I held her off, and found some weedy grass struggling to survive between the rocks near my opponent. I added a giant shot of power to send it growing and weaving between the stones. It slithered out of a crevice and wrapped around her ankles, yanking her flat on the ground, then dragged her out into the open where I could see her.
I knew the woman. She was a thin little thing, older than many of my peers in power - a veteran, someone who'd ruled with an iron hand in the old days. A contemporary of Bad Bob's. Her name was Deborah Kirke. She'd been wounded in the Djinn rebellion, I remembered, and she'd lost most of her family when her Djinn had destroyed her house around her. She had cause to believe Bad Bob's anti-Djinn agenda, but that didn't mean I could give her a pass. She'd taken up arms against me and the other Wardens.
That meant she had to be stopped.
"Deborah," I yelled. "Just stay down, dammit. I don't want to hurt you!" She didn't. I suppose, from her perspective, she really couldn't.
I trapped her under a clump of boulders and reinforced it by melting the top layer into a concrete cage. She could breathe, and in time she'd probably dig her way out of it. I was heartsick doing this to an old lady, but I had a war to fight, and mercy wasn't going to win me any consideration from their side in return.
Another former Warden had emerged from cover as well. I knew this one, too - Lars Petrie, a Fire Warden. He liked to form whips out of living flame, and sure enough, one hissed through the air and cut a burning path down my right arm. It wrapped around my wrist and yanked me off balance. I wasn't prepared, and the burn bit deep, charring skin and muscle. That was bad; burns created distractions, made it harder to concentrate, channel, control the forces I needed to balance.
I grabbed water out of the sea. It rose in an arc into my hand, frozen solid, and compacted into a spear. I barely paused before sending it arrowing at Petrie's chest.
He dodged. The spear hit the rocks behind him and shattered into snow, but it distracted him. While it did, I formed another blade of ice and slashed it through the whip. The flame fell apart on my side of the cut, leaving ugly black spirals up the skin of my arm, with red exposed muscle.
I tried not to think about how much that was going to hurt once the nerves woke up.
I started running for him, knife clutched in my uninjured hand, and while I was at it, I shook the rocks under his feet, a miniature earthquake that sent him stumbling. He wrapped his fire whip around a boulder to steady himself, but I was there when he straightened, already cutting at him with the knife.
I got it under his chin and held the cold edge there. Our eyes met, and Petrie's widened in shock and horror.
"Listen to me," I said. "Lars, we have no fight here. None.You can't win, and he doesn't expect you to.You're nothing but compost and cannon fodder to him."
"Yeah? And what the hell am I to you?" he demanded, and shoved me backward. "I watched four Wardens die while Djinn ripped them apart, and where were you? Screwing one of them. You don't care about us, any of us. Don't pretend we're the same." The fire whip formed in his hand again, and I moved my right foot back for better stability as I tried to anticipate which way I needed to dodge. He trailed the whip on the ground, snaking it this way and that, hissing the burning edges of it over stones. A tiny alarmed crab scuttled out of a tide pool and toward the sea. A second later, the whip touched the pool and turned it into steam, baking whatever was unlucky enough still to be trapped there.
"I'm not your enemy," I said, and held out empty hands toward him. "Come on, man. Let's not do this."
Petrie, like Deborah, was a post-traumatic survivor of the Djinn attacks. I didn't know what had happened to him, but I remembered that the review team had removed him from his duties, and that Miriam, the head of the internal security team of the Wardens, had put in precautions...
Petrie had a fail-safe in his brain. Dammit. Standard Earth Warden procedure was to put a two-stage fail-safe in place. The first one stunned, and the second one killed. If I knew the stun code...
But I didn't. And I had no time to find out, because even if Lars was damaged and irrational, he was one hell of a master of that whipping loop of fire. It flared at me without warning, and I dropped to a crouch. That saved my neck, most likely; he'd been aiming to decapitate me, and I felt the scorching heat as the living flame snaked over my head.
I lunged forward and pulled up seawater with both hands, forming a massive wave that shattered over the rocks and hit Lars from behind, sending him flying and dousing his fire whip in a hot blast of steam.
I threw myself on his chest as he sprawled on top of the rocks. "Stop!" I screamed at him, and banged his head against the rock. "Stop fighting me!" I put a forearm over his chest to hold him down as he struggled. My arm was bloody and torn from the fight, dripping on his chest, and I felt savage. So much for the black torch being responsible for all my darkness; Bad Bob had been right, I'd had some of it all along.
And I always would.
He got an arm free and put it to use by landing a right hook to my jaw - but not hard enough to break free, or to break my bones.
"Just stop," I said. "Please stop." I didn't know if I was talking to Lars Petrie, or to myself.
I let Petrie go, and he sat up, exultant triumph lighting up his plain, middle-aged face. I backed away.
I heard a dry, ironic sort of clapping behind me. "Impressive." Bad Bob's voice. "Damn if you aren't still a do-gooder, after all this effort." Petrie's face twisted in fury, and his fire whip formed in his hand, then snapped toward me.
From directly behind me, Bad Bob said, "Duck."
I did. Well, I was going to do that anyway.
A sheet of ice the thickness of a razor slashed through the air, spinning like a saw blade.
It sliced feathering hairs from the top of my head, bit into Petrie's neck, and kept on spinning.
I gasped as Petrie's hot blood splashed over me in a wave. That blade hadn't been aimed at me.
It had been intended for Petrie. I whirled around while Petrie was still falling.
Bad Bob was sitting in a battered deck chair behind me, right out in the open, on top of a pile of rocks that I'd have sworn had been empty a few seconds before. He grinned and waved at me, and made a discus-throwing motion. "Hell of a shot, eh? I should turn pro." Petrie's head and body hit the stones separately, spattering me with even more blood.
I couldn't turn to look. I didn't dare take my gaze away from Bad Bob, who was no illusion, not this time. He was here. Within striking distance.
Victory was at hand... for one of us.
"You look tired," Bad Bob said. "Rough trip?" He sipped a beach drink. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt in vomit yellow and pinkeye pink that clashed with his skin and hair. He also was wearing old man shorts, socks, and flip-flops. If I hadn't known who and what he was, he'd have looked like any old pensioner roaming Fort Lauderdale or asking directions at Disney.
"Why?" I blurted. He knew what I was asking, so I didn't even look at Petrie.
"Thought I'd give you a helping hand, since you seemed to be having some crisis of conscience. Tell me, why is that, anyway? I figured you'd be well on down the road to not caring about anyone but yourself by now."
I tried slow, even breaths. The burn on my arm was getting worse, and shock was setting in. I needed to heal myself, and I had the power to do it; I just didn't dare spare the concentration it would take to build the matrix of energy and direct the healing.
Bad Bob didn't blink. "Oh, where are my manners? Have a seat, kid. You look just about done in."
And with a wave of his hand, there was another beach chair, this one shaded by a ruffling yellow awning fringed in white. There was even a little side table, and a fruity cocktail with a blue folding umbrella.
"No, thanks," I said. It was only three steps to the chair, but I wasn't at all sure the chair wouldn't turn out to be a spring-loaded bear trap. Messy, and undignified, as a way to exit stage left. "I think I'll just stand. It's great for the calf muscles."
"Suit yourself, but your calf muscles have always been top flight, especially in those heels you like to wear." He smacked his lips, just another leering old geezer. "Come here all by yourself, did you?"
"Sure. Why not? You're not going to hurt me, are you?"
"Never in a million years, sweetness."
Oh sure. I remembered being forced down on my back, and Bad Bob handing a bottle to his Djinn, and a Demon sliding its black tentacles down my throat.
No, he'd never hurt me at all.
"Turn around," he said. "Let me see the progress."
He meant let him see the black torch.
Moment of truth. I'd spent time in the water forming an illusion, one that had all the weight of reality to it. The twisting shadow on my back looked and felt like the real thing.
I hoped Bad Bob couldn't tell the difference at this range.
My shirt was knit, and sleeveless. I pulled it up so that my back was revealed. "Satisfied?" I didn't wait for an answer, just dropped it back down again. "I'm still on your team, Bob.
You saw to that, whether I like it or not. I was your first-round draft pick." Had he bought it? I couldn't be sure. He sat there looking at me, nothing in particular showing in his expression, and then nodded. "Just wanted to be sure," he said. "You wouldn't believe all the crazy crap people pull trying to get into the VIP section these days.
Some Djinn came in here about three hours ago, pretending to be you, if you can believe that. Talk about your Trojan horses. That was a dumb idea. They think I can't tell the difference?"
I felt my throat go tight and my guts clench. "Who was it?" He shrugged. "Didn't ask. She looked just like you, though, right down to the sassy attitude. Good copy. If I hadn't known that tattoo was a fake, I might have just let my guard down for her."
Was he taunting me? I was afraid that he was, but I didn't want to force things until I knew for sure. "So where is she now?"
"Why?"
"Because I'm not on great terms with them anymore." That was almost true.
He lit a cigar, a big Cuban thing, and puffed until he was satisfied with the draw. "What do you think happened? I've got dependents, you know. People got to eat." Whatever I'd expected, it wasn't that. "What?"
He gave me more of that horrible grin. "Sweetheart, you ever order a Djinn to become a pot roast for dinner? Unbelievable, the things you can do when you've got power over them.
It's a real education."
I felt an actual wave of sickness travel through me, like the blast from a bomb of nausea.
And he kept on smiling.
I couldn't stop the words that rolled out of my mouth. "You fucking sick awful evil - "
"Ah, that's the old Jo," he said, and winked at me. "You know what's wrong with all my old friends, the ones I talked out here to the middle of Buttcrack, Nowhere, with me? I tell them how to humiliate and mutilate a Djinn, and they dive right in. They think it's payback.
I hate to say it, but the human race is starting to completely disgust me, sweet pea, and that's why I'm so glad you're here. You, I can still shock. You restore my faith in humanity." That logic was so twisted it ought to be served salted, with a side of mustard. "You just killed your own guy," I said. "That can't be good for morale." Bob dismissed it with a shrug. "Petrie was nuts. Everybody knew it. But I'll tell you what, sugar, I was really amazed at how many Wardens I got to turn their coats. I didn't even work that hard at it. Talk about morale, you guys need some team-building retreats or something. Then again, you'll all be dead, so that problem solves itself, really." This sounded so much like Bad Bob that it lulled me into believing that he'd keep on talking, forever... and then a thick black tentacle burst up out of the rocks beneath my feet and writhed its way up my ankle, my calf, my thigh.
"Oh, damn," he said, and sipped his drink. "Try not to move. It'll take your skin clean off if you struggle."
The thing was like an octopus tentacle, and I could feel the obscene, cold suction of hundreds of tiny cups against my skin. I froze. It didn't read as alive on the aetheric, and it wouldn't respond to any kind of Earth power that I could wield.
"Let me go," I said. Bad Bob tilted his head, eyes burning an incandescent, almost Djinn shade of blue.
"Nope," he said. "Did you really think I wouldn't know you slipped the leash? Nice trick, by the way. I can always try it again, but I have the feeling you won't be all that easy to screw with again - Hold still or you'll lose that leg, you know." I gave up struggling. "Fine. So what are you going to do with me? I don't make a very good pot roast, I'm just telling you right now."
Bob sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, like I'd given him a monster headache.
"What the hell am I gonna do with you ?" he repeated. "You're kidding. This isn't remedial school for half-assed criminals. I'm going to kill the holy hell out of you, but first, you get to help me get what I need out of the Wardens."
I winced as my boot slipped against the rocks, and the tentacle wrapping my leg gained a couple more inches and got very, very friendly. "Lewis won't deal."
"Of course he'll deal. That boy loves you, always has. I know him. I picked him for the Wardens." Bad Bob looked positively malevolent for a second. "Lewis never did want responsibility. He isn't going to step up to it now, with your life on the line." I blinked. Bad Bob, the all-knowing and all-powerful, was talking like an old man, set in his ways, reciting out-of-date facts. Lewis certainly had once been like that, but like Bad Bob himself, he'd changed. Bad Bob hadn't bothered to find out how much.
