Gale Force

his problems solved, if I just disappeared from the face of the earth. After all, the vows David

and I had exchanged had elevated the New Dji

the Old Dji

''You don't have my daughter, and you're not going to have her,'' I said, with an icy calm that I

was far from feeling. ''The Dji

Oracle's head. You're a fool if you think anything else-and that includes Ashan, by the way.

He might be using you, but he'll never stand with you.''

Bad Bob stared at me for a second. The grisly vision of Imara vanished into mist. Gone. He lifted

the tequila bottle to his lips and drank. Drank it dry. Then he tossed the bottle back to me, and I

snatched it out of the air.

''You come on, princess,'' he said. ''You find out what I've got. Call my bluff.''

I didn't blink. ''All right,'' I said. ''I call.'' Anything, anything to buy time. My backup didn't

dare come at him unprepared, any more than I dared a direct assault against him; they had to be

sure he was cut off from his support, and that they could get to him before he got me. Bad Bob

had it in him to slaughter me, right here, right now. I felt it in the air. David needed to counter

Ashan's influence first.

We'd wanted this. We'd asked for it. I only hoped that we were prepared to actually deal with it,

now that the moment was staring us in the face.

''Good girl.'' That smile, that evil, dark smile, grew wider still. ''So give me your expert

opinion: Do you think this is just another illusion?'' He reached aside, into the shadows, and this

time he pulled out a book: the book, a twin to the one, bound in leather and wrapped in iron, that

I'd last seen in the vault in Ortega's Miami mansion.

I felt the pull of it from here, and the whisper of power. Nope, that was not an illusion. And our

time was ru

whispered, It's here; he has it here, and felt the Dji

They slammed hard into a black shell of crackling power that Bad Bob threw up so fast it made

me shudder. The Wardens backed off, and the Dji

weakness.

I was trapped.

Bad Bob took the iron peg out of the latch with a flick of his finger, opened the book, and flipped

pages. ''You have any idea what's in here, sweetheart?'' he asked. ''What kind of havoc I can

wreak? Ah, here's a good one. . . .'' Words spilled out of his mouth, strange and liquid, and

something in my brain trembled and screamed an alarm.

I froze as the last syllable left his lips, and felt something seize control of me, and a burning

sensation high on my right shoulder blade, like a brand being pressed deep into the flesh. I

couldn't flinch. Couldn't scream. I smelled my own skin burning, and couldn't so much as cry.

This shouldn't happen. This can't happen!

''Hush,'' Bob murmured. ''Sooner done, soonest over. There. Now I own you, sweet little Jo.

The way it was meant to be.'' He snapped the book shut and dropped it; it vanished into mist

before it hit the floor. He was storing it in a pocket universe, somewhere in the aetheric. No way

to get to it without knowing exactly where, without having the keys he'd crafted to hide it.

I still couldn't move. I stayed stiff and silent as Bad Bob walked toward me. He was a short,

bandy-legged old man, but none of that mattered. I was looking at him on the aetheric, and he

was no longer troubling to hide himself at all. He was a morass of boiling black, tentacles

whipping and tangling, razor edges slashing at everything around him, and where he touched it,

the aetheric bled.

I couldn't even close my eyes. You son of a bitch, I thought. How dare you do this. How dare

you. . . .

I felt the power of the Wardens and the Dji

burning through the black shield he'd put up.

Not quickly enough.

''You know, you cost me,'' Bad Bob said. ''I spent a while cultivating all that hate, all that fear

from the Sentinels. And you had to go put on a public show and get all the fanatics to wriggle out

of the woodwork, whether I wanted them to or not.'' He leaned very close to me, lips lover-

close, and whispered, ''That's why I need you, Joa

That made no sense. I was no Dji

agreement between the Warden and the Dji

It had to be a bluff.

And I couldn't help a surge of pure fear, because there was so much visceral delight in his face.

''Be thou bound to my service.'' His eyes were blood-shot, not entirely human anymore. His

breath smelled foul and ancient, something ages in the ground.

Stop, I wanted to say. I couldn't. He wasn't even letting me breathe, and my lungs were crying

out for air. I couldn't even wield the power necessary to supply a trickle of oxygen. Stop this.

''Be . . . thou . . . bound . . . to . . . my . . .'' He whispered each word separately, eyes drifting

half closed in pleasure, and then smiled. ''Service. Ahhhh.''

I felt the white-hot force of the united Wardens and Dji

pieces. The thread between me and David held, but only barely. Things were changing, terribly

changing, and I couldn't see the edges of the wave that was rippling out from this moment. I

didn't know what he'd done, or how, but it was flooding the world, drowning everything.

And when the flood receded, there was an ominous silence. The aetheric felt clean and very

empty.

I drew in a whooping, gasping breath and sobbed it out, then breathed in again. Some of the

black spots dancing in front of my eyes started to recede . . . not all, by any means. I felt one half

step from unconscious, but I kept myself on my feet, facing Bad Bob.

''There,'' he said. ''That's better.'' He chucked me under the chin, as if I were his favorite niece

who'd just performed a cute trick. Or a puppy. ''Oh, you have questions, don't you?''

I managed to get enough breath to gasp, ''What– did-you-''

''You had a Demon Mark, once upon a time,'' he said. ''You may have gotten rid of the Mark,

but it left you stained. Vulnerable. Mine.''

The Wardens burned through the shield and launched their assault, with or without the Dji

and the doors of the penthouse blew off the hinges. Lewis strode in, surrounded by a barely

visible nimbus of red light, and behind him came a grim-faced phalanx of my friends: Marion

Bearheart, walking with a cane; Kevin, scared but determined; Luis Rocha, the Earth Warden I'd

first met during the original Fort Lauderdale event. Dozens more, people I knew and liked,

people I hadn't even known would put themselves at risk for me.

David stepped out of the center of the group.

''Whoops, Daddy's home,'' Bob said. ''Time for me to be leaving. You will come see me, won't

you? I'll expect you around sunset. Love that bloody color on the water.''

My muscles were working again. I shakily reached for power and pulled it down, pulled it from

all around me, every surface. The room lit up with miniature lightning strikes, all bleeding

toward me.

''Bride of Frankenstein,'' Bad Bob said. ''All right, all right, I'm going. Don't set your hair on

fire.''

He crooked his little finger and vanished with an audible pop of air. I stared at the spot in the

aetheric; the writhing black tentacles took longer to leave, finally slipping through a raw wound