The wind did nothing but ruffle the rags the Djinn was still barely wearing.
She'd been female, at some point, or at least liked to manifest in female form.
I slammed a harder gust of wind at her, well aware that I was draining energy out of the atmosphere and something was going to have to create balance for it.
Molecules rushed in to fill empty spaces, vibrating faster; temperatures rose from the friction of atom against atom.
But it was too slow. Wind wasn't going to stop this thing, and the weather system was way too stable for me to get anything out of it in time to save my life. No rivers around to redirect …
Water. Strictly speaking, Djinn didn't need air to breathe; they could adapt themselves just fine. But one thing all cells need, no matter how artificiaclass="underline" they need water just to have form.
I'd never done it before, but it came to me in a blinding and rather scary flash, and I didn't stop to think, I just acted.
I reached out my power into a bubble, surrounded the Djinn, and called every microscopic speck of water out of it.
It was like watching something freeze-dry in time lapse … between one step and
another, the insane Djinn went from huge and bulky and twisted to dry and thin and twisted, a husk of what it had been. It had made itself too real, and reality required human building blocks. Without water, its muscles couldn't function to move. Nerves couldn't conduct impulses.
It let go of flesh and became vapor and flew at me, screaming. I threw up a wall of wind and slammed the vapor back against the cinder-block wall and held it there, pinned. It was strong, oh God it was strong, and it was full of hunger and black fury, and I couldn't keep this up all day. Too many variables, too many witnesses …
The Djinn snarled and solid or not, proved it was capable of a little weather-manipulation of its own; I sensed the wind coming and braced myself, but didn't dare let up on the Djinn to summon up any kind of shield. It hit me hard and fast, a linebacker of a wind packed with scouring sand, and I was knocked off balance and sprawled full length on the pavement, and the wind kept howling, growing, taking on a life of its own as it swept up sand and random trash into an unsteady broad circle around me.
Trying to form a dust devil. Dust devils are a version of a tornado, one without the killing interaction of moisture and air; they're a dry-air phenomenon, and lack the force to really kill.
Unless, of course, they're powered from an outside force, like the Djinn I was trying to hold helpless against the wall.
I felt my control slipping.
"David!" I yelled, and clawed my hair out of my eyes. "David, I need — "
But my command was stopped in my throat, rammed back by a monster punch of wind that nearly blew out my lungs. I was pulled off the ground, whirling. I had a great view of the wind dying around the Djinn, and it reforming into flesh and blood, staring up at me and snarling as the dust devil tossed me around like a toy. Heat lightning shimmered across the sky.
The police car, speeding toward us, suddenly left the road and flipped over into the air four or five times, or maybe I lost count because of my own sickening spin … I saw it in flashes, the metal crunching, bits flying off, the horrible rending shriek of metal.
I had to stop this. Now.
I reached out for the wind, and tried to grab hold, but it was under the Djinn's control and fought me, fought me hard, lashed me bloody with debris and then dropped me with casual, cruel suddenness to the hard ground.
I rolled over, gasping, and saw the Djinn looming over me, and there was something in its mouth, something horrible and I remembered it all too well, the Demon twisting its way into my body and soul … never again, never again …
A boom like Armageddon tore the world in half. No, not the world, just the Djinn. It staggered back, a huge hole in its middle, surprise on that twisted face, and I smelled gunpowder and looked up to see Brian McCall standing there with his shotgun smoking in his hands. Pale and scraped, but upright. He pumped it and pulled the trigger a second time.
"You can't kill it!" I screamed at him, and spotted something shiny lying in the weeds growing next to the wall. I lunged for it, praying, and felt the Djinn gathering its insane strength behind me. When it struck, it wasn't going to screw around; it was going to flatten me, McCall, the motel, and everything in sight.
Or it was going to come after one of us and put that Demon Mark down our throats.
Either way, I couldn't let it happen.
There was a brown glass beer bottle half-buried in the weeds. I pulled it out, breathless, shaking, and held it up to the light.
No cracks.
Also, nothing to use for a cork.
No time to worry about it. I felt the hot rush of power behind me, rolled over on my back and held the bottle up in both hands toward the sky and the Djinn, who was falling on me like a storm, and screamed, "Be thou bound to my service!
Be thou bound to — "
It grabbed me by the ankle and yanked. I slid across the parking lot in an abrading scrape of back on asphalt, and somehow managed not to drop the bottle.
McCall had his shotgun aimed, but there was no way he could do anything without hitting me as well, and besides, I wasn't sure the Djinn would even pay attention to a little pellet spray, not with a Warden in its hands.
"— to my service! Be thou — "
It fell on me, driving the breath out of me; it felt exactly like a two-hundred-pound wrestler had dropped with both knees onto my rib cage. I felt things crack, saw red flashing stars, and felt a jet of agony spray through me like acid. My third repetition dissolved into an inarticulate scream, and I felt the Djinn's hand — or whatever passed for it — scrabbling at my mouth, trying to hold it wide open …
Something yanked it off.
I blinked, whooping in painful gasps, and saw that another Djinn was materializing behind the insane one — bronze and gold, swirls of power, hot molten eyes, fury …
David.
He put his forearm across the other Djinn's throat and yanked it upright and screamed at me, "Finish it!"
I could barely get my breath, but I forced enough in and whispered, " — bound to my service," and the Demon-infected Djinn dissolved in an explosion of mist, and I felt the bottle in my hand grow instantly cold and heavy. I slapped my hand over the top of the bottle.
"Cork," I whispered, but David didn't respond. He couldn't. Those were the rules … he couldn't provide anything to do with bottles or corks, couldn't touch his own bottle or those of other Djinn. "Shit. Forgot."
He knelt next to me, holding me up, combing hair away from my face. Frantic.
I didn't have time for that, not now, I was too aware of the bottle I was holding, the energy contained by nothing more than my hand, and the darkness unraveling the edges of my vision. I was going to pass out. If I did, my hand would fall off of the bottle, and …
I looked up into the sky and called rain. It took a few minutes to get what little moisture there was in the area crammed together, and rub the molecules together enough to produce the energy necessary. McCall, who hadn't moved from where he was standing, shotgun still at half-mast, stared at me without any understanding of what I was doing, but when a lightning bolt suddenly whipped out of the clouds forming above he ducked for cover.
Rain fell in a hard silver curtain, brutally fast, hitting my exposed skin in cold slaps. I didn't care. The chill and pain anchored me, kept me awake. I blinked away water and looked at David. Water didn't touch him, just vanished into tiny wisps of steam a few inches from his body. He was staring at me with an intent half-frown, and when the ground was wet enough, I smiled and turned the bottle upside down, removed my hand and dug it into the mud. Screwed it in tight.