Текст книги "Ill Wind"

Автор книги: Rachel Caine

Соавторы: Rachel Caine
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

"I'm thinking about pizza," I said. "Deep dish, lots of cheese, maybe some pepperoni. They've got to have good Chicago style around here. Wait, I don't suppose that's one of the handy cool tricks you can do, is it?"

"Make pizza?" He gave it serious thought. "No. I can't create something from nothing, at least not while I'm free. I could probably transmute it for you, so long as what I made it from contained some of the same elements."

"Like?"

"Tomato into pizza sauce. Grain to bread crust. Although I'm not exactly sure how to get pepperoni."

"I think you start with a pig, but let's not get too far into that. Man, what I'd give for a Moon Pie right about now."

David turned and looked around in the backseat; I could have told him the prospects for scavengable food were slim. Marion kept a clean car, something I'd never really been able to do, as much as I loved Delilah. I tended to accumulate slips of paper, receipts, scribbled directions, paper wrappers from straws…

But there was something, I remembered it. "Hey, I think she left a thermos in here. Coffee would be incredibly good."

He didn't see it. I leaned back and spotted a silver gleam under the passenger seat, just about popped a vertebra rooting it out, and came up with the goods. I was just about to check it for caffeine content when David said, "Do you feel that?"

I forgot all about caffeine. The jolt of adrenaline went straight to my heart and tingled in every soft tissue on my body. I put the thermos aside. "Yeah." The hair on my arms was standing up. "Don't get out of the car."

"I wasn't planning to."

I had long ago outrun the storm, but there was a line of clouds dark on the horizon ahead. I'd been playing with the idea of doing some sabotage on the cold front coming down out of Canada, but that was just plain selfish. Bad weather was both natural and necessary. The only time I was really morally allowed to tinker was if it posed a clear and imminent danger to human life… not necessarily including my own.

What I felt wasn't the storm ahead, and it wasn't the storm behind. It wasn't a storm at all. I wasn't entirely sure whatit was, except that it was strange.

"Any idea—?"

"No," David said. "Not yet. Maybe you should start the car."

I did, and eased the Land Rover into gear and back onto the road. We accelerated without any problems. After half a mile I remembered to breathe. Nothing fell on us out of the sky or rose up out of the ground, which was downright encouraging.

"So," David finally said. "Exactly how many enemies doyou have?"

"Marion's not an enemy."

"She buried you alive."

"It's complicated."

"Apparently." He settled back in the seat… not relaxed, exactly, but cautiously watchful. "Tell me about what happened."

"You know what happened. You were there."

"Tell me why you're running."

I felt a lurch somewhere in my gut. "You know, I really don't want to talk about it. If I'd wanted to talk about it, I would have done the whole This-Is-My-Life thing with Marion, where it might actually matter."

"You need to tell someone," he said, which was very reasonable. "And I don't have a stake in the matter."

In other words, he was Djinn. He could walk away at any time. I wasn't even a flash of a second in terms of the eternal life he could look forward to. My story was something to pass the time. Hell, Iwas something to pass the time.

"I killed somebody," I finally said.

He was unmoved. "So I heard."

"Somebody important," I said, as if he'd contradicted me. I was surprised to feel tears burn at the back of my throat. "I had to."

David reached over and touched my hand. Gently. Just the tips of his fingers, but it was enough to send a warm cascade of emotion through me that I didn't fully understand. Was it a Djinn thing or a David thing? Was there even a difference?

"Tell me," he said. "Please."

I told David about the first encounter I'd had with Bad Bob at my intake meeting, and then the weird showdown we'd had at the National Weather Services offices, the time I'd worked the Bermuda Triangle and stopped Tropical Storm Samuel.

And then I told him the rest.

After I'd calmed down with a few drinks at a sand-side bar, I'd decided to put Bad Bob's bizarre problems behind me and just be a girl for a change. I'd strolled down to the sea in my fancy new few inches of perfect spandex. Beautiful girls are a dime a hundred on Florida beaches, so I didn't feel special…. Well, okay, maybe I did, a little, because it was a reallygood bikini. Beach studs checked me out, and there was nothing bad in that. I staked out a section of warm white sand as far as possible from screaming kids and teenagers blaring the greatest hits of Eminem on boom boxes, applied sunscreen and dark glasses, and settled down on my beach towel to soak up the love of Mother Sun.

There's nothing like a good day on the beach. The warmth steals slowly into every muscle like an invisible full-body massage. The dull, constant rhythm of the seas counts out the heartbeat of the world. The smell of fresh salt water, banana and coconut oil, that ripe undercurrent of the cycle of life turning somewhere under the waves. The sounds of people talking, laughing, whispering, kissing. Happy sounds. Somewhere out there, in the wet darkness, sharks hunt, but you can forget that, lying there in the sun, letting your cares slide away like sand through your fingers.

I had almost succeeded in forgetting about everything that was bothering me when a shadow cut off my sun and sent a chill running through my blood. It didn't move away like it should have.

I opened my eyes and peered up, dazzled, at a dark shape with a brilliant white halo of windblown hair… then blue eyes… the face of Bad Bob Biringanine.

I sat up fast. He was crouching down next to me. I did one of those involuntary female things one does when wearing too few clothes in the presence of an intimidating man…. I put on my coverup, then crossed my arms across the thin fabric.

"That's too bad," Bad Bob said. "It's a nice look for you."

"What?"

"The suit. Designer?"

"Yeah, right. On what you pay me?" I shot back. "Don't think so." I glared. In my experience, guys who gave grief and then came bearing compliments were not to be trusted. Especially guys who held my future in the palm of their hand.

His face was different out here in the world—more natural, I guess. There was something that hummed in tune out here, near the sea and sky. This was what true power looked like in its element—not dealing with people, which annoyed him, but being part of the vast moving machine of Earth.

"I scared you this morning," he said. "That's not what I meant to do. It's not personal, Baldwin. It's not that I think you're a crappy Warden. It's that I've seen too many turn out that way."

"Thanks for the warning. I got the message."

"No, you didn't. And hell, I can't blame you, I'm the king of arrogance, and I damn well know it. Anyway, you did good," he said. "Most people screw it up their first time out in the Triangle. There's something out there that isn't anywhere else on the planet."

"Really?" I shaded my eyes and tried to see if he was kidding me. "What?"

He eased himself down to a sitting position on the sand. "If I knew that, I'd probably be National Warden by now instead of some cranky old bastard with a nasty reputation. Maybe someone with more guts and less self-preservation than me will find out. They don't call it the Mother of Storms for no reason."

"A discovery like that could really make a reputation," I said.

He grinned, and it was a street urchin's grin, full of Irish charm, and I had the sense he'd done some sweet-talking of girls in his immoral past. Lots of girls. "Oh, I think my reputation's secure, don't you?"

It was, of course; whatever else Bad Bob Biringanine got up to, he was bound to be a legend for generations to come. I sighed. "Why'd you come down here? Just to get in my light?"

He dropped the grin and just looked at me seriously. "I liked your work. Steady, calm, never mind the bullshit. You didn't let me get to you, and that takes guts. I've rattled plenty of cool customers in my day just by looking at them, and you looked right back. That's impressive, girl."

Oh. Now that my heart rate was slowing to under two hundred, I realized that Bad Bob was trying to make a connection with me, not just ruin my afternoon. Had he ever done this before? Probably, but the stories of Bad Bob that play well are the confrontations, not the conciliations. Nobody would buy me a drink to hear that Bad Bob patted me on the back.

But it still felt good.

"I've been looking for somebody with steady nerves," he said. "Special project. You interested?"

There was only one sane answer. "No offense, sir, but no. I'm not."

"No?" He seemed honestly puzzled. "Why the hell not?"

"Because you'd crush me like a bug, sir. It was all I could do to get through an afternoon with you staring down my shirt. I don't think I could handle a full eight hours of it a day."

And had I said that out loud? Yes, I had. And he hadbeen checking out my boobs all morning there at the Coral Gables office. So there. Let the charming old bastard chew on it.

He stared at me steadily, with those eyes like pale blue glass, and said, "Oh, it wouldn't be eight hours a day. Twelve, minimum. Possibly as much as eighteen. Though I will give you time off for good behavior, if you keep wearing that bikini."

"No." I settled back on the sand and closed my eyes. "If you're going to keep sexually harassing me, could you do it from about three feet to your left and quit blocking my sun?"

He didn't move, of course. He stayed solidly in my light. After a few dead moments, when I didn't open my eyes or try to fill the silence, he said, "You're still six months away from qualifying for a Djinn. I can make that happen in two weeks. Or I can make sure it never happens. Your choice, sweetness."

I threw an arm over my eyes and groaned in frustration. Of course, it would come to this. Blackmail. Perfect.

"Come on, Baldwin, you're an ambitious little ladder-climber. We both know you'll work for me just for the bragging rights. Quit playing coy. Here's the address."

He dropped a business card on the bare skin of my stomach. When I opened my eyes, he was walking away, a bandy-legged white-haired man still broad in the chest, muscular in his arms and legs.

An aging tough guy. A hero of the kind they don't make anymore.

On the back of the business card was his home address. On the front was his name, Robert G. Biringanine,and in very small letters below it, Miracles Provided.

I held the card in my hand for the next thirty minutes as I tried to empty my head and concentrate on sunshine, but the cold, pitiless blue of his eyes kept intruding. By four o'clock I'd had enough, and trudged back to my car, lugging beach bag and beach umbrella. Two hunks in Speedos—six-pack abs and all—tried to convince me to do some snorkeling in one of their beach houses, but I had things to think about. Big things.

At six, I called Bad Bob's, got his answering machine and left a message that I'd be at his house at 7 a.m.

See, I'd like to blame it on Bob's cynical little threat-and-reward strategy, but the fact of the matter was, I found him interesting. More than twice my age, white-haired, wrinkled, bad-tempered, notoriously difficult… and there was something intensely alivebehind his eyes that I'd never seen before. Well, not since Lewis, anyway.

Power calls to power—always has, always will.

Two minutes before seven the next morning, I was standing on Bad Bob's porch, which had a stunning view of the blue-green ocean. It rippled like blown silk and flowed up on sand as white as snow. He had a private beach. It was a measure of who—and what—Bad Bob really was. As was the house, a postmodern sweeping dome with lines that reminded me of wind tunnels and race cars.

"No bikini?" Bob asked me when he opened the door. That was his version of good morning, apparently. He had a coffee cup in his hand as big as a soup bowl. His striped bathrobe that made him look like a disreputable version of Hugh Hefner, and he had the moist, red-rimmed eyes of a morning-after drunk.

I hesitated over choices of responses. "Do I have to be polite?"

"Politeisn't a word people often use to describe me," he answered. "Idon't suppose I can expect it from you, either."

"Then no more cracks about the bikini, or I turn around and walk. Seriously."

He shrugged, swung the door wide, and turned away. I followed him into a short hall that opened up into a truly breathtaking room. It must have gone up thirty feet in a curve, with windows overlooking the ocean all along one side. Carpet so deep I wondered if he hired a lawn service to maintain it. Leather couch, chairs, furniture that combined style and comfort. All unmistakably masculine, but with a finer taste than I would have expected from somebody of Bad Bob's reputation.

"Nice," I said. People expect that kind of thing when you first see their home.

"Ought to be," he said. "I paid a fortune to some unspeakably horrible woman named Patsy to make it that way. Through here. Coffee?"

"Sure."

He led me into a vast kitchen that could have catered dinner for a hundred without breaking a sweat, poured me a cup, and handed it over. I sipped and found it had the rich, unmistakable taste of Jamaican Blue Mountain, fifty dollars a pound. Not the kind of thing I'dgive away cups of to marginally welcome guests. I took as big a mouthful as I could get away with, savoring that smooth caramel aftertaste. I could get used to all of this… fancy house, ocean view, fine imported beverages. I had no doubt his collection of whiskey was first-rate, too. And he struck me as the kind of guy with a killer DVD collection.

"So," I said. Bad Bob leaned against a counter, sipping coffee, watching me. "Staying off the subject of the bikini, what exactly am I here to do?"

"You're here to work as my assistant. I need a good, solid hand in manipulating some small-scale weather patterns for an experiment. Nothing I couldn't do myself, but it would save time to have another pair of hands."

"Hands?"

"Metaphorically speaking. You've worked with Djinn before?"

"Sure. Well, not closely. But I've been linked to them." Man, the coffee was excellent.He'd poured a pretty generous cup; I wondered how open he'd be to the concept of refills. I was going through this mug pretty quickly. "I can handle it."

"I'm sure you can," he said. "You know, I have the feeling you're going to be absolutely essential to the success of this project. It's groundbreaking. I think you'll be truly impressed by the scope of what we can accomplish together, Joanne. By the way, how's the coffee?"

"Fabulous. It's—" My eyes blurred. I blinked, felt the world slip sideways, and reached out to brace myself against the counter. I could hear my heart beating, suddenly. " – it's Jamaican Blue—"

I must have dropped the cup, but I didn't hear it shatter on the ceramic tile. I remember my knees letting loose, I remember sliding down with my back to the cabinets, I remember Bad Bob taking another long drink from his cup and looking down at me with those pitiless blue eyes.

He smiled at me. His voice sounded slow and wrong and far too friendly. "We're going to do great things together, you and I."

I woke up on the edge of panic, fighting nausea, with no idea where I was or what the hell had happened to me. It took a full minute for my brain to start connecting chemical chains long enough to remember Bad Bob, the tainted coffee, the collapse. Jesus, what kind of a bastard ruins Jamaican Blue Mountainwith knockout drops?

I was lying on the leather couch, and my hands were tied behind my back. I could barely feel them, but I knew it was going to be painful if—when—I worked my way free. I blinked shadows from my eyes, shook my head to get hair out of my way, and found Bad Bob sitting in the leather armchair just about five feet away. The bathrobe was gone, replaced by a pair of khaki pants and a loud Hawaiian print shirt. He was holding a half-empty glass of something on the rocks, which might have been apple juice but probably had a lot more punch.

"Don't struggle," he said. "You'll just dislocate a shoulder, and I'm not much on the medical stuff."

My tongue felt thick as a sausage, but I managed to fit it around words. "Fuck you, you bastard. Let me go."

His bushy white eyebrows rose. They curled up and out, and reminded me of a lynx. The eyes were predatory, too.

"Ah, ah, be nice," he said. "My offer to you was absolutely valid. We're going to do some great work together."

"What in the helldo you think you're doing? You think you can just abduct me and—" My brain caught up with my mouth and told it to shut up, because he hadabducted me, and chances were he was going to get away with it, too. Nobody knew I'd come here. I had no close friends, no confidants. I hadn't spoken to my sister or my mother in a month. John Foster might wonder where I'd gotten off to, but like most Wardens, I wasn't a slave to the nine-to-five. Could take weeks for anybody to begin to worry.

"You'll be fine," he said. He took a long slug of his drink, made a face, and put the crystal tumbler on a glass table next to him. There was no sound of anybody else in the house, just the usual everyday hum of electrics and air circulation. The surf hitting the shore came as a dull, unceasing drum. "I have something important for you to take part in, and I want your word that you're going to take this responsibility seriously. You're going to change the world."

I had a lot of ambition, but changing the world was a little outside the scope. I tried the ropes again, felt sharp pain dig into my shoulder, and decided to work on things a little less directly. I couldn't go head-to-head with Bad Bob Biringanine… few people on the planet could. But maybe I could take him from behind.

I started slowly, slowly working the oxygen out of the mixture in the room. Nothing obvious, because obvious would get me swatted like a fly. At the fastest rate I dared to work, I needed to buy at least ten minutes for the O ₂levels to drop far enough to put him to sleep. Ifhe didn't realize what I was doing. The alcohol would help that, slow his perceptions and make him more susceptible to nodding off.

"I–I came here to work for you," I said. "Really. You didn't have to drug me. You could have just explained it to me."

"Sweetheart, I couldn't really take the chance you wouldn't agree. I need you. It's more of a draft than a volunteer army." His eyes skipped away from me, toward the windows, where the Atlantic rolled endlessly toward the Pacific. "Stop fucking with the air in here or I'll knock you out and do this while you're unconscious. It doesn't really matter, either way. I just thought you'd like to be a witness."

I swallowed hard and let my manipulations of the oxygen drop. "To what?"

"To your transformation. I'm about to transform you from some second-rate, arrogant little weatherworker to a world-class talent. And in return, you're going to save my life." He got up, stretched, and went to refill his glass from a crystal-stoppered decanter on the sideboard, near something that looked like an authentic Chinese terra-cotta solider, like the ones found in the emperor's tomb. It almost looked real enough to walk across the room.

"Sir, please, I have no idea what you're—"

"Shut up." He didn't raise his voice, but there was something dark and violent in it that made me instantly seal my lips. Liquor splashed ice in his glass, and he took a drink. "How do you think all this works, Baldwin? You think the Wardens Association is just some not-for-profit do-gooder fraternity, like the lions Club or the Shriners? We run the world.That takes power. More power than you can even imagine."

I had no idea what he was talking about, but so long as he was talking, I had breathing time. I worked on the knots with numbed fingers. It was all I could think of to do.

"When Hurricane Andrew hit the shore in 92, it was a killer of the worst kind. It was all set to destroy us, singly or in groups. Somebody had to take on the responsibility to stop it." He snorted and tossed back the rest of the liquor. "Some poor bastard like me. But humans aren't built that way, Baldwin. They're built to come apart under that kind of pressure."

He was talking. I decided I should be cooperating. "That's why we have the Djinn. To take the stress."

"What crap. You don't know dick about Djinn, girl. They have power, but they dole it out in little bits and pieces, always looking for ways to screw us– they hate us. They'd kill us if they could." He rattled the ice in his glass and tried to suck the last drops of his drink from between the cubes. "Rely on the goddamn Djinn, you get killed. No, to stop Andrew I needed something else. Something bigger."

He was insane. Bad Bob was literallyinsane. There wasn't anything bigger than the Djinn except…

I bit my lip and felt a fingernail rip off against rope, but that was nothing compared with what I was afraid he was about to do to me. It was all falling together now, and it made a hideous kind of sense.

"A Demon," I whispered. "You took on a Demon."

"Smart girl," he answered. "Too bad, really. I can't afford to put my Djinn out of commission with this thing—level of Demon this is, if d probably eat him alive, but it'd damn sure poison him past usefulness– so it has to go somewhere. My heart's going. Can't die with this bastard in me."

"Wait—"

"Sorry, time's up." Bad Bob put his drink down, walked over to me, and put his hand on my forehead. His skin felt ice cold. It might have been a compassionate gesture, but he put some strength into it and forced my head down, pinning me against the leather couch. I kicked out at him, writhed, wriggled like an eel regardless of how much pain tore at my arms and wrists. "Don't worry. This'll be quick. Demon goes in, and then I burn you. You probably won't feel much pain at all."

He tried to pry my mouth open. I fought back with every muscle in my body, desperate to get him off me, away,because I could feel it in him now, a black cold hunger devouring him from inside.

"Dammit!" He backed off, blue eyes glittering with rage, and reached out for a bottle of wine—very old, with a flaking, yellowed label and a cork that looked fossilized. He worked the cork out of it, set the bottle on the floor, and said, "I need you."

In the movies they always show Djinn coming out of the bottle in a puff of smoke, but that rarely happens, unless the Djinn is a traditionalist with a sense of humor. Bad Bob's Djinn just appeared– blip– without any dramatics at all. I've always wondered how Djinn decide how to look, and why they always seem to look so nearly human; this one was nearer than most. He looked like an accountant. Suit, straight black tie, pin-striped shirt. Young, but ancient around the eyes. The eyes, of course, gave him away: a kind of phosphorescent green that caught daylight the way a cat's eyes reflect at night.

"Sir?" he asked. He didn't even look at me.

"Hold her down," Bad Bob said. "Don't kill her like you did the last one. It's hard enough to find a match, you know."

The Djinn leaned over and put his hand on my forehead. Instantly, gravity tripled and pinned me down; made it an effort to drag in a breath, much less fight. I wanted to say something, but I knew it wouldn't do any good; Bad Bob wasn't listening, and his Djinn couldn't do anything against his orders. Don't kill her like you did the last one.His Djinn didn't want the Demon moved. Maybe, if I could think fast enough, I could get his help….

"Open her mouth," Bad Bob said. The Djinn laid one fingertip on my lips, and even though I clenched my jaw muscles, I felt it all slipping away, felt my lips parting. Oh, God, no.Maybe I imagined it, but the Djinn's touch seemed to make it less painful, less horrific. Help me. Please stop this.But if he could, or if he even wanted to, there was no sign of it in those inhuman green eyes, clear as emeralds. I felt gray edging in around the knife-sharp spike of fear, the desperate desire to get away.Maybe I could pass out. I wanted to pass out. Anything not to feel this.

The Djinn's touch burned. My lips slid open, and cool air hit the back of my throat with drowning force.

Bad Bob bent over and touched his lips to mine. Not a deep kiss, just a touch. Just enough to create the bridge of flesh. He tasted of booze and stank of fear, and I tried to scream….

Too late.

I felt it squirming in my mouth, shooting tendrils down my throat, invading me in a way that even the worst rape couldn't equal—it was inside me, ripping furiously through my flesh, looking for a place to hide. I tried to scream, tried to vomit, tried to die,but it just kept going, down my throat, burning in my chest, squirming and moving through me like a hand until it closed into a fist around my heart.

The pain was so bad, I left my body and escaped into Oversight, and that was when I saw the Demon Mark for the first time. A black nest of tendrils writhing around the core of my magic, my life, feeding. The last of it slid out of Bad Bob and left him shining and clear of taint.

And utterly devoid of power. He'd carried it for so long that it had eaten away the power he'd started with. He was an empty shell of a man whose heart continued to beat, but I felt the horrible hollow space where this thinghad been.

And then his heart jumped, shuddered, and froze in his chest. His face took on a dull sheen of surprise.

Can't die with this thing inside me.

Oh, God, no. This couldn't be happening.

I felt the particles charging around me, and it reminded me suddenly of Lewis, turning his bloodied face to me, holding out his hand for power. Because it was power forming around me, funneling throughme. Taking the last of the energy that kept Bad Bob alive. I could tastethe drowning blackness of his despair, the wailing terror of his death. The Demon Mark sucked it down and began to taste what was inside me, too, and the sensation was so bitterly wrong that I couldn't help but fight back. It was as instinctive as gagging.

I reached for power, and it came, a rolling white wave through Oversight, circling me like a tornado. It would wreak havoc on the real world, but I didn't have a choice. Every cell in my body, real or aetheric, was screaming to get that thingout of me.

In the real world, the dome house literally exploded. Glass blew out from the windows in a pulverized mist. Wind tore through the room at speeds impossible to withstand and shredded wood to splinters, plastic to shards. The terra-cotta warrior exploded into dust. Charged particles glittered and flashed and rolled like crystal waves around me, storm-ready. So much potential energy, my hair lifted and crackled with it, on the verge of burning. Every circuit in the house blew, frying electronics, starting fires in the walls. In Oversight, the power draw flared photonegative, out of control, and ice crystals began to form around minute particles of dust in the swirling air of the living room.

Outside, steaming hail the size of baseballs, soccer balls, hit the beach; I heard the hard, brittle impacts all over the house. Temperatures soared, then dropped, as pressure rose. Outside, over the sea, clouds massed with incredible speed, darkened, began a lowering rotation.

Bad Bob fell to the floor, a lifeless lump of flesh, already being torn apart by the forces in the room. By my own power, out of control.

His Djinn disappeared into the maelstrom, and I saw the wine bottle picked up by the wind and hurtled against the far wall with so much force, it literally vanished into crystals no larger than sand.

The leather couch I was still lying on was blown back with a tidal force of wind, and I rolled over debris. Shards of glass everywhere; I barely noticed the cuts, but I managed to get my fingers around a sharp needle-edged piece and slashed at the ropes that held my hands until they parted with a moist snap. It hurt, but my standards of pain had changed; a little flesh-and-blood agony was nothing to worry about.

I scrambled until I found a wall at my back. Lightning flashed, and I could feel the thing feeding inside me, out of control; greedy little bastard sucking down every mote of energy. It fed off storms. It fed off the power burning inside me.

I had to shut it off. Somehow, I had to reach down into that– thing—and force it to obey. It was growing inside me, growing angles and cutting edges; it would burst out of me like some evil child and then… and then…

Something warm and gentle touched the back of my neck. Breathe,a voice whispered inside me. Under my skin. Child of air, breathe in your strength.

I gasped in a breath. Another. The air felt warm, smelled faintly of ozone.

The Demon is of the darkness. Use your light.

I opened my eyes and there, in front of me, was the Djinn. Bad Bob's Djinn. He was a column of living fire, a pair of golden eyes, something wonderful and terrible at the same time.

Breathe in your strength,it said again, and when I inhaled, I felt the fire go into me, burning like raw lava down my throat, into the darkness.

Now go.

I was outside in the rain, in the cold, with my arms wrapped around my body, shivering. The surf pounded the dome house, sucked at it like a tasty treat. Overhead, the eye of the storm whirled and stared down on me.

Inside me, the Demon Mark shuddered and went quiet.

I breathed out mist and steam, and around me the energy levels faded. Lightning flashed, hit close, and I felt the burn of ozone on my flesh like the heat of a distant cold sun.

And then I slammed back down, hard,into reality. Cold, wet, windy reality, the storm screaming over tortured waves, the stench of burning and dead things and my sweat. There was something inside me,stuck inside me. I ripped open my shirt, expecting to find—something—some horrible black tangle under the skin. There was only a faint, intricate black scorch mark. I touched it, trembling, and felt the thingunderneath stretch and murmur in its sleep.