A child-sized hand flattened against my forehead, and I felt a cold, iron-hard wall come down, severing me from the reservoir of warm golden power that had accumulated within me. Luis had been feeding it to me, I realized; he’d been trying to heal me from afar, but now I was adrift and alone, and without that constant pulse of power, I was beginning to die. Oh, it was a slow process. It would take days of agony and terror, but my flesh would rot, and then the core of me would starve and flicker out like a blown flame.

I blinked away the glare, and the shadows wavered into the shapes of faces and bodies. Zedala’s face came first. She was kneeling next to me with her hand on my forehead, and it was she who was cutting me off from my source. From Luis.

Zedala looked up, and I saw a boy of about her own age standing there staring down at us with a cold, remote expression. The Earth Warden boy, the one who’d staged that elaborate charade in the field to draw me out. There were two more children as well—a small, delicate girl who almost vibrated with the energy of Fire and a golden-skinned boy with silky black hair who radiated ... nothing. Absolutely nothing.

There was something terrifying about him, and the look in his eyes. He couldn’t have been more than nine years old, but that was an ancient, awful thing inside of him.

There was an adult woman with them as well, one of the teachers in a red bandanna. She was standing back, head bowed, hands clasped together. I thought for an instant that her obedience was directed toward the children, but then I realized that there was another presence in the room, standing farther away and somewhere past my aching head.

I pulled in a shaking breath as I felt the tidal force of her presence wash through the room.

I’d sought Pearl here.

I’d found her.

“No words, sister?” Pearl walked slowly into my field of vision. She was tall, graceful, beautiful as a blinding star; the dream vision I’d had of her had been an accurate representation of her human avatar, except that she wore her thick, silky black hair piled in intricate knots on top of her head to emphasize the long sweep of her neck. Unlike her followers, she was dressed in lush patterned silks that swept the floor as she walked. Her feet were bare and perfect. “No threats? No apologies? I’m disappointed. I wouldn’t expect you to give up so easily.”

I held my silence, since it bothered her. My head felt wrong and tender, and I was almost sure that my skull was fractured. The pillow beneath me felt sticky with blood, and I could smell the iron reek of it. Nausea twisted inside me like smoke, but I contained it. I couldn’t heal myself, and cut off from Luis, I had no chance of surviving such an injury. Pearl knew that.

She was enjoying it.

Zedala and the other children looked at Pearl with expressions of utter devotion. In turn, Pearl trailed her long, lovely fingers over the hair of the smallest girl and favored her with a slow, cool smile. “Do you know what I’ve done, Cassiel?” she asked. “Do you understand the astonishing thing that’s been accomplished here?”

“You’ve perverted and destroyed children,” I said. My voice sounded weak and dry, no match for her elegance. “It’s not so astonishing. Humans have been doing that to their own for millennia.” A pulse of hot, stabbing pain bolted through me, and I tensed and cried out.

Zedala gave me a wolfish grin. “Don’t be rude to the Lady,” she said. “You’re not good enough to look at her. I should put your eyes out.”

For an awful second, I thought that Pearl would allow that; she considered it, as she wandered over to the Earth Warden boy and caressed his face with idle affection. “No,” she finally said. “Show me her base human form first.”

Zedala cocked her head, staring at me, and then power burst out of her like a flood from an exploding dam, such astonishing power that it overwhelmed and drowned me, ripped me apart in its turbulence, then subsided in a slow, sticky tide. I felt myself changing. Bones shattered and re-formed. Skin melted and healed. I screamed; I couldn’t stop the flood of agony, or my body’s primal, visceral response of horror.

The only part of me that didn’t suffer was my left arm, from the forearm down. Instead, the fleshy disguise I’d adopted melted away, leaving a cold, gleaming bronze appendage in all its minutely crafted detail, down to the whorls of artificial fingerprints on metal fingers. I’d sliced away my arm to save myself, and replaced it with a Djinn-crafted duplicate; it seemed the only respite now from the pain Pearl and her children seemed intent on causing me.

I could move it, just a little.

By the time Zedala burned her way down my body, I had gained a foot in height, and my skin had been restored to its ivory color. My hair as well—it had grown out, and been bleached to its normal ice-white.

“There you are,” Pearl said, and shrugged. “Or the human vessel of you, at least. Tell me, sister, how long since we’ve been together, even in our Djinn forms? Human time has no measure, does it? So long ago that you killed me.”

I had killed her, or at least I’d believed it was so. And it had been the only possible response to her crimes, which had driven Mother Earth mad with pain. I’d destroyed her, and I’d thought I eradicated all traces of her ... but some part of her survived, tenacious as the roots of a weed. It had taken her aeons to gather her strength, but finally she was here, present, physical again.

And deadly. So very, very deadly.

“These,” she said, and placed a kiss on Zedala’s braided hair, “are part of me now. They believe implicitly in my cause. They understand how dangerous the Djinn and the Wardens are. They are my warriors. My avatars. My children. And when the end comes—and it will come for you, Cassiel, for all of you—these will survive with me. Out of the ashes, a new Mother will rise.”

My mouth went dry. “You.”

“Yes. Of course. Who is more deserving?”

Pearl’s ambition was greater, and more insane, than I’d ever dreamed. Not annihilation, as grandiose as that might be; she still planned to destroy the Wardens, the humans, the Djinn, and indeed all life, but she planned more. She planned to kill her own Mother, the life spirit of our planet, and she planned to become that life spirit.

A corrupted, damaged, evil spirit. I couldn’t imagine what would spring forth from her, as she breathed her power over the dead land—whatever it would be, it would be nightmarish, twisted, and a perverse mockery of all the beauty and diversity of this world.

The Djinn didn’t know this. Couldn’t imagine it. If they had, if they’d been able to comprehend the danger, they would have bonded together to destroy her regardless of costs.

Even Ashan would have set aside his personal ambitions for that.

Now I had a new mission—not killing Pearl, although that was still my greatest goal. No, I had to get this knowledge out, to the Djinn, to the Wardens, to anyone who could take up arms and defend against her. I had no choice now but to survive, and run.

If I could.

“I won’t insult you, or myself, by asking you to join me,” Pearl continued. “I know you won’t. There is a core of stubbornness in you, Cassiel, that does you no particular credit. I suppose some would see it as heroism; I see it as arrogance. You have no cause for that, dear sister. You’re not nearly what you once were.”

“Who is?”

She laughed, a golden bell of sound that sounded so lovely it was easy to forget the rotten darkness in her core. Pearl was seductive; that was why this camp existed, why these children had been so badly and fatally bent to her will. That was why, even now, the Djinn hesitated to move against her—that, and their own self-interested instincts.

Even I felt her attraction, and had ever since I’d stepped into this camp. Here, she put forth her charm, her glamour ... and everyone responded. Even, I suspected, the human FBI had succumbed, outside the gates. Perhaps she’d merely made them decide to abandon their posts. I wouldn’t have put it past her abilities, not anymore.