Chill Factor

Flesh corrupted and melted away, revealing wet stripes of muscle. Bone. Layer by layer, he died.

What was left turned hard and cold and black.

Frozen.

Ifrit.

Soft human hands were on me, pulling me back into a sheltering embrace, and I was being rocked against someone as I whimpered. Unable to weep now. Unable to scream and let out the fury and horror.

Cold, cold, everything was cold.

David was a thing of ice and shadow, burned by darkness. Lying on the floor and motionless.

Marion had me. She was saying something to me, but I couldn't understand her; she unzipped the purse at my side and took my strengthless hand and wrapped it around David's blue glass bottle.

She was telling me to do something. It didn't matter anymore, but I numbly echoed the words. "Back in the bottle," I said. The words sounded odd in my head and tasted flat on my tongue.

The Ifrit that lay like some twisted sculpture in David's place misted into an oily whisper and disappeared. Marion fumbled the stopper in place.

Rahel. No one else could see her, but I couldn't just… leave her here. I took the second, empty bottle. I whispered the words. Rahel's frozen body disappeared, too.

There were rescuers coming. Flashlights dancing wildly in the dust-filled air. Marion zipped the purse shut and held me close as the first of them got to us. Paramedics and firefighters. One of them forced Kevin to put down Siobhan's body, and the three of us-the three survivors-were wrapped in blankets and led out through the tangle of steel and broken glass and darkness.

I remembered the sniper only then. It no longer seemed to matter, but there were no merciful red laser dots coming to dance on my chest. Qui

We walked out a twisted side door into hot sunlight, and I blinked and shaded my eyes.

Oh, God. I don't know what I expected to see, but not this.

The rest of Las Vegas was untouched. Literally untouched. Windows intact, buildings still standing. The Eiffel Tower still climbed toward the sky, and the half-scale Statue of Liberty raised her torch.

The Bellagio was barely damaged, overall. Just the casino area, and just our casino area.

The Ma'at had targeted us. They'd done all this just to get us. Or worse… maybe, considering who Qui

I felt the comforting ice of shock start to break up around me, dumping me in the cold water of reality.

Sink or swim, now. Give up and die, or make it mean something.

"Marion?" I licked my lips and tasted blood, swallowed grit and bitterness. "How many people-"

She looked exhausted under the paling layer of dust. Her hair was coming loose from its meticulous braid, and her leather jacket was ripped and shredded in places. When she wiped her forehead, she left streaks of still-wet blood.

"No fatalities. We were able to minimize it," she said. "Me and the kid." She cut her eyes toward Kevin, who was wrapped in silence and his own blanket, sitting on the curb while a paramedic tried to get information out of him. Miraculous. There'd be news coverage twenty-four/seven for the next few months, going over and over the freak earthquake, the survivors. Pundits would come on the airwaves to talk about all kinds of crackpot theories, everything from international terrorists to James Bond superweapons. None of them would get it right.

Please God, nobody would get it right.

"He could be great, you know. If anyone cared enough to show him how."

Marion was still watching Kevin. I nodded. "If nobody kills him first."

"See that they don't."

The paramedics were working their way around to us. "We need to get out of here," I said. "Before they get our names."

Marion nodded. She understood the need for secrecy now, as I did.

"Better use your Dji

"He's gone," she said. "He was taken from me five years ago."

No wonder I'd never seen him. "Why? What happened?"

She heaved in a silent breath. "He was stolen from me."

"And you never told…" No, of course she hadn't. Losing a Dji

"I was told," Marion said softly, "that if I reported it, they'd torture him. I believed it."

I wanted to ask a million questions, but this wasn't the time or the place. Too exposed. My skin kept crawling, trying to feel the nonexistent pressure of a laser sight.

I felt a hand on my arm, and turned.

Jonathan. God! I'd forgotten all about him…

He had on his most rigid, focused expression. "Not much time," he said. "He found the bottle. Listen, I'll delay him as much as I can. You know where to find him-"

"What the hell are you talking about? I don't understand!" I grabbed for Jonathan's shoulder, made a fist out of the black fabric of his shirt, and tried to pull him closer. It was like trying to pull a pile of lead. He had the specific gravity of a mountain. "Tell me what's happening, dammit, and no goddamn Dji

His dark eyes glittered and went to narrow slits. "I've been claimed. You know this guy! We're going to fant-"

Blip. He was gone, instantly gone in midsyllable. I caught a flicker of something in his eyes-impotent rage, maybe a tiny flash of fear-and I sucked in a startled breath. I spun around, hard, and plunged back toward the casino, where emergency workers were swarming like hornets. Marion wrapped her arms around me and dragged me to a stop.

"No!" she said sharply. "You can't go back."

"I left him! Jonathan's bottle… have to get it back!"

"It's too late." She was too strong, and her voice was too compassionate. "Someone just commanded him. You can't get it back."

"Son of a bitch!" I sucked in a wet, trembling breath. "Let go. Let go!"

I wrenched free, but she'd convinced me; when she released me, I stopped trying to bull my way back inside. I'd left Jonathan's bottle, somehow, some way… how the hell…

I remembered in a blinding flash.

Siobhan, slipping the fallen bottle into her pocket. Me demanding it back.

She'd switched bottles. And now someone- probably Qui

Marion raised her head to look, and her face went blank and grim. Eyes like flint, ready to spark.

"Don't look now," she said, "but the cavalry's arrived."

I turned my head.

A group of maybe twenty, pushing through the crowd of looky-loos; the one in front was a distinguished-looking older man in a spotless blue suit, with a silk tie in tasteful gray.

Myron Lazlo. Next to him, Charles Ashworth II flourished his ebony cane. No sign of Qui

The Ma'at had come to restore the balance.