I knew exactly who he meant. Pearl. My sister Djinn, once. My enemy. My conquest, or so I'd thought.
Pearl, insane and predatory, who had wiped an entire race of protohumans from the face of the planet once, in her jealousy and madness. She should by all rights have been destroyed, long gone from this Earth; I had seen to that. But instead she lived on, drawing strength and power in steady, parasitic increments from these hijacked Wardens.
These children.
Candelario was like Pammy--a victim, although it was likely he didn't know this, and would never accept it. He almost certainly believed that he was chosen, special, a trusted soldier in a war against evil. Pearl had convinced many. It was a signal weakness of the human condition, to be so easily swayed by those who wished them ill. To be rotted from within by their own belief in their virtue.
"Where is she?" I asked the boy. He spat at me. "She is using you. She is not your protector."
"You don't know anything!" he shot back. "Let me go or she'll kill you all!"
"I doubt that," I said. "Or she'd already have done so."
Something shifted inside the boy--a change so basic that it seemed that the bones inside of him moved along with it. His face seemed to grow sharper, more adult. More like . . . someone else.
"Do you?" An entirely different voice than the boy's, although using his vocal cords. "Really, do you doubt it, my sister? I thought you knew me better."
Pearl. Pearl was speaking through this boy. I caught my breath. I felt Luis's warm hand grip my shoulder, and I put a palm down flat on the warm ground, taking in power and feeding it through the cycle between us. Preparing for the strike, if it would come.
The boy's eyes were still black, but now it wasn't adolescent anger in them, it was something worse. Focused malice. Real evil.
"You send out your troops ill-prepared," I told her. "His attack was crude, you know."
"I'm not interested in subtlety," Pearl said. "You should know that about me, Cassiel."
Oh, I did. All too well. "Then why not come to me directly? I'm your enemy. Not this one."
"You're wrong," she said, and there was such deep, ancient anger in it that even I shuddered. "I have nothing but enemies. Doubt me not, sister mine. I will destroy this world and everything living on it. You're a fool if you believe otherwise."
With that, she was gone. Just . . . gone, leaving no clues, no comfort. She did not explain herself. She never had, and never would; I would have to guess at the dark motives behind her plans. But it would have to do with hatred and jealousy, just as it had before.
We had all felt it, when she had struck in those long-ago mists of time. Almost a million thinking beings killed in an instant, a mass murder on the scale of a god, a million souls screaming in pain and confusion. It had destroyed Pearl's mind, or what remained of it; in response, she had begun to rip at the universe around us, damaging things that should never have suffered injury. Things that lacked the capacity to heal.
I had destroyed Pearl, or I thought I had. I was the original murderer, among the Djinn. The first of us to kill one of our own.
Ironic, that some seed of her had survived, had somehow cast down roots among the new species that filled the emptiness she'd left on the planet with her crimes. Humanity was where Pearl hid. Humanity was where her power lay.
And so Ashan, the leader of the True Djinn, had ordered me to repeat not my crime, but Pearl's. By ending humanity, I would also, once and for all, end Pearl. So he believed, and it was likely true.
If I acted, I would become a monster. If I failed to act, Pearl would use the power she sucked from these humans to destroy my people.
Choices.
Candelario resurfaced, still glaring. I could see that he had no idea of what he had said--or what she said, using him as her remote tool. She hid within him, within all of them, like a virus.
This was, I realized, not a serious attack at all. Candelario was a crude instrument, powerful and poorly trained. A failure, she would classify him. Expendable. She sent him to me expecting him to be destroyed.
I exchanged a look with Luis, and then cupped a hand behind the boy's head. Bravado or not, he was sweating; I felt the clammy moisture against my fingers.
"Sleep," I said, and took a small measure of Luis's power to course through Candelario's nerves. The boy went limp, head gone heavy against my hand, and Luis softened the ground around his feet while I pulled him free. The grass was tenacious where it had twisted around his legs, but I finally convinced it to withdraw. I eased the boy to his back on the grass and looked up at Luis. "What now?"
He would be a bad enemy to leave at our backs; he might not be clever, but I sensed that he would be implacable. If he couldn't hurt us, he could threaten those around us, innocents caught in the crossfire of powers that they couldn't understand.
Luis was quiet for a moment; then he said, "I'll call Marion." Marion Bearheart, I understood this to mean; she was a powerful Warden in her own right, and she had been left here to oversee the skeleton crew of adepts remaining in the country while the majority of the Wardens were off chasing some other threat--what, I did not know and did not care. It was none of my concern.
Marion Bearheart was also the head of a division of the Wardens which concerned itself with policing those with powers. They were police, judge, jury, and executioner when required.
We had little choice but to involve her. Only her resources could deal with this boy in anything other than a fatal manner.
Luis turned away to make the call on his cell phone, and I considered the boy on the ground. He looked thin, but not unhealthy. No scars or bruises that I could see. He had not been abused, or at least not in a way that left marks. Still, there clung to him an aura of desperation, of darkness, and I wondered if, on some level, his subconscious mind understood how little he meant to the one he followed so ardently.
I dug into his coat pockets, turning up the detritus of a young life--sticks of gum, a small cellular phone, a bus pass which showed he had arrived in town recently, coming to Albuquerque from Los Angeles, which I remembered was in the state of California. Many hours away. In another pocket I found a thin wallet, quite new, which contained only a library card for a place called San Diego, and some thin green sheets of money--not many. None of the other things that men like Luis normally carried in their wallets--no plastic cards, no slips of paper, no receipts for purchases. Only the cash, and the one simple card.
I held the card up to Luis as he finished up his phone call. He frowned as he read it. "San Diego?"
"What's in San Diego?" I asked.
"Awesome shoreline, big naval base, great weather. Apart from that, I have no idea." He handed it back. "Marion's dispatching a team to take the kid into custody while they see what's been done to him. Twelve is too young for anyone to be using the kind of power he did today. It could hurt him."
Regardless of whether or not it hurt him, it would certainly, inevitably bring tragedy to those around him. Candelario was too powerful, and had none of the training and balance of an adult Warden. (Though I wondered, from time to time, how much difference that made with many of the Wardens, who had a tendency to act like spoiled children in their own right.)
"How long before they arrive?"
"You're kidding, right? We're short-staffed everywhere. She's got to send a team out from Los Angeles. They'll fly in, but it'll still be tomorrow before they get here. We need to keep him on ice until then."
I didn't understand on ice until I framed it in the context of his words. Keep him controlled and unconscious, I interpreted. "Is that not kidnapping?"
"Sure," Luis agreed. "If anybody is missing the kid. Which they might be, but we can't give him back like this. He's been brainwashed, like the rest of Pearl's kids. Maybe Marion's people can deprogram him and deactivate his powers until he's old enough to grow into them."
That was a positive interpretation. The other side--the likely side--was that the Wardens would be forced to rem
ove Candelario's powers completely, to ensure he didn't harm himself or others.
But neither of us could afford to take a personal interest in the child's rehabilitation. Isabel, I reminded myself. Isabel must be saved. Manny and Angela's child, Luis's niece. And something--though I hated to admit it--something to me as well. I dared not define it more than a simple admission that I had a connection to the child.
More than that implied threads which bound me into this half-life of human existence, and I was not yet ready to truly explore the depth of these connections.
None of which solved the problem of the boy lying at my feet. "What do we do with him?"
Luis shrugged. "Take him back to the house, I guess," he said. "Can you shield us?" He meant, from prying eyes--a thing which, in fact, I had already done when I realized how this might look to the random humans in the area. It was not invisibility, but it was similar; they would see us, but their brains would attach no significance to it. No memories would capture us.
Luis, on my nod, picked up the limp body of the boy in his arms, and we walked calmly across the street, down the alley (where I, at least, held my breath), and into the backyard of Luis's house. I refastened the lock on the gate, repairing the damage, and followed Luis inside.
He took the boy to Isabel's room, still furnished with all her little treasures and brightly colored toys, and stretched him out on a bedspread covered with cartoon characters. In a curiously kind gesture, he removed the boy's shoes and put them beside the bed, then touched his fingertips to the child's forehead. I sensed the sleep I'd given grow deeper.
He wouldn't wake for hours. "Unless you are planning to be here when he comes out of it, we should restrain him," I said.
"Great. Kidnapping and restraining. I guess we have to tack assault on to that, since we knocked him down."
"He was trying to kill us." I glanced toward the living room. "Also, he burned your couch."
"Well, that makes it all okay." Luis sighed and sat down on a delicate white stool decorated with tiny pink flowers, which did not seem at all suitable. "Seriously, Cass, we're in weird territory here. This kid could make a case that we abducted him, drugged him, tied him up. We could look at major prison time for this if we're not careful."
"He attacked us."
"And you seriously think anybody's going to believe that? Anybody who wasn't there, I mean?" He shook his head. "We need him out of here before he wakes up."
"And how do we do that if the Wardens can't send someone until tomorrow?"
"Meet them halfway," he said. "We stick him in the backseat of a car, put a blanket over him, and drive. I've got a real bad feeling that if we don't, we're going to be sweating in a cell by nightfall."
I didn't really see the danger; with the power we had at our disposal, a jail could hardly hold us--at least, not a jail the way normal, nongifted humans constructed them. Holding any kind of Warden was extremely difficult, but Earth Wardens were by far the worst. Jails were made of metal, of stone, of wood--materials worked from the Earth and connected to her by chains of history.
If he was not unconscious, or drugged, Luis could make short work of most locks and stone walls. So could
I, through him.
"You're not worried about escaping," I realized. He grunted.
"Thing is, I'm not exactly tops on the Good Citizen list. They're going to come for me guns blazing, and there are a lot more of them than there are of us." Interesting that he was now automatically classifying the two of us as facing adversity together. "Trust me, it's better if we don't get into a fight. Not that we can't win it, but we shouldn't have to try. People will get hurt."
It wasn't the nature of the Djinn to be so prudent, but I saw his point, and I nodded. "What do you want me to do?"
"Manny's van is in the garage," Luis said. "Get it started, I'll get the kid. If you could tint the windows a little darker . . ."
Child's play. I went to the garage and did as he asked, and before long, Luis appeared in the door of the garage with the slight burden of the child in his arms. I opened the back sliding door, and we settled the boy across the bench seat in the back, sleeping quietly and wrapped in a colorful blanket from Isabel's closet. He looked even younger now than before, and much more helpless. I saw Luis touch his fingers gently to the boy's forehead, both in gentle affirmation and to ensure the deep sleep continued uninterrupted. I took the passenger seat up front, and Luis closed the back and entered the driver's side.
"You ready?" he asked. I shrugged. "Yeah, me neither. Here, take my phone. You make arrangements with the Wardens. Shoot for someplace halfway."
He backed the van out of the garage and into the street. The day remained quiet and sunny, few people around to see us leave. Manny and Angela's home--Luis's home, now--looked small and abandoned, and it was quickly left behind us as we made the twists and turns to lead us to the freeway.
The Wardens' central hotline connected me directly to Marion Bearheart. I knew her by reputation, as I knew most of the prominent Wardens; she had been well thought of by many of the Djinn, although that had never extended to me. She knew of me--that was certain--because I sensed the guarded tension in her low voice.
"We need a meeting place," I told her, without introduction; there was no need, as she would have been brought up to date by her staff or by Luis in any case. "Halfway between Albuquerque and your team's starting point. We can't wait here."
"You're sure? Crossing state lines with that boy is a federal offense."
"I'm fairly certain that we've already crossed that line," I told her, "and in any case, if we stay we're likely to be betrayed before they can reach us. We need to move."
She didn't argue the point, which was a pleasant surprise. "I'll send the team to Las Vegas," she said. "It'll be about a six-hour drive from where you are, and they can get a short-hop flight. Go to the casino with the pyramid, and ask for Charles Ashworth. I'll alert him that you're coming."
"He is a Warden?"
"Wardens are thin on the ground right now. He's Ma'at."
"And we can trust him?"
"In this, I believe you can." I approved that she limited her trust. Most humans didn't, to their great tragedy. "Call me when you arrive, or if there's any trouble. How powerful is this boy?"
"Very," I said. "Far too powerful for someone his age. He lacks control and focus, but in power I would rank him highly." I paused for a moment, then said, "I believe you will have to remove his powers."
"That's a last resort."
"I believe it will be necessary," I repeated, and shut off the phone. Luis cast me a doubtful look.
"Las Vegas," I told him. "I shall sleep now."
I drifted into darkness, only a little bothered by the noise of the road and the memory of Luis's hands moving on my skin.
When I woke up, it was because the car was skidding violently sideways, heading for an oncoming truck.
Chapter 3
"HOLD ON!" Luis shouted, and wrenched the wheel hard, trying to control our skid. The van jittered, wheels spinning, and finally straightened out. I blinked and grabbed the handle for security as gravity whipped us violently, and cast my senses out to see what had happened.
Ice. The road was covered with it, an impossibility in the current weather conditions. The air was warm, and there had been no freeze, no rain.
And yet the ice was at least an inch thick, slick as glass, and the van was not made for such conditions; its tires spun and slid, trying vainly for traction as our momentum sent us hurtling onward.
Likewise, the truck coming toward us was helpless, driven by its massive kinetic energy. The driver's attempts to steer were creating torque, and the trailer connected to the truck was beginning to slide as well, out of line with the cab.
"Weather Warden," I said. Luis nodded without taking his eyes off the oncoming truck. He looked tense, but unafraid. Timing his actions. With a deep breath, he held out one hand to me, and I took it, feeling the snap of energy between us--c
omplex, deep, and growing intimate.
"Now," he breathed, and sent power out in a tightly focused wave. It plowed through the metal of the tractor trailer, slicing it cleanly in two. The two halves spun away from each other, spiraling outward from the release of energy, and Luis arrowed the van directly into the gap.
As we passed the wounded truck, I glanced over and saw the mangled remains of some large household appliance, which had been sliced in two by Luis's strike.
"Man, I am hell on insurance companies today," he said, with a trembling manic edge to his voice that was not quite humor. "Hold on. Could get bumpy."
The ice was already thinning, and a hundred feet on, it ended altogether. The tires bit into asphalt with an almost physical hiss, throwing us to the side.
Luis hit the gas and arrowed us onward. I looked back over my shoulder. The driver of the truck was out, duckwalking cautiously on the ice, shaking his head at the mess that had been made of his load. He probably did not understand in the least what had just happened, which was best for us all, I thought. We drove for a few tense moments.
Nothing else came at us.
"What do you think?" Luis asked. "You think she got ahead of us somehow? Set a trap? You sense anything else?"
"I didn't sense that one," I pointed out. "But somehow--I don't think so. It must have come from . . ."
From the boy. I felt that conviction strike me hard, and quickly twisted over my shoulder.
The boy's eyes were open, wide, and focused darkly on me.
I waited, but he didn't blink. There was an emptiness in his gaze that chilled me.
"Pull over," I said to Luis, as I unbuckled my seat belt. I climbed over the seats to land lightly next to the boy, who still lay bundled in his red-and-yellow blanket. He didn't move, not even to shift his gaze to follow me.
There was a dry flatness to his eyes.
I pressed my fingertips to his neck, feeling for a pulse. Nothing. No spark of life responding to my touch at all.
The boy was empty.
Candelario was dead.
Luis bailed out of the driver's side up front, slid the cargo door back and climbed inside the van. I sat back and watched as Luis performed the same search I had, but with more effort, more anxiety. He came to the same result, but he didn't simply accept the fact; he pulled the boy down into the flat open space between the seats and began pressing rhythmically on the unresponsive chest, sharp downward pumps that mimicked the beating of a human heart.