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"You think I’ you?"

"You’re not that subtle," he said, which stung because it was true, mostly "But there’s somebody else on board that ship who is"

We both knew that he was talking about Lewis "You’ve still got a chance to end this peacefully," I said "Let Rahel go Give up It doesn’t have to be Areddon: Atlantic Edition We can find a way to make this work, Bob Or whatever you are"

"I’m still Bob," he said, and winked at me, just the way Bad Bob would have back in the old days "I’ to come to any nice, peaceful settle up territory or setting boundaries This is aboutall of you off the face of the earth, and thenelse It’s nature’s way, you know The strong eat the weak The many eat the few And I am about to eat you "

He saped hideously wide, like a snake’s If this was a nightmare, it was a first-class effort out of my very darkest subconscious

I stepped back from him

His jaws re-formed and closed The Cheshire Cat smile remained "Don’t look so scared," he said "You wouldn’t believe the stuff I can do with et all about that wimpy little Djinn boy you’re so taken with Give uess I’ll just have to settle for so on over here, by the way I figured you ht, sooner or later The torch has that effect on people It just draws people to me, whether they like it or not"

He took two steps forward, thrust out his hand, and put it all the way through , and a little uncomfortable, but I actually felt a little spurt of triuht it would be, I was about to say, when I realized that he’d reached to a very specific place

To the ghostly ainst it beneath my translucent skin - I could feel it, even if I couldn’t see it happening

All of a sudden the room was far too small, like a trap, and I wanted to leave this place, now, before so happened

Too late

I feltin its sleep I felt the hot tingle of the black torch begin to spread across my shoulder blade

I’d lost David’s containht not know it

Bad Bob re sorin, and walked away I struggled to figure out as holdingto a board The ured out how to turn it off - if I could - he could keep er I stayed out, the worse it was going to be when I got back

I remembered the Wardens, lost in the storm If my spirit was shredded, my body would just stop And they would never knohy

Outside, a truly ferocious stored I felt the hot, darit and pushing the rickety sticks of furniture in rando Bad Bob’s pale hair and face into a fright mask

He reached outside, and when his hand canized the thing - it was thick, and it sparkled with bursts of so that wasn’t color, wasn’t darkness, wasn’t anything human senses could identify or codify He’d refined his weapons, I saw This spear had started out life as a s body of a Djinn, and Bad Bob had given it enough care and feeding to , wickedly pointed expression of his own appetite for destruction

The Djinn called it the Un It was, as best I understood the physics of it, stable anti he wanted to destroy

Including re Djinn from the fabric of the universe

"Oh, Bob, that’s just sad," I said His grin broadened "Seriously, why can’t your type ever grow a discus for a weapon, or the world’s largest potato? How come it’s always so -

phallic?"

Bob ignored the opportunity to banter, and stepped out into the storm He looked up at it, into the heart of it I knehat he was seeing - the raging engine of destruction, the pri, this storer or a puainst the dirt, and a blinding pulse of soht went up froain

Again

With every thuainst the earth, I felt the world itself shudder On the aetheric, muddy red waves spread like blood from a mortal wound

The force e feel to it, and the color - if you could call it a color - was a poisonous, pallid thing, like the glow given off by decay

The storht

It was dark Photonegative energy, but here on the real world He’d infected the storm itself, made it a force for destruction far different from any natural predator

And then it flashed that unearthly ereen

"Alrip on the spear Handling that y couldn’t have been pleasant, even for hi ahere his hand touched the surface "Ready for the cherry on top?" He pointed the spear down at the ground, and drove it in It went deep, even though he didn’t use any real force - as if it tunneled greedily on its own

I felt the earth shriek in real pain beneathshook