Firestorm Page 0,72

by the scruff of her shirt. She screamed and fought, but it was a little like a puppy fighting a wolfhound, only not so equal. "Shhhhh," he told her, and held a finger to her lips. She went instantly still, and white as bleached paper. "Good girl." He set her on the ground and stepped back, still holding her by one arm in case she might decide to sprint for it.

Angel glided back, barely touching the ground. Her feet looked as if they'd never encountered dust, much less rocky, tough ground.

She held her hand over Emily's heart.

Head-tilt. It stayed frozen in one spot for longer than I liked, and then slowly came back upright.

She moved quick as a tiger, fingernails forming into silver claws, and ripped Emily's shirt open over her heart. Not just the shirt. The jog bra was a casualty, and Angel hadn't been too careful about the skin, either.

Under the pale flesh and the claw marks and the vivid red blood, I glimpsed a tangle of black racing out of sight under her skin.

"No," I whispered. "Oh, no. How--? When--?" Because I knew for a fact that Emily hadn't been infected when we'd left her house. It had to have happened in the woods, when we'd been separated.

The damn Demon Mark was still following me, and when it hadn't cornered me, it had gone for Emily.

Emily's jaw worked nervously, and she looked at me as she fumbled the shreds of her shirt back together.

"It is early," Angel said. She was unquestionably the Djinn in charge here. The two who looked like kids--a matched set, boy and girl twins dressed in identical T-shirts and sloppy corduroy pants, with tangled brown hair--looked at her with a kind of unquestioning worship. The polite male Djinn, too. "Do you want this one?"

She was talking to me. To me. "Do I--uh--what?"

"Do you want this one?" she asked slowly, sounding out each word with heavy care. When I looked blank, Angel turned to the male Djinn holding Emily's elbow.

"Do you want us to take the Demon out of her," he translated. "It's still early. We can do it."

"Um... will it hurt her?" Stupid question. Of course it would. But it would hurt her a lot worse to keep it. "Never mind. Yes. If you can."

He nodded, took a glass bottle from a leather bag at his side, and handed it to Angel. She opened it carefully and held it in her left hand.

"Don't move," she said to Emily, and plunged her right hand into her chest.

Emily shrieked. I think I must have, too. I know I lunged forward, or tried to, but suddenly there were arms around me from behind, although all the Djinn were in front of me.

"No, love." David's whisper in my ear. "This has to be done."

I spun to look at him. Emily was making terrible, agonizing noises, and there were dead people on the ground, dead people... "You killed these people?"

He looked tired. Shadows in those normally bright eyes. "It had to be done."

"You killed them?"

He shook his head. "Let's not do this. Not now."

"Why didn't you want me to stop, if you didn't know this was going on?" But I knew. He must have sensed the lingering presence of my encounters with Demon Marks on me, just as Angel had. He'd been afraid that they'd just assume I was one of the infected. "God, David, how could you do this? These were Wardens."

"Wardens have always passed their infections on to Djinn, and we could never fight back. Now we can."

"So it was them or you. Is that it?"

His eyes held mine, steady. Flecked with amber and full of regret. "Yes. Them or us. And don't tell me the Wardens haven't done the same. Don't tell me that you wouldn't if it came to it."

"Slaughter fifteen people like sheep? No, David, I--" Emily's tortured moans suddenly cut off with the sound of flesh hitting the ground. I spun back toward her, and saw her being picked up from her faint by the big male Djinn, who placed her back in the SUV's passenger side. He removed that door, too, and the back one, as well. Evidently, he liked symmetry.

I rushed to her side and pressed my fingers to her throat. A nice, steady pulse. She moaned weakly and opened her eyes. Bloodshot and unfocused, but it looked like she'd live.

"They were on their way to the fire," David said grimly. "Fire that would have accelerated the Demon Marks and