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Thin air

Кейн Рэйчел

Without resentment.

He’d do anything for her.

God, she was pretty. Not just pretty-beautiful. And she was so…bright. Yvette had been pretty, but in a cheap kind of way, a slutty way, but Cherise…when she smiled it was like the sunshine. What the hell she was doing hanging with that stone-cold bitch Joa

(whom he nevertheless respected…)

…Cherise was somebody he could help. Somebody warm and soft and someone who needed him, needed him. And when he got between her and trouble, she made him feel…He was too young for her, she’d teased him, but she hadn’t treated him that way, not really.

And she hadn’t used him. She’d just been…amazing. Sweet and kind and fu

And yet somehow she did, and that made this so much better.

And that made it so much worse, when he failed in the forest.

I’d found it. The trail turned dark again, as if Cherise’s sunshine presence had gone behind a cloud, and all his internal demons had crawled out of their holes, never more than a heartbeat away.

I took a breath and sank deep into his memory.

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At first it was good. Better than good. The Wardens had given him assignments, and he’d surprised himself with how good he’d been at it. Lewis had been an ass at times, but he’d shown him stuff, and Kevin had learned, although he hadn’t wanted to let on that he was paying attention. Wasn’t cool to be too eager.

So when the Wardens dropped him on the front lines of the California fire near Palm Springs, he’d taken Cherise with him. Wasn’t supposed to; he’d been told to leave her at the base camp, but she’d wanted to come, and he’d wanted an audience, right? Somebody to impress.

So it was all his fault.

At first it had worked just the way he’d wanted. He’d been taught how to set controlled fires to create firebreaks, and he could do it faster and better than the regular firefighters, without any risk of losing control no matter how long the fire line got. He’d done a good job, a really good job, and Cherise had kept him supplied with water and sometimes kisses of congratulations, which had been pretty great. Because she’d asked him to, he’d worked with some crotchety old bastard of an Earth Warden to save some horses who were trapped on the hills, and the light in her eyes as the small herd galloped past them, safe, had been better than any sex he’d ever had.

And then it had all gone bad right around dark. First he’d felt it as an ache in his chest, and he’d thought he’d caught some smoke, but he couldn’t cough it out. There was something wrong with him, and there was something wrong with Cherise, too, and he couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t help her. It was like the whole world was dying around him; he could feel it slipping away, and…then it came back, and things had returned to normal for a few minutes, and he’d held Cherise and told her it was all going to be okay, and that had been a lie.

The fire jumped one of the breaks he’d set, so he went closer to try to stop it before it could leap treetops. He told Cherise to stay back, so he didn’t see it happen, but when he extinguished the flames racing through the dry underbrush, he turned back and…

She was on the ground, and there was a thing, a thing with its hands buried in her chest.

Kevin screamed and threw himself at it, and it batted him away into a tree. He saw blood and stars and felt something wrong with his head, like he’d hit it too hard, and when he got up again Cherise was standing there like nothing had happened.

But it wasn’t Cherise, and that wasn’t her smile, because it wasn’t the sunshine.

It was something else.

“Kevin,” she said, and came toward him. “Honey, it’s okay. It’s all okay. I need you.”

Cherise had known to say that, not the thing inside, and that was what stopped him from backing away. That, and the bleak, black knowledge that nothing ever really worked right for him in the long run. Of course this had to happen.

It always did.

Oh, Kevin, I thought from that separate quiet place where I stood. It doesn’t have to. You have to have faith.

But he wasn’t listening, and anyway, this was already done, already past, and he was giving up because he just thought there wasn’t any real point in trying.

So he didn’t fight when Cherise reached out and put her hands on his head-exactly the way I’d done it when I’d entered his memories-and the Demon began to tu

And from that point on I wasn’t in Kevin’s memories anymore.

I was in hers.

She was cold inside. Ice-cold, all clean logic and calculation, empty of kindness or compassion. She made Eamon, messy and awful as he was, seem like Father Christmas in comparison. She wanted only one thing, and it was the iron-hard central core of who she was: She wanted to go home.

And she would do anything, use anyone, destroy the world to get there.

Starting with Cherise, because she’d been close and vulnerable, but really starting with Kevin, because he was what she needed. Power. Strength. Energy.

She used him like a straw, an empty vessel good for nothing but as a conduit between her and what she craved…raw aetheric energy, the stuff that powered all Wardens. She would have preferred to consume a Dji

She had tried the girl first, but the pathetic meat hadn’t been able to deliver much of a meal; humans barely brushed the aetheric, and so were of little use. But she kept Cherise, aware of the emotions it roused in the boy; the angrier and more afraid he was, the more energy the Demon was able to draw.

It was horrible, and it was cruel, and it interested her for a long time. Too long.

She used Cherise and Kevin to stalk other Wardens. Those she did not bother to control, only to drain and slaughter, but Cherise and Kevin provided her with a self-sustaining well of anguish that she would not easily give up.

And then something happened. Something startling.

There was a shift of energy on the aetheric, titanic in its intensity. It was like some soundless explosion, and everything rippled. The Demon felt it and chased after, not even sure what she was chasing, but there was something floating there in the emptiness, something free and powerful…