Total Eclipse

“Oh my God, he’s not still in there . . . ?”

If he was, I’d just lost him forever. The enormity of it slammed in on me so hard that I literally lost my balance, and Cherise had to grab my arm to keep me from toppling into the size sevens. If you hurt him, I thought to the Air Oracle, if you kill him, I will destroy you. I don’t know how, but I will.

“It couldn’t,” I said aloud, and tried to make myself believe it. “David’s not just anybody. It can’t just kill him. Even Ashan wouldn’t ignore that.”

Presuming anything made sense anymore. Presuming Ashan, the leader of the Old Djinn, had an identity of his own, still, and was capable of making his own decisions. If the Mother was waking up, the Djinn were lost to us as individuals, and while she might notice and care about the Djinn David, the human David might not even be noticed.

“I’ll go back,” Cherise said.

“Are you mental? You’re not going anywhere!”

“Well, you’d go back. And I’m kind of you, now.”

“No, Cher, you’re not! Just—I told you to stay in the car!”

“You’d be dead if I had!”

Well, she did have a point there. “I have to find David,” I said.

“Yeah, what’s your plan for that? Mall intercom?”

“No,” I said. “Movies.”

We headed out of the shoe store, which was inexplicably halfway across the mall, and made the best possible time back to the multiplex cinema outside the food court. The sign was no longer flashing ENTER HERE, or making dire threats. It was advertising a Disney film.

I turned a slow circle, taking in the standard mall view—tiled floors, towering indoor plants, escalators, elevators, stores, shoppers, food vendors with all their flashing neon. Crying children and harassed clerks.

Someone in a black windbreaker and cheap uniform pants moved past us, walking fast. Mall security, talking on a brick of a walkie-talkie. She sounded tense, although she was keeping her voice down.

I zeroed in on her and followed.

“Where are we going?” Cherise asked. I didn’t answer. “Because we really need to get out of here. This Oracle person wasn’t fooling around, you know.”

“The Air Oracle has no set space,” I said. “It can go anywhere it wants. If it wants to get to us, it will.”

“Oh, that’s comforting. You could have told me that before I pissed it off.”

Despite everything, I smiled. “Yeah,” I said. “I could have. But it wouldn’t have been as much fun.”

“Bitch.” Cherise fell silent, because the mall security lady was hurrying even more now, heading for a figure slumped on a bench with two more security guards around it. One pale hand was resting on the tiled floor, and I could see blood dripping.

As the security guards turned to look at the new-comer, I saw a glimpse of auburn hair.

“David!” I shrieked it, couldn’t stop myself, and plunged for the knot of people without any regard for my own safety, or theirs. They sensibly got out of my way, and oh God, I was right. It was him.

David was lying on the bench, curled on his side, breathing shallowly. His face was shockingly pale, and he looked . . . fragile. Terribly . . . human. There was blood, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

He opened his eyes when I touched his face, and it took a few seconds for him to focus on me. When he did, relief flooded through him, and he tried to sit up. “No!” I said, and made him stop. “What happened?”

“I was right behind you,” he said. “But you were gone. You were gone, and I was running—”

“You know this man?” one of the officers said. “Miss?”

“He’s my husband,” I said. My voice was shaking. “David, are you okay?”

“He ran into a plate glass window,” the guard said. “He’s got a nasty cut on his side. Paramedics are on the way. Sir, have you been drinking?”

“What?” I sat back on my heels, staring up at him. I couldn’t honestly understand what he was talking about. “Drinking?”

“He came out of nowhere and ran face- first into the glass,” the guard said. “Usually that means alcohol or drugs. Maybe both.”

“No. No, he just—he was looking for me.” I looked down at David’s pale face, at the red, human blood soaking his shirt. “He was afraid for me.”

“Guess I had no reason to be,” he said, and tried to smile, but it turned into a wince. “What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Liar,” he whispered. His eyes closed for a few seconds, then opened again. “Cherise? I thought we told you to stay in the car.”

She shrugged, back to her old self. “It’s the mall,” she pointed out, blankly mystified. “I thought you were kidding. Hey, and I saved your girl, so there.”

He looked at me a little doubtfully, so I smiled. “She did,” I said. “Although to be fair she almost got us both smashed, too.”

“Sounds right. Help me up.”

“Nope. You’re staying down.”

The security guards didn’t quite know what to make of us now. . . . They’d pegged us as drunken troublemakers, but we weren’t acting that way. A little giddy with relief, maybe but not intoxicated—though I admit, if somebody had passed me a bottle, I’d have taken a generous swig right about then.

All three of the guards’ radios suddenly crackled, and a voice on the other end brayed, “Get over here, guys, right now! South entrance, in front of the—”

It broke up into static. The three security guards exchanged a what now? look, and then the most senior of them looked down at me. “Miss, you stay right here. Paramedics will be here in a couple of minutes.”

I nodded, and the three windbreakers hustled off into the milling crowd, heading for whatever trouble was brewing. I started to return my attention to David, but I heard something.

Screaming.

Coming from the south entrance, which was all the way at the other end of the mall. The screaming was dopplering our way, and as I stood up to look, I saw that at the long straight end of the hall, people had rounded the corner and were stampeding in full flight in our direction. Some were still carrying shopping bags, but I had the impression that it was only because it hadn’t occurred to them to drop everything. They certainly weren’t slowing down as they ran, and I wondered exactly what could have put a full hundred dedicated shoppers to flight. Terrorism? Fire? Ebola?

I felt a tremor through the floor, and felt a sick twisting in my stomach. “Change of plans,” I said. “David, up. We’ll help you get back to the car. “Cher—where’s Kevin?”

“In the car.”

“He let you go by yourself?”

“I told him I had to use the bathroom.”

Well, that wouldn’t hold him for long, if I knew Kevin. As I looked around, I saw that most of the mall crowd had taken alarm and was streaming for the exits—not yet running at this end, but certainly moving with purpose.

One tall, lanky, skinny figure was pushing through upstream, heading for us. “Jesus,” he said, taking us in as he arrived. “When you chicks go to the mall, you really tear the place up.”

He was looking toward the south, where the screaming crowd originated, and I said, “What do you see?” I felt frustratingly handicapped, as I helped David to sit up and got his hand firmly placed over the wound in his side. “Kev?”

“No idea,” he admitted. “It’s just a mass of— something. I can’t see what it is, except it’s heading this way, and I think all these people running might have a real good idea.”

He grabbed David’s arm and hoisted him to his feet, taking most of David’s weight, and we blended with the