It was better than she deserved.
I dragged her body behind a sofa and covered it in silky furs. The bloodstains came up easily, and then I methodically searched the room for a way out.
There was only one.
The way the Warden wanted me to go.
I transformed the neon yellow jumpsuit and prisoner shoes into soft leather trousers and jacket in light pale pink, with war slashes of black. Heavy riding boots.
I moved the curtain aside, expecting another room . . . but it was a hallway, like a long, curving throat. Slick and featureless. There was no sound.
She knows I’m here, I thought. She’s waiting. My Djinn side refused to say anything, or to give me the name of my fear.
I sensed nothing but cold and ice ahead of me.
I moved on, and as I did, doorways appeared—closed, with no markings. Each felt slightly different beneath my fingers. One was hot enough to blister, even at a brush. One felt damp, and I sensed a vast pressure of water behind it. One was a living grave, rich with the smell of rotting things and the work of scavengers.
What are you looking for, Cassiel? Come. Come ahead.
The voice vibrated in my ears the way Luis’s had done, but it was not Luis. It was not any voice I knew. No, it was every voice I knew, Djinn or human, a massive and strange chorus of sound.
I stopped where I was, my hand on a closed door, and felt every nerve shrink with fear.
You killed my servant, killer of Djinn.
“She deserved it,” I said.
The laughter was the laughter of every murderer. Mocking, cold, and free of any trace of a soul. So do you, the voice said. For your crimes, murderer of the eternal.
The nacreous hallway began to close in on me. The pearly layers grew and thickened before my eyes, pushing inward. It would grind me apart. I looked behind and found the way back already closed to me. This structure was the mouth of a hungry predator, and I had no escape but down its throat, the way it wanted me to go. There was something dark and terrible at its heart, waiting to devour.
I took a deep breath and opened the door that stank of earth and rot, and plunged into darkness instead.
If I died here, I would choose my death.
Grave dirt filled my mouth, my nose, my ears. It was heavy and wet on my skin. I knew death intimately, and it tried to push inside me, insistent as a blind worm.
Interesting, the alien voice whispered to me. But you cannot leave me. I know you now. I will have you.
I spat it out and pushed through the dirt, swimming in muck, until I fetched up against a hard surface in the darkness. Nacre. The slick, pearly surface had a living structure to it, like bone. Why? Why have this room of grave dirt?
I had no time for riddles.
I blew the wall apart in an explosion of shards, and the house—if one could call it a house—shrieked. My strike, even as powerful as it was, had only opened a hole the size of a fist. I battered at it, widening it, and the house fought to close its wound even as I struggled to widen it. The instant I paused, it shrank the gash again.
I rained down destruction until the hole was barely wide enough to pass my shoulders, and then wriggled in. This was the most dangerous moment of all; if my concentration faltered, the house would close the gap and chop me in half or amputate a limb. I could sense the Voice screaming, though I had stilled my eardrums and rendered myself effectively deaf. I’d shut off all other senses, too, save sight. I wanted no sensory attacks to distract me at a critical moment.
The nacre had jagged, knife-sharp edges, and it sliced my skin as I crawled and wiggled through the narrow opening. I felt it shift as I hauled myself through, and for a heart-skipping moment I felt the sharp edges press on my thighs enough to draw blood. It wanted to snap shut. I didn’t let it, but it was a very near thing. I hauled my feet free seconds before the nacre mouth snapped closed, gnashing only air.
I was on the white gravel outside of the white house, on the smooth, curving side facing away from the park and the children. I rolled to my feet and began to run, releasing my hold on my senses. I would need every advantage now.
You cannot leave me, Cassiel, killer, destroyer. I have been waiting for you.
This time, the human inhabitants of the compound did not ignore me. I drew shouts, screams, and shots. One bullet grazed my leg, but I dodged the rest, using cover and even the bodies of others. I had little empathy for anyone caught in the cross fire just now. They were only faces, and the terrible thing behind me, the terrible knowledge pressing in on me . . .
What was in that white building, so close to where those children played . . . was nothing less than a monster.
And these adults served it willingly.
A squad of armed soldiers came after me, but I was no longer unarmed, thanks to the gun I had taken from the dead Earth Warden. I dropped two men with shots; the others with a burst of power that crippled them, at least temporarily. I had no interest in killing them, but I didn’t particularly care if that was the outcome.
“Ibby!” I screamed, turning in a circle. “Isabel Rocha!”
I ran on, crying out her name, searching for her individual whisper in all this chaos.
Behind me.
The park.
I reversed course, avoiding the hail of bullets by dodging behind a truck. To get to the park, I would have to go around the bone house, that terrible white place that housed the heart of the monster.
The ones hunting me had grown organized in their attacks, and there was little cover left. Even the confused civilians had withdrawn.
I took in a deep breath and dove for the ground. It parted for me like thick water, and I used my body like a dolphin’s, pushing against the resistance in sinuous curves.
The bone house extended down, into the ground. I sensed its vibration and swam away from it, careful not to touch it.
My breath grew hot in my lungs, rancid and used, and I kicked against the dirt and swam up, tearing my way through the roots of grasses to the surface.
The children were being rounded up in the park. Unlike the rejects I had seen in the forest, dirty and ragged, ill-fed, these were glossy, lovely children in impeccable clothing, all of stainless white.
There were perhaps twenty of them, and they were all under the age of ten.
“Ibby!” I screamed, and one small face came into focus, kindling like a star.
“Cassie!” she shrieked, and threw herself forward, racing toward me.
She was intercepted by one of the adult caregivers, who closed ranks between me and the children. The woman who restrained Isabel was wearing a medallion similar to the one in my pocket, the one that held a silver key.
Ibby stretched out her arms to me, tears streaming down her face, and I aimed the gun at the woman blocking her. “Put her down,” I said. There were more soldiers coming now. The tower guards also realized something was wrong, and of a surety, at least two of them could reach me where I stood. I was an easy target.
But I wasn’t leaving without the child.
“Put her down,” I repeated, “or I’ll kill you all.”
The woman, wide-eyed, shook her head and held on to the struggling child.
“Your choice,” I said, as cold as I had ever been in Djinn form.
I shot her. Isabel shrieked and fell, rolling on the grass. Another adult scooped her up and ran away with her, toward the pearl white building. I saw her chubby arms still reaching out for me, her tear-streaked face desperate, and in that instant I felt the anguish inside me coalesce into true hatred.