Then the screaming freight train hit me, full force, and my world went dark. Agony rolled through my body, as if every cell was being ripped apart, rolled in acid, and set aflame . . . but somehow, impossibly, I was still alive.

I heard myself shrieking, just like that sound Id heard, and then fire exploded out of the ground to engulf me.

No, not fire.

Power.

Thick golden streams of power, flooding up my body, wreathing me in glorious streamers, whipping around and around and then plunging in to waken an explosion that should have ripped me apart.

It should have ripped the world apart.

But instead, I opened my eyes and saw the haze of the aetheric, overlaying the drab, gray destruction. I saw the swirling, unsettled energies, the anger, the stain of all the past in this place.

And I saw the Mother, looking out of a Djinns eyes in blind, unthinking fury.

I knocked Rahels arm aside and slammed my palm down flat against her chest, directly between her breasts. Force rippled out and down my arm, and blew explosively in a tight-focused blast from me to her.

I knocked the Djinn into the air, over a pile of fallen concrete blocks, and out into the relatively clear area of the parking lot.

I looked down at myself. I was covered in cuts, concrete dust, and bloodso much so that I might as well have been wearing a really skin- tight outfit. But everything was still working, at least while the adrenaline was pumping.

Good enough.

I walked over the broken concrete and glass, heedless of more cuts, and followed Rahel out to where shed fallen. Not surprisingly, she was already back on her feet, and her sharp teeth glittered as she snarled.

I kept walking toward her, but as I did, I reached for power, and it came, welling up out of the ground, descending from the skies, crackling and bleeding out of every electrical impulse around me. I formed it into a ball of luminescent poison green and threw it like a fast-ball, straight for her face.

She tried to bat it aside, but it dodged, even quicker than a Djinn, and detonated against her torso in a hot flare that knocked her completely down. I reached up into the troubled skies and rubbed water and air molecules together, gathering static into a massive potential energy that turned the clouds black and green.

Then I flipped the polarization of the molecules in the ground, then the air above her, clicking over the changes faster and faster until the circuit was open . . .

. . . And lightning struck in a thick, burning column, pinning her down. Rahels body convulsed and dissolved into mist. Not deadyou cant kill a Djinn like thatbut seriously inconvenienced. Even a Djinn has a safety overload, and Id just burned it right out with those three consecutive strikes.

Shed be back, but not for a while.

I looked around and remembered the power Id gathered overhead as the sky snarled and rumbled. I reached up and bled the energy back out, slowly, distributing it in a soft, gentle rain that sluiced the blood and dust from my skin. I was still full of powerstuffed with itbut I knew how to let it slowly sink back down into the waiting, silent ground.

A final sigh, and I opened my eyes.

And collapsed.

Ow.

The concrete wasnt a soft landing, and I realized that my body had simply failed after conducting that much power, energy, and adrenaline. I was shaking now as the tide of hormones receded in my bloodstream and left me feeling human, and vulnerable, again.

I was also hurting. A lot. I looked down at my arm, which was bleeding from deep cuts, and thought, I need to do something about that. It took me a long minute to remember the first aid kit that Id salvaged from the office. It, and the guns, had been in a bag in my motel room.

I rolled up to my knees, then to my feet, cut off the rain and dried myself off with another burst of powernot so much eliminating the moisture from my skin and hair as moving it somewhere else. Balance. Maat.

The sight of the motel was appalling. It was a ruin, barely recognizable as the cheap building wed arrived at just an hour ago. My room, at least, still had a partial wall standing, though the roof had been yanked off and tossed twenty feet away in a jumble of broken wood and shingles.

Cherises and Kevins rooms were worse.

Cherise and Kevin. The kid.

It came to me in a physical shock. In the press of adrenaline, fighting for my own life, Id forgotten about them, but now it came dreadfully clear.

I had my powers back.

Cherise had been harboring my powers, and there was only one reason for those powers to pull away from her and go in search of someone elseif Cherise was no longer a living vessel for them. And I was the only one left standing.

Oh God, no.

I forgot all about the wound on my arm and ran to the mass of broken blocks that was where I remembered Cherises room to be. Cher! I screamed, and started throwing rubble aside, searching. Cherise!

I heard something soft, like a kitten, and stopped to listen. Far corner, under yet another mound of debrisbut under the debris was a mattress. Shed done as I had; shed grabbed the mattress and ducked under it for cover. Yes. Yes, it was going to be okay. . . .

I cleared the rubble off the filthy, broken mattress and pitched it away, heaving with all my strength.

Under it, Cherise lay motionless, with her body half covering the toddler shed rescued. Tommy. He was the one making the mewling sounds, and when light hit him and he saw me, he let out a full-throated howl of panic and pain. I turned Cherise over enough to pull him out, and checked him with trembling hands. He was bruised, but I couldnt find any broken bones. Shed protected him.

Shed protected him with her body, and her life.

Cher, I whispered, and smoothed her bloodied hair back from her face. Oh, no, sweetie. No, no, no. You cant do this to me. You cant.

Shed been badly battered by the falling wall, even with the mattress for protection, and I saw the unnatural shape of her legs where theyd been broken and twisted. Her face was oddly unmarked, except for a spot or two of blood. I could almost hear her laughing and saying, I always knew Id die pretty.

No, I said flatly. Youre not dying on me, bitch. Not happening.

I saw a flicker inside of her, a golden tongue of fire that hadnt yet gone out. She wasnt dead . . . but she was dying. No breath, no heartbeat, and her cells were burning up the last of their energy and shutting down.

I put Tommy down, dragged Cherise flat, and began CPR. I imbued every pump of my hands on her chest, every breath I blew into her slack mouth, with Earth power, giving her body an artificial jump-start of energy for those starving cells until I could get the rest going again. It was exhausting, sweaty work, but I wasnt going to give up. She was there. Cherise was still alive, buried under the broken rubble of her own body, and she needed me.

The Earth power saturating her body formed a link to me, reporting back on all that it found wrong inside my friend. It wasnt good. It was going to take a lot to bring her back, and even more to restore her to anything like health.

I needed someone like Lewis, someone who had the gift, the fine and delicate touch of healing. But all I had was me, and I would have to be enough.

I started with the worst of itruptured spleen, damaged liver, torn internal blood vessels that were flooding her with blood and compressing her lungs. A depressed skull fracture that had driven splinters of bone into fragile tissue.

Each of those took time, and massive concentration and energy. The skull fracture was the worst and most delicate, and when Id finally coaxed out the bone splinters and dissolved them, and repaired the damage, I had very few reserves of power left.