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David helped e, lips parted as if he literally couldn’t believe it I wasn’t sure I could, either

Venna shifted and htly--she was exotically beautiful, hite hair and eyes that norlowed a brilliant yellow She tried to mist away, but Venna was quicker, and sank her claws into the Djinn, who howled in rage and pain

"We have to stop her," David said "She’ll kill everyone Everyone"

I scrambled for Venna’s bottle and said, firmly, "Venna Back in the bottle Back in the bottle Back in the bottle!" I al to meBut then, inevitably, the coed away fro black that oozed slowly back into the glass container

I jammed the cork in

There were still ten or so Djinn facing us--no small number, and Ashan could decide to pop back in at any h time The Wardens were here

And they were Earth Wardens, which was good; the radiation in here would fry Weather or Fire Wardens Two Earth Wardens would be a lot of use

I wasn’t prepared for who they’d be, and it tookdown the maze of broken concrete toward us He--or they--had cleared a tunnel along the way, so I could see faint gli in a tough-guy kind of ith muscled arms that rippled with flame tattoos

Likeboots, which served hi him was a tall, thin, pale woman with hair as white as the Djinn on who She had skin tothat missed albino only by the shade of her eyes, which were an unreen They weren’t a Djinn’s eyes, not anymore, but they once had been

That was Cassiel, the Djinn who’d been locked into human form And her partner, Luis Rocha

"Sorry we’re late," Rocha said, and jumped down the rest of the way to land with a solid thuo halfhen you blow shit up, do you? There’s enough rads burning in here to barbecue lead We can’t stay here long"

"We have to," I said "How’d you get here?"

"We were close, and Cassiel’s hell on wheels withfast Hey, Cass, you remember Joanne?"

Cassiel inclined her head, just a little She didn’t sain

That took a turn for the worse as she looked at her fellow Djinn "They’re hers," Cassiel said "They won’t stop co for you They know you hurt her"

"I know that," I snapped "It was kind of the plan Here Rocha, take this Try to bind one of them"

"Try to what?" He looked shocked, as I pressed a bottle into his hand "What the hell are you talking about?"

Two Djinn caot body-slammed into a pile of broken rock and bent rebar, and I felt suddenly sick at the daan whipping it around the chamber, vicious eddies and currents that pulled at the Djinn and flowed through them Unless they commit completely to human form, Djinn often wear shells--bodies that aren’t quite completely stable

Wind is their enemy, and I shredded several of the them with blasts of air

The ones who’d taken on entirely physical forms came at us in a rush, and I realized, belatedly, that the one who’d been heading for ing for Cassiel, who had grabbed the bottle from Luis’s hands

"Be thou bound to h time to repeat it two tiered under the blow, but it was nowhere near as deadly as it could have been, because the Djinn was dissolving into mist when he’d made contact He siphoned into the bottle, and she corked it and tossed it to Rocha Then she took a deep breath and grabbed another bottle

He stared at her with utter disbelief as she bound another Djinn She shoved that bottle into a pocket and grabbed yet another empty--only that one turned out to already be occupied Rahel misted out of it--the Rahel I knew--and took a look around at the chaos

Then she flashed rin and threw herself into the fight

Cassiel raised an eyebrow and put that bottle in another pocket, and kept on binding Djinn in a terse, methodical way until the only one left was the one David was fighting

Luis finally decided to join in, and bound that one

Silence

I dropped toblood, and I realized the enormity of e’d just done We’d enslaved thetoafter us, that was it Well, Lewis had wanted me to be bait I didn’t think he’d expected me to achieve it on this level of success

"What did we just do?" Luis asked nobody in particular "Fuck"

"We did e had to do, to survive," Cassiel said, in her cool, uninflected way "But on’t survive long if we don’t leave this place The radiation is too high even for Earth Wardens"

I nodded, and climbed painfully to my feet I needn’t have bothered; David swept me up in a carry position, and I reflexively threw my arms around his neck for balance "You’re hurt," I said "Letthe entire contents of rimly

"Shut up, Jo Let ainst me was better than ue with him, not now God, I didn’t realize how one A voice on the radio, a presence in an avatar--those things weren’t David This was David

"Don’t ever do anything this stupid again," he told me, as Cassiel led the way up the treacherous rocky tunnel I rested hed

"If I had a nickel for every time somebody said that "