Unbroken: Outcast Season: Book Four (11 page)

“Yeah, well, you can argue it when we see him.” He yawned, shook himself out of it, and said, “We can’t keep this up. We’re burning power every time we turn around, and it’s going to wear us down, Cass. We haven’t even made it to an actual fight yet, and already I’m drained. So are you.” He checked his watch and the fuel gauge. “We’ve got at least another eight to ten hours before we get to Seattle, and that’s if the roads hold out and we don’t run into trouble, which we damn sure will.”

“
And your point…?”

“We need rest. We need to figure out what to do with Pearl Junior there, because you can’t keep her unconscious from now until this all shakes out, and having her at our backs is the definition of a bad idea.”

“What are you saying?” I half turned in the seat now, staring at him.

“I’m saying that we’ve got the hell beat out of us more than we can handle already, and we’re going to have to handle a lot more. We need to refuel, recharge, get ready. Going in drained means we ain’t helping anybody.”

“They’ll bring the fight to us!”

“Maybe,” Luis said. “But out here, away from the cities, it’s still quiet. And we’re stopping to rest before we do something stupid, because we’re too tired to think straight.”

He took his foot off the gas.

I flooded power through the metal, and the engine growled deep. The truck lunged forward, inciting a chorus of yelped protests from the others. I held Luis’s stare with mine, and then said quietly, “Watch the road. We’re not stopping. We cannot stop. There’s no more rest, no more time. Do you understand?”

“You’re crazy. We’re
human
, not Djinn. We can’t just— Let go of the pedal, Cass.”

I said nothing. There was something in my stare that made him go quiet in the end, and he faced forward.

We kept driving.

Thirty minutes later, we slowed for the first signs of trouble—a tangle of wreckage in the middle of the road. Luis stopped the truck, and we both went to examine the damage. It had been a car once, but there was nothing left of it now to identify it as such, save one mangled tire still visible. From the fluids leaking from the crushed
object, there had been occupants. They were beyond saving.

“Any idea what did that?” Luis asked me. I shook my head, but that was a lie. There was no damage to the close-crowding trees on either side of the road, which argued against an attack by weather; I could visualize a Djinn easily compacting the vehicle with careless blows, driving the metal in on the occupants. But why
this
car? Why…

I found a severed hand by the side of the road, a perfectly undamaged specimen sheared cleanly by some incredible force. It was a woman’s hand, with manicured fingernails that had seen better days, and a great deal of recent abuse.

In the palm, when I checked it in Oversight, there shimmered the ghost of a stylized sun—the identification of a Warden. I looked at the crushed car, startled, and the agony and violence that bloomed on the aetheric made me shudder. A Djinn had done this. A powerful, furious, mad Djinn.

Because they were Wardens, headed—as we were—to battle.

“Luis,” I said softly.

“I know,” he said.

“Wardens.”

“I
know.
Get in the damn truck,
now.
”

We ran for it, but I slowed as I felt the aetheric bending around us. Something had just arrived. The hot, intangible rush of power blasted through me, and left me scorched and trembling inside.

I stopped and turned to face it. Luis made it to the door of the truck, but turned as well. I heard him whisper, softly,
“Madre de Dios.”

A Djinn was standing in the road, blocking our path. He was the size of a man, but he was not anything like one, really;
the form was correct, but his skin was a deep violet-indigo, his eyes blazed silver, and there was an aura around him that was visible even in the human world—power, madness,
rage.

Rashid. He’d recovered far faster from Esmeralda’s bite than any of us really had expected, and he was still under the control of the Mother. At least I believed he was.

Like Priya, he had no choice in what he’d been sent to do.

“Cass?” Luis said. “What do you want to do?”

“Get in,” I said. “I’ll keep him busy.”

“Cassiel—”

“Do it!”

Luis yanked open the door and slid in, and I saw Rashid lower his chin. The glow in his eyes brightened, sparked with fury that was beyond even my experience.

I reached deep into Luis, into the deepest reserves of his power, and pulled all I could without damaging him beyond repair. I heard him cry out, but there was no time, no time at all, not if any of us were to survive the moment, the
second
.

I hit Rashid with a blast of pure white fire.

It was hardly enough to sting him, but it pushed him off the road and into the dirt, where he hit, rolled, and came to his feet with his skin dripping fire.

“Go!” I screamed, and heard Luis hit the gas. The truck rocketed past me, tires screaming; I felt the bumper brush me out of the way, but I had no time for pain because Rashid was rushing at me, and I knew, without even a hesitation, that I was about to die.

And that was, oddly, all right.

The world went quiet, still, pure, calm. Rashid was an indigo smear against it. I searched for the fear and rage
that I needed to sustain me in this fight, but it was gone. Nothing left but a vast acceptance and readiness.

I’d felt this before, the detachment, the lack of fear, the
power.
Only once, since I’d been cast out from the Djinn, but the single bright spark of
that
Cassiel had never died, never surrendered.

Some part of me, some normally unreachable core, was yet a Djinn—trapped, limited, maybe even mutilated by what Ashan had done to me, but he couldn’t destroy it, not utterly. And in this moment, when I shed all my human faults, fears, hopes…

The Djinn emerged, and flowed into me again, unnatural, inhuman,
perfect
. My body glowed with a pure white light, and I caught Rashid’s arms and forced them wide as he rushed upon me. We were locked together, bodies pressed, eyes focused on each other.

And I was not afraid, any more than I’d been afraid when I’d seen an infection crawling up my arm and taken a weapon and brought it down to sever the flesh and bone. I’d known what had to be done, and I’d done it without hesitation. It had been a glorious madness, just like this.

I could hold Rashid here, trapped with me. I
would
hold him, for as long as necessary to ensure that Luis and the girls got safely away. For eternity, if I must.

No.
No.
I could do more.
Must
do more.

I tightened my hold on him. He was brutally strong, powered by the Mother’s rage, but there was something in me, too, something that I’d carried with me. A core that wouldn’t break, wouldn’t yield.

His rage flowed over me, through me, out of me, and back into the Earth from which it sprang.

Rashid,
I whispered, my lips kissing close to his.
Rashid.

He was there. Unlike Priya, he was not yet gone, not
yet burned away. He’d hidden himself deep within, and I could feel him there, his terror and pain, his anguish and rebellion.

He needed help.

He needed…

It came to me with a stunning shock what he needed, and without thinking I released him and stepped back. I couldn’t save him like this, or stop him from going after those I was sworn to protect.

But I
could
stop him. And save him.

The instant I released him, Rashid flashed away, chasing the truck. I dove into the underbrush and found the thing I’d glimpsed, a single flare of brightness in the dark.

A glass bottle.

It was a beer bottle, still smelling of hops and malt.

Seconds left.

Rashid was in front of the truck now.

Summoning his power.

“Be thou bound to my service,” I said, and concentrated every ounce of the power inside me on his distant spark. “Be thou bound to my service. Be thou bound to my service,
Rashid
!”

There was a scream on the aetheric, a ripping of the fabric, and power flowed like blood toward me, through me, into the bottle.

I slapped my hand down on the top, trapping him within, and collapsed to my knees on the fallen leaves. A chilly blast of wind made me shake, but it wasn’t only that—the fear came back, and the emptiness, and the fragility of flesh. The Djinn Cassiel had visited me and gone, and left me a human shell full of weakness.

But I had Rashid. I
had
him.

There was mud caked at the bottom of the leaves, and I slammed the bottle down into it, sealing it tightly. It
looked empty, but on the aetheric the glass container swirled and glowed with trapped energy.

I didn’t know if the binding would keep him controlled by my will, or if it had only bound him into a prison; the only way to test it would be to release him, and that was a dangerous risk. Too dangerous, for now. Later, perhaps, it would be worth taking the chance.

The truck was still moving, already out of sight. Safe, for now.

And I was once again on foot.

TWO MILES DOWN THE ROAD,
I found the Victory motorcycle sitting neatly parked on the edge. The tire marks told me that the truck had stopped, unloaded it, and driven on.
Good.
I leaned against the bike for a few moments, head down. The rain continued, but it was fitful now, and light; no other traffic had passed in either direction.

I mounted the bike and started it with a spark of power, then patted the sleek side with absent fondness. “Let’s find them,” I said. I opened the saddlebag strapped to the side and found men’s clothing, rolled up tightly; the beer bottle with Rashid’s spirit fit nicely inside the curl of a pair of soft blue jeans, and I cushioned it further with a fleece shirt.

Then I eased the Victory out onto the black ribbon of road, and started the ride.

The punishing vibration of the engine felt magically soothing to me, pounding the kinks from knotted muscles and clearing my mind. The wind and rain in my face woke something primal in me, something that thought
clearly and coldly about our chances. They were, of course, poor at best. Lewis Orwell himself had admitted that; until the bulk of the Wardens docked from their mission at sea, those of us stranded here were the thinnest possible line of defense. There was no chance we wouldn’t be shattered.

But we had an unexpected, even shocking advantage, if we could actually trap and bottle the Djinn. I’d always loathed that loophole in the freedom and power of my kind, but now I felt grateful for it; without it, the humans wouldn’t stand a chance, and ultimately neither would the Djinn themselves
or
the Mother. We had to maintain a fragile balance to fight for reason, for peace, and for the defeat of our real enemy: Pearl.

The Mother was experiencing agony and the temporary madness that came of it. If we could soothe her, it would pass. But Pearl… Pearl was a cancer at the very heart of the world, and she had to be burned away.

The bottle in my saddlebags represented a step toward all of that. Perhaps. At the very least, it symbolized a chance we hadn’t had an hour ago.

I saw the white flash of paint ahead on the road, and accelerated around a curve. The truck was just ahead now, climbing a rise. I could catch it in only a moment.

I was still half a mile back when the vehicle made the top of the hill…

… And exploded in a fireball, raining metal and debris into the trees.

“No!” I screamed. It burst out of me in a fury, ripping a blood path down my nerves and flesh, and I pushed the throttle hard over, heedless of the slick road, the dangers,
everything
except the burning wreck that was overturned there at the top of the hill.

No one could have survived that.