Unknown

I saw no such doubts on that one’s face. He was a fanatic. A true believer, as was the girl next to him.

“You’re the ones who lie!” the girl shouted, and I felt a fearfully strong Earth power ripping at me, trying to clutch its fingers around my heart and crush. I batted the attack away and lurched to my feet, wiping blood from my mouth. Earth powers, I could defend against. The boy who was backing away was Fire.

The Weather Warden boy was still the real danger. He was willing to kill. Eager to. He was just trying to find the right moment, and to avoid hurting Ibby in the process—though I wasn’t at all sure he would flinch from it, if he thought it necessary.

“Get her out,” I said to Luis. “Go. Go now.”

He hesitated. Isabel turned her luminous, too-adult eyes to me, and I saw the shadow in them, the adult understanding. The power.

Pearl had made the child old far beyond her years. Forced her to see and do things that would have damaged someone far more experienced in this world.

I wasn’t sure, suddenly, that we hadn’t been manipulated, once more, but really, what choice was there? Leave Ibby here, to suffer more? No. Not possible. We had to try, or there was no point to any of it.

“Take her,” I said. “You have to save her or none of this will mean anything. Just go, Luis. Go.”

He nodded and began to back away, up the tu

But neither of us could defend against a Weather attack.

Lightning arced from all sides of the tu

I hit the smooth wall of the tu

The children retreated. The boy changed his attack again, pushing me back with a wave of hot wind, and the Earth child darted forward to slam a fist into my chest.

It hit with the overwhelming force of a freight train. It took years for an Earth Warden to build up that kind of force, yet this child pulled it in an instant, and I felt it blow through me, damaging everything in its path—ribs, lungs, barely missing my heart. I choked, gasped, and felt a burst of pain bloom like a flower made of knives in my chest.

“Cassiel!” Turner yelled, and sent a burst of fire rolling past me, forcing the Earth Warden child back just as she tried to summon up a second, killing blow. “Jesus, get back!”

I couldn’t. I was already wounded, and if I didn’t finish this quickly, they would.

I ignored the agony. I rolled forward over my right shoulder, came up in a crouch, hands outstretched, slammed both palms against the foreheads of the two children, and sent a jolt of power into them that overloaded their brains, instantly sending them unconscious.

In theory.

One went down.

The one I’d held my metallic left hand to, the Weather Warden, staggered, but as I’d feared, the metal had failed to conduct aetheric power in the same way that flesh did.

It was a fatal moment to learn that for a fact.

The boy had no more hesitation or mercy than the girl at his side, who was already falling to the ground in sleep. He struck me point blank with an invisible blade of hardened air, punching it deep inside me. It was an old form of attack, one that the Wardens had long since abandoned; Weather Wardens didn’t engage in close-quarters fighting, and when they did, they tried to avoid fatal wounds.

This was . . . very close to fatal. Very, very close.

I fell forward, reaching out with my right hand as I did, and slapped it against his forehead. He was a sweet-faced child, Asian in ancestry, with silky black hair cut in a careless shag around his face.

I had just enough focus left to send the pulse of power into him, and he collapsed before I fell on top of him.

I was bleeding. Unable to breathe.

“Cassiel!” A distant voice, shouting. I felt something tugging at me, but it was very remote.

It felt peaceful suddenly.

Someone rolled me over, grabbed the two unconscious children, and hustled them away. I lay there watching the red pool of my blood spread outward across the clean pale floor.

I felt the hunger of the place stir. It liked blood. It loved mine.

Sister. Pearl’s voice, echoing in my head, unwelcome in this peaceful state I’d reached. No, this won’t do. I can’t have you giving your life. That’s to no purpose at all.

Sorry to disappoint you, I replied. I felt . . . remote now. Like an Oracle myself, removed from the concerns of the world. I remembered how I’d longed for peace, for solitude, for silence.

I was finding it, breath by breath. Soon, it would surround me entirely.

You’d leave the man, Pearl said. I find that hard to believe. You’ve become so human. So bound to skin. And he does so love you, already. Like the child. It was hard to turn her against you. I had to hurt her many times to do that.

I felt a stir of hate, an echo of emotion that troubled me. It had no place here, where I was leaving things behind.

The pool of red crawled outward, spreading into a lake.

There was one more Warden child left in the hallway, the one who’d backed away from the fight once Isabel had been taken. He was an older boy, about ten years, and I saw in him the shadow of the man he might one day become, if he survived all this—if he survived all of us—to be a genuine Warden.

He would be the next Lewis Orwell. There was a light in him . . . a light . . . .

He reached out and touched me, spreading his hand over the open wet wound that the knife of air had left. “No,” I whispered. “No, don’t.” Because as close as I had come to the edge, I might pull him with me. I would not pull him into the dark. “Let me go. It’s all right.”

Shhhhh, Pearl said soothingly in my mind. Oh my sister, he’s mine to give. And I give you this gift. I’m not ready to let you go quite yet. It’s not time.

“No!” I screamed it, but it was too late.

The boy wasn’t acting of his own accord. This child, this marvelous and beautiful child who would grow to be a marvelous, beautiful man, was completely under her control. Against his own will, he poured power into me, emptied every reserve. It roared into me in a fierce, white-hot cascade, burning through my nerves, spilling in a flood through the wounded tissues. Healing. Mending sliced arteries. Forcing the wound closed.

Saving me. Destroying himself.

“No!” I whispered, but I couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t sever the co

She emptied him of everything. Every tiny scrap of power, even the tiny bursts of energy that kept the cells of his body alive.

She killed him to save me.

“No!” My scream was raw, and it filled the narrow space of the hallway, raced through the space, echoed from the roots of my soul.

I caught the boy as he fell, but it was too late. He was emptied by Pearl and discarded like garbage.