Total Eclipse

Chapter Eight

Weirdly enough, nothing else was happening in Missouri, or in Oklahoma as we dropped down toward our Arizona destination. Open roads, lots of traffic. Some towns still had power and some sense of normalcy, including—improbably—Oklahoma City.

People were actually going to work.

I supposed that was a good sign; life had to go on, until it became impossible. It was just . . . strange.

I rose up into the aetheric and found a powerful bunch of Wardens at work—Earth, Fire, and Weather all locked in a tight- knit unit, constantly repelling attacks on any number of levels. They were stretched thin, but coping. I soared up higher into the spirit world, looking at the patterns of lights and color, shadows and twisted representations of the physical world.

Lewis had figured it out. He’d teamed up his people in those triangular bases of power, positioning them at strategic locations. I looked back toward the east, where the chaos had been the worst, and it was dying down. For now, the Wardens were handling it, even against all the odds.

It wasn’t a battle we could win, but we could fight to a standstill—for a while.

I spotted Lewis on the aetheric. I’d expected him to be in Seattle, but he was a brilliant, incandescent blaze of power located in Nevada right now. I couldn’t imagine what had drawn him there, but it was unmistakably him. And he was still moving, though not as quickly as I was, given the jet-powered chariot skills of the Mustang.

He was going wherever the battle was the fiercest, I thought. As he should.

I cut my grip on the aetheric and dropped back into my body with that familiar, faintly disorienting jolt, then pulled out my cell phone and checked it. The grid was back up, and I speed-dialed Lewis.

No answer. I wanted to tell him about Kevin, but this wasn’t something that would be good for voice mail. I’d wait until I could tell him on the phone, or face to face. The news wasn’t going to get worse, or better, with time.

I was just hanging up when the phone rang, startling me into a frantic juggling act. When I’d renewed my grip on it, I accepted the call and held the phone to my ear.

Piercing shrieks of static. I yanked the phone away again, no doubt making one of those pained faces, and then carefully eased it back as the feedback diminished into a thick net of noise. The screen said PRIVATE CALLER. I had no idea who it was.

And then I did.

It was me. My voice. And it said, “You need to stop. Stop now.”

I took the phone away and looked at it again. Yep, there was a call. Private Caller. And it was my voice.

Saying, again, “Are you listening to me? Don’t come here!”

“Excuse me, who am I talking to?” I asked, which was a pretty reasonable question at the moment, if a bit existential. This took talking to myself to a whole new level of weird. Then, belatedly, I got it. “Imara?” My Djinn daughter had been a virtual clone, down to the voice, although she’d always somehow sounded more sassy to me. Maybe because I wasn’t used to being on the receiving end of the sass. “Imara, is that you?”

The answer drowned in static, and then my—her?—voice came back strong, again. “—have to stay away, Mom, do you understand?”

There was a particularly violent shriek of feedback, and the connection cut off. I was surprised there wasn’t smoke curling up out of the receiver, as loud as that had been. I waited, but the phone didn’t ring again.

The Djinn behind the wheel—still driving top speed on very treacherous roads—was staring straight at me, not at the road. “Jo?” David’s voice, out of the radio. “Jo, was it Imara?”

“Yes. Can you reach her? Is she okay?”

“I can’t see her. Like the Fire Oracle, I think she’s hidden herself. I’ll try to get through.”

“Hurry,” I said, and chewed my lip nervously. “I think she could be in trouble.”

“We’re all in trouble,” David said, which wasn’t the most inspirational speech he’d ever delivered. The radio shut down. The Djinn turned back toward the road.

I turned around to look in the backseat. Cherise was asleep, cuddled up with Tommy in a camouflage-patterned sleeping bag. We’d stopped in at a sports outfitter in Oklahoma City—Muzak still playing over the speakers, although shoppers were noticeably rattled and tense, and buying survival gear instead of lawn games—and stocked up on things like insulating blankets, sturdy boots and clothes, portable shelters, water and survival foods. Next best thing to Army surplus. And a lot more expensive, since it catered to the weekend wannabe warrior market.

It had felt deeply surreal to be signing a credit card slip while the world was in the throes of chaos, but I supposed one way or another, I’d be paying off my debts.

Cherise looked tired and pale, and from the way she was whimpering in her sleep, she had bad dreams. I reached back and smoothed her hair until the whimpering went away. Baby Tommy seemed to have adapted much more easily; he’d taken to Cherise quickly, and he was a happy kid, smiling and burbling most of the time. From the way he filled his diapers, he was healthy enough. I would have felt better having him checked out by an honest-to-goodness Earth Warden or, at the very least, a pediatrician, but for now, we were all doing okay. Cherise was out of the braces. Her legs had healed straight, and although she continued to be weak and tired, she was recovering remarkably well from having just about died. The jury was still out on how she was going to deal with Kevin’s death, long term.

If we had any long term, of course.

Up ahead, traffic was snarled, again. As we got into more civilized areas, it was perversely harder to get around these days, what with people frantically trying to get to their survivalist mountain hideouts, or to their relatives, or just to the store to stock up on emergency batteries. We were coming into Amarillo—not exactly a major metropolitan area, but busier than the deserted Texas Panhandle highway had been. The air was dry and stable overhead, and the landscape was mostly flat and scrubby, with tough vegetation. Very different from the trees where we’d left Kevin.

I hoped I wouldn’t end up dying somewhere without trees. I liked trees.

Even the Djinn’s prodigious driving skills couldn’t cope with the jam of traffic, and pretty soon we were cooling our engine at an idle, watching brake lights. Funny; this type of backup on the East Coast would have been a howling chorus of impatient horns sounding. Not here in the Southwest. People just . . . waited, listening to their music or talk radio, poking at their hair, arguing with whoever was in the car along with them. Or with themselves, apparently. I didn’t hear a single angry honk.

“This is restful,” I said, to nobody in particular. The Djinn wasn’t exactly chatty company. Cherise was asleep. The radio stayed quiet, not falling for my opening gambit. “David? Do you think we should stop?”

“You all need rest,” he said. “I’ll find you a place to stay for a few hours, and someplace to eat.”

That sounded heavenly. Not that I couldn’t sleep in the car and eat bagged food, but stretching out on real sheets was better than sex right now. The mere thought of fresh food made me salivate.

“We should probably push on,” I said, being the brave little toaster. “It’s only about another ten hours to Sedona, and that’s not counting the bat out of hell multiplier.”

“You’d get there exhausted,” he said. “It’s been hard, and it’s going to get worse, I think. You need to rest while you can.” He spoke with authority, and I remembered that in his brief human life he’d been a soldier. He’d been used to exhaustion, to snatching what little rest and relief he could in between fighting for his life.

I gave in. Truthfully, it had been a token protest anyway, and Imara’s inexplicable warning had made me worried. My daughter, like David, had a much wider view of things than I ever could. What if we were making things worse instead of better? What if we were actually forcing the battle instead of preventing it?

I couldn’t think straight anymore. I’d been holding back emotions for a while now, but there’s one thing about emotions: they never really go away if they’re strong. You can bury them, but like a vampire they keep lurching back up. I knew that I was still numb about the loss of Kevin, but it was going to come out, and probably soon. I’d rather suffer through that in private, lying in a bed and hugging a pillow. It wouldn’t help Cherise to see me lose it.

I’d put him in the ground myself. I’d felt the unmistakable absence in him, the void where his life had been.

No, I didn’t want to remember how it had felt to hold his empty shell, or how he’d looked so pale, bound up in that cheap motel sheet—but the image wouldn’t go away.

With a shocking intensity, that mental picture suddenly shifted, and it was Lewis’s face pale and still, it was Lewis lying in my arms as I abandoned him to the dirt—alone, cold, unmarked. I almost gasped out loud with the emotion that brought rolling through me, and rested my burning forehead against the glass as I squeezed my eyes shut. No. No, that’s not going to happen.

David and I had our powers back. Cherise had survived. We’d saved some lives along the way. We were winning, dammit. I couldn’t get spooked now. I couldn’t lose focus. That was another good reason to recharge. When I was in the throes of exhaustion, it was far too easy to let things overwhelm me, even the unlikely threats. I lost all ability to filter.

While I was thinking, David had been acting, and I felt the Mustang suddenly leap forward. I looked up and saw we were hurtling straight for the back of a stopped eighteen-wheel truck . . . and then the car lurched sideways with a scream of tires, jumped over a curb, and bumped down on the other side, onto an off ramp. Free of the traffic block, we rocketed down the access road toward a nice, neat- looking, moderately priced hotel/ motel.

We passed it. I looked back as it receded into the distance and said, “Uh, that one would have been okay—”

“No, it wouldn’t have been, sugar.” Whitney’s accent never failed to make me want to roll my eyes. She could not have been more annoying about how thick she laid it on. “You’re going to have company coming soon. Won’t do to put you up someplace that’s going to just come down on you. Again.” She sounded utterly certain of herself, and casual about the threat, too. Lovely.

“What kind of company?”

“The kind you don’t want to stand up to, not that you could. You remember little Venna.”

Ouch. Venna was the very last Djinn I’d want to have on my tail right now—even worse than Rahel. Venna was impossibly strong, and she was clever, too. Great friend, awesomely bad enemy. I thought about that little girl, the image of innocence, with those ghostly white eyes like I’d seen in Rahel.

I shuddered. “Where can we go?”

“I’m working on that,” Whitney said. “I’m taking over the car now.”

We blurred past a lot of inviting-looking roadside inns, took some turns, and ended up on the northeast side of town, as best I could tell. Businesses of any kind thinned out and stopped.

Wherever she was taking us, it wasn’t going to be the Hilton.

The car slowed and stopped in the middle of nowhere. I could see a faint smudge on the horizon off the black-top to the right, but I couldn’t tell what it was.

“Uh, Whitney? Hello?”

Nothing. No answer from her, or from David. I tried poking the Djinn, but it just sat there, inert and hot to the touch. It was like poking a bag of especially firm rubber.

Cherise yawned and sat up, rubbing her eyes. Tommy woke up with a grouchy grumble, turned his face toward her neck as she lifted him up, and promptly fell asleep again draped all over her. She patted his back, smiled a little, and then looked at me. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, obviously nothing, because we’re just sitting here. Why are we just sitting here?”

“Because David and Whitney are arguing about it,” I said. I just knew that was the case, and I knew that it indicated a potentially major problem. “Whitney says Venna is headed this way. Maybe it’s a coincidence, but maybe she’s on our trail, too. Either way, it’s not good news.”

Cherise shuddered. “Ouch. Okay, got it—crisis imminent. Again—we’re sitting. Why are we sitting?”

“Because running off without a plan is an even worse idea,” David’s voice said, coming from the radio.

Whitney’s voice, at the same time, came from the Djinn. “You’re not thinking straight about this, boss man. You try to run them, she’ll catch up. You try to hide them in the middle of all those people, she’ll just mow down everybody in her way. This is your only real shot at keeping them alive, and you know it.”

“This is the opposite of keeping them alive!” David snapped back.

“I hate it when Mommy and Daddy fight,” Cher said, with just enough sarcasm to cut through. “We’re not just pieces getting pushed around on a board, you know. Tell us what’s going on.”

David got there first. “She wants to take you to a nuclear weapons assembly plant.”

I think Cherise and I both said it at the same time. “What?” I think we were both pretty restrained about it, really.

“That’s it up ahead,” David said. “It’s not a good idea. It’s so easy for Venna to destroy not just that place but everybody in this part of the state, given all that raw material to work with.”

“I know that,” Whitney snapped. “But it’s also one of the only places we can lock off against her, not just with wards and shields, but with lead-lined concrete and bunkers designed to withstand nuclear attacks. Best possible place to hide them, especially if we can erase their traces on the aetheric.”

Wow, Whit must have been upset, because she’d lost most of her Gone with the Wind accent. And she used bigger words.

“It’s too dangerous,” David said flatly. “No. We go on. I’m sorry, Jo, but if we keep moving we can stay ahead of Venna.”

“Venna can materialize any place she wants, and you know it,” I said. “How exactly do we stay ahead of her?”

“We’re shielding you. She can’t know exactly where you are.”

“But she can narrow the area. And like Whitney said, anybody standing around us is collateral damage.”

He fell silent, which indicated that my logic was, sadly, unassailable. I deeply wanted that little oasis of a working roadside inn, a meal with cooked food and actual silverware, but I understood the risks, and they were far too high—not for the three of us, but for everybody who had nothing to do with it.

“Is she really looking for us?”

“We think so,” Whitney said. David said nothing, which I took for unwilling assent. “She’s not the only one. There are at least four Djinn quartering the country. She just happens to be the one in this area. They’re looking for signs, and ignoring the other Wardens.”

Mother Earth must have really been pissed about me kicking Rahel’s ass. Not good news.

“How about the other Wardens?” I asked. “Anybody close?”

“The three teamed up to cover this area are together in Albuquerque. Not close, but we could try making for their location. Strength in numbers.”

“Not against Venna,” Whitney said, which was probably true. “Not unless you’re throwing an oiled-up Lewis into this cluster.”

“Oiled-up . . .” David sounded utterly mystified, which was probably a good thing, because the image that flashed through my brain was exactly what Whitney intended. Thanks, Whit, you button-pushing bitch. David elected to go with a more literal interpretation. “He’s still in Nevada. Too far.”

“So it sounds like we don’t have a lot of options,” Cherise said. “Is this nuclear place safe for kids?”

“No,” I said, “and it isn’t safe for us, either. But I think Whitney may be right. There isn’t any safe place just now. Maybe it’s the closest we can get. David—can you get us in?”

“Security’s tight, but I think so. The plant’s closed now and under lockdown. Once you’re inside the security perimeter you won’t be seen.”

“Surveillance,” I reminded him. “Heat sensors. Motion detectors. Doesn’t have to be an actual person to bust us for breaking and entering.”

“Nothing electronic is going to pick you up,” Whitney said. “I guarantee that.”

Well, that was about the best I could ask for, in terms of reassurances. Go back, or go into the bunker?

Cherise, oddly enough, asked the logical question I hadn’t bothered to think about. “How long are we staying there?”

“Until we can get Warden tactical support,” I said. “Until we know whether we should go on to Sedona. If Imara really doesn’t want us there, then we’re making a mistake. We need to understand where we’re needed, at this point.” My whole goal, I realized, had been retrieving David’s powers, and my own. Mission accomplished. Now what? We still had a major, and very difficult, war going on that we were unlikely to win. Restoring David had saved his life but placed him squarely on the sidelines, trapped except for what he could channel through our strange Djinn chauffeur.

Restoring me shifted the balance a little, but only a little. I had to choose where, and how, to apply the strength I could bring. Instinct cried out for me to keep running to Sedona, to see my daughter, to defend her with every breath I had and every power at my command. But Imara wasn’t a helpless child; she was an Oracle, more powerful than her father and me combined, most likely. Instinct could be leading me the wrong way.

I needed to think. And I needed a safe place to do that.

“The plant is our best bet,” I said finally. “If we have to make a stand, it’s got our best chance of survival.”

“I’m not dying in some nuclear warehouse,” Cher said. “Look, enough already. I love you, Jo, but I can’t take little Tommy in there. It’s wrong. It’s full of radiation and crap.”

She was right; it wasn’t any place to take a small boy. No matter how carefully this place conducted its business, it was an inherently dangerous environment for adults, never mind kids.

And I realized that at this moment, our roads were taking different turns. That made me sad, but it also relieved me, just a little. Cherise was warm, and funny, and a true and constant friend, and I loved her.

I didn’t want to leave her in a cold, unmarked grave somewhere, like Kevin. I couldn’t.

“You’re right,” I said softly, and reached over the seat to take her hand. “Cher, it’s not safe for you or for him. I know you feel responsible for him. I can’t ask you to just drop him off somewhere, and I can’t let you, or him, come in there with me. I can control any radiation exposure I get. You’re too vulnerable, and I can’t—I can’t let you get hurt. Not again. Not for me.”

She looked confused for a second, then sad and a little angry—not at me, at herself, because I was sure what she was feeling inside was more relief than frustration. “So that’s it? You’re just going to turf me, after all we’ve been through?”

“No,” I said. “I’m going to give you a mission to keep yourself and Tommy safe, and to get a message through to Lewis letting him know where I am, and that I’m back up to full power. Can you do that?”

“Don’t bullshit me, Jo. It’s not a mission; it’s called shuffling the stupid bikini girl out of the way.” Her eyes filled with tears, and they broke free in silver trails down her face. “Damn you. And thank you.”

“Sweetie—” I didn’t know what to say. I finally just reached over and hugged her, and Tommy as well. I kissed them both. “You’re brilliant.”

“You’re a jerk,” Cherise said. “And I adore you, by the way.”

“Ditto.”

“Ditto? Wow. Feel the love!”

“Now? I thought we’d get a room and do it up right.” I blew her a kiss, and she blew me a raspberry. Smiling through her tears. “I’ll be okay, Cher. You know I will. But I have to know you’ll be okay.”

“Yeah,” she said softly. “I will be. So—how does this work? Do I walk, or . . .”

“No. I walk. David, Whitney, whoever’s driving, take her back to town and find someplace safe she can stay. Without me, she won’t be a target. I’ll head toward the plant. You can come back for me.”

There was radio silence, which I figured indicated yet another behind-the-scenes Djinn smackdown, and then David said, “I’ll make sure they’re safe. Don’t try anything before I bring the car back.”

“Aye aye, Captain.” I reached in the back and grabbed one stuffed duffel bag loaded with water, food, insulating blankets, a flashlight, batteries, guns, ammo . . . everything a girl needs on vacation, except tanning oil and makeup. We’d packed them in individual bags, in case we had to grab and got separated. Good thinking on our part, and it paid off now, because with one final smile at Cherise, and a wink, I stepped out of the car, shouldered the duffel bag, and started jogging up the deserted road toward the distant shimmer of buildings. Before I’d taken two strides, the Mustang’s engine fired up, and I heard tires screech as it did a one-eighty, heading back toward Amarillo.

Damn, that thing was fast.

My jog settled into a walk after a while. The day was bright, but not too hot, mercifully. I could sense that the land was troubled around me, restless, and I began to extend my awareness out. There were living things around me, lots of them, mostly small, but all universally pissed off, thanks to the influence of the Mother. I was more worried about a snake coming after me than a lightning bolt. I’d have a lot more warning from the lightning bolt.

My watch clocked in fifteen minutes before I had the perimeter of the building fully in sight. I slowed down and stopped, because there wasn’t a lot of cover, and I was fairly certain that even thinking about strolling up to the gates was strongly discouraged. I sat down and had some water. Four separate colonies of fire ants were making tracks in my direction, streaming with grim purpose over rocks and dirt. Next to full- fledged army ants, fire ants were one of the creepiest warrior insects out there, in terms of their dedication to a cause. I formed a barrier that fended them off, respectfully keeping a good twenty-foot distance between them and me. Piles of ants started forming, trying to scale the invisible wall. They’d keep doing that, forming ladders and chains out of their own bodies, climbing and climbing, until they found a way over, or gravity toppled them.

Like I said. Committed.

My cell phone rang. The cheerful tones sounded even more out of place here than they normally did, and I slapped at my pockets quickly, trying to muffle it. I was too far away for the perimeter guards to hear anything that small, but it still spooked me.

I turned off the ringer and looked at the screen.

It was Lewis.

“I talked to Cherise,” he said. “She told me about Kevin.”

Oh, God. I hadn’t thought—Of course she had. Of course she would. I heard the anguish in his voice. “He—he was trying to protect us,” I said. “I’m so sorry. He was—” Was what? A good kid? He hadn’t been, really. But he’d tried. “He was brave.” Yes. He was that.

He cleared his throat. “Okay,” he agreed, and sounded grateful. “Cherise tells me you’re back on the playing field, Jo. You and David.”

“David’s more cheerleader right now than suited up to play, but that’s better than nothing.” I swallowed and clutched the phone tighter. “We almost didn’t make it, Lewis. I thought I was going to lose him.”

“I’m pretty sure he thought the same about you. But I knew you’d come through. You always do.” He let a second pass, then changed the subject. “I need you to do something for us.”

“Ready.” I already knew it wouldn’t be picking flowers, or even something easy that a lower- level Warden would do. He saved the worst jobs for his best people.

“I need you to distract the attention of the Djinn. I need something big, spectacular, and damaging that they’ll have to deal with directly. Do you think you can do that?”

My mouth went dry, and I sipped more water before I could answer. “What are we talking about, Lewis?”

“We need to hit her back,” he said. “We’re playing defense, Jo, and we’re getting slaughtered. Get her attention, pull her to your location, and the Djinn will follow. We’ll head toward you as fast as we possibly can. You won’t be alone.”

Actually, I would be, and he knew it. The Wardens could only travel so fast, and the Djinn could be anywhere they wanted, when they wanted. Not even close to a race.

He was asking me to do something that would make a significant sting to the Earth, and then he was asking me to stand still while the Djinn came to destroy me.

There was a name for that: suicide bomber. And me, sitting here next to a plant chock full of plutonium, uranium, and nuclear weapons. I could do the math, and the math divided by zero.

“Lewis,” I said slowly. “You understand what you’re asking me to do?”

“Yes,” he replied. “Believe me, I do understand. But they’re targeting our Warden network, and it’s folding. Once that’s broken, things will get worse again, very fast, and there’ll be nothing we can do to stop it. We’ve got only about another day, Jo, before they destroy every Warden on the planet. After that, it won’t even be a week before humanity is purged down to almost nothing. It’s extinction. This is the best move we have.”

“And better me than you,” I said. “I don’t mean that in a cruel way. The Wardens need a leader, and you’ve got us this far. I understand that you need to go on.” I gulped in an unsteady breath. “I don’t. I get it.”

“Jo . . .” There was so much torment in that one whisper, so much horror and frustration, that I wanted to reach through the phone and hold him, this man who was sending me to my death. “Only somebody of your quality could do this in the first place, and minimize loss of life. You’re my only choice. I wish it was—” His voice failed, broken, and all I heard was harsh, uneven breathing as he tried to get hold of himself again.

I felt a wave of resentment pass over me. How many times? How many times do I have to be the one who gives? It was a valid question. I’d worked my ass off for the Wardens, I’d saved them time and time again. Why did it have to be me, again?

One thing about waves: they pass. The emotion peaked, then receded, and in its wake I felt . . . calm. Oddly centered.

“I’ll get them here,” I said. “I’ll hold them here as long as I can. Lewis?”

“Yeah?” His voice was low and husky, choked with what he couldn’t say.

“Make it worth it.”

“No pressure.” There—some of his usual dark humor was back in place, armor against the world. I laughed.

“No pressure,” I assured him, and just before I pressed the END CALL button, I whispered, “I always loved you, just a little bit. Bye.”

I cut the signal before I could hear his response, if he could have managed to make one. I didn’t think David would have objected to me saying that. It was true, and it was the last chance I’d have to make that particular statement count.

Silence. I listened to the wind, which was blowing in from the north, bringing the bitter taste of sand out of Oklahoma. Red dust, filming the horizon. The sun was a fierce, hard ball in the sky, heading west, dropping on its predetermined course without any thought at all for whatever happened here on this complicated little oasis of life. I’d always wondered if other planets had some kind of vast awareness, too; maybe Earth got into neighborhood scraps with Venus and Mars, or yelling matches with big bully Jupiter. Maybe the sun had its own voice, its own life. Maybe the entire universe was alive with life, in forms we couldn’t recognize because we were too limited in our sight.

I finished my water, closed my eyes, and thought about God. My mother was a church-going woman, and I had grown up in Sunday school and after-school programs. It hadn’t damaged me, but it hadn’t altogether satisfied me, either. I wanted to know answers, and religion expected me to have faith.

Maybe religion had been right, and the answers were too vast, too complex, and too hard for me to begin to grasp, but that didn’t mean I wanted to stop trying.

“Please,” I whispered. “Please understand who we are, what we’ve achieved. How far we’ve come. How far we have to go. Please tell her to stop. Please listen to your children.”

If God didn’t stop her, I didn’t think the Wardens could, but I had to give them a fighting chance. Even if it meant doing something terrible. Something that I would never do under different circumstances.

I heard the car coming up the road—I’d know that throaty growl anywhere. I stood up, hoisted my pack, and looked around at the barricade.

The fire ants were swarming in a thick, unsettling sheet over the invisible shield, grimly determined to find something soft to kill. I also saw rattlesnakes, and somewhere beyond, a coyote paced, watching me with ravenous eyes. Overhead, birds circled, and as I looked up, a thermal-riding red-tailed hawk spilled air from its wings and began a smooth attack glide, clawed feet ready to slice.

I didn’t want to see him crash into the barrier; it would probably kill him at that speed. Instead, I heated a column of air and he flew right into it, lost control of his glide, and had to swing out and flap to regain altitude. Confused, he climbed again.

If only it was that easy all the time.

The Mustang pulled to a halt on the road, and the Djinn opened the passenger side with a wave of his hand. I took a second to think and ready myself, then dropped the barriers.

I felt the anger, then, the furious and baffled rage of the Earth. The ants collapsed in a wave as the barrier fell, and swarmed toward me from all sides. I didn’t hesitate. I pulled power out of the ground and jumped from a standing position to an area outside the swarms, and hit the ground running.

Behind me, I heard the coyote howl, and heard his jaws snap on air. Damn, he was close. I could outrun the ants and snakes, but that coyote . . .

His teeth sank into my calf. It felt like I’d been stabbed and squeezed in a vise at the same time, and I yelped and went down as his weight dragged me off balance. He was snarling, teeth locked into muscle, and shook his head to try to cause maximum damage. I reached for Earth power and flung a raw handful at him; it hit him like pepper spray, and he let go with a startled yelp, dancing backward as I lurched to my feet.

Ten more feet to the car.

A rattlesnake struck at me without any noisy warning. He was concealed in the shadow between the black-top and the dirt, and there was no way I could be fast enough to dodge; by the time I spotted his movement, he was already there, sinking his fangs into my arm. Jesus, that hurt. I grabbed the snake and pulled him off, flinging him as far as panic would allow, and kicked back at the coyote as he tried another grab for my calf. I got him far enough away that I dove forward, landed belly down on the seat, and scrambled to shut the door behind me.

The coyote got his head and shoulders in the way and lunged, snarling. I smacked him with my fist on the nose, and he backed up, shocked and hurt, just enough for me to get the door shut.

David’s voice was coming out of the radio, but it was just noise right now.

“Go!” I yelled. The Djinn floored it, and we left the angry delegation from Animal Planet behind.

I immediately turned my attention to the snakebite, which was going to be much worse than the coyote’s damage to my leg. Neither attack had hit any blood vessels, at least. The snake’s venom hadn’t found its way into my circulatory system yet, but it would soon if I didn’t slow it down—now. I kept the arm down, below heart level. The pain of the bite was bad, but it was definitely going to get worse; the area around the fang marks was already swelling and discoloring in shades of angry red and mottled white. In terms of bite intensity, probably a three or a four. I didn’t think it was quite bad enough to be classed as a five, which would have put my odds way, way down.

I knew enough about snakebites to know that ice wouldn’t work, and neither would the old Western cliché of cutting open the wound and sucking out the poison. What would work was antivenin. Which I didn’t have.

Well, the good news was that this bite probably wouldn’t kill me. It would just make me very, very sick. And I could lose the arm. I licked my lips, hoping that there wouldn’t be any major symptoms, such as tingling, just yet. There weren’t. That was a good sign, I thought.

We were closing the distance fast to the perimeter, and I realized that this was, in fact, perfect. “David,” I panted, finally settling down enough to put something into words. “Don’t try to hide us. Take me right to the main gate, dump me off, drive away.”

“I can’t do that! Dammit, Jo, stay still. I’m turning the car around and taking you to a hospital.”

“No. You can stabilize me for now, right? I don’t need to be healed. Just do enough to make me functional.”

I was wrong about the lip-tingling. It started, and increased, and it felt like someone was sticking pins in my mouth. Very unpleasant. I felt dizzy, too.

The Djinn’s hand flashed out and closed around the arm with the bite, and I screamed at the flash of agony that ripped through the nerves . . . but then it calmed to a dull, fiery ache, and I could breathe again. Tears stung my eyes from the intensity of the discomfort, but the torturous prickling of my lips and mouth receded, and the dizziness steadied. “Keep the swelling,” I panted. “I need proof. Just get me ambulatory.”

“This is insane!”

“No, this is a plan,” I said. “I’m a snakebite victim. They have to take me inside for medical treatment. I need you to take down their external communication systems, so they can’t call out an ambulance. They’ll have antivenin in stock, in a place like this. I’ll be fine.”

I didn’t feel fine, not at all. David didn’t like my brilliant plan, but then again, he didn’t know the extent of it, either. He really wouldn’t like the rest of it, and I wasn’t planning on enlightening him. Not yet.

“Once I’m in, you can bring the car in however you can manage it,” I said. “Including blipping it in there. I’ll find you.” I wouldn’t need the car, because of course the plan was that probably I would never leave. But it would be nice to have the option, in case things changed somehow for the better. Not that I had a single hope they would, but you know hope: it springs eternal.

And having David close—even virtual David, talking through a radio—would make me feel braver. I hoped I’d get to tell him, before the end, why I was doing this. I hoped I’d get to say good-bye.

“I don’t like this,” David’s voice said, coming now out of the Djinn’s mouth. We were coming up fast on the turnoff to the plant, which was protected by a guardhouse and pretty serious fencing. The compound—I didn’t know what else to call it—stretched on in a sprawl within the fence boundaries. The guardhouse was manned by two men, both armed, and there were more armed men in sight, watching with pointed vigilance as the Mustang coasted to a stop just beyond the guardhouse. Both guards stepped out, hands on their sidearms, watching us with cold, professional intensity.

“You’re sure you want to do this?” David said.

“I’m sure,” I said, and then, impulsively, “I love you, sweetheart.”

I opened the door before he could respond, and bailed out in a heap. It wasn’t hard, with the torn calf and the venom coursing through me. I felt generally pretty wretched.

The Mustang backed up in a shriek of tires, and the passenger-side door slammed shut as he braked, did a perfect sliding turn, and accelerated off down the road in a blur of dust and smoke. That was probably Whitney. David wouldn’t have been as prompt in executing the hell-out-of-Dodge part of the plan.

The guards were shouting, and one of them ducked back into the shack. I heard alarms sounding, and thudding boots. Nobody touched me, so I slowly flipped myself over on my side. My head was pounding, I was too dizzy to sit up, and, with a sudden spasm, I threw up. Mostly the water that I’d been drinking, but disgustingly convincing that I wasn’t faking anything. The swelling on my arm was bad, and getting worse.

They patted me down for explosives, yelled for medical assistance, and finally, one of them leaned down and barked, “Name!”

“Jo,” I whispered. “Joanne Baldwin. Security clearance. Check—check with—military.” I wasn’t lying. Wardens had security clearances. Mine was as good as his, I’d be willing to bet. I hadn’t endured all those questions and poking around in my personal life to fail to cash in my chips now. “Rattlesnake.”

“I can see that,” he said. Some of the ferocity left his voice. “Stay still. Help’s on the way.”

The other man, I was sure, would be running my name back through channels. That was fine. I was fairly sure that nobody would turn away the help of a Warden, even an injured one, at a sensitive installation—not in times like these. Hell, I was security.

I felt filthy, doing it, but they were making their own logical assumptions. I wasn’t lying to them, not one bit. I lay there on the pavement, retching helplessly, feeling miserable and in severe pain, but David had done as I asked—I wasn’t getting worse. Not yet, anyway.

There were conversations, hurried and clipped ones, with people who I assumed were higher up in the organization. Phones were used. Pictures were taken. A medical team arrived with a gurney, evaluated me, not surprisingly came up with a diagnosis of snakebite and some kind of animal attack, and loaded me up with a pile of hospital-approved blankets on top.

The gates parted, and I was wheeled inside the compound, past neatly lettered signs that warned of criminal prosecution to the fullest extent of the law for any violations of security protocols. More guards accompanied the medical team. I supposed I would have been handcuffed to the gurney, except for the snakebite, which made that impossible.

The first building we came to was obviously some kind of administration complex—big, blocky, heavily secure. Lots of locks, key cards, biometric scans just to get me into a hallway. A security officer was there, and he clipped a badge on my shirt, neon red, that proclaimed I was a supervised visitor. I didn’t feel like a visitor. I felt like a prisoner. It probably had tracking devices built in, so I could be found and caught in seconds if I managed to totter up off the bed.

I didn’t think I was going to bump the terror alert level any, given how I felt right now.

A doctor took over, clearly the Head Medical Cheese, and he did some unsympathetic probing of the snakebite wound. “It’s genuine,” he said to a guard standing next to him. “Probably a stage four bite. She’s very sick, and she needs antivenin urgently.” He bent over to look into my pale, sweating face. “What’s your name?”

“Joanne Baldwin.”

“How’d you get here, Joanne?”

“I was walking,” I said. “Snake bit me. Car picked me up but he dropped me here.”

All completely true. The doctor frowned, clearly not thinking much of someone who’d dump me and drive away, but he shook it off. “Looks like a prairie rattler bite,” he said. “Let’s get some CroFab in her, stat.”

In a gratifyingly short time—although every heartbeat felt like it lasted a year, thanks to the unbelievable and escalating pain—a nurse hustled back in with a vial and a hypodermic. He checked the label—thorough, I liked that in a doctor—and filled the hypo with the straw-colored liquid. I hadn’t really noticed, but someone had already put in a central line—and they must have been good at it, because I didn’t like IVs, not at all. The doctor added the antivenin to the flow, then reached for another vial. There were six on the table. I wondered if that was some kind of a record.

“Okay, this is going to take about an hour to get into your system,” the doctor said, after emptying the last vial. “If you start having trouble breathing, let us know immediately. Anaphylaxis is a possibility with this antivenin, but it isn’t common. You’re not allergic to sheep, are you?”

I gave him a blank look. “Sheep? Really?”

“Really.”

“How the hell would I know?”

“Good point,” he said, and grinned. “Lie back and relax. Keep your heart rate down. I know it’s miserable, but the antivenin will help, trust me. I’m going to take a look at the bite on your leg.”

In the great scheme of things, I’d almost forgotten the coyote bite; truthfully, it hardly registered, on the scale of Ow That Hurts right now. But when he started probing the wound, I found myself gasping and guarding, and he shook his head. “Let’s irrigate, get some antibiotics on board, and I’ll need to lay in some stitches. You are some lucky girl.”

I’d have given him the finger if I’d felt up to it.

Someone arrived and handed him a packet of notes, which he speed-read, and as the nurse worked on cleaning the bite, he leaned casually on the gurney and flipped pages. I wasn’t fooled.

“So,” he said. “You’re a Warden.”

“Yes.”

“Not an Earth Warden?”

This was the tricky part, because I was going to have to lie to answer, or explain more than I wanted. “Earth Wardens can’t heal themselves,” I said. “Not easily. It’s a drawback.”

He nodded. “So it is. Is it as bad out there as we’ve heard? Storms, fires, earthquakes? Some people are calling it the end of the world.”

“It’s not,” I said. “But it could be the end of us.”

That sobered him up. He closed the file and tucked it under his arm, looking down at me. Doctors always looked similar to me; there was some kind of posture they had, upright and ever so slightly arrogant, but with good reason. This particular doctor’s name badge read REID, HOWARD. He didn’t look like a Howard to me; he had thick dark hair, a long, thin nose, and smile lines around his mouth. An angular, mobile kind of face. Eyes of indeterminate color, maybe a dark blue. Not kind, though. Assessing and guarded.

“Is that your professional opinion?” he asked. “Since that’s your job, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said.

“How serious is it?”

“I wouldn’t go buying any long-term investments.” I coughed, because talking was making me feel sick again. A nurse got me water and a sippy straw.

Dr. Reid stared at me for a few long seconds, and whatever calculations were going on, I couldn’t follow them.

I shut my eyes as he got around to the stitches.

Dr. Reid wasn’t the only person on the base who knew what a Warden was; I could tell from the steady stream of gawkers who found a reason to drop into the infirmary over the next hour. Among them was a tall man wearing casual clothes but with a straight-up military bearing. No rank visible on the badges, but I was willing to bet, from the way people gave him room, that this man was high up.

“Hello,” he said to me immediately, with the assurance of somebody who doesn’t often meet equals, much less superiors. “How are you feeling?”

I wasn’t feeling well at all, and was starting to think that this snakebite ploy was a Very Bad Idea, but I forced a smile. “I’ll live,” I said, and cleared my throat. “Joanne Baldwin.”

He nodded. “I had you checked out. Roland Miles. I’m the director of the plant. I had to give special authorization to get you inside the gates.” By the look he gave me, I’d better humbly appreciate the sacrifice. Oh, and I did. Really. “I’ve given instructions that you’re not to leave this bed for any reason, and that as soon as you’re stable, you’re going in an ambulance to a hospital.”

“I’m a prisoner.”

“If you were a prisoner, you’d be handcuffed to the rail,” he pointed out pleasantly. “We’re just taking all necessary precautions for your health.”

“Including not letting me out of bed. What if I have to go to the bathroom?”

“Bedpan,” he said, and I didn’t think he was kidding. “I take my responsibilities here extremely seriously, Miss Baldwin, and what I see about you in my classified files doesn’t inspire confidence. You seem to have a running feud with the Wardens, and a shooting war going with authority. Now, why are you really here?”

He settled himself in a chair next to my bed, and that put our eyes level. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the very perceptive aura I was reading off of the guy—he was just plain human, but he was nobody to underestimate, clearly. They wouldn’t have put him in charge of what had to be a major terrorist target if he hadn’t been utterly capable.

“Wait,” I said, and gestured urgently to a nurse. She handed me a kidney-shaped bowl, and I retched up what little I still had in my stomach. It wasn’t theater, it was truly that bad, and after I was done I fell back against the pillows, feeling shaky and still in sharp, cutting pain. “So just to be clear, you think I got myself snakebit as part of a clever plot?”

“Maybe,” he said, unmoved by my clearly unhappy condition. “I’m not taking any chances with you in my facility. You do have security clearances sufficient to gain entry under normal circumstances, so I’ll let you stay until Dr. Reid says you can be moved, but the second that happens, you are out of here. With my best wishes, of course.”

“Of course,” I said, and swallowed hard. “Water?”

He was kind enough to fetch the cup and sippy straw, and I drained it in a rush.

“I know what’s happening out there,” he said, once I was done. He refilled the glass, which was a considerate thing to do, and set it within easy reach. “I know how bad it is. And I can’t think it’s any accident somebody like you just happens to show up on our doorstep, snakebite or not. You want to level with me, Joanne?”

“Well, I’d like to, but I don’t think your security clearance is high enough,” I said. “And I’m not in a share-y mood right now, what with all the venom and throwing up and you being a giant prick.”

He laughed. It was a real laugh, genuinely amused. Nice to know I was entertaining, even now. “Now that’s the Joanne Baldwin people told me about. You’d be a smart-ass to Death himself, wouldn’t you?”

I had been before. But that probably wasn’t something to share except on a need-to-know basis. “If you want to know what’s going on, stick your head outside,” I said. “Humanity’s sitting on a bomb, and the timer’s clicking down. That’s what’s happening. Forget global climate change; we won’t be around to see the last of the polar bears drown. That’s why I’m here, Roland. I’m on bailing duty on the Titanic.”

He didn’t like that answer, not at all, and it didn’t spark any kind of laughter this time. He was a smart man; he could identify truth when he heard it. “And why come here?” he asked.

“I didn’t! I was dumped out by the idiot who picked me up. I think he could have been running drugs.” In this part of the country, that was an extremely plausible scenario. Carloads of Mexican Brown were caught all the time, zipping their way up through the Southwest. They weren’t fighting a major drug war in Mexico for nothing.

That was my first real lie; only it was actually speculation. I hadn’t stated it as a fact, only a perception. I waited, and watched Roland Miles’s aura up on the aetheric. It was tougher to read regular people than Wardens, but there was no mistaking the troubled colors that surrounded him. The man was under a lot of stress, and he was wary. I didn’t blame him. He certainly had every right.

Wary he remained, but I didn’t get the sense that he detected any hint of a lie in what I’d said. That was good. It wasn’t that I couldn’t tackle the defenses he could probably bring to bear, but it would be very, very messy. Lives would be lost, and there was a decent chance that I’d end up having to do what I’d planned without evacuating the plant first. I didn’t want that on my conscience. Especially as the last act of my life.

Dr. Reid buzzed in the infirmary door, trailed by another nurse, this one carrying a tray full of the antivenin bottles. He nodded pleasantly to Director Miles, who stood up and moved his chair away from the bed to make room as Reid bent over me, taking my pulse, probing the badly swollen arm, and generally being a nuisance before he nodded. “Second round,” he said, and began loading the antivenin into the IV drip. “I didn’t figure that one dose would do you. That was a nasty bite. How’s the pain?”

“Intense,” I said.

“On a scale of—”

“Ten.” And I wasn’t kidding, it really was. As an Earth Warden I was all too aware of the damage the venom was wreaking on my tissues, and it scared me. There was definitely going to be scarring from this, if I survived the day. In a weird way, it was comforting to think that I didn’t have much of a chance of that, anyway.

Six vials of antivenin later, Dr. Reid gave me some kind of additional shot. I didn’t see him do it in time to countermand, but I knew I was in trouble the second the warm, weighty feeling of pain relief began to spread through my body. Oh crap. I couldn’t fall asleep. That would ruin everything.

“No!” I gasped. He’d only emptied about half a syringe into the central line, and now he looked up, frowning. “No narcotics, please.”

“You’re in pain.”

“I don’t want it.”

He shook his head, but it was, after all, a patient’s right to refuse medication. So I got enough to dull the raging, chewing pain, but not enough to get rid of it, or to lull me into dreamland.

Best of both worlds, really.

Miles tried to ask me something else, but Reid cut him off. I closed my eyes and went up into the aetheric—a struggle, considering my physical condition—and watched Miles leave the room. Lucky thing about the plant—the buildings had always been built for pure industrial use, and there weren’t a lot of emotions soaked into the place. Where they existed, they were centered mostly on the area where I was currently resting—injured and scared people had been brought here over the years, and that lingered. But outside, the aetheric shape of the place was orderly, almost sterile. This was an administration building; as I expanded my view I saw activity in several other locations, in some areas going down deep into the ground.

That was where I needed to focus my efforts. Deep in the ground. But not yet, not until I was capable of moving on my own.

It took another forty minutes, but the swelling began to go down, to the pleased murmurs of the medical staff. The venom slowed its progress, and the antivenin began to break it down into harmless chemical strings that were swept away in my body’s efficient housecleaning system. I didn’t feel good, but I felt better. Clearer. I drank a lot of water, and one of the nurses, on Dr. Reid’s approval, provided me with some kind of high-protein bar. I was able to keep it down, which was great.

By the time the second sixty minutes had passed, my arm was only a little swollen and red. Reid bandaged up the wound, after antibiotic shots, and gave me detailed instructions on what to tell the doctor at the hospital when I arrived.

“Dr. Reid,” I said. He stopped his medical lecture and looked at me, frowning. “I need you to listen to me.”

“I’m listening.”

“I can’t leave,” I said. “I need to be here. And you need to help me get everybody out of this compound before it’s too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“I’m going to do something to help us survive what’s happening outside, but it’s going to be very messy. I don’t want your deaths on my hands when I do it. So I need you all to leave the compound, do you understand me?” I held his gaze, and I put all of my Earth Warden powers of persuasion into it. “Isn’t there some medical protocol for evacuation?”

“In the event of a major radiation leak,” he said. “Yes. But—”

“Trust me, there’ll be one by the time you call the alert. How long to get everyone out of here?”

He looked around, blinked, and said, “We’re on skeleton crew, so probably no more than fifteen minutes once the alarm sounds. That’s to load everyone into the vehicles and evacuate to the secondary rally point.”

I loved a place that had their drills down cold. It meant people might actually survive this. Not me, of course. But these people, in specific.

“You know about the Djinn, right?” He nodded. I’d figured that since he knew about Wardens, he’d be up on the current information out there on Djinn as well. “The Djinn aren’t under the control of the Wardens anymore. They’re under the control of the Earth, and the Earth is very, very angry. Understand? The Djinn are going to come here, and they’re going to destroy everything. So you need to be sure you get this done, doc. If you don’t, it’s going to be very, very deadly to your colleagues.”

“I’ve got to talk to Director Miles.”

“If you want my advice, don’t,” I said. “Director Miles will have an apparently sensible solution that will mean a short-term gain for you here, and long-term disaster for the human race. Let me do this. I’m a Warden. I wouldn’t take this risk if there was any alternative, believe me.” I hesitated, then said, “I don’t plan on walking away from it, if that helps.”

“You’re not talking sense,” Reid said. “We can defend this place. That’s the whole point.”

“You can’t defend shit against the Djinn, not when they’re like this,” I said. “Trust me. I’ve been up against them, and it’s not a war you can win. It’s not even a war. It’s more like an extermination.”

He knew enough about Djinn to understand I wasn’t overselling it, and he shut up, watching me.

“Look,” I said, more gently. “Doc, I know you wouldn’t be working here if you didn’t have the highest ethical standards. If you weren’t completely trustworthy. But the thing is, I’m not some agent of another government or cause. The organization I’m part of transcends borders, and governments, and causes, and religions. We’re here to save the most lives we can, just like you. You have to help me. I know it seems wrong, but—”

With no warning at all, guards flooded into the room, boots and helmets and hard expressions. Oh, and large weapons, which all ended up aimed at me.

Director Miles walked in. Dr. Reid cast a guilty look around, then stepped away from my bedside as Miles advanced toward me.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t have you monitored?” he asked.

I smiled. “Actually,” I said, “I was pretty sure you would. That was the whole point. Now that I have your undivided attention, let’s talk about how this is going to go.”

“Oh, I already know how it’s going to go,” he said. “With you, handcuffed to your gurney, heading to the nearest FBI holding cell. Probably the medical wing, of course. We’re not lacking in compassion.”

“Only in sense,” I snapped back. “I could bring down this place around you, you know. And I will, if I have to. But I’m offering you the chance, one time only, to save your peoples’ lives. I suggest you take it, Miles.”

“Tell you what. The doctor here is going to trank you up six ways from Sunday, and you can tell the FBI all about it.” He nodded to Reid, who stepped up to my IV with another syringe.

I yanked the line out, clamped down on the immediate bleeding, and used a sudden, localized increase in air pressure around the syringe Dr. Reid was holding to crush it, spilling liquid sleep all over the floor. “Good luck with that,” I said. “You’re going to have to kill me.”

Miles hesitated, then nodded. Regretfully. “I suppose so,” he said, and addressed the guards surrounding me. “Shoot her if she moves a muscle. Or opens her mouth again. Lisa, get her handcuffed to the gurney, now.”

“Wait!” Reid said. “Let me bandage that first.” He meant the leaking hole in my arm where the IV had been. Miles didn’t like it, but he nodded. Reid was efficient with the pressure bandage and cloth tape, and stepped back as the guards moved in to slap the cuffs on. I winced as they closed around my still-swollen wrist, but they were fairly gentle about it. Didn’t matter, anyway. Clearly, Director Miles had never tried to jail an Earth Warden, even a relatively inexperienced one like me. Handcuffs were a nuisance, but a completely insignificant one.

Since the orders had been pretty clear to the guys with itchy trigger fingers, I kept still and quiet, and reached down deep into the ground for power. It came slowly; this wasn’t a place that was rooted deep in natural forces, but no matter how industrial it was, no man-made structure could keep out the flow of power to a Warden.

Instead of using it in an attack, I let it gather inside of me in a thick, still pool, filling me until I felt like an overflowing tub. Seductive and slow, that power; not like the energy I pulled for weather, or for fire. Instead of trying any dramatic gestures, I began to hum, very softly. It was Brahms’s “Lullaby,” and with the power imbuing every gentle note, it began to affect everyone in the room almost immediately. I was careful—I didn’t want them falling over, just drowsy and slow. I even got Director Miles, finally.

The only one I excluded was Dr. Reid.

I deepened the humming, and the power, and the guards one by one slid into a very gentle sleep. They didn’t fall, exactly—just folded up against whatever wall was closest and slid down to curl up in an utterly blissful rest.

I was kind of proud. That was subtle stuff, and not something I’d been able to do very often. But it almost emptied out my power reserve, and I didn’t have time to replenish it now. I expended a little more energy zapping the handcuffs, which fell away with a soft little click, and then swung my legs out of bed.

Dr. Reid was clearly trying to decide whether to tackle me, shoot me, or help me. He must have come down on the side of helping, because as my balance wavered dangerously, he moved to me and got me steady again. “This is crazy,” he said. “They’ll kill you.”

“Eventually,” I said. “Really not an issue right now, though. I didn’t hurt them. They’re just sleeping. What I need you to do is to declare a medical evacuation, now. Miles can’t stop you. I assume you’re pretty much the authority now?”

He nodded. His face was taking on new lines and stress, and I was sorry for that. “How do I know you’re telling me the truth, about what you’re going to do? What if you’re just here to steal warheads?”

“If I was going to steal warheads, I could get a Djinn to do it,” I said. “I’m not stealing anything, and I promise you, nothing is leaving here except your people. Deal?”

“Deal,” he agreed, but he didn’t look happy about it. “Only because I’m pretty sure that if I don’t agree, you’ll just put me out, too, and find some other way.”

“That’s true. But I’d rather not. Doing this kind of thing takes power, and I need to preserve mine right now. Understand?”

“No.” He checked my pulse, and frowned. “How’s your pain level?”

“Manageable. I’ll be okay.” Relatively speaking, anyway. “Do your thing, Doc. Get them out of here.”

“Where are you going?”

“Where I need to go.” I reached out and took Director Miles’s badge from his jacket, and replaced my bright red visitor’s ID with his. “This will get me in the doors?”

“No. Biometric scanners. You won’t match.”

I could handle those, but it would mean expending more power. “I’ll make it work,” I said. “Get moving. You haven’t got long before this place isn’t safe anymore.”

I left it deliberately vague as to whether I was going to make it unsafe, or the Djinn would. To be fair, it was probably going to be a team effort.

Reid didn’t like it, not at all, but I could see that he’d been doing some checking on who I was and what the situation out there in the rest of the world might be. He was convinced, but like all good humans, he was still in denial.

I didn’t really have time for his stages of grief. “One other thing,” I said. “I need your coat.”

“My coat?” He looked down at it. “Why?”

“Because people ignore other people in uniform in a place like this, and it’s easier to get on over my arm than one of their uniforms,” I said. “Coat, please. You can keep the badge.”

He stripped it off, no doubt rationalizing that if he didn’t, I’d just knock him out and take it anyway. Which I would have, probably. I took it and very carefully threaded my wounded arm through the sleeve, hissing a little as the not-very-flexible fabric scraped over sensitive, burning skin. Once I had it on, though, I felt better. I buttoned it up, grabbed a gun from one of the snoozing guards, stepped over another one, and went to the far door. When I swiped Miles’s card through the reader, the door buzzed open.

Reid was still watching me, and I could see the struggle in him—shoot me? Stop me? Wish me luck?

In the end, he didn’t say or do anything at all. And that was okay.

I slung the semiautomatic rifle over my neck and used Oversight to get a good look at where I was going. The good news was that given the relatively mild aetheric energy of this place, I could fairly easily spot approaching people and avoid them. Nothing special about the building—hallways, doors, offices, desks, filing cabinets. It was very clean. As Reid had said, there was only a skeleton crew here, so I made it from the infirmary to the door I’d identified as being closest to my goal in record time.

Outside, the wind was turning cool, rattling loose bits of gravel and sending an occasional tumbleweed rolling around. I hugged the exterior of the building for a second, looking for guards; there were several, and at least one had a high vantage point and a rifle. That wasn’t so great.

I’d have to have faith in the lab coat.

I set off across open ground, walking with a purpose and trying not to show off the fact that I had a giant weapon with me. I tried to walk like a doctor on her way to a patient. Calm, but focused.

It must have worked, because I made it across a hundred yards of open space, under the eyes of at least four heavily armed men, to the entrance to what was, at the aetheric level, a maelstrom of black energy.

Weapons, built for maximum damage. Even dormant, even stored, that energy swirled and eddied around them, restless and hungry. Disturbing. I swallowed hard, stood at the door, and swiped my card. There were all kinds of warning signs telling me that I had to follow strict security and safety protocols while inside this facility. Yeah, I was going to absolutely do that, first chance I got.

The biometric scanner lit up, requesting me to put my hand on the glass. I did, and while it was reading, I reached deep inside the works and blew it apart. Easier than it sounds, with high technology. When your security depends on soldered connections, you are screwed if an Earth Warden wants in.

The security designers were good, but not quite good enough. I managed to intercept the signal that zipped over to the door to tell it to lock down and sound the alarm, and converted the energy into the all-clear electronic pulse.

The door popped open, and I stepped into a sterile little anteroom, with another, identical scanning system at the far end. Protective gear was neatly stored, and I put on a suit, more for blending in than for what it would offer me. Second door, same verse, and then I was inside a hallway. There, a large, colorful map indicated that I was in a blue section. Blue section was the least dangerous, I gathered.

There were a few workers in this part of the plant, but a confident walk, a wave, and a badge seemed to do the job nicely. Nobody was doing much at the moment; operations were at an idle, and boredom had set in. I followed the color-coded maps to the elevators at the far end. More biometrics, which was a pain in the ass; I hoped they hadn’t security-locked the bathrooms, too.

Finally, after the third biometric I had to destroy, I decided to take an end run around the problem. Fire codes said that all security doors had to open in the event of a fire emergency.

I created one. Not a big one; I didn’t want to bake anybody, or even give them smoke inhalation, but I pulled some jittery power from the electronics and built myself an impressive-sized fire in a nest of empty boxes in a storeroom. Fire suppression kicked in, but with a little concentration, I was able to keep the fire blazing despite the countermeasures.

Thirty seconds later, the biometric scanners began flashing FIRE EMERGENCY, and I heard the clicks as secured doors began to unlock. The elevators stopped working, but I could get around that; it was a simple mechanism, and I needed to go all the way to the bottom anyway.

I stepped inside just as three people in protective gear—one with an automatic weapon slung over it—entered the corridor and looked straight at me. He had fast reactions, and I couldn’t jam his gun and keep the fire going at the same time. Too many balls in the air.

He got off five shots, aiming straight for my chest.