Weather Warden - Chill Factor Part 11

I shook my head and coughed. My lungs throbbed.

The gunman reached over and shut the door. "Poison gas, right?"

he asked. "d.a.m.n. Guess it's not a good idea to go in there and toss the room just now."

I shook my head. He holstered the gun and held out his hand, and just like that, he came into focus for me. A wallpaper kind of guy with black hair, a clever face, and light brown eyes. Two-day growth of beard.

"Nice to meet you. My name's Quinn," he said. "I'm here to rescue you."

FIVE.

Some rescue.

When it became clear I wasn't the damsel in distress-or at least not the kind Quinn could save me from with his heroic .45-he grabbed me by the elbow and hustled me down the hall, into the elevator, and out through the casino in record time.

I was getting tired of being hustled.

As we stepped outside onto the wide portico, with its huge sweep of overhang and constant stream of limos and taxis dropping off money, I yanked myself loose and stepped back, hands in fists at my sides. At last. Out in the open-more or less-and breathing natural air.

"Hey!" I snarled. Quinn's eyebrows did a funny little up-and-down jerk, and then his face went reflectively impa.s.sive. "Pal! Back off, will you? I don't need your d.a.m.n help! I had things under control!"

"Yeah, it really looked like it," Quinn said. He calmly reached into his pocket and took out the gun again, in full view of the uniformed doormen. One of them looked alarmed and reached for a phone; Quinn also moved his coat and revealed an official-looking gold badge in a black holder snapped over his belt.

Quinn was a cop.

"Let's take a drive, sunshine," he told me, and steered me out into a holding pen reserved for taxis and cars for hire. A dark brown Ford Taurus sat among them, shiny as a roach, and Quinn popped open doors and put me in like a criminal with a hand on my head, into the backseat. I immediately tried the door, but of course it didn't open.

Childproof locks had a lot to answer for.

Quinn's driver's-side door opened, and he bent over to fix me with a look out of those light toffee-brown eyes. "Play nice," he said. "Don't make me cuff you."

I put my hands pointedly in my lap. The car's upholstery groaned slightly as he got in, and then the engine fired and we were moving down the long driveway into blinding Las Vegas sun, heading for a huge sign that spelled out the current Bellagio attractions in glowing starlike lights.

"I'm under arrest?" I asked. "What's the charge?"

"Criminal stupidity," Quinn said.

"And you're full of s.h.i.t. I told you, I didn't need rescuing, and if I'm not under arrest, Detective Quinn-"

"Consider yourself a material witness in an ongoing investigation."

"An investigation of what, exactly?"

He took a right turn onto Flamingo Road, negotiated with a Lexus for a lane change, and headed the car down Las Vegas Boulevard.

"Murder," he said. "I had a guy pitched out of that window about a week ago, you know. Messed up my sidewalk something terrible. I guess you know that n.o.body else can see those knuckleheads up there. You must be a Warden, right? Wardens can see them."

Now that the panic was starting to subside, I felt tired and achy.

Groggy with leftover adrenaline. "And you? You're a Warden?"

He held up his right hand. I made a pa.s.s in the air, concentrated, and saw the telltale sparkle of wards reflected on his skin. Quinn's aetheric tattoo was an ankh, the Egyptian symbol for life. Which didn't match the stylized sunburst I'd expected to see.

"Not a Warden. What the h.e.l.l are you?"

"Need to know, sunshine."

"As in, I don't need to?"

"I know you thought you were being all clever and s.h.i.t, but the kid wasn't giving you Jonathan's bottle. Oh, he was going to give you a bottle, but it was one with a nasty toy surprise inside. He already pulled that on one other poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d." Quinn's glance in the rearview mirror was grim and a.s.sessing. "I take it you have some experience with Demon Marks."

Where the h.e.l.l had he heard that? Not even the Wardens knew much about it. The Djinn knew, but this guy wasn't Djinn; I'd have been able to tell that much. Not a Warden, not Djinn, but something.

And yet, when I took a look at him in Oversight, he was just a guy.

Nothing special. Not even any powers to speak of.

Quinn could tell I wasn't going to offer any color commentary. "If he'd given you the bottle, you'd have uncorked it to order Jonathan in," he said. "Only problem is, that would have let something else out, and we've got quite enough of that kind of problem going around right now. So sorry, but I had to stop you."

I felt a flush of cold through my veins. It was possible Quinn was right; Kevin's brain worked that way. If he could have found a way to screw things up, he'd have done it. And giving up ... it wasn't really his style, was it? Taking out the enemy in the most horrifically violent way possible, that was his style. And if there really had been a b.o.o.by- trapped bottle . . .

During Kevin's escape in New York three weeks ago, he and Jonathan had released from their bottles at least three Djinn who were infected with Demon Marks, which meant that they were clinically insane, at the mildest interpretation; I knew that two of them had been located and recaptured, safely labeled as hazardous materials, and stored in some underground vault in Colorado. The third remained on the loose. It figured that Kevin might have grabbed up one of the other unbroken bottles as insurance. He could have pa.s.sed one of those to me, and that would have meant pa.s.sing me the Demon Mark when I opened up the bottle. Yippee. Been there, done that. Really didn't care for a return engagement.

"Where are you taking me?" I asked. Useless question. He didn't even bother to glance in the rearview. There was no plastic divider between me and Quinn, and I was starting to wonder what the effects of a decent wind gust would be inside the pa.s.senger area of a Taurus, but then Quinn took an abrupt right turn, up a long, wide drive.

Toward the gleaming gla.s.s pyramid of the Luxor Hotel, guarded by the ma.s.sive golden bulk of the Sphinx.

"Oh," I said. "Cool. I always wanted to stay there."

The Luxor was like the Bellagio, only different. I kind of liked the Egyptian theme better, but then I've always been pretty ostentatious in my fashion sense, and besides, in the cl.u.s.ter of high-end shops by the entrance I spotted evidence of Jimmy Choo, Prada, and Kate Spade. That plus all the ornamental gold and enamel . . . well, I almost forgot about Quinn's gun and badge and hand on my arm.

For a minute.

The gaming area was virtually identical to the Bellagio's; only the wallpaper and carpeting and uniforms were different. The money was universal, and so was the mingled, vibrating sense of euphoria and desperation. I couldn't resist; I let myself slip the leash of the material world a little and rose up into the aetheric, just enough to catch a peek.

When I was a Djinn, the aetheric had registered in patterns and wavelengths of light. These days, human senses limited me to the surfaces of things, and a kind of broad psychological interpretation of auras. On the aetheric plane, the casino was almost a photonegative of how it appeared on earth. Instead of brilliant and glittering, it was dark, shadowy, peopled by ghosts whose auras fired in flares of manic excitement or despair. I don't mean that everybody there was addicted ... far from it. But there was a shine to it that reminded me unsettlingly of the way the blue sparklies had looked, up on the aetheric, when the route had been open from the Demon Realms into our own.

I wasn't sure what that meant, but I decided I didn't have time to solve the world's problems, anyway. One problem at a time, and mine was towing me through the casino at a relentless pace.

"Hey, you're not going to take me back to your presidential suite and hang me out a window, are you? Because that's so last half hour ago ..."

"Quiet," Quinn said absently. He strong-armed me up to one of those areas labeled PRIVATE, guarded by not one but two strong- looking guys in discreet blazers with not-so-discreet bulges under their arms. They nodded to him. He nodded back. One of them jerked a chin at me. They all gave me the once-over.

All in silence.

I gave myself the once-over, too. Clingy shirt, short skirt, high heels that were just short of being quality . . .

"In your dreams, guys," I said. "It's not what it looks like."

"She's with me," Quinn said.

"Watch it, Quinn," one of them warned. They were virtually identical-Buzz Cut Number One, Buzz Cut Number Two. Number Two had a slightly thicker neck. Number One had cool, chilly gray eyes. "Don't make us come in there."

Quinn fixed them each with a look, and I mean a look. Whatever he'd been using with me had been his friendly-puppy act, because that look was outright scary, promising evil and death in man-sized portions.

"Gentlemen," he said, and Buzz Cut Number One slid a key card through a slot and opened the door for us.

Beyond was a small, smoky room. In another setting it might have been labeled intimate, but in this one it was just small. Low lighting in the faux-Egyptian sconces along the wall, plush dark carpeting underfoot. A full bar at one end, with a uniformed bartender on duty.

In the center of the room, a round table, and five men sitting around it.

Playing cards.

The cards were floating in midair in front of each player; as I watched, an older gentleman who looked like he'd been made a CPA in the days of the pharaohs decided to fold, and lowered his hand facedown to the green baize surface. The room smelled of cigar smoke and sweat-soaked money. I didn't know how much the pile of chips on the table represented, but it was a lot. A lot. I didn't dare peek into the aetheric this time. Some things-I knew this instinctively- really shouldn't be seen.

"Quinn," the accountant grunted, and the rest of the players looked up. I was staring at the hand of the man directly in front of me; the floating cards showed he had eights over queens.

"Sir." Quinn's demeanor had changed again, this time to the respectful public servant. He let go of my arm. "Joanne Baldwin.

Joanne, this is Myron Lazlo."

"Charmed," the accountant said, and nodded in my direction without getting up. "You're a Warden, correct?"

"Weather," I said. "You?"

He had a lived-in face, lined around the eyes. High cheekbones that made him look like he'd stored a couple of tight, small apples in them for the winter. The suit-what I could see of it-was easily a four-grand tailored job, probably from Saville Row or Rome.

Beautiful gray wool. The tie was a Villa Bolgheri silk, knotted to perfection.

I revised my estimate of his total net worth up by seven figures.

"I'm not a Warden," Myron Lazlo said. "Neither are these other gentlemen, I a.s.sure you."

"So you're what, ankh guys? What's up with that?"

He gave me an unamused, unwelcoming smile. "Quinn, you're being unmannerly. Bring a chair for the lady, please."

Quinn moved without comment, came up with a straight-backed chair, and moved it into position away from the table.

"If you'd be so kind as to wait a moment," Lazlo said. "We're almost finished with this hand."

I sat down, crossed my legs, folded my hands, and waited. Quinn and his gun and his dead-eyed stare kept me honest, as did the idea of the Buzz Cut twins outside the door. Plus, whether they wanted to call themselves Wardens or not, these guys had something . . .

defying gravity wasn't something that most people, not even my people, casually went around doing. I had the unsettling feeling this was just a parlor trick, so far as they were concerned. I spent my time trying to figure out how they did it. No Djinn in evidence. I concentrated on the air, but it was following the normal flow patterns dictated by the forces of the room-the silent current of the air- conditioning coming from the top left-hand corner, swirling into corkscrew eddies as it was drawn down by gravity toward the floor.

The hotter flow was a shimmer of yellow, filtering the opposite direction. Some kind of filter system in operation, technology I didn't recognize that attracted the chemical chains of the smoke in the air and funneled it away. As smoky as this room was, I realized it could have been much worse. Five men, each puffing away on cigarettes or twenty-dollar cigars for hours on end . . . made me gag nicotine to think of it.

I didn't see any signal, but a sigh went through the four remaining players, and three folded and one raked in chips. Lazlo gathered the cards and neatly shuffled them back together before handing them off to a Luxor-uniformed factotum. The dealer put the cards into an envelope, pulled a self-seal, and labeled the outside of the envelope with the date, time, and some kind of code number. So there could be a.n.a.lysis done later, I a.s.sumed, in case of an allegation of cheating.

Nice.

He put a fresh, unbroken deck on the table and stepped away to stand like a statue in the corner, near the bartender.

"Now," Myron said, and gave me that parsimonious smile again, "let's talk about you, Ms. Baldwin. What brings you to Las Vegas?"

If he could ante up that fake a smile, I could see it and raise him on wattage. "Sun, fun, shopping . . ."

"Could it be that you're here to make a deal with Mr. Prentiss on behalf of the Wardens?"

I looked at Quinn. He was leaning up against the wall, arms folded, watching me with bright, uninformative eyes.

"Could be," I said. "Could be I'm here to kill him. Could be I'm just in the wrong place at the wrong time. That happens more than you'd think."

Myron laughed. "My dear lady, I can also see into the aetheric, you know. And while you are intemperate and occasionally unwise, you lack the necessary ruthless detachment to be able to execute young boys. Even in pursuit of the greater good. And besides that, the Djinn would stop you, you know. However, I think you actually believe you might do it, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and not consider it a lie." The laughter faded out of his eyes and left them chilled and scary. "You do not want to lie to me, my dear. Really, you do not."

Okay, now I had a creepy bad feeling. They knew about the Wardens. They knew about Kevin. They knew about Jonathan. Was there anything these guys didn't know?

"Your attempt to stop him is foolish," one of the others continued.

He was a short, gnarly-looking little man, approaching middle age but not yet arrived: slicked-back black hair, rimless gla.s.ses, eyes of no immediate impact behind them. "The Wardens need to stay out of this. They caused this mess, just as they've caused hundreds more in the past thousand years."

"Oh, okay. We'll just pick up our toys and go home." I smiled at Gnarly Guy, saw a faint flush spark high in his cheeks. "You do know about the temperature rise, don't you? Global warming?

Impending ice age? Earthquakes? You do think we should do something to stop that, right?"

Silence. They all looked at me, and then Myron Lazlo said gently, "Actually, my dear, no. We don't. And that is our difficulty. The Wardens long ago exceeded their authority when they began to enslave the Djinn and force the world to their own uses. The system has long been out of balance, which is why you have to work so hard to keep it going. What you're speaking of is simply the logical result of so many mistakes. It can't be corrected by working even harder to control it."

"Then how can it be corrected?" I asked.

"By letting go," he said. "By giving up the illusion of control and allowing the world to right itself. That is the only way we can find our balance again."

"And how many millions is that brilliant strategy going to kill?"

"As many as it takes, my dear. If the Wardens had followed the right course a thousand years ago, we'd not be facing this kind of apocalypse now, but they refused to believe. More power, they said.

More power will fix what's broken. But it won't, and you know that on some level, don't you?"

Things started to fall into place. "You've been fighting us."

"No," Myron said. "We've been correcting you. We stand on the side of the Mother. On the side of balance. We are Ma'at."

I stared at them, blank. They stared back. After a long moment, Myron smiled beautifully and nodded at the bartender.