Isadora looked for Maggie, but Maggie was gone, and had been for some time.
Those that were running kept running, as the pieces fell into their new configuration, sitting askew. One by one, they stopped running, no longer pulled along by the connection that was supposed to bind them to Rose’s counterpart.
Paige would need to know, which was a complicated thing. Akin to telling an Alzheimer’s patient that they had a relative, and their relative had passed in one of the worst ways possible.
What a shame, really.
She’d tried to tell him that a clean death was the best path available to him, but it seemed he wasn’t built to go down quietly. She’d called him the little warrior, and the idea fit.
Isadora remained where she was as the demon shifted position, searching for new prey.
More of reality resettled. Unpleasant, grating, as if the demon was everywhere in the city, in Jacob’s Bell, in Toronto, and in places in between, for just a moment. Exercising his power.
The binding held. The demon remained where it was.
With the resettling of reality, Rose appeared.
A damned shame, quite literally. This wasn’t clean at all, as exits went.
Rose, not even aware that she’d crossed over, reached out to stop Alexis, who was still running, caught up with emotion, even though that emotion no longer had a target.
The familiar was coming to pieces. A deal forgotten, it stubbornly refused to move on. There was no power to feed it but the spirits that had impregnated the ghost prior to the familiar deal. Nothing powerful, only spirits of freedom, air, yearning. These spirits would be spent in a matter of minutes, and the familiar would cease to be.
Others were dealing with a sadness they couldn’t explain. One girl, Isadora forgot the name, was rubbing at her eye, looking at the moisture as if confused.
The young man, Ty, who’d called Isadora beautiful, was standing stock still, caught between confusion and a desire to give strength. He was caught in a mental loop, akin to obsessive compulsive disorder, or a dream where one repeated an action over and over again, getting the same result, dozens, hundreds of times over. She could see him reaching out for a connection, finding the wrong one. Trying to think of a friend, thinking of someone who’d recently left the group instead. Not that person. Someone else. Reaching out, trying to think of the right person… and so the repetition continued.
Humans were not machines, however. He would find his way out, maybe a little worse for wear. It depended on whether he was rescued by his friends, or if he was allowed to stew in this recursive loop of thoughts for a time.
Each of them would either invent memories, as some were inclined to do, to fill the void, or they would live with the void, and it would rub them raw from time to time, something unexplained.
If they needed it, Isadora would explain what she could and help them fill that void. But if they decided to fill it themselves, she wouldn’t be able to.
For now… She stretched her wings out. It remains to be seen what damage is done.
■
The Eye – 2:46 PM
The crackling of flame was a mask, just barely covering an ocean of screaming heads, arms and bodies thrashing in pain. Raw-throat screaming, the kind of screaming that hurt, that happened because there was no other choice.
Burning to death hurt.
The Eye of the Storm remained where it was, hunched over a metal barrel, hands extended over the burning contents.
One eye stared down and saw visions. Memories and echoes, brief stories of human struggles ending in failure.
In the brighter parts of the flame the Eye saw lightning. In the snap and pop, the bang as the can’s contents shifted and touched the metal, the Eye heard thunder. The Eye heard ruin, mankind’s endeavors ending in disaster.
A crunch, as something burned enough that it broke. A car crash, bones breaking.
Symphony.
In time, humanity as a whole would succumb to this kind of fate. It was inevitable. With every creation came a destruction. A new scientific achievement, a new weapon.
War would erupt, and war would see man destroy himself. Bombs would fall.
These were the thoughts that ran through the Eye’s head as it held hands over the flames. The elemental remembered the thousands who he had burned, thousands who had burned of their own accord. Those who had been electrocuted, who had been ground to pulp by metal of their own making.
Right now, right here, he would wait as he’d been instructed.
Conquest would deal with Blake Thorburn. When that was done, he would signal the Eye, and the Eye would attack once more, and people would burn.
A chill wind passed, something unnatural.
Conquest would deal with…
With what?
Conquest would… …Done, he would signal the Eye, and the Eye would attack, and people would burn.
The Eye shifted position, uncomfortable. The thoughts didn’t connect.
Simplify.
Reduce.
Remove the damaged bits.
The words resonated with some century-old part of him, and he shifted from discomfort to ire.
Simplifying…
The Eye would attack once more, and people would burn.
He touched the edge of the barrel. The contents shifted position and the fire erupted forth, touching the trash that a small grocery had left beside the building. Cardboard boxes and vegetables.
The fire found its way to the necessary places in that pile of material.
The wire attaching the battery to the smoke detector inside shorted.
The Eye was already leaving the alleyway when the fire started to reach toward the dumpster.
Emanating heat enough to touch nearby patches of ice. They would melt and re-harden in the course of a minute.
The next car to find the ice would find zero traction available.
It didn’t matter whether that car was a fire truck or a chance accident blocking access to the blaze. The Eye knew it would serve.
People avoided him, avoiding eye contact, but he didn’t truly care if he was seen. The orders were to attack. The timing and consequences of this were for his master to worry about.
He’d given up worrying a hundred years ago.
The screams of the burning were the only thing familiar and natural to him, now. The electrocuted, the crushed.
A gauge in the nearby traffic light shorted out. People would later blame it on the blackouts that had afflicted the city earlier.
That’s how they operate. Blame.
The Eye felt uncomfortable. Old memories were stirring, and it didn’t know why.
All the same.
The traffic light fed information back to a main computer.
The main computer would give the wrong instructions to the system.
A subtle change.
Change enough that the Eye would hear the sounds it needed to hear.
■
The Astrologer – 2:47 PM
Diana shifted position, head smooshed against the pillow.
Why was it so hard to sleep now that she finally had an opportunity? There was a limited truce in effect, she was safe…
Safe…
Her eyes began to drift shut.