Текст книги "Total Eclipse"

Автор книги: Rachel Caine

Соавторы: Rachel Caine
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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

So much easier to squash the bug, especially when the hive was so, so large.

I was screwed.

Rahel stared through me for what seemed like an hour, but couldnt have been more than a couple of minutes, and then suddenly her head snapped back upright, and she surged up to her feet, took two steps forward, and her hand went around my throat. I yelped, trying to press backward; the chair tipped against the wall, pinning me in place. I kicked at her, for all the good it did. It was like kicking bare toes into solid rock. I felt the sharp, biting sting as her fingernails pressed in, and I had a grim, graphic vision of how it would look when she flexed her hand and drove those nails into soft flesh and ripped my throat out in a spray of blood. . . .

But that didnt happen. Rahel froze, our faces inches away. This close, the white glow in her eyes broke up into a coruscating brillianceevery color, all colors, flickering by at such speed that only the constant white glow was left. I was looking into something that humans should never see, and I felt parts of my mind giving up, shutting down, refusing to hold the information flooding into them. I could hear that awful shrieking again, just as I had on board the ship, and I couldnt shut it out.

And then, just like that, it was over. She let go, I overbalanced and fell to the floor on my hands and knees, and Rahel turned and stalked toward the door.

It blew outward in a spray of splinterswood mist, reallyand the untouched lock and knob fell with a clatter to the concrete outside. She didnt pause on her way out. I heard one of the other doors slam open, and heard Kevin yell.

Kevin, no! I screamed, and scrambled to get to my feet. Leave her alone! I wasnt at all afraid he could hurt Rahel, only that he was going to actually get her attention.

I made it to the door too late. Kevin had a fireball in his hand, and before I could shout again, he was throwing it at Rahels back.

Sometimes, the ant stings.

And theres really only one response to that, isnt there?

I threw myself backward and to the side as Rahel spun, braids flying, and backhanded the ball of fire out of the air, sending it rocketing at blurry speed for the proverbial bleachers. Before that had even happened, she was launching a counterattack at Kevin, a wave of force that hit the building and blew it apart in a cascade of shattered concrete, rebar, and splintered wood.

I was on the floor, hugging cheap carpet. Id lost my towel, but that was completely meaningless at the moment. As things came apart around me I grabbed the mattress on the bed and yanked it off the frame. It slid across, tilted down, and formed a small sheltered space as I curled up into a protective ball.

I heard screaming. Could have been Cherise, or the toddler. Tommy. Could even have been Kevin. I hated myself for hiding, but my body wouldnt move, wouldnt obey my orders to get up and help.

Nothing you can do, part of my mind said. Youre not a Warden. Rahel cant even see you. Youre just collateral damage. Keep your head down.

What had I told Cherise, once upon a time? Mere humans were part of this, too. They were the reason the Wardens kept fighting.

And I had to fight for myself, too. No matter the odds.

Another stunning blow hit the building, and the roof overhead ripped off and went flying. The front window shattered, and a piece of glass plunged all the way through the mattress to emerge two inches from my face in a lethally sharp exclamation point. I choked on concrete dust as the cinder-block front wall collapsed in. Some of the blocksnot all, thankfullyslammed down on top of the mattress, pressing it down on me, and I burrowed in toward the bed frame to gasp in more air.

And then it got quiet.

I went very still, listening, and over the faint groan of debris that was still succumbing to gravity, I heard slow, deliberate footsteps. They werent heading away.

Rahel was going to finish the job.

I huddled there, heart pounding. All the will to get up and fight had bled right out of me at the sound of those footsteps; there was something terrifying about them.

The sound of death.

I closed my eyes as the crunch of shoes on debris stopped nearby.

The mattress covering me suddenly flipped up and off, flying into the air like some startled bird. I gasped as its comforting weight disappeared. Id never felt so exposed, naked, and helpless in my life.

I forced myself to open my eyes, and saw Rahel standing over me, staring down with those eerie white eyes. I remembered the first time Id met herhow shed just appeared in my car, nearly sending me off the road in surprise. How shed casually tormented me, but helped me, too. Id seen Rahel do amazing things, and terrible things, but it had always been her.

This wasnt her. And suddenly, that made me angry.

All right, Mom, I said, and climbed up to my bare feet. Id lost my towels, not sure where or how; my cold, damp hair straggled down my back and over my shoulders, and I was unevenly coated in concrete dust like I had a serious case of mange. You want me? Here I am! I had a black rage boiling inside me, fueled by sheer terror, and I wasnt the type to go down without a fight. I bent and scooped up a bent piece of iron rebar. It felt gritty and cold in my hands as I took up a batting stance.

Rahel reached for me. I swung, connected with her shoulder, and the rebar snapped in half, sending a piece flying away to clatter against the rubble of the far side of the destroyed room. I wasnt done. I jabbed at her with the broken end, hoping to bury it in her guts, but she just batted it easily away. When I tried it again, she took hold of the rebar and ripped it out of my hand.

She flung it contemptuously after the other half.

I thought desperately of Davidnot as a savior, not as someone to come running in and sweep me off my feet. I thought how desperately I was going to miss him, and how much this would hurt him, and how sorry I was not to be able to tell himtell him . . .

As Rahel swiped a hand full of razor-sharp talons toward my neck, I knew I was going to die. Id heard other people talk about coming to some kind of peace, acceptance, whatever. Not me. I wanted to howl out my defiance and fury.

Instead, I ducked.

The claws missed my throat, my face, and tangled in my hair. She instantly grabbed a fistful, yanking me off balance toward her. I fought, scratched, punched, did everything I coulda wild animal, fighting for my life.

I heard a distant, wild screaming somewhere at the very limits of hearing, a banshee kind of sound that dopplered closer in seconds. A freight train full of demented shriekers, all of it hurtling straight for me.

Maybe that was death. Rahels claws flashed, and I managed to get my arm up to defend my throat. I didnt feel the cuts, but I saw the skin part like tearing silk, weirdly beautiful. Even the spray of blood looked beautifulbrilliantly colored, every misty drop frozen in crystal clarity.

Then the screaming freight train hit me, full force, and my world went dark. Agony rolled through my body, as if every cell was being ripped apart, rolled in acid, and set aflame . . . but somehow, impossibly, I was still alive.

I heard myself shrieking, just like that sound Id heard, and then fire exploded out of the ground to engulf me.

No, not fire.

Power.

Thick golden streams of power, flooding up my body, wreathing me in glorious streamers, whipping around and around and then plunging into waken an explosion that should have ripped me apart.

It should have ripped the world apart.

But instead, I opened my eyes and saw the haze of the aetheric, overlaying the drab, gray destruction. I saw the swirling, unsettled energies, the anger, the stain of all the past in this place.

And I saw the Mother, looking out of a Djinns eyes in blind, unthinking fury.

I knocked Rahels arm aside and slammed my palm down flat against her chest, directly between her breasts. Force rippled out and down my arm, and blew explosively in a tight-focused blast from me to her.

I knocked the Djinn into the air, over a pile of fallen concrete blocks, and out into the relatively clear area of the parking lot.

I looked down at myself. I was covered in cuts, concrete dust, and bloodso much so that I might as well have been wearing a really skin– tight outfit. But everything was still working, at least while the adrenaline was pumping.

Good enough.

I walked over the broken concrete and glass, heedless of more cuts, and followed Rahel out to where shed fallen. Not surprisingly, she was already back on her feet, and her sharp teeth glittered as she snarled.

I kept walking toward her, but as I did, I reached for power, and it came, welling up out of the ground, descending from the skies, crackling and bleeding out of every electrical impulse around me. I formed it into a ball of luminescent poison green and threw it like a fast-ball, straight for her face.

She tried to bat it aside, but it dodged, even quicker than a Djinn, and detonated against her torso in a hot flare that knocked her completely down. I reached up into the troubled skies and rubbed water and air molecules together, gathering static into a massive potential energy that turned the clouds black and green.

Then I flipped the polarization of the molecules in the ground, then the air above her, clicking over the changes faster and faster until the circuit was open . . .

. . . And lightning struck in a thick, burning column, pinning her down. Rahels body convulsed and dissolved into mist. Not deadyou cant kill a Djinn like thatbut seriously inconvenienced. Even a Djinn has a safety overload, and Id just burned it right out with those three consecutive strikes.

Shed be back, but not for a while.

I looked around and remembered the power Id gathered overhead as the sky snarled and rumbled. I reached up and bled the energy back out, slowly, distributing it in a soft, gentle rain that sluiced the blood and dust from my skin. I was still full of powerstuffed with itbut I knew how to let it slowly sink back down into the waiting, silent ground.

A final sigh, and I opened my eyes.

And collapsed.

Ow.

The concrete wasnt a soft landing, and I realized that my body had simply failed after conducting that much power, energy, and adrenaline. I was shaking now as the tide of hormones receded in my bloodstream and left me feeling human, and vulnerable, again.

I was also hurting. A lot. I looked down at my arm, which was bleeding from deep cuts, and thought, I need to do something about that.It took me a long minute to remember the first aid kit that Id salvaged from the office. It, and the guns, had been in a bag in my motel room.

I rolled up to my knees, then to my feet, cut off the rain and dried myself off with another burst of powernot so much eliminating the moisture from my skin and hair as moving it somewhere else. Balance. Maat.

The sight of the motel was appalling. It was a ruin, barely recognizable as the cheap building wed arrived at just an hour ago. My room, at least, still had a partial wall standing, though the roof had been yanked off and tossed twenty feet away in a jumble of broken wood and shingles.

Cherises and Kevins rooms were worse.

Cherise and Kevin. The kid.

It came to me in a physical shock. In the press of adrenaline, fighting for my own life, Id forgotten about them, but now it came dreadfully clear.

I had my powers back.

Cherise had been harboring my powers, and there was only one reason for those powers to pull away from her and go in search of someone elseif Cherise was no longer a living vessel for them. And I was the only one left standing.

Oh God, no.

I forgot all about the wound on my arm and ran to the mass of broken blocks that was where I remembered Cherises room to be. Cher! I screamed, and started throwing rubble aside, searching. Cherise!

I heard something soft, like a kitten, and stopped to listen. Far corner, under yet another mound of debrisbut under the debris was a mattress. Shed done as I had; shed grabbed the mattress and ducked under it for cover. Yes. Yes, it was going to be okay. . . .

I cleared the rubble off the filthy, broken mattress and pitched it away, heaving with all my strength.

Under it, Cherise lay motionless, with her body half covering the toddler shed rescued. Tommy. He was the one making the mewling sounds, and when light hit him and he saw me, he let out a full-throated howl of panic and pain. I turned Cherise over enough to pull him out, and checked him with trembling hands. He was bruised, but I couldnt find any broken bones. Shed protected him.

Shed protected him with her body, and her life.

Cher, I whispered, and smoothed her bloodied hair back from her face. Oh, no, sweetie. No, no, no. You cant do this to me. You cant.

Shed been badly battered by the falling wall, even with the mattress for protection, and I saw the unnatural shape of her legs where theyd been broken and twisted. Her face was oddly unmarked, except for a spot or two of blood. I could almost hear her laughing and saying, I always knew Id die pretty.

No, I said flatly. Youre not dying on me, bitch. Not happening.

I saw a flicker inside of her, a golden tongue of fire that hadnt yet gone out. She wasnt dead . . . but she was dying. No breath, no heartbeat, and her cells were burning up the last of their energy and shutting down.

I put Tommy down, dragged Cherise flat, and began CPR. I imbued every pump of my hands on her chest, every breath I blew into her slack mouth, with Earth power, giving her body an artificial jump-start of energy for those starving cells until I could get the rest going again. It was exhausting, sweaty work, but I wasnt going to give up. She was there.Cherise was still alive, buried under the broken rubble of her own body, and she needed me.

The Earth power saturating her body formed a link to me, reporting back on all that it found wrong inside my friend. It wasnt good. It was going to take a lot to bring her back, and even more to restore her to anything like health.

I needed someone like Lewis, someone who had the gift, the fine and delicate touch of healing. But all I had was me, and I would have to be enough.

I started with the worst of itruptured spleen, damaged liver, torn internal blood vessels that were flooding her with blood and compressing her lungs. A depressed skull fracture that had driven splinters of bone into fragile tissue.

Each of those took time, and massive concentration and energy. The skull fracture was the worst and most delicate, and when Id finally coaxed out the bone splinters and dissolved them, and repaired the damage, I had very few reserves of power left.

But I couldnt stop. Her legs needed healing fast, or shed lose them. I moved down her body and made sure she was kept unconscious as I moved the broken pieces, aligned them, and started binding them together in golden strips of power, spiraling up the structure and holding it together. The power sank slowly into the bone and fused it togethernot strong, yet, but set.

ThenI let her come up from the dark, leading her slowly and gently back to the light.

Cherise opened her eyes with a choking gasp, coughed, and stared blindly up at the sky for a few seconds before her pupils contracted and focused on my face.

Tommy? she asked. I pulled the toddler over. He was still whimpering, but at the sight of Cherises smile he waved his hands and smiled back.

Hes fine, I said. Cher, dont try to get up. Stay down, let your body adjust, okay? I have to put some braces on your legs.

My legs? She looked confused, then alarmed. Oh my God, what happened to my legs?

They were broken, I said. I fixed them, but youre going to have to watch it for a while. The braces are just to keep you from banging into things, twisting, that kind of thing. I tried to get up, but my body wouldnt do it. It justrefused. Okay, sitting was good. I was all right with a little rest, I supposed. I reached out and pulled over a couple of broken pieces of wood, wrapped each one in sheets from the bed, and wrapped the whole thing around her right leg, then repeated my construction project for the left.

Cherise said, in a very small voice, I dont feel good anymore. Not like I did.

I know. That energy, humming and snapping through my body, was something that Id never known I had, really, until it was gone. I could understand how Cherise felt, to have been given that gift, and then to lose it.

Youve got it.

Yep.

Because I died, she said, which made me stop what I was doing and look at her in mute concern. What? Its true, right? I died, and I lost the power, and it moved on to the next person it could reach. Had to be you, or . . . Her eyes widened, and we both said it at the same time. Kevin.

I hadnt spared a thought for him, not a single second. If I had, Cherise wouldnt have made it. But she wouldnt see it that way, and I wouldnt blame her a bit. It was a callous thing to do, not to at least try to find him. Problem was, now that I had the time, I didnt have the energy. No way could I find him, or heal him if I did.

David, I said, and closed my eyes. The cord that bound us together was back in place now, strong and vital, but stretched very thin. Still, I knew he could hear me. I knew he would. David, I need you to find Kevin.

David cant do anything; hes in Djinn Disneyland, Cherise said, and batted at me weakly. You have to go! Go find him!

I cant, Cher. I said it softly, but I thought she could feel the absolute truth of it. I just cant right now.

Her eyes filled with tears, and she tried to push herself up. I held her down. She yelled at me, cursed, called me names that would have stung if I hadnt been so tired and drained.

Then she went quiet, and I looked over my shoulder to see the Djinn whod been driving our car walking through the rubble toward us.

Draped in his arms was Kevins lank, limp body.

Cherise let out a soundnot a scream, not a cry, but some awful mixture of the two. It was raw and un-thought, and scraped at me like fingernails on a burn. Oh, sweetie, Im so sorry, I thought wearily. Wed all said we understood the risks, but this was different.

We never really understood until it came down to this.

The Djinn knelt down and put Kevin on the carpet next to Cherise. There wasnt a mark on Kevin, nothing at all.

He was just . . . gone. The life had been taken right out of him. All the working pieces were still there, in a body that could have still lived on, but some great, overwhelming force had commanded it to be still.

And I knew, as I touched his hand, that there was no way I could bring him back. Kevinall that had made up the complicated, fragile, angry, vindictive, sometimes brave boy Id knownall that was gone, blown away like a puffball on the wind.

His eyes were open wide, pupils expanded to drink in the light. He looked very, very young. His hair still gleamed in the dim, cloudy lightwet from his shower, or from the rain Id brought down. Hed been strong, and sometimes hed been good, and losing him shouldnt have hurt so very badly.

I put my hand on his forehead, one last and gentle benediction from someone who should have liked him more, helped him more, done better for him. Hed been torn apart as a child, made into a monster, and hed tried, dammit. Hed tried so hard to be different.

He would have been a good man eventually. I knew it.

I wanted to cry, but the tears wouldnt come. They choked me deep inside but refused to rise. Maybe I needed them. Maybe it wasnt time to mourn.

Jo. It was Davids voice, coming from the Djinns mouth. Theres nothing

I know! I snarled at him, suddenly and irrationally furious with David, of all people. Just leave me the hell alone, okay? I know theres nothing I could have done!

He rose to his feet, staring down at me, and then nodded. Ill get the car, he said. Let me know if you want to bury him before we go.

Now Cherise was screaming at him. I didnt think David minded. He was staying quietly neutral, aware that we had to deal with this in our own ways. He moved the Djinn back, out of our view.

Cherise finally stopped spitting out accusations, and gathered up the wailing, frightened toddler in her arms, hugging him close. Id never pegged her as the motherly type, but watching her, I could see it. She put on a smile for the boy, soothed him, and when that was done, I could see that shed reached some fragile acceptance inside.

Were not just leaving him here like this, like road-kill, she told me. Promise me.

I promise, I said. Ill make sure hes taken care of.

I meant it, of course, and she could tell that. She didnt make any objection as I gestured for the Djinn to come back and scoop Kevin up in his arms. I knew it was David on the inside of the avatar, but somehow I couldnt make myself reach out for him. It wasnt reallyDavid. Just a flicker of will. A phantom. A shadow.

I pulled myself up to my feet without any help from him, looked down at myself, and said, I need to find my clothes. It was a measure of how insane things were that nobody else seemed to have noticed I was naked. Cherise, in fact, looked surprised. I left them in the bathroom.

For answer, the Djinn nodded toward a spot on the carpeta relatively clean one. A pile of clothing materialized therewhite shirt, sturdy pants that looked suspiciously like I remembered the drapes to be. My own shoes, recovered and cleaned. Plain white bra and panties and socks.

Djinn couldnt create out of thin air, but they could recycle. Hed used the raw material of extra sheets, the curtains, towels, whatever textile was around, and hed managed to produce a decent attempt at a wardrobe. Clean and dry, if not stylish.

I struggled into it fast. It fit, of course. Djinn tailoring always fit. I tied my hair back with a stray scrap of fabric blowing in the dirt and started to follow the Djinn out of the rubble.

Jo? Cherise called. I looked back. She was sitting up, cradling the fretful boy in her lap. She looked huge-eyed and emotionally shattered, but at least she was physically okay. For now. I want to go with you.

No. If you put any weight on those legs right now, they could break again. They need at least an hour to finish building the seal in the break. Thats as fast as I can do it.

Okay. She swallowed, but didnt look away. I want to see him buried. Please. Take me with you.

I hesitated, then nodded. Ill send the Djinn back for you, I said. Wait here, okay? I promise, itll only be a few minutes.

She didnt like it, but I think she saw that there was no way I could carry her myself, physically or with any kind of magical power. If I pulled power from the world around me again, itd be a case of diminishing returns and a harder crash once it was over. I couldnt afford it.

Not knowing that this was far from the end.

I found the Djinn easily enough; hed left a lighted trail of orange light through the trees. He hadnt gone too far in, but far enough that I lost sight of the road and the wrecked motel. In here, among the pines, things were hushed. The air smelled sweet and heavy, crisp with the smell of the needles.

Untouched.

The Djinn had dug a gravesix feet deep, wider than neededbeneath a particularly impressive branching tree. Kevins body lay wrapped in a simple white sheet from the motel, and he no longer looked like the boy Id known, or the man Id wished hed had a chance to become. He looked . . . empty, rendered pale and sexless by the shroud. I wasnt sure I wanted Cherise to see him like this, but Id promised.

Ill get him in, I said. Go get Cherise and the kid. Dont let her walk yet.

The Djinn nodded and misted away. I stood there looking at Kevin for a moment, then hopped down into the damp hole in the earth, reached up, and rippled the ground to move him toward me and onto a hardened cushion of air. I floated him down into my arms, and lowered him the last bit on my own. He still felt heavy. Somehow, Id expected him to be lighter now.

I leaned over and kissed his lips gently. Im so sorry, I said. Find peace, Kevin. Ive never known anybody who needed it more, and deserved it more.

That didnt seem to be enough, but I couldnt think of anything else to say.

I levitated myself up on a heated column of rising air and stepped off at ground level, just in time to see the Djinn arrive back at a run with Cherise and the boy in his arms. They looked like toys, the casual way he balanced them, but I knew he wouldnt drop them. No chance.

He looked around, then formed a plain wooden chair that was the same color and texture as the trees around us. Fallen wood, probably, reshaped for the purpose. He lowered her into it and came to stand next to me.

He did a lot of things he probably regretted, David said. But he tried to do good. That counts.

He died trying to save us, I said. That counts for everything.

We linked hands. It didnt feel like David, but that didnt matter right now. I just wanted to feel a touch, anyones touch, to remind me I wasnt all alone in this. I felt a breath of relief pass over me that made me feel a little weak. I wish you were with me, I whispered, deep inside.

And I heard his whisper back, along that golden cord that bound us on the aetheric plane. I am with you, he said. Always.

Together, we filled in the hole. Apart from the singing of birds in the trees, the busy rustle of animals carrying on their lives, there wasnt any sound. When I looked at Cherise, she was silently crying. The boy was staring at us in confusion, about to break into wails of disapproval for all this craziness, but not sure if he should.

We smoothed the dirt on top of Kevins grave, and I sent a pulse through the Earth, bidding the seeds to grow. Grass and flowers, pushing up green and fresh.

You deserved better, Kevin, I said. You always deserved better than what you got, and Im sorry.

The Djinn said something, after thatsomething in warm, liquid syllables, lyrical and lovely that rose and fell in emotional arcs of poetry. When he was done, he bowed his head.

That was beautiful, Cherise said, even though I knew she hadnt understood it any more than I had.

Its our prayer for the dead, said Davids voice. Given to those who fall in battle.

When he said our, I sensed that he didnt mean the Djinn. He meant the human hed once been, living in that long-ago time.

I squeezed his hand. It is beautiful, I said. Promise me youll use it for me if it comes to that.

No, he said. I wont. Because I wont be here to do it if youre gone.

We stayed a while longer, but the air was getting cool, and we had miles to go.

The Djinn carried Cherise back to the waiting Mustang, which had only suffered a few scratches and dings out in the parking lot during the general destruction. Good. Id destroyed way too many automotive works of art in my time. I didnt want to leave the Boss behind, too.

I looked back at the place where Kevin Prentiss had died until it fell away in the rear window, just another wide spot in the road. Nothing special.

It was special now. It always would be, for me.

I waited for the tears, but they stayed where they were, simmering, angry, hungry.

Floor it, I said to the Djinn, and to David through him. I want to see our daughter.

He didnt respond, but the Mustang leaped up to a whole new level of fast.