Thin Air (6 page)

“I can't make a fire,” Lewis said. “Too dangerous in an enclosed space. Not sure I can manage the carbon monoxide.” He sounded mortally tired, but he opened the backpack he'd dumped on the floor—how the hell had he had the presence of mind to hang on to it through all that?—and dug out some packages. He threw two of them toward me, and I saw they were some kind of silvery thermal blankets. “These work better if you get undressed. Your clothes are too wet. It'll just—”

If he was waiting for me to have an attack of modesty, he was sorely disappointed. “Whatever,” I said, and began unbuttoning. The drag of wet clothes was making me nuts, and the cold had driven deep enough into me to make me uncaring about things like strangers watching me undress. Or maybe I was normally immune to that kind of thing. Hard to tell. I only knew that I didn't feel inhibited with him. Boy, and didn't
that
open up a ten-gallon drum of worms?

Lewis politely faced away while I skinned out of the sopping-wet pants. I decided to leave on the underwear, and wrapped myself up in crinkling silver foil. My skin felt like cold, wet plastic. “So,” I said through chattering teeth. “What the hell just happened?”

He glanced over his shoulder at me, saw I was more or less decent, and fussed with his own crackling thermal sheets to avoid answering. Or at least, that was how it looked. I waited. Eventually Lewis said, “Those two weren't right. They weren't themselves.”

“No kidding,” I said. I was feeling the cold now like sharp needles all over, and shivering violently. “There was something else, too.”

“What else?” He paused, staring at me. “What did you see?”

I didn't want to tell him, exactly. “Nothing definite. Kind of a shadow.”
A shadow that kind of looked like me.
No, I didn't want to say that.

Lewis looked like he felt sicker than ever, but he nodded. “I was afraid of that.”

“Afraid of what?”

His sigh echoed cool from the stone. “There's a Demon after you. And we have no way to fight it.”

“Demon,” I repeated. “Okay. Sure. Right. Whatever.”

That definitely told me just exactly what was going on.

I was taking a walking tour of Hell, and my Virgil was insane.

 

I tried to avoid discussing the whole Demon thing under the grounds that, hey, keep your delusions to yourself, but Lewis kept on talking.

“They don't come from Hell,” he said very earnestly, which only made him seem even nuttier. “At least, not as I understand it. They're not from this plane of existence. They come from somewhere else. They're drawn here to our world because of power; they need to feed on the aetheric, and the best way they can do that is to grab hold of a Warden, because we're the equivalent of a straw to them—they can pull power through us. The more power they draw, the more dangerous they get.”

We'd been talking for a while. I wasn't exactly believing in the whole Demon idea, but he was scarily matter-of-fact about the whole thing, and besides, I'd seen a few impossible things in the past couple of days. Including, well, him.

But really.
Demons?
How was that right?

I took a deep breath, put my doubts aside, and said, “So isn't there some kind of, I don't know, spell or something? Pentagrams? Holy water?”

“The only way we've ever found to stop a Demon, a full-grown Demon, is a Djinn,” Lewis said slowly. “The Djinn and Demons are pretty evenly matched.”

Great. David was coming back, right? Problem solved. Lewis must have seen it in my face, because he shook his head. “Not that easy,” he said. “Any Djinn that engages with a Demon directly is probably going to die, and die horribly. The only thing we can do to contain the fight is seal the Djinn, and the Demon, into a bottle. It traps the Demon so it can't do any more damage.”

My insides felt like they pulled together in a knotted ball. “But what about the Djinn?”

“Like I said, they die horribly. And it takes some of them centuries.” Lewis's face was hard, his eyes bright. “I didn't say I liked it.”

“That's—horrible.”

Lewis looked away. “Yeah,” he said. “Which is why we have a problem. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't let David—”

“Let David what?” said a voice from the shadows, startling me. David, of course, had arrived just in time to pick up his name being taken in vain. He stepped out of the shadows and stood there, watching us both, and whatever that was in his eyes, I couldn't read it. “Let David make his own decisions? Thank you, Lewis. I thought the Wardens never let Djinn think for themselves.”

He was angry, and he was—I thought—scared. I didn't know how much he'd heard, but clearly enough to disturb him.

Lewis didn't answer. Probably a good move.

He dropped a thick forest green down jacket, complete with hood, on the floor next to Lewis. “Here,” he said. “Something to keep you warm. We don't need you dying on us.”

Lewis let out a slow breath and sat back, bracing himself against the wall. “Thanks,” he said. “Nice to know you still care.”

“To a point,” David said, and turned to me. “Are you all right?”

I nodded, still shivering, but the last thing I wanted from him at this moment was a hug, which clearly he was thinking of offering. David slowly crouched, putting our eyes on a level. Not too close. He understood body language, at least, even if he wasn't human; I could feel the yearning in him, the frustration, the anxiety. I wondered if he could tell what I was thinking, and decided that he couldn't. He didn't look worried enough.

“Is there anything you can do for him?” I asked, and jerked my chin toward Lewis. “Heal him?”

“He wouldn't welcome that,” David said. He edged just a bit closer. “That is the stubbornest Warden I know, and considering I know you, that's saying something. Here. Put these on.” He reached behind him and retrieved my damp clothes from the floor—when I took them, they were soft and warm, like they'd come straight from a dryer. Something hardened in his eyes. “Did you take these off yourself?”

Lewis laughed, a bitter sort of sound. “David, if you think I'm in any shape to seduce her, you're giving me way too much credit,” he said. “She was freezing, she was soaked, and I didn't even look. Can we move on to the next problem, which is a damn sight worse than your jealousy?”

“You think there's a Demon,” David said. “I heard.”

“Worse than that,” Lewis replied. “I think there's a Demon that's managing to control Wardens and walk them around like puppets. You got any idea how bad that is?”

David looked profoundly troubled. “That means we can't trust the Wardens, either. Something's very wrong.”

I snorted. “
Wrong?
I'll tell you what's wrong. I saw Lewis put three bullets into one of them—a girl named Cherise—and she didn't go down. That's wrong. She's
little
!”

“Cherise?” David echoed, and looked to Lewis for confirmation. He nodded. “The human girl? Why would a Demon be using her? Why would it bother? There's nothing in her to feed off of.”

“I don't know, but she was definitely in on it,” I said. I was tired now, though considerably warmer; pulling on the clean, dry clothes had definitely helped. I leaned back to zip up the blue jeans and wrapped the tinfoil blanket around me again. “So she's not a Warden?”

“Not remotely,” he said. “The boy is, Kevin, but not her. She was just—”

“My friend,” I said slowly. “She was my friend. That's what she said. God…Why is this happening to her? To all of us?”

Lewis didn't even try to answer. If David could have, he held back; I couldn't tell what he was thinking at all.

“There's got to be people we can turn to,” I said. “Hell, if not the Wardens, what about the police? The army? The forestry service?” I was getting bothered by their shared silence. “Dammit—David, you could bring help to us, right? Rescue?”

“If the Demon can puppet humans, it wouldn't be wise,” he said. “It only adds more potential victims. The fewer we have to worry about, the better.”

“But we have to get
out of here
!”

“And we will,” Lewis said, and leaned his head against the wall with his eyes shut. His skin was the color of old, wet paper. “But David's right. Bringing people into this is a bad idea, both for them and for us. We need to find our own way out, and to do that, we need rest.”

“But—” Lewis needed rest, that much was clear. I turned to David. “Seriously, can't you see he's hurt? Can't you do anything for him?”

“If he'd let me,” David said. “Which I doubt.”

“I'm fine,” Lewis growled.

“See?”

“Lewis,”
I pleaded. “Don't be a dick. Okay, if you're going to be a dick, at least be
smart
. You'll slow us down. I need you in shape to get me out of here, right?”

Lewis didn't open his eyes, but after a long moment, he nodded. David stood up and walked to him, put a hand lightly on his shoulder, and then moved it to the back of his neck. He crouched down next to him, and his eyes burned like lava in the darkness, nearly bright enough to read by.

Lewis made a sound. Not a happy one. His face went an even more alarming shade of gray. “Sorry,” David said quietly. “You should have let me do this sooner. There's damage to your lungs.”

Lewis just nodded, tight-lipped. He was sweating from the pain, and his hands were trembling where they gripped the foil blanket around him.

With a glance at me, David brushed his other hand across Lewis's forehead, and with a sigh, the man's long body relaxed against the wall.

Out like a light.

“He'll be better when he wakes.” David settled Lewis more comfortably, then turned back to me. “He was afraid to let go. He didn't want to leave you alone with me.”

“What?” I couldn't quite believe what I was hearing. “Why?”

David smiled slowly. “Because like most Wardens right now, Lewis doesn't fully trust the Djinn. Even though I have more reason than anyone else to want to keep you safe.” David eased down on the rock next to me, not quite close enough to touch. “He thinks my loyalties are divided. He's right, of course. And the Djinn certainly aren't making any of this easier.”

“What do the Djinn have against me?” Was there anybody who didn't hate my guts?

“You, personally? Nothing, really. But many of them hate Wardens, and most of the rest have a kind of benign contempt for humankind in general. Our two species are not friends,” he said. “We're barely neighbors.”

“What about you and me?” My eyebrows rose. “I thought we were neighborly.”

“We're different.”

“But Lewis is still worried about you. Because you're Djinn.”

“Exactly,” David said. His eyes met mine, and in the shadows they were dark, human, and very gentle. “And as I said, he's right to be worried. I won't hurt you, Jo. I swear that. But I can't make that vow for other Djinn, not yet. There's too much anger. And—long-term, the future for us may not be bright.”

I sucked down a deep breath. “I don't want to talk about relationships. Look, Lewis said the only way to stop a Demon was to throw a Djinn at it. Which I guess used to be an easier answer—”

“Try convenient,” David said. “At least when the Wardens had plenty of Djinn as slaves. Now, they'll have to rely on our goodwill if they face a true crisis. Which, as I've said, isn't extensive.” He glanced sideways at me, then became very interested in the deep, still waters of the black pond. “I wish I could tell you that I would sacrifice myself for you, if I had to. I would give anything to tell you that, and a few months ago I would have, without hesitation. But now—now I have to think of my people. I can't confront a Demon, not directly. Not even to save your life. I also can't order one of my people to do it. Lewis knows that.”

I could tell what saying that cost him, and I didn't quite know how to answer. It took me a few seconds to work it out, and when I spoke, my voice sounded soft and very tentative. “You're ashamed of that, but you shouldn't be. It's okay, I'd never ask you to risk your life—or any Djinn's life—for me. I don't want Lewis to do it, either. If it comes down to it”—I swallowed, hard—“I want you to promise me you won't throw yourself on any Demons for me. Because…I don't want anything to happen to you.”

He didn't speak, and he didn't move. I couldn't tell if that had helped or not, so I blundered on. “I should have stayed back there earlier, to help Cherise and Kevin. They needed help, but I just—I just ran away. So I'm the last person to demand heroic sacrifices, here. I should have—”

“You should have done exactly as you did,” he interrupted. “You should have run. You have to save yourself, Jo. Neither of your appointed guardians are all that capable of helping you now, no matter how much we—” His voice failed him for a second, and then he finished. “No matter how much we want to.”

We sank into silence—not quite comfortable, but it mellowed out, and I felt tensed muscles easing. I don't know quite how it happened, but soon enough I was leaning against him, and his warmth felt so safe, so reassuring. After a while, he put an arm around my shoulders, and I let my head rest in the hollow of his neck.

“That girl, Cherise,” I said. “Is she still alive? Did I leave her to die?”

His warm fingers stroked across my forehead, the same gentle gesture I'd seen him give Lewis.

“Sleep,” he murmured, and I felt the warm brush of his lips against my temple. “Dream well.”

“I will,” I said faintly.

He kissed my hand, an old-world kind of gesture, full of tenderness, then got up with a grace that looked scarily sexy, and walked toward the opening of the cave. I didn't see him leave; it looked like he just misted away between one blink and the next.