Firestorm (Weather Warden #5)

Firestorm (Weather Warden #5) Page 5

I spent part of the drive napping, and dreaming. Not good dreams. Why couldn't my out-of-body experiences take me to a nice spa, with David giving me oil massages? Why did my brain have to punish me? I was fairly sure that I really didn't deserve it, at least not on a regular basis.

Unsettled by the nightmares, I kicked Imara out of the driver's seat as soon as I was sure I wasn't going to drop off into dreamland without warning. I always felt better driving, and the Camaro had a silky, powerful purr that welcomed me with vibrations through my entire body as I cranked her up. She needed a name, I decided. Something intimidating yet sexy. Nothing was coming to mind, though.

As we cruised along, switching highways about every hour because heaven forbid travel on the East Coast should be easy, I found myself longing for the endless straight roads in the West and South. Maine was beautiful, no doubt about it, but I wanted to drive fast. Responsibility and panic had that effect on me. Being behind the wheel gave me time to think, and there was a lot to think about, none of it good. All of it frightening.

I couldn't stop scrubbing my hand against my skirt, trying to get the phantom feel of the Demon Mark off me. I hadn't been infected. I knew that, intellectually, but it still made my stomach lurch when I thought about how close I'd come.

We stopped for breakfast at a truck stop, and I bought a couple of pairs of blue jeans and tight-fitting T-shirts. My shoes were missing altogether, so I added a sturdy pair of hiking boots and some feminine-looking flip-flops. Best to be prepared.

I paid extra to use the showers, rinsing off grime and mud and exhaustion under the warm beat of the massaging showerhead. Luxury. I wanted to curl up in the warmth and sleep for days, but instead I toweled off, blow-dried my hair into a relatively straight, shimmering curtain, and dressed in the jeans, T-shirt, and hiking boots.

It looked appropriate for Seacasket, anyway.

Back on the road, I fought an increasingly jittery desire to meddle with the weather hanging out to sea. Storms, of course. Big electrical storms, packing loads of wind and swollen with rain; I didn't sense any lethal tendencies in the front, but those were no fluffy happy clouds out there. Black thunderheads, trailing gray veils over the ocean, illuminated from within by constant pastel flutters of lightning. It was, as storms went, nothing more than a surly kid, but it could pack a wallop if it got aggressive. Right now, it was content to glare and mutter, out there at sea. Kicking the tops off waves. That was good; I didn't need more to handle.

Imara had my taste in music. That wasn't too much of a surprise, but it was gratifying. We both belted out the chorus to "Right Place, Wrong Time," both aware of just how appropriate that song was in the radio playlist.

We cruised into Seacasket at just after 7 a.m.

It was one of those Norman Rockwell towns with graceful old bell towers, spreading oaks and elms. A few 1960s-era glass buildings that looked like misguided, embarrassing attempts to bring Seacasket out of the golden age. That was the only impression I had of it, because the one time I'd materialized in the center of town, I'd come as a Djinn, with an irresistible command to burn the town and everyone in it to ashes; that hadn't given me a lot of time for sightseeing, since I'd been desperately trying to find a way to short-circuit my own Djinn hardwiring and save some lives.

The main street was called... Main Street. The turn-of-the-last-century downtown was still kept in good repair, although the hardware stores and milliners had long ago turned into craft stores ("crap stores," as my sister had always dismissively referred to them) and "antique" dealers whose stock-in-trade was reproduction Chinese knockoffs and things that got too dusty over at the craft stores. So far as newcomers, there were a few: Starbucks had set up shop, as had McDonald's down the street. I spotted a couple more fast food giants competing for attention, though sedately; Seacasket must have had one of those no-ugly-sign ordinances that kept things discreet and eye-level, instead of the Golden Arches becoming a hazard to low-flying aircraft.

There was a Wal-Mart. There's always a Wal-Mart.

I pulled into the parking lot toward the side--Wal-Mart had a crowd, of course--and idled the car for a moment, soaking in the atmosphere. When I rolled down the Camaro's window, birds were singing, albeit a bit shrilly, and there was a fresh salt-scented breeze blowing inland. The temperature was cool and fresh, and all seemed right with the Seacasket world.

Which was, in itself, weird.

Imara, in the passenger seat, was watching me curiously. "What are you doing?" she asked.

"I thought you knew everything I did," I said.

"Past, not present or future. Are you reading the weather?"

"Not exactly." Because weirdly enough, there didn't seem to be any weather in Seacasket. Sure, the storm I'd been noticing was still out to sea, but there was an odd energy at work in this town. Something I hadn't felt before. As if the whole place was climate-controlled... which wouldn't have made a lick of sense even if there had been a Warden on-site, which I could tell there wasn't. The Ma'at, maybe? I didn't think so. The Ma'at, rival organization to the Wardens, had their own way of doing things, which mostly involved letting nature have its way while smoothing off the highs and lows of the excesses, under the theory that if you allow the system natural corrections--even costly ones--ultimately, the entire system is more stable, less prone to lethal swings.

There was a certain logic to it, and I wasn't sure I disagreed with the Ma'at in principle... just in practice. Because I simply wasn't cold-blooded enough to sit back and watch a disaster. I could easily prevent them from taking innocent lives. Not for a theory. It didn't surprise me that the Ma'at mostly seemed composed of older men, who'd cultivated the detachment of politicians and CEOs.

This wasn't the Ma'at, though. This felt more like Djinn work, except...

I turned in the seat and faced Imara. "What can you tell me?"

She cocked her head, looking interested but not committed. "About?..."

"You know what David knew, right? So? What can you tell me about Seacasket?"

She'd inherited more from her father than just knowledge; I saw that in the flash of secrets in her eyes. "Not very much."

"I need to know where to find this Oracle thing. You're supposed to be my native guide, kid. So guide."

"Maybe I don't know how to find it." She lifted one shoulder in a shrug, and kept her metallic Djinn stare straight on me. Intimidating, but it didn't hide the fact that she was being evasive.

"Yes, you do. Why are you being so--"

"Evasive?" she shot back, and ran her fingers through her long, straight black hair. My hair was curling again in the humidity. I resented her hair. Secretly. "Possibly because this is certain death for a human to attempt, and I might not want you to die just yet."

"If you didn't think I could do it, why come with me?"

She smiled slightly, and those eyes looked entirely alien all of a sudden. "Maybe Father told me to."

"Maybe you and your Father--" I reined myself in, unclenched my fists, and took in a deep breath. "Don't make me do this."

"Do what?"

"Test whether or not you're really Djinn."

She smiled. "If you're thinking about claiming me, that arrangement died with Jonathan. It won't work."

"Something simpler than that." I took in a quick breath. "Where do I find the Oracle?"

"Mom--"

"Where do I find the Oracle?"

Ah, now she got it. And she was surprised, and pissed off, too. I saw the flare of temper in her eyes. "The Rule of Three. You wouldn't."

"Where do I find the Oracle?"

Three times asked, a Djinn has to answer truthfully. Of course, truth has a nearly limitless shade of interpretations; I probably hadn't framed my question closely enough to get a real answer from her, but she'd have to stick close to the subject... if the Rule of Three was still in effect.

Which it looked like it wasn't, as my daughter continued to glare furiously at me with eyes that were starting to remind me more of Rahel's than David's--predatory, primal, eternal. Not good to piss off any Djinn, especially now that humans had virtually no protection from them... Imara abruptly said, "It's close."

She didn't say it willingly, either; it seemed to be dragged out of her, and when she'd gotten to the end of the sentence she clenched her teeth tight and fell back into silent glaring.

Oh, I needed to be careful now. Very, very careful.

"Where exactly is the Oracle? Where exactly is the--"

"Stop!" She threw up her hand. "If you do that again, I'm leaving, and you won't ever see me again. Ever."

I swallowed hard. She looked serious about that, and seriously angry. "I'm sorry," I said. "But I need information. In case you haven't noticed, this is getting a little more important than just respecting your feelings, Imara. I need to do this. It all looks fine here, but believe me, it's not fine out there in the big wide world. If you ever want to see any of it, you'd better help me. Right now."

She blinked and looked away at the gently fluttering leaves of the oak tree that spread its shade over the car. A couple of kids sped by on bikes, and another rumbled by on a skateboard. Nobody paid us much attention. Wal-Mart parking lots were anonymous.

"You don't understand how it feels," she said. "Losing your will like that. Being--emptied out."

"Don't I?"

"Well--maybe you do." To her credit, Imara looked a little embarrassed about that. She had my memories; she knew the time I'd spent as Kevin's pet Djinn, forced into little French maid outfits, fending off his adolescent advances. "All right. Just ask. But don't do it again. Please."

"I won't if you'll answer."

"Fine." She pulled in a fast breath and turned away, not meeting my eyes. "There are a few places--less than a dozen around the world--where the fabric between the planes of existence is paper-thin. Where the Djinn can reach up higher or down deeper. These are--holy places, would be the only way I know to put it. Conduits. Places where we can touch the Mother, where we can--" It wasn't that she was avoiding an explanation; she just couldn't find the words. "The Oracle can be reached there. But Mom, don't mistake me: The Djinn protect these places."

Imara wasn't using the words holy places lightly. I hadn't known the Djinn had a religion, other than generic Earth Mother stuff, but if they did, they'd have kept it secret. They'd been a slave race for so long that they'd protect what was precious to them.

Especially against intrusions by humans.

"Seacasket," I said aloud, and shook my head. Because Seacasket didn't exactly look like the kind of place you'd expect to find exotic spirituality. Or maybe that was just because I couldn't quite imagine something spiritual sitting in the Wal-Mart parking lot. "You still haven't told me where to go to find the Oracle."

She looked deeply uncomfortable, and for a few seconds I thought that I was going to have to invoke the Rule of Three, even though that would break something fragile between us. "It's not far."

"Yeah, so you said. Can you take me there?" "No!" she blurted angrily, and pounded the steering wheel in a fit of fury. "It's not a place for humans. Even the Djinn sometimes get hurt there. You can't! I'm not even sure I can!"

Imara might know my experiences--might have been formed from parts of me--but she certainly didn't understand me on a very basic level. Oddly, that was comforting. She wasn't just a mirror image of me with some freaky-deaky eyes; she was her own person, separate from me.

And I could still surprise her.

"I'll find a way," I said. "You just show me the door. I'll get through it even if I have to pick the lock."

It sounded like bravado--hell, it was bravado. I wasn't some kick-ass Djinn babe anymore; I hadn't been entirely kick-ass even when I'd been a Djinn (though I'd been fairly smug about the babe part). My Warden powers were back up and running, however, and if anything, they were considerably stronger than they had been on the night Bad Bob Biringanine had give me a Demon Mark, the gift that keeps on giving, and generally screwed up my life for good.

But I was still just human. Body and soul. All of which I was hoping to keep together for a little while longer, apocalypse notwithstanding.

Imara was thinking about it, I could see, but finally she just sighed. Maybe she did understand me, after all.

At least enough to acknowledge that I wasn't about to take "no way in hell" for an answer.

She said, "There's a cemetery in the center of town. Which is convenient, because you're going to get yourself killed."

In Seacasket, even the cemetery was photogenic. Norman Rockwell hadn't specialized in morbid art, but if he had, he'd have painted this place; it had a certain naivete that begged for cute kids in adorable Halloween costumes to be playing hide-and-seek behind charmingly weathered gravestones. Or Disneyfied witches to be offering lemonade from a cauldron. It was the most wholesome cemetery I'd ever seen.

We parked on the street, near the town square, and walked across to the black wrought-iron fence. The gates were open, the paths in the place were fresh-raked clean white gravel, and the grass was almost impossibly green. Fat squirrels gamboled in lush spreading trees. Some of the dignified (and a few quirky) headstones were well-kept, and others had been allowed to grow with wild-flowers and vines. Not messily, though. Even the neglect looked planned.

Imara's steps slowed and stopped, and I stopped with her. She was staring at the ground, and as I watched, she lowered herself to a kneeling position on the gravel, both hands upraised, palms up.

"Imara?" No answer. "Imara, where do I go?"

She was lost in prayer, or whatever it was. I waited for a few seconds, then looked around. Up ahead, there was a big white mausoleum. The name over the lintel read GRAYSON. The doors were shut.

I took a couple of steps toward it, gravel crunching briskly.

Imara's voice froze me. "Don't move!"

I teetered, then caught my balance and glanced around. There was nobody else in evidence. Just us, the squirrels, and some scolding birds who didn't think this was an appropriate place for us to be strolling. "What is it?" I asked, trying not to move my lips. And then I realized that there were two Djinn standing, very silently, watching me. They blended in so perfectly, they'd been in plain sight the entire time... One was as pale as marble, with flowing white hair, dressed in shades of white and gray--an angel off its marble headstone, only with eyes the color of rubies. The other one was standing under a tree, and maybe I was crazy, but I could have sworn that her skin was dappled in camouflage patterns that moved and shifted with the wind.

As if they'd gotten the same message, both the Djinn started moving toward me. Ruby-red eyes gleaming.

Imara swung her head to stare fiercely at me. "Mom, dammit, if you're going, go!"

She put her hand in the small of my back and shoved. I lunged forward, off-balance, and then broke into a sprint. I dodged right, but the camouflage Djinn sprang forward like a tiger, snarling, and caught me with a backhanded blow across the face.

It was like slamming full speed into a metal bar. I staggered and went down, my head full of pain and fury, and some instinct made me roll out of the way just as a clawed hand slashed at my midsection.

"Mom!"

A blur hit the Djinn and rolled it away, snarling and clawing. Imara. I got to one knee, swaying, then fought my way upright. I tasted blood and spat out a mouthful on the cheerful green grass.

A heavy gray hand fell on my shoulder and spun me around. Up close, the tombstone-angel Djinn looked utterly terrifying. Remorseless, remote, and deadly.

It carried a dagger. Not metal... it didn't flash in the sunlight as it lifted toward me. Some kind of stone. I screamed and backpedaled, summoning up a burst of wind to smack the thing in the chest.

It was a Djinn. It should have been thrown back, because Djinn are essentially air... only the air didn't come at my command. I could feel it trying to, but there was something else holding it in place. Something far, far larger than I was.

Imara was right. Running was a really good plan.

I was disoriented, but survival was a great motivator; I dodged through the tombstones, moving as fast as I could. Leaping over what I couldn't avoid. The iron-bar fence was ahead of me, topped with Gothic triangular spikes; no way was I vaulting that thing. I couldn't count on the wind to give me any lift, either. I had to make it to the gates.

It occurred to me that the Djinn were playing with me. Robbed of my Warden powers, I didn't have any reasonable way to fight. Imara was running interference, but I could tell at a glance that she was overmatched with a single opponent, much less two.

The Djinn were determined to drive us out of the cemetery, which meant that this was the place I needed to be.

I headed for the gates at a dead sprint, reversed in a spray of gravel, and yelled, "Imara! I need a path!"

She was neck-deep in tiger-fighting, but she ripped free, flashed across the grass, and tackled the tombstone-angel Djinn into the trees. The tiger-Djinn was momentarily occupied with getting up.

I had a clear white gravel path leading to the center of the cemetery, and I took it at a pace that would have clocked in respectably at the Olympics. Panic and raw determination gave me wings, and I flashed past the tiger-Djinn. It grabbed a handful of my hair, but not enough to stop me; I sobbed breathlessly at the agony as it ripped loose from my scalp, and I hit the doors of the mausoleum hard.

They opened, spilling me inside.

I continued to fall forward.

Kept on falling.

No way was it this far to the floor...

I opened my eyes and looked. I was floating in midair, or falling, or something--I felt like I was falling, but then that abruptly fixed itself, and my feet settled onto the ground. Or what felt like ground. There was no sky, no ground, and every side of the room looked exactly the same. It was dim, gray, and lit by what looked like a firepit in the center.

Nothing else.

I waited, heart hammering, for some kind of a response. For the Djinn outside to come howling in here and chop me to screaming pieces.

Outside, I heard nothing. An ominous nothing.

This place had a sense of energy in it, something primal and deep. I tried going up to the aetheric to take a look, and for a second I thought that I'd just simply failed, because everything looked just the same.

Then I realized that the room hadn't changed, but that I was drawn in typical glowing aetheric shades and shadows. The room was somehow real on the aetheric plane, too.

I'd never seen anything like that, outside of the house where Jonathan had lived out on the edges of nowhere and nothing.

I felt a hot surge of anguish, thinking of Imara potentially fighting for her life outside, while I waited in here for... for what? What made me think the Oracle would even notice me, much less deign to talk to me?

Something floated lazily at the corner of my eye, a barely seen shadow, and I turned my head, frowning.

The Demon Mark.

It had followed me.

I backed off, terrified, trying to think of a single thing I could do. Nothing came to mind. It had me cornered. There was no place to run, and certainly no place to hide, unless I planned to jump into the fire...

The Demon Mark floated toward me, then veered suddenly off target and plunged headlong into the fire.

I heard the fire scream.

I took a big step back from the open pit, heart racing. The fire blazed up a little, flickering red and orange. No discernible source. It looked, smelled, and radiated warmth like a genuine flame.

What had I done? Oh, my God... the fire. The fire was the Oracle, and I'd brought the Demon Mark right to it. The screaming ratcheted up to a level that made me clap my hands over my ears. I blinked away tears. The incredible, heartrending pain in the sound... The Oracle was in trouble. Serious trouble. I had no idea what to do. I'd temporarily stymied the Demon Mark once, but twice was pushing it, and there was no handy geyser of power around for me to use as bait. The Oracle was the most powerful thing in the room.

The fire suddenly blazed up and out, fanning my face with heat; I scrambled backward and got to my feet. As I hovered there, torn between a total lack of options, a hand reached out of the center of the flame, and flailed on the stone floor. Groping for my help. It wasn't human, exactly--it was molten, white-hot, with curved talons instead of fingernails. Where it touched the floor, stone smoked and melted. Claws left inch-deep channels in the softening granite.

The screaming ate at my soul. I had to do something. Anything.

The hand flailed again, fingers opening and closing in agony. It was a stupid thing to do, but I couldn't stand being the cause of this. I dropped to my knees, sucked in a steadying breath, and tried to remember what Lewis had shown me back at the Wardens' offices.

And then, before I could think of the ten thousand reasons to stop, I reached out and grabbed the wrist of that flaming, white-hot hand. The hand instantly twisted, and closed around my forearm. Talons dug in, cruelly sharp and hot as acid. I hauled, hard, and felt something pulling back, trying to yank me inside that searing fire. I could smell the greasy stink of hair starting to fry. My hair. God, I hated fire.

I pulled harder, with every muscle in my body, and I got the Oracle's head and shoulders out of the bonfire. It was humanish, if not human in form. Broad, strong shoulders. Skin--if you could call it skin--that had the burnished metallic look of a statue, but throbbed with living, swirling patterns of heat. Tongues of flame rose off of his back, his outstretched arms...

When he lifted his head, still screaming, I saw the Demon Mark, flailing away on the surface of his molten skin. Trying to eat through and devour him. The Mark was turning restlessly, twisting. Where it touched him, I could see a hideous blackened patch. It seemed to be spreading. The thing was toxic to him.

If he was connected to the Mother--connected directly, in a way we mere humans weren't, and more than the average Djinn--how much more damage would this do once it got into her bloodstream? I had a sudden, sickening comprehension of just how good a deed I'd done earlier in evicting the Demon Mark from the geyser of power outside of New York.

Until I'd screwed it up here.

The Oracle was looking at me. There was a suggestion of eyes in that heat-blurred face. The scream continued, but there was even more of an edge to it now, as if he was trying to convince me.

Beg me.

I really wasn't the self-sacrificing type. If somebody had told me that I needed to voluntarily take a Demon Mark a year ago to save the world, I'd have burned rubber to get away from the idea. But things had changed. I had changed. I had a daughter out there, and people I loved.

I had too much to lose to walk away and save my own skin. And besides, this was my screwup, and I had to make it right.

I reached out and put my hand flat over the Demon Mark. This time, I did it deliberately.

I gagged at the squirming cold touch of it, but I didn't pull away. The flames beating hot against my skin didn't burn me--I hung on to enough of my limited Fire Warden ability to manage that--but I felt the Oracle's claws raking the tender skin of my left forearm. I focused on that pain, clear and pure, and let it flow through me to wall me off from the horrible sensation of the Demon Mark squirming under my fingers.

No way was I more powerful than the Oracle. The Demon Mark ignored me. It always, inevitably went with the bigger bonfire...

I was going to have to do this the hard way.

I gagged at the thought, but I closed my hand into a fist around the Demon Mark--in reality and in the aetheric--and began to pull it off.

It felt cold and slimy as a handful of thrashing worms, and it didn't want to let go. It stretched like rubbery elastic, and then it came loose with a sudden, wet smack in my hands. If I hadn't kept hold of it on the aetheric, it wouldn't have worked. If I hadn't been as strong a power as I was, it wouldn't have worked, either, but the Demon Mark decided to let go of the tough-shelled Oracle in favor of a softer target.

The Oracle collapsed facedown on the floor, and the saw-edged screaming came to a halt. I heard my sobbing breaths echoing in the room, and then fire exploded out around his body in a blinding white blaze, hot enough to singe my hair and drive me all the way back against the cool stone wall. I squeezed my eyes shut because it was getting brighter, and brighter, and I could still see the glow even through my tight-clenched lids. I closed my fist over the nauseatingly eager squirm of the Demon Mark. It was burrowing under my skin, sliding cold through my pores. It was happening faster this time, and the sensation was so horrible that I was weeping, sobbing, shaking with the urge to fling the thing away from me. It was like being stabbed with a wet, slimy knife in exquisitely slow motion.

I had to get rid of this thing, even if it meant losing my hand.

I banged through the door of the mausoleum and stumbled back out into the brilliant sunshine. It felt cold as ice to me, after the heat inside. I kept my fist clenched and staggered out, trying to think of something, anything I could do.

Lightning. It's the visual signal of an energy shift between potential and actual energy, with light and heat as the by-products. Billions of electrons have to line up in a chain for lightning to actualize, and because like draws like, a chain forming out of the sky will be drawn to a chain building up out of the ground, and when that last electron snaps into place, and the energy transfers, it has so much power that it can vaporize steel, for a fraction of a second, at least.

It might be able to stun, or kill, a Demon Mark... if I could manage a direct hit:

I pushed at the artificial tension holding the sky together overhead. The power controlling it was vast and hard-edged, but fragile. I battered at it with the strength of desperation until I felt it crack, and saw energy flare up among the gathering clouds.

Enough. More than enough.

Oh God, this was going to hurt...

In one desperate wrench, I grabbed the Demon Mark, ripped it loose, and threw it on the ground. It seemed unnaturally heavy. It hit the grass and immediately began to scuttle back toward me, moving like a spider on PCP.

It was too close, but I triggered the lightning anyway as the thing leaped for me. You don't see it, when that kind of power hits that close to you; you feel the overwhelming burn, and for a few seconds afterward, you really can't be sure that the lightning didn't actually hit you, because the coronal effect is so strong.

So it took a few seconds for my mind to fight off the sound, light, and pressure, of the near-miss and reconstruct from the evidence what had happened. There was a tree on fire, five feet away. The top half of it was charred black, and part of it had been blown clean off. Limbs had been blown off and were still flaming on the green, green graves.

There was a smoking black hole in the grass where the Demon Mark had been. Either I'd killed it, or I'd convinced it to find an easier snack elsewhere.

My knees buckled, and I went hard to the gravel. Ouch. When I pitched forward, the heels of my hands dug into sharp-edged rock, and I saw blood spattering the pristine white stones, dripping from my nose and mouth.

I swallowed hard, and then Imara was in front of me, eyes wide, grabbing for my elbow. She looked a little worse for wear--clothes torn, a few cuts and bruises. Her eyes were terrified.

"I'm fine," I said. My voice seemed to come faint and from a long distance out. "Are you okay?"

"We have to go, now. The Djinn are angry--"

Except that apparently the Djinn were so angry that they'd... left. No sign of the two that Imara had been going toe-to-toe with, which was odd. Just us, the mausoleum, the trees, the headstones.

"Not yet," I said. "I'm not finished."

"Mom, no!"

"Stay here." I climbed back to my feet, swaying, bracing myself on her shoulder for a long moment before turning back to the mausoleum.

There was a Djinn standing in front of it. Not really a Djinn, though--more. Other. He was... beautiful. All Djinn are made of fire, at some level, but he was fire personified, fire eternal. His body could barely contain the heat and the fury, and it rippled in patterns right under his translucent skin.

His eyes were flame. His hair was smoldering red.

He was the most gorgeously wild thing I'd ever seen. Terrifying and utterly sensual. He didn't say a word to me, just stared, and after a moment, he extended his burning hand toward me. I stayed still, aware that my heart was beating like a gong, that I was dripping with sweat and terror. Aware that if he touched me, I'd probably burn like oil left on a hot engine.

I'd healed the Oracle, or at least freed him from his prison. There was still a discolored black stain on his chest, just where his heart would have been in a human, but he seemed... better.

He didn't touch me. He just cocked his head to one side, watching.

I heard a rustle of clothing. Imara was down on the ground, abased, hiding her face. I suspected that the Oracle wasn't someone who got out much, and when he did, he caused quite a stir.

I was too giddy to be impressed.

"Favor for a favor," I said. "I need to get a message to the Mother. Can you help me?" He didn't make a sound. If I hadn't heard that tremendously awful shrieking earlier, I'd have thought he was mute.

He continued to hold out his hand. It shimmered and flickered with heat, like the surface of the sun.

"Don't," Imara whispered. She'd raised her head, watching, but flinched again and hid her eyes when the Oracle turned his attention toward her. "Please, don't!"

I slowly extended my hand and touched his.

Glory rolled through me, and I exploded into flame.

I heard Imara scream, and I wanted to tell her it was all right, but words were useless. Meaningless. What I became in that moment was... transcendent, and for an instant, an instant, I could feel everything. Everyone. I could feel the long, slow, sleeping pulse of the Mother. I could taste the metallic chill of her nightmares.

It flooded into me in images rather than words. Forests burning. Rivers contaminated with greasy pollution. Skies roiling with black filth. Oil-covered birds. Dead, floating fish. Butchered whales. Clubbed dolphins. Death, and death, and death. Cows screaming in slaughterhouses. Pesticides poisoning everything for miles, from the smallest insect to the largest predatory birds.

Humans, a stinking flood on the Earth, unregulated by her natural defenses. Arrogant. Untouchable as a species by any but the greatest of predators... Earth herself.

A furious desire to bring us to heel.

No. No, we're not like that!

I tried sending a countermessage, but the poison had filtered into me, too; what could I say about that? It was true. All true. We were a plague upon the Earth, and we deserved what we got...

No!

I struggled to fight it back. Images of people working together. Of groups on beaches, pouring salt water over stranded whales, struggling to keep them alive until tides could come to the rescue. Environmental specialists restoring oceans and waters, reclaiming them from pollution. We care. We know. We try. Laws to protect endangered species. Jane Goodall, living with her primates. National parks, carefully tended. Children nursing injured animals back to health. We're not monsters. We're not your enemy.

It wasn't enough. I felt it swept away in the black tide of fury coming from the other side, and then something batted at me, vast and languid, and sent me flying.

The contact between my fingers and the Oracle's broke, and I staggered backward, moaning. My clothes were smoking.

The Oracle was gone. The conduit was closed.

I had no idea what to do now. For the first time I could remember, I'd completely, utterly failed. Flat busted. I wanted to sit down against the cool marble and weep, because I felt like I'd fought so hard, and come to the end of things with nothing but exhaustion and despair to show for it.

But I wasn't much for giving up. Not for more than a few cold, lightless seconds. There had to be something else I could do, and I'd have to think of it. Figure it out. Maybe I actually would have, if I'd had the time. The fact was that I didn't. Imara, helping steady me with an arm around my shoulders, froze. "Oh, no."

A man in a natty gray suit turned the corner on the street and entered the cemetery. Tall, strong, perfect posture.

Ashan. Jonathan's third-in-command, after David. Heir apparent to the throne, who hadn't gotten what he thought he deserved.

Things were definitely worse.