Rachel Caine: Gale Force

I’d destroyed the bottle.

David was free.

The golden thread between us vibrated and snapped tight again.

In a second, he had his hands around me and was pulling me up, preparing to carry me through the open window.

“No you don’t,” Bad Bob gasped, and pointed his finger at us. I froze, off balance, unable to control my muscles. Dammit! I’d forgotten about the torch mark on my shoulder blade. It wasn’t only David he’d been able to manipulate.

“If you won’t play, you pay,” Bad Bob said, and grinned with bloody teeth. He reversed his grip on the Unmaking, found the balance point . . . and drove it straight down, into the floor—through the floor, into the concrete.

Through the concrete, into the bedrock of the earth.

I felt the sentience of the planet cry out, a wave of horror and emotion that overrode every synapse in my body. I felt her agony. She hadn’t been hurt so badly in a long, long time. David cried out, and I felt his hands slide away. He lunged past me, heading for Bad Bob, but after one step he pitched onto his side, convulsing.

Conduit to the aetheric and Mother Earth, he was also the most vulnerable to her pain.

The earthquake hit with the force of a bomb, shattering steel and wood and concrete as if it were so much glass. I sensed the perimeter troops, Warden and human alike, being tossed around like dice outside. I heard explosions, cracks, the sound of trees groaning in agony and breaking off in lethally heavy pieces.

I couldn’t move. Bad Bob didn’t move, either; he stood staring at me, one hand still outstretched, the other gripping the shaft of the Unmaking still sticking out of the ground.

Walls roared, cracked, and shattered. The floor rippled like liquid, then, the carpet shredding, it broke into jagged fragments. Dust became a mist, then a storm.

The roof joists snapped, and the entire thing inverted into a V, crashing toward us.

Bad Bob never stopped grinning. He waved merrily, ripped the Unmaking out of the ground in a single mighty pull, and vanished.

I dropped like a discarded puppet, rolled into a ball, and felt the first heavy piece of debris hit me. It was the wing chair, tipping on top of me. I curled underneath it for protection and screamed as the entire house came down in a rush of smoke, sparks, and crushing chaos.

The chair might as well have been made of plastic.

Breathe.

I couldn’t. Something was on my chest. I couldn’t get enough room to allow my lungs to expand. My diaphragm fluttered, trying vainly to pull in air. I choked and tried to reach for power, but it felt slippery, greasy, elusive. All my strength was gone.

You have to stay calm. Master your panic.

I had a house on top of me. Not that easy to stay calm.

You’re alive.

And dying fast.

David—

I heard the distant groan of wood being moved. Rising noise, scrapes, the tortured scream of metal.

Can’t breathe. I concentrated on putting my body into a state of meditation, to minimize oxygen burn. Slow and steady, wait, wait . . .

Something shifted, and I felt a piece of debris as heavy as the fist of God slam down on my lower chest. Ribs snapped in hot little starry snaps. I heard myself whimper, and then the weight shifted again, vanishing in a cloud of dust, and the pressure against me was gone.

“Oh Christ,” someone said. It sounded like Lewis. I tried to open my eyes, but it was too much of an effort. “We’re losing her.”

A warm hand was under my head, cradling it. I felt a strangely comforting sense of cold creeping through my limbs, tunneling through me toward my heart. Energy cascaded through me, trying to fight the chill, but the chill was stronger. Harder. More determined.

“No.” It was David’s voice, choked and despairing. “No, no . Jo, hold on—”

I pulled in a delicious breath and let it out, one last time. I wished I could open my eyes and see him, but in my mind I saw him as he’d been at the wedding, alight and golden and perfect.

I hadn’t wanted to hurt him this way.

It didn’t hurt at all, slipping away on a tide of darkness. It felt . . . peaceful. Hello again, I said to death. I was resigned, if not ready.

And then I was caught by a sharp, red-hot hook. The tide tried to pull me, but the hook—burning through my body, back to front, on my right shoulder blade—held fast. Heat flared and blazed—not the gentle healing of Earth power, something else. Something wild and dark and harsh, burning black in every nerve.

The next breath I took I let out in a raw, thin scream. I opened my eyes, and saw Lewis leaning over me, and David, and Marion Bearheart. Kevin was standing in the background, looking helpless and oddly vulnerable. Dozens of others were behind him. The sky ripped open with lightning, and rain began to fall in a cold silver curtain.

I laughed. My body put itself back together in hot, agonizing snaps and jerks, every nerve carrying every second of the pain to my brain.

And the pain felt so good .

Lewis let go of me, staring in bafflement that was turning fast to grim horror.

David didn’t move, but I saw the same thing in his face—the same revulsion and sickness.

“You think I’d let her go that easy?” It was Bad Bob’s voice, but coming raw from my own throat. “You think I’d let any of you go that easy? She’s the future, boys. My future.”

The laughter that exploded out of me was like a black, nauseating cloud, and this time even David flinched away from it. I rolled up to my hands and knees, covered in fine dust like flour where I wasn’t streaked in blood.

Alive. Whole. Even the radiation sickness had been flushed out of me.

The torch on my back burned, burned so hot. . . .

“So who’s the bad guy now?” I taunted. He taunted.

There wasn’t any difference now.

I turned my face up to the rain, and laughed, and for the first time, I understood why he was as he was, what about this was so intoxicating. No ties. No worries. No burdens. Just power, as pure as it came. People didn’t matter. All that mattered was winning .

I didn’t care about David, or Lewis, or any miserable little collection of cells walking the planet. They were all just meat and fuel for the engine.

And it was so . . . beautiful .

Then Bad Bob let me go, once he’d shown me the world as he saw it, a landscape where flesh and blood were as meaningless and desolate as sand and rock. I felt the fire gutter and die on my back, and my whole body jerked and folded in on itself.

Mourning for what I’d just lost.

I felt tears burning in my eyes and knew that the worst thing of all this was that I couldn’t be sure anymore that if he offered me the choice to feel that again, of my own free will, that I wouldn’t take it.

So who’s the bad guy now?

The circle of people around me waited tensely. I lifted my face again, and said, “He’s gone.” My words were almost lost in a blast of wind flying in from the ocean, blowing dust and debris and tattered palm leaves into the air. “I have to go after him.”

The Wardens shifted, looking at each other, at Lewis. He slowly shook his head. “We’re not doing that,” he said. “Christ, Jo. What just happened to you?”

David knew. He reached around and pulled the back of my shirt down, and I saw Lewis’s face turn a sick shade of white. “Oh God,” he said. “We need to get it off you.”

“I don’t think laser removal is going to cut it,” I said. I felt hollow, cored out. Beyond anything but gallows humor. “It’s deep. I don’t know how to shut him out.”

“Then you can’t go,” Lewis said. “We need to keep you safe. If he can use you—”