Heat Stroke

David smiled, but I could tell he wasn’t smiling at me. This was bitter, private, and painful. “ ‘Behold, thou art fair, my love, behold, thou art fair…’”

“Hey! Don’t quote that to me. You know I hate that.” Jonathan stalked back over, stared down at the two of us. After a long, silent moment, something melted out of him. The anger, maybe. Or the determination. “You’d really do this.”

David’s fingers tightened around mine. “It’s already done.”

“You’d die to give her life.”

“I don’t think I’ll have to, but if it comes to that, yes, I’m not afraid.”

Something inside me went still. Very, very still. Focused on him, on his eyes, on the power pouring out of him into me.

Power I now understood was sustaining me.

“Please.” David’s voice had gone soft, low, resonant in the back of his throat. “Jonathan. Please. It’s my choice.”

He put emphasis on the last word, and I saw it hit home in the other Dji

So much between these two I didn’t understand, and knew I never could. I hadn’t even known him a week; they’d had half of eternity together. No wonder Jonathan had that hard, hurting edge to him. And no wonder he wanted me dead. I’d have the same impulse, if somebody showed up to rip apart a friendship that had that kind of history.

“Your choice,” Jonathan repeated. “Oh, you’re good. If I take away your choices, I’m no better than the last asshole who held your soul in a bottle. Is that what you’re getting at?”

He was staring out the windows of his house. Before, it had showed a frosted white landscape, a washed blue sky. Now it looked out on a city street, masses of humanity moving like corpuscles in a concrete artery, every one of them alone. Gray sky, gray buildings, gray exhaust belching from the tailpipes of passing taxicabs.

He said, “You know how I feel about them. They’re like a plague of locusts out there, consuming everything. And now you want to open up our world to them, too.”

“Not them. She’s a person. One person.”

“One mortal,” Jonathan corrected. “And there are days when every single one of them deserves to be wiped off the face of the earth.”

It didn’t sound like idle conversation. Jonathan turned back to face us, looking at the two of us. “But you’re not going to listen to me. You never do. Even if this works, one of them will find you, just like last time, stick you in some damn bottle and make you a slave. You won your freedom, David. It’s a precious gift. Don’t waste it like this.”

“I’m not wasting it,” David said. “I’m spending it on what really matters.”

Jonathan took that like a knife, with a soft grunt of breath and a flinch. He went back to the window, staring out, and suddenly I had a sense of something I’d missed before. All this power, all this massive ability—and he was trapped. Trapped here, in this house, in whatever reality he’d created for himself. Staring out at the world through those safe, distancing panes of glass.

And maybe, being what he was, being as powerful as he was, he didn’t have a choice, either. He is the one true god of your new existence, little butterfly, Rahel had said.

A god who didn’t dare leave his heaven.

“What if I die?” I asked. I must have surprised both of them; I felt David’s reaction, saw Jonathan’s as his shoulders bunched up, then relaxed.

“You’re Dji

“According to him, I’m only half. So I can, what, half die?” I cleared my throat. “If something happens to me, does David get his energy back?”

“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” David murmured.

“Not talking to you right now.”

“Yeah, well, you shouldn’t be talking to him.”

Jonathan answered my question. “Depends on whether or not he’s stupid enough to die with you, or let you go. But yeah, if he let go… he’d be himself again.”

“So what you’re talking about, when you say you want to fix him, is that you want to kill me.”

Silence, from both quarters. Jonathan didn’t deny it.

“Wouldn’t advise you to try. I may not look it, but I’m pretty tough to kill,” I said. “You can ask around. How many people you know survived having two Demon Marks?”

Jonathan half turned and gave me a sarcastic, onesided smile. “Half a Dji

“Not my fault. Like this when I met her.” David’s smile was delighted, warm, proud. “You’ll like her, Jonathan. Trust me.”

The flickering response—so close to being love— died in Jonathan’s eyes. “I did trust you,” he said. “Look what it’s gotten me.” He turned back to face the window. “You broke the law, David. You brought a human into our world. That means you have to pay the price. If the price isn’t giving her up, then it has to be something else.”

The fire suddenly flared and died to dead, black ashes. Light faded outside to a cold gray. When Jonathan turned around, he was no longer masquerading as a regular guy. The house morphed around me. Couches disappeared. The homey wooden walls changed to unyielding marble.

And Jonathan became something so bright, so powerful that I turned away, eyes squeezed shut, and struggled to control a surge of pure fear.

He is the one true god of your new existence.

I didn’t realize that Rahel had meant it literally.

I felt David go down on his knees, and I followed, kept my head down and my mouth shut. This was what David had been warning me about. This was the Jonathan you didn’t argue with. I felt power surge through the room, as bright and vivid as lightning, and wanted to make myself very small. I couldn’t. Whatever powers I had were frozen in place, helpless. I couldn’t even get myself up off my knees.

“David, will you let this woman die?” It wasn’t a voice, not really. It was thunder, it was a dark, silky wind wrapping around us. Too big to be sound, to have ever come from anything like a human body.

“No.” David’s voice was just a raw rasp, barely audible. I couldn’t imagine how he was able to talk at all, given the pressure on us.

“Will you let her die?”

“No.”

“I ask a third time: Will you let this woman die?” He was asking it in the traditional Dji

From David, a hesitation. I couldn’t help it; I forced my eyes open and saw him struggling back to his feet. Standing tall, lonely, defiant.

“No,” he said. “Never.”

The light sighed. “Yeah,” it said. “Figures. Well, I had to ask.”

The incredible brilliance died and left me blind. I heard footsteps. As I blinked away darkness, I saw the temple morphing again, turning back to cabin walls, tapestries, overstuffed comfortable couches. No pressure now. I forced myself shakily back upright, holding on to the back of the couch for support. Fabric dragged at my fingers, real, so damn real. All of it, so real.

Jonathan stood in front of me, back to merely human again, shoulders strong and tensed under the black shirt, eyes as dark as space. He glared at us, locked his arms across his chest, and said, “If you won’t let go of her, the only way to get rid of her is to kill you, too. But you already know that.”

“Yeah. I know.”

The glare continued full force. “Crazy son of a bitch.”

David’s luminous smile warmed the air around all of us. “And you already knew that.”

Jonathan’s fierce look softened. “So I did.” They looked at each other for a few long seconds, and then Jonathan dragged himself back to dad mode with a visible effort. “Here’s what I’ve decided. I’ll give her a week to learn to live on her own. One week, counting from now. Then I cut the cord. If she can’t draw power on her own, she’ll go the way of the dinosaurs. Maybe you’ll die with her, maybe you won’t. I’m not making that decision for you. I’m making one about her. Got it?”