“Sweetheart,” Luis whispered, and put his hands on her small, sweet face. “Sweetheart, that’s very brave, but it’s also very stupid. We can’t let you do that. It’s very dangerous.”
It was also too much of a risk in another way, one he wouldn’t acknowledge ... because Ibby had been convinced by Pearl once, and although I knew she was a strong, independent child, she could be subverted again, perhaps without even realizing it.
“It’s dangerous to stay here, too,” Gillian said. Like Ibby, she no longer sounded much like a child. She’d seen and experienced too much. “They’ll keep coming for us. People will get hurt trying to protect us. Innocent people.” I saw the grief in her face, and the glitter of tears in her eyes, and knew she was thinking of the boy, Mike, who’d given his own life to save hers. “It’s better this way.”
Perhaps Esmeralda knew what they were going to do; I felt her shifting restlessly, heard the soft, tentative hiss of her rattle.
But neither Luis nor I was prepared, really.
Ibby had her arms around her uncle, and she kissed him on the cheek. “Sleep,” she said, and I sensed the sudden black wave that crushed down on him.
He fell as if she’d killed him, but I knew she hadn’t; I felt the continued, quiet beat of his heart, the steady pulse of his lungs and his life.
He slept, like the three children we’d taken down.
“Cassie,” Ibby said. She was still looking at her uncle, not at me. “Are you going to let us go?”
I was too weak to fight her, and Gillian, and I didn’t know which way Esmeralda would fall, or if she’d take a side at all. “Take me with you,” I said. “I can help you. I can make sure you’re safe.”
“Nobody’s safe,” Ibby said, and her tears fell on Luis’s burned, torn shirt. “Not me, not you, not him. Not the world. Can’t you feel it?”
Esmeralda looked up, and I heard the buzzing of her rattle burst into frantic, loud life.
The night sky was silent, full of stars, but what I felt, what I heard, wasn’t coming from the sky.
It was a scream, and it was growing louder and louder, and it was coming from the aetheric, and the ground beneath us, and the trees, and the world.
It was the scream of awakening, of pain, of the sudden and irrevocable changing of our lives.
Isabel stood up. So did I. Esmeralda slithered closer, her rattle shaking out a steady, adrenaline-fueled alarm. Gillian pressed closer against my side, and I put my arm around her for comfort.
The screaming grew so loud it burned in my head and drove me to my knees. The aetheric was burning red, burning like the end of the world.
And I heard Her voice. The Mother. Only the vast, rolling sound of it, the voice of thunder and hurricane, rock and boiling volcano. The scream of life in all its violent, striving agony. There was no meaning to it, no way to interpret it, but I knew what it meant.
It meant that my time was up, and so was Pearl’s. Whatever her plan, she had no time left to prepare. The Mother was awake, and the fury of her pain would drive the Djinn to her defense, like white blood cells racing to contain infection ... and that infection most certainly was humanity.
Ashan hadn’t triggered this. I didn’t know what wound had been made in the world that had brought it on, but it no longer mattered. The Mother was awake, and the Djinn would be under hercommand now, no longer individuals choosing their paths. Even Ashan would be one of that army, mindless and effectively quite insane.
If I’d taken his offer, if I’d returned to my Djinn strength, I would be just as helpless as the others now.
In a perverse sense, this worked forAshan, not against him. He wanted humanity gone, and the defenses of the Earth would begin to do that bloody work for him. Millions would die. Chaos would descend.
Pearl would have no one to oppose her now; all their energies would be devoted to survival. She could amass her forces and wait for the end, and no one would oppose her.
No one but us.
“We have to go,” Ibby said. “You have to make Uncle Luis understand, Cassie. We need him, too.”
“I know,” I whispered. I swallowed and tasted blood, and ash, and the oncoming deaths that this would bring. “I’ll make him understand.”
There was no place for protecting Ibby now, or Gillian, or any of them.
There was only total war.
TRACK LIST
I found these songs were the perfect inspiration to get through the writing of Outcast Season: Unseen.Here’s hoping you enjoy them, too! (As always: Artists exist because you support them economically. Please buy music—don’t steal it.)
"To Hell with the Devil" Jim Bianco
"Tomorrow Is Another Day" The Stone Coyotes
"Nostalgia" Emily Barker and the Red Clay Halo
"Steal Your Heart Away" Joe Bonamassa
"Quarryman's Lament" Joe Bonamassa
"Telephone" Lady Gaga and Beyoncé
"Back Against the Wall" Cage the Elephant
"ROTUB" The New Hotness
"I Know Who You Could Be" Butcher Boy
"Lost Art" Mere Mortals
"Boys and Girls" Mon Roe
"Resistance" Muse
"The Pigeons Couldn't Sleep" Peter Himmelman
"It Dawned on Me" Calla
"Teardrop" Jose Gonzalez
"Saint Veronika" Billy Talent
"So Long, Good-bye" 10 Years
"A Place Called Home" PJ Harvey
"Any Other Way" Colin Blunstone
"Not As We" Alanis Morissette
"Gives You Hell" The All-American Rejects
"Piano Fantasy" William Joseph
"Alice" Avril Lavigne
"Whataya Want from Me" Adam Lambert
"Complicated Shadows" Elvis Costello
"I Should Be Born" Jets Overhead
"Hold On" KT Tunstall
"Mykonos" Fleet Foxes
"Robots" Dan Mangan
"Why Try to Change Me Now" Fiona Apple
"To Ohio" The Low Anthem
"Be OK" Ingrid Michaelson
"Now" Dave Carroll
"21 Guns" Green Day (featuring the cast of American Idiot)
"Light On" David Cook
"Symphonies" Dan Black
"Kandi" One eskimO
"Walter Reed" Michael Penn
"Wars" Hurt
"We Are Young" 3OH!3
"Make Me Wanna Die" The Pretty Reckless
Books by Rachel Caine
Ill Wind
Heat Stroke
Chill Factor
Windfall
Firestorm
Thin Air
Gale Force
Cape Storm
Total Eclipse
Undone
Unknown
Unseen
Glass Houses
The Dead Girls’ Dance
Midnight Alley
Feast of Fools
Lord of Misrule
Carpe Corpus
Fade Out
Kiss of Death
Ghost Town