"I can't allow this folly," Ashan said. "Maybe you truly believe this is right, but we can't take the chance. You expose us all to slavery, David, not just yourself. No."
The minister looked justifiably bewildered, and not just by the sudden popping in of supernatural guests. I was thinking his brain had skipped right over that part. The human race was absolutely stellar at plausible deniability. "But I haven't asked for any objections, " he said faintly. "We don't do that anymore. Really, this is most - "
Ashan ignored him. Ignored me, too. He was focused only on David, and if David was a glorious bright star, burning with potential, Ashan was his polar opposite: leached of color; pale as an undertaker; grim as impending death. He was even wearing black - a severe suit, with a black tie paired with a white shirt. His idea of formal attire, I guessed. It might have even passed, if it hadn't been for the bitter expression and the cold, cold fire in his teal-blue eyes.
"You have no place here," David said. I felt the power of the Earth rising up in him, rich and thick and irresistible; Ashan was a Conduit, yes, but this was David's territory, David's home ground, in a sense. Ashan was an intruder, uninvited and unwelcome. "Leave us."
Ashan slowly shook his head. "I don't come for myself," he said. "I come for all of us, to ask. Don't do this, David. Don't destroy us again, for your personal satisfaction."
I'd expected assault, not a plea, and especially not a plea that had the ring of sincerity to it.
David didn't respond. He gazed at Ashan, fire in his eyes, but he didn't lash out.
Ashan said, even more quietly, "I also didn't come alone." He didn't move, not even his gaze, but I felt the shocking flare on the aetheric, and suddenly there was a presence beside him. It was human in shape, but not human at all - a wild power, barely contained by flesh. His skin was hot red, shifting with patterns of color, and his eyes were the pure white of the hottest flame. I'd never seen him take human form before, but I knew him.
The Fire Oracle had left his protected home in a crypt in Seacasket. I hadn't even known he could.
With a whisper rather than a flare, another presence shaped itself out of the air on Ashan's other side. Milk-glass skin, a vessel containing fog and ice. The Air Oracle was only barely human as well, and androgynous in form. Two of them. The Air Oracle had no fixed abode that I knew of, but still, it took a major event for it to manifest so publicly.
I knew, without even asking, that it had never happened before. Not in all the history of the Djinn.
Another surge of power, this one familiar, so bitterly and sweetly familiar. My daughter, Imara - human and far more than human, beautiful and unreachable and remote. She looked sad, but sure of herself - a mirror of my face and form, but with a totally individual core she'd inherited from both me and her father.
She was standing with the others, against us.
David closed his eyes, and I knew it hurt him as much as it did me. When he opened them, his eyes had gone dark, almost human. "You're sure," he said. "Imara?"
I thought for a few heartbeats that she might defect, might throw her support to us, but then she bowed her head. "I'm sure," she whispered. "Too dangerous. So much at risk. You can't, Dad. You just . . . can't."
Silence. The audience was whispering. I couldn't imagine what they were making out of this. Lewis had moved Cherise out of the line of fire, in case there was going to be any, but somehow I knew this wasn't going to come to fireworks. Not this time.
David slowly turned back to me and said, very simply, "I do."
My mind went blank for a second, and I felt the seductive flow of power wash over me. Half done. This was an exchange of vows; his was powerful, but not complete without my consent. The minister nervously cleared his throat, eyes darting from David, to me, to Ashan, to the three Oracles.
"Do you, Joanne - " His clerical voice was about half an octave higher than it ought to have been. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Do you, Joanne, take this man - "
"Wait," I said.
All of the Djinn - even Ashan - let out a sigh, and David's grip on my hand tightened painfully. His eyes went wide, and his skin bone-pale.
"Jo - "
"Just wait," I repeated. "Ashan, the Oracles - you admitted yourself that you don't know what will happen, David. How can we do this? How can we change the rules like this when we don't even know what's coming for us?" My voice broke. My heart broke. I was watching the fire die in him, and it hurt. "It isn't about us. It's about them, all of the people who depend on us!"
"I'm willing to take the risk," he whispered. "Believe in us, Jo. Please. Believe."
His hand came up to trace my cheek, and I felt tears well up in my eyes and burn trails down my cheeks. His fingertips came away wet from my face, and he raised them to his lips.
Please.
I might have changed my mind. I can't swear that I would have, or I wouldn't; the fracture between my head and my heart ran right down to my soul.
I didn't have time to find out.
The aetheric caught fire. At first I thought it was David, erupting in frustration and anger at me for what I'd done, but then I realized that it wasn't him at all.
We were under attack.
David spun away from me. So did the other Djinn, all facing outward, blindly seeking the threat. "You know what to do," David shouted to Ashan. "Protect the Oracles!"
A silver scar formed on David's right cheek, then darkened, and the infection I'd seen earlier at Ortega's house began to spread its tendrils again under his skin, moving frighteningly fast.
"David!" I grabbed for him, but he spun away, avoiding me. Doing his job. Dispatching his waiting Djinn according to some plan he hadn't shared with me. . . . Lewis was moving, too, shouting at the Wardens. Everybody had a plan, it seemed, except for me.
I felt the black wave sweep over me. It wasn't meant for me; it was centered on David, but even the edges of it made me feel faint and sick.
He collapsed against me, shuddering, and I felt a scream trying to rip loose from him. I was the only thing holding him up, the only defense he had left.
The Oracles vanished, leaving gusts of hot wind in their place that fluttered the pale layers of my gown. David's weight pulled me down. It seemed as though he was growing heavier with every passing second.
Ashan stood there, immobile, impassive, perfect.
"Help!" I screamed at him, and grabbed his hand. It felt like cold marble. "Damn you, he's your brother! Do something!" The two of them were the same, united by purpose and power, if not by the ties of blood that humans understood.
Ashan pulled free of my grip. "If you want him," he said, "save him. He won't save himself. He could, if he wished."
I couldn't hold David up. Lewis lunged forward and tried to help take his weight, but there was something strange happening here, something worse than anything I'd expected.
"God," Lewis muttered. "Hold on, we're trying to put up the shield. Hold on - "
The Sentinels attacked from all around us, on every front. I heard some physical confrontations, and saw a bloom of fire erupt somewhere off to the side, followed by shouts and screams. Security piled on top of me and began hustling me away; I gathered up my train with both hands, clutching it out of the way of traffic. Lewis had arranged our forces in teams, but even so, the assault was shocking in its suddenness and force. I grabbed Lewis's arm as he pushed past and shook it fiercely. "They're using Rahel to get to him! If you're going to counter, it has to be now. Right now! Go!"
"Already on it," Lewis snapped, and spun away. "Stay here. Draw them if you can."
David was down on the ground, surrounded by fierce-eyed Djinn protectors ready to fight anything that came for him, but they let me through. I sank down at his side in a flutter of silk and held him. He was gasping and trembling, eyes molten gold but with ominous sparks of darkness flying through them. The gray mottling on his face was taking on a shocking life of its own, moving dark tendrils beneath his skin. Seeking out the aetheric pipeline that made David the Conduit. Once it had that . . .
"Let her go!" I shouted, and grabbed him by the lapels. "David, you have to let Rahel go, please!"
He shook his head. His hand grabbed for mine and clenched tightly. "Say it," he said. His voice was raw in his throat, almost primal. "Say the words. Say it!"
I felt tears trembling in my eyes. The whole world was coming apart. I heard the crack of gunfire somewhere off to the side, and more screaming. Someone was shouting about a Warden down; someone else was warning of a Sentinel attack coming in the form of a tidal wave from the ocean.
This couldn't be right. It couldn't be.
I squeezed my eyes shut, felt the tears burn down my cheeks, and whispered, "Oh God help me, I do. I do."
There was an eerie second of utter silence, not even the wind moving. Conflicts stopped, pinned on the instant, and I felt something inside me shifting, aligning like a puzzle box.
And a wave of pure golden power flowed into me, through me, and out.
I opened my eyes and saw David watching my face with a look I could think of only as awed relief. The gray faded from his face, back to a silvery scar. Gone.
And I felt the echoing power between us build, and build, and build, waves on the beach, pounding and ceaseless, cascading out into the other Djinn, enhancing their raw power and refining it into surgical weapons.
I'd just made the New Djinn a quantum leap more powerful, by giving them a second anchor into the aetheric.
I'd also just gotten married, even if the minister hadn't quite gotten around to saying the words before he'd fled to the hills, along with most of the others.
The Djinn snapped a glowing shield of power over us, brilliant as shimmering gold. It covered not just the two of us, but all of the Palms - hell, it went so far out that it might have been covering all of Florida. Whatever the Sentinels were doing, they quit doing it, fast, rightly recognizing that they had just been dealt a very serious blow. It would take them time to figure out exactly what had happened.
"Did you know?" I felt giddy, halfway to heaven. Endorphins kicking in. "Did you plan that?"
David grabbed me and kissed me, long and hard, with a good deal less restraint than most bridegrooms would have shown under similar circumstances. His hands roamed, stroking down the silk, crushing it to my hips, his fingertips brushing over the skin left exposed by the open V of the corset at my back.
"Absolutely," he said, deadpan, when he pulled back.
"You had no idea."
"I knew."
"You liar. You guessed!"
He laughed and buried his face against my neck, picked me up, and whirled me around in the deserted gazebo. A storm wind lashed surf against the rocks, and a wild cascade of lightning slashed out of the sky and grounded spectacularly out at sea. It was the joy of the Djinn, made real.
David sobered, but the light stayed in him, burning fiercely. He kissed me again, this time more gently, with a promise of things to come, and I felt the curling smile on his lips. "I need to go," he said. "Things to do."
"Same here," I said. "They'll be looking for an explanation of what just happened."
He stepped back, and his gaze raked me from head to toe, ravenous and warm. "Don't change," he said. "I'll be back. I want to take that off you."
I shivered, nodded, and watched my lover - no, I supposed I was going to have to get used to the idea of husband - mist away on the hot, humid breeze.
I couldn't see any other Djinn, but there were plenty of hired security, all looking grim and efficient as they herded guests to cover. I had a whole contingent of them stationed near me, all facing outward. I reached up and tapped the nearest one on the shoulder. "Hey!"
"Ma'am?" He angled in my direction a huge ear that looked as though it had been badly mangled in some kind of sculpting accident, but didn't turn to face me. "You ready to go?"
"Guess so. Looks like the wedding's over!"
He snorted. "Right. Let's get you to the safe zone!"
"Sure," I said. I felt giddy. Almost invincible, actually, but even if bullets might bounce off me, I was pretty sure they wouldn't do the dress any good. Priorities. "Hey, didn't you notice all the cool stuff going on? Supernatural stuff all over the place?"
"Lady," he said wearily, "I've guarded the Rolling Stones. Trust me, you guys are amateurs."
When the phalanx of guards closed in around me, it was like being in a moving tank of body armor; I clutched the train of my dress well out of reach of their boots, and hustled along down the path, up the steps, and into the narrow hallways I'd come through before. No staff were smiling at me this time; they were probably busy toting up the damage charges. I hoped David's black AmEx was up to the job.
My security detail arrowed me straight past Lewis and a group of Wardens all huddled together; I tried to bail out to talk to them, but clearly that wasn't in the plans. No matter how loud I yelled, we continued moving straight for the elevators. The guards broke up there, facing outward in an arc while the guy in charge - Mr. Squishy Ear - took my elbow in one massive, scarred hand and escorted me firmly across the threshold and into one of the lifts. He punched in a key card, and away we went, just the two of us.
"Where's Cherise? My maid of honor?" I asked.
"Cute little thing? 'Bout this high?" He marked off a height just above the waistband of his ripstop pants. "Blond?"
The minister looked justifiably bewildered, and not just by the sudden popping in of supernatural guests. I was thinking his brain had skipped right over that part. The human race was absolutely stellar at plausible deniability. "But I haven't asked for any objections, " he said faintly. "We don't do that anymore. Really, this is most - "
Ashan ignored him. Ignored me, too. He was focused only on David, and if David was a glorious bright star, burning with potential, Ashan was his polar opposite: leached of color; pale as an undertaker; grim as impending death. He was even wearing black - a severe suit, with a black tie paired with a white shirt. His idea of formal attire, I guessed. It might have even passed, if it hadn't been for the bitter expression and the cold, cold fire in his teal-blue eyes.
"You have no place here," David said. I felt the power of the Earth rising up in him, rich and thick and irresistible; Ashan was a Conduit, yes, but this was David's territory, David's home ground, in a sense. Ashan was an intruder, uninvited and unwelcome. "Leave us."
Ashan slowly shook his head. "I don't come for myself," he said. "I come for all of us, to ask. Don't do this, David. Don't destroy us again, for your personal satisfaction."
I'd expected assault, not a plea, and especially not a plea that had the ring of sincerity to it.
David didn't respond. He gazed at Ashan, fire in his eyes, but he didn't lash out.
Ashan said, even more quietly, "I also didn't come alone." He didn't move, not even his gaze, but I felt the shocking flare on the aetheric, and suddenly there was a presence beside him. It was human in shape, but not human at all - a wild power, barely contained by flesh. His skin was hot red, shifting with patterns of color, and his eyes were the pure white of the hottest flame. I'd never seen him take human form before, but I knew him.
The Fire Oracle had left his protected home in a crypt in Seacasket. I hadn't even known he could.
With a whisper rather than a flare, another presence shaped itself out of the air on Ashan's other side. Milk-glass skin, a vessel containing fog and ice. The Air Oracle was only barely human as well, and androgynous in form. Two of them. The Air Oracle had no fixed abode that I knew of, but still, it took a major event for it to manifest so publicly.
I knew, without even asking, that it had never happened before. Not in all the history of the Djinn.
Another surge of power, this one familiar, so bitterly and sweetly familiar. My daughter, Imara - human and far more than human, beautiful and unreachable and remote. She looked sad, but sure of herself - a mirror of my face and form, but with a totally individual core she'd inherited from both me and her father.
She was standing with the others, against us.
David closed his eyes, and I knew it hurt him as much as it did me. When he opened them, his eyes had gone dark, almost human. "You're sure," he said. "Imara?"
I thought for a few heartbeats that she might defect, might throw her support to us, but then she bowed her head. "I'm sure," she whispered. "Too dangerous. So much at risk. You can't, Dad. You just . . . can't."
Silence. The audience was whispering. I couldn't imagine what they were making out of this. Lewis had moved Cherise out of the line of fire, in case there was going to be any, but somehow I knew this wasn't going to come to fireworks. Not this time.
David slowly turned back to me and said, very simply, "I do."
My mind went blank for a second, and I felt the seductive flow of power wash over me. Half done. This was an exchange of vows; his was powerful, but not complete without my consent. The minister nervously cleared his throat, eyes darting from David, to me, to Ashan, to the three Oracles.
"Do you, Joanne - " His clerical voice was about half an octave higher than it ought to have been. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Do you, Joanne, take this man - "
"Wait," I said.
All of the Djinn - even Ashan - let out a sigh, and David's grip on my hand tightened painfully. His eyes went wide, and his skin bone-pale.
"Jo - "
"Just wait," I repeated. "Ashan, the Oracles - you admitted yourself that you don't know what will happen, David. How can we do this? How can we change the rules like this when we don't even know what's coming for us?" My voice broke. My heart broke. I was watching the fire die in him, and it hurt. "It isn't about us. It's about them, all of the people who depend on us!"
"I'm willing to take the risk," he whispered. "Believe in us, Jo. Please. Believe."
His hand came up to trace my cheek, and I felt tears well up in my eyes and burn trails down my cheeks. His fingertips came away wet from my face, and he raised them to his lips.
Please.
I might have changed my mind. I can't swear that I would have, or I wouldn't; the fracture between my head and my heart ran right down to my soul.
I didn't have time to find out.
The aetheric caught fire. At first I thought it was David, erupting in frustration and anger at me for what I'd done, but then I realized that it wasn't him at all.
We were under attack.
David spun away from me. So did the other Djinn, all facing outward, blindly seeking the threat. "You know what to do," David shouted to Ashan. "Protect the Oracles!"
A silver scar formed on David's right cheek, then darkened, and the infection I'd seen earlier at Ortega's house began to spread its tendrils again under his skin, moving frighteningly fast.
"David!" I grabbed for him, but he spun away, avoiding me. Doing his job. Dispatching his waiting Djinn according to some plan he hadn't shared with me. . . . Lewis was moving, too, shouting at the Wardens. Everybody had a plan, it seemed, except for me.
I felt the black wave sweep over me. It wasn't meant for me; it was centered on David, but even the edges of it made me feel faint and sick.
He collapsed against me, shuddering, and I felt a scream trying to rip loose from him. I was the only thing holding him up, the only defense he had left.
The Oracles vanished, leaving gusts of hot wind in their place that fluttered the pale layers of my gown. David's weight pulled me down. It seemed as though he was growing heavier with every passing second.
Ashan stood there, immobile, impassive, perfect.
"Help!" I screamed at him, and grabbed his hand. It felt like cold marble. "Damn you, he's your brother! Do something!" The two of them were the same, united by purpose and power, if not by the ties of blood that humans understood.
Ashan pulled free of my grip. "If you want him," he said, "save him. He won't save himself. He could, if he wished."
I couldn't hold David up. Lewis lunged forward and tried to help take his weight, but there was something strange happening here, something worse than anything I'd expected.
"God," Lewis muttered. "Hold on, we're trying to put up the shield. Hold on - "
The Sentinels attacked from all around us, on every front. I heard some physical confrontations, and saw a bloom of fire erupt somewhere off to the side, followed by shouts and screams. Security piled on top of me and began hustling me away; I gathered up my train with both hands, clutching it out of the way of traffic. Lewis had arranged our forces in teams, but even so, the assault was shocking in its suddenness and force. I grabbed Lewis's arm as he pushed past and shook it fiercely. "They're using Rahel to get to him! If you're going to counter, it has to be now. Right now! Go!"
"Already on it," Lewis snapped, and spun away. "Stay here. Draw them if you can."
David was down on the ground, surrounded by fierce-eyed Djinn protectors ready to fight anything that came for him, but they let me through. I sank down at his side in a flutter of silk and held him. He was gasping and trembling, eyes molten gold but with ominous sparks of darkness flying through them. The gray mottling on his face was taking on a shocking life of its own, moving dark tendrils beneath his skin. Seeking out the aetheric pipeline that made David the Conduit. Once it had that . . .
"Let her go!" I shouted, and grabbed him by the lapels. "David, you have to let Rahel go, please!"
He shook his head. His hand grabbed for mine and clenched tightly. "Say it," he said. His voice was raw in his throat, almost primal. "Say the words. Say it!"
I felt tears trembling in my eyes. The whole world was coming apart. I heard the crack of gunfire somewhere off to the side, and more screaming. Someone was shouting about a Warden down; someone else was warning of a Sentinel attack coming in the form of a tidal wave from the ocean.
This couldn't be right. It couldn't be.
I squeezed my eyes shut, felt the tears burn down my cheeks, and whispered, "Oh God help me, I do. I do."
There was an eerie second of utter silence, not even the wind moving. Conflicts stopped, pinned on the instant, and I felt something inside me shifting, aligning like a puzzle box.
And a wave of pure golden power flowed into me, through me, and out.
I opened my eyes and saw David watching my face with a look I could think of only as awed relief. The gray faded from his face, back to a silvery scar. Gone.
And I felt the echoing power between us build, and build, and build, waves on the beach, pounding and ceaseless, cascading out into the other Djinn, enhancing their raw power and refining it into surgical weapons.
I'd just made the New Djinn a quantum leap more powerful, by giving them a second anchor into the aetheric.
I'd also just gotten married, even if the minister hadn't quite gotten around to saying the words before he'd fled to the hills, along with most of the others.
The Djinn snapped a glowing shield of power over us, brilliant as shimmering gold. It covered not just the two of us, but all of the Palms - hell, it went so far out that it might have been covering all of Florida. Whatever the Sentinels were doing, they quit doing it, fast, rightly recognizing that they had just been dealt a very serious blow. It would take them time to figure out exactly what had happened.
"Did you know?" I felt giddy, halfway to heaven. Endorphins kicking in. "Did you plan that?"
David grabbed me and kissed me, long and hard, with a good deal less restraint than most bridegrooms would have shown under similar circumstances. His hands roamed, stroking down the silk, crushing it to my hips, his fingertips brushing over the skin left exposed by the open V of the corset at my back.
"Absolutely," he said, deadpan, when he pulled back.
"You had no idea."
"I knew."
"You liar. You guessed!"
He laughed and buried his face against my neck, picked me up, and whirled me around in the deserted gazebo. A storm wind lashed surf against the rocks, and a wild cascade of lightning slashed out of the sky and grounded spectacularly out at sea. It was the joy of the Djinn, made real.
David sobered, but the light stayed in him, burning fiercely. He kissed me again, this time more gently, with a promise of things to come, and I felt the curling smile on his lips. "I need to go," he said. "Things to do."
"Same here," I said. "They'll be looking for an explanation of what just happened."
He stepped back, and his gaze raked me from head to toe, ravenous and warm. "Don't change," he said. "I'll be back. I want to take that off you."
I shivered, nodded, and watched my lover - no, I supposed I was going to have to get used to the idea of husband - mist away on the hot, humid breeze.
I couldn't see any other Djinn, but there were plenty of hired security, all looking grim and efficient as they herded guests to cover. I had a whole contingent of them stationed near me, all facing outward. I reached up and tapped the nearest one on the shoulder. "Hey!"
"Ma'am?" He angled in my direction a huge ear that looked as though it had been badly mangled in some kind of sculpting accident, but didn't turn to face me. "You ready to go?"
"Guess so. Looks like the wedding's over!"
He snorted. "Right. Let's get you to the safe zone!"
"Sure," I said. I felt giddy. Almost invincible, actually, but even if bullets might bounce off me, I was pretty sure they wouldn't do the dress any good. Priorities. "Hey, didn't you notice all the cool stuff going on? Supernatural stuff all over the place?"
"Lady," he said wearily, "I've guarded the Rolling Stones. Trust me, you guys are amateurs."
When the phalanx of guards closed in around me, it was like being in a moving tank of body armor; I clutched the train of my dress well out of reach of their boots, and hustled along down the path, up the steps, and into the narrow hallways I'd come through before. No staff were smiling at me this time; they were probably busy toting up the damage charges. I hoped David's black AmEx was up to the job.
My security detail arrowed me straight past Lewis and a group of Wardens all huddled together; I tried to bail out to talk to them, but clearly that wasn't in the plans. No matter how loud I yelled, we continued moving straight for the elevators. The guards broke up there, facing outward in an arc while the guy in charge - Mr. Squishy Ear - took my elbow in one massive, scarred hand and escorted me firmly across the threshold and into one of the lifts. He punched in a key card, and away we went, just the two of us.
"Where's Cherise? My maid of honor?" I asked.
"Cute little thing? 'Bout this high?" He marked off a height just above the waistband of his ripstop pants. "Blond?"
