The growth suddenly ended, and a dirt road carved itself out of the thin and shadowy moonlight. There were tread marks still fresh in the dust.
My enemies knew I was coming. Even if Luis hadn’t warned them, despite his best intentions, they would simply know. I had no doubt of that. I would press on as far as they’d allow before it came to conflict.
It didn’t take long at all.
I accelerated as the road twisted around a darkly shadowed curve, then another, and as I came out on a straighter section, the trail was blocked by a single, small figure—a boy of Isabel’s age, with ragged dark hair and huge eyes. He was wearing a grimy cotton shirt with a garish blue and red design, and small, loose cotton pants. No shoes. His face was smeared with tears, his nose was running, and he looked blank and terrified in the glare of my headlight.
I stopped in a cloud of dust, staring at him. My first impulse was to leave the bike and go to him, but my Djinn instincts tempered my human ones, infused the moment with an ice-cold clarity.
There was no reason for this child to be here, so far from his home, in the middle of the night.
“Is your name C.T.?” I asked. “Calvin Theodore Styles?”
His eyes filled with tears that glittered in my headlight. “Mama?” He sounded lost and very uncertain. He shuffled forward a step. “I want to go home! I want to go home!”
His voice rose to a chilling wail, and this time not even my cautious, cold Djinn side could keep me from turning off the motorcycle and dismounting. I approached the child carefully, not wishing to frighten him more than necessary. He was sucking on his thumb, and his eyes seemed the size of the moon that loomed overhead. Silver tears washed clean trails through the grime on his face.
I was halfway to him when the next child appeared. And the next. And the next. All moving silently out of the brush.
Ten, at least, all below the age of ten. Most looked thin and ill-kept, their clothing filthy. Some lacked shoes.
All seemed far too feral for comfort, and they were all armed. Knives, for the most part, but a few had clubs. No projectile weapons, for which I was grateful.
I paused, assessing. They were all around me, coming out of the underbrush in soft, stealthy whispers of leaves and twigs.
“I’m here to help you,” I said, in what I hoped was a soothing tone. “Please. My name is Cassiel. Let me help you find your homes.”
None of them made a sound, not even the boy who’d wailed so pitifully. The wind through the trees made a hissing sound as the pine needles rubbed together, and I became aware how vast and empty this area was . . . and how alone I had become.
“I am looking for a girl called Isabel,” I said. She wasn’t here, wasn’t among the feral ones. “Ibby. Do you know her?” I focused on the closest child, a girl with short blond hair. “Do you know Isabel?”
She didn’t answer. None of them moved, and none blinked. It was odd and—even for a Djinn.
C.T.—if he was C.T.—was no longer weeping, though tears still trailed down his cheeks. He had assumed the same cold, empty aspect as the other children.
I took a step forward toward him, and they all rushed at me in silence. I jumped, grabbing hold of a low-hanging branch, and pulled my legs up as they slashed at me with silver flashes of blades. A few made grunts of effort, jumping to try to reach me, but they didn’t speak, not even to each other.
By some unspoken coordination, two of them bent over to boost up others, who caught hold of lower branches and began to climb toward me. It was a ridiculous situation, hemmed in by infants—and yet there was a certain cold logic to it. I would be hesitant to harm these defenseless children, while the enemy—and I knew it was our enemy—would not hesitate to spend every small life to hurt me.
They were the perfect shock troops.
As the first child crawled along a branch toward me, mad eyes shining, I shifted my weight and grabbed for her wrist, twisting it. The knife fell like steel leaf.
She raked my arm with her fingernails and bared her teeth.
I had no choice but to sweep her off the branch, stunning her into unconsciousness as I did so. I cushioned her fall on the dirt with a burst of power.
Another was already coming. And another behind him.
These are annoyances, my Djinn side complained. Deal with them and move on. And had they been adult humans, I would have done so, but the reluctance to hurt a child was encoded in my helix DNA, and not even Djinn wisdom could counter it. You’ll waste your power fighting this battle. It’s what they want.
I knew that, but I also remembered Officer Styles on the road, the desperation and trauma in his face. The promise I’d made to him.
There were ten children here. Ten families searching for answers and praying for miracles. I couldn’t take that hope from them.
I dropped out of the tree, crouched, and began touching the children on the head, one after another. I forced myself to be methodical about it, ignoring their weapons. It worked for the first two. The third scored a long cut along my arm that burned like drips of fire before I sent him unconscious.
The fourth and fifth of the remaining nine went down without injury to themselves or me, but as I turned to the sixth, I felt a blinding cold pain in my side, and looked down to see that C.T. had buried a knife to the hilt in my body.
I slapped my palm down on his forehead, triggering sleep, and he collapsed to the dirt.
That left three still standing. They were two girls and another boy, and they clearly recognized the danger I represented. They stayed farther than arm’s length, waiting to see what I would do.
Sink them in the ground.
No. That was my Djinn ghost talking, and I would not do it—first, because it would hurt and terrify them, and second, because I could not afford the burst of power. Not injured.
I eased my weight down to my knees, trying not to gasp as pain arced through my nerves, and reached for the knife in my side. I touched it lightly, diagnosing the wound as best I could. I did not think it had cut any significant blood vessels, but there was damage—intestines cut, a cut to my liver that could be dire if untreated.
I pulled the knife out and somehow did not cry out. Blood dripped from the steel. I held it for a moment, staring at the children who circled me, and then rammed it point first into the ground in front of me.
They rushed me all at once.
Concentrate. My vision blurred, and I blinked away the haze. My hands flashed out, right and left, and brushed sleep into the minds of two of the children. Their falling bodies caused the third to stumble, and his club, aimed for my head, struck my shoulder instead with bruising force. I grabbed it, yanked it away, and pulled him toward me. He struggled in my arms, but I held him still, staring into his empty, wide eyes.
“You,” I said softly. “The one who hides behind children. I am coming for you.”
The boy’s mouth opened and he laughed softly. That was no child’s laughter. There was too much malice in it, too much knowledge.
Too much madness.
“Come, sister,” he said, and his eyes rolled back in his head as he fell to the ground.
He wasn’t breathing.
No.
I put my hand over his chest and felt no sign of heartbeat.
My enemy had just killed him casually, from a distance.
“No,” I said aloud, and pulled the boy into my lap. “No.” There was still a feeble flutter of life inside of him, struggling like a bird in a net. “You won’t do this.”
I put my hand over his heart and closed my eyes. Luis’s warnings came back to haunt me—I wasn’t trained in this; I could so easily damage the child—but I had no choice. There was no one better qualified to take my place.