Unbroken: Outcast Season: Book Four (9 page)

But the rest of me was suffering badly, and over the next hour I was so concentrated on staying on the bike that my vision had tunneled to an intense focus on the blurred road ahead. I failed to hear the horn honking behind me over the roar of the engine and the rain until Luis flashed his lights, illuminating the black, shadowed rain in glowing strobes. I forced my clenched fingers to respond, and slowed the bike as I pulled it over to the side. The truck eased in behind me, and Luis got out and ran to my side. He’d found a jacket in the truck, a thin blue windbreaker, which he tossed over my shoulders. “Let’s get your bike in the truck!” he yelled. “You can’t stay out in this!”

I felt immense, stupid relief at this; it hadn’t occurred to me, in my focus, to give up and seek shelter. I almost fell in getting off the bike, and Luis had to catch and stabilize me. “You’re ice cold,” he said. “Go on, get in the cab. I’ll get the bike loaded.”

I stumbled to the truck and opened the door as he
jogged by with the rolling Victory to the back of the truck. I supposed that there was a ramp of some sort, but the mechanics of it fled my mind as soon as I crawled into the warm, dry cab and slammed the door. I was shuddering with cold, and the blast of warm air from the vents felt like a lost, tropical paradise. Only gradually did I become aware that Isabel was sitting next to me, her hand tucked in my metallic one.

“Do you want me to help?” she asked. “I can.”

“No,” I said through chattering teeth. “You’ve used enough power today. Rest. It isn’t necessary.”

She immediately pulled her hand free and crossed her arms. I recognized the line that formed between her brows, and the harder jut of her chin. She’d inherited that from her father, Manny, and for just a flash, I felt the loss of him all over again. He’d been my first partner, my first human friend. My ally. And I’d let him down. “Fine,” Isabel said coldly. “Then freeze. I don’t care.”

She did, I knew that; it was a child’s anger, a child’s acting out, but it still stung deep. As she meant it to do. I said nothing, just closed my eyes and drank in the warm, hot-metal scented breeze that was slowly beginning to ease the chill. Isabel, not getting the reaction she’d wished, busied herself with twisting the radio dial. Bursts of static flared in time with lightning as it laddered overhead, but she finally landed on a relatively clear signal.

It was not good news.

The radio announcer was shaken; that was clear even through the grainy, static-hissed connection. “—Desperate situation right now as the area has been hit with both extremely violent, wind-whipped fires and a damaging earthquake that seismologists report measured at least an eight point five. Surrounding states are sending assistance, as is the federal government, but there is news pouring in of flooding and extreme tornado activity in other areas, and frankly, there’s a
limit to what rescue and volunteer efforts can accomplish at this point. The focus has turned to evacuations and saving those in the path of the destruction. In other news, in Boston, a spokesman for the CDC has confirmed the outbreak of a dangerous new virus, and the city government has called for an immediate, city-wide quarantine. While there has been speculation that this illness, which has claimed an unknown number of victims over the past twenty-four hours, was some type of bioterrorism, the spokesman stressed that they are conducting a thorough and speedy investigation to determine the point of origin of the virus.”

Isabel said nothing. She just turned the radio off as Luis opened the door and threw himself into the driver’s seat. He was soaked as well, despite his jacket and the oily trucker’s hat he’d thrown on, but he still flashed me a concerned look. “You okay?” he asked.

“She’s fine,” Isabel answered before I could speak. “There are lots of fires and earthquakes. What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Rest. You’re going to need your strength, Iz.”

“I’m not tired!”

“Yes, you are; you just don’t know it. You can’t burn through power like that and not have consequences—not even you. Just relax and let yourself heal inside.”

“But—”

“Iz. I said
no.
”

She slumped down in the seat, glaring at nothing, and Luis exchanged a look with me over her head as he started the truck again. He didn’t need to speak; I could understand his thoughts well enough.

It was going to be difficult with her from here on out.

Luis sighed and said, “We’re going to need beer.”

*   *    *

Esmeralda had been quiet—dangerously so—in the back of the truck, but as we drew nearer to Seattle, I heard her rustling and banging in the back. Finally, there was a sharp, annoyed rapping against the wall behind our seats, and Luis pulled the truck in at a closed, but covered, gas station. “Need a fill-up anyway,” he said. “Thank God for credit cards at pumps. You check on Reptile Girl back there, Iz.”

She had been steaming and glowering the entire drive, and now she gave him a frosty stare. “Say please,” she said.

“I thought you wanted to be treated like an adult, not a little kid,” he shot back. “Get your ass out and check on Esmeralda. Please.”

It clearly didn’t improve her mood, but she wiggled across the seat and darted toward the back. The rain was still pounding down, and the sound it made on the tin shield above us was a continuous, metallic din. Still, we were dry, and I couldn’t really say I was displeased with the trade. I stood outside with Luis, enjoying the smell of the rain, as he filled the gas tank. Isabel reappeared and said crankily, “She had to pee. So do I.”

“Open the store and go to the bathroom.”

Isabel rolled her eyes. “She’s a
snake
, Tío; she doesn’t use a toilet. She’s out there in the rain. She’s pretty angry about it, too.”

“Just go do your business and get back here,” Luis said. “Lock it back up when you’re done, okay?”

She didn’t answer. I had to smile at the thought that Luis had felt a need to lock a store during what would be, most likely, a time of chaos; Earth Wardens did tend to be more responsible with their powers than others. Most Fire Wardens would have melted the lock in their quest to get relief, and I didn’t like to think what a
Weather Warden might have done.

Isabel vanished inside the store.

“How about you?” Luis asked me. “Need to go?” When I shook my head, he said, “Okay, then watch the pump. I’m hitting the head.”

He moved in that direction. I concentrated on the boring task of watching the numbers spin meaninglessly on the pump; Luis had—probably uselessly—given his credit card for the payment, but economies across the world would stumble today, shatter tomorrow. Soon, it wouldn’t be how many imaginary dollars, or pounds, or yen, were in an imaginary account.… It would be about survival, and survival required tools. Things to barter, things to use. I began making a list of what would be good to acquire.

The pump stopped with a thud and click, and I replaced the nozzle where it was meant to go… and then realized how alone I was. Esmeralda was still missing, somewhere out in the rain; Luis and Isabel were in the store itself. It was just me, and the constant, punishing rain.

But there was someone watching me.

I stayed very still, facing out toward the downpour-obscured road. I saw nothing, but I sensed… something. A presence. The damp hair on the back of my neck prickled, and I felt the need to back up, but I stood my ground.

There was a sigh of wind, and the curtain of rain parted in a clear, square corridor. Water sluiced off the invisible top and down the sides. It was a precise, dangerously controlled use of power, and at the other end of the opening stood a child. Small, delicate; girl or boy, I couldn’t tell, and it didn’t matter greatly at that age.

“Sister,” the child said, and that voice echoed out, too large and powerful for that frail form. “I need to speak with you.”

I didn’t
know the child herself, but she was only a vessel. The power that loomed larger around her was familiar, and dangerous indeed. Pearl had come to see me—not in the flesh, but occupying it, piloting it from afar.

The open, rain-free corridor was an invitation, an obvious one that lured me toward the child. It was stupid of me to consider going toward the danger, but I was in a blackly strange place, and danger was all around me now.

So I went.

The sound of the rain drumming against the child’s shield was punishingly loud, until I stopped a few feet away. Then, the roar cut off cleanly, leaving a silence so charged with tension that I could feel the hair on my arms stir and shiver.

The child had dark eyes, short-cropped silky hair, and a secretive little smile too old for her years. I thought of Ibby, of the destruction of her childhood, and forced the anger away. “Sister,” I said. “Too weak to form your own flesh now?”

“Too careful,” she said, in that lazily amused tone. “What a judgmental thing you’ve become, Cassiel. Humanity has corrupted you quite to the core. Did you like your taste of the Mother’s love? She’d have killed you, you know. Supped on your blood and gnawed the power from your broken bones. She’s a cannibal. And all your human friends will be food for her feast.”

“Hers or yours,” I said, and shrugged. “Death is death, Pearl. You offer nothing better.”

“I offer a stay of execution. A partnership to keep humanity alive. You need me, sister. You know that you do.”

“For what? You’re only seeking to save your own existence. If the Mother destroys the human race, you go with it;
you’ve hidden yourself very well, I have to admit, and you did what all the Djinn thought impossible—you hid yourself away and drew power from humans, growing in power as they did. I’d applaud, but I doubt you can successfully root yourself so well in the power of the cockroaches who survive after them, although that would certainly be apt.”

The child’s eyes sparked with a sudden red glow, and power crackled around me in blue-white zaps along the edges of the corridor. “Softly,” she said. “I may not love you so much as all that, Cassiel.”

We fought like humans, I realized then… like siblings. Bitter and acrimonious, too sensitive to each other’s moods and vulnerabilities. The most violent hatreds came from families.

I took a step back and forced myself to stay silent. The glow faded slowly, and the crackling power hissed and fell silent, although a burnt-ozone smell filled the space around me.

“I came in peace,” Pearl said. “I came to save you.”

“We don’t need you,” I told her. I said it firmly, but without anger, and I even gave her a small nod of respect. “If you wish to fight, do so. But the Wardens fight alone, as they always have.”

“You speak for them.”

“They’d say the same.”

The child’s smile was, this time, truly unsettling. “You think so? Really? We’ll see, my sister. But the truth is, I don’t need you. You are an annoyance with which I no longer wish to contend. I gave you a chance. Now I hope you enjoy the consequences. Good-bye, my sister. Say hello to our mother.”

I had a second’s warning this time, purely because Pearl couldn’t help but gloat; it was just enough time to drop to one knee on the muddy ground and punch
power down into the water-drenched soil. I had no dominion over the water, but the soil responded to me, sluggish but powerful. It rose up in a thick, slippery wave under the child’s feet, throwing her—him?—off balance with a high, surprised cry. The attack that was blasting toward me missed, but only just; I felt the incredible heat of it blister my skin and sizzle my hair, and completed my forward motion to fall flat on the mud. My shirt was blazing, and I rolled over to kill the flames. As I did so, I kept moving the ground under the child’s feet, and riding the thick, shifting sludge kept the Fire Warden from launching another effective assault.

The rain shield overhead collapsed, and ice-cold water hit my burned skin in a punishing, breathtaking slap. I felt power shifting on the aetheric, and desperately kept pushing the earth around, trying to buy time. This child’s power was enormous, and extremely well controlled; if I gave a second’s pause, she would respond with a blistering assault that would burn the skin right off my body and leave me dying in the mud, or worse. I was fortunate that the child was strong in fire; earth was a good defense against that, if I could stay ahead of her and anticipate her moves.

It was hard to do, but while rocking her off balance yet again, I simultaneously pulled the mud up in a counterwave that buried me but left a tiny hole through which I could catch a breath. I sucked in a deep one, and rolled even as I sank deeper into the muck, reaching, reaching.…