by Rachel Caine
“You may have to,” I told her. “You may have to take the other two and leave, if they’ll let you.”
She gave me a long, sober look. “That’s what they want us to do. They want us to go back to the Lady.”
My arms tightened around her. I thought of Zedala, of those other fanatical children; Ibby, Sanjay, and Elijah would make perfect assassins, if she continued their indoctrination. I couldn’t allow that to happen to them.
But at least they’d be alive. My alternative might be to watch them die in a particularly horrible way.
I turned to Luis, but he was moving toward Marion, who was beckoning for his help. He was limping, and there was a broad, bloody stain on the leg of his pants. A bullet wound, but one he was managing well.
Ben had also been shot, from behind, by someone he must have trusted. He’d been heading to join Marion, or to warn her. “Ibby,” I said. “You said we were in trouble. You didn’t mean the fire, did you?”
“I saw her shoot him,” Ibby said, still in that tense, quiet whisper. “I didn’t know how to stop it. You should have showed me how to stop the bullets from exploding, and I could have stopped her from killing Ben. But it was too late then. I couldn’t bring him back. Nobody else saw it, and I don’t think she knows that I know.”
My gaze moved around the room, and fell on Shasa, who was deep in concentration, hands held palms out. She was sending waves of control against the fire, but whatever or whoever directed it against us was stronger. She was shaking, and damp with sweat as much from effort as heat.
“Not her,” Ibby whispered. “Her.”
I turned and met Janice Worthing’s calm, kind eyes—only in that instant they weren’t calm, or kind. Only blank with calculation. And I felt something go still and very quiet inside me.
I had known. On some level, I’d been uneasy with the woman, though everything and everyone around me had given the lie to that instinct. I should have listened to my Djinn side, I realized, the cynical and mistrustful side that had refused to be swayed and charmed by her subtle use of power.
Janice Worthing had been the traitor in the heart of the school, and no one, not even Marion, had suspected her. I wondered how long she’d been waiting to strike—months, maybe years. Maybe she’d been an early convert of Pearl’s, or maybe she’d simply been for hire. She didn’t, even now, strike me as a true believer—more of a mercenary.
She was holding little Elijah, the youngest of the children, in her arms. He’d been sent into a deep artificial sleep; to all appearances, her cradling of his body was gentle and protective, but suddenly I saw it differently.
Suddenly, Elijah was a shield.
“Let go,” I said to Ibby. She shook her head. “Ibby, let go and go to your uncle. I don’t want you to get hurt.” This was, in many ways, more dangerous than anything else that might have happened ... that the traitor was locked in here with us, in this desperate last stand, ready to strike at will. I wondered why she hadn’t done it already, but I thought I knew. She didn’t dare strike until she could ensure that she would take out all of the remaining Wardens in one blow—Marion, Luis, Shasa, and now me, to complicate her problem. Janice’s mission must have been to gather the most powerful children and bring them out alive to Pearl.
She’d gathered them. Now she simply had to kill the rest of us to ensure her victory.
I peeled Isabel’s arms away from my neck and pointed her at Luis. “Stay with him,” I said, and she backed toward him, never taking her wide dark eyes from Janice.
Janice cocked her head slightly to one side, and I saw the recognition in her eyes. She knew that I knew, and that Ibby did as well. Her charade was ending.
“Well,” she said, “it was nice while it lasted.” She extended one hand toward Luis, and the bullet wound in his thigh suddenly broke open, pumping bright red blood in a fountain. Ibby stopped, shocked, and backed away from the spatter in instinctive horror. Luis let out a choked cry and grabbed for his thigh, squeezing with both hands; Marion spun her chair toward him and slapped her hand atop his. She was splitting her concentration dangerously, and as I’d noted when I’d left the school, she’d already been tired. She had to pull away as a fresh attack pounded against the stone walls she’d thrown up, and the bleeding increased again as Luis sank down to a sitting position on the floor. Ibby ran to him and put her hand on his shoulder.
“No, no, Isabel, you’re in no shape to do that kind of work,” Janice said, and I felt a subtle, wrong shift in the energy coming from her. The edges of it brushed me, and I felt sick, wrong, twisted ... but it wasn’t directed at me.
It was directed at Isabel, who screamed and dropped to the floor beside her uncle, writhing in the grip of one of those seizures I’d witnessed before.
Janice had induced it. Deliberately.
I snarled and turned on her, every instinct—Djinn and human—screaming inside me to destroy the woman ... but I couldn’t. She had Elijah’s neck in her hands, and the boy was asleep. He couldn’t fight back.
“I’ll flay you,” I said, with an eerie control that I didn’t feel. “I’ll flay you and feed your skin to the pigs while you watch. Stop hurting them.”
“Back off, and I will,” Janice snapped. “Ah, ah, Marion, stay where you are. Don’t make me start thinning the herd.”
Marion’s face was frightening to behold, but she stopped her slow advance toward Janice. I could feel her gathering up her power, getting ready to strike, but like me, she was at a severe disadvantage.
As long as Janice had the children gathered around her, we were limited in what we could do.
Shasa’s concentration broke as the situation in the room finally dawned on her. She opened her eyes, startled, and glanced at Janice with a frown. “What the hell is going on?” It was only at that moment that I realized how much Shasa’s power had kept the ravening inferno at bay around us; smoke poured through tiny cracks in the stone, and the rock itself snapped and hissed under the pressure of the heat. Marion’s barrier couldn’t exist for long without Fire Warden assistance. “Janice? What’s she talking about?”
“Nothing,” Janice said in that warm, soothing voice that had lulled so many into trust. “She’s a traitor, Shas. She’s one of them. She left us to give them intel, and now she’s back to finish the job. She brought this on us, and we let her inside.”
That held just enough truth to distract Shasa for another critical moment ... and then Janice extended her hand and tapped the Fire Warden on the shoulder. Just a light tap, but I felt the cold breath of power settle around the girl.
Shasa collapsed as her eyes rolled back in her skull. She looked fragile, suddenly, like a broken doll. Without her power supporting it, the defenses around us began to snap and shift under the pressure of the forces outside.
Pearl’s forces.
My lips peeled back from my teeth. I glanced over at Luis, who looked pale and shaking, but he’d stripped off his belt and was twisting it around his thigh, attempting to slow the loss of blood. Isabel had collapsed against his side, trembling and writhing in the grip of the seizures, and the sight of that fueled my rage to dangerous levels.
I turned to Janice. “Put Elijah down,” I said. “Now. Or I destroy you. You’re no match for me.”
“Oh, you’re right about that,” she replied, and gave me her sweet little grandmotherly smile. I almost preferred Zedala’s fanaticism, in that moment; Janice’s violence and cruelty were coldly calculated, and in a sense that made it all the more horrible. “But then again, I’ve got some advantages, don’t I? If you want the bleeding to stop, and Ibby to survive this latest attack ... you’ll stand aside. I can call off the attack. We can arrange a peaceful exchange—these children for your lives.”
“And yours.”
“Well”—she shrugged—“naturally someone has to go with them to take care of them. And I’m one of the best.” The smile turned hard around the edges. “Even Marion said so.”
Marion remained silent, but
her expression could have shattered stone. I’d never seen a human look so implacably angry. That was the kind of rage that Wardens tried to avoid—the kind that drove them to extremes even a Djinn couldn’t comprehend. This offended her in every way possible, from her compassion for the children to the massive and unthinkable betrayal of trust Janice had perpetrated.
“I think Cassiel is wrong,” she finally said, very softly. “Flaying is too good for you, Janice. I’ll have to think of something ... better.”
Janice lost her smile altogether. “The New Mother is going to kill you all, in ways worse than you’d ever think of trying on me,” she said. I realized, with a grim, bleak amusement, that Pearl had given herself a title. How very like her. “Don’t be stupid. Let me have the kids. Let me walk away. I can guarantee you’ll live to lick your wounds.”
“She’s lying,” Marion said. “She doesn’t intend to let any of us out of here alive.”
“And I don’t intend to allow her to live, either,” I said. “Stalemate.”
Janice laughed. “Is it getting hotter in here, or is that just me?”
It was. The stone around us was cracking, friable under the unrelenting pressure of the fire. Smoke poured thinly through the cracks, adding to the oppressive heaviness of the air. I realized I was breathing more and more deeply. The fire outside was turning the air toxic, and without a Weather Warden to cleanse it, we had very little time left, even if the fire didn’t reach us first.
Janice was no match for me, not in strength; that was why she had Elijah, and the other children. Human shields. Any of us would hesitate to use full power with them in the way; it would be hideously easy for her, as an Earth Warden, to kill them before we could act.
“If I’d been able to keep Gillian, I could have solved this little problem,” Janice said. “You can blame that one on Ben. He lost his backbone.”
Ben. Weather Warden. I suddenly understood who it was who’d ambushed me with the mudslide on my way back to the school, before ... It was Ben; it had to be. Janice had recruited him, or he’d been placed, like her, in the heart of the school ... but he’d had a change of heart. Probably, I thought, because of the children. I’d seen him with them, and he’d seemed genuinely moved by their plight. I’d been an easy, justifiable enemy for him.
Not the children.
He’d been shot ensuring that Mike and Gillian were able to escape ... or Gillian, at least. In that end, there had been honor.
“You can’t want this,” I said. “I’ve seen you working with the children. You’re not cruel, Janice. You care for them. You can’t want them to be used, twisted, made into killers.”
“You think these children aren’t already killers?” Janice touched Elijah’s forehead, then Sanjay’s. Both boys stirred, looking dazed. She altered her tone again and projected a subtle variation of her normal warm reassurance—this one had an edge of fear, and pleading. “I need you, boys. You have to protect each other, and protect me, too.”
Sanjay looked up at her with absolute trust and devotion. “Miss? From what?”
“From them,” she said, and nodded at Luis, Marion, and me. “From our enemies.”
And like the good soldiers that Janice must have made them behind Marion’s back, Sanjay and Elijah climbed to their feet and faced us with identical expressions of determination.
Ready to fight, and die, for the cause.
“No,” Marion breathed. She sounded aghast, and deeply betrayed. I could understand that. ... She’d been just as seduced by Janice’s powers as anyone else. Janice had a rare gift of influence, one that had served Pearl far better than stronger, more overt talents. She’d manipulated absolutely everyone, to one extent or another. I was willing to bet that gathering the children at the school, logical though it might have seemed at the time, was also an idea that sprang from Janice’s suggestions.
While Marion had been focused on healing the children’s physical damage, Janice had been conducting a different kind of campaign ... one of steady, damning indoctrination, taking place right under the noses of the Wardens set to guard the children. Even Luis, warned that there was a traitor, had been blind to her.
As cynical and suspicious as I was, I would have chosen her last. There was something about her that simply defied reasonable doubts.
“Sanjay, Elijah,” Marion said, “don’t do this. We’re not your enemies. Your enemies are out there. They’re the ones trying to hurt us all.”
“No,” Janice responded. “She’s lying to you. Those people out there, they’re trying to get to us. To save us. We need to help them.”
“She’s right. They’re trying to save us,” Sanjay said. He sounded utterly certain of it. “You want to hurt us.”
“No, sweetheart, I don’t.” Marion’s anguish was palpable, but it was not reassuring; the boys drew a step closer to Janice, seeking the numbing, gentle warmth that she radiated. Only Ibby had broken with it, and only, I thought, because she’d seen Janice without that mask while she killed Ben. “Please don’t do this. You know we’re trying to help you. We’ve always tried to help.”
Her argument wasn’t going to win; I could see that. Sanjay and Elijah had both endured pain in the healing process, and they were too young and fragile to understand that the pain was necessary. Janice had chosen her willing avatars well, because even I, pragmatic as I was, wouldn’t strike against them unless forced to do so. They were a deadly combination—too small, and far too powerful.
Marion cast out a sudden strike of power, meant to send the boys to sleep, but Elijah batted it away with contemptuous ease. It was the wrong move, although if it had succeeded, we might have had a chance. As it was, whatever doubts the boys might have held were wiped away in the face of what they saw as an attack against them.
Elijah pushed power outward in a bone-crushing wave, directly at us. That, Marion and I blocked easily enough; it was our own specialty.
But he wasn’t our only problem.
“Down!” I yelled, and toppled Marion’s wheelchair to one side as Sanjay raised a hand. Flames exploded from the padding of her chair, but I pulled her safely out before she could be more than singed.
“I have to hold the wall!” she shouted at me, and I saw the torment and fury in her face. “I can’t split my attention; I’m too tired. You have to take them down, Cassiel. Do it fast.”
Elijah must have heard, because he sent another attack flying at us—no, not at us. At Luis and Ibby, wounded and defenseless now. I lunged in front of it and turned the power back at him in a hot golden flare. It knocked him backward in surprise—but not down.
I rolled out of the way of another bolt of power from Sanjay, which splashed against the stone ... directly into another send by Elijah, which closed crushingly around my bones, trying to shatter them like glass. He could squeeze me to a pulp in an instant before I could get my defenses in order ... but something interfered with him.
Isabel. She was lying on her side, eyes wide, face pale and ghostly under a coating of sweat. She was weak and terribly vulnerable, but she threw out just enough power to disrupt Elijah’s hold on me. Just enough to allow me to break it and throw him back, again.
He and Sanjay had an excellent strategy working ... I had no effective counter to Sanjay, but avoiding the strikes left me off balance and vulnerable to Elijah, whom I could counter, if given an instant to prepare.
They didn’t intend to give me that instant. Sooner or later, I would make an error, fall short, and they’d have me. Both of them. I needed Luis, but he was even weaker than Isabel; the bleeding from his leg continued, slowed but not stopped by the tourniquet he’d applied. Neither Marion nor I had the time or space to apply any kind of healing, and he was too weak to try it on himself. Earth Wardens were notoriously bad at self-administering their power, in any case.
Hold on, I begged him silently through our link. Please hold on.
We have an ace, he whispered back. Time to use it.
I didn’t understand f
or an instant, and then I did, as Luis fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a small, thick bottle topped with a black rubber stopper.
He put his thumb on the stopper, preparing to pop it open. Preparing to release Rashid, and order him to save us.
“No!” I screamed. “Luis, don’t!”
He seemed startled to hear me say it, and shook his head. He was starting to lose focus from the bleeding; I could see the vagueness in his eyes. “Only way,” he said. “Need his help.”
“He’ll kill you! You’re in no condition to manage a Djinn!”
He wasn’t listening. I lunged. He pulled back, but I didn’t have time to wrestle with him for the bottle; I balled up my fist, put a burst of Earth power through the muscles of my arm, and punched him in the jaw, a neat right uppercut that snapped his head back and sent him reeling.
He let go of the bottle, still stoppered. I caught it, fought off his dazed attempt to get it back, and retreated to the middle of the room. Across from me, one of the stone walls that Marion had erected shattered under the force of the flames beyond, and a rippling wall of fire burst through, seeking the cooler air of our little shelter. Marion flinched, but she couldn’t seem to repair the damage. She crawled to Shasa’s side, fending off an attack from Elijah as she did, and shook her awake just as a huge white-hot fireball shot through the opening. I lunged for Luis and Ibby, covering them as it bloomed overhead, filling the room with unbearable heat and glare.
Shasa came upright, screamed out raw defiance, and crushed the fireball into a marble-sized ball of plasma, which she grabbed and threw back out to the other side of the gap. I felt her shield go back up, and for the next few seconds, at least, she held off the attack.
Sanjay closed in on Marion, who was struggling to put the stone barrier back up.
Isabel squirmed out from beneath me, staggered to her feet, and got in his way.
“No!” Marion shouted, but it was too late; Isabel channeled a raw amount of force that shocked even my Djinn senses and sent Sanjay flying against Janice before he could pull enough power to strike. “No, Cassiel, stop her! She’s not ready—this will kill her!” She choked and coughed, retching as the almost unbreathable air finally became too much.