by Rachel Caine
They’re gone, I told Luis. He released his hold on the rock, and it flowed away from our hands and feet, back to its original configuration. My muscles had taken advantage of the support to rest themselves, and my pace upward increased dramatically.
Close. So close.
There.
My hands touched the grass at the top, and I pulled myself up, rolled, and immediately fell flat, facedown so that I could institute my own protective cover, which made me a slightly uneven rise and fall in the velvety green lawn. I hardly saw Luis at all, or Turner, but I knew my partner had placed the same chameleon measures over them.
Very slowly, we began to make our way, on our bellies, across the lawn. Not in the way you see in films . . . not crawling, with our bodies in the air, braced on forearms. We slid along the grass, bellies flat, pulling ourselves slowly forward with flattened hands. It was slow, tedious work, but effectively silent and almost impossible to spot, even on the open ground, with the kind of camouflage we employed.
But with the time we had lost, I was worried we wouldn’t make it to the dome before Sanders triggered his distraction, drawing people directly toward us.
And then I saw one of the bear- panther chimeras emerge from the trees at the perimeter, sniff the air suspiciously, and begin to pad across the grass, nostrils flaring for scent.
Cass, Luis whispered.
I see it.
It’s going to smell us.
No question of that. It already had, though it was baffled by the lack of visible evidence of our presence. It padded around us in a slow circle, orange eyes fixed on the open space where one of its senses reported we were, and the others reported we were not.
Can you put it out? I asked Luis.
Maybe, he responded. If it gets close enough. But that leaves us with a huge unconscious problem for anybody to notice. Which is not the point of stealth.
I closed my eyes, pushed my face into the clean, springy grass, and sent my aetheric senses out to find something, anything we could use.
I found a deer. A magnificent young buck, sharpening his antlers against a tree just beyond the tree line.
I panicked him with a pulse of Earth power and sent him bounding into the clearing, where he froze in shock at the sight of the huge, feline form of the chimera snuffling at apparently empty grass.
The chimera’s head snapped up, the elusive smell of humans suddenly overridden by obvious prey.
Run, I told the deer, and released it. It turned and crashed back into the trees, bounding for its life.
The bear/panther roared after it, powering on massively muscled legs. Other howls answered it from all sides—the pack, taking up the hunt. I felt sickened, but the deer had already made the fatal error; I had only exploited it to our advantage.
We crawled as fast as such things could be accomplished.
We were not quite at the glowing curve of the dome when I heard the revving of engines on the other side of the chasm. Agent Sanders was making noise, a lot of it. Voices shouted. Metal banged. They were relocating all their tents to here, right within sight of the compound. No more hiding and playing coy.
I heard Agent Sanders’s voice, magnified into a giant’s deep shout, roll in a wave across the distance. “You in the dome,” he said. “I want to talk to the leader of the Church of the New World in this location.”
No response. I lifted my head and took reckonings. The access road was less than ten feet ahead of us, and to the left was a cleared open area, dirt only, neat as if it had been cordoned off by nature herself. The supply drop. That meant that at least one access was located right there, as close as possible to that spot; human nature and efficiency dictated that to be the case. One didn’t build a road and a drop point if the access was on the other side of the building.
And Pearl, I knew, would have built access in whatever ways she liked.
Follow, I whispered to both Luis and Turner, and crawled around the edge of the supply area, almost to the dome itself.
Then we waited.
It took some time. Agent Sanders repeated his request, over and over, in a bland and annoyingly exact manner. When his voice got tired, Sanders put on blaring recorded music by a singer who offended even my limited sensibilities for his lack of imagination.
And after almost half an hour, an access point opened on the dome, and a single person stepped outside.
Not Pearl, of course. I didn’t recognize this man. He was tall, sun-browned, lean, and with a hardened face that looked strong, but not kind. He had a bullhorn as well.
He came out of another access point, one further along the curve of the dome.
“Who are you?” he demanded, his own voice just as strong and deep as Sanders’s had been. “What do you want from us?”
As if that wasn’t obvious. The man couldn’t be oblivious to the abduction of children going on within his own house.
See if you can open it, I whispered to Luis, and felt him crawl past me and touch his hand to the dome near the supply drop point.
While Pearl’s spokesman and Sanders carried on their make-believe negotiations—and there was really no doubt how that would end—the area of the dome where Luis’s hand had rested suddenly belled inward, and parted with a cool whisper of air to form a circle.
Like a mouth.
I hesitated, staring at it. The last time I had entered one of Pearl’s lairs, it had almost destroyed me, and I’d been alone at the time. I hadn’t had to worry about two other lives trailing along behind me.
Luis started to enter the opening. I reached out and grabbed his arm, hard.
No, I said.
What the hell? Why? We’re exposed out here! Because this was what she wanted, or she would not have driven me to this point. Picadors, and bulls. She had opened only the doors she wanted me to go through. Pearl understood me. On some level, we were the same—outcast, angry, vengeful. I had taken one road, and she another, but in parallel, not opposition.
I closed my eyes for a moment, shivering, and then whispered, Stay here, both of you. Stay down. I will open it to bring the children out.
Luis stared at me from shocked, wide eyes. You can’t go in alone.
I won’t be alone, I said. You’re always with me. He involuntarily reached out to me, cupping my cheek in his warm, dirty palm, and the look in his face was horrified, heartbroken, and angry.
Start the attack at the other domes, I told him.
You can’t do this, he said. Beside him, Turner was making urgent go motions; without the Earth Warden talent for silent communication, he was left frustratingly out of the loop.
She’ll have the children waiting, I told Luis. If we go in as a group, there will be deaths. I can’t let that happen. It was what Pearl wanted. For us to be trapped in close quarters, fighting these children for our lives. The more of us there were, the worse the toll would be.
You can’t do this alone, he said again. He wasn’t wrong, but I also understood now that there was a price for victory here, as everywhere.
And the price was too high. She meant it to be too high.
Follow, I said. Wait five minutes, and follow. If I’m dead, do what you can.
I didn’t bother to argue with either one of them. I just lifted my body and lunged inside, slamming the opening shut behind me and locking it with a twist of my will. He could force it, but it would take time.
I didn’t think there was much left.
When I turned back, I faced an organic sweep of cool, iridescent walls—not quite stone, not quite bone, not quite nacreous. It curved as it followed the outer shape of the dome, and I ran lightly along the path, looking for what I knew I would find.
I rounded the curve and found Isabel.
“Ibby?”
I slowed my steps, my metal left hand touching the outer wall, and stared at her with the intensity I reserved for those I loved, and for enemies. I wasn’t sure which she was now. Or whether she was still both.
Isabel was still, in body
, a chubby little girl, but she had put aside the behavior of a child. She stood very still, very alert, watching my approach. Behind her were three other children, each older than she was. They were dressed the same, all in that durable camouflage material, which I now realized had the same properties that Luis had used in his efforts to conceal us; the material mimicked its surroundings, and now it was a shimmering ivory, like silk.
“Ibby,” I said. I stopped and faced her, just as still as she was. “I’ve come to take you home, Ibby.”
She didn’t answer. None of them did. They just watched me with alert, angry eyes.
“Isabel, I don’t want to fight you. I want to take you home.”
Isabel slowly shook her head. “This is my home.”
“No. Your home is with your uncle Luis.” And me, I wanted to say, but didn’t dare. “He’s waiting for you. He’s missed you so badly. You remember your uncle, don’t you?”
Her dark eyes flickered for a moment, and I knew she was remembering. What she might remember was another question; if Pearl had succeeded in altering the girl’s perceptions, her memories, she might be reliving imaginary trauma—or real ones. Pearl had manipulated these children, tried to use their familial feelings to raise barriers and drive hatreds—but she could only manipulate, not program. That left them vulnerable to the same appeals.
“Uncle Luis is dead,” Ibby said. “You killed him. It was horrible.”
“She’s lying to you,” I said. Not that I hadn’t almost gotten him killed on many occasions, but it was probably not the best time to parse the dynamics of that relationship. “Ibby, the lady who tells you these things, she isn’t your friend. And she lies. She wants to use you, all of you. She doesn’t care what happens to you.”
Isabel was no fool, and I saw her consider that. The children behind her, however, didn’t have our history together. Or, perhaps, the same flexibility of mind.
“You’re the liar! You’re the evil one!” one of them shouted, and clapped his hands together.
A hammer of air forced itself down the narrow hallway, hit me, and slammed me backward to the floor with such violence I saw black swarms of stars, and felt myself begin to disconnect from this world. I fought back, panting, and rolled to my side to get up.
The Weather Warden child hit me again, harder, sending me face- first into the wall. I slid down it, almost senseless, and sensed Isabel stepping forward. The assault stopped, mainly because the Weather Warden—the same boy who’d almost killed us in the chasm, perhaps?—couldn’t strike with Isabel in the way.
Isabel called fire into her hand. It came in a blue-white burst of energy, flickering red at the edges, and echoed eerily in her eyes as she advanced toward me.
“You wanted them dead,” she said. “My parents. All our parents. You killed Uncle Luis. You want to kill me and my friends. You want to kill the lady.”
Only one of those things was true, but it was the critical one; I did want to kill the lady. And however it had happened, Manny and Angela Rocha had died; Pearl could twist the facts to suit her cause, and it would be useless for me to try to deny them.
But Luis . . . I could prove she was lying about Luis.
“Stop,” I said, or tried to say; there was blood in my mouth, and I wasn’t sure that I had actually spoken at all. The second blow had been so hard that I couldn’t get my limbs to move, other than uncoordinated scrabbles. “He’s alive.” That sounded almost clear. “Your uncle is alive.”
“Liar,” Ibby said. “I saw you kill him. The lady showed me—you hurt him, you hurt him so bad he died. And now you’re going to burn, just like you burned him.”
She pulled her hand back.
I flung out a hand in useless denial . . . and felt a surge of horror at what had been done to Ibby. To all these children. She’d watched someone—even if it had not been Luis in truth—burn. Whether that had been illusion or reality, it was traumatic enough to leave unendurable scars.
In the instant before she launched the fire at me, I shouted, “Ibby, think! I’m like your uncle! I can’t use fire!”
Ibby blinked. She stayed there, poised on the edge of violence, fire flickering and hissing in her small, chubby hand.
“Your uncle is an Earth Warden,” I panted. “I share his power. I am an Earth Warden. I couldn’t burn him, even if I wanted to, do you understand? And I never would, Ibby. I love him, just as I love you.”
It was much for a child her age to understand, but she’d been forced to things far beyond her normal understanding already. She understood the nature of power because of what Pearl had already taught her.
Ibby quenched the fireball with a clench of her fist, leaving behind a smear of acrid smoke on the air. She looked at me with wide, lost eyes, frowning.
“But I saw,” she said. “I saw you do it. I know you did it.”
Children are literal. And Pearl had counted on that. “No, my dear,” I said softly, and heard the grief and tenderness in my voice. “I didn’t. And I won’t hurt him, or you. You have my promise.”
I felt the air move behind me, a cool breeze stirring my hair, and heard running, booted feet.
And then Luis said, “Ibby?”
In the first instant there was shock, then fear. She’d seen him die. This required a wrenching adjustment of her worldview, something difficult and painful.
Then I saw delight dawn. Her eyes rounded, and so did her perfect little rosebud of a mouth, and in that single moment, she seemed the child she had been. “Tío Luis?” Her voice was shaking and uncertain.
He lowered himself to one knee. “I’m here, mija. I’m right here.”
She took a step forward, then shook her head, violently, and backed away, into the safety of the other children. “No,” she said. “No, it’s a trick. You’re playing a trick.”
Luis didn’t move, not even a muscle. He didn’t even glance at me. “Mija, it’s no trick. I’m here to take you home. You want to go home, don’t you? I know you didn’t want to leave us. I know they made you go. It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault.”
She pulled in a trembling breath, and I saw tears glitter in her dark eyes. So young. So fragile.
“Isabel,” Luis whispered. “I love you. Please come home.”
“No,” said the Weather Warden boy, the one who’d slammed me into the walls. He was cold and utterly controlled, and he grabbed Ibby’s shoulder as she started to move toward us. “She’s not going anywhere. You’re not going to hurt her anymore.”
“I’m not going to hurt her.” Luis kept his voice low, and as gentle as possible. “I’m not going to hurt any of you. You can all come with us.”
“Why, so you can cut into our heads? Make us zombies?” The boy’s grip on Ibby’s shoulder must have hurt; I saw her wince. “That’s what you do, we know all about it. You take us away to your hospital and you cut us up and you lock us up. We’re not going to let you do that to us. Or to anyone else, ever again. We’re going to stop you.”
They thought they were the heroes.
Worse, there was a grain of truth in what the boy was saying, like all successful lies. The Wardens did operate on those whose powers were too dangerous, too uncontrollable. Some didn’t survive. Some survived grievously damaged. Pearl knew that.
She had twisted it in their minds, made it their inevitable fate. Made us all evil, predatory villains.
They’d fight, all right. Fight to the death, because they were the brightest, the strongest, the most courageous.
She was turning our future heroes against us.
“Ibby,” I coughed, and rolled up to my hands and knees. “Ibby, please don’t. Let us help you.”
“No,” the boy said, when Isabel tried to pull free. He shoved her behind him, and slapped his palms together again, driving a wall of force toward us. I collapsed to the floor this time before it hit me, presenting as little target as possible; even so, the impact almost drove me into unconsciousness.
It blew Luis backward
s, sliding him ten feet down the hall with a yelp of pain.
“No!” Isabel shouted, and turned on the boy, shoving him back. “No, don’t hurt him!”
“That’s your enemy, dummy!” he yelled back, and shoved in turn. “How weak are you? Didn’t you learn anything? It’s probably not even him!”
“It is,” Isabel said, and turned toward Luis. “It is him.”
As she started toward us, the boy tried to grab her, but this time, Ibby was ready, and she slipped out of his hands and ran past me, toward her uncle. Luis rose, staggering a little, and she leaped into his arms.
He was driven back a step, but held on to her; there was a flash of pain on his face, quickly buried by waves of relief. He kissed her shining dark hair, hugged her, and murmured rapid calming phrases in Spanish, only half of which I could hear. Promising he loved her. Promising he would protect her.
I hoped that was true.
“The lady lied,” I managed to say to Isabel, and to the other children still facing us. “She lied to you. Do you understand? She’s trying to make you hurt innocent people. I know you don’t want to do that. You’re better than that.”
One looked horror-stricken, and backed up. He was clearly questioning everything he’d been shown, everything he’d been told; there was real doubt in his face, real pain. He was just a bit younger than the Weather Warden boy.
I saw no such doubts on that one’s face. He was a fanatic. A true believer, as was the girl next to him.
“You’re the ones who lie!” the girl shouted, and I felt a fearfully strong Earth power ripping at me, trying to clutch its fingers around my heart and crush. I batted the attack away and lurched to my feet, wiping blood from my mouth. Earth powers, I could defend against. The boy who was backing away was Fire.
The Weather Warden boy was still the real danger. He was willing to kill. Eager to. He was just trying to find the right moment, and to avoid hurting Ibby in the process—though I wasn’t at all sure he would flinch from it, if he thought it necessary.
