Cape Storm Page 0,108

of a Djinn, converting the power into its raw, black opposite, stabilized into a form we could handle and use.

Rahel knew it, too. I saw the fatal acceptance in her face, and the haughty courage, even though she was trapped in place by the bottle that Bad Bob held in his hand. Come, then, she seemed to be saying. If you can.

If I'd been myself, any version of myself, I wouldn't have done it. Couldn't have.

But holding the Unmaking had taken all that away from me, just as Bad Bob had intended.

I heard myself scream, a raw sound that fused oddly with the music of the Unmaking as it crawled through my nerves.

I lifted the spear in both hands and plunged it toward Rahel's chest.

It never got there.

A pulse of pure hot Earth power rolled up through the rocks and blasted them into knife-edged fragments under our feet, sending me flying in one direction, Rahel in another.

The attack came from underneath us.

Bad Bob was caught by surprise. He staggered, leaped for stable ground, but it dissolved underneath his sandals. He fell. The Ancestor Scriptures skittered across stone, and the bottle dropped toward a fatal impact with the edge of a piece of lava rock.

I got to Rahel before the bottle hit stone. I felt the firm impact of the spear hitting her flesh, and then - then she was gone, and the spear was broken off at the tip, vibrating like a tuning fork in my hands.

Rahel's bottle had shattered into pieces, and she was gone.

Rahel was free.

The Unmaking howled at me. It was angry at being cheated.

"Son of a bitch !" Bad Bob clawed his way out of the hole in the island, and jumped again as another hole was blasted up through it from beneath. Water geysered into the air between us. I held the spear in both hands and cast my own awareness out, too.

It was an impossibly stupid thing to do, but Lewis had taken the Grand Horizon down, like the world's most unwieldy submarine. It floated in its protective, glistening bubble right below the island, and as I looked down into one of the holes, I could see people on the decks looking up at me a dozen feet below.

Something hit me from behind with stunning force, and I toppled into the water. The spear was as heavy as an iron bar, and it dragged me down toward the ship below.

Rahel wrapped her arms around me and pulled me back before the spear could touch the fragile surface of Lewis's protective shield that kept everyone on the ship alive beneath the waves. I fought to get free, and when that didn't work, I tried to move the spear around to stab her from behind.

She pinned my elbows and dragged me back, swimming like a dolphin at attack speed.

The protective dome sparked with golden light, and I saw Wardens emerging. Lots of them. They were accompanied by the bright silver glow of Djinn, and it was all bright, and weirdly beautiful, and I realized that I was running out of air. The screaming of the Unmaking in my head was so loud it blotted out everything.

Rahel wouldn't let me breathe. I fought with everything I had, trying to throw her off, and for a moment it seemed like I'd succeeded.

I seized the opportunity and shot myself through the water at cannon speed, heading up. I blasted a path through the rocks and came up in the middle of the floating island, gasping and shuddering. I grabbed the husk of a dead palm tree and pulled myself from the water just a second before the hole sealed itself over beneath my boots. I used the Unmaking to lever myself to my feet. Where it touched, the rocks blackened and dissolved as if I'd doused them with acid.

My hands were black now, and my forearms were the gray of dead flesh, but I didn't hurt at all.

Bad Bob slid down a small mountain of rubble, and it exploded into flame and shrapnel behind him. He thumped down next to me, and we both looked up.

The storm circling overhead had taken on a thick darkness, pregnant with menace. As I watched, the clouds inverted their colors - a negative image, just a flash, and then emerald lightning tore through the sky, breaking in all directions.

"Time," Bad Bob said. "Take that up, Jo. Take it to the other side." Now I knew what he wanted from me. The Unmaking had