Firestorm Page 0,104

order here."

No answer. Man, this was frustrating, not to mention scary. I cast a longing look at the ice-covered bathroom door.

"I saved the life of an Oracle, and I need you to help me now. Just help me talk to the Mother."

There was a sudden sensation in the air, as if everything in the world had shivered. The Oracle, wreathed in fog, leaned closer. As it did, streamers of milk-white mist wrapped around me to lick me like tongues. I shuddered, and as the Oracle's face came closer to mine, I saw its eyes.

Just for a split second, because I turned my face away and closed my eyelids and prayed, prayed never to see such a thing again. I remembered that I'd thought Jonathan's eyes had been scary--and they had been, depthless and terrifying--but at least they'd reminded me of something I understood. Something inside my experience.

These were the eyes of eternity itself.

"Help me," I said. "Please."

The air shivered again, more violently this time, with a sound like a million silver bells falling out of a dump truck. Deafening. Was that a voice? Was I supposed to understand it? I didn't. I couldn't. Even the Fire Oracle's screams had made more sense.

"I can't understand you!" I said, and immediately knew that was a mistake. One doesn't correct gods, even minor ones, and if the Djinn bowed to these creatures, that was good enough to qualify them for the name. The air around me curdled and thickened, pressing on me again. Squeezing. I couldn't breathe. Spots danced bright in front of my bulging eyes, and I pitched to my knees on the tiny bathroom floor with the Oracle, bent at some impossibly inhuman angle, following me down. Boring into me with those eyes.

I was starting to wish that I was any kind of Warden other than a Weather Warden. If this was my patron saint, I was in real trouble, because I had the sense that it was playing with me. Enjoying my pain. Interested in my panic. Just when I thought it would crush me like a grape, the air stilled again, completely dead of intention or life. The Oracle hadn't moved away. When I breathed, I was breathing in mist that flowed off its genderless, featureless face.

I avoided looking at it directly.

"I'm not quitting," I said. "If you won't help me, I'll go to the Earth Oracle."

It had a mouth, after all, and teeth made of ice, and it showed them to me. I whimpered, I think, waiting for it to destroy me, and mist wrapped around my neck in a thick, choking rope to pull me closer.

My skin stung with a sudden ice-cold chill.

I focused past the teeth, on the terrifying eyes of the thing, and said, "I'm not giving up. If I have to give my life to get this done, then I will. Kill me, or let me talk to the Mother."

The vote seemed to be on the side of killing me, but it was too late to reconsider, and besides, I meant it. If I had to die, I would. Hell, I'd done it before, and I would again, at least once. Might as well make it count.

Apparently there was a third alternative I hadn't considered, because the rope around my throat suddenly dissolved into cool white fog, and the Oracle's teeth flashed in what could only be interpreted by my brain as a smile, and... it simply misted away. Back up through the ventilation system.

Gone.

My gasping breaths hung white on the ice-cold air, and I sat there shivering for a few more minutes before I felt a shudder through the deck.

We were out of the clear air and heading back into turbulence.

I unlocked the bathroom door. It unsealed with a snap-crackle of ice, and I walked on shaky legs back to my row, lurched past Yves, and strapped myself back into my seat.

"Mon Dieu, you look as if you've seen a ghost," he said, and touched the back of my hand with his fingers. "You're freezing."

Lightning flashed hot in the sky, changing black to smoke gray, and there was something floating outside the plane in a drift of mist and curves, with the eyes of eternity.

I flattened my hand against the window in a reflexive gesture, trying to reach it, trying to push it away, maybe both, but then the lightning failed and there was nothing there.

Nothing.

I felt my stomach churn and grabbed for the airsickness bag.

Yves, alarmed, pulled away as I retched, and