"Ibby," I said. I stopped and faced her, just as still as she was. "I've come to take you home, Ibby."
She didn't answer. None of them did. They just watched me with alert, angry eyes.
"Isabel, I don't want to fight you. I want to take you home."
Isabel slowly shook her head. "This is my home."
"No. Your home is with your uncle Luis." And me, I wanted to say, but didn't dare. "He's waiting for you. He's missed you so badly. You remember your uncle, don't you?"
Her dark eyes flickered for a moment, and I knew she was remembering. What she might remember was another question; if Pearl had succeeded in altering the girl's perceptions, her memories, she might be reliving imaginary trauma--or real ones. Pearl had manipulated these children, tried to use their familial feelings to raise barriers and drive hatreds--but she could only manipulate, not program. That left them vulnerable to the same appeals.
"Uncle Luis is dead," Ibby said. "You killed him. It was horrible."
"She's lying to you," I said. Not that I hadn't almost gotten him killed on many occasions, but it was probably not the best time to parse the dynamics of that relationship. "Ibby, the lady who tells you these things, she isn't your friend. And she lies. She wants to use you, all of you. She doesn't care what happens to you."
Isabel was no fool, and I saw her consider that. The children behind her, however, didn't have our history together. Or, perhaps, the same flexibility of mind.
"You're the liar! You're the evil one!" one of them shouted, and clapped his hands together.
A hammer of air forced itself down the narrow hallway, hit me, and slammed me backward to the floor with such violence I saw black swarms of stars, and felt myself begin to disconnect from this world. I fought back, panting, and rolled to my side to get up.
The Weather Warden child hit me again, harder, sending me face-first into the wall. I slid down it, almost senseless, and sensed Isabel stepping forward. The assault stopped, mainly because the Weather Warden--the same boy who'd almost killed us in the chasm, perhaps?--couldn't strike with Isabel in the way.
Isabel called fire into her hand. It came in a blue-white burst of energy, flickering red at the edges, and echoed eerily in her eyes as she advanced toward me.
"You wanted them dead," she said. "My parents. All our parents. You killed Uncle Luis. You want to kill me and my friends. You want to kill the lady."
Only one of those things was true, but it was the critical one; I did want to kill the lady. And however it had happened, Manny and Angela Rocha had died; Pearl could twist the facts to suit her cause, and it would be useless for me to try to deny them.
But Luis . . . I could prove she was lying about Luis.
"Stop," I said, or tried to say; there was blood in my mouth, and I wasn't sure that I had actually spoken at all. The second blow had been so hard that I couldn't get my limbs to move, other than uncoordinated scrabbles. "He's alive." That sounded almost clear. "Your uncle is alive."
"Liar," Ibby said. "I saw you kill him. The lady showed me--you hurt him, you hurt him so bad he died. And now you're going to burn, just like you burned him."
She pulled her hand back.
I flung out a hand in useless denial . . . and felt a surge of horror at what had been done to Ibby. To all these children. She'd watched someone--even if it had not been Luis in truth--burn. Whether that had been illusion or reality, it was traumatic enough to leave unendurable scars.
In the instant before she launched the fire at me, I shouted, "Ibby, think! I'm like your uncle! I can't use fire!"
Ibby blinked. She stayed there, poised on the edge of violence, fire flickering and hissing in her small, chubby hand.
"Your uncle is an Earth Warden," I panted. "I share his power. I am an Earth Warden. I couldn't burn him, even if I wanted to, do you understand? And I never would, Ibby. I love him, just as I love you."
It was much for a child her age to understand, but she'd been forced to things far beyond her normal understanding already. She understood the nature of power because of what Pearl had already taught her.
Ibby quenched the fireball with a clench of her fist, leaving behind a smear of acrid smoke on the air. She looked at me with wide, lost eyes, frowning.
"But I saw," she said. "I saw you do it. I know you did it."
Children are literal. And Pearl had counted on that. "No, my dear," I said softly, and heard the grief and tenderness in my voice. "I didn't. And I won't hurt him, or you. You have my promise."
I felt the air move behind me, a cool breeze stirring my hair, and heard running, booted feet.
And then Luis said, "Ibby?"
In the first instant there was shock, then fear. She'd seen him die. This required a wrenching adjustment of her worldview, something difficult and painful.
Then I saw delight dawn. Her eyes rounded, and so did her perfect little rosebud of a mouth, and in that single moment, she seemed the child she had been. "Tio Luis?" Her voice was shaking and uncertain.
He lowered himself to one knee. "I'm here, mija. I'm right here."
She took a step forward, then shook her head, violently, and backed away, into the safety of the other children. "No," she said. "No, it's a trick. You're playing a trick."
Luis didn't move, not even a muscle. He didn't even glance at me. "Mija, it's no trick. I'm here to take you home. You want to go home, don't you? I know you didn't want to leave us. I know they made you go. It's not your fault. None of this is your fault."
She pulled in a trembling breath, and I saw tears glitter in her dark eyes. So young. So fragile.
"Isabel," Luis whispered. "I love you. Please come home."
"No," said the Weather Warden boy, the one who'd slammed me into the walls. He was cold and utterly controlled, and he grabbed Ibby's shoulder as she started to move toward us. "She's not going anywhere. You're not going to hurt her anymore."
"I'm not going to hurt her." Luis kept his voice low, and as gentle as possible. "I'm not going to hurt any of you. You can all come with us."
"Why, so you can cut into our heads? Make us zombies?" The boy's grip on Ibby's shoulder must have hurt; I saw her wince. "That's what you do, we know all about it. You take us away to your hospital and you cut us up and you lock us up. We're not going to let you do that to us. Or to anyone else, ever again. We're going to stop you."
They thought they were the heroes.
Worse, there was a grain of truth in what the boy was saying, like all successful lies. The Wardens did operate on those whose powers were too dangerous, too uncontrollable. Some didn't survive. Some survived grievously damaged. Pearl knew that.
She had twisted it in their minds, made it their inevitable fate. Made us all evil, predatory villains.
They'd fight, all right. Fight to the death, because they were the brightest, the strongest, the most courageous.
She was turning our future heroes against us.
"Ibby," I coughed, and rolled up to my hands and knees. "Ibby, please don't. Let us help you."
"No," the boy said, when Isabel tried to pull free. He shoved her behind him, and slapped his palms together again, driving a wall of force toward us. I collapsed to the floor this time before it hit me, presenting as little target as possible; even so, the impact almost drove me into unconsciousness.
It blew Luis backwards, sliding him ten feet down the hall with a yelp of pain.
"No!" Isabel shouted, and turned on the boy, shoving him back. "No, don't hurt him!"
"That's your enemy, dummy!" he yelled back, and shoved in turn. "How weak are you? Didn't you learn anything? It's probably not even him!"
"It is," Isabel said, and turned toward Luis. "It is him."
As she started toward us, the boy tried to grab her, but this time, Ibby was ready, and she slipped out of his hands and ran past me, toward her uncle. Luis rose, staggering a little, and she leaped into his arms.
He was driven back a step, but held on to her; there was a flash of pain
on his face, quickly buried by waves of relief. He kissed her shining dark hair, hugged her, and murmured rapid calming phrases in Spanish, only half of which I could hear. Promising he loved her. Promising he would protect her.
I hoped that was true.
"The lady lied," I managed to say to Isabel, and to the other children still facing us. "She lied to you. Do you understand? She's trying to make you hurt innocent people. I know you don't want to do that. You're better than that."
One looked horror-stricken, and backed up. He was clearly questioning everything he'd been shown, everything he'd been told; there was real doubt in his face, real pain. He was just a bit younger than the Weather Warden boy.
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 tunnel. Agent Ben Turner stepped in to fill his place, standing with feet spread wide apart, blocking any possible pursuit that might have gone after Luis and Ibby. He looked tired and bruised, but also focused and very capable. Between the two of us, we could cover two avenues of attack.
But neither of us could defend against a Weather attack.
Lightning arced from all sides of the tunnel, like a net of energy, striking at both of us. It mostly missed me as I dove forward, but it struck Turner squarely, and he froze, galvanized by the force, but absorbing it into fire energy. Transforming it. Lightning and fire were close cousins, and although it hurt him, it didn't kill him. He staggered, fell against the curving wall of the tunnel, and stripped off his FBI Windbreaker, which had burns and melted fabric dripping in syrupy streams down the sleeves.
I hit the smooth wall of the tunnel, planted my feet, and adjusted my trajectory, adding Earth Warden speed to my movements, burning energy at a rapid rate now. Lightning continued to fill the tunnel, but I sped up my reflexes and reaction time, and although it brushed close, it never stabbed home.
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 connection. I was too weak, and perhaps, at some primal level, I was too afraid. Too afraid of dying myself.
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.
I was weak, pale, and horribly damaged, but I was no longer on the edge of death. He had gone on without me, into the dark.
Not by his choice.
I heard voices in the distance, a confusion of shouting, running feet. You should go now, sister, Pearl said. I wouldn't have you waste my gift. But I won't allow you to take more of my children. I need them for our next meeting.
"I will," I said out loud. My voice was bloody, ragged with rage. "I will stop you from doing this. I will stop you."
You know how, Pearl said. All you have to do is act. But if you do, this one child dead before you is the first of billions. Then again, if you don't act, I will do the same to the Djinn, the Oracles, to the faithless Mother who turned her back on me. Which would you prefer?
Let the Djinn save themselves. I couldn't face another death now, much less the deaths of billions.
But there had to be another way.
"I will stop you," I repeated. "However it has to happen."
I gathered up the fallen child in my arms. My blood soaked into the boy's clothing from my own, and I staggered and fell against the wall, dizzy from the effort and a sudden, overwhelming feeling of anguish. I am guilty of this, I thought. Guilty of destroying something astonishing. I might have stopped him, if I'd been strong enough. His life, for mine. It wasn't a fair bargain.
I had to find some way to make it worthwhile. And I had to face his parents, look them in the eyes, and explain why I had failed their son.
I owed him that.
A dark shape rounded the far end of the sloping hallway, at the opposite curve from my exit--not a child, an adult. Tall and broad, and armed with a rifle, which he aimed in my direction. I had no time for subtleties; I melted the barrel of his gun just as he pulled the trigger. It exploded in his hands, sending him reeling back into the man behind him, who shoved his bleeding, screaming colleague aside to raise his own rifle and squeeze off two fast shots. His aim was poor, thanks to quick reactions and adrenaline, but the hallway was narrow, and one of the bullets caught me low in the side, in the bulletproof vest.