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she took over for me, creating flesh and form in less than a flicker of a second, and when I opened my eyes her neon yellow ones were staring into mine from less than a foot away.

"What the hell was-"

"Hold on!" she shouted, interrupting me, and I felt the power surge around us. Not from her, not from me, from that thing.

I didn't think, I reacted. I reached out and slapped it down, hard. The resulting concussion of force erupted in sparks and blue-white flashes as energy turned to electricity, seeking the ground.

Ah, this was something I could handle. I reached out on the subatomic level and quickly dispersed the field, bleeding it off into a million tiny jolts through the steel frame of the building. All over the place, people would be picking up static charges from carpet, shocking themselves on doorknobs, feeling prickles on the backs of their necks.

"No!" Rahel said, and grabbed me by the shoulders. "We can't fight here! Too close!"

Not that we had any choice. The thing was still coming at us, hard and fast, and I ignored her to reach out through the aetheric and read what was going on.

It had control of the air. I couldn't tell what it meant to do, but something bad was a good bet. Air's heavy-it weighs several pounds per square inch. Increasing density can crush a human-or even a humanoid-body like an empty beer can.

I blocked, drawing heavy oxygen out of the elevator cage and slamming it together in a tightly packed ball between my spread hands. Rahel backed away, looking down at the swirling gray-blue mass I was holding. Her eyes went wide.

I set it on fire with a spark from the electricity still crackling around in the air, and wrapped the whole thing in a shell of carbon dioxide, and lifted that bowling-ball-sized inferno in one hand and held it there. Hell in a bottle.

"Bring it on!" I yelled to the empty air. Voices didn't carry in the altered atmosphere, but it didn't matter, I knew it was getting the point. "Get your ass out here, you coward! Show yourself!"

The elevator shuddered to a halt.

Something black manifested itself in the corner as a shadow, then a stain, then an oil-slick presence.

It wasn't a Djinn. I didn't know what it was, but evidently Rahel did. She lifted her left hand and pointed it at the thing, and her fingers sprouted claws again-long, wickedly pointed things that gleamed harsh crystal in the overhead lights.

"Ifrit," she hissed. She looked savage. "Leave this place."

There were eyes in the shadows; I could feel them even if I couldn't see them. Dark eyes. And a darker amusement. The ball of fire I'd made was starting to get hot, even through the layering I'd put around it. I tossed it from one hand to the other, looking casual and-I hoped-deadly.

The Ifrit purred, "Peace to you, my sisters."

"War, my sister," Rahel answered softly. "Who lets you hunt here?"

"Sweetmeat, I hunt where I choose," the thing said. It had a voice like darkest velvet, and even though the air was too thin to hold a smell I could taste it, like rotting meat in the back of my throat.

"Not here. Not now."

I don't know how it did it, but it smiled. Grinned, actually. Maybe it was just that my eyes were getting accustomed to the lack of features in its face, and added some imaginary ones, but I thought I saw a flash of teeth. "This creature cannot survive," it said, and pointed toward me. "Think you I will allow its energy to be wasted?"

The Ifrit was talking about me. "Who you calling a creature?" I shot back.

"Hush," Rahel said absently. She was staring at the Ifrit with a frown now, no longer afraid. "Get rid of that fireball before you hurt someone."

Oh. The fireball. I killed it by the simple expedient of cracking the carbon dioxide shell and instantly supercooling the molecules as they tried to hurtle out and fry us alive. By the time the snapping sound echoed through the elevator car, all that was left was a faint smell of ozone and a wisp of smoke that I left, just for effect.

"Now," Rahel said, and slowly lowered her hand. "Who sent you, my poor sister?" I wondered what had made the attitude change. My poor sister? The