Cape Storm

impulses and autonomic functions. I pulled away and stretched to the limit. I arrowed up into the aetheric, feeling the bond stretch and pull, thinner and thinner. At the top of the aetheric, there was a flickering white milky light— the boundary of another world above that one. Another plane of existence. The Djinn could pass through it. Humans couldn’t, not even Wardens.

I touched it, trailed ethereal fingers against the barrier, and looked down. Distances and heights didn’t mean the same things up on the higher planes, but in this sense they did—there was a form of gravity, and momentum, and forces that translated from the aetheric back to the physical.

I let go, turned, and put all my power into an accelerated dive back to my physical body. Instead of letting myself fall, I raced, gathering as much force along the way as I could. Pulling it directly from the aetheric, like the wake from a speedboat. I’d never tried this; I knew that there were Earth Wardens who had, who’d managed to get a power boost through this technique. It wouldn’t last, and it came at a heavy cost, but it was at least something to try.

They never told me how bad it would hurt, though.

Hitting the physical form of my body had a psychic shock wave, like slamming head-on into a bank vault at eighty miles per hour. Then the aetheric wake slammed in behind me, temporarily compressing me inside.

I blew it out through the mark on my back, channeling it through the black lines. It overloaded within an instant, shocking the mark into silence, sending it back into its containment state.

I raised my head and looked David in the eye and mouthed Help. I didn’t know if he’d believe me or not—I almost hoped he wouldn’t—but without him, I knew that sooner or later this was going to end in my death.

My whole body was trembling, anoxic, on the edge of unconsciousness. I couldn’t create oxygen from the toxic soup of molecules left inside this bubble; I’d have to break the shell, get some kind of feed from the outside.

Or maybe I’d die. That wasn’t a bad solution, all things considered. Not my fave, admittedly, but it would save innocent lives, and—

David’s outstretched palm pushed through the hard shell of air. Stress fractures formed as white cracks around his fingers, and then he broke through, and a rush of delicious air fanned my hair back from my face. The bubble disintegrated. I dropped facedown to the floor.

A weight settled on top of me—David, straddling me. Slamming his hand down on top of the black mark, and if I’d thought that sucker was painful already, this was a thousand times worse, so bad that I couldn’t stop screaming, writhing, trying to claw my way out of the pain.

“I’ll kill you!” I was screaming. And worse. And I meant it.

Lewis took my wrists and held me still. Somebody else grabbed my flailing legs and anchored them. It was like old-style surgery without the benefit of anesthesia, this feeling of something vital being cut out of me, bloody and dripping . . .

And then it stopped.

I collapsed, sobbing helplessly. I couldn’t feel David’s hand on my back. I couldn’t feel anything from the nape of my neck to my waistline; it had all gone icily numb.

“Mother of God,” someone among the onlookers murmured, and the tone was so appalled that I wondered just what he was seeing. I didn’t care. It was enough that it didn’t hurt, just for a few precious breaths.

“Get the medical team,” Lewis said. His voice sounded strangely rough, low in his throat. When I turned my head and focused on him, his eyes were red, lids swollen. There were tears tracking down his cheeks.

He was still holding my wrists in a brutally tight grip.

“I’m okay,” I said. I wasn’t. I felt hollow and odd, as if I was floating several feet from my own emotions. “Hey. Don’t worry. I won’t go nuclear on you.” I didn’t think I had anything left, anyway. “I’m losing, you know. Can’t hold it.”

Lewis let go, very slowly, and swiped his arm across his eyes. He sat back on his haunches, and his gaze moved away from me, up and behind.

Locking eyes with David, presumably.

I felt David’s warm hand touch the back of my neck. “Don’t move,” he said. He sounded almost as odd as Lewis. “I need to tell you something.”

This didn’t sound positive. “What?”

“The mark. It’s gone.”

Wasn’t that good? “And?”

There was a short, heavy silence. David said, “It burned off your skin, all the way down to the bone in places. I’ve tried to close the wound, but—”

“It won’t let you,” I finished for him. That explained the emergency numbness covering my entire back, and the shocked trembling of my muscles. I felt cold, too. My body was trying to marshal its resources against a life- threatening crisis. “It doesn’t matter, the mark’s still there. It’s buried inside me. I can’t burn it out. Was anyone hurt?”

David let out an uneven breath. “Other than you?” I felt his weight ease off of me, and then he moved into view, kneeling next to me. Lewis moved out of his way. “No. You didn’t hurt anyone. You fought it off.”

“No. Not really.” I swallowed and tried to order my drifting, scattered priorities. “I saw Bad Bob. He has sixty former Wardens with him. I can tell you where.”

“Jo—” That was Lewis again, soft and almost regretful. “We can’t believe you now. You understand that, don’t you? You can’t know that any of what you saw is real. He could have put it there. He’s a manipulative son of a bitch. Even if it was true, he’ll move before we can get there.”

“He knows,” I said. “He knows we got one of the skins. He’ll be activating the others. You have to move, now. Stop them.”

Lewis tore his gaze away from me. “David, I’m going to need you.”

“No,” David said.

“If this ship goes down, she still dies. Is that what you want?”

David’s eyes flashed—not fire, not bronze, but white-hot, like the flash from the sharp edge of a diamond. “I’ll give you all the power you need. I’ll assign Djinn to you. But I won’t leave her. Don’t ask me again.” The edge to his voice scared me, and I reached out to touch his hand.

“No,” I said. “I’m not dead, I’m just massively screwed up.” I sucked in a deep breath. “Help me sit up.”

David didn’t like the idea, but he saw that if he didn’t, I’d flail around and do it anyway, probably hurting myself even more. “Wait,” he said. “Bandages.”

I suppose the medical team had arrived, because I was lifted up to a sitting position, my arms were raised, and I got wrapped up like a mummy, from waist to just under my armpits. It was a very odd sensation—I could feel every bit of the pressure and texture on my front and sides, but the bandages simply disappeared when they touched my back.

It took care of half the problem that I was naked in the middle of a crowd. Somebody brought in one of the cruise line’s fluffy guest robes, which took care of the other half once I’d gotten it on and belted.

When I faltered getting up, Cherise ducked in and braced me, arms around my waist. David held me up on the other side. “I’d carry you, but—” I understood. There was no way for him to do it without putting pressure on my ruined back.

“It’s fine. I can walk.” I wasn’t sure I could, but damned if I wasn’t going to try. As I stood there catching my breath and my balance, though, I took a look around.

I’d pretty much managed to trash the first-class lounge. The sofa was a skeletal wreck, burned through to the springs. The carpet where I’d been standing (or lying) was melted and blackened into a tangled knot of ash and acrylic fibers. Add to that the still-lingering smoke that curled blackly around the room, seeking exits, and the general reek of burned flesh . . . Yeah. That security deposit was gone for good.

“Sorry,” I apologized, to no one in particular, and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other on the way out of the room.

I heard a dull boom from below us, somewhere in the bowels of the ship, and looked at David’s tense expression.

“It’s not your problem,” he said.

Whether it was or not, he wasn’t going to let me claim responsibility of any kind.