fire went out. And darkness began to creep up his arms. No, not darkness - oh God , I knew what that was.
Ash, and dust.
He was being destroyed, just like the Djinn who'd died in the hallway. The touch of this thing was toxic to them. That Djinn must have come across it somehow, maybe even been sent by Ashan to warn us of the danger - and it had killed her.
It had erased her.
Just as it was trying to do to David.
"Let go!" I shouted, and rolled over the top of the couch to land on my feet. I staggered, but I didn't have time for weakness. "David, back off!" David didn't want to, but he did, breaking away and lunging to his left as I strode forward, gathering up raw power in both hands. As I moved, a silver sword formed in my grip - not metal but ice. Hard as steel, reinforced with a binding that left the cutting edge as thin as a whisper.
If this thing could survive David's heat, I wanted to see how it felt about chills.
The blade hit, bit, and cut, slicing through fragments of muscle and cooked skin, through crystalline bones that glowed blue where the ice slashed.
I chopped right through its neck. I paused, holding in my follow-through, to see what would happen.
The creature's head stayed on. As I watched, it wobbled a bit on the skeletal column of glassy vertebrae, then settled back into place.
It smiled with needle-sharp crystal teeth. If it had ever been human, other than a casual disguise, it certainly wasn't playing at it now. This was something out of a big-budget nightmare, and I took a step back from it, fast.
"David, get everybody out!" I yelled. I could sense this thing orienting on me, predator to prey. The last thing I needed right now was mortal trip hazards and speed bumps; it was going to be all I could do to protect myself, much less Cynthia Clark and her employee.
I sensed David grabbing up the noncombatants and hustling them to the door.
The creature facing me opened its mouth and flicked a tongue like a whip at me. It was more like an icicle than living tissue, but it moved like a cobra. The end was as sharp as a needle, and I barely avoided the stabbing turn of it in midair. A return stroke with my ice-knife passed through the tongue without any effect at all.
Damn.I couldn't hurt this thing, at least not with these weapons.
I retreated. I changed out ice for steel and tried again. This time, I sliced a piece out of the tongue, which fell to the floor and writhed like a slug in the sun. Whether that hurt the creature or not, it charged me, and I tried to make like a matador. That didn't help. It had reach and speed, and what had been its fingers in human form were now claws, diamond-sharp and lightning fast.
I felt the slices like chilly tugs on my side, but there wasn't any pain, not at first. I didn't allow myself to look down, I kept moving, turning, keeping myself away from the razor-edged whirlwind that was hissing through the air in pursuit.
Then I hit a corner, and there was nowhere left to run. I slashed, trying to slow it down, but the creature was just too damn fast, and too damn powerful. It smashed through the shield I put up. I didn't have time to try any Earth powers; fire wouldn't work, and weather tricks wouldn't buy me more than another fragile breath.
I was going to lose.
A small, white ball of light hit the thing from the side and plunged beneath the crystalline structure. It lit the creature up like an arc light from within. I couldn't even estimate the heat; it felt like a nuclear bomb compressed to the size of a baseball, forces well beyond my ability to summon, much less command.
All I could do was duck and cover. Again.
The creature shrieked in that horrible, soul-destroying range again and became a photonegative blast of flame that cooked everything within a foot of it - but not an inch beyond. The inverse flame became white flame, then reversed itself into a tiny, glittering spark... and the creature was gone except for a shower of glittering crystalline powder.
A wave of intense pressure passed over me and shoved me hard into the corner.
The white ball of light expanded into a softer glow, and as the