I sensed no power stirring in the aetheric toward us. When I directed my attention toward Pearl's camp across the divide I got a sense of shielded, harnessed, focus energy, like the potential of a bomb, tightly contained. Was Pearl there? I wasn't sure she was. I wasn't sure she was anywhere, in a purely physical sense. Her followers, yes, but Pearl could manifest herself in ways I didn't fully understand, and that meant she couldn't be tied down to a single focus.
Not yet.
I was still searching for a sign as to what had driven Rashid on his way when Agent Sanders, looking harassed and angry, strode back into the clearing. He looked at the spot where Rashid had been sitting, glared at the agents, then at me. I shrugged.
"Djinn," I said. "He can leave when he wishes. There's really not much you--or I--can do about it."
"Your friend really doesn't value your life too highly, does he?" Sanders said.
"He isn't my friend," I said. "We had an agreement, not a relationship, and my life is my own to worry about."
"Yeah, you got that right. Come on. Up and at 'em."
I had been sitting cross-legged for a while, and since my hands were still cuffed behind me, it was difficult to rise. Sanders assisted me with a hand on my arm, and kept the hand there as he directed me away from the clearing, past the watching agents, and down a game trail that cut through the brush.
We emerged into an open area where tents had been erected--camouflage canvas, sturdy government issue that had probably been used for everything from disaster relief to combat. They were large structures. One held cots and a meal area; the other, where Sanders directed me, had long folding tables covered with paper, maps, computers, and equipment whose purpose I couldn't guess. Communications, perhaps. There were at least ten other people in the tent as we arrived.
Agent Turner was not among them.
There were also folding chairs, and Sanders sat me down in one for a moment to look down into my eyes. "Must be uncomfortable," he said. "Hands behind you like that. Tell you what, I'll cuff you in front, but I need your promise not to try anything stupid. I'm not your enemy. Your enemy's out there, other side of that gully."
I didn't like making any kind of deal with Sanders, but he was right; my shoulders were aching, my arms trembling from the strain of trying to relieve the constant pressure. Sitting was awkward, at best.
I nodded.
"I'm going to loosen one cuff," he said, "and you move both arms in front. No other stunts. You try anything woo-woo and my friend Agent Klein there will put a bullet right in you, are we clear?"
Agent Klein certainly was. He was a young man with curly brown hair and a semiautomatic pistol, which he held unwaveringly pointed at the center of my chest.
"I understand," I said, and looked straight at Agent Sanders. "I will cooperate." For now.
He did exactly what he said, stepping behind me to unlock one side of the manacles. I moved both hands forward, sighing a little in relief, and held them out, wrists together. Sanders reattached the cuff with a snap, and I felt a spark go through me--not enough to hurt, just enough to verify that the cuffs were still live. I lowered my hands to my lap.
"Better?" he asked. It was a rhetorical question, and that was very likely the only consideration I would get from him, so I did not respond at all. Sanders likewise didn't wait for an answer. "So here's what we know. We know that this camp over there is run by an organization of fringers. On their recruiting materials they like to call themselves the Church of the New World. They've got a Web site, bulletin boards, social networks, and a YouTube channel where they post all kinds of crazy, earnest crap about how we need to remake the world. Standard stuff, really; my team's been tracking these guys for years. But in the last twelve months, something changed with them. They were talking a good game before, but all of a sudden they've got money, they've got recruitment, they've got real physical facilities set up in at least four states that we know about. You following?"
He paused to take a drink of bottled water. When I nodded, he walked over to a laminated map of the United States, with locations circled in red marker. La Jolla, California, where we were now. An X mark was over a circle in Colorado, where the original version of the Ranch we'd found had been located. There were two more places circled. Both, to my eyes, looked remote, far from the nearest large city.
Sanders tapped the crossed-out circle in Colorado with the closed cap of a marker. "We were just setting up the surveillance for this place when you and your friend Luis busted the door and raised hell. Great job, by the way. Lots of dead people, missing kids, one hell of a mess left for us to try to make sense of. Thanks for that."
"I was not aware I had to clear my plans for rescuing a stolen child with you."
"Well, you do now."
"For how long?"
"How does forever work for you?"
"Better than it does for you," I assured him, and smiled, very briefly and sharply. "I don't care about your problems, Agent Sanders. I want Luis Rocha. I want to rescue the children. I leave you to deal with the rest, if you can."
Sanders dragged a chair over across the uneven ground, thumped it down in front of me, and sat with his elbows on his knees, leaning forward. He held my gaze as he said, "That's not good enough. Far as I can tell, this is a Warden mess of some kind. A Djinn mess. And we're in it now, because you people can't take care of your own shit. So read me in, Cassiel. Right now."
"Read you in?"
"Tell me everything I need to know."
"Simple enough. Nothing. Withdraw your people. Shut down your operation. Leave."
Sanders sighed and sat back, folding his arms across his chest. The folding metal chair creaked in complaint. He looked over at Agent Klein, who was still aiming his gun straight at me, and said, "Greg, why don't you get me and my guest a couple of cups of coffee? You drink coffee, right?" That last was directed at me. I said nothing. "Two. Thanks. This is going to take a while."
Klein looked startled, and he looked over at his boss for a moment. "Sir? You sure?"
"I'm sure. We have an understanding, right, Cassiel? You try anything with me, and I will bury you and your friend Rocha so deep that the president and the Joint Chiefs wouldn't have high enough clearance to even know you ever existed. You think Guantanamo was bad? You ain't seen nothing yet."
I blinked. "Are you trying to intimidate me?" I was honestly curious, because I had been cowed before--rarely--but it was not very likely to come from this man, with all his rules and limits. "Because for all your posturing, I don't think you are a bad man. I think you are afraid of me. You shouldn't be. As long as you don't interfere with me--"
He gave a short, hard bark of laughter. "Interfere with you? Lady, you've done nothing but fuck up our lives around here since you landed on Earth. Now, you tell me what I need to know about how the Wardens and the Djinn are involved in this."
"Or?"
"Or you're not going to like me very much," he said.
I didn't like him now. I didn't see how that would be much of a change.
He didn't push me. Agent Klein returned with two disposable cups filled with thick black coffee. I accepted one and held it in both hands, breathing in the fragrant steam. Agent Sanders guzzled his.
"Where is Turner?" I asked.
"Sent him out," Sanders said. "Figured that with the bad blood of him selling you out like that, you might want a piece of him. So you can consider him off the case, as far as you're concerned. All right?"
"Turner worked with you on countermeasures for Wardens," I said. "For how long?"
"How about I don't discuss classified government programs?"
"Oh, I assure you, you will discuss it. Whether you discuss it with me, with Lewis Orwell, with Joanne Baldwin, with David or Ashan or some of the others--well, that is your choice. But that will be a much more . . . energetic conversation. One Mr. Turner won't enjoy, I would think."
"Turner's our asset. We'll protect him."
I didn't like the direct
ion this was going. Inevitably, it would end one place--with a civil war between the normal human world and the human Wardens. The Djinn would not have to take sides, but some would. Destruction and wrath would follow.
It was, as Luis would have phrased it, a cluster fuck.
Which brought my mind back to the subject I was most interested in. "I want to see Luis," I said. "Now."
Sanders and I engaged in another staring contest. He finally broke it and looked at Agent Klein, who was standing at rest, with his hand not very far at all from his gun. "Get him," he said.
"Sir--"
"Just get him."
We waited in silence while Klein was gone. I sipped my coffee. Klein had disappeared around the edge of the tent, and I'd heard a vehicle start and pull away. They weren't keeping him here, at their forward base; there was a secondary encampment, one where they would probably take me, eventually. There was no virtue in acting too soon. And the coffee wasn't bad.
Agent Sanders had sense enough to know I wouldn't speak again until my request had been fulfilled, so he stood up, drank his coffee, and conferred with other agents in the room. When he was done with that, he came and stood over me.
"You made it inside," he said. "Actually inside the compound." He sounded impressed.
"In," I said. "But just getting in is not the problem. There are safeguards. Alarms. Guards." I thought of the bear-panthers, coursing in packs in the trees, more effective than any human force that could be deployed. "If you think to raid that compound, you'll be destroyed."
"Oh, I'm not trying to raid it," he said. "Not yet. But I'm very interested in exactly what you saw while you were there."
"Nothing," I said. "Manicured grounds. A gravel road. A large curved building that glowed from within. That's all I had time to see."
He tried asking me more questions, but I had already given him as much as he was going to get from me, and eventually he recognized that fact and fell silent.
Fifteen minutes later, I heard the growl of an engine, the crunch of tires, and then the silence as the driver shut down the vehicle. Slamming doors.
I stood up. That brought a change in posture from all the agents in the room--straightening, bracing, hands moving to weapons. "Sit," Sanders snapped. I ignored him, and he pulled his sidearm, although he didn't aim it. "Sit down, Cassiel. I'm not playing."
Shadows at the opening of the tent. Agent Klein . . . and Luis Rocha.
My breath went out of me, because he was being carried on a stretcher by two other men. Unconscious. The men settled the stretcher on top of one of the folding tables and, at a nod from Sanders, withdrew to wait. Klein took up his post again only a few feet away, gun drawn.
I looked from Luis's slack, blank face to Sanders. Everything seemed to have a red tinge to it, and I was having difficulty breathing.
"He's alive," Sanders said, as if that was even a question. "Whoa, Cassiel. Take it down a notch. He's going to be okay. He put up a hell of a fight. They had to go hard on him, and then they had to put him out to treat him. He'll wake up in a couple of hours."
I saw blood on Luis's shirt. I lifted the hem of it and saw a bandage as large as my hand beneath it, on his right side. Beneath it I sensed a cut, a long and deep one, that had perforated organs and nicked a bowel. The human physicians had repaired the damage with stitches, cleaned out wounds, and left him to heal.
"Take these off me," I said, and held my cuffed hands out to Sanders without looking away from Luis.
"Can't do that."
I wanted to issue the sort of threat I would have in Djinn form: Refuse me, and I'll destroy you, your colleagues, every trace you were ever alive. But, in human form, that would not only be extremely difficult to accomplish, it would also get me imprisoned, or shot out of hand.
"I can heal him," I said, and put a note of pleading in my voice. It was not precisely acting. "Please. Let me help him. Otherwise it will take weeks for him to get back to full strength, and he risks infection." I left unspoken the obvious: If Luis Rocha died of his wounds, or even complications of them, then he would be held responsible. Not just by me. By his superiors. By the Wardens. Possibly even by one or two Djinn with a random interest.
Sanders obviously recognized the risk.
He fixed me with a long, steady look. I tried my best to convey a lack of threat, although that was hardly my strong suit.
He sighed. "Fine. But you do anything I don't like, and Agent Klein here will shoot you a whole lot. Okay?"
He wasn't waiting for my agreement. He unlocked the cuffs, both wrists, and removed them. They looked like regular handcuffs, which was curious; I had expected some small technological addition, but I saw nothing of interest.
Sanders stepped back and nodded toward Luis, lying silent on the table. "Clock's running," he said. "You've got five minutes."
He had no experience with Wardens, other than Turner, that much was obvious. I shook my head and put my right hand on Luis's forehead. It felt cool and slightly clammy. The left--the metal hand--I left at my side. I was no longer sure if I could control the flow of power through it at a fine enough level to perform this kind of task.
The damage within Luis had been surprisingly light, and repaired by skilled surgeons; he was, in fact, not in any danger at all, but merely needed rest and recovery. That, at least, was easy enough to fix, by simply replacing his lost energy with some of mine, although I had precious little to spare. Had he truly been badly injured, I doubted I would have had the reserves to repair him on my own . . . but this, I could do.
And did.
Luis opened his eyes. They were blank for a moment as his brain came aware and began processing information at a pace that was astonishing even to the Djinn--memory, sensory input, aetheric input. Then his eyes focused, fixed on mine, and he did nothing for a long second.
Can you hear me? I performed the Earth Warden trick, murmuring the words directly into his ear by delicate vibrations of the membrane inside. Don't move. Don't let them see you're awake.
He stayed perfectly still, relaxed beneath my hands.
Good to see you, he said. You're okay?
I was not the one who was lying on a table with stitched wounds. Of course, I said. Are you strong enough to take care of half the guns?
Lady, I can take care of all the guns, Luis responded, and blinked. They're FBI, right? Oh man.
Was he reconsidering? But you will take care of the guns.
Sure. He sounded resigned. Might as well earn the wanted poster while I'm at it.
I didn't waste time asking what he meant; instead, I whispered Now into his ear.
He sat up in one fluid movement, and as every FBI agent in the room wondered what to do next, I whirled and advanced on Agent Sanders.
Agent Klein hadn't been bluffing. He immediately pulled the trigger on his firearm, and his aim was perfectly steady. If his weapon had been working, I would have been down with a hole through my brain.
It didn't work quite that way. Instead, the gun gave a dry click. Klein blinked and immediately tried again. Another click. The sound was joined by a brittle chatter of clicks, as every FBI agent in the room attempted to fire.
I batted away Sanders's attempt to punch me and grabbed him by the throat, slamming him backward and down on one of the folding tables, which teetered dangerously and looked ready to collapse. Then it did collapse, in a sudden rush, metal legs splaying out unnaturally, and the table thumped down to the ground, taking Sanders with it. I followed him down, sinking into a crouch, never releasing his throat.
I let the Djinn show on my features, shine in my eyes, and I said, "I will not be controlled by the likes of you, Special Agent Adrian Sanders." I almost purred. "There is a reason the Wardens have never bent to government control. The Wardens are beyond nations, beyond administrations, beyond the rules and boundaries of your society. They must be, to accomplish their work. They police their own, and they do not need your particular brand of oversight." Behind me, I heard Luis take
on another agent who was rushing to the rescue--possibly Agent Klein. Earth Wardens had the ability to alter gravity. This was probably news to Agent Klein, who let out a startled yelp as the area around him suddenly took on three times the normal gravity at the Earth's surface, stopping his rush in midstride and sending him crashing heavily--very heavily--face-first to the ground. A position from which he could not, without great and sustained effort, rise.
Luis flicked a look at the other agents, still standing near their computers, weapons in hand. They exchanged a look. "Relax," he said. "We're not going to hurt anybody. Chill out."
I was fairly certain, from the look on Sanders's face, that he didn't altogether believe that. I couldn't really blame him. The way I felt, I couldn't guarantee him anything on the not-hurting-anyone front. Especially him.
I leaned closer, pale hair drifting around my face like smoke, and whispered, "If you ever try to put those handcuffs on me again, Mr. Sanders, we will have this conversation again, but it won't end so nicely." Then I let go, stood up, and offered him a hand. My left. The metal one.
Sanders stared at my face, then the hand, and for a long moment I wasn't sure he'd accept the implied apology. Then he took my bronze fingers and pulled himself to his feet against my strength.
"We need to work together," I said. Behind me, Luis stepped up alongside me. "The Wardens are few right now. The Djinn are . . . largely uninvolved. But this fight is yours, too. Human children, Warden or not, are being hurt and killed. You must help us." I held his dark eyes, and put all my sincerity into the moment. "You must. Think of your own children, and help us."
He'd been holding on to my hand, and I saw that he held concealed, on his other side, the power-disrupting handcuffs. With one move--no doubt a move he had practiced and performed many times--he could have those on me in seconds, possibly before Luis could interfere.