Heat Stroke

She cried out, once, and I felt her agony vibrating through the aetheric. I forced myself to look at her in Oversight; she was crawling with those blue specks, and they were alive, moving, eating.

She was being devoured. But they’d been all over me, all over David, they hadn’t hurt us, God, what the hell…

“Stop it,” Ashan said. His voice was raw, colorless. “It’s done. You can’t save her.”

Jonathan ignored him, ignored everything. He was focused on Rahel, fiercely intense, and the power flowing out of him just kept increasing. I felt it like a pressure against my skin, saw others shying away from it.

Rahel’s skin continued to slough away, revealing soft wet masses of tissue. The skin misted as it fell away. Slowly, layer by layer, the muscle began to peel back as well. Jonathan kept trying, uselessly and furiously, to keep her together.

“Stop,” I said, feeling the words turn in my throat like razors. “Please. He’s right, you’re just making it worse. Let go.”

His face was pallid and damp with strain, and his eyes were glittering with frustration, but he released the energy and dropped his hand back to his side. He didn’t move, though. I don’t even know if he could move, by then. I felt the energy flow shut down and watched as Rahel’s body melted away into a fetid, oily mist.

Gone.

She was still screaming when she vanished.

“Is she dead?” I blurted. Nobody answered. I don’t think they could. I had a cold flash of certainty that it was worse than that, far worse, out there on the aetheric. It was a horrible way to go. No wonder Jonathan had shut Ashan down so hard on the very idea of just letting Dji

What about David? I closed my eyes and reached for that silver link between us. It was faint and thin, but it was there. Unbroken.

Blue specks crawled up my arms.

“Joa

Fu

Jonathan reached out for me, but I just stepped away. Instinct, I guess.

Because it didn’t hurt.

I opened my eyes again and saw the most amazing thing.

Sparks. Blue swarmed out of the air, onto my skin, and vanished. The things that had eaten Rahel couldn’t hurt me.

Jonathan stopped, staring at me. I sighed, watched the last of the coldlight sizzle into emptiness, and wondered what had him looking so pale and confused.

“I’m okay,” I said. I thought he was worried about me.

Pallor faded to stretched white on his face and clenched fists. His eyes looked dark and blind.

“Jonathan?”

“Little trouble here,” he said.

I extended a hand toward him…

… and he lit up like a Christmas tree with crawling blue light. Oh God! The other Dji

Instinct. I grabbed for him as he started to slide down.

The sparks whirled out, climbed my arms, circled me in a storm of blue. Rahel’s grisly dissolution ran red in front of my eyes, and I swore I wasn’t going to let that happen, not to him, not now…

I sucked the sparks in, laid them thick on my skin, and consciously opened myself to them. I opened my squeezed-shut eyes and watched the light show as the sparkles glittered, peaceful and serene on my skin, then faded out into nothing.

I’m made of this. That was why they couldn’t hurt me. I was just taking in more of what had formed me in the first place.

Jonathan sat where he was, watching, too. His dark eyes shifted to meet mine.

“Thanks,” he said.

I nodded. “Favor for a favor. We need to get David back. Now.”

“I know,” he said. He sounded tired. “You look like hell.”

“Fu

Jonathan held on to me while I fought the pull. I felt his will settle over me like a soft, smothering blanket, and the summoning pull was lost in the weight.

“Tired,” I whispered. He already knew that. He was lifting me again in his arms as all the other Dji

Back to the bedroom.

The soft feather pillow.

The frosted-coal shadow of the Ifrit, watching.

I slept.

The next day—if days had any meaning here— dawned just as bright and su

I woke up to find the man himself sitting in a chair watching me. The Ifrit was gone.

“Wow,” I said. “This is getting familiar.”

“Don’t wear it out.”

“The bed or my welcome?”

He ignored what was admittedly a pretty weak comeback. “So. How you feeling?”

“Fine.”

“Good.” I wasn’t sure what he wanted, and I had the impression he wasn’t either, really. He got up to walk around the room, long strides that didn’t quite rise to the level of pacing. More like a stroll, with purpose. “About the rift up there.”

“What about it?” All my fight drained away at the bare mention of it. I couldn’t help but remember the red, tearing agony of Rahel dissolving into mush, or the hundreds of others who were suffering somewhere out there, where I couldn’t see them.

“You think it’s your fault,” he said. “Crap. What happened was David’s choice, not yours… and he had no way of knowing this would happen. Hell, even I didn’t understand what was going on until too late to do anything about it. Once I did, he wanted to go fix things.”

“But?”

“But by then I knew it was too dangerous, and then he went tearing off after you when you got—” He waved a hand, didn’t bother to finish the sentence. “He’s not exactly what you might call big-picture when it comes to personal sacrifice.”

“Neither am I. Neither are you.” He gave me a slight nod to acknowledge the point. “You should’ve told me about the rift. Or at least about how badly things were screwed up because I was brought back.”

He shrugged, a simple economical straight-up-and-down movement of his shoulder blades. No particular emotion in it. “Things screw up all the time. Hey. You gotta love the excitement. Granted, this is a lot more exciting than usual… but you stay alive as long as I have, you learn to take these things in stride. The Dji

I stared up at the shadows on the ceiling. “How much worse?”

“Hard to tell until it’s over.”

I pulled in a deep breath. Fu

“Sleeping,” he said, and nodded toward the far wall. “Lots of guest rooms. We run a topflight refugee camp around here.” He gave me a thin, almost human smile, but it didn’t last. “I never thought I’d like you, but you turned out okay. ‘Gut shortage.’ That was pretty good.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. I got carried away.”

“No, you’re right. One thing Dji

“I do,” I said. “You’re better off in here.”

“Not for much longer,” he said. He held out his hand, palm up, as if he was offering something to me. I looked at it, puzzled, and felt a sudden stab of alarm as a single cool blue spark ignited in his aura. “They’re coming in. I can’t keep them out, I can only slow them down. It’s going to be one giant blue snow globe in here soon. And even though I’m resistant to them, I’m not immune.” He stood up, swiped imaginary dust from his pants, and gestured at me. “So, you go