Heat Stroke Page 0,115

kid again, scrawny, nervous, arrogant. "Yeah? Well, you tell them, they try it, I'll kick all their asses. Count on it."

I just shook my head. He didn't know. He didn't understand.

Kevin snapped his fingers at Jonathan. "Now. Today. Take me to Vegas. We've got some fun to be having."

"Stop him!" I pleaded with David. He looked stunned, angry, and completely baffled.

"I can't. Lewis-" He looked down at the man I held in my arms. "It's gone. All his power. There's nothing to draw from."

Too late, anyway. A sensation of rushing wind, and Jonathan and Kevin were gone.

"Can you track them?" I asked. David crouched down next to me and nodded. "Oh, God, David . . . can you fight them?"

"Not alone," he said. "Not like this."

I closed my eyes and looked inside myself, felt the warm red swell of power. I'd been put back into human form with all my potential included, which meant that maybe I was the only one qualified to do this thing. The only one with enough raw energy.

But I had to do something I'd sworn I never would. And no matter what anybody said, it would change things. Forever.

As always, David knew me. He said quietly, "You know you have to."

I took the bottle from Lewis's limp fingers, and felt the sudden rush of strength, the giddy sensation of David's allegiance transferring itself to me.

He looked at me with those copper eyes, smiled so warmly I felt the embrace of the sun fold around me, and said, "It's about damn time. What took you so long?"

My lips parted as I felt the two halves of us knit together in a partnership like nothing I'd ever felt in my life. Equals. There was nothing subservient about the Djinn, not like this . . . He was me, part of me, more than me. And I was more than him.

I gently eased Lewis down to the carpet and stood up to face David. He reached out, put his hands on my shoulders and slid them up to gently cradle my face. Thumbs traced my lips and left a memory of fire. He was so damn beautiful it made me want to explode.

"We'll do this together," he said, and kissed me. A long, sweet kiss that fired me deep inside, a pilot light kicking in with enough force to make my knees go weak.

"Yeah," I murmured into his open mouth. "Can we win?"

His smile was a warm ghost against my lips. "Don't know. But it's going be one hell of a good fight."

I was warned by the clatter of metal and the creak of a heavy door at the far end of the hallway, but there was no point in getting flustered by the fact that the Wardens had finally dug themselves out of their chaos and come looking. "Freeze!" somebody roared with the authority of a man with a big gun. I wasn't worried. I'd faced down worse.

I opened my mouth to give David my first command . . .

. . . and I heard a loud boom, loud as the world, saw David's pupils expand in shock, felt my body jerk hard against him.

Oh, shit, I thought.

They'd just shot me in the back.

I had time for one last command. David was already readying himself for battle, for killing, for more death.

"Back in the bottle," I whispered, tasted blood, and saw David's eyes go even wider in anguish as the wind sucked him down, into the bottle.

I was crying when I slammed the stopper in place, and curled up on the ground, gasping for breath against the growing, howling pain with his bottle held in both hands, against my heart.

Some shadows leaned over me.

Darkness.

I woke up slowly, to the beeping of machines and the dull mutter of voices.

I opened my eyes and focused slowly on the man who was sitting next to me, his large hand wrapped around mine.

"Jo?"

Not David's voice, not his touch. Dots of light swirled and settled into the haggard outline of Lewis's face. Pallid, lined, textured by at least a day's unshaven growth of beard. Greasy hair.

"You look like shit," I whispered, and his dry lips cracked into a smile. He was wearing a hospital gown, one of those designs that flatters nobody. So was I. There were tubes tethering my