Cape Storm Page 0,77

the boat, pinning people against the walls, and a wild-eyed angel dropped out of heaven to gather me in his arms.

The sound that came out of him was some horrible cross between a scream and a growl -

inhuman, furious, insane with grief. I couldn't move. I couldn't control my eyes to focus on his face, so his expression was mercifully blurred.

Suddenly, I felt the pressure of darkness inside me ease. Bad Bob had lost interest in me.

Dead, I was of no use to him, none at all. The thick, toxic sludge of power inside me began to bleed away.

But it wasn't gone.Not yet.

Lewis said, "David, please understand. You can't bring her back. Not this time." David's voice was a raw, bloody scream. "She's not gone!" He could touch me. See me. Feel my ghostly presence. He hugged my limp form to his chest and rocked back and forth, his face hidden in my hair.

"Let me save her," he whispered. "Order me to save her." I felt Lewis shudder. "No. David, you have to let her go. She's damaged. She can't fight him off anymore. It's time to let her go." He paused, and then said, with absolute precision,

"I'm ordering you to let her die, David."

The silence in the boat was as deep as the ocean. So was the sense of pressure. Even my dead flesh could feel it.

"I'll kill you for this," David said. There was nothing in his voice - no emotion, no hate, no grief. Nothing but simple declaration of intent. "I'll rip you apart one cell at a time, and you'll live a thousand years through the pain. I might even let you scream, if you beg me." He was utterly serious. He would torture Lewis. He'd do it with the kind of cold distance that the Djinn reserved for those they truly, deeply, madly hated.

He'd do it for me.

"Listen to me," Lewis said, and if he was afraid, it didn't show in his voice. "I'm ordering you not to save her. I'm ordering you to cut the cord and let her go. "

"Well, that's a paradox," David said. He still sounded eerily calm, almost relaxed. "Because if I let her go, it destroys the vow that binds me to the bottle, and that means I'm free.

Free to pull you apart, Lewis. Free to order the brutal, screaming death of every last one of your kind. Do you really think I won't?" There was madness in him, I realized. Terrible, burning madness, and Kevin was right - letting David free was a death sentence for Lewis.

Not just for him, though. For the Wardens. For everyone.

In this moment, David was a bigger threat to humanity than anything Bad Bob had ever dreamed.

I didn't want to linger like this. I wanted to tell him it was all right, that Lewis had done it for a reason, a good one, and I didn't really mind. The darkness was dripping out of me in an invisible stain on the deck. I felt... clear, at last. Finally, myself again.

I couldn't bring myself back to life; it violated all the laws of the universe. All I could do, now that I was clear of Bad Bob's influence again, was choose to die. But if I did that, if I severed the cord holding me and David together, the result would be the same; he'd be lost, and alone, and mad with fury and grief.

I could feel Lewis working all of that out, and realizing that he was in a trap he couldn't escape.

Just like David.

"Let me have her," David said. "Let me have her and I swear I will not harm you." Lewis's voice came back stripped raw. Bloody. "You think I'm afraid of that ?" He stopped and took a deep breath. "She's too dangerous. You know that. "

"No," David said softly. "I don't know it. You fear it. There's a difference. Let me have her, or I will teach you fear. All of you. You think you've suffered at the hands of the Djinn?

You have no concept of how much I can do to you. "

Lewis knew the minutes were ticking away, and after a certain point, life wouldn't return to the decomposing tissues of my body. Not any kind of life I'd want to have, anyway.

He also knew that forcing David to kill me was even worse.

"Do it," Lewis said. "Save her."

Before the words were out of his mouth, David acted. A silver cascade of power flooded me, pounded