"So what am I worth?" I asked. "What are you going to ask?"
"He's not stupid. He grabbed all the Djinn he could find and bottled them. My folks back on the mainland couldn't find much, and what they did find got them killed. So I'll trade you for a cargo full of bottles. How's that? Make you feel any better?" Not really. But I didn't believe for a second that Lewis would trade one Djinn for me, much less a boatload. Besides, rescue was on its way.
Right?
It had been maybe ten minutes since my arrival on the island. The Grand Horizon was supposed to be visible by now, but I couldn't see its distinctive outline anywhere on the open seas around us, and it was way too big to miss. Had something happened? Had Bad Bob managed to sink the second ship, too?
Was I all alone here, at the end?
Well, if I was, I was going to go down fighting.
God, please, don't let him kill me.
Because David really would destroy everything.
Chapter Eleven
Bad Bob talked. He loved to talk, and I let him, because I learned a lot.
Bad Bob, I was starting to realize, really didn't have much. While we'd been sailing around the Atlantic as a big, juicy target, he'd been conducting a multifront war. Those never work; ask Napoleon. He'd had operatives back home who'd gone after the remaining Wardens, on the theory that if they were any damn good, Lewis wouldn't have left them behind. That got him a big fat score of fail. The Wardens didn't lose a single person, or any Djinn.
The Sentinels, who were getting increasingly desperate, had been taken down not by the Wardens themselves but by Homeland Security. They couldn't even defeat a bunch of government men.
That was kind of rich.
What remained of Bad Bob's threat to the Wardens was here, on this island, which meant a bunch of fanatics in rags with the aetheric equivalent of a nuclear device.
Not great, but at least isolated.
I couldn't move much, thanks to my mutated octopus friend, but I could pay attention to Bob's manic ram blings, in case there was something useful to be learned. I didn't know if the thing inside had driven him mad, but it certainly didn't know how to flip the OFF switch.
Eventually, Bad Bob got impatient. He'd expected my rescue to heave over the horizon, but if it was out there, it was smart and very patient.
That was good.
It just wasn't good for me.
"You're sure they got the message?" I asked. I'd managed to find a position sitting on the stones, with my pinned leg carefully held straight out. I didn't want to look too closely at what was happening to me; it felt very much like that tentacle was sinking into my leg, and I'd really had enough of that kind of thing. "Maybe your ransom demand went to voice mail. Sucks when that happens."
"Oh, they know I have you. They just need some incentive, that's all," Bad Bob said cheerfully. The sun was beating down on my unprotected head, and while I wasn't going to get delirious from the heat, or the lack of water, it wasn't the most comfortable I'd ever been.
And I didn't like the sound of incentive.
I liked it a whole lot less when Bad Bob got out of his chair and walked toward me, because as he did, he reached into empty space at his side and brought out the Djinn Ancestor Scriptures.
I stared at it wearily. It wasn't of human origin, this thing; as far as I knew, it wasn't of Djinn making, either. The Ancestor Scriptures probably wasn't even a book, in the strictest sense, although it certainly had that appearance here in this plane - leather binding, wrinkled ancient pages, metal flaps to lock it shut.
What it really was I couldn't say, but I was pretty sure that it had been written by a higher power than the Oracles, and the Oracles of the Djinn had been entrusted with its care and feeding.
Whether this was one of the three originals or a copy, I couldn't say - the copies were just as deadly, if maybe not imbued with as much power.
"How'd you get your hands on that?" I asked Bad Bob as he opened the metal latches and began to flip crackling, translucent pages. "Garage sale at the Villain Supply Company?"
"I took it from an Oracle," he said, but absently, as if it really didn't matter. He wasn't bragging. "Air Oracle. Years ago."
That, I could believe. The Air Oracle had always struck me as hostile, guarded, angry at the world in general and humans in particular. I'd certainly gotten little to no love from him/her/it.
That kind of made sense, if Bad Bob had gotten there first. He'd given bipeds a bad name.
"Hmmmmm." Bad Bob looked down at a page, considered it, and shook his head. "No, too subtle. This - too messy. Ah, here we go. I'll just turn on old DNA inside you, see what we get. Maybe you'll grow a tail, shark teeth, chicken skin..." Well, I definitely wasn't waiting around for that.
I stole Petrie's specialty, and formed a whip of pure plasma out of the air, igniting it with a burst of silvery power out of my special Djinn reserve. It burned hot blue, and where it slithered over the rocks, it left melted trails behind.
I snapped it toward Bad Bob.
He caught it in one hand, wrapped it around his fist, and yanked. I slid forward on the stones; the tentacle wrapped around my left leg tightened, and I felt flesh tearing under the strain.
Dammit.
I let go of the whip, and the fire guttered out, leaving just a trail of greasy smoke between us. Bad Bob, for a change, didn't say anything. He walked over to where I was pinned in place, blood streaking down over the tentacle anchoring me.
"You just don't lie down, do you?" he said. "I always said you were way too good for the Wardens. You made the rest of us look bad." He turned and yelled toward his watching followers. There were a lot fewer than I remembered - maybe twenty, if that. Granted, I'd taken some down earlier, but I didn't think I'd grounded quite that many. He'd probably lost some to incursions and his own craziness - like Petrie - plus I figured that those who could think logically enough to escape had grabbed transportation and taken their chances.
That probably meant they were dead, out there on the ocean, but at least they'd died cleanly, off this black hunk of stone.
His remaining troops scrambled to assemble at his silent wave of command. They were terrified, and they were realizing - all too late - that the savior they'd imagined him to be was all in their heads. He'd used their fears against them.
I imagined he would continue to do that, right up to the end. They had to follow him now.
Where else was there to go?
"Get over here!" he yelled. "Bring our friend along!" The Sentinels began crossing the distance. Some of them were old, some were wounded, none of them looked entirely compos mentis.
They all looked at me like I was dinner - which, considering Bad Bob's earlier pot roast revelation, was a truly sickening thought.
"Moira," Bob said, and held out his hand. A spritely little pixie of a young woman stepped out from the others and came forward to lock fingers with him. In her left hand, she carried an old green wine bottle with an equally ancient cork stuffed in the top.
I didn't know her. She was younger than I was, which surprised me - a lovely young girl with fair skin and full lips and a head of thick, lustrous red hair that glinted gold in its highlights.
She held the bottle up to Bad Bob as if seeking his approval on a choice to serve with dinner. He nodded.
Her eyes were the same blue as Bad Bob's. "Hey, Da," she said. "What can I do to help?" He pecked a kiss onto her perfect milkmaid's cheek. "Oh, just stand there and look pretty."
I felt a step or two behind the curve. "Da?" I said. "Unless she's speaking Russian, you've got to be kidding me. You've got a kid ? Wait - more importantly, some woman actually slept with you? Without a condom?"
"Shut up," the girl said, and temper blazed up in her like magma. That, more than anything else, convinced me of the paternal bloodline.
"Wow," I said. "I don't know whether to say congratulations or condolences. That probably goes for both of you."
"Moira, meet Joanne," Bob said. "Moira's my pride and joy, the fruit of my powerful loins. Isn't she beautiful?"
Moira, like daughters everywhere, looked annoyed. "Oh, can it, Da."
"I'm very proud of her. But you know how that feels, don't you, Jo? You're a mother. More or less."
That made me flinch, as he'd known it would. I wanted to demand that he leave my own child out of this - a half-human/half-Djinn hybrid who'd become one of the three Djinn Oracles. The Earth Oracle, in fact, which was how I'd gained access to that particular set of powers - through her.
Imara had been born full-grown, and she was a lot like me - she could, and did, take care of herself. Besides, the Djinn would have closed ranks around their Oracles, protecting them at all costs.
Imara was safe. I was the one at risk. He wanted me to fear for her, but I just stared him down.
"Nothing?" Bad Bob watched my face. "Huh. Well, okay then. Cross that one off my list." And he pulled the cork on the bottle. "Oh, wait. Let's revisit that." A ghost misted out of the air. My own body, mirrored. My own dark hair. Everything the same, except her golden eyes, and the brick-red layered dress that swirled around her body like smoke.
No. It couldn't be.
"Damn," Bad Bob said, and turned to Moira. "I thought I told you to bring the white. " She smirked. "Sorry."
I didn't pay any attention to their playacting. My brain seemed stuck, unable to move past the word No to any kind of possible outcome to this moment.
My daughter Imara was here. And she couldn't possibly be here. There was no way Bad Bob or any of his minions could have captured her, stolen her from her chapel in Sedona, without triggering an all-out war with the Djinn. They'd fight to the last of them for her, no matter whose daughter she'd been in the beginning. Not only that, but David would have known. There was no way that he and Ashan couldn't have known, if something happened to Imara. The Earth Herself would have fought back to protect an Oracle.
My daughter looked at me with desperate fear in her eyes, and I couldn't stop a pulse of maternal anguish from traveling like lightning through my body.
And then I pushed it away. "Nice try," I said. "But no sale. That's not my daughter." Moira gave her father a harassed look. " Toldyou she'd never buy that malarkey," she said, and grabbed the bottle back from him. The form of the Djinn shifted away from Imara's reflection of my face, took on darker shades and harsher angles. Long, cornrowed hair with gleaming bits of gold beaded in. This was a Djinn I knew.
Rahel.
The Djinn had fought to keep that part of her appearance the same - at what cost, I couldn't quite imagine - but she'd lost the war on clothing. Moira dressed her like a Barbie, and the effects were ridiculous. Rahel was wearing a wine-colored evening gown, sleeveless, with a plunging neckline and a slit up the side. White opera gloves. Dangling diamond earrings.
Rahel was a beautiful creature, but this looked wrong on her. Deeply, stupidly insane.
"Wait," Moira said, and giggled. She added a tiara on top of Rahel's head, a ridiculously ornate confection of chrome and fake diamonds. "Wave to the adoring crowds, Miss America."
Rahel's right hand came up and did a mechanical, empty wave.
Her eyes were locked on mine, and I hated what I saw in them, because it was a very close cousin to the madness that I'd recently seen in David, when he thought I was gone. A desire to crush and destroy and kill everything in her path. She'd been tormented, forced to do horrible things. And she, like David, was not inclined to forgive.
"Hey," I said to Moira. "Seriously, is that the best you can do? Because that's not even original. Honestly, I used to be a Djinn. I had a teenage boy for a master. Now, he had an imagination. You're just - sad. But then again, like father, like daughter..." I got that pulse of fury out of her again. "You shut your whore mouth!"
"Wow. Like I said. Sad. When you have to quote a MySpace graphic, you've just given up." I ignored Moira and looked at her father. "What's the point of having the kid here? Were you just lonely for somebody who had an extra helping of crazy in the veins?" The girl smirked at me, turned, and skinned up the edge of her thin white shirt.
She didn't have a torch mark. Instead, her back was a mass of writhing fire, moving just below the skin - worse than mine had ever gotten, even at its most painful. "I'm one of the chosen," she said, and dropped the fabric. "Like you used to be, before you gave it all up."
"Jesus," I said. "Just when I thought you'd hit rock bottom, Bob. Congratulations on tunneling down."
"It's the family business," he said. "Bringing an end to this travesty we call humanity." I checked the horizon. No ships breaking the smooth outline of the sea.
I was starting to sweat.
"So what now?" I asked. "Not that this isn't fun, but my leg's falling asleep. Can we move the end of the world along a little? Or at least work in a nap?" Moira laughed. Bad Bob shrugged. "Sure," he said. "For you, sweetness, I'll kick it into high gear. But you know that means you're going to suffer, don't you?"
"I figured," I said, and shrugged. "I'm already suffering. These rocks are really uncomfortable."
He laughed. "What a girl," he said, and elbowed his daughter. "Right?" By her expression, she found me a good deal less charming. "She's nothing," she said. "You never needed her, Da. You always had me." Oooooh, jealous. Very jealous. I could use it.
"He's not stupid. He grabbed all the Djinn he could find and bottled them. My folks back on the mainland couldn't find much, and what they did find got them killed. So I'll trade you for a cargo full of bottles. How's that? Make you feel any better?" Not really. But I didn't believe for a second that Lewis would trade one Djinn for me, much less a boatload. Besides, rescue was on its way.
Right?
It had been maybe ten minutes since my arrival on the island. The Grand Horizon was supposed to be visible by now, but I couldn't see its distinctive outline anywhere on the open seas around us, and it was way too big to miss. Had something happened? Had Bad Bob managed to sink the second ship, too?
Was I all alone here, at the end?
Well, if I was, I was going to go down fighting.
God, please, don't let him kill me.
Because David really would destroy everything.
Chapter Eleven
Bad Bob talked. He loved to talk, and I let him, because I learned a lot.
Bad Bob, I was starting to realize, really didn't have much. While we'd been sailing around the Atlantic as a big, juicy target, he'd been conducting a multifront war. Those never work; ask Napoleon. He'd had operatives back home who'd gone after the remaining Wardens, on the theory that if they were any damn good, Lewis wouldn't have left them behind. That got him a big fat score of fail. The Wardens didn't lose a single person, or any Djinn.
The Sentinels, who were getting increasingly desperate, had been taken down not by the Wardens themselves but by Homeland Security. They couldn't even defeat a bunch of government men.
That was kind of rich.
What remained of Bad Bob's threat to the Wardens was here, on this island, which meant a bunch of fanatics in rags with the aetheric equivalent of a nuclear device.
Not great, but at least isolated.
I couldn't move much, thanks to my mutated octopus friend, but I could pay attention to Bob's manic ram blings, in case there was something useful to be learned. I didn't know if the thing inside had driven him mad, but it certainly didn't know how to flip the OFF switch.
Eventually, Bad Bob got impatient. He'd expected my rescue to heave over the horizon, but if it was out there, it was smart and very patient.
That was good.
It just wasn't good for me.
"You're sure they got the message?" I asked. I'd managed to find a position sitting on the stones, with my pinned leg carefully held straight out. I didn't want to look too closely at what was happening to me; it felt very much like that tentacle was sinking into my leg, and I'd really had enough of that kind of thing. "Maybe your ransom demand went to voice mail. Sucks when that happens."
"Oh, they know I have you. They just need some incentive, that's all," Bad Bob said cheerfully. The sun was beating down on my unprotected head, and while I wasn't going to get delirious from the heat, or the lack of water, it wasn't the most comfortable I'd ever been.
And I didn't like the sound of incentive.
I liked it a whole lot less when Bad Bob got out of his chair and walked toward me, because as he did, he reached into empty space at his side and brought out the Djinn Ancestor Scriptures.
I stared at it wearily. It wasn't of human origin, this thing; as far as I knew, it wasn't of Djinn making, either. The Ancestor Scriptures probably wasn't even a book, in the strictest sense, although it certainly had that appearance here in this plane - leather binding, wrinkled ancient pages, metal flaps to lock it shut.
What it really was I couldn't say, but I was pretty sure that it had been written by a higher power than the Oracles, and the Oracles of the Djinn had been entrusted with its care and feeding.
Whether this was one of the three originals or a copy, I couldn't say - the copies were just as deadly, if maybe not imbued with as much power.
"How'd you get your hands on that?" I asked Bad Bob as he opened the metal latches and began to flip crackling, translucent pages. "Garage sale at the Villain Supply Company?"
"I took it from an Oracle," he said, but absently, as if it really didn't matter. He wasn't bragging. "Air Oracle. Years ago."
That, I could believe. The Air Oracle had always struck me as hostile, guarded, angry at the world in general and humans in particular. I'd certainly gotten little to no love from him/her/it.
That kind of made sense, if Bad Bob had gotten there first. He'd given bipeds a bad name.
"Hmmmmm." Bad Bob looked down at a page, considered it, and shook his head. "No, too subtle. This - too messy. Ah, here we go. I'll just turn on old DNA inside you, see what we get. Maybe you'll grow a tail, shark teeth, chicken skin..." Well, I definitely wasn't waiting around for that.
I stole Petrie's specialty, and formed a whip of pure plasma out of the air, igniting it with a burst of silvery power out of my special Djinn reserve. It burned hot blue, and where it slithered over the rocks, it left melted trails behind.
I snapped it toward Bad Bob.
He caught it in one hand, wrapped it around his fist, and yanked. I slid forward on the stones; the tentacle wrapped around my left leg tightened, and I felt flesh tearing under the strain.
Dammit.
I let go of the whip, and the fire guttered out, leaving just a trail of greasy smoke between us. Bad Bob, for a change, didn't say anything. He walked over to where I was pinned in place, blood streaking down over the tentacle anchoring me.
"You just don't lie down, do you?" he said. "I always said you were way too good for the Wardens. You made the rest of us look bad." He turned and yelled toward his watching followers. There were a lot fewer than I remembered - maybe twenty, if that. Granted, I'd taken some down earlier, but I didn't think I'd grounded quite that many. He'd probably lost some to incursions and his own craziness - like Petrie - plus I figured that those who could think logically enough to escape had grabbed transportation and taken their chances.
That probably meant they were dead, out there on the ocean, but at least they'd died cleanly, off this black hunk of stone.
His remaining troops scrambled to assemble at his silent wave of command. They were terrified, and they were realizing - all too late - that the savior they'd imagined him to be was all in their heads. He'd used their fears against them.
I imagined he would continue to do that, right up to the end. They had to follow him now.
Where else was there to go?
"Get over here!" he yelled. "Bring our friend along!" The Sentinels began crossing the distance. Some of them were old, some were wounded, none of them looked entirely compos mentis.
They all looked at me like I was dinner - which, considering Bad Bob's earlier pot roast revelation, was a truly sickening thought.
"Moira," Bob said, and held out his hand. A spritely little pixie of a young woman stepped out from the others and came forward to lock fingers with him. In her left hand, she carried an old green wine bottle with an equally ancient cork stuffed in the top.
I didn't know her. She was younger than I was, which surprised me - a lovely young girl with fair skin and full lips and a head of thick, lustrous red hair that glinted gold in its highlights.
She held the bottle up to Bad Bob as if seeking his approval on a choice to serve with dinner. He nodded.
Her eyes were the same blue as Bad Bob's. "Hey, Da," she said. "What can I do to help?" He pecked a kiss onto her perfect milkmaid's cheek. "Oh, just stand there and look pretty."
I felt a step or two behind the curve. "Da?" I said. "Unless she's speaking Russian, you've got to be kidding me. You've got a kid ? Wait - more importantly, some woman actually slept with you? Without a condom?"
"Shut up," the girl said, and temper blazed up in her like magma. That, more than anything else, convinced me of the paternal bloodline.
"Wow," I said. "I don't know whether to say congratulations or condolences. That probably goes for both of you."
"Moira, meet Joanne," Bob said. "Moira's my pride and joy, the fruit of my powerful loins. Isn't she beautiful?"
Moira, like daughters everywhere, looked annoyed. "Oh, can it, Da."
"I'm very proud of her. But you know how that feels, don't you, Jo? You're a mother. More or less."
That made me flinch, as he'd known it would. I wanted to demand that he leave my own child out of this - a half-human/half-Djinn hybrid who'd become one of the three Djinn Oracles. The Earth Oracle, in fact, which was how I'd gained access to that particular set of powers - through her.
Imara had been born full-grown, and she was a lot like me - she could, and did, take care of herself. Besides, the Djinn would have closed ranks around their Oracles, protecting them at all costs.
Imara was safe. I was the one at risk. He wanted me to fear for her, but I just stared him down.
"Nothing?" Bad Bob watched my face. "Huh. Well, okay then. Cross that one off my list." And he pulled the cork on the bottle. "Oh, wait. Let's revisit that." A ghost misted out of the air. My own body, mirrored. My own dark hair. Everything the same, except her golden eyes, and the brick-red layered dress that swirled around her body like smoke.
No. It couldn't be.
"Damn," Bad Bob said, and turned to Moira. "I thought I told you to bring the white. " She smirked. "Sorry."
I didn't pay any attention to their playacting. My brain seemed stuck, unable to move past the word No to any kind of possible outcome to this moment.
My daughter Imara was here. And she couldn't possibly be here. There was no way Bad Bob or any of his minions could have captured her, stolen her from her chapel in Sedona, without triggering an all-out war with the Djinn. They'd fight to the last of them for her, no matter whose daughter she'd been in the beginning. Not only that, but David would have known. There was no way that he and Ashan couldn't have known, if something happened to Imara. The Earth Herself would have fought back to protect an Oracle.
My daughter looked at me with desperate fear in her eyes, and I couldn't stop a pulse of maternal anguish from traveling like lightning through my body.
And then I pushed it away. "Nice try," I said. "But no sale. That's not my daughter." Moira gave her father a harassed look. " Toldyou she'd never buy that malarkey," she said, and grabbed the bottle back from him. The form of the Djinn shifted away from Imara's reflection of my face, took on darker shades and harsher angles. Long, cornrowed hair with gleaming bits of gold beaded in. This was a Djinn I knew.
Rahel.
The Djinn had fought to keep that part of her appearance the same - at what cost, I couldn't quite imagine - but she'd lost the war on clothing. Moira dressed her like a Barbie, and the effects were ridiculous. Rahel was wearing a wine-colored evening gown, sleeveless, with a plunging neckline and a slit up the side. White opera gloves. Dangling diamond earrings.
Rahel was a beautiful creature, but this looked wrong on her. Deeply, stupidly insane.
"Wait," Moira said, and giggled. She added a tiara on top of Rahel's head, a ridiculously ornate confection of chrome and fake diamonds. "Wave to the adoring crowds, Miss America."
Rahel's right hand came up and did a mechanical, empty wave.
Her eyes were locked on mine, and I hated what I saw in them, because it was a very close cousin to the madness that I'd recently seen in David, when he thought I was gone. A desire to crush and destroy and kill everything in her path. She'd been tormented, forced to do horrible things. And she, like David, was not inclined to forgive.
"Hey," I said to Moira. "Seriously, is that the best you can do? Because that's not even original. Honestly, I used to be a Djinn. I had a teenage boy for a master. Now, he had an imagination. You're just - sad. But then again, like father, like daughter..." I got that pulse of fury out of her again. "You shut your whore mouth!"
"Wow. Like I said. Sad. When you have to quote a MySpace graphic, you've just given up." I ignored Moira and looked at her father. "What's the point of having the kid here? Were you just lonely for somebody who had an extra helping of crazy in the veins?" The girl smirked at me, turned, and skinned up the edge of her thin white shirt.
She didn't have a torch mark. Instead, her back was a mass of writhing fire, moving just below the skin - worse than mine had ever gotten, even at its most painful. "I'm one of the chosen," she said, and dropped the fabric. "Like you used to be, before you gave it all up."
"Jesus," I said. "Just when I thought you'd hit rock bottom, Bob. Congratulations on tunneling down."
"It's the family business," he said. "Bringing an end to this travesty we call humanity." I checked the horizon. No ships breaking the smooth outline of the sea.
I was starting to sweat.
"So what now?" I asked. "Not that this isn't fun, but my leg's falling asleep. Can we move the end of the world along a little? Or at least work in a nap?" Moira laughed. Bad Bob shrugged. "Sure," he said. "For you, sweetness, I'll kick it into high gear. But you know that means you're going to suffer, don't you?"
"I figured," I said, and shrugged. "I'm already suffering. These rocks are really uncomfortable."
He laughed. "What a girl," he said, and elbowed his daughter. "Right?" By her expression, she found me a good deal less charming. "She's nothing," she said. "You never needed her, Da. You always had me." Oooooh, jealous. Very jealous. I could use it.
