Unknown

“If I save her now,” he said, “you will lose your way to the one you seek. I can follow instead, and retrieve the girl before more harm is done.”

“She’s alone,” I said. “She’s in pain. She’s a child.

More harm is done every second. Do this, Rashid. You owe this to me.”

He thought about that, and unwillingly inclined his head.

Then he vanished.

In the silent aftermath of his departure, Ben Turner said, “You cut your hand off. Jesus Christ, you cut. Your hand. Off.”

“It wasn’t my hand,” I said. “Not anymore. And it couldn’t be saved.”

Turner looked a little queasy, and stared hard at the unmoving black thing that sat crouched and nailed to the tabletop. It still didn’t look dead. It looked like it was simply waiting for an opening, for a careless moment. I was not entirely certain the knife could hold it, if it truly exerted itself, although Rashid had certainly buried the metal deeply into the wood.

“Yeah,” Turner said softly. “I see your point. So . . . what the hell do we do with that now?”

“You are a Fire Warden, aren’t you?” I asked. “Burn it. Please.”

He sent me a narrow, disbelieving look, then silently asked Luis if he agreed. Luis did, with a bare, silent nod. Turner took in a deep breath, focused his energy, and the wood on the table, for a respectable distance around the severed hand, burst completely into flame.

The hand began to struggle against the knife, jerking, slicing itself blindly as it tried to escape. Luis and I opened the floodgates of power to pour it into the wood the hand was touching. What wasn’t yet burning warped, folding over the fingers, trapping it. Fire, metal, earth—it was bound by all the powers, save air, which in this case fed the fire. The hand flopped wildly, trying to pull itself free, and finally, with a crackle of baking bones and sizzling flesh, went completely, utterly limp.

Dead.

A black, viscous liquid flowed from the severed stump of the wrist, turning wood to powdery, rotted ash where it touched, and smothering the flames. But it didn’t live long beyond its flesh host, and vanished into black, greasy smoke that faded into nothing on the air.

Turner kept the fire burning hot until my hand was a lacework of bones, bright white and crumbling, and then he let the flames die.

He promptly stumbled to the bathroom and slammed the door. I watched him go without comment. Luis, moving like a man who’d taken a gut wound, let go of me and walked to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and took out a beer. He popped the cap from it, still staring into a distance full of horror, then upended the bottle and drank until all that was left was foam. Then he leaned forward and rested the cold empty glass against his forehead.

I stood up, swaying a little from the loss of blood and lingering shock, and retrieved the bronze hatchet from where it lay in a pool of crimson on the floor. I cleaned it carefully against the towel wrapped around my left wrist, then sat down on the sofa and worked the tight knots of cotton twine that bound the towel in place.

“What the hell are you doing?” Luis asked wearily, and tried to stop me. I shoved him away with my good hand and held him there, pulling at the frayed cord with my teeth until it loosened enough for me to slip the towel away.

I had enough control of my body to keep the blood vessels clamped, and the nerves deadened. I wrapped the twine tight again, then contemplated the bronze weapon in my right hand.

“Cass.” His voice broke a little. “Cass, what the hell are you doing?” He was afraid, I realized, that I had gone entirely mad. That I was about to start mutilating myself again, to no real purpose.

“Shhhhh,” I said, and reached out with power. The metal of the weapon softened, melted, formed itself into a complex and delicate structure. I built it with a Dji

Now the same ruthless, cold Dji

I began by building hard metal bones, then overlaying them with fine, strong cables in patterns that mirrored the muscles and tendons of my right hand. Then, over all of that, a light, flexible bronze skin. Fingers. Even delicately etched fingernails, each slightly and sharply pointed, like finely manicured claws.

Then I slipped the complex mechanism over the open stump of my arm and joined up the parts, with little regard to what was metal and what was flesh. It fused together with a hiss and a smell of burning flesh, and I began to move my fingers slowly, one after another, before Luis’s wide, disbelieving eyes.

Then I made a fist, with my new bronze hand, and uncurled it to lay it flat in my lap. It was an exact mirror of my right hand, perfect in every visible detail. Even the shine of the metal mimicked living flesh. It was as if I’d dipped my living hand into metal.

I heard the water ru

I held up my metal hand and said, “No ambulance. No hospital.” I wiggled the fingers to show him that it worked, then lowered it and closed my eyes. “I will sleep now.”

I don’t know, but I imagined that Turner and Luis exchanged long looks. I simply drifted off into a half-drugged distance of shock, artificial calm, and true, genuine exhaustion.

It felt like I slept only a few minutes before coming awake again, shaking. The calm and shock had left me, the cold Dji

Luis was sitting beside me on the couch. I looked mutely at him, my eyes blurring with cold, lost tears, and he put his arm around me, pressed his lips to my temple, and whispered, “Thank God. Thank God you’re back.”

I was. The person who had been inhabiting my body, from the moment I had realized what my only choice had been, was gone. That Cassiel had once again been banished to the hidden recesses where she lurked.

“That was her, wasn’t it?” he asked. “The Cassiel you used to be. The Dji

I nodded, burying my face against his shirt. I couldn’t stop shaking. Couldn’t stem the tears. His hand stroked my hair over and over, an animal comfort and co

“You were right,” he told me. “She’s terrifying.”

To me, as well.

The next few minutes were long ones, silent ones, filled with the sound of Turner drinking down a glass of water, refilling it, then emptying it again, as if he hoped to wash himself clean from the inside out. I wondered if I should ask for something, but I didn’t need to do so; Luis, unasked, brought me a glass and very gently encouraged me to drink.

I hadn’t realized how thirsty I was until the water touched my lips, and then I sucked it down gulp after greedy gulp, barely pausing for air until the tumbler was dry. He refilled it, then sat beside me as I drank at a slower pace, stroking my hair with restless fingers.

“It’s the power,” he said. “It takes a lot out of you, physically. And you—” He glanced down at the metal hand, lying still in my lap. “Yeah. I’m not even sure how you did what you did.”

“Which part?” I asked.

“Hell, any of it. I’ve never seen anything like that before, outside of some big-budget sci-fi movie.” He kept watching the hand with guarded fascination. “Are you sure that’s not some evil hand or something?”