I turned and ran, sprinting across the dark asphalt. Luckily there were no cars in the way, this late at night, and my body was capable—when forced—of speeds that even I found surprising. The ambulance fell behind, but then I heard the engine roar as it picked up speed, eating up ground between us. I heard the dim thunder of the ocean, and the more immediate thudding of my heart, and as I ran I reached back with power and blew out all four rubber-and-metal tires in a tremendous bang. The ambulance immediately thumped hard onto bare metal rims as broken rubber flailed in all directions, spun off by the momentum. It lost speed, but I could sense that the one forcing it on wouldn’t give up so easily.
Neither would I.
I gained the end of the parking lot. There was a chain-link fence there, at the top of a steep slope covered by ice plants; I charged the ten feet up the hill, leaped onto the fence, and climbed toward the top.
I reached the top just as the ambulance jumped that curb, and its momentum carried it up the slope toward me. But without tires, the metal rims chewed ground, finding no purchase, and it never reached the fence before it began to slide backwards, engine screaming in frustration.
I leaped from the fence to the top of the ambulance. I landed with a hollow, booming thump, crouched, and looked from that vantage point out into the night. You’re close, I whispered. I know you are. By making a target of myself, I was hoping to spot the attack before it arrived.
After a split second, I felt power begin to stream through the aetheric, a red-black pulse heading in my direction, and struggled to identify the type of attack. Not Earth powers, this time.
Fire.
It came as a hot streak of light as large as a man’s head, glowing white hot and trailing flames and smoke. I put my right hand down on the ambulance’s metal roof and pulled up, willing the metal to flow with me, then jumped down to ground level by the rear doors. As I jumped, the roof ripped free, front to back, peeling like a giant tin of sardines, and hit the ground with a thick, heavy boom—arched, still connected to the ambulance at the very top, but extended out like a waterfall of cold steel.
I ducked behind and hardened it just in time for the attacking fireball to strike it squarely in the middle. Ten inches from my face, the metal began to glow a dull, muddy red, and I felt the waves of heat boring through. But I hadn’t intended the metal alone to stop it; I heaved up the ground from the other side of the ambulance in a fountain of damp earth and cascaded it overhead, to thump down on the fireball, burying it beneath an organic weight that would not catch fire easily, if at all.
I heard the hiss as the fire began to fail, and the metal in front of me ceased to glow.
I stepped out of the barricade and stared out in the direction from which the attack had come.
There was a shrill, short cry, and then nothing for a long moment before Luis called, “Cass! Got her!”
Her. My heart stuttered in its rhythm, and I spurred my body back into a run, shattering even the speed at which I’d fled before. Ibby?
Luis emerged from the darkness into the glow of a streetlight. There was a child in his arms.
It was not Isabel. It was another girl, dressed in the same dull paramilitary uniform, long golden braids spilling down over Luis’s arm and swinging like ropes. I felt my stomach clench, and I slowed to a walk.
I saw the same weary pain in his face. “Had to knock her out,” he said. “Same as the other kids. Somebody amped up her powers, big-time. It’s burning her out. Goddammit, we have to stop this. How many of these kids does she have?”
“Enough to throw them away on the mere chance of killing us,” I said. “You noticed the change?”
He frowned down at the sleeping face of the girl in his arms. “Cleaner,” he said. “Healthier. Not dressed in rags and castoffs like the ones in Colorado.”
“Uniformed,” I said. “And trained. Pearl’s army is becoming a reality. I doubt we are the only ones being targeted, if that’s the case.”
Agent Turner, out of breath, arrived at that moment and heard the last part of my statement. He immediately pulled out his phone and dialed a number, turning away to talk, then back as he finished.
“You’re right,” he said, folding the phone. “Warden HQ has reports of isolated attacks all over. Kids attacking adult Wardens. The Wardens are off balance, they’re not sure what’s going on.”
“Tell them,” I said. “Tell them we have a significant problem, and they should be ready.”
“To fight kids?”
“To protect themselves,” I said. “These children won’t hesitate to kill. They’ve been trained not to flinch. If the Wardens do, they’re dead.” More of Pearl’s games. Sometimes you’re the bull. She’d use her Warden children as picadors, pricking us, bleeding us, driving us into a fury that she could manipulate.
But perhaps Pearl’s control wasn’t as perfect as she imagined. Isabel hadn’t struck at me with lethal force. She’d knocked me out and retreated instead.
Incomplete training? Or free will?
I could count on neither being true for long.
The next time I faced Ibby . . . I might have to destroy her.
Her, the other children . . . the Wardens . . . the human race.
Destruction radiating out the way the poison from the list had taken my hand.
But if I took that step, that last step, it would not be Pearl making that choice. It would be me, and me alone.
I stared at the blond- haired girl in Luis’s arms. She seemed so innocent. So small. Eight or nine years old, no more than that; the age of Gloria Jensen, whom we were here to see. I wondered who had lost this child, and when. And if they even knew of it yet.
Luis said, “I can keep her out. Let’s get her in the hospital and make sure she’s okay otherwise.”
I followed him and Agent Turner to the door as security and medical personnel spilled out, pelting toward the ambulance at the far end of the parking lot. It hadn’t crashed, although it had certainly been a rougher ride than necessary; there was that mercy. I hoped that not too much damage had been done to the occupants, but I’d done all I could to safeguard them.
I left it to the more creative among them to explain the missing roof, the metal barricade, and the piled wall of wet earth around the scorches and burns.
I had better things to do.
Chapter 7
GLORIA JENSEN HAD LITTLE TO TELL US, after all. She was drowsy from painkillers, neatly bandaged, with her broken arm set in a plastic brace. Her parents, unaware of the incident down in the parking lot, had already made their ecstatic welcomes, and they sat on either side of her bed, touching her as if they couldn’t bear to let her go even for a moment.
Gloria’s eyes widened when she saw me. I had come alone; Turner and Luis had stayed behind with our child attacker. Luis was maintaining the artificial sleep that kept the unconscious girl from further destruction, of herself if nothing else; Turner, I think, just wanted to stay out of my way. He was regarding me with more and more caution.
Gloria told me nothing of significance. She’d been taken from school. She’d tried to fight the man who was taking her. He’d broken her arm in the process of subduing her; he’d tied and gagged her, and put her in the trunk of his car.
“Then the other man came, after a really long time,” she said. “I don’t know how he got in there. He was just there. Then the trunk opened, just enough for me to get out, and he took me to a policeman before he left again. Then they brought me here.”
Rashid. The hushed tone of her voice confirmed that she’d sensed him as being somehow different.