The semitruck burst out of the fog like the red fist of a vengeful god, and I felt the surge of power around us as David pulled together a bubble of protection just before the world came to a sudden, sharp end.
"Hey."
I jerked awake, sweating and trembling. The sun was coming up, a hot blur on the horizon, and I wasn't dead - we weren't dead, and there wasn't any truck. There hadn't been any truck for hours, since we'd left it behind at the gas station.
We were alive. It had been a dream . . . no, not a dream, a goddamn nightmare, so real it still ached in every muscle. My heart was thumping so fast it felt as if it were on the verge of needing a shock to bring it back to normal rhythm. I was damp with cold sweat.
David was looking at me with worry in his eyes. His hand was on mine, just as it had been in the dream. Exactly as it had been. I twisted around, sure I was about to see the specter of the truck rising up behind us, but no.
Nothing but road, and early-morning mist, and the traffic of another normal, busy day. I recognized the road. I'd traveled it before I'd met David, driving non-stop through the night, heading for Lewis's last-known address in a desperate bid to save myself from a death sentence.
Why did it feel as though I were still on the run?
David chose not to ask about my all-too-obvious freak-out, for which I was extremely grateful. He downshifted the Mustang and blended smoothly into the traffic as he reached down between the seats and came up with a smoking hot cup of coffee. Not a word spoken. I cried out in relief, grabbed it, and found it was exactly right - just hot enough, not one degree over, although I would have gladly chugged it if it had been the same mean temperature as lava, damn the burns and blisters. I felt badly off balance and unsteady.
When I'd taken enough in that I felt part of the world again, I sighed, tilted my head back against the seat, and asked, "So how far do we have to go?"
"Couple of hours," he said. "We'll be there on time. Do you need a comfort stop?"
Of course I did. We found a small roadside diner with clean facilities and a pretty spectacular breakfast. Probably not too smart to order the Heart Attack Special, given my earlier cardiac fibrillations, but damn, eggs, biscuits, and gravy all sounded like heaven. If heaven came with a side of bacon.
David watched me consume with a lazy sort of pleasure in his expression as he nursed a cup of coffee and a bowl of mixed fruit. If he noticed that the waitresses kept whispering and looking him over, he didn't mention it. "That was some dream," he said. "What happened?"
I didn't want to talk about it. Unlike most dreams, this one remained vivid and terrifying. "We died," I said. No explanations. His eyebrows climbed, and I saw him think about asking for details, and then think better. "That truck. Did you ever see - "
He was already shaking his head. "There was nothing weird about the truck, Jo," he said. "It turned off and went its own way a little after you fell asleep. It was a Peterbilt, carrying a load of television sets. The driver was a Haitian immigrant. Want to know his name?"
I paused, studying him. A forkful of eggs cooled on my upraised fork. "You really did pay attention."
"Of course I did. He has six kids, a wife, and an elderly mother. I know everything about him, everything about the truck, everything about its cargo. I wasn't taking any chances. Not with your life. I've nearly lost you too many times." He said it without any emphasis, but it went straight to my heart. I lowered my fork and put it down, and fought to catch my breath. He leaned forward, cup cradled in both hands with exquisite care. "Nothing will happen. You have to trust me on that."
I held his gaze. "And you have to trust me that everything may not be as simple as you think it is."
"You're talking about the package." I nodded. "Jo, I promise, I'll try to keep an open mind. No matter how . . . unlikely all this seems to me."
He really was trying. More than that, I knew it wasn't easy for him to devote so much time to me; there were constant demands in the Djinn world, just as in the human one. He had a day job, after all.
"I love you," I said. "More than chocolate. And you know how much that means to me."
"Eat your eggs," he said, and gave me that slightly off-kilter smile, with an intriguing tilt of his head. "Wouldn't want you to faint like a girl later and blame it on low blood sugar. Again."
"Hey, buster! When have I ever fainted like a girl?"
He picked up the spoon from his fruit bowl and licked it, slowly and contemplatively, tongue moving very deliberately around the sleek curves. "I can think of one or two times."
"That," I said severely, "is totally unfair."
"What is?" He dipped the spoon into the little pot the waitress had left out for my coffee, and then licked that off, tongue curving lovingly into the bowl of the spoon. "Mmmm. Fresh cream."
I think one of the waitresses dropped a water glass. I distinctly heard one of the other ones murmur something that sounded like Thank you, Jesus.
"Stop it. Not even you can make me faint with desire, " I said. I was trying for stern, but it was coming out more indecisive than anything else. It wasn't that I was weak-willed; it was that nobody was immune to David when he really put effort into it. Especially me.
"Oh, I don't know," he said, and even his voice was pure seduction. "Five minutes from now, when I do this thing I was just thinking about - "
"Is it that thing with your little finger? Because I'm ready for that one this time."
"Oh no," he said, very earnestly. "I was thinking of the thing with my tongue, actually."
"What thing with your tongue?"
His smile deepened, and sparks flew in the darkness of his eyes. "You sure you really want me to demonstrate? Right here?"
I was pretty sure that if he did, there'd be a lot of women asking to order what I was having. I took a deep, slow, determined breath, and said, "Play nice, David."
"I'm always nice."
Oh, I didn't think so. That was part of his dark, chocolate-rich charm, and as I'd already noted to him . . . I really couldn't resist chocolate.
He ate the rest of the fruit, nibbling on the moist bites with such suggestiveness that I think every waitress in the diner made sure to come by and ask if there was anything at all she could do for him. He never noticed. He was having too much fun making me squirm.
But when I glanced down involuntarily at my watch, he sighed, ate the last bite of cantaloupe, and nodded. "Right," he said. "Let's get going."
"As soon as this is over - "
"Don't think I won't hold you to it."
Chapter Six
When we came out of the diner, there was a van pulled up behind the car, neatly blocking us in. I felt my nerves tighten up and shiver, but I silently told them to stand down; I'd already made a fool of myself over the semitruck, and this would turn out to be just another idiot picking up, dropping off, or parking badly. In fact, it even looked like a delivery van - battered, a bit weather-faded.
The sunlight caught a glitter on the door, and I paused, blinked, and tried to convince myself it was nothing but random metallic paint flecks. Tried hard, but got nothing. I gave it up and took a quick look in Oversight.
The van took on the dimensions and solidarity of one of those military Humvees, wickedly armored and decorated with spikes. Tough and badass - that was its essential character, interpreted for me visually by whatever processing filter the Wardens had that others didn't. The aetheric showed truth, but it was a subtle and strange kind of truth.
One thing was unequivocal about the truck, though: On the door panel blazed the stylized sun emblem of the Wardens.
I opened my mouth to warn David, but he already knew, of course. He stopped, studying without expression the van and whatever occupants it held. All the playfulness was gone, and he reminded me of a hunting leopard, lean and powerful. His eyes had gone a color that should have been a warning, and probably would have been to anybody with sense.
Unfortunately, the Warden who got out of the van was Lee Antonelli, and he had less sense than a pet rock. He was a big guy, and a gifted Fire Warden, but when it came to subtleties, he was likely to crush them under his big steel-toed boots and never notice. How he'd survived the Warden/Djinn conflicts was anybody's guess, but the fact that he hadn't had a Djinn issued to him in the first place was enough to keep him off the initial hit list, and I strongly suspected he'd spent most of the conflict hiding out.
I said Lee was big. Not brave. Hence, of course, the unreasonably tough shell of attitude on his van, not on his person.
He leaned against the passenger side of the van and crossed his arms; they were impressively muscled, and he'd invested a small fortune in body art. It should have made him look intimidating. Instead, I thought it made him look like someone doing hard-ass by the numbers, especially when coupled with the shaved head. "Warden," Lee said to me. He didn't so much as glance at David. I wondered why, and then I realized that Lee couldn't see him. David had made himself invisible, although he was still there to my eyes.
"Warden," I replied to Antonelli coolly, "who taught you how to park? I'd say Sears, but really, they do a much better job. Maybe you were absent the day they explained what those parallel lines in the lot are for - "
"Shut up, Baldwin. I'm supposed to pick you up and escort you in," he said. "Since whatever you've got going on is so damn important, I guess I'm riding shotgun."
This was weird, and it wasn't normal. Lewis knew I was coming; he knew David was traveling with me. Why send Antonelli, of all people, whom he knew I couldn't stand? Lewis might work in mysterious ways, but that was downright impenetrable. I bought time to think by digging a pair of big sunglasses out of my purse and putting them on. There. Without a clear view of my eyes, Antonelli was going to have a tougher time figuring out what I'd do. "Shotgun," I repeated, "so you're the bodyguard. Flattering."
Antonelli ran one hand over his bullet-shaped shaved head and gave me a grim-looking smile. "Most ladies would say so."
"Save the smarm, I'm not in the mood."
He shrugged. Flirting was reflexive for him; he didn't fancy me, except in the abstract way that somebody like Antonelli fancied anyone with internal sex organs. If I stood still long enough, he'd gladly take a turn, but other than that, I was furniture. "Playtime's over, then. Let's move. In the van."
I stayed right where I was, next to the door of the Mustang. "I'm driving my own car." Technically, David was driving, but Antonelli might not know that. In fact, he didn't look nearly worried enough, so I doubted he had any idea there was an angry Djinn standing a couple of feet away, eyes lit up like Halloween lanterns.
"Look, I don't know the plan; I'm just following orders. Lewis says take the van; we take the van," Antonelli said. "I don't ask no questions; neither do you. Come on, sister, let's go. I've got things to do."
There was a ring of sweat around the high neck of his muscle shirt, and dark streaks under the arms. Unless Antonelli had come straight from the gym, something was up. He was nervous.
"We can sort that out," I said, and pulled my cell phone from my pocket. "Let me just call - "
The circuitry inside the phone fried, boiled into vapor in an instant. I dropped the red-hot case and blew on my blistered fingers. Antonelli hadn't moved, but something about him had changed. I could almost smell it: the burned-metal bite of desperation, mingled with a coppery odor of fear.
"Get in the fucking van," he said. "I'm not playing, bitch. Don't make this a showdown; there are too many people around. Kids. I don't want to do that, and neither do you. Let's keep this calm."
Oh God, he was serious. I could tell it from the sweat on his skin, the dark shadows in his eyes. He was a whole lot more scared of someone else than he was of me.
That needed to change, right now.
I dropped my purse to the ground, glad I'd donned the sunglasses. I made sure my feet were firmly planted, shoulder-width apart, the right slightly forward to give me a more stable base.
"You're right," I said quietly. "I don't want to do this. You don't want to do this. But somehow, I think it's going to happen anyway, because I can't get in that van, Lee. Whatever's going on, I can't take the chance. Let's think this through before we both start something that will end badly."
David had not moved. Hadn't spoken. Still, I was feeling the vibration of menace from him like the subsonic pulses from a volcano about to blow; this was going to go south, very badly, very fast.
"Who is it?" I asked. "Lee, tell me who's making you do this. It's not Lewis. It's not the Wardens. Somebody's forcing you to take me out of circulation. Come on, man, we don't have to make this a throw down. We can talk about it, work it out." While I talked, I used my Earth powers, subtly sending calming vibrations to him, lulling him into a state in which he might be more inclined to listen. To trust.
Antonelli shook himself, as if he were throwing off a wrestling hold, and I knew my brief second of opportunity was gone. "Save it," he snapped. "I'm not some wet-behind-the-ears trainee. You can't con me."
And then Lee Antonelli, one of the best natural Fire Wardens I had ever seen, declared war.
I'll give him credit; it was a strategic strike, not just a general firestorm. He formed a fireball and lobbed it not at me, but at my car. Clearly, he did not understand my relationship with cars. He'd have gotten off easier if he'd gone ahead and set my hair on fire. I'd have taken it less personally.
"Hey."
I jerked awake, sweating and trembling. The sun was coming up, a hot blur on the horizon, and I wasn't dead - we weren't dead, and there wasn't any truck. There hadn't been any truck for hours, since we'd left it behind at the gas station.
We were alive. It had been a dream . . . no, not a dream, a goddamn nightmare, so real it still ached in every muscle. My heart was thumping so fast it felt as if it were on the verge of needing a shock to bring it back to normal rhythm. I was damp with cold sweat.
David was looking at me with worry in his eyes. His hand was on mine, just as it had been in the dream. Exactly as it had been. I twisted around, sure I was about to see the specter of the truck rising up behind us, but no.
Nothing but road, and early-morning mist, and the traffic of another normal, busy day. I recognized the road. I'd traveled it before I'd met David, driving non-stop through the night, heading for Lewis's last-known address in a desperate bid to save myself from a death sentence.
Why did it feel as though I were still on the run?
David chose not to ask about my all-too-obvious freak-out, for which I was extremely grateful. He downshifted the Mustang and blended smoothly into the traffic as he reached down between the seats and came up with a smoking hot cup of coffee. Not a word spoken. I cried out in relief, grabbed it, and found it was exactly right - just hot enough, not one degree over, although I would have gladly chugged it if it had been the same mean temperature as lava, damn the burns and blisters. I felt badly off balance and unsteady.
When I'd taken enough in that I felt part of the world again, I sighed, tilted my head back against the seat, and asked, "So how far do we have to go?"
"Couple of hours," he said. "We'll be there on time. Do you need a comfort stop?"
Of course I did. We found a small roadside diner with clean facilities and a pretty spectacular breakfast. Probably not too smart to order the Heart Attack Special, given my earlier cardiac fibrillations, but damn, eggs, biscuits, and gravy all sounded like heaven. If heaven came with a side of bacon.
David watched me consume with a lazy sort of pleasure in his expression as he nursed a cup of coffee and a bowl of mixed fruit. If he noticed that the waitresses kept whispering and looking him over, he didn't mention it. "That was some dream," he said. "What happened?"
I didn't want to talk about it. Unlike most dreams, this one remained vivid and terrifying. "We died," I said. No explanations. His eyebrows climbed, and I saw him think about asking for details, and then think better. "That truck. Did you ever see - "
He was already shaking his head. "There was nothing weird about the truck, Jo," he said. "It turned off and went its own way a little after you fell asleep. It was a Peterbilt, carrying a load of television sets. The driver was a Haitian immigrant. Want to know his name?"
I paused, studying him. A forkful of eggs cooled on my upraised fork. "You really did pay attention."
"Of course I did. He has six kids, a wife, and an elderly mother. I know everything about him, everything about the truck, everything about its cargo. I wasn't taking any chances. Not with your life. I've nearly lost you too many times." He said it without any emphasis, but it went straight to my heart. I lowered my fork and put it down, and fought to catch my breath. He leaned forward, cup cradled in both hands with exquisite care. "Nothing will happen. You have to trust me on that."
I held his gaze. "And you have to trust me that everything may not be as simple as you think it is."
"You're talking about the package." I nodded. "Jo, I promise, I'll try to keep an open mind. No matter how . . . unlikely all this seems to me."
He really was trying. More than that, I knew it wasn't easy for him to devote so much time to me; there were constant demands in the Djinn world, just as in the human one. He had a day job, after all.
"I love you," I said. "More than chocolate. And you know how much that means to me."
"Eat your eggs," he said, and gave me that slightly off-kilter smile, with an intriguing tilt of his head. "Wouldn't want you to faint like a girl later and blame it on low blood sugar. Again."
"Hey, buster! When have I ever fainted like a girl?"
He picked up the spoon from his fruit bowl and licked it, slowly and contemplatively, tongue moving very deliberately around the sleek curves. "I can think of one or two times."
"That," I said severely, "is totally unfair."
"What is?" He dipped the spoon into the little pot the waitress had left out for my coffee, and then licked that off, tongue curving lovingly into the bowl of the spoon. "Mmmm. Fresh cream."
I think one of the waitresses dropped a water glass. I distinctly heard one of the other ones murmur something that sounded like Thank you, Jesus.
"Stop it. Not even you can make me faint with desire, " I said. I was trying for stern, but it was coming out more indecisive than anything else. It wasn't that I was weak-willed; it was that nobody was immune to David when he really put effort into it. Especially me.
"Oh, I don't know," he said, and even his voice was pure seduction. "Five minutes from now, when I do this thing I was just thinking about - "
"Is it that thing with your little finger? Because I'm ready for that one this time."
"Oh no," he said, very earnestly. "I was thinking of the thing with my tongue, actually."
"What thing with your tongue?"
His smile deepened, and sparks flew in the darkness of his eyes. "You sure you really want me to demonstrate? Right here?"
I was pretty sure that if he did, there'd be a lot of women asking to order what I was having. I took a deep, slow, determined breath, and said, "Play nice, David."
"I'm always nice."
Oh, I didn't think so. That was part of his dark, chocolate-rich charm, and as I'd already noted to him . . . I really couldn't resist chocolate.
He ate the rest of the fruit, nibbling on the moist bites with such suggestiveness that I think every waitress in the diner made sure to come by and ask if there was anything at all she could do for him. He never noticed. He was having too much fun making me squirm.
But when I glanced down involuntarily at my watch, he sighed, ate the last bite of cantaloupe, and nodded. "Right," he said. "Let's get going."
"As soon as this is over - "
"Don't think I won't hold you to it."
Chapter Six
When we came out of the diner, there was a van pulled up behind the car, neatly blocking us in. I felt my nerves tighten up and shiver, but I silently told them to stand down; I'd already made a fool of myself over the semitruck, and this would turn out to be just another idiot picking up, dropping off, or parking badly. In fact, it even looked like a delivery van - battered, a bit weather-faded.
The sunlight caught a glitter on the door, and I paused, blinked, and tried to convince myself it was nothing but random metallic paint flecks. Tried hard, but got nothing. I gave it up and took a quick look in Oversight.
The van took on the dimensions and solidarity of one of those military Humvees, wickedly armored and decorated with spikes. Tough and badass - that was its essential character, interpreted for me visually by whatever processing filter the Wardens had that others didn't. The aetheric showed truth, but it was a subtle and strange kind of truth.
One thing was unequivocal about the truck, though: On the door panel blazed the stylized sun emblem of the Wardens.
I opened my mouth to warn David, but he already knew, of course. He stopped, studying without expression the van and whatever occupants it held. All the playfulness was gone, and he reminded me of a hunting leopard, lean and powerful. His eyes had gone a color that should have been a warning, and probably would have been to anybody with sense.
Unfortunately, the Warden who got out of the van was Lee Antonelli, and he had less sense than a pet rock. He was a big guy, and a gifted Fire Warden, but when it came to subtleties, he was likely to crush them under his big steel-toed boots and never notice. How he'd survived the Warden/Djinn conflicts was anybody's guess, but the fact that he hadn't had a Djinn issued to him in the first place was enough to keep him off the initial hit list, and I strongly suspected he'd spent most of the conflict hiding out.
I said Lee was big. Not brave. Hence, of course, the unreasonably tough shell of attitude on his van, not on his person.
He leaned against the passenger side of the van and crossed his arms; they were impressively muscled, and he'd invested a small fortune in body art. It should have made him look intimidating. Instead, I thought it made him look like someone doing hard-ass by the numbers, especially when coupled with the shaved head. "Warden," Lee said to me. He didn't so much as glance at David. I wondered why, and then I realized that Lee couldn't see him. David had made himself invisible, although he was still there to my eyes.
"Warden," I replied to Antonelli coolly, "who taught you how to park? I'd say Sears, but really, they do a much better job. Maybe you were absent the day they explained what those parallel lines in the lot are for - "
"Shut up, Baldwin. I'm supposed to pick you up and escort you in," he said. "Since whatever you've got going on is so damn important, I guess I'm riding shotgun."
This was weird, and it wasn't normal. Lewis knew I was coming; he knew David was traveling with me. Why send Antonelli, of all people, whom he knew I couldn't stand? Lewis might work in mysterious ways, but that was downright impenetrable. I bought time to think by digging a pair of big sunglasses out of my purse and putting them on. There. Without a clear view of my eyes, Antonelli was going to have a tougher time figuring out what I'd do. "Shotgun," I repeated, "so you're the bodyguard. Flattering."
Antonelli ran one hand over his bullet-shaped shaved head and gave me a grim-looking smile. "Most ladies would say so."
"Save the smarm, I'm not in the mood."
He shrugged. Flirting was reflexive for him; he didn't fancy me, except in the abstract way that somebody like Antonelli fancied anyone with internal sex organs. If I stood still long enough, he'd gladly take a turn, but other than that, I was furniture. "Playtime's over, then. Let's move. In the van."
I stayed right where I was, next to the door of the Mustang. "I'm driving my own car." Technically, David was driving, but Antonelli might not know that. In fact, he didn't look nearly worried enough, so I doubted he had any idea there was an angry Djinn standing a couple of feet away, eyes lit up like Halloween lanterns.
"Look, I don't know the plan; I'm just following orders. Lewis says take the van; we take the van," Antonelli said. "I don't ask no questions; neither do you. Come on, sister, let's go. I've got things to do."
There was a ring of sweat around the high neck of his muscle shirt, and dark streaks under the arms. Unless Antonelli had come straight from the gym, something was up. He was nervous.
"We can sort that out," I said, and pulled my cell phone from my pocket. "Let me just call - "
The circuitry inside the phone fried, boiled into vapor in an instant. I dropped the red-hot case and blew on my blistered fingers. Antonelli hadn't moved, but something about him had changed. I could almost smell it: the burned-metal bite of desperation, mingled with a coppery odor of fear.
"Get in the fucking van," he said. "I'm not playing, bitch. Don't make this a showdown; there are too many people around. Kids. I don't want to do that, and neither do you. Let's keep this calm."
Oh God, he was serious. I could tell it from the sweat on his skin, the dark shadows in his eyes. He was a whole lot more scared of someone else than he was of me.
That needed to change, right now.
I dropped my purse to the ground, glad I'd donned the sunglasses. I made sure my feet were firmly planted, shoulder-width apart, the right slightly forward to give me a more stable base.
"You're right," I said quietly. "I don't want to do this. You don't want to do this. But somehow, I think it's going to happen anyway, because I can't get in that van, Lee. Whatever's going on, I can't take the chance. Let's think this through before we both start something that will end badly."
David had not moved. Hadn't spoken. Still, I was feeling the vibration of menace from him like the subsonic pulses from a volcano about to blow; this was going to go south, very badly, very fast.
"Who is it?" I asked. "Lee, tell me who's making you do this. It's not Lewis. It's not the Wardens. Somebody's forcing you to take me out of circulation. Come on, man, we don't have to make this a throw down. We can talk about it, work it out." While I talked, I used my Earth powers, subtly sending calming vibrations to him, lulling him into a state in which he might be more inclined to listen. To trust.
Antonelli shook himself, as if he were throwing off a wrestling hold, and I knew my brief second of opportunity was gone. "Save it," he snapped. "I'm not some wet-behind-the-ears trainee. You can't con me."
And then Lee Antonelli, one of the best natural Fire Wardens I had ever seen, declared war.
I'll give him credit; it was a strategic strike, not just a general firestorm. He formed a fireball and lobbed it not at me, but at my car. Clearly, he did not understand my relationship with cars. He'd have gotten off easier if he'd gone ahead and set my hair on fire. I'd have taken it less personally.
