Unseen

“I have to hold the wall!” she shouted at me, and I saw the torment and fury in her face. “I can’t split my attention; I’m too tired. You have to take them down, Cassiel. Do it fast.”

Elijah must have heard, because he sent another attack flying at us—no, not at us. At Luis and Ibby, wounded and defenseless now. I lunged in front of it and turned the power back at him in a hot golden flare. It knocked him backward in surprise—but not down.

I rolled out of the way of another bolt of power from Sanjay, which splashed against the stone ... directly into another send by Elijah, which closed crushingly around my bones, trying to shatter them like glass. He could squeeze me to a pulp in an instant before I could get my defenses in order ... but something interfered with him.

Isabel. She was lying on her side, eyes wide, face pale and ghostly under a coating of sweat. She was weak and terribly vulnerable, but she threw out just enough power to disrupt Elijah’s hold on me. Just enough to allow me to break it and throw him back, again.

He and Sanjay had an excellent strategy working ... I had no effective counter to Sanjay, but avoiding the strikes left me off balance and vulnerable to Elijah, whom I could counter, if given an instant to prepare.

They didn’t intend to give me that instant. Sooner or later, I would make an error, fall short, and they’d have me. Both of them. I needed Luis, but he was even weaker than Isabel; the bleeding from his leg continued, slowed but not stopped by the tourniquet he’d applied. Neither Marion nor I had the time or space to apply any kind of healing, and he was too weak to try it on himself. Earth Wardens were notoriously bad at self-administering their power, in any case.

Hold on, I begged him silently through our link. Please hold on.

We have an ace, he whispered back. Time to use it.

I didn’t understand for an instant, and then I did, as Luis fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a small, thick bottle topped with a black rubber stopper.

He put his thumb on the stopper, preparing to pop it open. Preparing to release Rashid, and order him to save us.

“No!” I screamed. “Luis, don’t!”

He seemed startled to hear me say it, and shook his head. He was starting to lose focus from the bleeding; I could see the vagueness in his eyes. “Only way,” he said. “Need his help.”

“He’ll kill you! You’re in no condition to manage a Dji

He wasn’t listening. I lunged. He pulled back, but I didn’t have time to wrestle with him for the bottle; I balled up my fist, put a burst of Earth power through the muscles of my arm, and punched him in the jaw, a neat right uppercut that snapped his head back and sent him reeling.

He let go of the bottle, still stoppered. I caught it, fought off his dazed attempt to get it back, and retreated to the middle of the room. Across from me, one of the stone walls that Marion had erected shattered under the force of the flames beyond, and a rippling wall of fire burst through, seeking the cooler air of our little shelter. Marion flinched, but she couldn’t seem to repair the damage. She crawled to Shasa’s side, fending off an attack from Elijah as she did, and shook her awake just as a huge white-hot fireball shot through the opening. I lunged for Luis and Ibby, covering them as it bloomed overhead, filling the room with unbearable heat and glare.

Shasa came upright, screamed out raw defiance, and crushed the fireball into a marble-sized ball of plasma, which she grabbed and threw back out to the other side of the gap. I felt her shield go back up, and for the next few seconds, at least, she held off the attack.

Sanjay closed in on Marion, who was struggling to put the stone barrier back up.

Isabel squirmed out from beneath me, staggered to her feet, and got in his way.

“No!” Marion shouted, but it was too late; Isabel cha

We were all in danger of death, I thought, but didn’t have the breath left to speak. The air was thick and fetid, and it was an effort to even try to draw it in, as shimmering and hot as it was. Around us, the school was crumbling under the attack, and our circle of safety felt now like a slower, crueler way to die.

I looked down at the bottle in my hand and scrambled up to my knees. Luis struggled to get up, wiping blood from his mouth, but he was done. There was little strength left in him now. Certainly not enough to manage a Dji

Rashid would help us. Perhaps. But like all Dji

He might find a way to allow us to die, simply out of a basic, inhuman need for revenge. It would be easy for him, so easy.

I couldn’t give him a reason.

I dropped the bottle to the floor, unopened, and grabbed a fallen slab of rock. Luis, guessing what I was about to do, flailed a weakened hand toward me, but he was too late.

I smashed the bottle with the stone, and felt a gust of something that was not quite wind, not quite power blow through us like a shock wave. It felt like a sigh.

“No,” Luis whispered. There were tears in his eyes as he collapsed with his cheek against the stone. “No, Cass, why? Why did you—”

“No other choice,” I choked, and fell beside him. Even Janice had collapsed to her knees, though Elijah and Sanjay were still moving, still a threat. “Can’t compel him.”

He was our last hope, but Rashid didn’t appear. Seconds ticked by, brutal and hopeless. Isabel went down, and Shasa; I dropped the stone and crawled to her, pulling her into my weak arms. The power inside me boiled impotently. There was nothing it could do. I tried to soften the stone beneath us, provide an escape route, but our enemies had thought of that, too.

No way out.

Elijah began to claw at the walls with his power, fighting Marion for control. He had more power, and he was wi

“Give up,” Janice said between coughs. Her eyes were bloodshot and strained from gasping for what little air was left. She no longer radiated warmth and comfort, only desperation and fury. “Why won’t you just give up? Do you really think you can win?”

I didn’t give up because I couldn’t. That, I thought was something Janice, a mercenary at heart, could never really understand ... that there were some battles too important to retreat from, at any cost.

I’d gambled on Rashid, but that might have been my own blindness. I trusted a Dji

No. I had done right.

I would die doing right.

I would die beside Luis, holding Isabel, and at least we would be together. At least that.

A blast of fresh air swept through the room, sweet and cold, and I gasped it in with helpless hunger. Luis’s lungs heaved, too, and Isabel’s. It braced all of us, and gave us a precious few more moments.

Unfortunately, it also gave Sanjay the fuel he needed to ignite an intense, tightly compacted fireball in the palm of his small hand, and fling it directly at me.

I had no chance of avoiding it, or of turning it aside. I reached for Earth power to try to form a shield of stone, but he’d acted so quickly I was drastically unprepared.

Luis lunged across me and intercepted the strike. The incandescent ball of boiling plasma hit him in the chest, and threw him like a rag doll into the cracked, smoking wall. He screamed, and convulsed, and I tried to get to him. I tried, but Sanjay threw another bolt, and this time I was able to raise the stone in time to block it, but Luis ...