by Rachel Caine
“What are you doing here?” I asked her. I kept watch for any sign of observers, but although there were people about, they didn’t pay any obvious attention to me.
Zedala continued to huddle in her veil, but finally replied, “I was looking for you. You tried to help me.”
“And?”
“I need to get out of here.” She looked up, and the faint, fading light shone on tear tracks on her face. “They say I failed. They say I’m not powerful enough; I’m not the one they need. So they say I’m going to go home. But I’m not going home, am I?”
I thought of the bodies under the tilled field. “No,” I said. “I don’t think they’ll let you go home.”
“Can you help me?” she asked in a very faint voice. “Because there’s nobody else. Nobody.”
I closed my eyes. The pain in her voice pierced me, but I knew what Ashan would want me to do. What the old Cassiel, the Djinn Cassiel, would have done. I knew I should have walked away, left her there in her tears and desperation, and preserved my chance to win the day.
But she had no chance without my help. None. By dawn, I’d be finding her corpse buried next to Merle’s. I’d be imagining a child’s last, frantic, desperate moments. A child whom these people professed to honor and protect.
I might be a good Djinn if I allowed that to happen, but I would be a monster of a human being.
I opened my eyes and said, “All right. Can you veil yourself until I come and get you?”
“I think so.” Zedala wiped her face with her sleeve and looked up at me with hope dawning warm in her eyes. “You’re going to help? Really?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m going to help. But you have to promise me one thing.”
“Okay.”
“You have to promise me you won’t stop running until you reach the Wardens. Tell them I sent you for help.”
She nodded solemnly, and I pushed away from the wall and went into the lodge. My shower seemed to take an eternity, as did the dinner that followed. Will tried to distract me with amusing stories, but my smiles were all halfhearted.
Oriana was gone, too, I realized, as I looked around. Merle and Oriana, both missing, both likely dead.
I would be next, or the child would. I couldn’t let her suffer for my mistakes.
After dinner, I willed myself to return to the lodge. Oriana’s bunk above mine was neatly made, but any personal effects were gone. Instead, it was ready for a new occupant, complete with the same welcome gifts she and I had received upon our arrival. I undressed and got into bed, and waited for the hours to pass.
In the full dark, I rose and dressed as silently as I could, went to the restroom, and pried open one of the small windows at the back. I would never have made it in my original Cassiel form, but Laura Rose was smaller and lighter-boned, and I squirmed through the narrow opening and dropped to the ground outside. The moon was dark, so I had only starlight to navigate by. Apart from the rustle of the wind in the trees, there seemed to be no one about at all tonight. I spotted the subtle glimmer of Zedala’s veil; she was where I had left her, close against the wall of the lodge building. I hesitated for a moment more, breathing in the sharp evening air, all senses alert, but I heard and saw nothing else.
I moved toward her under cover of shadows and crouched down next to her. She was wrapped in my quilted jacket, but still shivering. Nevertheless, she gave me a wan smile when she saw me. “You came,” she whispered. “You came.”
“Of course,” I said. “I wouldn’t leave you.”
I helped her up, took her hand, and after another careful survey of the area, led her across the dangerously open area toward the fence. It was a significant barrier, but not for an Earth Warden; I had no more fear of disguising my power, because I knew that in order to allow Zedala’s escape, I’d have to betray myself.
It felt like a positive step, until I remembered the friends I’d made, the peace I’d felt here. Until I imagined the look in Will’s eyes when he learned of my betrayal.
“Are you okay?” Zedala whispered. We were at the fence, and I was at the moment of truth now. No more delays, no more doubts. I had to do this, or the child wouldn’t survive her next encounter with her teachers.
It would cost me my chance at Pearl if I did this, but if I stood by and allowed a child’s death as the cost ...
No. I was willing to pay a high price, but not that. Not that.
I extended my hand, exerted a delicate flow of power, and the metal mesh of the fence began to split and peel back like the edges of a sharp, dangerous flower.
Something hit me in the back of the neck with a stunning blow, and then again, even harder. A wave of disorientation, darkness, pain, and then I was falling to my knees, struggling to turn my power on the one who’d attacked me ...
... until I saw Zedala’s face, alight with triumph and malice. She still held a bloody rock in her hand. She raised it over her head and screamed in triumph—a warrior’s cry, chilling from such a small, fragile girl.
“Why?” I asked. I was clinging to consciousness only with the greatest of effort, and there was something terribly wrong with my head. The world tilted, sliding me toward the black edge.
For answer, Zedala hit me again. I heard answering cries, hot with approval, and this time, I couldn’t hold on to the world at all.
Cass. Cass! Wake up!
Luis’s voice, whispering urgently in my ear. I didn’t want to wake up. The darkness was kind; it cloaked the pain and dulled the betrayal, but the whispers reached me even there, dragging me into a dull twilight full of agony. The pain drove me upward, into a harsh light that made me groan and twist aside from the glare.
“She’s waking up,” someone said. Not Luis. I ached to feel his presence, his comforting, healing touch, but instead there was only pain, and isolation. I couldn’t move far. I was tied, or otherwise restrained. When I opened my eyes, the blaze of sun made me want to retch in anguish. There were dark shapes around me, distorted and sinister. “Block her! Don’t let her get at her power!”
A child-sized hand flattened against my forehead, and I felt a cold, iron-hard wall come down, severing me from the reservoir of warm golden power that had accumulated within me. Luis had been feeding it to me, I realized; he’d been trying to heal me from afar, but now I was adrift and alone, and without that constant pulse of power, I was beginning to die. Oh, it was a slow process. It would take days of agony and terror, but my flesh would rot, and then the core of me would starve and flicker out like a blown flame.
I blinked away the glare, and the shadows wavered into the shapes of faces and bodies. Zedala’s face came first. She was kneeling next to me with her hand on my forehead, and it was she who was cutting me off from my source. From Luis.
Zedala looked up, and I saw a boy of about her own age standing there staring down at us with a cold, remote expression. The Earth Warden boy, the one who’d staged that elaborate charade in the field to draw me out. There were two more children as well—a small, delicate girl who almost vibrated with the energy of Fire and a golden-skinned boy with silky black hair who radiated ... nothing. Absolutely nothing.
There was something terrifying about him, and the look in his eyes. He couldn’t have been more than nine years old, but that was an ancient, awful thing inside of him.
There was an adult woman with them as well, one of the teachers in a red bandanna. She was standing back, head bowed, hands clasped together. I thought for an instant that her obedience was directed toward the children, but then I realized that there was another presence in the room, standing farther away and somewhere past my aching head.
I pulled in a shaking breath as I felt the tidal force of her presence wash through the room.
I’d sought Pearl here.
I’d found her.
“No words, sister?” Pearl walked slowly into my field of vision. She was tall, graceful, beautiful as a blinding star; the dream vision I’d had of her had been an accurate representation of her h
uman avatar, except that she wore her thick, silky black hair piled in intricate knots on top of her head to emphasize the long sweep of her neck. Unlike her followers, she was dressed in lush patterned silks that swept the floor as she walked. Her feet were bare and perfect. “No threats? No apologies? I’m disappointed. I wouldn’t expect you to give up so easily.”
I held my silence, since it bothered her. My head felt wrong and tender, and I was almost sure that my skull was fractured. The pillow beneath me felt sticky with blood, and I could smell the iron reek of it. Nausea twisted inside me like smoke, but I contained it. I couldn’t heal myself, and cut off from Luis, I had no chance of surviving such an injury. Pearl knew that.
She was enjoying it.
Zedala and the other children looked at Pearl with expressions of utter devotion. In turn, Pearl trailed her long, lovely fingers over the hair of the smallest girl and favored her with a slow, cool smile. “Do you know what I’ve done, Cassiel?” she asked. “Do you understand the astonishing thing that’s been accomplished here?”
“You’ve perverted and destroyed children,” I said. My voice sounded weak and dry, no match for her elegance. “It’s not so astonishing. Humans have been doing that to their own for millennia.” A pulse of hot, stabbing pain bolted through me, and I tensed and cried out.
Zedala gave me a wolfish grin. “Don’t be rude to the Lady,” she said. “You’re not good enough to look at her. I should put your eyes out.”
For an awful second, I thought that Pearl would allow that; she considered it, as she wandered over to the Earth Warden boy and caressed his face with idle affection. “No,” she finally said. “Show me her base human form first.”
Zedala cocked her head, staring at me, and then power burst out of her like a flood from an exploding dam, such astonishing power that it overwhelmed and drowned me, ripped me apart in its turbulence, then subsided in a slow, sticky tide. I felt myself changing. Bones shattered and re-formed. Skin melted and healed. I screamed; I couldn’t stop the flood of agony, or my body’s primal, visceral response of horror.
The only part of me that didn’t suffer was my left arm, from the forearm down. Instead, the fleshy disguise I’d adopted melted away, leaving a cold, gleaming bronze appendage in all its minutely crafted detail, down to the whorls of artificial fingerprints on metal fingers. I’d sliced away my arm to save myself, and replaced it with a Djinn-crafted duplicate; it seemed the only respite now from the pain Pearl and her children seemed intent on causing me.
I could move it, just a little.
By the time Zedala burned her way down my body, I had gained a foot in height, and my skin had been restored to its ivory color. My hair as well—it had grown out, and been bleached to its normal ice-white.
“There you are,” Pearl said, and shrugged. “Or the human vessel of you, at least. Tell me, sister, how long since we’ve been together, even in our Djinn forms? Human time has no measure, does it? So long ago that you killed me.”
I had killed her, or at least I’d believed it was so. And it had been the only possible response to her crimes, which had driven Mother Earth mad with pain. I’d destroyed her, and I’d thought I eradicated all traces of her ... but some part of her survived, tenacious as the roots of a weed. It had taken her aeons to gather her strength, but finally she was here, present, physical again.
And deadly. So very, very deadly.
“These,” she said, and placed a kiss on Zedala’s braided hair, “are part of me now. They believe implicitly in my cause. They understand how dangerous the Djinn and the Wardens are. They are my warriors. My avatars. My children. And when the end comes—and it will come for you, Cassiel, for all of you—these will survive with me. Out of the ashes, a new Mother will rise.”
My mouth went dry. “You.”
“Yes. Of course. Who is more deserving?”
Pearl’s ambition was greater, and more insane, than I’d ever dreamed. Not annihilation, as grandiose as that might be; she still planned to destroy the Wardens, the humans, the Djinn, and indeed all life, but she planned more. She planned to kill her own Mother, the life spirit of our planet, and she planned to become that life spirit.
A corrupted, damaged, evil spirit. I couldn’t imagine what would spring forth from her, as she breathed her power over the dead land—whatever it would be, it would be nightmarish, twisted, and a perverse mockery of all the beauty and diversity of this world.
The Djinn didn’t know this. Couldn’t imagine it. If they had, if they’d been able to comprehend the danger, they would have bonded together to destroy her regardless of costs.
Even Ashan would have set aside his personal ambitions for that.
Now I had a new mission—not killing Pearl, although that was still my greatest goal. No, I had to get this knowledge out, to the Djinn, to the Wardens, to anyone who could take up arms and defend against her. I had no choice now but to survive, and run.
If I could.
“I won’t insult you, or myself, by asking you to join me,” Pearl continued. “I know you won’t. There is a core of stubbornness in you, Cassiel, that does you no particular credit. I suppose some would see it as heroism; I see it as arrogance. You have no cause for that, dear sister. You’re not nearly what you once were.”
“Who is?”
She laughed, a golden bell of sound that sounded so lovely it was easy to forget the rotten darkness in her core. Pearl was seductive; that was why this camp existed, why these children had been so badly and fatally bent to her will. That was why, even now, the Djinn hesitated to move against her—that, and their own self-interested instincts.
Even I felt her attraction, and had ever since I’d stepped into this camp. Here, she put forth her charm, her glamour ... and everyone responded. Even, I suspected, the human FBI had succumbed, outside the gates. Perhaps she’d merely made them decide to abandon their posts. I wouldn’t have put it past her abilities, not anymore.
Merle had resisted. Look what that had earned him.
I had to get free. Somehow, insane as it was, I had to find a way out of this.
“She’s plotting,” the boy Earth Warden said—Pearl’s personal executioner, as Zedala had become her personal torturer. “She’s going to try something.”
“Not yet,” Pearl said serenely. “She’s injured, and she’s alone. She’ll bide her time. Cassiel is good at that. But I, my sister, am far, far better practiced.” She bent over me, and brushed her smooth, damp, cool lips against mine. I resisted the urge to bite, only because it wouldn’t help—or even hurt her. The touch gave me the truth of her human form—it was still artificial, not genuinely human. She didn’t yet have the real power to create a body down to the cellular level. This was a shell only, lovely as it was. “If you’re counting on your Warden lover, I wouldn’t,” she continued, still bent close to me. Her eyes were black, lid to lid, and shimmering like oil. “He won’t leave the child’s side, not to rescue you. And if he does, I’ll have you all, won’t I? Foster father ... foster mother ... and child.”
“You’ll never have Isabel,” I said. “She’s free now.”
“You think so?” Pearl’s smile was nauseating, seen at close range—not in the least human. She straightened, and glanced at Zedala.
“You’d better kill me,” I said, and meant it. “If you don’t, I promise you, I’ll destroy you. At whatever cost.”
“You can’t do anything without power,” Pearl said, “but I was planning to kill you, sister. No reason to waste you, though. My children need practice.”
She nodded to the small black-haired boy, the one from whom I sensed no identifiable kind of Warden power at all ... and he reached out a single finger, and touched me just as Zedala yanked her hand away from my forehead.
Void.
His power was its absence. He lived and breathed, but what filled him was cut off from the roots of life. He existed without connection, and as his touch bridged the gulf between us, I felt the organic parts of me being shre
dded into rags, lost in a vortex of hungry emptiness. I couldn’t even scream. There were no human sounds for the agony of cells imploding into absolute nothingness.
It would be slow, and I would feel every second.
I was going to die, in a way more painful than I’d ever imagined, and more thorough than any other kind of death. It would devour the very Djinn nature of me. It would erase me.
And there was nothing at all I could do to stop it.
Chapter 12
THE DJINN PART OF ME, the Cassiel part, was no more than a whisper, but it did not want to die. I felt it flow through me in a silvery thread, coiling in the power that I could now reach, since Zedala had withdrawn her block—but the power couldn’t survive against the black-hole pull of the Void.
The organics of my body were coming apart. Instead, the power flowed into my inert metal hand.
I was no longer consciously directing the power; it was driven by Djinn instinct, by the primal need to survive. My metal hand malformed, changed, and re-formed into a sharp-edged metal blade, which sliced through the bonds holding my left hand and foot to the bed where I lay.
And then my Djinn self, my cold and true self, slashed the blade through the air toward Pearl’s lovely shell. It sliced through her neck, and her body collapsed in a nauseatingly empty sack of meat—lacking organs, bones, muscles. Just a shell of flesh, and the power inside escaped.
The mocking echo of her laughter remained.
I had no choice of what to do next. I slashed across my body, and cut off the finger of the Void conduit where it pressed against my skull.
The boy screamed and fell backward. He sounded like a wounded child, not a vicious empty thing, and for a fatal second, I hesitated with my blade ready for a killing stroke.