Firestorm Page 0,46

with a backhanded blow across the face.

It was like slamming full speed into a metal bar. I staggered and went down, my head full of pain and fury, and some instinct made me roll out of the way just as a clawed hand slashed at my midsection.

"Mom!"

A blur hit the Djinn and rolled it away, snarling and clawing. Imara. I got to one knee, swaying, then fought my way upright. I tasted blood and spat out a mouthful on the cheerful green grass.

A heavy gray hand fell on my shoulder and spun me around. Up close, the tombstone-angel Djinn looked utterly terrifying. Remorseless, remote, and deadly.

It carried a dagger. Not metal... it didn't flash in the sunlight as it lifted toward me. Some kind of stone. I screamed and backpedaled, summoning up a burst of wind to smack the thing in the chest.

It was a Djinn. It should have been thrown back, because Djinn are essentially air... only the air didn't come at my command. I could feel it trying to, but there was something else holding it in place. Something far, far larger than I was.

Imara was right. Running was a really good plan.

I was disoriented, but survival was a great motivator; I dodged through the tombstones, moving as fast as I could. Leaping over what I couldn't avoid. The iron-bar fence was ahead of me, topped with Gothic triangular spikes; no way was I vaulting that thing. I couldn't count on the wind to give me any lift, either. I had to make it to the gates.

It occurred to me that the Djinn were playing with me. Robbed of my Warden powers, I didn't have any reasonable way to fight. Imara was running interference, but I could tell at a glance that she was overmatched with a single opponent, much less two.

The Djinn were determined to drive us out of the cemetery, which meant that this was the place I needed to be.

I headed for the gates at a dead sprint, reversed in a spray of gravel, and yelled, "Imara! I need a path!"

She was neck-deep in tiger-fighting, but she ripped free, flashed across the grass, and tackled the tombstone-angel Djinn into the trees. The tiger-Djinn was momentarily occupied with getting up.

I had a clear white gravel path leading to the center of the cemetery, and I took it at a pace that would have clocked in respectably at the Olympics. Panic and raw determination gave me wings, and I flashed past the tiger-Djinn. It grabbed a handful of my hair, but not enough to stop me; I sobbed breathlessly at the agony as it ripped loose from my scalp, and I hit the doors of the mausoleum hard.

They opened, spilling me inside.

I continued to fall forward.

Kept on falling.

No way was it this far to the floor...

I opened my eyes and looked. I was floating in midair, or falling, or something--I felt like I was falling, but then that abruptly fixed itself, and my feet settled onto the ground. Or what felt like ground. There was no sky, no ground, and every side of the room looked exactly the same. It was dim, gray, and lit by what looked like a firepit in the center.

Nothing else.

I waited, heart hammering, for some kind of a response. For the Djinn outside to come howling in here and chop me to screaming pieces.

Outside, I heard nothing. An ominous nothing.

This place had a sense of energy in it, something primal and deep. I tried going up to the aetheric to take a look, and for a second I thought that I'd just simply failed, because everything looked just the same.

Then I realized that the room hadn't changed, but that I was drawn in typical glowing aetheric shades and shadows. The room was somehow real on the aetheric plane, too.

I'd never seen anything like that, outside of the house where Jonathan had lived out on the edges of nowhere and nothing.

I felt a hot surge of anguish, thinking of Imara potentially fighting for her life outside, while I waited in here for... for what? What made me think the Oracle would even notice me, much less deign to talk to me?

Something floated lazily at the corner of my eye, a barely seen shadow, and I turned my head, frowning.

The Demon Mark.

It had followed me.

I backed off, terrified, trying to think of a single thing I could do. Nothing came to mind. It had me cornered. There was no place to run, and certainly