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You and I know that he’d stop at nothing to destroy what killed you

Oh Christ"You cannot be serious with this Lewis Please, tell et er David into a hoainst your enemies?"

It would work

Sure it would It would leave Bad Bob and whoever was around hi, probably, the cruise ship, which would beco was that as a nuclear option, it was not bad So long as you accepted that the pile of bodies would be unthinkable, but at the end of the day, the ene, Lewis," I said "If I get killed anyway, fine, all bets are off But I’ all the way down Get me?"

Yes You understand that I had to ask

Not really But I was starting to think that in soht - I never would truly knois Not at his core

"I’ off, Lewis," I said, and spit salt water as a wave slappedot a dry, tinny chuckle in my ear How could I ever stop you?

"See you on the other side, then"

Yes

That was it Our big good-bye As roht

We were past all that now

After a good half hour of chasing down the floating island,hand finally slapped a boulder on the island’s rocky shore - whatever sand there once was had long ago been scoured away, so there was nothing left to this beast but slick, water-srabbed at the rock, but ed up out of the water as far as I could

My rib cage thumped down painfully on the s and clawing paid off I found a handhold, at the cost of the last memory ofsurf to lie exhausted and dripping, draped like Josue’s proverbial drowned mermaid over extremely uncomfortable terrain

"Daain?" Oh yeah - because I was probably the only one who could, with anything like certainty

And because sometimes I just had to face my own demons - and Demons - head-on

I spent severalmy muscles shake and cry out in relief, and then rolled up to a sitting position to take a look around It wasn’t ranite This place wasn’t more than a few dozen millennia away from the lava flows that had built it in the first place It still had reat for me, of course I’d worn heavy boots, butto protectscars as I scray landscape

I climbed up on the tallest boulder I could find and did a quick survey The island was bigger than I’d expected - maybe a solid mile across - and toward the ed pal now Whatever fresh water had nourished the hulk, and I wondered uneasily how Bad Bob had kept sixty Sentinels - that I knew about - alive on such a bare span of rock I supposed he’d laid in supplies, but he didn’t seeuy

Maybe they were eating each other It wouldn’t surprise iven the level of devotion he inspired in people

This was not the place I’d have picked as my home away from home if I had to choose a portable island paradise, that was for da trees, no water, no shade Just razor-edged rock and the odd crab scuttling by The surface of Mars, only at least fifty percent less hospitable

If I hadn’t been doing such a careful survey of the island, I ht haveto give it away but a faint shiainst the rocks, like a reflection of waves - but it didn’t ht, and it wasmy direction

I’d never seen one in full daylight before That was a crystalline skeleton, barely visible without the huuise its kind had adopted back on the Grand ParadiseI knehy it had gone for the skins; the creature ing like a finger tapping an ice-cold crystal glass

The skins had muted the vibrations, hidden them in the natural noise of human existence

The crystal shilare of the sun for a second, and then I saw the blur of it against the piles of rocks only about three feet away from me

I didn’t have time for fancy moves, just dived out of the way It was fast, but the rocks were just as hazardous to its footing as to mine, and I saw it stumble and try to catch its balance as it checked its momentum Instead, it tumbled off into the water

It sank below the surface in seconds, pulled down by the density of its bones

Well, that was great news, but as I looked up, I counted threein my direction I calculated frequencies I didn’t have tiood neas that I’d already killed one of these things on h I knew the theory, and even without the direct access to the aetheric that I’d have had with David free, I wasn’t starved for power I was al cereed for me, and I opened my mouth and picked a note Nerves forced the ah, and the creature just kept co it steady, and fine-tuned it as the beast came closer, and closer, and -

- and then it burst into a powder-fine shower of disrupted crystal Instant sand

Gotcha

Twodeep intolessons I kept the note going, and a it in a shock wave out across the island from end to end The intensity of the sound swept out like a bomb blast I was ihosts exploded into dust and shards as the wave of sound rolled over them

The note did ht Bad Bob’s other allies out of hiding Farther inland, near the stunted,out of caanized The shock wave rolled over them, and dozens more went down - not dead, but stunned and probably deafened I’d caught them by surprise

They returned the favor

As I took a step forward, stone softened under my boot, and I sank in toto harden the ain around my body, which would have not just trapped me but pulverized flesh and bone, if I was lucky - or amputated both feet at the ankles, if I wasn’t