Undone (28 page)

I skidded the motorcycle to a stop and clawed at my helmet. The buckles seemed frozen in place, but it finally popped free, and as I removed it, the faceplate fell off in two pieces. The plastic was as gray and foggy as the eyes of a corpse.

My helmet, on the front side, had been stripped of paint, reduced to dull gray. A fountain of dirt cascaded out as I dropped it to the road. More dust spilled as I bent my head. I coughed uncontrollably, spitting up dirty mouthfuls, and I finally felt Luis's hands let go of me. I'd have bruises where he'd gripped, I thought, with every finger clearly imprinted.

Luis got off the motorcycle and staggered a few steps as he tried to wrestle off his own helmet. He'd been protected by my body, but even so, when he turned, his face was a muddy mask of sweat and dirt. He coughed and spat, bracing himself with both hands on his knees, and shook his head.

“Can't believe we made it,” he croaked. I couldn't speak at all, I discovered. My throat wouldn't cooperate. “You okay?”

I gave him a thumbs-up gesture. Running through my abused body was a rush of warmth, of ecstatic satisfaction.

I had survived. I had forced myself through, and I had
survived
.

As a Djinn, I had never understood how it felt to win against such odds.
It's only adrenaline,
that old part of me scoffed.
Illusion and hormones.

Behind us, the sandstorm rolled on, howling, black as night. There was nothing we could do to stop its progress, nor was I inclined to try.

I set my face forward, toward Colorado, where Isabel's track still led.

 

Neither of us could go on for long without some kind of relief. It appeared in the form of a dilapidated, barely operating roadside motel just shy of the state line. If it had a name, I didn't see it, only the rusting, flapping sign that said MOTEL, and below that COLOR TV AND AIR-CONDITIONING.

The Victory was coughing as much as I was, and I hoped that it had not been badly damaged by the sandstorm. It had blasted edges, pitted and smoothed, but seemed to have come through relatively unscathed. The same could not be said for me.

I rented a room using gestures and the Warden credit card that bore the name of Leslie Raine. The attendant behind the ancient, cracked counter looked young and far too excited to see a customer. “Y'all were in that sandstorm?” he asked as he hand-cranked a machine to get an imprint of the card. I nodded. “Y'all are lucky to be alive,” he said. “Here ya go. Sign here.”

I signed where he told me, using the name on the card. The boy was fascinated with my pink hair—still visible, though coated with dirt. “Not from around here,” he decided. “Dallas? LA? Las Vegas?”

“Albuquerque,” Luis said, and coughed. “Water?”

“Machine out front,” the boy said. “Cost you a dollar and a quarter, though. Water fountain right there for free. Well water; no city water.” He said it proudly. I raised an eyebrow at Luis, who gave me a mud-caked thin smile in return. As Wardens, we both understood well that
natural
did not equal
safe.
I mutely handed Luis several dollars, and he left to patronize the less risky choice.

The boy looked disappointed in our lack of moral courage. “Okay, then,” he said, and handed me a grimy key on an even grimier orange plastic dangle, which was marked with the number 2. “Here you go. A/C's working, clean sheets, adult channel no charge.”

I gave him a long stare for that last, and walked out into the brilliant sunlight. Luis was retrieving the last of four cold bottles of water from a sun-faded vending machine. I walked past him to the door that matched the key, opened it, and surveyed our temporary refuge. It wasn't even as much as the motel in which I'd stayed in Albuquerque, but the desk clerk had not lied—there was a bed, neatly made, and once I'd switched the air conditioner on, the blasting breeze was cool. I dropped the key on a table and started shedding layers of clothing on my way to the bathroom, sending cascades of gritty sand down to the carpet. Beneath the layers my skin was filthy and abraded, in places down to the muscle.

I stood under the water for a long time, until what swirled down the drain was clear instead of sandy, and as soon as I stepped out Luis was moving past me, naked, heading in. We said nothing to each other. He averted his eyes from me, and after my first glance, I did him the same. I shook out my clothing and cleaned it with a small burst of power, then did the same for his as the shower continued to run in the bathroom. Fully dressed again, I drank two bottles of water and stared out the motel room's window at the sandstorm, which was proceeding toward the horizon.

I heard the shower shut off, and in a few minutes the rustle of cloth behind me as Luis began to dress. We had said nothing, but there seemed to be communication between us nevertheless. I was acutely aware of him, every movement, and I wondered if he had the same sensation of me.

I handed him a bottle of water, which he thirstily guzzled, and then the second. It was only as he neared the end of that one that Luis said, “You still have the trace?”

I nodded and sipped.

“I've been thinking,” he said. “Maybe this isn't about us at all. Maybe it's about Isabel.”

That surprised me, and I turned toward him. “How can it be? She's a
child
.” My voice had returned, but it was thin and scratchy. I cleared my throat and drank more water.

“Yeah, I know, but hear me out. It seems like they're not in the kidnap-for-ransom business—they haven't called in any kind of demand, not even to get us to back off. They had to have been watching the house to find an opportunity to grab her. So what if all of this has been to grab Ibby, not to kill Manny or Angela or me or you? We're just—”

“Obstacles,” I finished softly. “But what value can a five-year-old child hold? Is she even displaying any talents as a Warden?”

“Not yet. Most kids don't until they hit puberty. But it does run in our family.” He shrugged. “I started using mine pretty early. Around nine, I think.”

I thought back and wondered. It seemed impossible that the attacks would have been designed solely to eliminate potential guardians for the child, but he was right: Taking Isabel seemed to be a primary goal, not a secondary one.

“Then they won't let her go easily,” I said. “If they did all this to ensure they could get her.”

Luis was watching me, and his expression was tense and grave. “You think they'll kill her?”

“I don't know,” I said softly. “I don't know what they want from her.”

I turned in the key to the desk clerk ten minutes later, which led to his anxious worry that we had found something wrong with the accommodations, and Luis and I mounted the Victory and resumed the journey.

The trace, on the aetheric, was still there, and still definite. Isabel was ahead of us, but only by an hour. Whatever method of travel they were using to transport her, it was slower than our motorcycle, even double loaded. I opened the throttle, and we began to close the distance.

We rode for almost an hour, and my hunting instincts—inherited from the Djinn I had been as well as the flesh I wore—bayed for blood. We were maddeningly close, so close that a single fold of the horizon hid her from us.

Careful,
the cautious part of me warned.
They'll fight to keep her.

“Colorado!” Luis shouted as we flashed past a large sign. I didn't care about the boundaries. Isabel's track was only a few miles ahead of us, and I intended to catch them. “Dammit! Cassiel, slow down—cops!”

I saw the cruiser as we flew past it, sitting nose out in a dirt road at the side of the highway. I glanced in my rearview mirror to see if he'd take up the pursuit.

He did.

“Pull over!” Luis was shouting to me now. “You can't outrun them on a straight road; just pull over!”

I slowed. It was hard. My instincts howled to keep on chasing, and although I knew he was right, it seemed wrong to give up so easily.

The cruiser pulled up behind us, and two men got out. One approached us while the other hung back.

“Off the bike, please,” the policeman said. He was a large man, solid, with an expression that seemed blankly polite. His eyes were covered by dark sunglasses and shaded by a brimmed hat. My impression of him was one of starch and angles.

I swung my leg over the seat, as did Luis, and once we were off the motorcycle, the policeman drew his weapon and shoved it hard against my chest, right over my fragile human heart.

“Don't move,” he said. Luis had frozen, not daring to protest, and that cost us, as well; the other policeman came around the car, grabbed Luis by the collar, and threw him facedown on the hot metal hood of the car.

He put the muzzle of his gun on the back of Luis's neck.

“On the ground,” the man who had me said. “Face-down. Do it!”

The asphalt was hot and sticky, but I had little choice. I could resist, but I doubted I could save Luis as well as myself. Too many variables, and I didn't understand this reaction. It seemed out of proportion for a speeding violation.

“Hands!” he demanded. I felt a hard knee in the center of my back, and moved my arms within his reach behind me. He snapped cold metal over my wrists and jerked me up to my knees with a hard pull on the restraints. Pain lanced up my strained shoulders, and I bit down on a wince. “All right, bitch, you've got about one minute to tell me what I want to know. Understand?” He jammed the gun hard at the back of my head. “Understand?”

“Yes,” I said. A Fire Warden might have been able to disable the guns. Perhaps it might be possible for an Earth Warden, as well, to warp the metal, but undoing the chemical reaction that fired the bullet was a skill that Luis did not have, and remained elusive to me.

I don't know what question I expected the policeman to ask, but it surprised me when he said, with cold intensity, “Tell me what happened to my son.”

 

I had no idea what he was talking about, and my gaze touched Luis's, where he'd been thrown facedown against the car. His dark hair was damp and clinging to his face. He looked desperate and angry.

Dangerously so.

“What are you talking about?” Luis snapped. “Let her go, man!”

The policeman holding him down pushed harder. “Shut up.”

“Yeah, I don't think so! Colorado State Police have cameras in the cars, right? Smile, you jackass, you're busted for brutality!”

“Luis! Enough!” I said, and twisted enough that I could see the edge of the policeman's face, the one holding the gun to my head. “I don't know what you are talking about. Who is your son?”

It was a very dangerous question. I sensed the sick fury building in him, and he was mere seconds from pulling the trigger that would kill me.

“Who's my son?” he repeated. He grabbed a fistful of my pink hair and yanked my head painfully back. “
Who's my son?
You've got to be kidding me.”

“Randy,” the other cop said. “This guy's got a point. We're exposed out here. You want to get straight answers, we can't do it right here on the side of the road, man.”

“Cameras can be smashed,” Randy said.

“Maybe so, but passing cars can't.”

Randy hesitated, then grabbed the handcuffs and hauled me up to my feet. He shoved me in the direction of the police car as his partner opened the back door and put Luis inside. Luis didn't fight, but as we approached the vehicle the stench of it rolled over me—hot metal, vomit, despair, sweat, blood, stale air, and the reek of plastic—and it was hard not to dig in my feet and resist.

No.
I had to learn to deal with this strange problem of mine sometime, and now, with a gun aimed at my head, it seemed a good time to begin.

I told myself it wasn't as bad as I'd thought, once I was inside the police car, but that was a fragile sort of lie that crumbled as soon as the door slammed shut beside me. The air was stifling, and it reeked. I coughed, barely controlling an urge to void my stomach, and tried not to struggle like an animal in a trap.

No. It was confinement. And confinement was something the Djinn hated.

Officer Randy and his partner got in the vehicle, which rocked to accommodate their weight, and we pulled out onto the road.

“You okay?” Luis asked me in a low voice. I nodded, throat working, unable to speak. I had never liked enclosed vehicles, but this one seemed ever more sinister and confining. “Don't do anything crazy.”

“Yeah, listen to your friend,” Randy said. We had gone about five miles from where we'd left the Victory, and now he slowed the cruiser and made a right turn on to a barely visible dirt road. The car bounced and rocked along the trail, throwing up showers of dust and rocks.

When we could no longer see the road behind us, he brought the car to a stop and turned off the engine. The
tick-tick-tick
of cooling metal and the constant low chatter from the radio speakers were the only sounds.

“Out,” Randy said. His partner gave him a worried look, but complied. He and Randy opened our doors and removed us from the backseat, out into open air again. The hot air fanned the sweat that had trickled down my back, and I shivered.

Randy drew his gun again, staring at me with cool, dust brown eyes. He was a hard man, but I didn't sense real cruelty in him. Desperation, perhaps.

“Now,” he said. “Let's start the movie over. Where's my son?”

Luis shook his head. “We don't know what you're talking about, Officer. We really don't.”