“Cassiel!” Turner yelled, and sent a burst of fire rolling past me, forcing the Earth Warden child back just as she tried to summon up a second, killing blow. “Jesus, get back!”
I couldn’t. I was already wounded, and if I didn’t finish this quickly, they would.
I ignored the agony. I rolled forward over my right shoulder, came up in a crouch, hands outstretched, slammed both palms against the foreheads of the two children, and sent a jolt of power into them that overloaded their brains, instantly sending them unconscious.
In theory.
One went down.
The one I’d held my metallic left hand to, the Weather Warden, staggered, but as I’d feared, the metal had failed to conduct aetheric power in the same way that flesh did.
It was a fatal moment to learn that for a fact.
The boy had no more hesitation or mercy than the girl at his side, who was already falling to the ground in sleep. He struck me point blank with an invisible blade of hardened air, punching it deep inside me. It was an old form of attack, one that the Wardens had long since abandoned; Weather Wardens didn’t engage in close-quarters fighting, and when they did, they tried to avoid fatal wounds.
This was . . . very close to fatal. Very, very close.
I fell forward, reaching out with my right hand as I did, and slapped it against his forehead. He was a sweet-faced child, Asian in ancestry, with silky black hair cut in a careless shag around his face.
I had just enough focus left to send the pulse of power into him, and he collapsed before I fell on top of him.
I was bleeding. Unable to breathe.
“Cassiel!” A distant voice, shouting. I felt something tugging at me, but it was very remote.
It felt peaceful suddenly.
Someone rolled me over, grabbed the two unconscious children, and hustled them away. I lay there watching the red pool of my blood spread outward across the clean pale floor.
I felt the hungerof the place stir. It liked blood. It loved mine.
Sister.Pearl’s voice, echoing in my head, unwelcome in this peaceful state I’d reached. No, this won’t do. I can’t have you giving your life. That’s to no purpose at all.
Sorry to disappoint you,I replied. I felt . . . remote now. Like an Oracle myself, removed from the concerns of the world. I remembered how I’d longed for peace, for solitude, for silence.
I was finding it, breath by breath. Soon, it would surround me entirely.
You’d leave the man,Pearl said. I find that hard to believe. You’ve become so human. So bound to skin. And he does so love you, already. Like the child. It was hard to turn her against you. I had to hurt her many times to do that.
I felt a stir of hate, an echo of emotion that troubled me. It had no place here, where I was leaving things behind.
The pool of red crawled outward, spreading into a lake.
There was one more Warden child left in the hallway, the one who’d backed away from the fight once Isabel had been taken. He was an older boy, about ten years, and I saw in him the shadow of the man he might one day become, if he survived all this—if he survived all of us—to be a genuine Warden.
He would be the next Lewis Orwell. There was a light in him . . . a light . . . .
He reached out and touched me, spreading his hand over the open wet wound that the knife of air had left. “No,” I whispered. “No, don’t.” Because as close as I had come to the edge, I might pull him with me. I would notpull him into the dark. “Let me go. It’s all right.”
Shhhhh,Pearl said soothingly in my mind. Oh my sister, he’s mine to give. And I give you this gift. I’m not ready to let you go quite yet. It’s not time.
“No!” I screamed it, but it was too late.
The boy wasn’t acting of his own accord. This child, this marvelous and beautiful child who would grow to be a marvelous, beautiful man, was completely under her control. Against his own will, he poured power into me, emptied every reserve. It roared into me in a fierce, white-hot cascade, burning through my nerves, spilling in a flood through the wounded tissues. Healing. Mending sliced arteries. Forcing the wound closed.
Saving me. Destroying himself.
“No!” I whispered, but I couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t sever the connection. I was too weak, and perhaps, at some primal level, I was too afraid. Too afraid of dying myself.
She emptied him of everything. Every tiny scrap of power, even the tiny bursts of energy that kept the cells of his body alive.
She killed him to save me.
“No!” My scream was raw, and it filled the narrow space of the hallway, raced through the space, echoed from the roots of my soul.
I caught the boy as he fell, but it was too late. He was emptied by Pearl and discarded like garbage.
I was weak, pale, and horribly damaged, but I was no longer on the edge of death. He had gone on without me, into the dark.
Not by his choice.
I heard voices in the distance, a confusion of shouting, running feet. You should go now, sister,Pearl said. I wouldn’t have you waste my gift. But I won’t allow you to take more of my children. I need them for our next meeting.
“I will,” I said out loud. My voice was bloody, ragged with rage. “I will stop you from doing this. I will stop you.”
You know how,Pearl said. All you have to do is act. But if you do, this one child dead before you is the first of billions. Then again, if you don’t act, I will do the same to the Djinn, the Oracles, to the faithless Mother who turned her back on me. Which would you prefer?
Let the Djinn save themselves. I couldn’t face another death now, much less the deaths of billions.
But there had to be another way.
“I will stop you,” I repeated. “However it has to happen.”
I gathered up the fallen child in my arms. My blood soaked into the boy’s clothing from my own, and I staggered and fell against the wall, dizzy from the effort and a sudden, overwhelming feeling of anguish. I am guilty of this,I thought. Guilty of destroying something astonishing.I might have stopped him, if I’d been strong enough. His life, for mine. It wasn’t a fair bargain.
I had to find some way to make it worthwhile. And I had to face his parents, look them in the eyes, and explain why I had failed their son.
I owed him that.
A dark shape rounded the far end of the sloping hallway, at the opposite curve from my exit—not a child, an adult. Tall and broad, and armed with a rifle, which he aimed in my direction. I had no time for subtleties; I melted the barrel of his gun just as he pulled the trigger. It exploded in his hands, sending him reeling back into the man behind him, who shoved his bleeding, screaming colleague aside to raise his own rifle and squeeze off two fast shots. His aim was poor, thanks to quick reactions and adrenaline, but the hallway was narrow, and one of the bullets caught me low in the side, in the bulletproof vest.
I turned my back as he vaulted forward, screaming his defiance, followed by a whole rank of his friends.
I ran for the exit. The weight of the dead boy was like lead in my arms, and my body felt as if it might collapse with every dull step, but I rounded the corner still ten feet ahead of the pursuers . . .
... and the door was closed.
I slammed my hand down on the nacreous surface, willing it to open, but it refused.