Page 38 (1/2)

Because he&039;d come He&039;d said he&039;d always coht now more than I ever had

He didn&039;t co sharp slice my cheek-blown metal, maybe, or maybe only a palm frond-and saw blood whip red in a stream into the wind

I wasn&039;t ready to die I didn&039;t want to die like this Not like this I&039;d faced it so many times already, and it was all bad, but this

Please, I prayed

A figure appeared out of the blur of the storramp for stability, and when he turned his head towardwith rain All his polish was gone, and as left was frighteningly priht hold of the duct tape around ers

For a frozen second, I couldn&039;t say anything at all He looked insane Insane and oddly turned on

"Ask me," he shouted Even six inches away, the wind nearly ripped his words into nonsense He tugged on the duct tape binding me "Ask me!"

"Please," I screa teeth, and reached into his pocket Came up with a switchblade knife that he flicked open with a practiced twist of his hand The blade was at least six inches long, and gleaht

"Please what?" he asked, and put the knife to exposed skin just under the notch of my collarbone "Articulate, my love Speak up"

"Please save , and slowly took the knife away

"Save my sister, you bastard You owe e, stepped back, sliced through the duct tape, and dragged Sarah away fro bathrobe back into place, yanked the knot tight, and hugged her in both arms to protect her from the wind

And in that moment I knew, absolutely, that she wasn&039;t just a means to an end to him Andht in his eyes

"Beg," he shouted I could barely catch the tattered rag of sound A blast of wind nearly toppled hiainst the tree, overclose

"Fuck off!" I screarinned and leaned back, and drove the knife straight at , and felt the duct tape pull as he cut it barely a quarter inch fro down and bury itself shallowly in the skin of my shoulder

He wasn&039;t as careful in cutting the others Quick, careless slashes I felt the pinsparks of pain

"You can beg me later, love," he said, and picked Sarah up with a sudden heave, dropping the knife to the ground The wind skittered it away He threw ered away toward the parking garage

I fell forward, or tried to, but the storainst the tree as fired to strip the re skin froular scales of the tree, and when I turned the wind sla

Cherise was still inside

I don&039;t kno I , nearly blind-and fell face-first on the glass-scattered, rain-slickin I felt distant and drea seemed to matter much just now Sarah ith Ea her skin abraded off out in the hurricane I&039;ll fix it, I pro, soon

David hadn&039;t come to save gered to the closet and threw the door open, Cherise was huddled under the cot, wrapped in a blanket All china-pale skin and huge, blue eyes

"I stayed," she said in a s," I said, and started to laugh It wasn&039;t a good kind of laugh I choked it off and took her hand

The less I say about e, the better The tunnel was a shattered-open concrete bridge, a deathtrap only a co across the open ground and e

Stairs were ame this tiain, Cherise was driving the Mustang out of the garage, chanting so under her breath that sounded like please please please, and the wind hit the car and shuddered it five feet to the left, violently, and I kneeren&039;t going tolooht I saw it at the same time as Cherise, and we both screaado&039;s Huust, and once it was on its side, it was like a giant sail It was being shoved along at highway speeds, and it was heading straight for us

It hit a broken chunk of concrete and flew into the air, flipping uncontrollably I covered my head, uselessly, and saw Cherise do the same

The world stopped

Breathless

I felt Jonathan die, and it was a terrible thing, like every s unraveled, and tiold and green and a color that should only exist on the aetheric, but the aetheric was burning, everything was burning at levels that could never catch fire because this shouldn&039;t happen

And the stor just stops, of course; the wind kept blowing and the waves kept surging ahead of it, but I felt the sentient black anguish of that hurricane extinguish itself in a blaze of heart-destroying sorrow, and ti, and then

then Eladio Delgado&039;s Hu, rolled, and exploded into flaer side of the car, through layers of steel and glass

Cherise, screaot us the hell out We skidded wildly, pushed around by the wind, but made it to the road

I looked back and saw the less, shattered outline of the Testosterone Towers shivering and swaying in the wind Not quite breaking, but almost

Over the ocean, the black clouds slowed down their , the winds slowly decreased in speed

Cherise drove too fast, skidding around debris and wrecks, tre to the silence on the aetheric

I&039;d never felt anything like this before, this absence

"Stop," I said suddenly Cherise didn&039;t see wheel; she hit the brakes and foughtsafely pulled over to the side of the road Gale-force winds continued to shudder the car "Stay here," I said, and got out

My legs alth David had always told me I had, and crossed the slick, hurricane-buckled surface of the road to what had once been the beach More ocean than sand, now Blue-white foam Not really water, not really air; you could drown in it but never sink

I&039;d lost my shoes so, unsteady, wandering left and then right

I saw the Djinn standing in the surf Ashan, looking gray as death Inhuolden hair whipped straight by the wind

Rahel, on her knees in the foa out to sea

Dozens of the in whispers ofout to sea

I felt the heat h me, and went toagainst the pressure

Soe I couldn&039;t understand it, only feel it, and humans weren&039;t made to contain this kind of e rush I knew; I knehat it was all about, I knew love in itsI had ever felt, even as a Djinn

All aroundat the sky Eyes closed Drinking in the flood of light and love

And then it ended, and I felt e out of the surf, naked and golden and beautiful, and he wasn&039;t David any more

On the aetheric, he was a white-hot star, and everything, everything linked to him Every Djinn Every Warden The network clicked into place and began to hum with power, vast and intense

Jonathan was dead

And David had becoered and went down in the water, and Ashan and Rahel leaped forward, taking his arot toin ht Not anyot up, David was dressed and steady He looked the same as he always had, on the surface, but as underneath was hugely different

As he looked atwith galaxies and energy

He ca me, except with the force of his emotion "I&039;s were different, Jo"