I felt an odd tug at my leg and looked down. The decking was growing green shoots, and they were twining up my leg in thick, twisted strands. I hissed in frustration and snapped the plant off at the root, but while I was occupied with that, more fast-growing tendrils erupted up around me, anchoring me in place. It was stupidly annoying, and I finally summoned up a pulse of fire to burn them away from me.
Then I pushed the wave of flame out at the Wardens.
A Fire Warden named Freddy Pierce stepped out and shoved the attack back at me. Then, surprising me, he rushed through the flame and hit me in a low tackle. As attacks went, it wasn’t subtle, but it caught me completely off guard, and the man was stronger than he looked. I slammed down on my back, and Freddy flipped me over and held me down with one sharp knee digging into my spine.
“Come on,” Lewis said, and stepped through the guttering flames to stand over me. His voice was low, kind, and a little sad. “You’re not going to kill us. You won’t, Jo. And that makes things tougher, because I can’t kill you if I know you’re still in there somewhere.”
I laughed and turned my cheek to one side, staring up at him through a mask of tumbling hair. “Do you really think so?” I asked, and blew Freddy off my back.
I blew him off the ship.
Into the water.
Then I lunged up, wrapped my hands around Lewis’s throat, and called fire. It wrapped around me in a dripping mantle, and Lewis’s clothes ignited instantly. He controlled that, but I was attacking him on multiple fronts; while he was putting out the flames, I was turning his breath toxic in his lungs, turning his blood to sludge in his veins. Earth Wardens knew a million painful ways to kill, and it was hard to fight, especially when you were on fire.
But Lewis managed, somehow. He batted me away, sending me reeling back to crash against a metal rail. Somewhere out in the churning iron gray sea, Freddy— a Fire Warden, with no power over either the water or the living things in it—yelled for help with panic in his voice. Something about sharks.
As Lewis staggered and fell, the bottle that held David’s soul entrapped fell out of his pocket and skittered across the deck. I reached out for it.
Cherise got to it first.
She backed up, fast, both hands clenched around the small glass form. She pulled it in to her chest.
The Wardens closed ranks between her and me.
“Back off,” Kevin said, pushing his way to the front—and Cherise.
“You back off,” I snapped. “I saved your life, you rancid little murderer. You owe me.”
“I owe Joanne,” he said. “I don’t know who the fuck you are, and I don’t care. You make a move against Cherise and—”
“And what?” I asked, and took a step forward. “You’ll cut me? Oh, shut up. Get out of my way if you want to live.”
Venna misted into place next to him. She didn’t speak. She didn’t have to. I got the message well enough.
“I’ve fought you before,” I said.
“You lost,” she pointed out. “The poisoned water may sustain you, but it’s still poisoned. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re my equal. Ever.”
“Booyah, bitch,” Kevin said. Someone else, with more sense and better self-preservation instincts, muttered for him to shut up.
“I’m going to kill you all,” I said. I meant it. I felt it coming, a kind of inevitable darkness. “I have to.” I was still just a little sorry about that, but it really was necessary. Lewis had been right that somewhere deep inside me, the old Joanne was still struggling—poisoning my thoughts, driving my actions.
No more.
I flung my arms wide, felt the storm roar and answer, and shouted, “Now!”
The Djinn Rahel erupted from out of the ocean.
No, not Rahel—Rahel as commanded by her master, Bad Bob, the Black Warden.
Rahel was as large as the cruise ship. Her hair was a nest of writhing eels. Her face was distorted, pointed into an extreme triangle, and her mouth was full of rows of teeth. She was dressed in rags and weeds and pearls and fish scales, and in both hands she held swords as long as the hull of the ship.
“Oh, Christ,” someone said, appalled, and then the screaming started. Not among the Wardens, who instantly began pulling up every defense they had.
It really wasn’t going to do them any good at all.
Venna, pretty and fresh in a sparkly pink shirt with a unicorn on it, jumped flat-footed from the deck to balance on the railing. The storm winds hit her like the wave front of an explosive blast, blowing her hair back in a rippling blond flag, but she was absolutely steady as she balanced. Rahel saw her, and that shark-toothed mouth gaped in a menacing smile.
Venna executed a perfect dive, and before she hit the waves, she’d changed into something else, something vast and dark that swam straight at the terrifying sea-hag that Rahel had become.
Rahel’s shark teeth parted on a shriek, and she was yanked down under the waves. The Grand Paradise rocked violently as the water churned, and the storm winds lashed the ship in swirling gusts.
Rahel wasn’t the attack, of course. Just a diversion, something to help get attention away from me. While the Wardens were focused on the water, I concentrated on the metal of the ship’s hull, below the water line.
Metal bent and screamed, and the entire ship twisted as if it had been T-boned. It rolled starboard, then over-corrected to port, sending people flying and rolling and screaming.
Rahel broke the surface of the water and was yanked under again. The battle continued, not that it mattered to anyone on the ship anymore.
I could feel the damage.
It wasn’t containable.
I smiled.
Lewis left the deck in a sudden burst and went airborne—a trick that few Weather Wardens could manage under stress, even at full power. Formidable, I thought, filing it away for future reference.
Then something hit us hard on the side, and the ship, already dying, rolled all the way over.
Disaster can be oddly beautiful. It seems to happen in slow motion, like ballet, and if your emotions aren’t involved, then it’s only input.
All I was feeling, as the ship died around me, was a quiet kind of satisfaction.
It took about ten seconds for the Grand Paradise to capsize, and then I was in the water, floating away from the ship. It looked exactly like it had ten seconds before, only now it was upside down and wreathed in so many cascading bubbles that it was like some wild New Year’s Eve party gone badly wrong.
There was a ripped section of hull below the waterline, extending nearly half the length of the ship. I could see inside to hallways, storerooms, and the complicated mechanics of what was probably the engineering section.
I had done that. Just me.
I saw people flailing amid the strangely serene wreckage of what had been our only salvation out here in the middle of this watery desert.
Rahel’s massive sea-monster body dived past me, driven by a tail that was as much eel as mermaid, and disappeared into the gloomy depths. She was followed by a pink, sparkle-skinned unicorn with eyes of fire, gills, and flippers instead of legs. Its horn was shimmering crystal, lighting up the dark as it shot away in pursuit of Rahel.
The water was shockingly cold, or at least that was my impression. I instinctively reached for power and warmed myself, oblivious to the screaming people bobbing around me in the waves. Weather Wardens were quickly reacting, encasing people in protective bubbles and popping them to the surface if they’d been unlucky enough to end up sucking sea. I supposed they’d be all about saving those who were trapped, too.
I felt the suction of water rushing into the ship.
Rahel and Venna broke the surface again, two giants now screaming and ripping at each other, far less human than I’d have ever imagined; Venna had given up her My Little Pony sparkles and was fish-belly white now, and Rahel’s body was a dark mesh of scales and teeth, too confusing to identify individual features.