it, and feed it back to him. It was, I thought, the reason that humans had made Djinn their servants—our ability to channel, magnify, and refine their powers so completely.

It was trust I required, and trust I received, as Manny let go of his own destiny and put it into my hands.

I shaped his power into a sharp edge, something that gleamed like the blade of a knife on the aetheric. I forced the edges finer, finer still, until it was thin as a whisper, and strong as steel.

Then I threw out my arms and cut through the barrier holding us penned. Not only the storm of force around us, but the iron of the cattle pen itself.

I formed a second sharp-edged plane and slammed it down five feet from the first, through force and metal. The metal fence, chopped at two points, fell in the middle to form an exit, a break in the attack large enough for us to escape.

Except that Manny did not take it. Instead, he began slapping the cattle's thick hides, driving them to the hole I kept open. “Move!” he yelled. The cows, once prodded, saw the clear space and thundered toward it. I could not dodge out of the way. I was transfixed by the crushing load of concentration; the barriers I'd managed to erect were strong, but holding them against the battering attack was like holding a pane of glass against a hurricane—a doomed effort, but one requiring all my attention.

Manny must have realized that just in time. I felt a sudden surge of power from him—just a small amount, because he had little left to give. Just enough to divert the cattle from my unprotected body.

The beasts streamed around me, hot and bellowing, and thundered through the narrow gap. When the last bawling animal was free, Manny hesitated at the edge.

“Go!” I shouted. He plunged through.

I did not think I could keep the barriers in place while moving, but I tried, walking slowly and calmly with my arms outstretched to either side. My fingertips brushed the slick, cool surface of the walls I'd put in place. I felt them shudder.

I felt them shatter when I was still in the middle.

The storm closed around me and shattered me, too.

 

I came back to consciousness with my eyes full of cloudless blue sky, tasting dust and metal. When I took a breath, it was thick with the smell of cattle.

It was the stench that convinced me.
Ah, then. Not dead, unless the humans are correct about hell.

For a moment, as pain washed over me, I wished I'd been granted that mercy, but instead, a face loomed close, blocking out the sun. I expected Manny, but no. A cow, blinking its huge brown eyes, watched me with as deep a curiosity as something so primitive could muster. It nudged me with a damp nose.

“Hey!” Manny's sharp voice startled the cow, and it pulled back and away, trotting off to join its fellows placidly cropping the trampled grass. This time Manny's shadow blocked the sun as he leaned over me. “You're okay. Thank God.”

I felt strangely . . . light. Empty. I held out my hand to him, and it trembled with the effort.

He looked at it, then past my shaking fingers to focus on my face.

“You saved my life,” he said. There was something odd in his voice. “You really did.”

I had no strength left to voice my needs. Part of me was already fraying at the edges, and I was afraid, the way I'd been afraid as Ashan ripped me from the world of the Djinn and sent me falling into flesh.