Firestorm Page 0,115

Her hair, intricately braided with beads, swirled and twisted in a sudden hot wind rushing over the parking lot. I felt the patter of sand against my skin. "Swear to God. Pray. Pray."

She was terrifying now, and it wasn't the Earth inside her, it was purely and wholly Rahel.

"Pray," she said again, as if it really meant something, and put her hands together and gave me a full, formal bow.

I blinked against a stinging rush of blown sand, and then... she was gone. Nothing there but discarded paper cups rattling around on the ground, making pointless circles in the wind.

I scrabbled for the door and threw myself inside the car, fastened both hands tight on the steering wheel for a second, and then started up the car.

Pray.

Well, it was a start.

I pulled out onto the highway, still heading through Sedona, looking for... a sign. Overhead, the sky seemed to be getting darker, although it wasn't anywhere near dusk; the cerulean blue was taking on ocean colors. The sun blazed on, brassy-bright, but it didn't seem to be giving any warmth.

I paid no attention to the traffic, and let my instincts and peripheral vision take care of it while I frantically scanned the horizon. Jagged rocks all around, ringing us, and I had no idea what she'd meant except that she'd meant something specific.

And then, up ahead, I saw a sign. A literal exit sign. It said, chapel road, and in a smaller size type, CHAPEL OF THE HOLY CROSS.

Pray.

I took the exit fast, with tires squealing, and followed the winding road.

Chapter Nine

There was a parking lot at the top of the hill, and a sign told visitors that it was a steep climb up to the Chapel of the Holy Cross. I closed the car door and stood there, shivering in the suddenly cold breeze, staring up at the place. It was... beautiful. Built into the rocks, organic, angular. Strikingly memorable. The shape was oblong, the sides sloping in with a short line connecting them at the top--all plain gray concrete, contrasting sharply with the red sandstone around it. The front was all glass, reflecting the sun and the beautiful eternity of the desert around it. It wasn't as large as I'd have expected, but then it was a chapel, not a church. It was a place pilgrims came to ask for favors, and to leave a gift of worship.

There were a few other cars in the parking lot. I was hoping there wouldn't be unsuspecting visitors caught up in this, but it was too late to worry. Everybody was in the crossfire now. Six billion potential innocent bystanders.

I took the steep stairs toward the chapel at a run.

Sweat dried on my skin as I pounded up the steps, and I was about halfway up when I realized that somebody was right behind me, and gaining. I glanced back.

It was Ashan, feral and bloodied, and as I looked, he changed himself to mist and flew at me. He surrounded me, and coalesced, yanking my head back by the hair and catching me off-balance. It would be a long, bruising fall. A broken neck, at best.

But he didn't fling me over the edge, or down the steps. Again, I got the weird sense that he just couldn't, no matter how much he might have wanted it. Something prevented him. While he was fighting against that instinct, something hit him like a small pinafore-wearing freight train, and he went sailing over the edge of the drop, with little Alice/Venna on his back and riding him like a struggling surfboard toward the rocks. He had time to mist. So did she. They reappeared at ground level, and I had the sense that Ashan was trying to get free to come after me, but she circled to counter him at every turn.

It was fun for her. There was a terrible tiger's smile on her innocent little face that made my stomach lurch.

"Go!" she called to me, and extended a little-girl hand toward Ashan.

And blew him past five parked cars to slam up against a concrete retaining wall. He bounced off and came back at her like a man-eating rubber ball. I turned my attention back to the steps, taking them two and three at a time. My calf muscles screamed in protest. I hadn't run stairs in... well, years. Since evil Coach Hawkins in high school, who'd made it the start to every PE class. I'd never been all that good at it