“Nice to meet you,” he said, which was a patent lie. “Rick Harley. Weather. If you’re looking for a Djinn, I’m not working with any right at the moment.”
“I’m not looking for Djinn. I’m looking for you,” I said, without any particular emphasis or menace. His eyes were blue, faded a bit from their sapphire sparkle of youth. He drank too much alcohol, and it showed in the tremor of his hands and the state of his body. “Did you participate in any gambling involving the Djinn?”
He looked ghostly now, and grim. There were pale patches around his mouth and eyes, and a muscle jumped unsteadily in his jaw as he said, “Don’t know what you’re talking about. If that’s all—”
“I am speaking about the death of a Djinn,” I said. “And you know what I’m talking about, very well. It disturbs your sleep. It makes you drink too much, and cut yourself off from your family and friends to hide out here in the wilderness. You are guilty, and it eats at you.”
He said nothing to that. He stared at me as if I were the angel of death, come on this fine, sunny morning to reap his soul ... as I was. He seemed unusually composed, and resigned.
“Rick,” I said, “I’ve been sent to kill you. This isn’t my choice, although it’s justice; your death serves a greater purpose, and will save innocent lives. Your death is the price I have to pay to ensure the safety of those innocents.”
“Why are you telling me this?” he asked, and there was a grim, wry twist to his mouth at the end. “Do you think it makes me feel any fucking better? You think I’ll be happy to put my neck on the chopping block because all of a sudden I’m dying for a good cause?”
“You might be,” I said. “Your death isn’t in vain. Your death is honorable, the way a Warden’s should be. Your death redeems your life, and the mistakes you’ve made.”
“Fuck you,” he said, and stood up in an unsteady scramble. He was already drunk, I realized, even so early in the morning. His ears were flushed bright red, but his eyes were steady and focused, and frightened. “I knew one of you would come for me. I knew it would happen someday. Well, fuck you. I know I can’t win, but I’m not giving up. Maybe you can kill me, maybe you can’t, but I’m damn sure going to give you one hell of a ...”
He didn’t have a chance to finish. His head exploded in a cloud of red mist, and it took me a shocked second to realize that someone had shot him, from a distance. Someone had put a high-caliber bullet through his head, blowing it apart like a ripe melon. Warm spray spattered my face and dotted my white leathers, and a second later I heard the rolling crack of the rifle shot.
I didn’t think, only reacted, throwing myself down and to the side, rolling even as Rick Harley’s body toppled dead to the ground. Another shot snapped into the dirt where I had been, and a third followed but missed by inches. I made it to the cover of the tent’s bulk and paused, breathing hard as the facts began to hurtle through my brain at light speed.
One, I had been sent here by Rashid to kill a man.
Two, I wasn’t the only one.
Three, and most important, I had never been expected to carry through on my task.
This was a trap, set not for Harley but for me.
Rashid was no longer my ally. He was my adversary, and he’d sold me out to my enemies.
That was confirmed as a very human voice called from the trees, near where the rifle shot had originated, “Come out, Cassiel. We’ll let you live if you surrender peacefully.”
Chapter 7
THERE WAS,in fact, no possibility of surrendering, because I knew that these had to be Pearl’s human acolytes—and they were under orders to kill me if at all possible. Otherwise, they’d not have fired the shots they already had—or, in the next breath, fired through the tent, opening bright spots of sunlight that blazed into the shadows beside me. The last of these missed my head by no more than an inch.
I closed my eyes, blocking it all out, and went on the aetheric to assess the situation. There were four of them—one, probably the shooter, holding his position in the trees beyond the tent. A second was creeping slowly through the foliage around to my left, and a third was climbing a tree to try to get an angle down on me from above.
The fourth, and most worrisome, had abandoned stealth and was running fast, heading for my exposed right. Once I was flanked, I was dead—that much was clear. They were certainly all armed. I could control guns, but there were many moving factors in this that didn’t play to my strengths.
I considered my options, which weren’t plentiful, and then did the only thing I could.
I softened the ground beneath my boots into loose, frictionless fine sand, and sank quickly to my knees, then to my hips. I held my breath as the sand advanced to my breasts, and closed my eyes and held my nose as my body plunged completely into the earth.
I was no Weather Warden, to create breathable oxygen, but the earth and things within it responded to me; I kept my vision in Oversight, assessing the positions of my enemies, and swam silently through the ground and loose rocks, cutting through like a shark beneath the waves. I sensed the two others getting quickly into position, and felt the waves of alarm and confusion when I wasn’t where they expected me to be. They would waste time assuming I’d somehow managed to make it to the trees.
The one who’d gone up into the tree had made a deadly mistake. I poured power through the tough, springy bark, waking thirst and hunger, and the branches began to twist, seeking sun. If he felt it, he must have attributed it to nothing more than the wind, until he paused and a tiny tendril of a new branch whipped around his ankle. Then another. Then another, pinning his knees. By the time he realized he was being restrained it was already too late, and bark was growing up and over his body with relentless speed.
It closed over his face and cut off his screams of alarm, and in another moment his final thrashings were over.
I achieved the safe shadows beneath his tree and emerged from the earth just enough to allow myself to take a quick breath. The air tasted sweet, and I had to fight the urge to gulp it in uncontrollable spasms that might be heard. I stayed very still. My enemies were down to three, but each of them had a good vantage point, and would be hard to take down if I came out of cover.
But there was no real need, I realized, as I assessed their aetheric signatures more closely. There were no Wardens among them; these were merely human hunters—which would have been enough, if I hadn’t been warned and taken immediate action.
But once I was able to ready myself, they had no real chance at all. I proceeded to kill two of them, simply by reaching out and stilling their hearts. They had no concept of how to fight such an attack, and dropped without a sound. In a way, it was a pity, because I do enjoy a fair fight. But I love winning much, much more.
I saved the last one, who had no idea he’d gone from a position of strength to even odds in less than a minute. I sank back into the ground and swam again, avoiding the area where Rick’s blood was seeping into the soil. I came up where one of the other hunters had fallen, with his rifle still clutched unfired in his hand.
I rose out of the earth and grabbed the rifle in the same motion, sank to one knee, and sighted.
Rick’s killer saw the movement and started to turn, but I was quick, and although I wasn’t an expert with a rifle, I didn’t really need to be; his chest was a large enough target, and I hit him high on the right side, between heart and shoulder. Probably through a lung, possibly near or through a major artery. The rifle rocked in my hands, driving back against my shoulder, and I rode with it and kept it at ready position as my opponent staggered and tried again to raise his own weapon. He failed, and it slipped out to fall to the grass.