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Thin air

Кейн Рэйчел

“Fine,” I said. “What exactly did I do?”

He blinked a couple of times. “You don’t know?”

“Look, I know that Marion’s in a coma, but-”

“You screwed around with things that you weren’t ready for, and you put her in that coma. Then you went after me.”

“I-I what?”

Lewis didn’t change his expression, not at all. “You heard me. If I hadn’t put you down, hard, you’d have ripped my brain apart like a piñata.”

“But-why would I do that?” I felt bewildered, alien in my own skin.

“Post-traumatic stress, I’m guessing. The point is, you were a danger to everybody around you.”

“But…not now.” I said it like I believed it. Lewis didn’t grace me with agreement, but he didn’t disagree, either. He just sat, gently providing reassurance through the contact of our hands. “Lewis, I don’t want to hurt anybody. Really. You have to believe that.”

“I do,” he said. “But the best thing right now is for you to rest and get your strength back. I had to put you down pretty hard. Harder than I’d have preferred. You need to heal.”

“Lee said I’d be moved somewhere else,” I said. “It sounded like prison.”

Lewis’s thumb stopped stroking my fingers. I wasn’t sure I liked that.

“It’s not prison,” he said. “But it’s a medical facility, and it’s run by people from Marion’s division. If they can’t find a way to stop you from misusing your Earth powers, they’re going to have to block the cha

I laughed, but it was shaky, and so was his smile. “I swear, I’ll try,” I said. “Has David been here?”

Lewis looked away. “Not yet,” he said.

“Is it normal, him being gone this long?”

“You know it isn’t. But there’s no way we can check on him, so we’ll just have to wait.”

There was a discreet knock at the door, and it did the buzz thing. Lewis leaned back as a security guard leaned in. “You’re wanted on the phone, sir,” the guard said. “Conference call.”

Lewis nodded, then gave me a distracted kind of grin. “Politics,” he said. “Marion was right. There’s always time for politics. Rest, okay? I’ll come back.”

I didn’t trust myself to say anything. He left without a backward glance, and I tried to close my eyes and damp down the panic inside.

I’m trapped. They’re taking me to prison. No, worse-they were taking me to screw around with my head, to keep me from hurting people.

I was, in Warden terms, mentally ill. Crazy with a capital K. Except somehow, I knew that I wasn’t-and that if I let them mess with my head, that would be bad. Very, very bad.

A monitor beeped somewhere near my head. My heart rate was up, and getting faster. Some other electronic alarm joined the chorus-blood pressure? I felt sick all of a sudden, almost dizzy. There was a hissing sound in my head, like interference, and this terrible pressure inside my chest…

In the corner of the room, a shadow stirred. I couldn’t see who it was for a second, and then once my bleary eyes focused I felt a jolt of sheer terror driving away what was left of my drugged sleep.

I had a visitor, and the visitor was me.

No…the visitor looked like me, right down to the nasty hospital gown and unkempt hair. But there was something cold and inhuman behind her blue eyes, something that wasn’t me at all.

It just stood there, looking at me, and I could feel space warping between us, see the air shimmering and turning dark and thick.

We were drawing each other closer, but at the same time, I could feel the sickening drain on my life.

“Help!” I tried to scream it-Lewis hadn’t gone far, he couldn’t have-but my voice was a weak, choked squeak in my throat. Oh God. It took a step toward me, and I felt a corresponding surge of dizzying weakness sweep over me.

“Quiet,” the Demon whispered, and moved even closer. I gasped for breath, but it was like breathing at the bottom of the ocean. I was drowning in the dark. “We’re nearly there. Nearly there. You need to let go, let go and give me what I need.”

I knew in a flash that this was why Jonathan had come to warn me. Right now, the Demon was missing something, something vital. Something I had.

And against all odds, I needed to hang onto it.

I needed to fight for my life, because I was the only one who could.

Of course, I was also drugged and tied to a bed, but nobody promised it was going to be easy.

David. God, David, please.

If he could hear me, he couldn’t respond. Maybe he was hurt, or imprisoned, or just cut off and unable to get to me. I could almost feel him out there, feel his frustration and fear, but…

Look inside.

It was a whisper, and I didn’t know where it was coming from, but it steadied me. I got my breath and reached deep within, reached in for something I didn’t even know I had.

Power flowed up through me, thick and honey-sweet, slow as the heartbeat of the Earth herself.

Yes. There. Just like that.

The restraints were leather and metal, both things that Earth Wardens could manipulate and control. I dissolved them into sand, pulled my wrists free of the gritty pile, and rolled painfully up to my knees to face the Demon.

She stopped moving, staring at me. If I scared her at all, I couldn’t tell it from her expression.

“Back off,” I panted. “Right now.” As a threat, it was pretty empty…I didn’t have a clue how to hurt this thing. But she was standing there, waiting, frowning just a little. Maybe she didn’t know much about me, either.

Maybe she was just a little bit afraid.

She said, with an eerie flatness, “There you are. I’ve been searching for you. It’s time to finish this.” She held out a hand toward me, and I felt the shimmering, sickening blackness sink deeper into me. “Do you know who I am?”

My voice was barely a whisper. “Demon.” I didn’t doubt that, not at all. There was something so utterly wrong about her…

“No.” Something changed in her expression-no longer doll-blank, but a glimmer of something else. Life. Personality. My personality. “Not anymore. I’m becoming something else. I’m becoming you.”

I swayed on my knees, too sick to move, too terrified to do anything. She came closer, and with every step, she was…more me. Expression, body language, confidence. Even the smile.

“Why are you doing this?” I managed to whisper. Her fingers were moving toward me, and I knew, knew without the shadow of a doubt, that if she touched me, it was all over.