Firestorm

If he was co

Until I'd screwed it up here.

The Oracle was looking at me. There was a suggestion of eyes in that heat-blurred face. The scream continued, but there was even more of an edge to it now, as if he was trying to convince me.

Beg me.

I really wasn't the self-sacrificing type. If somebody had told me that I needed to voluntarily take a Demon Mark a year ago to save the world, I'd have burned rubber to get away from the idea. But things had changed. I had changed. I had a daughter out there, and people I loved.

I had too much to lose to walk away and save my own skin. And besides, this was my screwup, and I had to make it right.

I reached out and put my hand flat over the Demon Mark. This time, I did it deliberately.

I gagged at the squirming cold touch of it, but I didn't pull away. The flames beating hot against my skin didn't burn me—I hung on to enough of my limited Fire Warden ability to manage that—but I felt the Oracle's claws raking the tender skin of my left forearm. I focused on that pain, clear and pure, and let it flow through me to wall me off from the horrible sensation of the Demon Mark squirming under my fingers.

No way was I more powerful than the Oracle. The Demon Mark ignored me. It always, inevitably went with the bigger bonfire…

I was going to have to do this the hard way.

I gagged at the thought, but I closed my hand into a fist around the Demon Mark—in reality and in the aetheric—and began to pull it off.

It felt cold and slimy as a handful of thrashing worms, and it didn't want to let go. It stretched like rubbery elastic, and then it came loose with a sudden, wet smack in my hands. If I hadn't kept hold of it on the aetheric, it wouldn't have worked. If I hadn't been as strong a power as I was, it wouldn't have worked, either, but the Demon Mark decided to let go of the tough-shelled Oracle in favor of a softer target.

The Oracle collapsed facedown on the floor, and the saw-edged screaming came to a halt. I heard my sobbing breaths echoing in the room, and then fire exploded out around his body in a blinding white blaze, hot enough to singe my hair and drive me all the way back against the cool stone wall. I squeezed my eyes shut because it was getting brighter, and brighter, and I could still see the glow even through my tight-clenched lids. I closed my fist over the nauseatingly eager squirm of the Demon Mark. It was burrowing under my skin, sliding cold through my pores. It was happening faster this time, and the sensation was so horrible that I was weeping, sobbing, shaking with the urge to fling the thing away from me. It was like being stabbed with a wet, slimy knife in exquisitely slow motion.

I had to get rid of this thing, even if it meant losing my hand.

I banged through the door of the mausoleum and stumbled back out into the brilliant sunshine. It felt cold as ice to me, after the heat inside. I kept my fist clenched and staggered out, trying to think of something, anything I could do.

Lightning. It's the visual signal of an energy shift between potential and actual energy, with light and heat as the by-products. Billions of electrons have to line up in a chain for lightning to actualize, and because like draws like, a chain forming out of the sky will be drawn to a chain building up out of the ground, and when that last electron snaps into place, and the energy transfers, it has so much power that it can vaporize steel, for a fraction of a second, at least.

It might be able to stun, or kill, a Demon Mark… if I could manage a direct hit:

I pushed at the artificial tension holding the sky together overhead. The power controlling it was vast and hard-edged, but fragile. I battered at it with the strength of desperation until I felt it crack, and saw energy flare up among the gathering clouds.

Enough. More than enough.

Oh God, this was going to hurt…

In one desperate wrench, I grabbed the Demon Mark, ripped it loose, and threw it on the ground. It seemed u

It was too close, but I triggered the lightning anyway as the thing leaped for me.

You don't see it, when that kind of power hits that close to you; you feel the overwhelming burn, and for a few seconds afterward, you really can't be sure that the lightning didn't actually hit you, because the coronal effect is so strong.

So it took a few seconds for my mind to fight off the sound, light, and pressure, of the near-miss and reconstruct from the evidence what had happened. There was a tree on fire, five feet away. The top half of it was charred black, and part of it had been blown clean off. Limbs had been blown off and were still flaming on the green, green graves.

There was a smoking black hole in the grass where the Demon Mark had been. Either I'd killed it, or I'd convinced it to find an easier snack elsewhere.

My knees buckled, and I went hard to the gravel. Ouch. When I pitched forward, the heels of my hands dug into sharp-edged rock, and I saw blood spattering the pristine white stones, dripping from my nose and mouth.

I swallowed hard, and then Imara was in front of me, eyes wide, grabbing for my elbow. She looked a little worse for wear—clothes torn, a few cuts and bruises. Her eyes were terrified.

"I'm fine," I said. My voice seemed to come faint and from a long distance out. "Are you okay?"

"We have to go, now. The Dji

Except that apparently the Dji

"Not yet," I said. "I'm not finished."

"Mom, no!"

"Stay here." I climbed back to my feet, swaying, bracing myself on her shoulder for a long moment before turning back to the mausoleum.

There was a Dji

His eyes were flame. His hair was smoldering red.

He was the most gorgeously wild thing I'd ever seen. Terrifying and utterly sensual. He didn't say a word to me, just stared, and after a moment, he extended his burning hand toward me. I stayed still, aware that my heart was beating like a gong, that I was dripping with sweat and terror. Aware that if he touched me, I'd probably burn like oil left on a hot engine.

I'd healed the Oracle, or at least freed him from his prison. There was still a discolored black stain on his chest, just where his heart would have been in a human, but he seemed… better.

He didn't touch me. He just cocked his head to one side, watching.

I heard a rustle of clothing. Imara was down on the ground, abased, hiding her face. I suspected that the Oracle wasn't someone who got out much, and when he did, he caused quite a stir.

I was too giddy to be impressed.

"Favor for a favor," I said. "I need to get a message to the Mother. Can you help me?"

He didn't make a sound. If I hadn't heard that tremendously awful shrieking earlier, I'd have thought he was mute.

He continued to hold out his hand. It shimmered and flickered with heat, like the surface of the sun.