He was lying to me. I had to believe he was lying.
And so I ran. I ran until I was breathless, shaking, covered in sweat. I ran until my muscles trembled with exhaustion. Ashan continued to appear like a ghost in the darkness, silently watching me.
I didn’t stop, until with Djinn suddenness he formed right in my path, close enough that I had to slide to a flailing halt to avoid hitting him. He caught me silently when I faltered, and held me there, staring down at me. He was dressed in an immaculate gray suit now, human but with an inhuman perfection to him. His eyes, and his tie, were teal blue, with glints of silver. I had never felt so grubbily human as that moment, face-to-face with the eerie beauty of what I’d left behind.
“Enough,” he said. “If you must destroy yourself, do it in battle, not ... like this. Not uselessly.”
And he whirled me away into a nauseating swirl of color, sound, taste, the rancid scent of death ... and out again, into a blast of cold air, smoke, and the roar of fire.
I tripped over a corpse and fell face forward into bloody, churned ground.
Chapter 13
THE CORPSE I’D TRIPPEDover was someone I didn’t recognize—a man, dressed in dark clothing. He had a rifle with him, and a handgun holstered on his belt. I tugged it free, picked up the rifle, and slung it across my shoulder as I rose to my knees.
Ashan had brought me back to the school, but the school was unrecognizable. It was a burning inferno, only vaguely defined by the shapes of walls; the fire was incredibly hot and violent, with the flames in places leaping fifty feet into the night sky. Trees burned from their leafy crowns downward all around me. At first I thought that the school had been in the path of a forest fire, but that made no sense; there were powerful Fire Wardens present who should have been able to turn the flames away, even if they hadn’t been able to extinguish them completely.
No, this was an attack.
And a successful one.
I didn’t hear the sound of the shot fired at me, but I felt the bullet slice across the meat of my upper arm, drawing a bloody slash; it felt like a hot poker applied to my skin, and for a second I didn’t register what had occurred. My instincts saved me; I threw myself flat and crawled to take the only shelter available—behind the corpse that I’d fallen over earlier. I rolled him on his side and curled up, unshipped the rifle, and carefully looked around for my assailant. It was impossible to hear the shots, but I saw a spark of misplaced flame from the trees—a muzzle flash in the darkness—and aimed and fired, using the power of the Earth to guide my shot to its target.
I sensed the shock of the bullet’s impact through bone, brain, and out the other side as my shot found its home, and then I took another moment to study the scene more carefully. He seemed to have been the only remaining gunman, or the one assigned to prevent reinforcements from arriving; no one else fired on me.
But I felt a harsh ripple on the aetheric, and turned toward it just as I saw the trees bending, whipping, and cracking. Something was coming for me, coming fast, and it was big. Very big.
I glimpsed something dark, but it wasn’t an animal; the power driving it felt alien at its core, cold and lifeless. Void.Someone was driving a moving sphere of void through the forest, devouring all it touched, and it was heading straight for me.
I couldn’t fight that, and it was too late to run. I got up to my feet, took three long steps, and prepared myself. There was a dead tree trunk lying at an angle nearby, and I ran for it, up its incline, and on the last step channeled power into my legs and jumped.
The black sphere charged through the space where I’d been while I hung at the apogee of my jump, fifty feet overhead, and then landed crouched on the branch of a tree above. It hesitated, circling, and then zipped off in a different direction. It had found another target, and I heard someone scream.
It was quickly cut off.
From this vantage, with the treetop aflame above me, I could see the devastation wrought on the Wardens’ stronghold. The attack had shredded the metal fencing around the building, but it was the building itself that had sustained the most damage—concrete walls shattered, wood burned away, and now almost every part of the interior seemed to be burning with a white-hot intensity that was at odds with a normal blaze. It was being fed by a Fire Warden of abnormal power and concentration ... one of Pearl’s, I imagined. I could feel the dark shimmer of her power in the air, though I couldn’t locate her presence.
Evidently her adept that was managing the Void was less well equipped, because after several moments the black sphere faltered, smashed through a few more unlucky trees, then abruptly shrank to a pinpoint and vanished with an implosive poplouder even than the roar of the fire. I jumped down from the tree and began hunting for the rest of Pearl’s attacking force.
Instead, I saw a Warden—one I recognized, though I didn’t know her name—waving at me frantically as she rose from behind the cover of some bushes and dropped what must have been a very, very good veil. I raced to her, keeping low, and as I ducked behind the brush I saw that she wasn’t alone—she had dozens with her, including most of the other Wardens. Almost all of them were injured or exhausted from the fight. “Thank God,” she said. She was holding a bloody bandage to her side, and offered me a real, though tense, smile of welcome. “I’m Gayle.”
I nodded, scanning the weary faces. “Where are the rest?” There were too few children, and no sign of Luis and Ibby. Gayle’s smile faded, and she looked back at the burning inferno of the school.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “We couldn’t reach them. Marion, Janice, Luis, Shasa, Ben—at least five of the kids. We tried, but we were under attack. We had to save those we could reach. I’m so sorry.”
I shouldn’t have blamed them for that, but in that moment I felt a surge of pure hatred nevertheless. You left them to die.Gayle must have known that, must have seen it burning in my eyes, but to her credit, she didn’t back away. Maybe she was simply too tired, and too badly wounded.
I turned away and stared at the burning ruins. Adrenaline and fear made it difficult to sort out my emotions, but I calmed myself and listened, listened for that tiny whisper that always existed—that fragile yet steely-strong connection with Luis.
I felt a discordant jangle of emotions not my own.
Alive. He was alive, somewhere in there.
I opened my eyes, turned to Gayle, and said, “They’re inside. We must get them out.”
She looked at her exhausted, wounded band, and the huddled, frightened children they protected. “I can’t. I’m sorry, but we have to concentrate on protecting these kids. We can’t go back in there. I have only one living Fire Warden, and she’s badly injured.”
I couldn’t fault her logic, or her judgment, but I wasn’t willing to accept defeat that easily. Not when it meant the lives of those I loved. “Then watch my back,” I said. I handed her the rifle, and she checked the clip with a competence that gave me confidence.
“Good luck.” She nodded. “If you can get them out, head for the fire road to the east. If everything works right, we should have rescue transportation coming in the next twenty minutes, but we can’t wait for you for long if it means risking the lives of those we already have.”
I rolled to my feet and ran, keeping low, around the side of the school. The flames weren’t as intense here—in fact, part of the wall seemed intact, though heavy iron gray smoke poured through shattered windows. The door was open, and two small bodies lay huddled together on the bare ground outside.
I ran for the fence, still largely intact on this side, ripped it apart with Earth power, and left it dangling open behind me as I scooped up the two children and dragged them away from danger. Both were almost unrecognizable under the thick layers of soot on their faces, but I knew the bright red blaze of her hair—the girl was Gillian. It took me longer to work out the boy’s identity, but of course it was Mike, her constant companion and protector.