… then Eladio Delgado’s Hummer slammed to the ground two feet to the left of the Mustang, rolled, and exploded into flame so hot that I felt it on the passenger side of the car, through layers of steel and glass.

Cherise, screaming, hit the gas and got us the hell out. We skidded wildly, pushed around by the wind, but made it to the road.

I looked back and saw the windowless, shattered outline of the TestosteroneTowers shivering and swaying in the wind. Not quite breaking, but almost.

Over the ocean, the black clouds slowed down their manic swirl, and while the rain kept lashing, the winds slowly decreased in speed.

Cherise drove too fast, skidding around debris and wrecks, trembling like a leaf. I didn’t stop her. I was listening to the silence on the aetheric.

I’d never felt anything like this before, this… absence.

“Stop,” I said suddenly. Cherise didn’t seem to hear me. I lunged and grabbed for the steering wheel; she hit the brakes and fought me, but we somehow got the Mustang safely pulled over to the side of the road. Gale-force winds continued to shudder the car. “Stay here,” I said, and got out.

My legs almost folded, but I found that inner core of strength David had always told me I had, and crossed the slick, hurricane-buckled surface of the road to what had once been the beach. More ocean than sand, now. Blue-white foam. Not really water, not really air; you could drown in it but never sink.

I’d lost my shoes somewhere. My feet sank deep into wet sand, and I kept walking, unsteady, wandering left and then right.

I saw the Djinn standing in the surf. Ashan, looking gray as death. Inhuman.

Alice in her wet pinafore, with long golden hair whipped straight by the wind.

Rahel, on her knees in the foam, staring out to sea.

Dozens of them.

Then hundreds, forming in whispers of mist and fog and ocean, all staring out to sea.

I felt the heat move through me, and went to my knees, too. Moaned and pitched forward on my hands, panting against the pressure.

Something was talking. Something huge. I couldn’t understand it, only feel it, and humans weren’t made to contain this kind of emotion. I wanted to scream, and laugh, and die. In a blinding rush I knew; I knew what it was all about, I knew love in its most intense, furious, burning form, and it was like nothing I had ever felt, even as a Djinn.

All around me, the Djinn were lifting up their heads, staring at the sky. Eyes closed. Drinking in the flood of light and love.

And then it ended, and I felt empty, so very empty.

Someone came walking out of the surf, naked and golden and beautiful, and he wasn’t David anymore, not my David, he was something more.

On the aetheric, he was a white-hot star, and everything, everything linked to him. Every Djinn. Every Warden. The network clicked into place and began to hum with power, vast and intense.

Jonathan was dead.

And David had become the linchpin in his place.

He staggered and went down in the water, and Ashan and Rahel leaped forward, taking his arms, dragging him out onto the shore. I got to my feet but didn’t move toward them, because something in me told me… it wasn’t right. Not anymore.

When he got up, David was dressed and steady. He looked the same as he always had, on the surface, but what was underneath was hugely different.

As he looked at me, I saw eternity in his eyes. They were black, swirling with galaxies and energy.

He came to me and crouched down. Not touching me, except with the force of his emotion. “I’m sorry,” he told me softly. “I’m so sorry. I wish things were different, Jo.”

All the Djinn turned to look at me, and I felt the force of their stares. All those inhuman eyes. All that power, back in their own hands.

Something was very, very wrong.

I heard that murmur again, echoing on a level that I couldn’t hear or understand, only feel.

David reached out, but his hand stopped a few inches from my skin. There was a vast distance between us, a gulf neither of us could reach across. “Tell the Wardens that the Djinn can’t be owned anymore. That agreement died with Jonathan. It’s a new world now.”

I swallowed hard. I could feel the difference on the aetheric, a silvery vibration that was growing stronger. Like a gigantic, slow heartbeat.

“What’s happening?”

He glanced up, as if he could see what I was feeling. “She’s coming awake.”

“Who’s coming awake?”

His black eyes came down to meet mine again. “The Mother. Our Mother. Your Mother.”

Earth.

“Is that…” I was really afraid to ask. “That’s not good, is it.”

“Not for you,” he said. “I’m sorry. I love you, but I can’t protect you, not from her.”

Something changed in that whisper. A red thread of anger in the silver pulse. David’s eyes swirled from black to crimson, then back again.

Rahel’s, too.

And Ashan’s.

“You need to tell the Wardens,” David said. “You need to tell them that she’s dreaming, but the dream is ending. She’s going to be very—”

His eyes turned entirely red.

“Angry,” he said. “She’s already angry, even in her dreams. We don’t have any choice. We belong to her now.”

I stumbled back. He didn’t move to attack. None of them did, but I could feel the pulse of menace, pounding faster.

“Run,” David told me softly. “Tell the Wardens. Tell them they need to stop her. Stop us before it’s too late. Before she wakes up all the way.”

“How?” Because I had no idea, none at all, how any group of Wardens, no matter how powerful, could begin to fight the Djinn, much less the Earth itself. It was just… impossible. “David! How?”

“RUN!” he screamed.

I felt his control shatter with a sound like breaking crystal, and stumbled backward from what I saw in his eyes.

A hand closed around my arm and jerked me upright. Not David. Not Rahel. Not Ashan. I didn’t know this Djinn. She had waist-length, glossy black hair falling in waves; she had burnished golden skin and eyes like the sun.

“Stop staring and run,” she yelled, and shoved me to the car.

We ran. Behind us, hundreds of Djinn closed in on us like a silent, deadly pack of hounds. My savior practically threw me into the car, leaped in the passenger door and screamed at Cherise, “DRIVE!” When Cherise stared, uncomprehending, the Djinn gestured at the gas pedal.

We peeled out at an inhuman speed, leaving the storm-swept beach and the rest of the Djinn behind.

David came closest to catching us. I twisted to watch him disappearing in the back window, a tall figure standing in the road, coat blowing and belling in the wind.

“Are you all right?” the black-haired Djinn asked. I blinked at her. She looked familiar, but I had no idea why. “Hey! Can you hear me? Are you all right?”

I opened my mouth to tell her that I was, but something was happening in the back of my mind, something enormous and unbelievable. I knew something, but I couldn’t think what it was.

She must have seen it in my eyes, the knowledge and the fear, because she smiled, and when I saw the smile, it all came into blinding clarity.

That was David’s smile.

That was my face.

That was my daughter.

“Imara,” I said. She closed her hand around mine, and her skin was hot and smooth and real. “Oh, my God. How…”

“Jonathan,” she said, and the smile turned sad. “It takes death to make a Djinn. He told you.”

I remembered him taking the spark of life from me and walking away. He’d known, even then, what he intended to do. Die. Put his power into David.

Give life to David’s child.

I had a child. Okay, she was a six-foot Amazon goddess dressed in flawless, tailored black, but she was my child. And she wasn’t like the others. She wasn’t in thrall to the Earth, at least not completely; she could still think for herself, act for herself. Act against them.