Firestorm

all nature. Weeds strangle wheat. Bees go to war against each other. Humans are just… better at it.'

Nothing. But she didn't turn away, either. I felt tears break free, and I didn't try to stop them. So much to cry for, right now.

'Please,' I whispered, out of strength. I leaned forward and rested my forehead on her lap. Soft fabric rustled around me as she shifted, and her scarred right hand slowly moved to rest on top of my hair.

I felt something tug inside and heard my deathclock tick faster. Faster. Years running out of me with every exhaled, terrified breath. It was going to end quietly after all. Not in blood and fire and storm, but in silence.

When there was nothing left, I collapsed in a heap at her feet, on top of the pooled brick-red fabric of her dress. It wasn't fabric. It felt like sun-warmed stone. It smelled like the empty, quiet places, and clean wind, and for a few seconds, it didn't seem to matter so much, that everything would be gone that I knew. That I loved.

She was offering me peace.

The hell with that. Peace was overrated.

I reached out with one flailing hand, grabbed hold of the bench beside me, and pulled myself into an awkward sitting position. Staring up at her. 'No,' I said. 'Hear me. Hear me. Listen. We're a part of you. Hear us!'

Millions of voices, talking. Babbling.

—scared, honey, there's nothing to be afraid of—

—Ayudame, padre—

—Jag inte den sa goda känselförnimmelsen—

A storm of languages, of voices. Merging into one sound.

Into a jagged, discordant human chorus, six billion strong.

The Oracle slowly tilted her head, listening. I clapped my hands over my ears, but it wasn't enough; the din was enough to beat right through the barrier, billions of voices shouting in my ears. Howling. Scared.

And one of them said—Listen.

I knew that voice. That low, calm voice, with its blur of warmth and assurance.

Lewis was speaking, too. Lewis, who was like Jonathan had been, who had the keys to power. Once I'd opened up the line, it was like creating a network, and all he had to do was tap in.

I felt him, as if he was actually in the room with me.

Maybe he was, in a sense. I saw the Oracle's blind stare go away from me, to some empty spot in the chapel.

The Oracle's head turned back toward me. One of her hands raised in a graceful, slow motion, and the babble of voices ceased.

And I heard a voice speak, a single voice, and it was vast and huge and unknowable.

Something broke with a sharp tug in my chest, and for a second I thought, This is it, we're all dying, but then I felt—heard?—the clock that had been speeding along inside slow down.

Then wind backward.

Now that was a weird sensation. I gasped and held on to the bench for dear life, gulping down nausea, and then, with a subtle and whispered pulse, everything just…

… went back to normal.

All over the world, human beings stopped feeling bad, paused in the act of dialing 911 or their local equivalents. Stopped clinging to each other in fear. Felt vaguely embarrassed by that sense of sheer terror that had gripped them for thirty long seconds of eternity.

The Mother had stopped in midhousecleaning.

The Oracle considered me, and then extended a single pointing finger.

I felt something stir inside, and then grow. Waves of heat and sensation coursing through me, beating like wings. Each one more intense than the last, shaking me free of the flesh. Hot golden pressure bursting through my mind, dissolving me in showers and waves and pulses of ecstasy. I let go and floated on wave after wave of incandescent glory.

The Oracle smiled, and dropped her hand back to her side, and I slowly drifted back into my body.

When it was over, there was something left behind. A slow, rich, deep pulse of power. Connection. Rhythms that I'd never felt before, or had any idea existed within my own body.

The Oracle turned away and took her seat again, contemplating the bright red rocks outside, the washed blue sky, the molten sun.

She looked peaceful. So peaceful.

I turned to go back out into the world.

Ashan was standing in the chapel. Staring at me with murderous, bloody fury. I backed up a step and shot a look at the Oracle, but she was sealed in that silent contemplation again. Might as well have been a thousand miles away from the confrontation going on three feet from her.

'It's over,' I said. 'Back off, Ashan.'

'No,' he growled. He was far from the polished, self-contained Djinn I'd come to know and fear—this one was primal, reduced to his most basic instincts to inflict pain and terror. 'Not you. I won't be your slave!'

I'm not asking you to…

I would have said it, but he didn't give me the chance. He lunged forward, exactly as he'd lunged at Imara, and I was glad to see him come for me, glad, because I wanted this monster dead more than I'd ever wanted anyone dead in my life.

I reached for power, intending to finish this once and for all, but I wasn't fast enough. He grabbed my head and held it between his hands, and I knew I was one millisecond from a broken neck, dead like my child, oh God, Imara…

Instead, he held me still and stared into my eyes, and I felt something happening. I fought to get free, but he was too strong, and whatever it was, he was doing it up on the aetheric levels, too—

Something in me ripped away, something vital and irreplaceable, and I felt a liquid heat race through my head, burning, erasing, taking me away from the world…

No.

The Oracle moved. Impossible, that something so composed of stillness could move so fast, but Ashan was in her hands and being pulled back and down, still snarling and fighting.

Whatever he'd done to me, it was still happening. I swayed, gasping, and grabbed for a bench. Missed. Thumped hard to my hands and knees.

Ashan was on the floor, too, and something was happening to him, something bad… the woman, the thing, she was bending over him and there was a pure white light and screaming, so much screaming…

… and when it was over, she was sitting on a bench, staring straight ahead as if she'd never moved. Never would.

The gray-haired man with the pale, young face rolled over on his side, still screaming. Something different about him now. He was weeping, gagging on every breath.

Not a Djinn at all now. Just a man. Human.

Cast out from the angels.

… what was a Djinn?

I'd known his name once, hadn't I? And this place, I knew it, too… there was a haunting feeling of déjà vu, but I couldn't remember…

Couldn't remember.

There was a popping sound, like thin glass dropped on stone, and without any more warning than that a naked man was lying on the floor near the altar. Golden skin, auburn hair. When his eyes opened, they were the color of melting brass, fierce and hot and inhuman.

I flinched and scrambled out of his way. Toward the other man, who was at least human.

'No—' The metallic one reached out, trying to grab hold of me, and I pulled away. 'Jo, what's happened to —?'

I had no idea who he was, but he frightened me. Scenes flickered in front of my eyes, people I didn't know, a life I'd never lived. Terrifyingly vivid, but they had nothing to do with me, did they? I didn't know these people, these places. I didn't know… it was all so confusing…