considered my options, and decided on something relatively risky. Djinn are, essentially, vapor in their atomic structure; they can increase their weight and give themselves the corresponding mass, but just now I figured that Prada was more interested in keeping her balance than having true human form. A human appearance was doing the job, for her purposes. She didn't need the actual reality.
All I needed to do was hit her from behind with a powerful wind gust, enough to break her grip on the guy she was holding, and at the same time tip him backward and encourage him to hop down onto the concrete again.
Simple. Relatively elegant. And a hell of a lot better than waiting for the Djinn Deathmatch to turn up a winner.
I closed my eyes, took a fast, deep breath, and reached out for control of the air around me.
And missed.
I gasped and reached farther, stretched. Felt a faint stirring come to me. A stiff breeze. Nothing nearly strong enough. Oh my God... I felt clumsy, drugged, imprecise. Horribly impaired. I fought my way up onto the aetheric, feeling like I was swimming against a flood tide, and when I arrived everything was gray, dimmed, distant. Gray as ash.
It was like what had happened to me over breakfast with Sarah and Eamon, only far worse.
I buckled down and went deep, all the way deep, into reserves I hadn't called on since I'd survived the Demon Mark. Pulled energy out of my cells to fire the furnace of power inside. Pulled every scrap of power I had and threw it into the mix...
And it wasn't enough. I could bring the wind but I couldn't control it. It would be worse than useless, it would hit with the force of a tornado and swirl uncontrollably, throw the man's fragile human body onto the concrete and that would be my fault...
Prada sensed I was doing something. She snarled and extended her free hand toward me, talons outstretched and gleaming, and it was d�jr vu all over again.
I could feel her reaching into my chest to take hold of my pounding heart. She wouldn't even have to work hard to kill me; it would be a simple matter of disrupting the electrical impulses running through nerves, just a quick jolt ...
"David!" I yelped. I didn't mean to; I knew better, dammit, but I was scared and there was a Warden who was going to die because I wasn't strong enough...
"David? Where?" Cherise, distracted from the drama for a second, stared at me.
"Who, the guy up on the rail? That's not David, is-"
I felt the warm surge of power, flaring to a white-hot snap, and David came from out of nowhere between parked cars, olive drab coat belling around him in the wind. Auburn and gold and fire in flesh. Moving faster than human flesh could manage. Nobody standing around watching the action even glanced at him. To their eyes, he didn't even exist.
The other four Djinn in the crowd froze, staring. And as one, took a step backward.
Prada hissed and instantly transferred her attack to him, which was a mistake; it brought him to a stop, all right, but only because he wanted to get a good, hard look at her. He looked tired, so horribly tired, but he dismissed whatever she was trying to do to him with a negligent shake of his head. He looked at the man on the railing, then the cops. Took it in, in a single comprehensive glance.
I wondered, not for the first time, what Djinn saw when they studied a scene like that. The surface? The glowing furious tangle of human emotions? The energies we exerted, even unconsciously, on the world around us?
Whatever it was, it couldn't have been pretty. I saw faint lines groove themselves around his mouth and eyes.
His eyes turned to hot, molten metal, and his skin took on a hard shine. Getting ready for battle. He looked at Prada, who returned the glance with level calm.
"Why are you doing this?" he asked.
"I don't answer to you," she replied. "You betrayed us. Turned your back on us."
David turned to Alice, who raised pale eyebrows. "It's begun," she said. "It's spreading like a disease. A Free Djinn kills a master, sets loose a slave, who frees another, who frees another."
He looked appalled. "Jonathan ordered this?"
"Of course not."