Gale Force (Page 29)

"That's why you were perfect," Lewis said. "How'd Rahel do?"

"Fine. If I hadn't known she wasn't human, I'd never have figured it out. She was - " Kevin's throat worked nervously, his prominent Adam's apple bobbing. "She was really good at being Cherise." And I couldn't imagine Kevin had been able to really play along too well, but that might have been okay. After all, he was socially awkward at the best of times.

"When did Paul show up?" I asked.

"About an hour ago," Kevin said. "That was when they cut us off. Tried to make it seem like they were just testing us, but Rahel knew Paul was in the building, she told me. She knew he'd sell us out."

"Didn't she try to get the two of you out?"

"Yeah." Kevin's voice faltered. "I made her stop."

Silence. I looked at Kevin's hands. They were tightly bound up together, trembling.

"Why?" Lewis asked the question I wanted to, in a voice far more gentle than I could have. "What happened?"

"There was this girl. I didn't know - she might have been one of them, I don't know. But they said - they said they were going to kill her if we tried to leave. I had to - " Kevin squeezed his eyes shut. "Christ. I should have just let Rahel get out of here."

"Trust me, if Rahel hadn't thought it was important to stay, you'd have been yanked out whether you wanted it or not." Lewis glanced at David, who was still pacing, but listening to every word. "Then what happened?"

"They had this stuff. Black stuff. I guess it was like - like the stuff you found." Antimatter. I nodded. "They tied Rahel up with it, and she couldn't move. I know she tried to get away, but she couldn't; she was able to make enough noise that I could run. I was looking for a way out when you showed up." He nodded at me. "I should have - "

Kevin stopped. I knew that feeling, all too well. I wanted to help him, but I knew it was something that he had to deal with himself. No platitude was going to help, no matter how sincere.

"Kevin." I took one of his hands and drew it out of its tight ball; it stayed tense in mine, trembling, ready to yank away at a second's notice. "Before Paul showed up, they may have told you some things. Something that could help us."

He was already shaking his head. "I'd have said if they spilled their guts, okay? But they didn't. They just talked about what a bitch you were, and how you were willing to fuck over the Wardens for your boyfriend. . . ."

"Finally, someone you could agree with," I said. He shot me a covert look, almost hidden by his dangling, shaggy hair.

"No," he said, "I don't. Not after I saw what they wanted to do."

I felt a shiver crawl hand-over-hand up the bones of my spine. "What did you see?"

"They were going to torture him," Kevin said, glancing up at David, then away. "Make him tell everything about the Djinn. About the Oracles. About how to destroy them."

"They really are crazy," Lewis said grimly. "Destroying the Djinn and the Oracles would destroy us. There's no way humanity, or anything else alive on this planet, would survive a catastrophe like that."

We thought of it at the same time, our gazes locking over the top of Kevin's bowed head. David must have as well, because he spun toward us.

"He knows that," I said. "Bad Bob knows that. He's not stupid enough to assume anything else. So why would he want to destroy the human race?"

"You know," David said.

"It's not Bad Bob," I said. "Is it?"

"No," Lewis agreed. "I think it's a Demon wearing his skin."

Unfortunately, I had way too much personal experience with Demons. Most recently, I'd seen the damage they could do once they took on a human form. I thought the Wardens had been pretty successful about purging anyone from their ranks who carried a Demon Mark - a larval form of a Demon that granted the carrier more-than-normal strength and energy, almost like having a secret Djinn under your control. But you could carry a Demon Mark only so long before it began to corrupt you from within, and if you wanted to survive, you had to get rid of it by passing it to someone else.

Someone else more powerful, because the Demon Mark was only attracted to power. It traded up.

I'd been the unfortunate recipient of such a thing, at Bad Bob's hands. I hadn't understood, at the time, that he'd been paying me a kind of backhanded compliment. . . . I hadn't known, then, how really strong I was.

He had. He'd chosen me for just that reason.

It had killed him in leaving his body - he'd waited too long, hung on to his power until it was nested deep inside. I thought about his cold body lying in a grave somewhere, and wondered if his flesh was still there, peaceful and empty. Maybe what was walking around right now was Bad Bob reanimated; maybe it was just a semblance, like the one Rahel had worn to play Cherise. Either way, it wasn't Bad Bob on the inside. Couldn't be. But if it was a full-grown, fully formed Demon, it had powers I couldn't begin to understand.

"The antimatter," I said. "The Demon produces it, secretes it, something like that. That's why there's no machinery, no plant they've had to set up. That's why we couldn't find any kind of permanent base for the Sentinels - they don't need a plant, not even a hidden one. Because he just . . . makes it." Like sweat, or blood, or other bodily fluids. It was the very essence of why the Demon didn't belong here; it literally destroyed the world around it, just by being. The human shell kept it contained, like a space suit insulating an astronaut from the cold of space.

If it left that shell . . .

I remembered what Jerome Silverton had said about the black shard we'd found embedded in the dead Djinn. One kilogram of antimatter annihilating itself is supposed to produce about 180 petajoules of energy. The spear I'd seen Bad Bob use to kill Ortega had been at least five times the size of the shard we'd originally found. Catastrophic would be charitable.

The Demon was hunting us. Hunting Djinn, using the Djinn to power the growth of the antimatter weapon. Once it was strong enough, what would he do with it? Where would he -

"The Oracles," I said. "What if he goes after the Oracles?"

David was already gone when I turned toward him; a blurred motion was all that was left. Imara. My daughter was in Sedona, locked for all time in one location. Unable to flee.

I sat with Lewis, holding Kevin's shaking hand, and waiting for the end of the world.

The end of the world didn't come before dinner, anyway.

As the hours went by, the FBI decided they'd have a better chance of containing the situation - ha! - if they ejected those of us not wearing three letters or badges on our outfits. That went for the Wardens, the Ma'at, and would have gone for the Djinn, had any been present. I'd stood witness to the FBI forensic team taking Ortega down from the wall, then interring him in a metal casket that was marked with all kinds of warning signs. Somehow, I felt someone should watch. He'd been a kind man, a peculiar sort of Djinn, and he hadn't deserved this kind of ending.

Lewis, Kevin, and I were bundled into an FBI helicopter - not my favorite form of transportation -  and flown to the Miami field office, where we were left in a severe-looking room for a few more hours.

Dinner was served, and apart from its being warm and edible, I don't remember much about it. We barely talked. There didn't seem to be all that much to say.

When David reappeared, he came with reinforcements - six Djinn. One of them was Venna, which made me smile in relief; one was the tough-looking specimen David had identified to me as Roy, when we'd seen him earlier - he'd been Rahel's hypothetical backup. I wondered where he'd been when he was needed the most.

Zenaya was the third. I didn't know the other three, but they all had the otherworldly grace and glitter that I associated with the most powerful of the Djinn, Old or New.

"The Oracles are protected," David said. "Ashan's taking care of it, and Wardens we trust have been assigned alongside them as backup."

"He won't like that," I noted.

"He doesn't have to like it. I've explained the necessity. " There was a cold, angry shimmer in David's eyes, and I wondered exactly how civil that discussion had been. "We intend to go and get Rahel."

"You can't," I said. I was calm about it, and authoritative, but all too aware that David might not be in any mood to listen to reason. "She's bait. You go charging in there, that's exactly what they want -  especially you, Conduit Boy."

He didn't answer me, but he didn't argue, either. He was biding his time. I knew I couldn't get him to just stand by and risk Rahel's life, not under these circumstances. Time was running out. If I wanted to avoid watching David throw his life away, I needed a plan, and a damn good one.

And all of a sudden, looking at him, I had one. Granted, I was operating on little sleep, too much adrenaline, and next to coma-levels of caffeine imbalance, but it sounded good. I bit my lip, running it over in my head, and made a hold on gesture to David as I beckoned Lewis toward a convenient corner of the room.

"What is it?" he asked. He sounded just as stressed as I felt.

"I think I know what will bring them out in the open. We need to get the Sentinels to come after us again, not the other way around. If we allow them to choose the ground - "

"Yeah, I get it. The Djinn don't even know how much of a disadvantage they have." Lewis leaned closer. "It's crazy, isn't it? Your idea?"

"Pretty damn crazy."

"Tell."

I did. Crazy didn't really exactly cover it, as I listened to the words tumble out of my mouth. Insane, that was closer. Also, stupidly suicidal, but that was par for the course with me. At least it would be consistent.

Lewis stared at me as if he couldn't quite believe what I'd said, and in truth, I wasn't sure if I was believing it, either. Then he said, slowly, "It could work. It allows us to assemble all the Wardens in one place, choose the ground, protect the Djinn, offer the Sentinels a target they can't afford to pass up. . . ."

Oh God, it actually was a good plan. Damn. I'd been half hoping he'd shoot it out of the air. Instead, it looked as if I was going to have to kick my shopping into high gear.

"Right," I said, and turned to David. "How do you feel about getting married tomorrow?"

I had no idea Djinn could look so blank. Venna turned to David and said, with the perfect blend of alarm and puzzlement, "Are you sure she isn't insane?"

David continued with the blank look for a few more seconds, and then the light dawned warm in his eyes, and he slowly smiled.

"Actually," he said, "I'm fairly certain she is, and that is exactly why I'm marrying her."

Chapter Thirteen

One nice thing about having the Djinn Conduit on your side was receiving no arguments from the rank and file - no arguments of any substance, anyway. The other Djinn still thought we were crazy, but generally decided that was our personal business.

What they weren't so wild about was the idea that we weren't going to charge off to Rahel's rescue, but I knew they weren't tactically inept; they knew if we played the game the Sentinels had set in motion, we would all pay the price.

I also knew how hard it was going to be for them to stand by and sacrifice Rahel for a tactical point. I was hoping it wouldn't come to that. I knew David, and I knew that making those choices was just as impossibly hard for him as it was for me.

Part of what we planned was, again, complete insanity. Lewis carried out the first part of it at four o'clock, on the steps of the Miami FBI field office.

We called a press conference. To say it was well attended would be to say that the hottest club in LA had a bit of a wait to get in. I'd expected to draw attention, but as we walked through the lobby with a flying escort of FBI agents, Homeland Security, and anxiously hovering, nameless other governmental representatives, I could hear the roar of the crowd outside.

One of the no-name governmental types, nattily turned out in a nicely tailored suit and a two-hundred-dollar haircut, pushed in front of us and physically threw himself against the glass doors leading out, facing us down. "Wait!" he blurted. The parade trickled to a halt, and Lewis and I glanced at each other. We'd had bets on how long it would take for the cold feet to manifest. I was about to make a cool twenty bucks. Sweet. "Are you sure about this? You're sure there's no other way? The chaos - the fear - "

"Let me put it this way," Lewis said. "You had half the news media covering the meltdown out at the motel earlier today, and every phone line to every possible agency has been jammed ever since, demanding an explanation. Do you want to try to coordinate some big lie that won't get found out, at this point? Because I'd be happy to put your name forward as the guy in charge."

No-Name Nice Suit Guy swallowed and lowered his arms. He straightened his lapels with an unconscious gesture and stepped out of the way.

"Damn," Lewis said. "Kind of hoped he'd go for it, actually."

Fat chance. This wasn't a hot potato; it was the entire state of Idaho, fresh out of the microwave.

"Here goes," Lewis said, and opened the door.

The noise washed over us in a wave, and we walked out into a whiteout of flashbulbs and video spotlights. It was like hitting a psychic wall, and if I'd been on my own, I'd have caved fast and hard. God. I couldn't focus on anything; the crowd was a faceless mass of shouting faces, all blurring into a snarling, hostile entity. I transferred my probably shell-shocked stare to the buildings on the far side of the street. Somebody was in an office, backlit, looking out at us. Nice to have that kind of distance.