Firestorm Page 0,109

and pushed away from the car to stand in the clear. Facing him with my arms at my sides, hands limp and open. Staring right into his eerie Djinn eyes. "What are you waiting for? Smash me. Destroy me. Rip me to pieces. I'm just a mortal, I can't stop you. Come on, Ashan, kick my punk human ass."

He growled. It was a low, primal sound, and his human form distorted under the pressure of his rage. He misted at the feet, then the legs. The suit disappeared. Everything remotely elegant disappeared, and he was pure flame, pure roaring energy, like the center of a volcano.

He rushed at me. I flinched a little, but I held my ground.

He came to a halt less than two inches from my face. I could feel the burn, the fury, but he didn't touch me.

He couldn't touch me.

And he knew that I knew.

I opened my eyes and smiled. "You said it yourself. Jonathan, Lewis, me. She wants to see me. Hear me. Doesn't she? And she's not going to let you kill me."

He formed himself back into human flesh again, pale and solid as marble, cold as tombstones. His eyes were an unholy shade of teal, glittering with silver. "I wouldn't smile," he said, and there was a grave hint of fury in his voice. "I may not be able to hurt you, but I can take it in trade. Blood for blood. The blood of your lover."

That meant that David was still alive, oh God... Relief made me weak at the knees, but I couldn't let him see it. "David's willing to die for this if he has to. I don't even have to ask him."

"Not just him. I'll destroy every one of the Wardens. If you think to play the game with me, you need to know the stakes. Lives will be lost. I will see to it."

"You already did," I spat back. "Hundreds of Wardens are dead. Tens of thousands are in danger, or dying, and for every Warden that dies, more get put in jeopardy. I know what I'm playing for, Ashan. And you're not going to threaten me into giving up."

I expected him to laugh and bluster--I mean, good villains did, right?--but he just looked at me, and when his comeback came, it was slow and deliberate and scary. "No," he said. "I have never known you to respond to threats against yourself. Or the world at large. And you're quite right about David and his self-sacrifice."

He was looking behind me. I know, I know, it's the oldest trick in the book, but I didn't think that he was all that up on strategy.

I glanced back. Imara was out of the car and standing mute and somehow limp a few feet away. As if she were unconscious, being held up by an invisible hand at the back of her neck. Her head lolled forward, then back, as if someone had tugged hard on her hair.

Her eyes were empty, flat silver.

I turned back to Ashan. His were the same color.

"She's mine," he said. "Until you take her away. Mine to use. Mine to kill, if I want. You can accept your own death. So far as I can tell, you seem to actively seek it out. And like most of humanity, the plight of the distant and faceless doesn't move you. But your daughter is in my hand, Joanne. And I think that means something more."

I swallowed hard. He was right, of course. Every cell in my body screamed at me to do something, anything, to save my daughter. She was part of me, and I wanted to protect her so badly, it was tearing me to pieces. Ashan might not have human ancestry in his background, but he knew what we feared.

"It does," I said softly. My eyes filled up with tears suddenly--hot, hard, aching tears that seemed to pour right up from my heart. "I love my daughter more than my life. But I'm going, Ashan. You do whatever you have to do, but I'm going. I have to."

I got back in the car. I could barely see it for the tears, but somehow I kept myself from sobbing. The wet trails on my face where they'd streamed felt cold in the sudden blast of the air conditioner as I turned the key and started up the roadster.

Ashan was still watching me, with my daughter clutched in one hand like a broken marionette. I couldn't tell what he