Thin Air Page 0,87

him here when we're ready. If he panics, he can be hard to control."

A Djinn-well, former Djinn-who had panic attacks. That was a new one. I parked the Camaro in a convenient spot, killed the engine, and sat listening to the metal tick as it cooled. Outside, there was a living silence that pressed heavily against the car windows.

I didn't like it here.

"This is hard for you," Venna said. "Yes?"

"Yes."

She turned those blue, blue eyes on me and said, "Do you know why?"

I silently shook my head. I didn't think I wanted to know.

We got out of the car and walked to a steep set of concrete stairs leading up into the dark. Motion-sensitive lights bathed the steps dusty white, a startling contrast to the reddish rocks. I put my foot on the first one, and suddenly I couldn't breathe. Couldn't move.

Venna took my hand. "I know," she said quietly. "This place remembers. It remembers everything." She put her head down, as if there were things she didn't want to see. I could understand that. I could feel it brushing at the edges of my consciousness, and without meaning to I drifted up into the aetheric...

And I saw chaos.

Raw fury. Horror. Anguish. An abiding, keening grief that had reduced this place, on the aetheric level, to a black hole of emotion.

"My God," I whispered numbly. "What did this?"

Venna glanced up at me, then back down. "You did," she said. "David did. We all did. When she died-"

She shut up, fast, but not before I put the pieces together. "Imara," I said. "Imara died here."

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "We didn't know what to do. She was part human, and that part couldn't be saved. He tried, after you were...after you disappeared."

"David tried to save her."

Venna bit her lip and nodded. She looked genuinely distressed. No wonder there was so much pain here, so much grief. David's agony, staining this place like ink.

Maybe mine, too.

"We'd better go," she said, and took my hand. Hers felt warm, childlike, human. "It'll be better at the top."

It wasn't exactly easy ascending those stairs; I felt as if I were moving through the same quicksand I'd fought through back on the beach. The handrail felt sticky. I looked at my hand, almost sure I'd see bloodstains, but no...nothing. Up above, stars were twinkling in the dark blue sky; there was still a band of pale blue toward the horizon, shot through with threads of red and gold. Beautiful.

There seemed to be a thousand steps, and every one of them a sacrifice.

When we made it to the landing I was gasping for breath and shaking; Venna let go of my hand and moved to the door of the chapel, which was closed and had a sign on the front that gave the hours it was open-which didn't include the hour of now.

That didn't seem to matter to Venna, who simply pulled, and the door opened with a faint snick. The puff of air from the darkened interior smelled of incense and cedar, a timeless scent that carried none of the horror present outside.

Except for the flicker of a couple of red candles here and there, it was quite dark inside; the dim, fading sunset showed a small chamber, inked in shadow at the corners, with a few plain wood pews facing the huge expanse of glass windows. It was breathtaking, and it was, without a doubt, a holy kind of place.

Venna held the door for me, and locked it once we were inside. The place looked empty.

"I thought you said-"

"I said I'd bring him," she said, and I felt a massive energy surge sweep over my body, staggering me, and I almost saw the golden arc of it blow past.

It seemed to outline a human body, glowing hot, and then the glow vanished and there was only a man standing there, unsteady and pale as a dead man.

He pitched forward to the floor, retching.

I knew exactly how that felt, actually. I'd felt it when I'd flown Air Venna from the Great Northwest to Las Vegas, nonstop.

"I thought you said teleporting could kill people," I said.

"It didn't."

Even though I knew it was a mistake, I took a step toward them and heard that he was gasping for breath in helpless, hopeless sobs. He looked up, and the dim light gilded a pale face, pale hair.

"I shouldn't be here," he said. "I can't be here-" And then he just...stopped, staring at me.

"Ashan?" I asked. He should have rung some