Rachel Caine - Firestorm

I took a step backward, until the wall was at my back. Felt good, the wall. I needed the support. My legs had gone cold, pins-and-needles cold. My balance insisted that the room was pitching and rolling like the deck of a sinking ship.

David exchanged a look with Imara, a nod, and she dropped her gaze and moved out of his way. Nothing standing between him and Eamon now. I saw Eamon register that, and lick his suddenly pale lips.

"Hang on a minute, mate," he said. "I know it looks bad, but the truth is, I only need to wake her up for a couple of minutes. Less, even. Just long enough to say my good-byes and—"

"Don't lie," David interrupted. The knife kept turning in his hand, drawing my eyes as well as Eamon's. "You have a reason, and it isn't anything so sentimental."

Eamon's eyes narrowed, and I could see him trying to decide whether or not he'd be able to take the knife. He couldn't, but there was no way he'd be able to judge that for himself. I hoped he'd try. I really did.

"All right," he said. "Nothing so saccharine. We were partners. She took possession of a certain payment, and she didn't want to share. I need to make her tell me where she hid the money."

"Still not true," David said. His eyes were terrifying—flames swirling around narrowed pupils. "I want you to speak the truth, just once before you die."

"You don't want to kill me, old son. I'm the one with the antidote for your girl's poison, and unless you want to see her in a hospital bed next to my beloved Liz here—"

David moved in a streak of light, and suddenly he was pressed against the other man, chest to chest, bending him over the hospital bed in a backbreaking curve. His right hand was locked around Eamon's throat, and his left…

… his left held the hilt of the knife he'd buried deep in Eamon's side.

Eamon's eyes widened soundlessly.

"That," David said, "is a fatal wound. Feel it?" He moved the knife helpfully. Eamon tried to scream, but nothing happened. "Shhhh. Nod if you believe me."

Eamon shakily nodded, throat still struggling to let loose his terror.

"Good." David pulled the knife free in a single fast rip. No blood followed, and there should have been fountains of the stuff. "I'm holding the wound shut," David said. "But the second you disappoint me, little man, the instant I think that you're mocking me or even thinking about harm to my family, that ends. I watch you bleed your life away in less than a dozen heartbeats. Understand?"

Eamon nodded convulsively. He was paler than the woman on the bed.

"Now, you're going to get the antidote," David said. "Which I imagine you have hidden somewhere in this room. You're going to give it to Joanne, and then you're going to go and give it to her sister." He let go of Eamon's throat. "Move."

Eamon edged out of the way, one hand pressed trembling to his side. Too terrified to move quickly. David watched him with glowing metallic eyes, and Imara did, as well.

I made some sound of effort, trying to straighten up. David had his full attention on Eamon, and his knuckles were white where he gripped the knife. I remembered Imara saying that he was fighting off the influence of the Mother, and how difficult it was. I wondered what would happen if he succumbed to that here, in a building full of innocent and helpless victims.

Not for me. Please, not for me . I tried to send him the message, but I had no idea if he was listening. His attention was completely riveted on Eamon.

Eamon, meanwhile, was moving—slowly, carefully, with a hand pressed hard to the place the knife had gone in as if he could hold his life in with it. He walked to a wooden cabinet and dragged a floral suitcase—clearly a woman's—from a narrow cubbyhole. He opened it and took out a bottle filled with clear liquid that he held up in one shaking hand. His hair was plastered to his face in wet sweaty points, and I could feel the rage and fear coming off him.

"I hope we understand each other," David said. "If Joanne dies, I take you apart. Slowly. I can show you things about pain that you've never even imagined. And I can make it last for an eternity."

Eamon, if possible, paled even further. He tossed him the vial. David effortlessly snatched it out of the air without moving his gaze from the other man's face, and held it out. Imara took it and looked uncertain.

"Syringe," Eamon said. Imara ripped open drawers in the cabinet by the sink and came up with a syringe, which she filled from the vial.

She crossed to me and hesitated again. "I—I don't know how to—" She did. I knew, and she knew everything I did, but it was comforting to know that there were still things that could make my daughter flinch.

"Vein or muscle?" I asked.

"Muscle," Eamon said.

I took the syringe out of Imara's hands, jammed it into my thigh, and depressed the plunger. Whatever it was in the hypo, it went in ice-cold, tingling, and then turned hot. It moved fast. I gasped for breath as I felt it move through my circulatory system. My lungs felt as if I'd sucked on liquid nitrogen, and I got an instant, mind-numbing flash of a headache.

Then it was done, and I felt… clearer. Not well, by any stretch. But better.

For the first time, David looked at me directly. I gave him a shaky nod as Imara helped me up. "I'm okay," I said. "Now, can you—help her? None of this is her fault. She doesn't deserve to suffer for it."

David looked baffled for a second, then turned his attention to the woman lying on the bed. He crossed to look down at her, and put his fingertips on her forehead.

And then he said, very quietly, "There's nothing there to help."

"No," Eamon said, and lunged forward over the bed, one hand still clutched to his side. "No. She opened her eyes—"

"Imara opened her eyes for her," David said. "The mind that was inside her is gone. She's been gone for years."

Eamon's face turned into a rigid mask, with a red angry flush across his cheekbones. "No. She's there. I told you, I need five minutes—"

"Her brain is dead, and her soul is gone." David looked up at him, then at me. "This is why you wanted a Djinn. To heal her."

Eamon said nothing. He'd taken the woman's limp hand in his, and he was holding it. For any normal person, it would have been horrible, coming here, holding her warm hand, knowing on some level that it was just a lie her body was telling. I wasn't sure what it was for Eamon. I wasn't even sure why he cared so much. Both his explanations had been lies, David said. So what was the truth?

"You said you had a time limit," I said.

"Her family's turning off the machines," he said. It was barely a whisper. "Tomorrow. Brings new meaning to the term deadline, doesn't it?"

He laughed. It was an awful laugh, something wild and dangerous and mad. Not a good man, Eamon. Not a sane man. But there was something in him, some overwhelming emotion driving all of it.

"How did it happen?" I asked.

"Why would you care?" he asked, and brushed the glossy, oddly healthy hair back from her pale, dry face. It had to be about money, didn't it? Cold, hard cash. Because I didn't want to believe he was capable of love and devotion—it made things far too complicated.

"You did it to her, didn't you?" Imara suddenly asked.

Eamon transferred that feverish stare from the woman to my daughter. "Bugger off."

"Imara's right. She was just another victim, wasn't she? Only this one up and died on you." My voice was shaking, and I could feel the rest of me trembling along with it. "You got carried away, playing your little games."

He laughed, and looked down at the woman. "You hear that, Liz? Funny. Just another victim." He shook his head. "Liz and I—let's just say we had a professional relationship. And she violated some professional rules. Things went wrong."