"So it was them or you. Is that it?"

His eyes held mine, steady. Flecked with amber and full of regret. "Yes. Them or us. And don't tell me the Wardens haven't done the same. Don't tell me that you wouldn't if it came to it."

"Slaughter fifteen people like sheep? No, David, I—" Emily's tortured moans suddenly cut off with the sound of flesh hitting the ground. I spun back toward her, and saw her being picked up from her faint by the big male Djinn, who placed her back in the SUV's passenger side. He removed that door, too, and the back one, as well. Evidently, he liked symmetry.

I rushed to her side and pressed my fingers to her throat. A nice, steady pulse. She moaned weakly and opened her eyes. Bloodshot and unfocused, but it looked like she'd live.

"They were on their way to the fire," David said grimly. "Fire that would have accelerated the Demon Marks and hatched out more than we could handle at one time. We had to stop them before the Demons emerged, and it was too late to remove them safely. We didn't have a choice."

"We could have done something!" I shouted, rounding on him. He didn't back up. "We could have put them in a cell, in a hospital, anything but killing them and tossing them out like yesterday's trash! You don't have the right, David!"

"No!" he shouted back. "I have the responsibility! Now, if we've taken enough of a guilt trip, I have a fire to stop."

He whirled and stalked away, coat flapping in the hot wind behind him. I scrambled after, heart pounding in a bloody, loud fury in my ears. I grabbed his arm, felt heavy wool and the flex of muscles, and dragged him to a stop.

"David!"

He turned, and his expression… Ah, God. The agony was heartrending. "There's nobody else to make these choices. You know."

I did. I remembered all the times that I'd run screaming from the burden of hard choices. Even this time, I'd let myself get distracted from the mission by the opportunity to earn myself a little feel-good glory. It was Emily's job. It hadn't been mine. I'd come out here with good intentions, and hell lay at the end.

"This whole thing won't stop," I said. "It won't stop until we're all dead. Right?"

For answer, he reached out and folded his arms around me, holding me. He smelled of smoke and sweat, real and human, and I wanted nothing but to be somewhere else with him, somewhere free of chaos and responsibility. Somewhere I could hold him against my skin, and we could wash each other clean.

If we could ever be clean again.

"I know you didn't kill them," I whispered against his neck.

"I'm responsible," he said again, and his lips touched the sensitive skin below my ear, a delicate benediction. "That's all you need to know."

Lewis and Paul would shrug it off; fifteen more dead Wardens? A tragedy, sure, but we'd already lost more than we could count. And Demon-infected Wardens weren't an asset to anyone. I knew all the logical reasons, and none of them touched the black, oily guilt that continued to seep into my heart.

I took a deep breath and pulled back enough to look him in the eyes. "Where are these things coming from? What do they want?"

For a second he didn't react, and then his pupils narrowed as he comprehended what I was asking. "The Demon Marks? They're destined to produce adult Demons. They reproduce at will, once they hatch. The Marks—the eggs—are drawn through rips in the aetheric, and they're pulled to the nearest source of power. Djinn or Warden."

"Is that all?"

"No. They're drawn to us because we're part of her, in greater or lesser measure. What they want—especially the adults—is to get to the Mother."

"Like I do." Oh, the irony.

"Not… like you do," David said slowly. "If they can get to a place where she's vulnerable, they could kill her. Demons are a disease, Jo. And we have to fight them however we can, especially now. She's vulnerable. And she's hurting."

"The Oracle. The one in Seacasket. He was infected with a Demon Mark—"

"What?" He pulled back, completely back, eyes wide. "No. That isn't possible."

"I—I think it might have been my fault. I got it off him, but I don't know how much damage it did first."

His face went stiff and blank. "I have to go," he said carefully, with exquisite care. "Don't—don't go back to the Oracle. Don't try."

"But—"

"If you go back," he said tonelessly, "I'll have to kill you. Don't even think about it."

I swallowed hard. He'd shifted from the warm, comforting lover to the leader of the Djinn, and the change was terrifying. "Then what do I do? David, you're the one who said—"

"I know what I said. But it's out of my hands now. And yours. Go home, Jo."

I stood there, stunned. He walked away, toward the fire.

One of the other Djinn was standing next to me—the big one, his pale white ponytail fluttering in the wind. He raised an expressive eyebrow.

"You can go," he said.

Something occurred to me, late and hard. "I forgot—there's a Demon down in the fire—"

"We know, love," he said. "That's why we're here. Go."

When I didn't move, he just picked me up and effortlessly carried me back to the SUV, and plumped me into the driver's side. This time, the engine started with a throaty roar. I looked over at Emily, who was firmly buckled in, and fingered the shredded remains of my own seat belt.

"Oh, sorry," he said, and reached in to touch it with a fingertip. It knitted together with dizzying speed. Good as new. He solicitously buckled me in and patted my shoulder. "You do what he says, now. You go home."

I hardly even remembered driving away. I remember staring into the rearview mirror, at the smoke and flame and the battlefield of dead Wardens, until the next hill hid it all from view.

I cried for a while. Tears of fury and anguish and bitter, bitter disappointment. Disappointment in myself, mostly. If I'd stayed in Seacasket… if I'd gone back instead of going into the fire with Emily, maybe things would be different. Maybe those fifteen Wardens wouldn't be dead. Maybe…

Maybe it would all be the same, only I'd be dead, too. No way to second-guess it. I knew only that the path I was on wasn't the right one, not at all.

Emily continued to sleep, and snore, as I piloted the broke-down Jeep back down dirt roads, heading for civilization.

The first sign of which was a paved road, black and level, at right angles to the road I was on. I turned left.

It's so strange, how quickly you can go back to normal life. The first shock came as the tires of the SUV hit blacktop. The sudden lack of vibration felt weird and unnatural, and for a second I had a nightmarish vision of myself as a backwoods four-wheeling fanatic like Emily, wearing oversize work shirts and thick-waisted jeans and clunky steel-toed boots. With a collection of trucker gimme caps.

Behind us, the forest fire was a lurid red fury, pouring blackness into the clouds. I felt sick, remembering how I'd left things with David. It already seemed more dream than reality.

I wiped tears from my grimy cheeks and thought longingly of a shower. A long, hot shower, followed by a deep, drug-induced sleep.

Paved road or not, I still had a half mile or so to go before we reached the actual highway. Not out of the woods yet. The fire had turned back, consolidated itself—fighting the Djinn now, instead of the Wardens. It might give us just enough breathing space.

Home. Where was home? Sure, I'd drop Emily off at her house, but where did I belong? Back at Warden HQ, helping Lewis oversee the end of the world? Back in Florida, salvaging whatever was left of my apartment after the big storm, and waiting for the next one to hit?