Ill Wind (30 page)

“You don't!”

“I need him.”

“You don't even
have
the Mark anymore! You're free!”

That pretty, false face distorted in anger. “Yeah, exactly. I'm
healed
. Well, that's just great, isn't it? Except I can't go back to what I was. Scarred. Crippled.
Useless.
I need this one, Jo. I need him to
live
.”

I remembered the incredible strength of the fire jetting across the field toward me. A thing like that didn't come cheaply. She was weakened, and she needed a fresh source of power.

She needed David.

“I love him, Star,” I said. “Please. Please, don't.”

She laughed. The same laugh, the same sweet, happy laugh that had kept me sane all these years, reminded me there was a normal world and normal friends and the hope of something beyond the Wardens.

The same lying laugh.

She walked up to David and trailed her fingers over his face, down his neck. I felt an overwhelming urge to bitch-slap her into next week. She tucked the phone between her ear and shoulder and flipped pages in the book he held. “Let's say I know what—and who—you're talking about.”

“I'm not fucking around, Star. You either let him go, or I come and take him from you. Understand?”

She found what she was looking for. She looked down at the words for a few seconds, then stepped back.

“You have no idea,” she said. “No idea what I've done, or how hard I worked. I was a fucking
cripple,
Jo. Ugly, maimed, burned out. Even
Marion
thought I wasn't worth bothering about. I barely had enough power left to light a match.”

I swallowed my anger and tried to sound reasonable. “But you got better.”

“Oh, yeah, I got better. No thanks to any of
them
.” She was smiling now, but it was a hot, tight smile that looked like it hurt. “No thanks to
Lewis
. He left me looking like a Halloween fright mask, you know. I felt him healing me, but he didn't have the guts to take it all the way. Just like you.”

She put the phone against her chest and said something to David, but there was no sound in the illusion. David didn't—couldn't—answer. Star finally put the phone back to her ear.

“Got to go, Jo,” she said. “Things to do, Djinn to claim.”

She hung up and tossed the phone down on the table. I screamed into the cell phone, but it was too late, too late, too late.

Estrella took a Mason jar down from a shelf and set it on the floor next to David's feet. I don't know why I kept looking, except that not looking would have been a betrayal of everything he'd shown me about honor and loyalty, about forgiveness and responsibility.

I read her lips as they moved.

Be thou bound to my service.

Oh, Star, no. Please.

Be thou bound to my service.

Please stop.

Be thou bound to my service.

I felt the David I'd known snuff out like a candle,
his personality and presence obliterated by the bonding.

He was Star's.

His eyes shifted spectrums, became a dark, lightless brown.

She took the book away from him and put it down, and his gaze followed her with the unsettling attention and devotion he'd once given me.

“He's lost,” Rahel said. Her voice had turned ice cold, hard enough to cut. “Trust him no more. He cannot go against her.”

She let the illusion snap to darkness. I felt my knees give way and sank down in the grass again. I rested my forehead against my braced knees.

Rahel's hand rested briefly on my shoulder. Comfort? I don't know. But it did give me strength. I fought off the weight of panic in my chest and blinked against tears. My face felt hot, my skin too tight.

“I don't understand,” I said. “Why is she doing this?”

“She doesn't have the Mark anymore,” Rahel said. She crouched down, fluid as a shadow, to look me in the face. “She must have something to fill her emptiness.”

“Then where did the Mark—?”

The answer was in her sad, furious, outraged eyes.

“Oh, God,” I breathed. “Lewis tried to save her. He took it from her. And now she wants it back.”

“Now you see,” Rahel said soberly.

I did. Vividly. Horribly. Lewis had so much power . . . more power than me, than anyone. Lewis had done exactly what his nature demanded he do—
he'd stepped in to heal her. In doing so, he'd been vulnerable to the Mark, and that was . . . horrible. Lewis corrupted, without a conscience, with unlimited power . . .

Apocalypse
never seemed like such a personal word before.

“Is he still with her?” I asked. She tilted her head to one side, then back. “C'mon, Rahel, spill. I don't have time for Djinn games.”

“I think so. We have found no trace of him.”

“Why doesn't he leave?”

She blinked slowly. “I think he can't.”

“Shit!” I slapped the ground hard enough to make my hand hurt. “Why didn't you
tell me?
”

“What would you have done differently?”

“Well,
crap,
maybe I wouldn't have blundered right into the trap, you idiot!”

Rahel gave me a long, offended look that reminded me I was dealing with Power. Capital
P
. “I am not responsible for the short-sighted nature of mortals, Snow White. I deal with you as we have always done with humans. It is not our nature to explain ourselves. We expect you to understand this.”

“Whatever. Man, if I make it out of this, we're going to have some classes in interspecies communication, 'cause you guys
suck
at it!” Shit. I didn't have time for this, the situation was out of control, and as somebody already falling, I had a bird's-eye view of the nasty landing. “I need to get to Oklahoma City.”

“I can't take you there,” she said. “I'm—”

“Yeah, free, I know. You can only travel the speed we do.” She looked pleased and surprised that I already knew. “Get me to the closest car lot.”

She nodded. “Hold on,” she said. She threw her arms around me in a full-body hug.

And my feet left the ground.

Now, I've flown in Oversight hundreds of times, maybe thousands—and I'm used to the sensation of the world falling away. But this was different. My body wasn't safely down on the ground waiting for me; my body was dangling in midair, at the mercy of a Djinn with an ugly sense of humor.

I let out a scream that came out more like a helpless
meep
and threw my arms around her, too, hanging on for dear life as we soared up into the cool air. Heat battered my skin, and when I dared to look down, we were passing over the blazing orange pyre of the Land Rover.

A bird dipped wings and darted closer to check us out; I read confusion in his dark little bird eyes and absolutely felt for him. I didn't know I was doing in his airspace, either.

“You know so much of the Djinn,” Rahel said, grinning. “Did you know we could do this?”

I shut my mouth before I could catch a bug in it.

 

Rahel touched us down on the corner of an intersection in Norman, about ten miles from where we'd started, and let me sit down and put my head between my knees to fight off the urge to puke. She found it amusing.

“You walk the worlds,” she said. “Yet a little levitation bothers you?”

“A
little?
Hello, a
lot,
” I shot back, and swallowed. “What are we doing here?”

Here
being a closed, deserted car lot called
Performance Automotive. Rahel gave me a look so exasperated, I was surprised she didn't just snap her fingers and make me into a white rat.

“Clearly, we are getting you transportation.”

Right, the Land Rover was a pile of smoking crap. “We're stealing a car.”

“Unless they offer late-night test drives, I believe so.”

So, it was going to be straight-up grand theft auto. No problem. The idea of a car perked me right up, and besides, next to the death sentence ticking away inside me, prison sounded like a day spa. I had to get to OKC and find Star, and wheels sounded like a damn practical idea.

I scouted around for witnesses. Not much traffic in this part of town after sunset, especially with a storm coming; the predominant sound came from wind-snapped flags and the rattling hum of light poles shivering in the increasingly harsh wind. The few cars that did drive by didn't seem to be bothered by our presence.

Rahel waited for me to say something. I took a deep breath and obliged. “I need something fast but invisible,” I said. “High-end Honda, maybe an Acura, neutral colors. I want to blend into traffic. But first, take care of these security cameras.”

Rahel looked up at the shiny blind lenses stationed on the roof of the dealership and attached to two or three of the light poles. She stared for three or four seconds. “It's done.”

“Really?”

“I fried the circuit boards,” she said. “And also demagnetized the security tape.”

“Damn, you sure you've never done this kind of thing before?”

Rahel showed me fierce white teeth. “I have done
every
kind of thing before, sistah.”

We stepped over the white-painted iron fence that wasn't designed to keep shoppers out, just cars in; there were some sweet machines parked on the lot, in a rainbow of yummy colors. I reluctantly ruled out the neon yellows, greens, and reds.

“That one,” I said, and pointed to the one that looked black in the peach gleam of the sodium lights. It was a BMW, a good solid production car. Not the highest priced set of wheels, not the lowest, but one that would do zero to sixty in under eight seconds without any mods at all. Best of all, it looked kind of like a family car, which meant it wouldn't be so easy to spot at a glance from a passing cop.

And, unless I missed my guess, it was dark blue, which was my color.

Rahel nodded and walked over to do a slow circle of the car, never taking her eyes off it, and finally said, “There is an alarm inside.”

“Can you disarm it?”

“Of course.”

“Go for it.”

“Done.” She shrugged. She put her hand on the door locks, manipulated electrical currents, and popped open the driver's side door. “Now you should go, quickly.”

I started to. Really. And as I turned to get in, I saw
her
.

She was sitting all alone in the parking lot, gleaming dark blue with white racing stripes up her hood.

It was love at first sight.

I walked away from the Beamer without any conscious decision to do so. I heard Rahel asking what I thought I was doing, but I was locked on this unexpected beauty sitting there, waiting for me like God himself had put her there.

Rahel caught up with me as I came to a halt next to the car.
Car?
No, that was too small a word; it could have described anything from a Honda Civic to a Lamborghini. This needed a new word.

“What is it?” she asked impatiently. I put two fingers on the gorgeous metallic blue paint, stroking it.

“A 1997 Dodge Viper GTS,” I said reverently. “V10, 7,990 cubic capacity engine, six thousand RPM. The fastest production car in America, top speed of nearly three hundred kilometers per hour. Faster than any Corvette, faster than the 1971 Boss Mustang, faster than the goddamn
wind,
Rahel.”

Rahel looked unimpressed. “It looks expensive.”

“About sixty grand, if you're lucky enough to find one.” The door was locked, of course, but I could feel the Viper issuing the invitation. “Open it.”

“You told me you wanted to blend in and be difficult to spot. This . . . is not hard to spot.”

“Just hard to catch.” I flattened my hand against the paint and stroked her flared panels like she was a barely tamed tiger. “She's the one. No question about it.”

Rahel shrugged, touched the door handle, and the lock popped up. I slipped inside with a sigh of pleasure; it felt like dropping into my favorite chair, with a purring cat curled up against me. Soul-deep comfort. I adjusted the seat, inspected the cockpit display,
and felt a surge of love as strong as anything I'd felt for a car in my life. Even poor Delilah.

“I'll take it,” I said. Rahel looked perplexed. “Please.”

She touched the ignition. The Viper shivered into purring life. The gearshift knob fit perfectly in the palm of my hand. Rahel closed the driver's-side door. I hit the button to glide down the window and said, “Can you open the gate?”

“I live to serve.” She sounded bemused. Well, I guess she'd never witnessed the sacred bonding of woman and car before. “Do you know where to go?”

“Away from you,” I said, and eased the Viper into gear. The power shifted to a low, trembling growl.
Sweet.
“Actually, I have a pretty damn good idea what I have to do now. It's what you always wanted me to do, right? Go back to Oklahoma City. Get to Star.”

She smiled. “Perhaps you're not as stupid as I feared.” Her hot gold eyes never blinked. “Don't assume David will take your side. He can't, however much he wishes.”

Behind her, metal locks snapped and wrought-iron gates swung open with a soft moan, laying down the last token of the Viper's protection. “God be with you,” she said. I idled, looking at her.

“How about you?”

She shook her head. “At the last, I must be faithless,” she said. “I have done what I could. Ask me for nothing more.”

I didn't intend to. As I slipped the Viper in gear, I slid up into Oversight to survey the stormline, and I saw the Demon Mark in me, an ugly black
nightmare of tentacles and edges. I closed my eyes against the destruction of my soul and promised, “I'm going to find a way to stop her.”

I let the Viper slip the leash and run.

 

The Viper—whose name, I decided, was Mona—hit ninety miles an hour on the way out of Norman, which barely required an effort on her part. She was a throwback to earlier cars, sensitive to touch, steering, braking, no computer-controlled minibrain to interpret between us.