I didn’t say I would make it easy, sister,Pearl laughed in my head. I want you suffering. For a very long time, the way you made me suffer. I want to bury that tiny part of you in the ground, trapped and bleeding and aware, aware for all time. I want to feel your screams echoing in eternity. You deserve that.
I put my back to the blank wall where the door should have been, breathing hard, and watched all the soldiers plug the hallway, blocking any possible alternate routes. Metallic clicks as they aimed their weapons, but the man in the front rank held up a clenched fist, and no one fired.
“Put him down,” the man said. “And get on your knees, hands behind your head.”
I couldn’t disable so many weapons. Even if I could, they had other weapons, and I sensed that some of them, if not many, had other powers they could bring to bear against me.
I was trapped, completely and utterly trapped.
But I was not giving up the boy.
Or kneeling.
Not now. Not to them. Not ever.
The leader of the security force must have recognized that, because he nodded sharply and put his weapon to his shoulder, sighted, and fired. One shot.
It hit me in the leg, shattering my femur, and I screamed and almost went down.
He adjusted his aim to target the other leg. When I reached out with power to try to disable his gun, something blocked me—him, or one of his men.
The wall softened behind my back, sagged outward under my weight, and I fell as it popped and pulled aside in that eerie round mouth.
Spitting me out, this time.
“Cassiel!” Luis screamed. He grabbed my hand and dragged me around the curve of the dome, slapped a hand on its surface, and dialed the opening close in the face of the security leader. “Oh God, what the hell . . . ?”
There was chaos at the perimeter. FBI agents had driven an armored truck down the slope of the hill, and were engaged in a full firefight against a squad of Pearl’s human guards, while still others were fighting off an assault by the chimera bear/panther predators. It was all lit by a hellish, fiery glow as the treetops burned around us.
Turner, panting, raced toward us, stopping along the way to trade shots with a human guard. He grabbed me by one arm, Luis took the other, and they started to drag me off.
The boy tumbled from my grip. “No!” I shrieked. “No, bring him! Bring him!” I fought them in a frenzy, grabbing at the boy’s body. Luis recognized that we would all die if he didn’t try to help me, and slung the boy over one shoulder as he pulled me along, limping on one bloody leg, toward the armored carrier.
He and Turner thrust me inside, along with a medic who climbed in with a pack of supplies. Also in the truck
I found the two sleeping Warden children, and Isabel, who was curled up in a ball in one corner, watching the fight with bright, terrified eyes. She looked at me—bloody, pale, wild as I was—and threw herself into my arms as I collapsed on the seat beside her.
I tried to hold her as the world slipped greasily around me, but the pain came in waves, blacking out everything, and I heard the medic say, “Hold still,” and then it was all dark.
Not even the rattle of gunfire followed me.
Chapter 11
I WOKE IN SILENCE,in sunlight, in my own bed in my own apartment. The covers were twisted over me. My leg was bandaged and braced, and I felt exhausted, feverish, achy.
Human, and lost because of it.
I smelled coffee brewing, and the pressure of a full bladder forced me up to the necessary task. I then seized a pair of crutches leaning against the wall and hobbled my way into the small kitchen, where I found a pot of coffee simmering on the burner. I poured a mug and drank, then refilled it, without sitting down.
From the sofa in the small living room, I heard Luis say, “You feeling better?”
“I am now,” I said, and drank yet another cup to the dregs, set the mug down, and clumsily made my way to the sofa to sink down beside him. The crutches clattered down on the floor.
Luis looked . . . himself. Bruised, yes, and some the worse for wear, but I saw no serious wounds or braces. Lucky,I thought. Or more skilled than I at surviving it.
“Thank you for the coffee,” I said.
“De nada,”he replied. “I made it for myself. You got a side benefit.”
He turned, arm across the back of the sofa, and studied me with concern. I didn’t meet his gaze. Instead, I drew fingertips down my leg. “I don’t remember,” I said. “Being treated for this.”
“You wouldn’t. They kept you out. You were thrashing around like a caged lion. It’s okay, though. The brace is on just to keep you from doing something crazy. Bones are together.” He paused for a moment before saying, “Crazy being totally damn relative with you, by the way.”
I sighed and let my head fall back against the sofa. “At no point did I wish myself injured,” I told him. “I’m not by nature that sort of masochist. That’s a human trait.”
“No, you’re a sadist is what you are. You know what it’s like to be close to you, Cassiel? You know what it’s like to feel so . . . helpless? Watch you do this to yourself?” He stopped and rubbed his hand over his face. “Shit. It’s not your fault, I know that. I just hate it. I hate this. How did it get to be this way?”
“By slow steps,” I said. “By nobody’s will.” I twisted awkwardly, and met his gaze at last. “Isabel?”
“She’s all right.” He didn’t sound convinced of it, but more as if he was trying to make himself believe. “She’ll beall right, anyway. They did some unholy shit to these kids, you know. They made them think—all kinds of things. Used illusion to convince them the people they ought to trust were evil. There’s no pit deep enough for these bastards, I’m telling you that right now.”
“And her power?” I asked.
“We’re looking into it,” Luis said softly. “She’s got a dual gift. Or would have had, anyway. The Wardens don’t want to lose that. But they can’t have her running around with those kinds of uncontrolled powers, either. Neither can I. Not if I love her. But I don’t know how—I don’t know how I can let them neuter her like that.”
I felt that go through me like a bolt of electricity. “Neuter her?”
“You know, do the surgery. Take away her powers completely. It’s dangerous, and it might be fatal if they fuck it up. Worse, it’s not always effective. It could leave part of her power intact, to surface later, and she’d be even worse at dealing with it.”
Not to mention what damage it would do to Isabel herself. Some Wardens could walk away from their powers safely. Others . . . others crawled away, bloody and bleeding. Others would do anything to undo the choice they made.
Isabel wasn’t the sort of Warden who could walk away. I knew that already, I saw it in her. She was powerful, and she would only get more powerful.
Or more damaged.
Or both.
It was the nightmare that Pearl had promised them, and here it was, a terrible possibility. I’d promised. I’d promised them . . .
“What will you do?” I asked him. He looked down at his hands, flexing his fingers as if they pained him.
“Don’t know,” he said. “Wish to hell I did. I think—I think I have to take the chance to temporarily block her powers again. That’s dangerous in itself, and it doesn’t always work, but at least it’s not ... permanent. If we can delay things for another six, seven years, at least she’ll have enough physical maturity to handle what happens inside her body with the Earth power. That would be the right age for that to start emerging anyway. The other kids aren’t in as bad a shape.”
I nodded. It sounded best to me, too.
“She wants to see you,” he said. “I told her no, not right now. You need time to heal.” He swallowed. “And I have to ask what happened with that boy. The one who died.”