Thin Air Page 0,49

feel the sickening drain on my life.

"Help!" I tried to scream it-Lewis hadn't gone far, he couldn't have-but my voice was a weak, choked squeak in my throat. Oh God. It took a step toward me, and I felt a corresponding surge of dizzying weakness sweep over me.

"Quiet," the Demon whispered, and moved even closer. I gasped for breath, but it was like breathing at the bottom of the ocean. I was drowning in the dark. "We're nearly there. Nearly there. You need to let go, let go and give me what I need."

I knew in a flash that this was why Jonathan had come to warn me. Right now, the Demon was missing something, something vital. Something I had.

And against all odds, I needed to hang onto it.

I needed to fight for my life, because I was the only one who could.

Of course, I was also drugged and tied to a bed, but nobody promised it was going to be easy.

David. God, David, please.

If he could hear me, he couldn't respond. Maybe he was hurt, or imprisoned, or just cut off and unable to get to me. I could almost feel him out there, feel his frustration and fear, but...

Look inside.

It was a whisper, and I didn't know where it was coming from, but it steadied me. I got my breath and reached deep within, reached in for something I didn't even know I had.

Power flowed up through me, thick and honey-sweet, slow as the heartbeat of the Earth herself.

Yes. There. Just like that.

The restraints were leather and metal, both things that Earth Wardens could manipulate and control. I dissolved them into sand, pulled my wrists free of the gritty pile, and rolled painfully up to my knees to face the Demon.

She stopped moving, staring at me. If I scared her at all, I couldn't tell it from her expression.

"Back off," I panted. "Right now." As a threat, it was pretty empty...I didn't have a clue how to hurt this thing. But she was standing there, waiting, frowning just a little. Maybe she didn't know much about me, either.

Maybe she was just a little bit afraid.

She said, with an eerie flatness, "There you are. I've been searching for you. It's time to finish this." She held out a hand toward me, and I felt the shimmering, sickening blackness sink deeper into me. "Do you know who I am?"

My voice was barely a whisper. "Demon." I didn't doubt that, not at all. There was something so utterly wrong about her...

"No." Something changed in her expression-no longer doll-blank, but a glimmer of something else. Life. Personality. My personality. "Not anymore. I'm becoming something else. I'm becoming you."

I swayed on my knees, too sick to move, too terrified to do anything. She came closer, and with every step, she was...more me. Expression, body language, confidence. Even the smile.

"Why are you doing this?" I managed to whisper. Her fingers were moving toward me, and I knew, knew without the shadow of a doubt, that if she touched me, it was all over.

"No choice," she said. "Your memories changed me. I have to complete the process. Only one of us in this world, and it will be me. You're weak. I'm the stronger."

"No." My breath felt thick and stale in my lungs already, as if I was gone and didn't know it. "David-"

That smile was definitely mine, right down to the lopsided twist at the corner of her lips. "He won't know. Nobody will know, because I won't be pretending-I'll be you. Completely."

I fell backward as her fingers moved toward me; I rolled over and used the cold metal bars of the hospital bed to pull myself to a sitting position. I lashed out with Earth powers, feeling for the cold, solid structure and heating it at the atomic level; the metal sagged, turned liquid, and hit the floor with a hiss.

I rolled off the edge of the bed, avoided the molten mess, and backed away. I was in a corner, and the Demon was between me and the door. My head felt like I'd slammed it in a door a couple of times, and my whole body seemed cold, on the verge of giving up.

The building was made of concrete and metal and wood, and under normal circumstances that might have posed a problem, but I was beyond panic, and I was beyond controlling the surging, deadly flow of the Earth power in my body. I lashed out and felt the concrete soften.