Текст книги "Cape Storm"

Автор книги: Rachel Caine

Соавторы: Rachel Caine
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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

But Lewis managed, somehow. He batted me away, sending me reeling back to crash against a metal rail. Somewhere out in the churning iron gray sea, Freddy—a Fire Warden, with no power over either the water or the living things in it—yelled for help with panic in his voice. Something about sharks.

As Lewis staggered and fell, the bottle that held David’s soul entrapped fell out of his pocket and skittered across the deck. I reached out for it.

Cherise got to it first.

She backed up, fast, both hands clenched around the small glass form. She pulled it in to her chest.

The Wardens closed ranks between her and me.

“Back off,” Kevin said, pushing his way to the front—and Cherise.

“ Youback off,” I snapped. “I saved your life, you rancid little murderer. You owe me.”

“I owe Joanne,” he said. “I don’t know who the fuck you are, and I don’t care. You make a move against Cherise and—”

“And what?” I asked, and took a step forward. “You’ll cut me? Oh, shut up. Get out of my way if you want to live.”

Venna misted into place next to him. She didn’t speak. She didn’t have to. I got the message well enough.

“I’ve fought you before,” I said.

“You lost,” she pointed out. “The poisoned water may sustain you, but it’s still poisoned. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re my equal. Ever.”

“ Booyah, bitch,” Kevin said. Someone else, with more sense and better self-preservation instincts, muttered for him to shut up.

“I’m going to kill you all,” I said. I meant it. I felt it coming, a kind of inevitable darkness. “I have to.” I was still just a little sorry about that, but it really was necessary. Lewis had been right that somewhere deep inside me, the old Joanne was still struggling—poisoning my thoughts, driving my actions.

No more.

I flung my arms wide, felt the storm roar and answer, and shouted, “Now!”

The Djinn Rahel erupted from out of the ocean.

No, notRahel—Rahel as commanded by her master, Bad Bob, the Black Warden.

Rahel was as large as the cruise ship. Her hair was a nest of writhing eels. Her face was distorted, pointed into an extreme triangle, and her mouth was full of rows of teeth. She was dressed in rags and weeds and pearls and fish scales, and in both hands she held swords as long as the hull of the ship.

“Oh, Christ,” someone said, appalled, and then the screaming started. Not among the Wardens, who instantly began pulling up every defense they had.

It really wasn’t going to do them any good at all.

Venna, pretty and fresh in a sparkly pink shirt with a unicorn on it, jumped flat-footed from the deck to balance on the railing. The storm winds hit her like the wave front of an explosive blast, blowing her hair back in a rippling blond flag, but she was absolutely steady as she balanced. Rahel saw her, and that shark-toothed mouth gaped in a menacing smile.

Venna executed a perfect dive, and before she hit the waves, she’d changed into something else, something vast and dark that swam straight at the terrifying sea-hag that Rahel had become.

Rahel’s shark teeth parted on a shriek, and she was yanked down under the waves. The Grand Paradiserocked violently as the water churned, and the storm winds lashed the ship in swirling gusts.

Rahel wasn’t the attack, of course. Just a diversion, something to help get attention away from me. While the Wardens were focused on the water, I concentrated on the metal of the ship’s hull, below the water line.

Metal bent and screamed, and the entire ship twistedas if it had been T-boned. It rolled starboard, then over-corrected to port, sending people flying and rolling and screaming.

Rahel broke the surface of the water and was yanked under again. The battle continued, not that it mattered to anyone on the ship anymore.

I could feel the damage.

It wasn’t containable.

I smiled.

Lewis left the deck in a sudden burst and went airborne—a trick that few Weather Wardens could manage under stress, even at full power. Formidable,I thought, filing it away for future reference.

Then something hit us hard on the side, and the ship, already dying, rolled all the way over.

Disaster can be oddly beautiful. It seems to happen in slow motion, like ballet, and if your emotions aren’t involved, then it’s only input.

All I was feeling, as the ship died around me, was a quiet kind of satisfaction.

It took about ten seconds for the Grand Paradiseto capsize, and then I was in the water, floating away from the ship. It looked exactly like it had ten seconds before, only now it was upside down and wreathed in so many cascading bubbles that it was like some wild New Year’s Eve party gone badly wrong.

There was a ripped section of hull below the waterline, extending nearly half the length of the ship. I could see inside to hallways, storerooms, and the complicated mechanics of what was probably the engineering section.

I had done that. Just me.

I saw people flailing amid the strangely serene wreckage of what had been our only salvation out here in the middle of this watery desert.

Rahel’s massive sea-monster body dived past me, driven by a tail that was as much eel as mermaid, and disappeared into the gloomy depths. She was followed by a pink, sparkle-skinned unicorn with eyes of fire, gills, and flippers instead of legs. Its horn was shimmering crystal, lighting up the dark as it shot away in pursuit of Rahel.

The water was shockingly cold, or at least that was my impression. I instinctively reached for power and warmed myself, oblivious to the screaming people bobbing around me in the waves. Weather Wardens were quickly reacting, encasing people in protective bubbles and popping them to the surface if they’d been unlucky enough to end up sucking sea. I supposed they’d be all about saving those who were trapped, too.

I felt the suction of water rushing into the ship.

Rahel and Venna broke the surface again, two giants now screaming and ripping at each other, far less human than I’d have ever imagined; Venna had given up her My Little Pony sparkles and was fish-belly white now, and Rahel’s body was a dark mesh of scales and teeth, too confusing to identify individual features.

Venna drove Rahel back under the surface again, and bubbles geysered in their wake.

Lewis rose out of the water. Levitated, like a freaking superhero, dripping gallons of seawater.

“Everybody, move close together!” he yelled. “Grab on to each other. Kevin, you’re in charge. Count noses!”

The noses were still bobbing to the surface, like corks. Kevin swam to the center of the chaos and forcibly dragged people to form the first tight layer of the circle, then ducked beneath them to form up the next ring, and the next. “Hold on to each other!” he yelled. “Just like you’re in a huddle! And keep kicking!” Now the survivors looked like a giant skydiving stunt, concentric rings of people floating with their arms around each other. Scared, sure, but human contact helped, especially for those who couldn’t swim or were too terrified to remember how.

I bobbed in place, watching them for a moment, and then I called sharks.

Lewis felt the pulse traveling out through the water, and he knew what it meant. I saw his head snap around, his eyes widen, and the shock and horror on his face set up a warm, liquid glow deep inside me.

“Now I’ve got your attention,” I said. “Don’t I?” There weren’t enough Earth Wardens to control big predators like sharks, not if they had to be focused on not drowning at the same time. The Fire and Weather Wardens would be completely vulnerable.

There were thousands of sharks out there. Thousands.

And now they turned and headed our way, drawn by an imaginary smell of blood in the water.

Something in Lewis’s face changed. He’d made a decision, not one he liked. I wondered what it was.

Between the two of us, a vividly painted craft suddenly erupted through the waves. It was reflective yellow, bright as a traffic sign, and it was completely enclosed, sleek as a science fiction submarine.

A lifeboat.

More of them were popping up now, all around the Wardens. Lewis—or Venna—had broken them free of the sinking wreck. “Ladders at the back!” Lewis yelled. “Last row of the circle boards first! Each one of these will take about forty people. Wardens, I want a minimum of three of you per boat, and try to evenly distribute the powers!”

The railings around the ship were studded with these strange little craft—fiberglass, highly buoyant, with diesel engines and very little chance of being swamped even in high seas. I assumed they’d have life vests and provisions inside.

It was a race to see if he could get the Wardens into the boats before my sharks arrived for their feast. Lewis correctly deployed his forces, keeping the Earth Wardens focused on repelling attacking predators as the Fire and Weather Wardens, staff, and crew boarded their ships. Then he evacuated the last of them.

I bobbed in the pounding waves, cold and shivering, watching.

The Grand Paradise,that floating castle, rolled like a dying whale, heeling in the direction of its fatal wound, and then the stern rose at a ninety-degree angle out of the water, exposing the massive propulsion pods and steering mechanisms. I could see, very briefly, the entertainment area of the ship that I’d never had time to visit—the rock-climbing wall, the pools, the spas.

And then it all slipped beneath the waves with a deep, gurgling death groan, churning foam and debris, and was gone in less than a minute.

I put my face beneath the water and watched its free-fall descent into the dark, and laughed, because even if the Wardens survived all this, that was going to be one hellof a security deposit problem.

I was still laughing when something suddenly lunged up from the depths at me. I had one flash of a second to recognize the gaping maw, the dead eyes.

Shark.

Sometimes, no matter who you are, or how powerful, Mother Nature still wins.

I floated on my back, bouncing on the churning waves, watching clouds fly in black, menacing swoops overhead. My storm circled in thwarted, anxious fury.

I was bleeding badly, and I couldn’t seem to stop it. I’d blown the shark into bloody meat, but too late; it had gouged a giant chunk from my thigh, and although I’d shut down the pain receptors, I knew how bad it was. The power I had at my command wasn’t meant to heal. It was meant to destroy.

Maybe it was a hallucination, but I could have sworn Bad Bob was standing on the wave-tops, looking down at me. He was wearing that same crappy, loud Hawaiian shirt, and his thin white hair blew in the same wind that blew spume from the water into my mouth as I struggled for air.

“What is it the kids today say, Jo? Epic fail?” He crouched down next to me. I could see the water rippling over his toes, but he could have been standing on concrete, while my struggles to stay afloat were getting weaker and weaker. “I think you let this happen. I think you were so damn guilty, you thought a shark bite was what you deserved.”

“Fuck you,” I whispered, and coughed. God, I hated him. The darkness inside me had filled me to bursting, and I needed to gag it out before it choked me. “I killed the ship for you.”

“Yes, you did. Not a bad job. But you let the lifeboats survive. That’s a whole lot less impressive.”

I blinked away burning salt in my eyes. “Help me.”

“Wait, what was the pithy phrase you just used? Fuck you,Jo. You kill Lewis Orwell for me. Then we’ll talk about how I can help you.” He smirked down at me, his pale eyes as vicious and shallow as those of the shark that had come after me. “Consider it the fairness doctrine in action.”

And with that, his image turned into a black mist and blew away.

But I didn’t think he’d ever really been there anyway.

There were more sharks coming. I’d drawn them here, and now there really was blood in the water—mine. My wounds were pumping out more all the time, and the shark I’d destroyed was functioning as bait too. The next one to arrive wouldn’t be so tentative. He’d just rip me in half.

I wondered if it was shock that was making me so fatalistic about that.

The lifeboats were all heading off to the horizon now.

All except one, which peeled off and turned back.

I was unconscious before it arrived.

I woke up lying on the floor of the lifeboat, with two Earth Wardens healing up my bites as best they could.

It hurt.

It hurt a lot.

Cherise, Kevin, Cho Chu Wing, and the remaining crew were on this lifeboat, as well as the Grand Paradise’s Captain Miller, a sturdy gentleman who retained his military dignity despite his waterlogged uniform. He didn’t say much. I didn’t suppose he was regretting not going down with his ship, but maybe he was thinking about all the inevitable paperwork.

Or, if he knew I was responsible, he was thinking about finishing up what the sharks had left undone.

“We need to split up the boats,” Lewis was telling the captain as I drifted in, out, and around consciousness. “We’re like ducks in a shooting gallery out here on the open water.”

The captain nodded, but not as if he really understood or cared. I didn’t think he cared about much anymore. “I’ve already sent out distress calls,” he said. “Six freighters are heading our way, including a Saudi tanker. They’ll start rendezvousing with the other lifeboats within the hour.”

Lewis nodded and walked over to take a seat near me. The benches were fiberglass, with cushions that doubled as flotation devices. Among the supplies already broken out were insulating blankets, one of which was already wrapped around my damp, shivering body, and boxed drinks. They were trying to coax me to drink apple juice, but I couldn’t choke anything down. Not yet.

I’d learned a startling new lesson: no matter how badass you think you are, having a shark latch on to your body and break a piece of you away will put a dent in your self-confidence.

Cherise was playing Red Cross nurse; she draped a blanket over Lewis’s damp shoulders and handed him a juice box, which he mechanically sipped as he stared down at me.

“What?” I asked, and tried to smile. “You never saw somebody trying to kill you get their ass kicked before? Because I know you have.”

No answer.

“You want some advice? Pull the Wardens together. If you split them up between the rescue boats, you’re screwed.”

“Thanks for the tip,” he said. “Wardens stay on the boats. I want them protected in case you and Bad Bob decide to play Battleship.”

I almost managed a shrug. “Hazards of the sea. They all know what could happen.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I’m sure that’ll be a great comfort to their kids back home. I want Wardens behind us, guarding our retreat, as well as with us, guarding our asses up close. You got a problem with that, take it up with—oh, nobody, because at this point, you’ve got nobody.” He raised his head and fixed me with red-rimmed, fiercely focused eyes. “What am I supposed to do with you?”

A week ago, if he’d asked that question, it would have been with an undertone of longing and some heavily suppressed fantasies involving schoolgirl uniforms. Not now. He was looking at me like I’d looked at the shark that had bitten me.

“I can still get you to Bad Bob,” I said. “If you want.”

“I can’t trust you.”

I winced and closed my eyes as one of the Earth Wardens laying hands on me did something particularly painful. “I’m serious. I will take you to Bad Bob. I need to get there myself.”

“Why?”

I opened my eyes and locked stares with him. “Because he left me to die in the ocean and get eaten by sharks. Because you came back.”

“Bullshit.”

I blinked.

“Don’t tell me you’ve had a change of heart. I can see you didn’t. You’re just pissed that he didn’t keep his promises to you. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.”

I closed my eyes. I was too tired, too hurt, and too sick to care about his philosophy right now, and the darkness inside me ached, impatient with my body’s weaknesses. Soon I wouldn’t be vulnerable. Soon I’d be like the storm itself—unstoppable, unfeeling, a force of nature.

Lewis had chosen his healers well. They did their job, whether they wanted to or not. It took time, and I slept in between the exhausting bouts. I could feel the lifeboat moving, but I no longer cared where it was going. It didn’t matter. The storm would follow me, pouring power into me, filling me with darkness.

When I woke up, reallywoke up, the Wardens had finished their work.

I was healed.

I looked at my jeans, which had a ragged hole ripped most of the way through them, and beneath the bloody cloth, my leg was mostly there. Scarred, yes, but it would heal. The new muscle and flesh felt weirdly tender.

I looked up and saw them all watching me.

“Thanks,” I said, and tried to stand. It wasn’t as hard as I’d expected. I actually felt fairly good. Better, as the storm above us purred and rained down its darkness into me, reminding me who I was. What I wanted.

Lewis was right not to trust me, but I knew I didn’t need to tell him that.

“Jo,” he said, “sit down.”

I didn’t. I looked at him. There was a tingle of fire in my fingers, and as I rubbed them together, I saw sparks jumping. “Time to change course,” I said. “I’m taking the boat. The rest of you—you can either come along and shut up or I can leave you behind. In pieces.”

He took in a deep, resigned breath. “I didn’t save you just to fight you.”

“No, you saved me because your delicate conscience couldn’t stand thinking about me getting ripped apart by sharks,” I said. “Your mistake, man. Not mine.”

“You don’t want to do this.”

I smiled. And he saw that I really, really did.

Kevin wasn’t surprised. He was grimly staring at me with a bleak expression, as if he’d known it all along. Back at ya, punk.

“You’re not going to hurt anybody else,” Lewis said. “I’m not going to let you.”

That made me want to prove him wrong. “We knew this was coming,” I said. “So go on. Try and stop me. It’s time for the lightning round, Lewis. Go for the actual lightning. It’s a small, enclosed space, but some of them may not die right off. The sepsis from the burns, that’ll probably kill them in the end.”

He didn’t move. “Don’t make me. Please, I’m asking you, don’t.”

I called fire in my hand.

Lewis grabbed my arm, but instead of fighting me power for power, as I’d expected, he yanked me close, pinning me against his body. Putting my palm directly against his chest.

“Please,” he said. There were tears in his eyes. “Jo, I know you’re in there somewhere. Please stop.”

“No,” I said, and let the fire go. It flamed through his shirt, charred his flesh.

And I felt nothing.

Lewis let out a soft, agonized moan, but he didn’t let me go.

“I’ll kill you,” I growled, and I meant it. “Every one of you if I have to. But I’m taking this ship.”

“No.” Lewis grabbed my face in his hands and—kissed me. There was desperation in it, and fury, and pain, and anguish . . .

. . . and death.

I felt something go very, very wrong in my brain.

Click.

Lights going out. A burst of pain, of surprise, of knowledge. . .

Fail-safe. He’d put a fail-safe in my brain and he’d made me forget about it and now I’d forced him to trigger it, at long last.

“You’re not taking the ship,” Lewis whispered. I could hear him, and I could feel the fading sensation of his lips against mine. A benediction into the dark. “Good-bye, Jo. God, I loved you.”

Pain exploded through my nerves like flares. I couldn’t move, couldn’t blink, couldn’t take a breath. Not fair, this shouldn’t hurt, death should be quick . . .The fire sank deeper, bone-deep, as if my internal organs were charring and baking.

All the pain was on the inside, shimmering like lava. On the outside, I remained limp. Apparently, already gone.

What was keeping me here?

Lewis lowered me to the deck. I could sense what he was feeling. He was full of horror and guilt for what he’d done to me, even though he’d known that it was necessary. It was toxic in its intensity, truly shocking. I didn’t know how he could live with it.

Or if he could.

In the breathless silence, Cherise’s voice sounded very small. “What did you do to her?”

“I killed her,” Lewis said, and closed my eyes. I felt tears slide down my temples as he did—could the dead cry?—and felt his fingertips brush across my forehead in the old familiar gesture. “I hadto kill her.” It sounded like he was trying to convince himself of that.

Nobody spoke. Cherise pulled in a deep, trembling breath, then let it out in a rush. “You’re lying. She’s not dead.No way. Not Jo.”

One of the Earth Wardens who’d just wasted all that time and effort on healing me knelt down and pressed cool fingers to my neck, then bent over to listen to my chest. He checked my eyes, which were fixed and out of focus.

“She’s gone,” he said. “Christ, Lewis.”

“She’s not gone,” Cherise insisted. There was a rising tide of alarm in her voice. The river Denial, flooding its banks. “She can’t be gone.Check her again.”

“Cherise—” Kevin tried to head her off.

“No! Check her again!”

They did. One of the other Wardens even tried reviving me—pumping my chest, breathing for me.

My body was an inert lump of clay, and inside it my mind was shrieking, trapped and unable to get free.

“She’s gone,” Lewis repeated again dully, with a hitch of agony in his voice. He thought I was dead, I could feel that. Whatever was anchoring me here, in this dying shell, was something he couldn’t touch. “We have to let David say good-bye.”

“You can’t do that, man. He’ll kill you,” Kevin said. He sounded absolutely sure of it. “No. I’m not letting David anywhere near this. There’s no way he won’t rip us all into meat for doing this to her.”

“Give me the bottle.”

“No.”

“I’m not going to ask again. Give it to me.”

“No!”

There was some kind of struggle, and then Kevin cursed in an unsteady whisper. Cherise was weeping as if her heart was breaking. From everyone else in the small boat came silence, rapid breathing, waves of distress and fear.

God, please, let me go,I begged. My brain should have been off by now, letting me escape into the comfortable dark, but instead I could feel my nerves slowly dying, my cells screaming for oxygen. Nothing I could do to stop it, either.

I was feeling my body die on a cellular level. God, would I be around for the rest of it? Feeling the dead cells turn into sludge and soup? Decomposing?

I didn’t want to be trapped in this body as it slowly decayed, with no hope of release or rescue.

I realized, very slowly, that what was binding me here was one tiny thread of silver, stretching through the navel of my body and out through the aetheric.

Davidwas holding me here, but he couldn’t save me. His power wasn’t mine to touch, and it wasn’t his, either, not as long as someone else held his bottle and he was trapped inside it.

“Lewis—don’t do this, man,” Kevin said. I’d never heard that tone in his voice before, so pleading. “I’m begging you. Don’t. It’s not fucking fair.”

“I’m not doing it because it’s fair,” Lewis said. “I have to do it because it’s right. It doesn’t matter how long we wait; when we let him out of that bottle, his grief will be exactly the same. So let him out now. Please.”

The darkness that Bad Bob had put inside of me battered at the prison of my dead body, fighting to reactivate it. To stay alive.

Without the energy of my body sustaining the darkness, it was growing weaker. Dying along with me.

I felt a whisper of power scent the air as the cap came off of David’s prison. I felt him battering furiously at the glass, trying to shatter his way free.

Oh, you fool, Lewis. He’ll destroy you.

“David,” Lewis said. “Come out.”

Wind blasted through the boat, pinning people against the walls, and a wild-eyed angel dropped out of heaven to gather me in his arms.

The sound that came out of him was some horrible cross between a scream and a growl—inhuman, furious, insane with grief. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t control my eyes to focus on his face, so his expression was mercifully blurred.

Suddenly, I felt the pressure of darkness inside me ease. Bad Bob had lost interest in me. Dead, I was of no use to him, none at all. The thick, toxic sludge of power inside me began to bleed away.

But it wasn’t gone.Not yet.

Lewis said, “David, please understand. You can’t bring her back. Not this time.”

David’s voice was a raw, bloody scream. “She’s not gone!”

He could touch me. See me. Feel my ghostly presence. He hugged my limp form to his chest and rocked back and forth, his face hidden in my hair.

“Let me save her,” he whispered. “Order me to save her.”

I felt Lewis shudder. “No. David, you have to let her go. She’s damaged. She can’t fight him off anymore. It’s time to let her go.” He paused, and then said, with absolute precision, “I’m ordering you to let her die, David.”

The silence in the boat was as deep as the ocean. So was the sense of pressure. Even my dead flesh could feel it.

“I’ll kill you for this,” David said. There was nothing in his voice—no emotion, no hate, no grief. Nothing but simple declaration of intent. “I’ll rip you apart one cell at a time, and you’ll live a thousand years through the pain. I might even let you scream, if you beg me.”

He was utterly serious. He would torture Lewis. He’d do it with the kind of cold distance that the Djinn reserved for those they truly, deeply, madly hated.

He’d do it for me.

“Listen to me,” Lewis said, and if he was afraid, it didn’t show in his voice. “I’m ordering you not to save her. I’m ordering you to cut the cord and let her go.”

“Well, that’s a paradox,” David said. He still sounded eerily calm, almost relaxed. “Because if I let her go, it destroys the vow that binds me to the bottle, and that means I’m free. Free to pull you apart, Lewis. Free to order the brutal, screaming death of every last one of your kind. Do you really think I won’t?” There was madness in him, I realized. Terrible, burning madness, and Kevin was right—letting David free was a death sentence for Lewis. Not just for him, though. For the Wardens. For everyone.

In this moment, David was a bigger threat to humanity than anything Bad Bob had ever dreamed.

I didn’t want to linger like this. I wanted to tell him it was all right, that Lewis had done it for a reason, a good one, and I didn’t really mind. The darkness was dripping out of me in an invisible stain on the deck. I felt . . . clear, at last. Finally, myself again.

I couldn’t bring myself back to life; it violated all the laws of the universe. All I could do, now that I was clear of Bad Bob’s influence again, was choose to die. But if I did that, if I severed the cord holding me and David together, the result would be the same; he’d be lost, and alone, and mad with fury and grief.

I could feel Lewis working all of that out, and realizing that he was in a trap he couldn’t escape.

Just like David.

“Let me have her,” David said. “Let me have her and I swear I will not harm you.”

Lewis’s voice came back stripped raw. Bloody. “You think I’m afraid of that?” He stopped and took a deep breath. “She’s too dangerous. You know that.”

“No,” David said softly. “I don’t know it. You fear it. There’s a difference. Let me have her, or I will teach you fear. All of you.You think you’ve suffered at the hands of the Djinn? You have no concept of how much I can do to you.”

Lewis knew the minutes were ticking away, and after a certain point, life wouldn’t return to the decomposing tissues of my body. Not any kind of life I’d want to have, anyway.

He also knew that forcing David to kill me was even worse.

“Do it,” Lewis said. “Save her.”

Before the words were out of his mouth, David acted. A silver cascade of power flooded me, pounded on my heart, drowned my brain. This was the pure white light of the Djinn, bathing me from the inside out. And where it met the fading black tangle of Bad Bob’s tattoo . . .

. . . the silver light went out.

There was still a deadly core there, hiding inside me. Under the skin. Not even death had taken it away.

I took in a convulsive breath and sat bolt upright, still held in David’s arms, and then I relaxed against him, even through the pain. My eyes spilled over with tears of agony, liquid screams that were the only thing I had to give voice to what was raging inside.

If I couldn’t come back all the way, come back clean,I didn’t want to come back at all.

I shuddered, and my eyes rolled back in my head, and for a precious moment I blacked out as my nervous system simply refused to conduct any more pain.

I returned to consciousness slowly, with the distant awareness of pain but unable to feel it directly. My back was numb again, all the way down to midway on my thighs. I couldn’t feel the back of my head, either. Or the tops of my shoulders.

Out of nowhere, I felt the soft press of lips against mine. I felt the exhale of David’s trembling sigh. I felt the burning drops of his tears on my face. “That’s all I can do,” he said. “Jo. Please. Come back to me.”

I blinked, and my eyes slowly focused on his.

“It’s all right,” I whispered. It wasn’t. I felt sick and wrong, and the light seemed too bright for my eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

David’s eyes widened. Instead of bright copper sparks dancing in them, there was ash, as if something inside him had burned itself out. “Nothing to be sorry for,” he said. “You saved their lives. If they’d let you die . . .”

The look he gave Lewis was utterly black with fury. I couldn’t imagine being on the receiving end of that much hatred. David really wantedto kill him, slowly and horribly. Even now, I felt the conviction of that echoing inside him.

I wound my fist in David’s shirt, pulling back his attention. “No,” I said. “Don’t you dare. Don’t use me as an excuse.” My voice was a parody of its usual tones, and I had no doubt he could see the sincere fright and dread in my eyes. “No matter what happens. Promise me. He did that for a reason.”

He lifted a hand and traced the line of my cheekbone, light as a breath. “No.”

“Promise me, David.”

“No.”

“Promise me.”

This time he said nothing at all. He was serious about this. Very damn serious indeed.

Lewis was still holding David’s bottle. Now, he gestured to Kevin and handed it over. As Kevin’s fingers closed over the glass, David’s body shattered into mist and re-formed.