All Your Wishes (28 page)

He hit me in a tackle like a linebacker, smashing me into the far wall with an impact that gave me whiplash and rattled my teeth. I rolled, threw him off, and struggled to my feet as three other agents boiled into the hallway.

Time ran out.

Hasan's voice was everywhere, filling the air. Its power translated into actual pressure, pushing against every inch of exposed skin, and a hot wind that blew even indoors. It wasn't just in my mind, either—everyone could hear it.

“You are not here. You are not dead, but I cannot see you. Where are you, Celia Graves?”

Turner's eyes widened until the whites showed all around the irises. He swallowed hard. The other agents froze, looking around in almost comical panic.

I grasped the
sujay
at my neck. With a sharp yank, I pulled it off, then shoved it into my pocket.

“I'm here,” I shouted. “I'm doing my best. I was on my way to you when somebody tried to kill me. I'm still trying to get to the temple.” The air was so filled with magic, it felt like it was burning my lungs. Hell, maybe it was. The exposed skin of the agents in the hall with me was reddening as if from a sun- or windburn.

There was a nanosecond's pause. Then,
“DO BETTER.”

Those words were followed by a roar of sound like nothing I'd ever heard before. Like a jet engine up close, but much worse and much louder. The walls of the terminal began to vibrate, then shudder, before peeling away with a scream of protesting metal. The air pressure changed and my ears popped. Thirty seconds, maybe less: that's how long it took Hasan to tear apart the entire building, leaving me looking out through twisted, exposed metal at the swirling vortex of a tornado that took up much of the horizon.

The tornado had to be more than a mile wide. It tossed jumbo jets like children's toys; ragged bits of metal, cars, semis, and anything else in its path were pulled up to circle in the green-tinted black clouds. The mass was backlit by flickering lightning and the crackling, popping flickers of man-made lightning that were the last gasps of destroyed electrical junctions.

Most disturbing of all, I could see Hasan's face in the clouds, beautiful and implacable in his rage.

 

23

The city
of Denver and its suburbs were about to have a really bad day and there wasn't a damned thing I could do about it. My head was pounding like a drum. The noise, the rapid change in air pressure, and tension combined gave me an instant headache that brought tears to my eyes.

“What the hell was that?” Turner gasped. When I returned my attention to the hallway, I saw that he was the only one still standing. The other three were lying on the floor and none of them were moving.
Shit.

“That was a pissed-off ifrit. He'd given me a deadline to meet with him and I missed it.” I started taking stock. A huge section of the airport was completely flattened and most of the walls around me had been reduced to twisted metal spikes. But I stood in a six-foot-wide circle of perfection. Walls, floor, doorways—everything was intact.

Also intact was someone's cell phone. I could hear it ringing, somewhere in the rubble to my left. Could hear it over the wind, and the creaking and settling of the building, and shouts as people began looking for the injured.

There hadn't been a lot of warning before the tornado hit. I doubted that the authorities had been able to get more than a few people to the shelter of the tunnels. I guessed a lot of people were hurt. Or dead. Damn Hasan anyway.

The phone rang again. Usually, a call went to voice mail after four rings. It rang a third time, and then a fourth, and then the sound stopped.

“That was your meeting?” Turner asked.

“Yup. Now shush.” I concentrated, picturing Dom Rizzoli's face in my mind. I didn't know if he could help me, but he was the highest-level law-enforcement type I knew. Maybe he knew somebody high enough up to get me some backup and serious transport. Maybe. I hoped.

What the hell is going on, Graves?
his mental voice thundered.

I winced. The headache I'd had earlier was suddenly back with a vengeance.

Stop yelling. Please. My head is killing me.

I could actually hear him take a deep breath and start counting. He got to about eighty before he was calm enough to be civil.

Look, just tell me what's going on. Please. I know you had a case involving the ghost of Connor Finn and what happened at the Needle. But what I just heard was no ghost or sorcerer, not even a demon.

I told you I was dealing with an ifrit. I'm sure I did.
Though now it occurred to me that maybe I hadn't. I couldn't really remember. It had been a rough couple of days.

No. You didn't. That's not the sort of thing I'd forget.
His mental voice was not quite a snarl.

Oops.

Sorry,
I apologized.
The ifrit's name is Hasan. Bad guys used Finn's ghost to let him loose. I got hired to protect the guy trying to put him back in the jar. Things went south …

No kidding? With
you
involved? I'm shocked.

It was my turn to growl at him mentally.
Anyway, Hasan gave me an ultimatum: get to a specific location by a specific time or he'd start killing people.

Is this why I have a message from your business partner?

Seriously, didn't
anyone
bother taking Dawna's calls?

Yes, probably. I was on my way when some bad guys made a run at me on the plane and injured a civilian instead. I tried to do the right thing by the victim and wound up stuck here, and the deadline came and went without me.

So what we heard was an angry ifrit?

You heard him?
I was shocked. Dom had said he'd heard the ifrit before, too, but I hadn't really taken that in. I'd assumed that Hasan's voice had only appeared locally.

Celia, everybody on the freaking
planet
heard him.
He gave a huge mental sigh.
It's not just Denver. An earthquake hit California, there was a tsunami in Thailand, at least two volcanoes have erupted, and several off-shore drilling rigs were hit by explosions. And there's more. There were simultaneous disasters all over the planet.

Oh … dear … God.

So tell me. What do you need to fix this? I suspect I can get authorization to give you whatever you need.

I gave him a list.

*   *   *

It's good to have friends in high places. The military scrambled helicopters from Buckley Air Force Base—to get help to the folks at DIA
and
to ferry me down to the caves pronto. My sad little carry-on had been lost in the rubble. My weapons were God knows where—that part of the airport had been completely flattened. There was no telling how high the death toll was going to be. I didn't dare think about it.

While waiting for the cavalry, Turner and I checked on the other agents. One was dead. The other two had been knocked out, but it didn't look like they were seriously injured. They were groaning and starting to come to when I heard the roar of engines and
thwup thwup
of helicopters coming in fast.

I took a moment to mentally check on the people I cared most about in the world.

Bubba was stuck in the airport bar—pinned under some rubble with a badly broken leg. He was in a lot of pain, but he was alive, so I counted my blessings. Gran was fine. El Jefe and Emma were unharmed but stranded. They'd watched the Landingham family home get swallowed by a crevasse created by one of the California earthquakes—a crevasse that made a perfect circle six inches outside the jeweled casting circle they were standing in. Dawna was on her way to the hospital after a car wreck. She'd been heading back to the protective circle Tim had put up. She had been badly injured but was expected to pull through. The rest of my staff—and Minnie the Mouser—were fine.

When my thoughts brushed Bruno's, I found him in the kind of complete concentration he gets when he's working a particularly dangerous and tricky bit of magic. I knew better than to interrupt him. Besides, he had to be alive to be working said magic.

That was as far as I got before the choppers landed.

The noise was tremendous as three big machines landed gently on a relatively clear section of tarmac some hundred yards or so away. The wind from their rotors sent up clouds of dust and sent little bits of debris swirling, but it wasn't too bad. I stared in awe as a group of military specialists dressed in tan desert camo emerged from the first chopper, carrying enough armament to take over a small developing nation. They ran toward me in a wedge formation, each bowed slightly at the waist, expressions intent. It was impressive as hell and more than a little scary. I wasn't the only one the spectacle affected, either. I heard Ned Turner swallow and he stammered a little as he spoke into his radio.

“Um, we have … military personnel here.”

The radio crackled. Then a voice said, “They're here for the princess. Cut her loose, Turner.”

“But…”

“
Now,
Turner. We have more important things to do, like saving lives.”

“Right.”

While they were talking, more troops were arriving, more choppers landing in the fields of long grass beyond the runways and beginning to offload emergency gear. I saw teams of medics streaming across the landscape and breathed a sigh of relief when a couple targeted the injured TSA agents in my hallway.

By the time Ned finished stammering into the walkie-talkie, seven members of the military were waiting at parade rest in a perfectly straight line six feet in front of me. The eighth man stepped forward and held out a hand. I took it and shook hands.

“Ma'am. We've been sent to assist you with the mission. I am Command Specialist Cox, a level-seven mage specializing in defensive magic.” Cox was a big man, standing about six two and broad boned, with a square jaw, penetrating brown eyes, and dark hair in the classic military cut. He filled out his uniform completely and thoroughly, without an ounce of fat to be seen, and he moved with the kind of confidence that comes from knowing what your body is capable of.

Cox began introducing the rest of the group, speaking so quickly that I was glad they all had their names sewn onto their uniforms. There were four other men and three women of various apparent ethnicities, and other than Cox, they all looked younger than me. Cox set a pack gently on the ground by my feet.

“Weapons, clothing, and protective gear,” he informed me. At his nod another soldier set a four-pack of nutrition shakes next to the backpack.

“Which of you is the best shot?” I asked.

“Rifle or handgun?” Cox replied.

“Both.”

“Finlay has had sniper training. Vargas has the best scores on the range with handguns.”

I debated for a moment. Who should get the necklace? Not me. Hasan needed to see me coming. But I wanted at least one of our team to be invisible to his eyes; someone who could and would shoot me if they had to, to slow me down or, God forbid, kill me.

“Vargas.” I pulled the
sujay
from my pocket and offered it to a beautiful Hispanic woman who might, possibly, have been old enough to drink. She looked from me to Cox, her expression questioning.

I continued, “You'll need to fix the chain, or tie a knot in it, but wearing that will make you invisible to the ifrit. If it looks like he's taking me over, shoot me. Please don't kill me unless you absolutely have to.”

At Cox's nod, Vargas took the necklace from me and began fiddling with the chain. At another gesture from Cox, a man who appeared to be in his mid-twenties stepped forward, holding a large-ish wooden box. “We had to scramble a bit to get the artifacts you told Agent Rizzoli you needed,” Cox commented. “Cooper.”

The young man passed the box to me, his expression not quite neutral. I saw a hint of regret. Mostly he looked very tough and very determined. “Ma'am.” His voice was a soft, melodic tenor. “I realize these are not your own weapons, but they were spelled by the same mage and are of excellent quality.”

Cooper flipped open the lid of the box. I felt the magic imbued in the knives wash over me in a burning wave that took my breath away. I knew that the military gave their corpsmen good gear, but not this good. Knives like these were rare and expensive.

“Those are not military issue.” I met Cooper's eyes when I said it.

“No, ma'am, they are not.”

I stared down at the matched pair of plain silver throwing knives where they lay on black crushed velvet, and knew without being told that they were Cooper's most prized possessions.

I opened my mouth, intending to say something, but he spoke first.

“Ma'am, the general made a personal request that I give you these knives. I'd be honored if you'd take them.”

“The general?” I turned to Cox, my expression inquiring.

“Ma'am, everyone heard the ifrit. When we were notified by Washington that you were here and needed our help, General Abernathy took a personal interest.”

Hell, what could I say to that? I'd asked Dom for artifact-grade knives if he could get them. There was a really good chance I'd need weapons like these if I was going to get through the day without becoming Hasan's sock puppet.

I sighed, running my hand over the spelled silversteel of the first blade, feeling the familiar power of Bruno's magic.

“All right. But when this is over, I'm giving them back.” I winked at him. “I don't know you well enough to take a present this valuable from you.”

Cooper grinned, which made him look years younger. I could like this man. The realization made me cringe inwardly. I was about to take him, and the others, up against Hasan. Yes, they were trained professionals. But this was going to get ugly. Who knew if any of us would make it out alive?