Undone (24 page)

“Why?”

“Why?” he echoed, and his eyebrows quirked up. “Yeah, I see your point; we weren't exactly close. I was the boss, and I was too human for your taste. We call that irony, by the way, down here in the dirt.” He let that sink in for a moment, then smiled. “You realized what you've been given yet?”

“Given,” I repeated, and I heard flat anger in my voice. “What have I been
given
?” Everything I had once possessed had been ripped away from me. I'd been
given
nothing.

From his thin-edged smile, he knew what I was thinking. “You've been given a chance.”

“Chance. What
chance
? I have been cast out, crippled, forced into human skin. I'm hunted and despised. What
chance
is this?”

“Something most Djinn never get,” said Jonathan, who had been born in mortal flesh only a few thousand years ago, and yet seemed far older than I. “A chance to learn something completely new. A chance to shed your old life and form yourself in a different body, a different shape, a different direction. You're a blank slate, Cassiel, that's your
chance.
” He didn't blink, and I saw the flicker of stars in his eyes, endless galaxies of them, an eternity of possibilities. “Or just a chance to screw it all up, all over again. Anyway. You're here for a reason.”

“I'm here because Ashan cast me out.”

He shook his head. “Something bigger than Ashan is in play, Peaches. You'll figure it out. You always did have logic on your side, even if you were as cold as space. You have a battle ahead of you. Just thought I'd shake your hand while I could, and tell you good luck.”

Something rippled in the sky above us, like heat above a road, and Jonathan looked up sharply. His human body flared into light, pure white light, and I sensed the flash of steel-sharp wings as I covered my eyes.

I could see him even through closed lids and concealing fingers—a man-shaped bonfire, coursing with energies I couldn't touch, couldn't even identify.

Jonathan had gone far beyond the Djinn, into something that was legend even to us.

“Got battles of my own to fight,” his voice said, in a whisper that came shockingly close to my ear. “Think about what I said, Cassiel. Think about your chance. Remember how it feels to
feel
. It's important.”

The light intensified into a burning pressure on my skin, and I turned my back, crying out, as those mighty wings carried the being who had once been the greatest of the Djinn up, out, away.

“Cassiel?”

Luis's voice. I whirled, shaking, and saw him standing in the doorway, watching me with unmistakable concern. There were marks of tears on his face, but he seemed . . . peaceful.

“Something wrong?” he asked. He hadn't seen.

Jonathan wasn't visible, not to him.

I couldn't begin to explain. I shook my head and wrapped my arms around myself, trying to control the chill I felt. I had been in the presence of something so great that I'd felt so small beside it, and it made me wonder—it forced the question of what else the Djinn didn't know, couldn't imagine.

Of what I had once been, and might still become.
A chance
, he'd said. But a chance to be what? Do what?

“It's okay,” Luis said, and put his hand on my shoulder. “It's good that you cared about them.”

Manny. Angela. He thought my tears were for them—and, in a way, they were, for all the chances wasted, for all that was unknown.

I took in a deep breath and nodded. “I did,” I said, and heard the surprise in my voice. “I did care.”

Luis put his arm around my shoulders and steered me back into the funeral home, and with his hand in mine, I went to look for the last time on the first two human friends I had known.

I went to say good-bye.

 

I was surprised by how many people came to the viewing. Greta, the Fire Warden with the scarred face, came to pay her respects and talk quietly with Luis for a moment. She glanced toward where I sat at the back of the room, and for an instant I thought she would speak to me, but she changed course and shook hands instead with Sylvia, who sat remote and quiet near her daughter's coffin.

Some came with flowers. Some cried. All felt uncomfortable here, in the presence of such massive change.

No one spoke to me.

At eight o'clock, the funeral director with the sad face came to me to whisper that it was time to close the viewing.

Luis was shaking hands with the last few visitors when the doors at the back opened again, and five young men walked in—Hispanic, dressed in casual, sloppy clothing. Glaring colors, baggy blue jeans topped by oversized sports team jackets, all for either UNLV or the San Francisco 49ers.

Four of them were nothing: followers. Killers, most assuredly, with jet-black eyes and no hint of conscience behind them.

But it was the one in front I watched.

He was the shortest of the five, slight of build, with a smooth, empty face and the coldest eyes I had seen in a human. Like the others, he had tattoos covering his neck and arms. He was ten years younger than Luis, perhaps more, but there was something unmistakably dangerous about him.

Luis had frozen into stillness at the first sight of the intruders, and now he moved only to keep facing them as they strolled past Sylvia, the funeral director, and the two or three remaining mourners. Luis flicked his gaze quickly to me, and in that look I read a very definite command. I rose from my seat and glided to the others in the room, and gently but without hesitation hurried them toward the doors. Sylvia frowned thunderously at me, but she also understood that something was very wrong.

I closed the doors and locked them from the inside, turned, and crossed my arms over my chest. Three of the newcomers were watching me, assessing what risk I posed; two of them immediately dismissed me. The last of them—smarter than the rest, I thought—continued to keep part of his attention on me.

“Hola,”
the young leader said to Luis, and bent over Manny's casket to stare. “Holy shit, this your brother? Doesn't look much like you. Then again, the makeup probably don't help. Makes him look like a
puto
. A dead one.
Pinche cabron.
”

Luis didn't move, didn't betray even by a flicker the anger I knew he felt. I could feel it coming off him like heat from a furnace.

“Show some respect,” he said. “Leave.”

“Respect?” The boy turned slowly in Luis's direction, and his thin smile grew even tighter. “You want to talk to me about respect,
Ene
? You screwed my brother. You ratted him out. You got nothing to say about
respect
.”

“Whatever I did to your brother, you killed mine,” Luis said. “It's enough. Get out and let us bury them in peace.”

The boy sprawled himself over two chairs, completely at ease, and put his feet up on the coffin. “Fuck you and your brother,” he said. “We were aiming for you.”

Two of the men slipped guns free of their waistbands and held them at their sides. Luis locked eyes with me, and I pushed away from the door.

“My friend asked you to leave,” I said. “Please comply.”

“Please what? Who is this pasty-faced
gringa
bitch?” The boy didn't wait to hear Luis's response. “Never mind. Just kill her.”

The men were turning toward me when I weakened the metal chairs the boy-leader was sitting on. He toppled to the carpet, cursing, and Luis moved forward, grabbed another chair, and hit the first man to point the gun toward me in the back of the head, with stunning force.

I took a running leap and slammed my body into the midsection of the next man, ripped the gun from his hand, and threw it toward Luis. It didn't require much power to disrupt the electrical impulses within the brain of the third man, an interruption just long enough to make him stagger and fall. Luis jumped him and recovered that gun, as well, while I moved to take down the last.

In seconds, it was done. Most of the men were on the floor, their guns in Luis's hands or pockets, and the boy was just struggling up to his knees to find one of the guns aimed directly at him, along with Luis's deadly stare.

He froze.

Luis thumbed back the hammer on the revolver he held. “You need to get your ass out of here before I forget my manners,” he said. “Your brother got what he deserved. Mine didn't. You want to keep on going to war, I'll bring it, and you'll be the first one down. Good thing you're already in a funeral home. Saves time.”

“Shoot me,” the boy growled. “You better shoot me, 'cause if you don't, you got no idea what we're going to do to you. No place you can go, no place you can hide. You
or
your piece of shit family. Next time we get the kid, too.”

Heat flared inside me, sticky and tornado strong, and it was all I could do not to take hold of the boy and take him apart, one bloody scream at a time.

Luis sent me a warning look, one full of unmistakable command to stay still. “Watch them,” he ordered, and jerked his chin toward the other men. He tossed me one of the guns. I plucked it from the air and aimed it at the group of angry, hurting men in front of us. The urge to pull the trigger was very, very strong, and they must have sensed their death in the air, because none of them moved.

Luis put the gun he held away in the waistband of his pants. “You got them, Cassiel?”

“Yes,” I said softly. “What are you doing?”

“Breaking the law.”

I felt the storm of power, even though I was on the edges of it; the gravitational pull of it focused on the boy. Luis seemed to hover, almost floating in the strong currents of it, and then he
lunged.

He put his hands on the boy's slicked-back hair and his thumbs on the high forehead. The boy opened his mouth, but no scream emerged.

When his knees gave way, Luis followed him down to the floor, still holding the boy's head. Luis's eyes were almost black with power and rage. I kept my focus on the other men. As they realized something was happening to their leader, they decided to rush me. I sank their feet into the concrete floor, and laughed softly as I watched them flail and curse.

Whatever Luis was doing spilled over, out, traveling in a wave over the men and sending them slumped to the floor. When that wave finally lapped against me, I felt my senses slide toward darkness. I took a step back and braced myself against the door.

It receded. I blinked away the sparkling afterimages.

All the men were down. As I watched, Luis let go of the boy and went to each of the others, one by one, to clamp his fingers down on their skulls and do—
something
.

It took long, long minutes, and I felt his power failing on the last of them. He finished and climbed slowly, painfully to his feet, then collapsed into one of the folding chairs.

I edged around the fallen men—still not moving—and crouched down next to him. The metal of the gun felt heavy and cold in my hand.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Changed their minds,” he said. “Literally. Wardens can put me away for pulling that kind of shit, but if I didn't do something, they'd keep coming. They'd come for Isabel, and I couldn't let that happen. It was that or kill them, and keep on killing the next bunch, and the next. Anyway, like I said, the Wardens got more to worry about than chasing down rule breakers.”

He sounded exhausted. I placed a hand gently on his shoulder, careful not to draw any more of his strength away.

“They're not dead?” I asked. They weren't moving.

“Asleep. They'll wake up in the next few minutes. When they do, they won't remember much. Lolly—that's the punk-ass son of a bitch in charge of the Norteños around here—will only remember that we're even now. Life for a life.” Luis wiped sweat from his forehead with a trembling hand. “And he'll feel guilty. About Manny and Angela.”

“You can do that?”

“Not officially, I can't.” He gestured, and I helped him lever himself upright. “Let's get out of here.”

I glanced back as I shut the door to the room. The young leader, Lolly, had gotten to his hands and knees. I was afraid for a moment that he would turn and see me and remember, but he seemed transfixed by the coffins that stood just a few feet away.

He stood and walked to Angela, and I saw his hands grip the wooden side. His shoulders began to shake. I couldn't imagine that he had shed tears for the dead in a very long time.

It must have hurt.

I was glad.

Chapter 11

WHAT LUIS HAD
just done was a grave breach of the rules of the Wardens, and I understood why; Earth Wardens—the truly powerful ones—could manipulate memory. If it was done subtly enough, the victim might never suspect anything had happened at all.

It was a power that was fearfully easy to abuse, and difficult to detect. Under normal circumstances, I thought that Luis would never have done such a thing, but now, with the Wardens either withdrawn to their own affairs or potential threats . . . he couldn't afford to rely on them for help.

Or me.

“Why didn't you kill them?” I asked Luis. We were out of earshot of Sylvia and the funeral director, who were near the door. Luis shook his head. He was moving slowly, concentrating on the steady motion of his feet, as if it was the most difficult thing in the world at the moment.

“It's a pride thing. You kill a Norteño, you get killed, or everybody near you does. There's no end once you start that. It can roll on for years. Wipe out whole families.”

Blood feuds. One of the common threads of human culture, this inability to forget or forgive. It was something they had in common with the Djinn. When I had heard the boy speak of hurting Isabel, I had almost killed him. I wouldn't have hesitated if Luis hadn't been there. I'd have simply ended the threat, with no regard for the consequences. I would have walked away from the resulting war with no thought of guilt.