He hung his head.
The Ifrit leaped like a hunting cat. Ripped into the Djinn with flashing claws, digging deep. The Djinn’s mouth was open, but no sound was coming out. He wasn’t fighting. He was just… dying. Dying horribly. Disintegrating into wisps of bloodred, pain-heavy mist.
She sucked him in through that black gaping maw of a mouth and swallowed him whole. Nothing left. Not even a scream. I was frozen by Yvette’s command, but I wouldn’t have had the courage to run even if I were free. There was something so predatory, so cold in the air…
The Ifrit turned her non-face toward me, sniffing, and I went utterly cold. To stand here and be devoured without a fight was the worst fate I could imagine.
But then she changed. Frosted black skin going pale, smooth, glorious. A glowing waterfall of white hair. Her eyes were the last thing to change, flickering from dead black to a deep dark amethyst.
Sara, as I’d seen her in the dream. She stretched out her arms mutely to Patrick, and collapsed. He rushed to her, picked her up and cradled her in his embrace, lips pressed to the soft waves of her hair.
He was whispering something to her, over and over. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. When he looked up at me, the misery in his eyes hit like a blow. “It’s the only way,” he said. “She has to eat…”
And she ate other Djinn. I couldn’t imagine how lucky I’d been the other night, when he’d put me in a cage match with her, or even when I’d been chatting with her in the kitchen. What had she said in the kitchen? Don’t blame him. She’d known what he was going to do. They’d done it before.
Yvette’s cool green eyes were all over me like sticky hands. She’d forgotten all about Lewis, unconscious on the floor. “You’re like Patrick, then. Human, changed by a Djinn.”
I don’t think I’d ever been so ashamed of my origins. I gave her a burning glare back. “So what does Patrick do for you, to get your castoffs? Besides pimp out whoever he can get his hands on?”
She had the sweetest, most revolting smile. “Why, I don’t think the business details of our arrangement are going to be your concern, pretty girl. No, I think you’d just better concentrate on making my son Kevin very happy.”
Yvette tossed the kid the bottle. He almost fumbled it. I had that one second to move while the bottle was out of her control and passing into his; I used it to race to Lewis’s side and pour what healing energy I had into him.
He was hurt. Badly. I couldn’t do enough, wasn’t good enough.
“What are you doing?” Patrick protested, clearly thrown—not talking to me, but to Yvette.
She rounded on him with clenched fists. “Getting rid of the trash. You think I wanted her? You told me you had a way to get to David.”
“I do!” He nodded at me. “He’ll come for her. As soon as he knows you have her, he’ll come running.”
“He’d better,” she said, and gave him a full smile, with teeth. “If he doesn’t, there’s no place you can hide from me. You know that.” She shot a look at me, and I was struck by the sheer callous indifference in her eyes. “Put your toy away, Kevin. I want to go home.”
The kid clutching the bottle pointed at me and said, “You. In the bottle. Now.”
I had no choice, none at all. I felt myself breaking apart, looked up to see Yvette watching me with dreaming sea green eyes. “Don’t you worry, sweetie,” she said as I was sucked away into gray oblivion. “I’m sure we’ll think of something interesting to do with you.”
You wouldn’t think you could dream in oblivion, but well, there you go. I dreamed I was a child again. Very small, too small to understand the world around me—a toddler, teetering around on stubby uncertain legs and grabbing for anything pretty, shiny, interesting, dangerous.
I dreamed of being held in someone’s arms, maybe my mother’s, with my head pillowed on her shoulder. I remembered rain, falling like perfect diamonds from the soft gray sky. I remembered wind licking cool over my skin. I remembered thunder vibrating through me like the voice of God.
Dreams and memories are so very close to the same thing.
In the dream, in the memory, I fell down on the cool, damp grass and wailed in fright, and there was somebody there, gathering me up, holding me, stroking away the pain and fear and tears.
Shhhh. It was my mother’s voice, warm and blurred the way things are in dreams. They’ll hear you.
I was too young to talk, but somehow I was talking anyway. Who?
Her hands smoothed my hair in gentle, careful strokes. You know.