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felt a sudden hard surge of power up on the aetheric, and a male voice from behind me said, "I can solve all of your problems. Give David to me."

Ashan. Tall, broad-shouldered, a sharp face that tended toward the brutal even while it was elegantly sculpted. He was a study in grays... silvered hair, a gray suit, a teal-colored tie that matched his eyes. Rahel's fashion sense was neon-bright; he was like moonlight to her sun. Cold and contained and rigid, and nothing of humanity about him at all, despite appearances.

Rahel threw back her chair in a shriek of metal on concrete and hissed at him, eyes flaring gold. Ashan just stared at her. He looked breathtakingly violent, one second from murder, even though all he did was stand there.

I was looking at the embodiment of the war Rahel had been talking about, and I was the chosen battleground.

"Still campaigning for your master?" he asked. Not directed at me; I didn't matter to him at all. I was human, expendable meat. "Time's up, Rahel. Are you staying with him? The old guard's changing. You don't want to be stupid about this. I've got a place for you at my side."

She didn't answer. Didn't need to. Her defensive crouch was answer enough.

"It's a small army you've put together," Ashan said. "Small, and weak. You stink of humans, Rahel. Don't you want to wash yourself clean of them? Them and all of the filth that we've wallowed in these thousands of years while Jonathan watched his plans rot and die?"

"I'm clean enough," she said, "and I don't answer to you."

"Not yet," he agreed, and turned those eerie eyes on me. "I don't know why Jonathan hasn't killed you, human, but if you get in my way, I won't hesitate. You know that."

I dug my fingernails into my palms and slowly nodded.

"Now be a good girl and go get the bottle for me," he said. "I want David. Now."

INTERLUDE

As the storm nears its first brush with land, it's almost unrecognizable from the soft, pale breeze born off the coast of Africa. It stretches hundreds of miles across, thickly armored in electric gray arcs of clouds. It carries inside of it the energy of the sun, stored in the form of tightly packed moisture that continues to rise and fall, condense and shred, and every transfer bleeds more fury into the system.

Dangerous, but not lethal. When it breaks, it will dump torrential rains and heavy winds, but it's still just a storm.

But as it nears the first of several islands in its way, a one-in-a-billion confluence of events comes together, as an ocean current winding its way north to south is warmed by just the right angle of the sun. Its temperature rises by four degrees.

Just four.

Just at the right time.

The storm passes over the current, and bumps into the sudden warm wall of rising moisture. Something alchemical happens, deep within the clouds; a certain critical mass of moisture and temperature and energy, and the storm begins its relentless suicidal course.

The last small variable in the equation is a random brisk wind spinning off the Cape. It collides with the storm's far perimeter and slides along, and because it is cooler it drags the storm with it.

The storm begins to turn. The storm has rotation. It has mass. It has a gigantic energy source, self-sustaining. It has taken a huge leap, grown explosively and deepened in its menace, and it is no longer a child.

It is now a full-fledged hurricane; and it is still growing.

FOUR

In retrospect, snarling, "Over my dead body!" probably wasn't the smartest thing to say to a Djinn willing to take on Jonathan in a straight-up dogfight for control of the Djinn world.

I never said I was smart. But at least you can't call me a coward.

Ashan reached out to grab me, but his hand never reached me; Rahel lunged past me in a flash of neon gold and flung herself on him like a tiger, ripping and snarling. Ashan, taken by surprise, fell back a few steps...

... off the balcony.

He didn't fall. He floated, looking surprised and annoyed and a little bit pissed-off, and yanked a handful of Rahel's cornrowed hair to get her off of him. His strength was incredible. I knew how tough Rahel was, and the ease with which he slung