The mist around me suddenly thickened, choking me, trapping me in a gelatinous blanket, and I struggled to get a breath that didn’t feel like a ball was being shoved down my throat.
A shape appeared out of the mist—but only a shape. A shadow, like glass filled with the same mist that surrounded me. No features, no face, nothing but a chilly kind of menace. It was terrifying, and I realized that I was seconds away from dying if I couldn’t get the Air Oracle to stop tormenting me.
I did the only thing I could.
I gave up.
I stopped struggling, stopped trying to choke in a breath, and relaxed. The mist supported me, flowing like syrup through my clothes, along my skin, caressing me in intimate and cold ways that felt repulsively invasive.
I let it happen.
The pressure of mist inside my lungs let up, and I whooped in a breath of air just as the edge of my vision started to go dark and sparkly from oxygen deprivation.
Human.
It wasn’t a voice, exactly, or a thought either. It was more of a vibration that didn’t register in my ears, but in my flesh. As if the Oracle was speaking through my bones.
It hurt.
I gasped, and suddenly the mist holding me up let go, dropping me to my hands and knees on the featureless white floor—except that it still felt like more insubstantial fog. I had the dizzying sensation that I was standing on a cloud, that only the Oracle’s whim kept me from hurtling through the vapor tens of thousands of feet down to my death. . . .
Weak, the thought vibration came, this time rich with overtones of contempt. Useless. As I thought.
I coughed and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. I tasted blood, but it seemed to be confined to my throat. “The Mother’s waking up,” I said. “Isn’t she?”
No answer. The ghostly form of the Air Oracle wavered, changing in fluid, subtle ways.
“You don’t want her to wake up,” I said, filling in the blanks. “It will take away all your power. All your individuality.” The Oracles weren’t necessary if Mother Earth, the consciousness of the planet itself, took direct command of her Djinn. They’d be blown out of existence, burned away—or reduced to Djinn, no more or less. The Air Oracle, of all three that I’d met, was by far the most haughty and power- mad. No wonder it had taken action. “Look, it’s not in the interest of the Wardens or humanity for her to wake up, either. Or even the Djinn. They lose their individuality to her, their ability to think for themselves. They don’t want that. Not even the Old Djinn.”
No answer. The Air Oracle just hovered.
“David and I both lost our powers,” I said. “If you help us get them back I may be able to stop this. I can try, at least. The Wardens need every bit of help they can get.”
You ask a favor, came the reply, in slow, measured throbs through my body.
“No. I’m asking you to act in your own interests,” I said. “It’s in your interest to put back what I lost, and restore David’s powers.”
That was risky. The Air Oracle had never been on the side of humanity. If anything, it was on its own side, only paying lip service to the other Oracles. There were a few times when it had intervened, but not many, and never from altruistic motives.
Mercenary little sexless bastard.
The Air Oracle was silent. I hated dealing with eternal beings. No sense of urgency. “At least restore David’s powers,” I said. “He is a Conduit. He can reach the Mother. Maybe he can stop her.”
No, the Oracle said immediately, and the single word, the concept, was rich with contempt. He cannot. It is a waste of energy.
Great. David hadn’t made a fan out of this Oracle, any more than I had.
Once humans are gone, the Mother will release us, the Oracle continued, with cold and inexorable logic. The world will be ours. As it should be.
I swallowed hard. “If you really believed that, why bring us here?”
There were no features on that misty face, but I had the impression of a shark’s smile, something hungry and merciless. To be sure you don’t stop it.
The mist closed in, and this time, it wasn’t just suffocating, it was crushing. I had time to gasp in one inadequate breath before the weight slammed into me from back and front, squeezing. When I opened my mouth, the mist jammed itself in, choking me.
No! I’m a Weather Warden! This can’t happen! But it was happening, no matter how much I wanted to deny it. I had no power to fight an Oracle, no tricks, nothing but the sheer panicked will to live.
And that wasn’t enough. Not here.
I felt hot sparks of pain through my body as muscles strained, joints began to fail, bones bent. It was going to smash me flat and leave me a leaking carcass, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. . . .
All of a sudden, a hurricane wind whipped through the mist, cold and clear and edged with ice. It tattered the forces holding me, revealing the Air Oracle looming over me in its faceless, sexless menace. Suddenly, I could breathe. I dropped to my hands and knees, gasping in ragged gulps, and looked around to see what the hell had just happened.
Oh crap.
Cherise stood there, tiny and cute in her flirty dress and perfect tan. She was showing teeth. It wasn’t a smile. Maybe it had started out being a confident grin, but as the Air Oracle focused its attention on her instead of me, it became more of a demented, if terrified, snarl. Her blond hair was streaming in the wind, and as I watched, she extended a hand out toward the Air Oracle and pushed force at it.
“No!” I yelled, and dropped flat on the white, slightly spongy floor, pressing myself as low as I could go. Cherise’s attack rolled over me, and even as small a target as I’d made, I felt it freeze my back as it glanced over me.
Cold air is heavy, and Cherise wielded it like a bat, slamming it into the fragile Air Oracle and scoring a home run. The Air Oracle broke apart into streams of white-hot energy, and its scream echoed through my bones with such force I actually thought something would break inside me.
“Cher, stop!” I screamed. “You can’t win this! Stop!”
“Shut up,” she said, and grabbed me by the ankle with both small hands as she backpedaled through featureless white space. “What the hell did you get me into this time? Stop kicking!”
“Stop pulling me like a toy pony!” She let go, and I rolled up to my knees and bounced to my feet, driven by adrenaline and sheer terror. “We have to leave. Right now.”
“Yeah, about that, how?”
I made a helpless flailing motion with my hands, frustrated beyond any measure. “Just—I don’t know—do it! Gah! This is not the time for on-the-job training, because that Oracle is going to be—”
Really pissed, I was going to say, but honestly, that fell far short of what was happening about fifteen feet away, where the Air Oracle was reforming in a black, roiling cloud that glittered with icy edges. It was lit from within by flashes like swallowed lightning, and even as paranormally blind as I was right now to subtle forces, I could feel the menace in the air. It was going to kill us really, really dead, and it wasn’t going to screw around doing it.
“Out!” I yelled, and grabbed Cherise’s hand. “Think about the mall!”
Cherise said, in a plaintive little voice, “But I don’t know what’s in this mall. . . .”
Oh fuck, we were going to die.
The Air Oracle roared toward us, and the mist closed in, and hope vanished with the open space. I felt Cherise’s hand in mine but I could no longer see her, couldn’t see anything but white, as if the mist had entered my eyeballs and filled them up.