Windfall

We banged through the door to the stairs into the lobby…

… and into a group of men standing there looking at the touch screen, just the way I’d done earlier. Rescue! I thought in relief, just for a second, and then I realized that these guys weren’t exactly dressed like they were public servants on patrol. Three of them looked tough as hell—tattooed, greasy, muscled up past any sensible point of no return.

The fourth one had on a Burberry trench coat that had gone from taupe to chocolate from the force of the rain, and under that a half-soaked hand-tailored suit with a silk tie. I felt sorry for the shoes, which surely looked Italian and not hurricane-safe. He had an expensive haircut even the rain couldn’t dampen, a dark mustache, and a cruel twist to his mouth.

He took one look at me, nodded to his Muscle Squad, and they rushed me. Sarah went flying. One of them knotted a big, tattooed hand in her hair and dragged her upright; she wasn’t medicated enough not to scream. I didn’t fight. I knew I didn’t have much of a chance, especially when the Suit pulled out a gun that looked remarkably similar to the one Eamon had been using upstairs. Apparently it was a model much favored by sleazebags.

I wasn’t really scared anymore. The kind of day I’d had, adrenaline starts ru

“You’re the one,” he said. “You’re the one who killed Qui

Eamon had sold me out. I don’t know why that didn’t surprise me.

He walked up to me and shoved the gun under my chin. “I am Eladio Delgado, and you have something I want.”

I shut my eyes and thought, Here we go again.

Interlude

I’m still sitting on the beach when the storm makes landfall. It closes around me like a black fist, trying to crush me as it’s crushing the things born of man all around me—boats shattered into splinters, buildings ripped from foundations, metal twisted and bones crushed.

It can’t touch me.

I stand up and walk into the storm surge; it foams around my feet, then my knees, then my thighs… not that I have any of those things, really, they’re just markers, symbols of what I am. Or was.

I stand in the storm and I listen to it, because it’s talking. Not talking in mathematics and physics, the way the Wardens measure things, but in symbols and poetry and the music of a broken heart. It’s the mourning of the Earth, this storm. It’s the scream of a wounded creature that can’t heal.

It’s part of me.

As I’m standing there, listening, I feel David’s presence slide into the world next to me, and a complex web of energy clicks together. Fulfilling me, and finishing me.

He says, “I don’t want it to be this way. Jonathan, please, don’t let it be this way.”

“I don’t have a choice,” I tell him, and turn to look at him. She’s done him damage, his human girl. Not really human anymore, although I guess she doesn’t know that. David’s barely Dji

“You have to stop this,” he says. He’s talking about the storm, of course. But he doesn’t really know what he’s talking about.

I shrug. “I already stopped it once. Look how that turned out.” In the distance, I can feel Ashan and the others waiting, hearing the song of the storm, responding to its call. They’re coming for me, and together they’re strong enough to take me. I know Rahel is coming, and Alice, and dozens more, and if they get here in time it’ll be a pitched battle and the world will bleed. Not be destroyed, because the Earth is tougher than that, older, harder. But everything on it is, in one way or another, fragile.

Life is fragile.

David’s eyes are flickering copper, then black, then copper, then black. He is trying desperately to hang on.

“Jonathan, don’t do this. You don’t have to do this.”

“I do,” I say, “because I love you, brother.”

And I turn and walk into the storm.

I feel him change, behind me, and even over the burning wail of the storm I hear his scream of mortal agony as he changes, as he loses control of who and what he is.

This is how it has to be, I think, just before the Ifrit sinks its talons into my back.

And it hurts just about as much as I expected it to.

Chapter Nine

Well, both Eamon and Detective Rodriguez had point-blank warned me that I’d better watch my back. Of course, Eamon had then proceeded to stick a knife in, but that was just his way. At least he’d warned me first.

The cold metal of the gun barrel under my chin made a pretty dramatic statement as to my new friend’s intentions. He wasn’t the subtle, sinister type like Eamon; he was more like me. Just state your business and get it done.

I respected that.

“I don’t have Qui

I really was out of adrenaline. My pulse stayed steady, even when he jammed the gun harder into the soft skin under my throat. It made me want to gag. I opened my eyes and looked at him, and close up, he made Qui

“Then I don’t need you,” he said, “and you need to be taught a lesson, bitch.”

“You think you have time?” I shot back. “We’re in a little bit of trouble here, in case you haven’t noticed. Unless you came in a Sherman tank, I think you may have a little trouble making your escape after—”

Windows blew at the far end of the lobby, and wind screamed in, flapping Delgado’s coat in ways Burberry never intended. One of his musclemen rapped something out fast in Spanish, too fast for me to catch. I wanted to turn my head and see what was happening to Sarah, because she was quiet again, and I was worried.

“My friend reminds me that we have a plane to catch in Miami,” Delgado said.

“And the roads are very bad. So I don’t have time for you or your bullshit. Do you have my stuff? Yes or no.”

I kept holding the stare. “No.”

“You have anything I might be interested in?”

“No.”

“Too bad.” He shrugged and put the gun back in his pocket. “Take them outside. You know what to do.”

His guys didn’t hesitate. My feet scrabbled for purchase on the floor, but they just lifted me up by the elbows as he stepped away, and carried me like a paper doll toward the big, thick glass doors. There was some discussion about how to open them, given the wind pressure. They finally decided on the one on the right. When they opened it, the hurricane blast caught it, slammed it back, and shattered it into safety-glass fragments against the stone wall. The metal backstop had been ripped totally out of the concrete.

“Wait!” I screamed. It didn’t matter, and in the next second the two men carrying me had me outside and whatever noise I made was drowned out by the piercing, constant shriek of the storm as it crept ashore.

We weren’t anywhere near the worst of the storm yet, and the wreckage was awesome. The two musclemen were having a time of it, shuffling along hunched against the wind; they got to one of two giant palm trees that were bending and thrashing like rubber toys and threw me up against the rough trunk, facing out.

I saw Sarah out of the corner of my watering eye, joining me. Our fingers instantly locked together.

Muscleman number one grabbed a roll of duct tape out of his jacket pocket and started wrapping it around me, Sarah, the tree trunk. Tough, sticky tape binding my hands together, then looping over my knees, my hips, my breasts, my shoulders, my neck.