Cape Storm Page 0,23

He feels he made a tactical error."

That wasn't unexpected. "He made the right choices at the time. We had to give it a try."

"I know. He's afraid that he rushed into it. He's afraid that he allowed personal issues to color the decision."

"That'll be the day," I said, and then wondered what that meant. "Personal, how?" Please, let it not be about me.

"Rahel," David said softly. "He can feel her suffering, just as I can. Bad Bob is making sure we can feel it."

Bad Bob had a Djinn named Rahel in his clutches - one of David's New Djinn, and someone I could almost call a friend. He could do whatever he wanted to her - the curse of a Djinn being bound to a bottle, of having her will taken away. And she couldn't fight back. The nightmare dimensions of that stretched on and on into the darkness, because I knew how sick Bad Bob's imagination had been even years back. God only knew how much worse he was these days, with so much Demon in his body that I wasn't even sure the old Bad Bob was still around in any form I would recognize.

Rahel had done me some very kind favors in the past. She was never to be trifled with, or underestimated, but unlike a lot of the Djinn, she did care, however remotely, about the fate of individual humans - and the fate of the human race.

David, as her connection to the power source of Mother Earth, would feel every injury done to her. I wasn't sure, but I thought that her connection to Lewis was more about personal feelings than old-fashioned lines of fealty. She liked him. He liked her. Maybe it went deeper than that. He'd never felt the need to tell me, and I didn't ask. I had thought their relationship was more of a hookup than love, but I could have been wrong.

I put my hand on David's cheek and looked him full in the face for a long, long moment.

"How bad is it with her?" I asked him. I didn't want a kind evasion. I didn't want anything but the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, and he could sense that from me.

"Is he going to destroy her?"

"Eventually," he said, and gently took my wrist. "There's nothing more I can do for Rahel just now. She would want me to focus on those I can help."

"You've done all you can for me, too."

"Yes," he said, and I could see he hated to admit that. "I'm slowing it down, but that's all I can do. It's deep, and it's still growing. But I intend to keep trying. I'm not giving up, not on either of you."

He wasn't saying anything we didn't both know, but I could hear the frustration in his voice, and the anguish. I slipped my arms around his neck and the two of us cuddled close for a moment. His lips found mine, long and lingering.

"You're tired," he murmured. Like the gentleman he was at heart, David slipped the bra back up my arms, turned me around, and fastened it for me. He even buttoned up my camisole. "I want you to rest."

I was more used to him undressing me. This felt... warm. Intimate in a way that seemed more personal than unbridled passion. It was the kind of thing a husband did for a wife - an everyday kind of gentleness.

It made me crave him so badly.

"David?" My voice came out very small. "I can't sleep. Will you stay with me? Just for now?"

His arms wrapped around me and his head rested on my shoulder. I felt a shudder go through him, some emotion I couldn't name. When he looked up, the intensity of it was enough to shatter my heart.

"I'll stay," he said, and eased me down onto the bed. "I'll stay as long as you're awake."

"Big promises, Mister Big Shot," I said. "What if a cat gets stuck up a tree in Peoria? I bet you'd go running off to the rescue."

"You know how seriously I take a vow. Unless I made one to the cat, you're my priority." He tapped me gently on the nose, and there was humor in his face now. "Clothes off or on?"

"Oh God, off. Off off off."

We were naked before our backs hit the mattress, thanks to David's wondrous Djinn fabric-vanishing powers. The duvet settled over us like snowfall, but it was warm beneath it, so warm,