Unknown

“Someone is lying to you,” I told her. “It isn’t me. Please think about that.”

She considered me in silence for a long few seconds, then tilted her head to one side and extended a chubby little hand.

“Sleep,” she said, and darkness hit me like a falling anvil. I fought it, reaching for my own power, but as I did, I realized that she was trying to show me mercy. If I fought it, she’d use other means, and then I’d have to kill or be killed.

Better to lose. Much better.

As I was driven beneath the surface of the darkness, I thought about Luis, about what he might think when I failed to keep my promise and come back.

And I mourned not for myself, but for him.

When I woke up, I was on the gravel at the side of the road, and Isabel was gone. There was no sign of her anywhere. I tore myself out of anchoring flesh to look for her on the aetheric, but I found no trace at all, not even a lingering shadow of her presence.

I wrapped my arms around my aching chest, where emptiness and confusion burned like a heavy weight. So close, I’d been so close. I’d seen her. I might have saved her.

Or killed her. The odds had been far too uncertain.

Not much time had passed—moments, perhaps. Stars still glimmered overhead. Fires still burned. Men still moaned and cried out for help.

A low wail of a police siren was sounding in the distance, no doubt drawn by the death, smoke, and flames still raging on the road behind me. How was I ever going to explain this? I felt a surge of frustrated helplessness, and dragged myself to my feet by main strength.

A motorcycle roared up out of the ditch. The leader of the bikers, leaving behind his fallen comrades, opened the throttles and blazed past me in a blur of metal and leather, not even pausing to kill me, although he no doubt dearly wished to. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d made the attempt.

He had found another undamaged bike. The one I had salvaged still stood leaning on its kickstand in the middle of the road a hundred feet away, idling. I walked to it, mounted, and raised the stand to balance the heavy weight at its equilibrium point, then gu

I had to get to Sedona.

I aimed the Harley where it needed to go, and let it loose to fly, chasing the taillights of the biker ahead of me as we both, for different reasons, fled the law.

Riding the Harley was a very different sort of experience for me. It was rougher, less forgiving of the sins of the pavement against it—less precise in its handling, although still a very fine machine. It made up for these things in sheer, raw power, and although the traffic began to thicken as I approached Sedona, I had no problem guiding the bike in a fluid, shifting rush around slower-moving cars, trucks, and vans. Sedona’s night desert glowed in starlight, a severe and subtle beauty that woke something in me. A hunger for peace. Serenity. Solitude. There was a faint, pink glow on the eastern horizon; the sun was coming. A new day. A fresh day.

A day in which, perhaps, I could find my own brand of redemption.

Not while this abomination goes on, I told myself. The haunting image of Isabel, forced to accept powers beyond her reach, warped by loyalty to a dead mother, made me too sick with rage to consider satisfying that impulse toward retreat.

I will save you, Ibby. I will.

If there was anything of her left to save.

As a Dji

No. I will not fail. Not in this.

There was nothing but my will to drive me, but I had to believe that would be enough.

I had to believe in myself, as paradoxical as it seemed.

I dodged around a slow- moving RV with Virginia license plates, avoided a head-on collision with a tractor trailer, and after another quarter hour saw the turnoff toward the church. The motor of the Harley left smoke and blatting roars in my wake, somehow indecent in this polite, sleepy town in the predawn dimness, and for a moment I considered spending a few precious drops of power to muffle the noise.

Instead, I spent them on repairing my clothing and cleaning my skin and hair, making myself presentable for a meeting I was already dreading.

The Chapel of the Holy Cross was a popular visitor destination, particularly at dawn. As I parked the Harley in the broad, flat lot, I saw more than a dozen trucks, cars, and, yes, the ever-popular recreational vehicles, all disgorging yawning occupants. Tourists snapping photographs, or pilgrims come to pray and meditate. Their presence would be a bother, but not a deterrent to me.

I left the Harley, stood for a moment to gather my thoughts, and then started up the long path to the chapel. The walk gave me time to think what I might say. I wasn’t certain why I was so nervous this time about approaching the Oracle; I had done it before, and she had been, if not warm, at least accepting. What had changed? Rashid’s warnings, of course, but it was more than that.

I felt a greater weight on me now.

I knew why, on some level. I was becoming more human, and there was a kind of dread building in me, a kind of instinctual awe that I could not control. I was not even certain if the Oracle would hear me now, and if she would, if she could grant me even the smallest of favors.

But I had no other choice but to try. Lives had already been lost to get me this far.

I was exotically different from the others climbing toward the chapel; that fact became immediately apparent as those nearby cast me a wide variety of glances—admiring, suspicious, scandalized, worried, oddly worshipful. I returned none of them, concentrating on my own journey. Still, I was aware that with my pale skin and hair, my bright eyes, and my aggressive leathers, I was a cat among the walking-shorts-and-tee-shirt-wearing pigeons as the sun began to crest the horizon.

I did not look like either a tourist or a pilgrim.

I looked like trouble.

A priest was taking the air outside the chapel doors, smiling and shaking hands with those entering; he faltered when he saw me, but quickly recovered. He was a man of middle age, neat and trim, only a slight softening of his jawline and a slight drooping of his eyes to disclose that he might be older than he seemed. He radiated energy and a kind of satisfaction that I supposed doubled for purity. I neither liked nor disliked him, but I suspect he disliked me, immediately and without reservation.

He recognized an eldritch spirit when he saw one. No surprise, given the overlapping of sacred ground here; he must have seen the Dji

I didn’t deeply care.

Inside, the chapel rose up to a dizzying height, walls angling in. It was a warm, glowing color that was not quite gold, not quite orange, but something between, with a sheen like living skin. It was a small room dominated by the massive window at the far end that looked out on the majestic vista of the canyon it overlooked. As I studied the view, an eagle glided by in silent grace, wheeled, and began a descent toward its prey. All around me, tourists milled, the penitent prayed, but all were hushed and still in the presence of what felt . . . more than human.