Ill Wind (25 page)

“I'm guessing that's bad? Look, who's Djinn is she?”

He didn't answer me. Didn't look at me. “Hurry.” He turned and walked away, back toward the truck.

I hurried.

 

After Star was burned, she lingered on in the hospital for weeks, fighting for her life. Every day her
breath came a little bit shallower; her heart raced a little bit faster. Pseudomonas cruised her blood. Pumping her full of antibiotics didn't seem to be working, and the Earth Wardens who'd tried to repair the damage had been completely defeated.

Sitting there at her bedside, holding her undamaged right hand, a thought came to me. I knew someone who
could
save her.

If I could find him.

Like Star, I'm not big on debate and thinking things over; the minute Lewis's name popped into my head, I went up into Oversight, far up, far enough that the planet curved away beneath me and night settled its cloak of stars around my shoulders. From up there, I could see little jets of flame that represented Wardens using their powers . . . little flicks like sparks from a flywheel. I waited up there, watching. It was impossible to distinguish the signatures of most Wardens—they were too similar, too homogenous. A few had characteristics, though. Marion, for one; her powers glowed stronger and in a deep blue green. Martin Oliver, when he exercised his power—which was rarely—vibrated in a hot orange part of the spectrum.

I waited, and waited, and waited. The world turned, and I turned with it, watching.

Finally, I saw a soundless bloom of pearl-white. Not a jet, not a spark, but a
bloom,
like a fireworks blast expanding in all directions.

I fell toward it at top speed and stopped myself when I was close enough to determine where Lewis was at the moment.

I don't know why I didn't expect it, but I didn't, really.

He was in Yellowstone.

Six hours later, after enduring commercial air travel and two hours of jouncing around in a well-broken-in rental SUV, I came up on the area of Yellowstone that was blocked off to the public. The Warden on duty knew me. We exchanged the secret glowing-rune handshakes, and I went on in.

I smelled it before I came over the rise and saw it—a thick, ashen smell of death and bitter smoke. But nothing really prepared me for the devastation. Nothing could.

The valley stretched out as far as I could see, a black valley streaked with gray. No forest, nothing but ash and the skeletal black stubs of trees. There was a sense of . . . stillness. Of death so vast that no life could ever come there again, or would want to.

A sense of utter sadness.

Lewis was a dot of human color in the middle of it, sitting on the hood of an SUV that looked like the mate to the one I was driving, only gray. Mine was red, but as I crawled it slowly over the ruined landscape it turned ash-gray, flecked with black. By the time I parked next to him, they were both camouflaged.

He looked . . . good. Filled out, no longer starving and sick. There was a sense of peace around him, and power. He was still tall and gawky, but somehow that fit now. He'd grown into it, and the gawkiness had become grace.

He didn't look surprised to see me as I climbed
down out of the SUV and came around to face him. In fact, he smiled like he'd been expecting me for a while.

“Jo.” He nodded. I nodded back. “Been a while.”

“You shouldn't be using all that power,” I said. “You burn like a nuclear explosion in Oversight, you know.”

He shrugged. “I knew you were watching. If I hadn't wanted you to find me, you wouldn't have found me.” He patted the hood of the SUV next to him. It was filthy, but I climbed up anyway. We didn't touch. “Not too many people can see it, you know.”

“Really?” That boggled me; he'd lit up like Vegas in my eyes. “Weird.”

“A bit,” he agreed. “I'm guessing you didn't come out here just to catch up on old times.”

He was looking at me, but I felt the soft caress of power everywhere around me. Nothing I could understand, just a hint; I looked away from him at the burned, blackened crematory of the forest and didn't see anything.

“You're doing something,” I said.

“Yes.”

“What?”

He gave me a slow, very slightly wicked smile. “Seducing someone.”

If I kept very still, I could actually
see
it now. It was a mist, very faint, glittering gold in the sun. It was moving over the ground as softly and slowly as a lover's hand, spreading out from the epicenter of Lewis. I slid off the hood of the Jeep and reached
down to touch my fingers to it, and felt a slow stirring of . . . life.

Lewis was pouring out life, like seed, across the mourning graveyard of Yellowstone.

“She needs help,” he said. “She wants to live, but it's too much for her. I'm just helping her along.”

I felt the slow, warm tingle of it clinging to my fingers even after I climbed back up on the hood of the Jeep next to him. We sat in silence, watching the golden mist thicken and swirl and creep out across the land.

It was so beautiful, I wanted to weep.

“This is what you do,” I whispered. “Oh, God, Lewis.”

“Some of it. You guys do a good job with the weather, but I pitch in now and again with Earth and Fire. I should've been here earlier. It wouldn't have been so—” He shook his head.

“You wouldn't have stopped it?”

“The fire? No. Things need to burn sometimes, and you have to know when to let them. But this got out of hand.” In the sunlight, his eyes were the color of fine dark ale. “There's a Demon trying to come through.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about.” Although I did, a little; there were whispers about Demon Marks, but nobody was very clear about them or what it meant. Lewis, however, sounded authoritative.

“Things like this happen because there's a kind of force acting on our world. Hurricane Andrew, that was another one. The floods in India. Those are signs
that something's trying to break through into the aetheric.” He was holding a stick in his hands, turning it over and over, learning it with his fingers. “Sometimes it succeeds in finding one of us to build the bridge. I think that's what this was. One of them trying to touch one of us.”

“Anyone in particular?”

“Don't know,” he confessed. “Probably not. The problem is that the energy from the Demon's efforts doesn't go away, it accumulates up there, in the aetheric.” He shook his head. “Never mind. Not important—you didn't come out here to get a lecture. What's up?”

“Star,” I said. All around me, the ground glittered with gold, with power, with potential. “I need you to help her. She's dying.”

Lewis stopped turning the stick in his hands. He looked down at it as if surprised to find it there. “Friend of yours?”

“Friend of yours, too. I remember her saying she knew you.”

He nodded. “I met her here. I was young and stupid then; I didn't realize how much energy there was here. I nearly got myself toasted.”

It was so similar to the way I'd met Star that I had to smile at the memory.

“I can't help her,” he said. “I've thought about it. I know she was—burned.”

“Worse,” I said. “Her power core was broken. That's what they tell me, anyway. That's what's keeping her from healing.”

He shivered a little. The color of the mist around us changed subtly, from gold to silver, then back to
gold. It clung to the skeletal limbs of trees like a coating of early frost.

“
Can
you help her?” I asked.

“It's not a question of
can,
Jo. Sometimes—”

“Sometimes you just have to let things burn,” I finished for him. The air was warm and thick with the taste of smoke and death, and the hard metal hood of the Jeep felt too warm under me. “But this is
Star
.”

He reached out and put his hand on my hair, stroking gently. Not letting himself touch my skin. I relaxed into the touch for the sheer pleasure of it. “I know,” he said. “Don't you think I
want
to?”

“I'm asking you,” I said. “I'm asking you for a favor. You owe me one.”

His hand went still, but he didn't take it away.

“Lewis?” I asked. “Please?”

The mist changed colors again, from gold to a pale green the color of spring leaves. The color change rolled across the valley slowly, in wavelike ripples.

The stick in Lewis's hand changed color, too, from dead brown to a fine, delicate tan, the wood inside showing pale as flesh. As I watched, it sprouted a single, delicate leaf. Lewis slid off the hood of the Jeep and planted the stick carefully upright in the charcoal field. I could almost feel it rooting, growing, pulsing with life.

“It might not work,” he said. He might have been talking about the plant, but I knew he wasn't. “Sometimes it doesn't work at all.”

“Try.”

He straightened up and turned to look at me. Around him, the mist rose into the air in whispering
waves, like angels flying. It dissolved on the light of the sun, and then there was just a black valley, dead trees, a tall and graceful man standing there with his arms folded across his chest.

But the smell . . . The smell was different. Warm. Golden.

The wind smelled like life.

He nodded and said, “Let's go.”

Six hours later, he was holding Star's hand, and that golden mist was moving through her, soaking into her skin, invading through her mouth and nose.

It saved her life. Lewis preserved what he could of her affinity with fire, but like me, he understood balance; to heal Star completely meant disturbing that balance beyond repair.

I don't think she ever knew he was there. When she woke up, two days later, Lewis was long gone, just a memory and a taste of gold in the air.

I never told her anything about it.

 

I watched the road behind us, once we were safely back in motion again, but I didn't see any lemon-yellow Djinn flying carpets in our trail. Not that she'd do anything that ridiculously
Arabian Nights,
of course, but when you're paranoid, staring out the back window seems like a vitally important occupation.

You're a fool. There is no saving a fool.

Whose side was Rahel on, anyway? Maybe nobody's. Certainly not mine.
Choose.
Choose what? Choose who? Why did the Djinn have to be so damn inscrutable, anyway? Was it just a personality flaw? I couldn't even assume she was really out to save
David. In fact, as little as I actually understood about the Djinn, there was nothing I
could
safely assume about Rahel—I didn't even know where she stood in this strange little game.

Choose.
So few choices I could make. I had the Mark. I could choose to give it to David. . . . No. I wouldn't. I couldn't.

Choose.
Dammit. The only thing I had left was . . . who to trust. Well, I knew something about that, at least. I couldn't trust Marion and her people; they'd do exactly what they were told to do by the Council, up to and including killing me. David—I already trusted him, in ways I couldn't begin to regret.

But I could commit to the one person I'd been avoiding dragging into this.

“Star—” I leaned forward and touched her shoulder. Her dark hair dragged like silk on my fingers. “Star, do you know anything about the Demon Mark?”

David couldn't quite control his flinch. He stared straight ahead, but I could feel the burn of his disapproval. As for Star, she turned her head, lips parted in astonishment, and then whipped back toward the road when a truck blared a warning. On the horizon, a flock of birds broke cover and wheeled like a tornado in the graying sky.

Star nodded toward David, plainly asking. I nodded. “He knows.”

“Yeah? He knows about
what,
exactly?”

“The Wardens. All of it.”

“Really?” She cut an interested look his way, but he didn't respond. “Well. Okay, I know a little about it. Why? You got one?” She was kidding, of course.
But in answer, I eased back the collar of my shirt and dragged it down to show her the scorch mark over my left breast. She whistled. “Holy crap, Jo.”

“I need to know how to get rid of it,” I said.

“Obviously! Okay.” She blew out an agitated breath. “Damn, girl, that's a hell of a secret to keep.”

“If it's any consolation, you're the first one I've told.” True, actually. I hadn't told David, he'd known all along, or guessed pretty damn well.

“How'd you get it?” She seemed pretty shaken. I guess she had a right.

“Bad Bob. He kidnapped me and—” I didn't want to describe what he'd done to me; it was too chokingly vivid. “Anyway. He died, I got the Mark.”

“Holy shit. Well . . . you could give it to somebody else. That's obvious.” She turned her attention back to the road, but her golden-bronze skin had taken on a paler tinge. “
Mira,
is that what you're looking to do? Pass it on? You know it won't go unless the person you try to give it to has more power than you do.” She flicked a glance at me in the rearview mirror, and her eyes widened. “You
do
know that, right?”

I looked to David for confirmation; he didn't meet my gaze, which was confirmation enough.
Damn.
But that meant—no, that was impossible. “Star, that can't be true,” I said. “
Bad Bob
gave this to me—you know he was one of the most powerful Wardens in the world. I can't be . . .”

If Estrella was surprised by that, she gave no sign of it. She just nodded. “Well,
chica,
I guess you know something about yourself you didn't know before, then.”

“Bullshit!” I was, at best, a mediocre Warden. I wasn't—couldn't be—

“Straight up word of honor, JoJo. A Demon Mark can't go from stronger to weaker, only from weaker to stronger. It's a known fact. So if Bad Bob's Demon Mark traded up to you . . .” Her eyebrows rose. “Welcome to the top of the food chain. Damn, girl, I knew you were strong. I guess I never knew how strong.”