Rachel Caine - Unseen

And there was an equally expert defense, mounted from the other side.

I had no protection I could summon up for the risk of burning, but there was no question in my mind of turning back. Luis was beyond that thick wall of destruction. Isabel would be there with him.

And I would not abandon them.

I should have taken Ashan’s offer. As a Djinn, I could have entered this fight with significant advantages ... but at the risk of losing what made me want to fight so hard. It was the losses I’d suffered that made me part of this world; Djinn had no such connection. Not the Djinn I had known, or been.

I couldn’t give up my hard-won humanity for power. I had to find a way. I rose to a crouch, readied myself, and closed my eyes.

And then I raced forward, into the fire.

Humans have an atavistic terror of burning, and I hadn’t counted on it being so strongly encoded in the cells of my body, but the instant I felt the flames hiss through my hair and clothes, my body went into terrified overdrive, releasing massive amounts of adrenaline, blocking out pain. The world shrank to a single, unalterable imperative: run.

And I ran, straight and fast, through a roaring fury of heat. Even with the deadening influence of the adrenaline, I distantly felt the lash of pain as my clothing caught fire and burned around me. Every step forward seemed to take a nightmare hour, though it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds before I hit the barrier at the end of the fire.

It was an impenetrable barrier of stone, flung up out of the Earth’s bones.

I couldn’t stop. I reached out to Luis and pulled an enormous, crippling flood of power that melted the stone in front of me in a rippling wave. It was extraordinarily dangerous, and I felt the pressure being exerted from the other side to block me out. The stone hardened, and I faced a nightmare possibility of being trapped, sealed in the rock, crushed ... but then the pressure fell away, and I tumbled through into hot, smoky air that felt as cold as ice against my scorched body. I hit the smoldering wooden floor and rolled. Someone threw thick cloth over me, and I felt hands slapping at me, trying to douse the flames. At the same time, someone sent an enormous burst of power toward the stone wall through which I’d come, to seal it shut again.

The first face I saw as the blanket was withdrawn was Luis’s. His eyes widened, and his lips parted in either horror or astonishment—it could have been either, given my current state—but then he pulled me up to a sitting position and hugged me fiercely. The adrenaline was fading as quickly as it had dumped into my bloodstream, and the pain that flashed through me was agonizing ... and then muted, as his healing power began to do its work.

No, not just his power ... Isabel’s, as well. She was beside me, too, and her hand was resting on my shoulder. The two complex signatures of power, as distinctive as types of wine, mixed inside me and exploded in a powerful new way, driving my cells to heal at a dizzying rate.

I hugged them both close, shuddering in shock and gratitude, and felt Isabel’s arms wind around my neck. Oh, child. Beautiful child. I kissed Luis quickly, put my hand on his unshaven cheek, and said, “Ben’s dead. So is the boy, Mike. Gillian is alive—I got her outside the fence. Gayle has most of the others hidden outside, waiting for transportation.”

“We’ve got almost everyone else,” Luis said. “It happened fast. I don’t know how; Ben must have been taken out first just as the fireworks got started. They meant to burn us all.”

I didn’t think so. I looked up at the others, who were sitting or lying in the small defensive space left to them. Marion still had her wheelchair, and she took time to spare me a quick look from her maintenance of the barrier that held back the ravening fire. “Thanks for joining us,” she said. “But it might not have been a good idea. We’re not doing so well.”

She was right about that; the situation looked bad. Earth could defend against Fire, but not for long. Ben’s Weather skills had been their best possible option; he could have kept the air fresh and clear, and starved the fire, given enough time and power.

The elderly Earth Warden, Janice, was in charge of the children, who were huddled close against her for comfort. She’d put two of them under, and they seemed to be sleeping with unnatural peacefulness. When I met Janice’s eyes, she said, “We can’t have them panicking.” And she was right about that; having these extraordinary children losing control of their talents here, now, would be deadly to us all.

Isabel tugged on my sleeve. I looked down at her in distracted affection and kissed her forehead, but she only tugged harder. She leaned in and whispered in my ear, “We’re in trouble.”

“I know that, Ibby.”

“No, we’re in trouble. Really.”

“Can you get through the fire and get out?”

“Sure,” she said, and shrugged. “But I can’t get anybody else out. They’ll let me go; they already told me so. And Sanjay and Elijah, too. But nobody else. And I can’t leave Uncle Luis.”

“You may have to,” I told her. “You may have to take the other two and leave, if they’ll let you.”

She gave me a long, sober look. “That’s what they want us to do. They want us to go back to the Lady.”

My arms tightened around her. I thought of Zedala, of those other fanatical children; Ibby, Sanjay, and Elijah would make perfect assassins, if she continued their indoctrination. I couldn’t allow that to happen to them.

But at least they’d be alive. My alternative might be to watch them die in a particularly horrible way.

I turned to Luis, but he was moving toward Marion, who was beckoning for his help. He was limping, and there was a broad, bloody stain on the leg of his pants. A bullet wound, but one he was managing well.

Ben had also been shot, from behind, by someone he must have trusted. He’d been heading to join Marion, or to warn her. “Ibby,” I said. “You said we were in trouble. You didn’t mean the fire, did you?”

“I saw her shoot him,” Ibby said, still in that tense, quiet whisper. “I didn’t know how to stop it. You should have showed me how to stop the bullets from exploding, and I could have stopped her from killing Ben. But it was too late then. I couldn’t bring him back. Nobody else saw it, and I don’t think she knows that I know.”

My gaze moved around the room, and fell on Shasa, who was deep in concentration, hands held palms out. She was sending waves of control against the fire, but whatever or whoever directed it against us was stronger. She was shaking, and damp with sweat as much from effort as heat.

“Not her,” Ibby whispered. “Her.”

I turned and met Janice Worthing’s calm, kind eyes—only in that instant they weren’t calm, or kind. Only blank with calculation. And I felt something go still and very quiet inside me.

I had known. On some level, I’d been uneasy with the woman, though everything and everyone around me had given the lie to that instinct. I should have listened to my Djinn side, I realized, the cynical and mistrustful side that had refused to be swayed and charmed by her subtle use of power.

Janice Worthing had been the traitor in the heart of the school, and no one, not even Marion, had suspected her. I wondered how long she’d been waiting to strike—months, maybe years. Maybe she’d been an early convert of Pearl’s, or maybe she’d simply been for hire. She didn’t, even now, strike me as a true believer—more of a mercenary.

She was holding little Elijah, the youngest of the children, in her arms. He’d been sent into a deep artificial sleep; to all appearances, her cradling of his body was gentle and protective, but suddenly I saw it differently.