“Can you help?”
“Yeah, probably.” Es shrugged. She studied her fingernails, and frowned at the dirt she found beneath them. She’d been traveling a long way, I realized; her shirt—the only clothing she wore—was dirty and torn, and her previously shiny, perfect hair was rough and tangled. No doubt she could manage to hide herself effectively with what remained of her Earth powers, because otherwise her travels would have been brief, and full of general panic. But even then, she hadn’t had an easy time of it.
I was willing to bet it was the first time she’d risked the outside world in quite some while.
“The girls,” I said. “Do you know where they are?”
“Ibby and the redhead? Yeah. I know where they were going.”
“And you just let them go?” Luis said. His fists balled up, and I saw the black tattoos on his arms glitter in the starlight and start to smolder. His use of fire was purely instinctual now, not directed with anything like precision. I laid a hand on his shoulder, and felt him deliberately reach for calm. “Where are they?”
“Doing something brave,” Esmeralda said. “They knew somebody would be coming for the convoy you have on the road. They split off. They’re going to intercept them.”
Luis spat out a curse. “We
already
had perimeter security,” he said. “The last thing we need is two of these kids out there handling power they shouldn’t be touching!”
“Listen, man-cake, I already slithered past your so-called perimeter security, like, fifteen times.” Es sighed. “You Wardens.
Es stupido.
You’d do better with third-rate rent-a-cops; at least they’d have guns. Ibby was right. If you want to keep your convoy from getting trashed, you’d better get your best on it. And the kids, they’re good. Better than you.”
“Es,” I said, “the more those girls use their powers, the more broken they become. They started too young. You understand that better than anyone.”
The Snake Girl looked away, and didn’t comment. Her coils shifted restlessly, and there was a slight, instinctive buzz from her tail rattle. “They’ll be okay,” she said. “Look, you can’t protect them. They’re going to do what they’re going to do.”
“It’s killing them,” Luis said.
Esmeralda’s dark gaze flashed up to lock with his. “And?” she asked. “What do you think making them
not
use it is going to do? Kill them slower? Some of them won’t make it. Some will adapt. That’s the way things go in this world. You can’t stop it, and you’d better not get in the way.”
“I’m not letting her do this,” he said. “Cass. Let’s go.”
“You won’t find them,” Es said. “One thing that kid knows how to do is hide. You won’t find them unless you trip over them by accident in the dark.”
“Can you find them?” I asked.
Es considered the question, and then tilted her head a little. “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe I don’t want to, though.”
I had let this go on too long, I decided. I was a little fascinated with Esmeralda, the way a mongoose is fascinated with a snake, but enough was enough. Luis was right. We couldn’t allow a six-year-old child to fight a battle for us.
I had been sending tendrils of power out through the roots of trees around us, and now, with a snap of will, I triggered the trap. Branches slammed down, forming a thick, springy cage around her. Roots squirmed from the dirt and wrapped around the branches, weaving it together.
Esmeralda let out a hiss of surprise, and I heard the dry rattle of her alarm. She battered the cage with the coils of her body, but it was tightly woven, and impossible for her to get real force into her struggles. “Let me go, you cold bitch!” she screamed, and ripped at the wood with her hands—but those were merely human hands, without the strength necessary to shred the tough fibers. “Let me
go
!”
“Once you tell me where they are,” I said. “You know this is too dangerous for them. Don’t let them down, Esmeralda. They meant for you to tell us. They hoped you would.”
“That’s not what she said.” The snake’s coils pulsed against the cage, trying to push it apart, but the trees were firmly rooted deep in the earth. Esmeralda subsided, panting, glaring through the mesh at us. Her knuckles were white where she gripped the branches. “She said not to let
anyone
find her.”
“She’s a child,” Luis said. “And she’s too brave for her own good. She needs us. Tell us where she is or I swear to God I’ll rip off your rattle and feed it to you!”
Esmeralda was silent for so long I wondered if she
would
tell us, and then she finally said, “I’m not afraid of you. I’m telling you because I think the
gringa
bitch is right; the kids shouldn’t be doing this alone. I was going to go help them anyway.”
“Where. Is. She?” Luis almost snarled it, and I felt the burning aura of fire around him again, a kindling that raised the temperature by several degrees.
Esmeralda sensed it, too, and went very still. The dry buzz of her rattle grew louder as she reacted to his threat, but she had nowhere to run, and she couldn’t strike to defend herself. Luis wouldn’t burn her alive—at least I didn’t
think
he would—but his rage was clear.
“If you stand between me and Isabel, I’ll wipe you off the face of the earth,” he told her. “You take us to her. Do it
now.
”
He nodded to me, and I released the cage of branches, which sprang back into their normal positions with a creak and rustle of dry needles. The roots shriveled back into the ground.
Esmeralda was free, but she still didn’t move. The steady, unnerving buzzing continued, like bones in a bottle.
“You keep it in mind,” she said. “I’m not your bitch. I’ll crush you and eat you if you mess with me.”
Luis brushed it aside with an angry swipe of his hand. “We can kill each other later.
Ibby.
Now!”
She relaxed a little, and the rattling slowed, then stopped. “All right,” she said. “Try to keep up, asshole.”
She could move with astonishing speed, and with a quick, sinuous flash, she was already disappearing through the trees. The pale white of her rattle was the only visible sign of her.
“Run,” I said, and took off in pursuit.
Chapter 14
IT WASN’T THAT I
had forgotten Luis’s leg injury, but I’d known he wouldn’t allow it to slow him down too much. Even so, he labored very hard to keep the pace, gasping for air, and when he faltered I grabbed him and pulled him along. He dug deep for the strength to deny the pain, and I blocked it as much as I could. The patch to his torn artery was holding, and that was all I could hope for now. This pursuit might do irreparable harm to him, but he wouldn’t give it up. There was no point in asking.
Esmeralda’s snakelike form whipped around trees, threaded between boulders, slipped over shadow-protected drifts of snow that hadn’t yet melted. I expected her to slow, but if anything, she increased speed, and the starlight wasn’t enough to keep her in sight. I tracked her on the aetheric; her aura was eerie and weirdly wrong for the shape she held in the human world. It was more as she imagined herself ... but she wasn’t human at all. A feathered serpent, magnificently colored, gliding silently through the world above. The deadly sense of menace from her was even stronger in that realm of force and will, and I realized once again what a power had been leashed inside those snake’s coils.
Whoever the Djinn who’d defeated her was, he must have been astonishing. And remarkably selfless.
It took a quarter of an hour, but Esmeralda’s progress abruptly ceased, and I dragged Luis to a panting, trembling stop a few feet behind her. Her rattlesnake-patterned coils pulled themselves together in a tense pattern, bracing her for a strike, but the rattle remained silent.
Luis collapsed to one knee, and I heard a soft moan out of him, something he tried to muffle but couldn’t. The pain was intense; I felt it burning between us, and touched his damp shoulder to try to numb the screaming nerves. He shook me off. His long, dark hair was soaked with sweat and clung to his face in sharp, sticky points. “Is she here?” he whispered. I shook my head. I didn’t sense her, but there was something gathering on the aetheric around us, dark as a coming storm.
There was a flash of blue-white light to the east, and in its glow I saw Isabel standing back-to-back with Gillian. They were surrounded by what looked like half a dozen wolves—big, rangy ones, circling and charging in to nip at them. It wasn’t natural hunting behavior, although wolves could certainly hunt humans if they chose. I felt the pressure on the animals in the aetheric, heavy enough to make my head ache even at this distance. The wolves were letting out soft yips—not excitement, but pain.
They wanted to run, but couldn’t. Instead, one darted forward, lunging for Gillian, but the young Weather Warden was ready; a blast of air met it and slammed it backward, tumbling through the air to land splay-legged ten feet away. It trembled with the urge to flee, but inched forward again, dragged against its will.
“Es,” I said. Her human face turned toward me. “You handle the wolves. We’ll handle the real enemies.”
Her eyes narrowed, but she nodded, and in a flash she was heading for where we’d seen Isabel and Gillian fighting for their lives. There was another flash of light—Isabel, throwing fire—and in its glow I saw that one of the wolves had grabbed Ibby by the front of her shirt and was dragging her like a cub across the ground as she fought. The fire sent it yelping away, and Ibby scrambled back to where Gillian was batting another wolf away. There was a tornado forming above them, and I felt the whipping, ferocious winds from where I stood. Gillian planned to bring it down around them, leaving them in the protected eye, but it required control and great precision. It was a good plan, if she could make it work.
But out in the dark, someone sliced into her careful construction, and the tornado wobbled, lost cohesion, and became an uncontrolled downburst that snapped off trees and slammed Gillian and Ibby to the ground.
The wolves closed in, but before they could sink their teeth into the girls, Esmeralda was there. She hit the wolf pack like a wrecking ball, slapping her coils into them, crushing some and throwing others at bone-breaking speed into trees. I turned away as she hissed and struck at the one closest to Isabel. I didn’t need to witness it to know that she would keep the girls safe ... at least from the wolves. Whether they would be safe from
Esmeralda
was a larger puzzle, but it had to be risked.
Luis nodded to me, and we moved toward the place from which the Weather Warden had struck to disrupt the tornado. On the aetheric, there was a black tangle, impossible to sort out—it could have been one, or twenty.
It proved to be three, and they were once again children. One Weather, one Fire, and one Earth. There was no sign of the Void represented here, which relieved me greatly. It was possible that Pearl had not been able to train enough of those kinds of soldiers yet, or that they were rare. I was glad enough not to face one.
The children were focused on Esmeralda, as I’d hoped, and Luis and I got within striking distance without being noticed. He took down the Earth child first, clapping a hand to the boy’s forehead from behind and dragging him off his feet; at the same moment I took the Fire Warden child, another boy. Mine went down more easily into an enforced, deep sleep; Luis’s fought, and I had to jump to his side and add my strength to his to overcome the boy, even taken by surprise as he was.
That left the Weather Warden, an older girl of about fourteen. She was legitimately old enough to come into her powers, but her fine control and raw strength were far from natural; she’d used the seconds of warning well, and as Luis and I tried to grab her, she pulled a massive amount of power from the air around her, drenching us with moisture and then ripping away energy to create ice. It wasn’t thick, but it was shocking, and it slowed us down long enough for her to scramble backward and launch her next attack, directly from the clouds overhead: lightning. I felt the buzzing whisper of power beneath my feet, of electrons turning and seeking alignment with those above. Even a full Djinn hesitated to take the force of a lightning bolt. I was not at all sure that I could survive a direct hit.
Flesh is an imperfect conductor. The delicate mechanisms of life are not suited to channeling that much raw energy, and I didn’t have the natural advantages of a Weather Warden to allow me to absorb the shock.
What I did have was a connection to the Earth, and the ability to alter my own body chemistry. It was risky, but the only possible defense I could muster in the second of warning I had. I increased my electrolytes, coating my skin in them in the form of sweat, and focused the energy downward, through my feet.
No one had prepared me for the pain. I’d been Tasered recently, and that had been painful, but this was like having every nerve in my body stripped raw and screaming, and then shaved with razors. It seemed to go on forever, and I felt my heart struggling not to seize up, fibrillating in the current ...
... And then it was gone, and I dropped to the forest floor, unable to move. Alive, but trembling with agony. What I could see of my hand seemed intact, though the sleeve of my jacket breathed wisps of smoke.
Luis hadn’t stopped. He had launched himself in a purely physical attack, barreling into the girl and slamming her down into the leaf litter on the ground. She screamed out raw defiance and rolled him over, pushing her palms down on his chest.
I saw his eyes go wide, and he struggled to breathe.
No!
She had taken away any kind of breathable air in his body. She could suffocate him this way—it was difficult for an Earth Warden to escape this particular sort of attack ... hard to hold on to focus and power while drowning in clear air.
She thought I was down, out of the fight.
I wasn’t.
I lunged forward, grabbed the girl’s long, braided hair in my metallic left hand, and yanked her backward. She shrieked and reached instinctively for her head, and I wrapped my arms around her to still her struggles. Luis rolled over, climbed to his feet, and put his hand on her forehead. She fought, but couldn’t ride the tide of darkness. It took her under.