Текст книги "Firestorm"

Автор книги: Rachel Caine

Соавторы: Rachel Caine
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"Hello, Eamon," I said. I sounded calm, no idea why, because my heart was rattling in my chest like dice in a shaken cup. I was having an out-of-body experience, or I knew I'd have felt something more than this ringing, empty amazement. Shock, I guessed. And fear. "How'd you find me?"

"GPS in your cell phone," he said. "The wonders of modern technology. Turns out that it isn't just for law enforcement anymore." His hand slid down my bare arm. "Are you naked under there?"

"Fuck you," I gasped, and tried to wrench away. No luck. He was a wiry bastard, and when I reached for power to even the score, I felt a hot, wet sting in my bicep. I flinched, but it was too late; he'd emptied the contents of a syringe into me with a fast shove of the plunger. Something heavy and sickeningly warm raced up my arm, into my neck.

"That should keep you from doing any parlor tricks," he said, and flicked on the bedside lamp. He looked only a little battered from our adventures in Florida—God, it hadn't even been long enough for his cuts to fully heal—but he was his usual natty self, dressed in a cool marine-blue shirt that looked fresh and crisp. Khaki pants. A dressed-down look, for Eamon, but fully complimentary. His hair was still a little too long, but I didn't let that friendly boy-next-door look fool me. No matter how limpid and sweet his eyes and smile might be, there was something deeply disturbing inside this man.

"There we go," he said soothingly, and he blurred out of focus again. No amount of blinking would help that. The warmth was stealing through my chest now, down my legs, up into my head. Such a nice, safe feeling. "You're all right, love. Just relax. No worries at all."

His voice was so soft and soothing, and I wanted to believe him. I knew better, but it was almost impossible to resist that kindness.

"Sarah," I managed to mumble. The world had turned into a candy-colored swirl of shapes. Strange tastes in my mouth. "Where?"

"Sarah is very safe, Joanne. You don't need to worry at all about your sister. I wouldn't hurt her." His laugh was dry and mocking. "Well. Not without giving you the chance to make good on our agreement first, of course."

I tried to say something, but my tongue was as thick as folded felt. I felt his hot fingers touching my neck, feeling my pulse, and then saw a bright hurtful glare as he lifted one eyelid. The room was doing a slow, graceful swirl.

"Excellent," I heard from a great distance. "A nap will do you good."

When I woke up in the dark, my mouth felt like a litterbox some cat owner had neglected for a month.

I was tied down, as I discovered when I tried to sit up. Ropes around both wrists. My ankles were tied together, but still anchored to something that felt rocksteady. I jerked at my bonds a few times, but got nothing but a steady rasping pain in my wrists for my trouble.

I felt dull and sick, and for a long few moments I didn't remember anything about how this had happened. It came back in flashes. Fire rolling down the road like flaming syrup. David. Dead Wardens.

Eamon.

A light flicked on across the room—a low-wattage bulb, barely enough to throw a yellow circle a couple of feet—but it burned my eyes. I winced, closed them, and then deliberately forced them open again. I wasn't in my room any longer. In fact, I doubted I was even in the same motel.

Eamon was sitting in an armchair next to the light, which was a standard-issue sort of thing with a lopsided paper shade. He wasn't an intimidating presence, generally; tall, lean, with pleasantly shaggy hair and a neat beard and mustache that gave some softness to his angular face. His hair was a color trapped somewhere between brown and blond, and although his eyes looked dark at the moment, I remembered them as that smoky color between blue and gray. He was, in a word, cute. Older than I was, but not more than ten years at a stretch.

In some ways, his hands were the most striking thing about him. Long, restless, graceful hands that should have been doing something artistic, like music or sculpting or neurosurgery. He took good care of them. His manicure was better than mine.

"How long?" I asked. My sense of time was screwed.

He tilted his head slightly, watching me. He looked a little surprised, as if that wasn't the first question he'd expected me to ask.

"An hour," he said. "By the way, congratulations on your escape from certain death back at the fire. That was exciting."

"You were following me."

He shrugged. "I'm not that energetic about it. I was tracking you. I only saw a bit toward the end."

"Why?"

Ah, that was the question he'd been expecting. He smiled. A sweet smile, with a loony's edge. "I had a strange idea that you weren't going to be looking after my interests," he said. "Seemed like a good idea to keep my hand in."

"Well, you've made your point. Very scary. Now let me go." It wasscary. I was starting to sweat again, and I really didn't like the ropes sawing into my hands and feet. The threat was implicit and precise, and the ease with which he'd handled me was frightening. He'd had a lot of experience at this abduction thing.

"Have I?" he asked. It was a neutral question, but I sensed the menace behind it. "Love, I haven't even started making my point with you. I warned you before. I need a Djinn, and I need it now. I'm not going to wait politely while you take care of your own affairs. You satisfy me first. Now."

There was a double entendre there that I was quite sure was intentional.

"I'll kill you," I said. "I'll kill you if you—"

"I'm not that crude," he interrupted. He hadn't really even moved since turning on the light, except for tilts of his head; his hands were limp on the arms of the chair. "I'm not Quinn, you know."

He knew. Quinn had told him what he'd done to me. Fury boiled up inside me, hot as plasma, and I didn't know how to deal with it. I'd never told anyone, not about what had happened to me in that darkest place, but Quinn had been shooting off his mouth to Eamon. Laughing about it over beer and chips, or whatever it was those two bastards did for fun besides tormenting others.

"No," Eamon said quietly. "He didn't tell me. I guessed. I wouldn't have done that to you, you know. There wouldn't have been any point. I keep my business and my pleasure completely separate."

He knew me way too well. I closed my eyes and focused on controlling my breathing. I needed calm, and I needed to have full command of my powers. Weather and Fire. I was tired, and I was waterlogged with drugs, but dammit, I wasn't going to take this. Not from Eamon.

"Yeah, but you've still got me tied up on a bed," I said. "Do the words sexual predatormean anything to you, Eamon?"

"Mmm. Fifteen to twenty-five, by the laws of this particular state, I believe. If I don't kill you. If I do, of course… does Maine have the death penalty? I'm afraid I can't keep track, as often as you people change your minds about cruel and unusual." He sounded bland and unworried. "You'll notice I tied you with your legs together. I could have done anything I liked. For that matter, I still could. You should be a little more polite."

That edge showed for a second, naked and glittering as a knife. Eamon was a Halloween candy bar full of razors. He terrified me on some level that I couldn't even fully understand.

"Somebody's going to come looking for me," I said to him. That got a stir from him; he sat forward, elbows resting on his knees, and tented his hands with his fingertips resting over his lips.

"The girl?" he asked. "The one who looks so remarkably like you that I had to ask Sarah about younger sisters, cousins, et cetera? I had to conclude that she was a closer relation. Daughter, I think. Very, very pretty." He smiled, and it was an expression that curled my stomach in on itself. "And since I've fairly comprehensively established that there's simply no way you could have conceived and delivered a child without there being some kind of record of it, she's something else. Something… unusual."

I stopped breathing, then forced myself to start up. Calm and casual, that was the only way to do this. "I'm not old enough to have a grown daughter."

"Please, don't force me to be ungentlemanly about it. You're more than old enough. But I think I can assume this is something else. Something to do with your handsome young Djinn boyfriend, for instance, and the desire of all living things to reproduce."

"You're crazy."

"Very likely." He nodded. "But your daughter is Djinn, and I want her. Need her, actually. I promise to return her unbroken, if that will help."

There were lots of answers I could have chosen from, but the most primal one boiled up first. "Touch her and I swear, I'll rip you apart, Eamon."

"I believe that," he agreed. "I don't think I've ever met anyone quite as capable of violence as you, Joanne. You disguise it well, but there's nothing light in your nature when you're at the sharp end. I like that about you."

"I mean it!"

"Oh, I spotted that right off," he said, and suddenly he was standing. He moved that way, unexpectedly, and my heart did a funny little jump as he crossed the short distance to the bed. He stood over me. There wasn't so much light over here, and he was blocking out most of it. I couldn't see anything but a pale oval for a face, and the darkness of his body.

The bed creaked as he sat down next to me.

"I love your sister," he said. Talk about things I hadn't expected… I kept my eyes on his unseen face. "That is very annoying, you know. I hadn't planned on feeling anything for her, beyond the occasional gratitude for being a good fuck—" He smiled at my animal noise of protest. "She's a good woman, Sarah. And she believes that I'm a good man. No doubt that bubble will burst soon, but I'd like to keep the fantasy intact awhile longer. She makes me feel—"

He fell silent. I didn't interrupt his thoughts.

"Well," he said, finally. "She makes me feel well."

No question, Eamon was sick on some level I didn't even want to understand. "Don't hurt her."

"I don't want to. But I'm afraid that's really up to you at this point, and your daughter. I've told you what I need, and it's up to you how it gets provided to me. I've made the request nicely—"

"You abducted my sister!"

"Rescued, actually."

"You molestedher!"

"Yeah," he admitted cheerfully. "I did, a bit. Sorry about that. Can see how that might rot the trust between us to some extent, but love, I was trying to emphasize to you the seriousness of the situation. Which has, I could point out, become even more serious. So I want my bloody Djinn or I will crush your fucking throat."

The last was snapped out in tones that made me cold inside. Before I could draw breath, his right hand was around my neck.

I wanted to scream, but nothing came out when I opened my mouth except a choked gagging sound. He was an expert at it. He choked me just hard enough to lock the scream in my throat and make it unbearably painful to breathe. The darkness began to spark with fireworks. Oxygen deprivation. He kept holding my throat, steady and sure, and then suddenly the pressure was gone. His hand stayed, loose and cool against my burning skin, and I whooped in a convulsive breath.

"Scream and I'll kill you," he said. It was a whisper, and it was against my ear, and he sounded utterly serious about it.

I didn't scream. I concentrated on breathing and marshaling my powers. It wasn't working. The drugs coursing through my system were interfering with my concentration and control; he must have done some research. These must have been similar to the drugs that Marion and her team used to sedate Wardens who'd proved dangerous.

I couldn't get enough power together to light a match, much less fry Eamon the way he deserved.

"I'm presuming you don't have some other Djinn in your handbag, ready to give me," he said. "No, don't speak. Shake your head yes or no."

I indicated no, silently. His fingertips moved slowly down the column of my throat to the notch of my collarbone, then back up. Stroking.

"Then I'm afraid it's your daughter I will require," he said. "Cross me, and I'll kill your sister and cut my losses. No warnings. I'll just phone you up and let you listen while she dies, all right?"

I managed to croak out some words. "I thought you loved her."

"I do," Eamon said. "I'm afraid that doesn't change anything."

His fingers trailed down into the open valley between my breasts. I didn't dare move. There was a tension in him that I couldn't quite understand, but I feared it. I wasn't sure he was quite in control of what he was doing.

"You and your sister," he sighed after a few silent seconds. "I can only imagine what you'd be like together."

Ewwww, that was an image I could have done without. I gritted my teeth and fought the urge to spit at him.

"Take your hands off me," I said. I wasn't sure how it would come out, but it sounded cool and controlled and furious. Not edged with panic, which was a miracle.

He covered my mouth, and in one swift motion, he swung a leg over me and straddled me. I felt a hot surge of utter despairing terror, a flashback from other times, years ago, when I'd been out of control and utterly lost, and it was only at the last second that I realized he hadn't untied my ankles, and I was relatively safe from the traditional kind of assault.

But then, Eamon didn't strike me as a traditional kind of rapist, either.

"Shhh," he whispered, and I froze as the sharp edge of a huge knife pressed against my throat. "Say hello to your daughter and tell her not to be stupid."

Imara? I gasped and blinked, and saw her face in the darkness, pale as snow. She was crouched in the corner, wild and feral as an Ifrit. Her eyes blazed hot gold.

"No," I croaked out, and waved one bound hand ineffectively. "Don't, Imara."

"That's excellent advice. It takes one little slip to end your mother's life."

No answer. No move from Imara. She just waited, staring, patient as a lion. Eamon's hand was trembling, just a little.

"I just want to establish the ground rules," he said. "First off, I'm keeping this knife in place until I have a clear understanding between us, all right? The drug that I injected in Joanne is toxic. Slow, but sure. I have the antidote. Not on me, of course. Do what I say, and everyone comes out of this alive and happy."

"Mom?"

"I'm okay," I said.

"No, in point of fact, you're not," Eamon said. "As I was saying. And if your offspring rips my heart out, you'll be buying burial plots for two, because your sister won't survive the day, either. I gave her a little shot, as well. Insurance. Now that we're clear about the cost of vengeance, I'm going to remove the knife from Joanne's throat, and you're going to be a very good little Djinn, aren't you?"

Imara's lips pulled back from her teeth in a snarl, but she didn't move. Eamon leaned back, then slipped off me with a creak of bedsprings. He used the knife on the ropes, quick slashes, and I rolled over on my side. I felt hot and sick. Drugged. Too drugged to do much. Eamon patted me on the shoulder. "There, there. You'll feel better—well, if you make me happy. If not, you'll slip into a coma and die."

Imara was up on her feet in one fluid motion. Her hands were at her sides, but I could see the gleam of claws, and threw her a warning shake of my head. "He gave me a shot," I said. "Can't—just wait. Wait."

Eamon hauled me to my feet. Cold air hit my skin, and I remembered with a bleary shudder that I was naked. He barely glanced at me, just shoved me forward into Imara's arms. "Get her dressed," he said. "Don't think of trying anything tricky. If you cooperate, we'll be saying our fond farewells in just a little while."

"Mom?" Imara sounded scared, and pissed as hell. "Should I kill him?"

Funny, I'd been blaming David for murder in the name of self-preservation just a little while ago, hadn't I? But if I hadn't had Sarah's life depending on this, as well as my own, I'd have cheerfully watched Imara de-bone the bastard right in front of me. Flexible ethics. The key to a happy life.

"No," I said. "Not yet."

She opened up a bag that was lying on the floor behind her. Clothes. Nice ones. Silky, formfitting underwear. A silky pair of gray microfiber pants. A pull-on black velvet scoop-necked top.

And a pair of elegant black shoes, sculptural and spike-heeled.

"Manolo," my daughter said. "For moral support. There's a more practical pair underneath."

The other pair was Miu Miu fiats. I swallowed hard and slipped them on. Perfect, of course. I kissed Imara on the cheek and smiled at her. Weakly.

"I'll kill him for hurting you," she said.

"Maybe," I agreed. "But for right now, let's just see what he wants."

"What he wants," Eamon said from where he reclined on the bed, "is to get your lovely bums out of here and into the car. Shall we?"

I nodded. The room did a greasy, unpleasant spin, but I hung on.

"Fine," I said grimly. "The faster we can get you out of our lives, the better I'm going to like it."

"Ah," he sighed. "Just when we were starting to bond."

Chapter Seven

He'd said a couple of hours. Actually, in most cars it would have been about four; in the Camaro, with Imara behind the wheel, it was closer to two.

No small talk. I sat in the backseat, with Eamon; he had his knife out and tapped the flat of it restlessly against his knee. I felt sicker than ever, my head pounding so hard that I started to worry about an aneurysm. Resting my left temple against the cool window glass seemed to help. A little.

I roused tofind that Eamon was taking my pulse. He seemed competent enough at it… He looked up when I tried to pull away and held on. "How do you feel?" he asked.

"Like I'm dying."

"I can give you something for the headache."

"The last thing I want is you medicating me. Again."

He shrugged and went back to tapping his knife. Imara was watching us in the rearview mirror. I nodded slightly to let her know I was all right.

The rest of the trip was conducted in tense silence.

We arrived in Boston just after dark, and Eamon gave directions in terse, single-turn increments. I had no idea where we were going, and it was a bit of a surprise to pull up in the parking lot of a huge granite building. I'd been expecting some deserted warehouse, some place where his sleazy business—whatever it might be—could be conducted in private.

This was a hospital.

"Out," he said to me, and prodded me with the point of the knife when I didn't move. Imara growled, low in her throat. "Let's all behave nicely. We're nearly done, you know. I'd hate for you to screw it up now."

I got out of the car and had to brace myself against the cool finish. Oh, God, I felt sick. Nothing in my stomach, or it would have been on the pavement. Imara took my arm, and Eamon slid the knife into a leather sheath that he concealed in a folded magazine.

"Right," he said. "After you, please."

We went in through the front door, just another concerned little family crowded together for support. All hospitals look pretty much the same; this one had a lived-in feel despite the constant application of astringents and floor wax. Lots of people in scrubs walking the halls, which were decorated with soothing framed prints. I barely noticed. I was too busy thinking about whether or not, since I was in a hospital, I should start shouting for help. The fact that the knife was still in Eamon's possession was a cause for concern, though. He could hurt innocent bystanders.

And would.

"Easy," Eamon whispered in my hear, as if he'd sensed my inner debate. "Let's not get tricky, love. On the elevator, please. And push six."

A long, slow ride. It was just the three of us. I calculated the odds of whether or not Imara could take him before he could stab me, and I could see she was doing the same math problem. She slowly shook her head. Not that she couldn't take him—she could—but that she didn't think it was a good idea.

Neither did I.

The doors dinged open at the sixth floor, and there was another long, clean hallway. Deathly still. We moved down it, and as we came even with an inset nurse's station, the woman on duty looked up and smiled.

"Eamon!" She looked ridiculously happy to see him. Did she not have any idea? No, of course she didn't. He was turning on the charm for her. "You're coming kind of late. Visiting hours just finished."

"Sorry," he said. "My cousin and her daughter got held up at Logan. Is it all right—?"

"Logan? That figures. Sure. Just don't stay too long, okay?" The nurse gave us an impersonal smile, half the wattage she'd reserved for Eamon. She focused in on me, and frowned a bit. "Poor thing, you look done in. Long flight?"

"The red-eye from hell," I said. Before I could say anything else, like Call the police, you idiot, Eamon hustled me onward. "All right, what is this?" I hissed. "Why are you taking us to a hospital?"

"Shut up." He pressed the magazine in my side. Sometime when I'd been distracted he'd slid the knife free, and it pressed a sharp reminder of his intentions into me. "Six doors down on the right side."

Some of the doors were shut, with medical charts in the holders out front. The sixth one was propped open. Eamon gestured the two of us to go first, outwardly polite, inwardly measuring the distance to my kidneys. I stepped in, wondering what kind of trick he was about to play.

None, apparently. No gang of scary people lurking in the corners—not that they'd have been able to do so, in such a small, clean, brightly lit room. Nothing to hide behind. Just some built-in cabinets along the walls, a hospital bed, and the woman lying in it.

Eamon closed the door behind us. We stood in silence for a. few seconds, and I stared at the woman. She was maybe twenty-five—it should have been a pretty, vital age, but she was pallid and loose and limp, her skin a terrible sickly color. Her hair looked clean, and carefully brushed; it was a medium brown, shot through with blond. Her eyelids looked thin and delicate and blue, veins showing through.

I waited, but she didn't move. IV liquids dripped. There was a tube down her throat, and a machine hissed and chuffed and breathed on her behalf.

I opened my mouth.

"You're about to ask me who she is. Don't." Eamon gave me a bitter, thin smile. "Just fix her. You don't need to know anything else."

"Pardon? Do what?"

The smile, thin and bitter as it was, faded. "Fix her. Now." He enunciated it with scary clarity. He transferred his stare to Imara, who frowned and glanced at me. "Don't even think about saying no, love, or I'll do things to your mum here that not even a hospital full of surgeons can fix." He grabbed me with his forearm around my throat, pulling my chin up, and set the knife to my exposed neck. I stood on tiptoe, fighting for balance. Fear gave me a sudden bolt of clarity, but there was nothing I could do or say, not like this. Too risky.

I had to trust Imara.

She slowly extended her hand toward him. Graceful and supplicating. "Sir, please understand," she said. "You didn't have to do it this way. If my mother had known what you wanted, she would have tried to help you without the threats."

"Maybe. Couldn't take that chance, though, could I? But still, here we are, and since you're suddenly taken all warm and fuzzy, go on. Do your good deed of the day."

Imara slowly shook her head. "I'm not—like that. I can do only a few things. I can't heal. Certainly not something as grievous as this."

His arm tightened, compressing my throat. I made a muffled sound of protest and teetered on my toes.

"Please! If I could save this woman, I would, but I'm not capable, don't you see?"

"Then go get someone who can."

"There isn'tanyone who can, not among the Djinn or the Wardens. There are rules, and they're larger than your desires or your needs. I'm sorry."

I couldn't see Eamon's face, but I couldn't imagine that cold, crazy man was letting that be the last word. He didn't have a ready comeback, though. I felt a tremble go through him, and the knife dug just a bit deeper into my skin.

"All right!" Imara said sharply. "Don't hurt her! I'll try."

She put her hands on the woman's face, turning it gently to one side so that it faced toward me and Eamon. I thought I saw the translucent eyelids flutter, but nothing else happened. The frail chest rose and fell under the pale nightgown. IV fluids dripped.

And then, with the suddenness of a horror movie, the eyes flew open. Blank and clouded, but open.

The eyes of the living dead, nothing in them at all.

I felt Eamon's reaction through the connection of his arm, a shudder that might have sent him reeling if he hadn't kept hold of me. Which he did, for a blank second, and then he shoved me away and lurched to the bed. The knife fell to the floor, forgotten, and Eamon bent over the woman. "Liz? Can you hear me?"

Her eyes rolled back in her head, and Imara let go as the woman's body went into a galvanic spasm, practically leaping off the bed. Convulsions. Bad ones. I looked at Imara, speechless, and she looked as shocked as I did.

"I told you," she said. "It's forbidden."

Eamon turned on her with the speed of a cobra. "No. You're holding back. Wake her up."

"I can't."

"Wake her up!" he shouted, and turned to pick up his knife. "I need five bloody minutes! Five!"

"I can't give it to you. I'm sorry."

"You're going to be!"

He rounded on me, and Imara reached out and knocked the knife out of his hand. It skidded across the floor in a hiss of metal, and bumped into a pair of shoes that had just manifested out of thin air.

I blinked away confusion and focused. Even then, it took me a few long seconds to recognize that David had come to our aid.

He bent down and picked up the knife. "Looking for this?" David's voice was reduced to a velvet-soft purr. The shine of the knife turned restlessly in his hand, over and over. "It has Joanne's blood on it, I see. Do you really think that was a good idea?"

Eamon froze. The woman on the bed stopped her galvanic spasms and went completely still again. Her eyes were half-shut.

"Yours?" David asked, and pointed at the bed with the tip of the knife. He looked—cold. Perfect and cold and furious, but absolutely self-contained. Rage in a bottle.

"Mine?" Eamon sketched a mad sort of laugh. "What the hell would I do with a girl in a coma? Other than the obvious, I mean."

I remembered Eamon's taunts and hints, dropped all the way back when he'd revealed himself to me as the bastard he truly was. Drugging my sister. I like my women a little less talkative and more compliant, in general, he'd said. The possibilities nauseated me, together with the fact that the nurse outside had recognized him by name, as a regular visitor.

I took a step backward, until the wall was at my back. Felt good, the wall. I needed the support. My legs had gone cold, pins-and-needles cold. My balance insisted that the room was pitching and rolling like the deck of a sinking ship.

David exchanged a look with Imara, a nod, and she dropped her gaze and moved out of his way. Nothing standing between him and Eamon now. I saw Eamon register that, and lick his suddenly pale lips.

"Hang on a minute, mate," he said. "I know it looks bad, but the truth is, I only need to wake her up for a couple of minutes. Less, even. Just long enough to say my good-byes and—"

"Don't lie," David interrupted. The knife kept turning in his hand, drawing my eyes as well as Eamon's. "You have a reason, and it isn't anything so sentimental."

Eamon's eyes narrowed, and I could see him trying to decide whether or not he'd be able to take the knife. He couldn't, but there was no way he'd be able to judge that for himself. I hoped he'd try. I really did.

"All right," he said. "Nothing so saccharine. We were partners. She took possession of a certain payment, and she didn't want to share. I need to make her tell me where she hid the money."

"Still not true," David said. His eyes were terrifying—flames swirling around narrowed pupils. "I want you to speak the truth, just once before you die."

"You don't want to kill me, old son. I'm the one with the antidote for your girl's poison, and unless you want to see her in a hospital bed next to my beloved Liz here—"

David moved in a streak of light, and suddenly he was pressed against the other man, chest to chest, bending him over the hospital bed in a backbreaking curve. His right hand was locked around Eamon's throat, and his left…

… his left held the hilt of the knife he'd buried deep in Eamon's side.

Eamon's eyes widened soundlessly.

"That," David said, "is a fatal wound. Feel it?" He moved the knife helpfully. Eamon tried to scream, but nothing happened. "Shhhh. Nod if you believe me."

Eamon shakily nodded, throat still struggling to let loose his terror.

"Good." David pulled the knife free in a single fast rip. No blood followed, and there should have been fountains of the stuff. "I'm holding the wound shut," David said. "But the second you disappoint me, little man, the instantI think that you're mocking me or even thinking about harm to my family, that ends. I watch you bleed your life away in less than a dozen heartbeats. Understand?"

Eamon nodded convulsively. He was paler than the woman on the bed.

"Now, you're going to get the antidote," David said. "Which I imagine you have hidden somewhere in this room. You're going to give it to Joanne, and then you're going to go and give it to her sister." He let go of Eamon's throat. "Move."

Eamon edged out of the way, one hand pressed trembling to his side. Too terrified to move quickly. David watched him with glowing metallic eyes, and Imara did, as well.

I made some sound of effort, trying to straighten up. David had his full attention on Eamon, and his knuckles were white where he gripped the knife. I remembered Imara saying that he was fighting off the influence of the Mother, and how difficult it was. I wondered what would happen if he succumbed to that here, in a building full of innocent and helpless victims.

Not for me. Please, not for me. I tried to send him the message, but I had no idea if he was listening. His attention was completely riveted on Eamon.