Black Corner Read online

  I heard the sharp bitterness in his voice. "You liked her."

  "Yeah. I liked her." Lewis opened his hand and let the golden power roll out of it. He rose from his crouch and scanned the horizon with distant, cool brown eyes. "Let's keep moving. There's a cold front coming in from the west. We'll have rain by tomorrow."

  I blinked, surprised. I hadn't felt it, but when I opened up my Weather Warden side, I could feel the tingle of the approaching front, the energy being produced as it collided and rubbed with the warm, dry air.

  Lewis could balance all this without even thinking about it. That was ... quietly terrifying.

  We followed a trail of tiny sparks, and David's footprints, across an empty space as the sun blazed across the sky.

  ###

  Trouble came on us suddenly, and without any warning. One minute David was there, striding over the sand, following his own invisible trail, and the next he was ... gone.

  Lewis accelerated into a lope, long legs eating up space. I had to push myself to a flat-out sprint to catch up. The golden mist around us roiled and eddied; I faltered in my concentration, panting with effort, but Lewis didn't. When we reached the last spot I'd seen David, the fog was still with us, blanketing the area and sparking with bursts of power. The place David had been glowed hot orange, and the molten-glass color pooled into the hollow of his footprints. Oddly, the fog wouldn't flow past that point; it piled up there, as if held back by an invisible glass wall.

  I walked to the spot. "Careful," Lewis said from behind me.

  I gave him an impatient wave and edged closer. David was at the bottom of the hill. He was crouched, both hands on the sand, like an animal ready to spring. "David?" I asked, and felt a tightening of my guts when he didn't respond. "David!"

  "Something's wrong here," he said. His voice didn't sound normal. "Stay back."

  I didn't. I slithered down the sandy hill, half running, half sliding, and landed in a burst of blowing dirt at his side.

  Lewis, on the other hand, stayed where he was, at the top.

  I crouched down next to David. "What is it?" His face was starkly pale, and his eyes - his eyes were glowing a desperate red.

  "Black corner," he said. "It's a black corner."

  "I don't know what that means! Are you all right?"

  He tried to get up, but staggered and almost fell. I grabbed him to steady him. "We have to get out of here. Now."

  "What did he say?" Lewis called from the top.

  "Get your ass down here and help me!"

  "Not until I hear what he said."

  Son of a bitch. "He said it's a black corner. What's a black corner?"

  Lewis didn't move. "A dead spot. A spot that's been burned, damaged through all the planes of existence. There are five or six in the world, but the Djinn can't sense them; they only know they're here when they walk into them. Sort of like aetheric quicksand."

  "God dammit! Help me get him out of here!"

  "I can't," Lewis said. "I'm sorry. If I go down there, I'll be just as useless as he is right now. You have to find a way to get him back up here without me."

  "You can be such a - " I controlled myself and slowed my breathing. "Fine, help me pull him up there." He shrugged off his emergency backpack and unzipped sections, coming up with some thin, flexible nylon rope neatly stored in a figure eight.

  I tied one end around David's waist. "Right!" I yelled. "You pull, I'll push! Go!"

  David was not quite dead weight. He had balance, and he could move a little on his own behalf, but I could see that it was torture for him to fight to stay with us. Black corner. I couldn't feel a thing, except -

  No. I couldn't feel a thing at all. I stretched out my senses, but it was like grabbing with a phantom limb. I felt nothing from the earth beneath my boots, nothing from the sky and wind. No sense of the world at all. I was entirely, magically blind.

  I concentrated on taking in raw, dirt-fogged breaths as I pushed David up the hill.

  We were halfway up David jerked, as if something had struck him hard, and a half-second later I heard the rolling crack of a rifle. It took me a stunned instant to process the evidence - the hole in his back, the limpness of his body against the rope's pull - and then I screamed. Lewis was already yelling. "Get to cover!" he shouted, and let go of the rope. David and I rolled back down the slope, into the black corner. He flopped flat on his back, red eyes open. Unmoving.

  I grabbed his outflung wrists and began dragging him toward the shelter of a low dune - the only thing around. Something puffed dust in a small cloud near my feet. I heard the snap of the shot following close behind, but I kept my head down and continued to drag David with all my strength. My breath was coming in short, gasping bursts, and I was starting to shake as adrenaline rushed into my system, trying to give me fuel for the fight.

  "David?" I cupped my hands around his face. He didn't blink. His pupils had expanded, leaving only a small ring of red around the edges. "I know you're in there. Don't you dare leave me!"

  No response. I closed his eyes with my thumbs and rolled him onto his side, so I could get a better look at the wound in his back. It was big, and it was bloodless; I could see the ragged track going all the way through him. God, I could see daylight.

  It would be a fatal wound for a human, but David couldn't be killed by a bullet. Not even here? some part of me whispered. He's weak. He's failing.

  I needed to find out where the edges of this dead zone were, and figure out a way to get David out. Now.

  "Lewis!" I shouted. "I need a plan!"

  "I know! Stay put!" came his distant response from the other side of the hill. I couldn't feel anything happening, but I saw sand begin to stir up there on the hill, rising up into a curtain, then into a thick red wall as Lewis created a diversion. It pushed forward, and stopped dead at the spot where David's footprints had shown the limits of the black corner.

  It curved around, driven by howls of wind, and slowly defined the edges of the place where even natural forces had no power. Now or never, I thought. I needed to act - get to the shooter and stop him while Lewis commanded his attention and clouded his vision. I pressed David's hand in a silent, desperate promise, and then got to my feet and sprinted hard for the closest edge of the black corner.

  I didn't make it. Another shot rang out, and I zigged, fast. Sand shifted under my feet, and I went down, rolling.

  As I struggled to rise, I felt my hands skid painfully on something hard. Wood. I got a palm full of splinters.

  There was something was buried under the sand.

  "Jo!" Lewis was yelling at me from outside the black corner, but I couldn't answer him. I knew I had seconds, at most, to save myself, and no power at all. The sand wasn't enough to protect me from the marksman aiming at me.

  I swept my hands along the wood, frantically seeking edges, and found them. I heaved with reckless strength, and a broad, heavy trap door creaked up. I slithered into the gap and dropped down into darkness as the door banged shut above me.

  The place smelled of fear and sweat and the natural by-product of someone being trapped for a few days. I held myself still, listening, and picked out the sound of breathing. "Ethan?" I whispered. "Ethan Falworth-Davis?" I heard the breathing catch, and start up again unevenly. "Your grandma Francis sent me. My name is Joanne."

  "Prove it," said a childish, disembodied voice.

  "You left your baseball glove and bat in the corner next to the leather couch in the parlor," I said. "And I brought your hat." I had it shoved in the back pocket of my jeans; for a miracle, it hadn't fallen out during my rolling around. "Do you want it?"

  "You got a flashlight?" For a kid who'd spent days in the dark, Ethan sounded remarkably calm. "My batteries are almost out."

  "No, sorry. Not even a match."

  "Okay." He switched on a flashlight, and although he was right, the batteries were definitely failing, it lit up the tiny space like a flash bomb, putting everything in stark relief. Ethan was still wearing
a stained baseball t-shirt with a red logo and sleeves. The box we were in - I couldn't think what else to call it - was concrete on the sides, with metal sheeting on the inside of the wooden door above.

  It was full of wrapped plastic packages, and I didn't think anybody would come all the way out here to stash their corn meal and flour.

  "That's not mine," Ethan said, sounding remarkably adult about it. He was the same boy from the photos, only he'd lost the smile. Big, earnest dark eyes, and a serious, square face. "I think it's, you know, drugs and stuff."

  "I think you're right," I said, and crouched down next to him. "Are you okay?"

  "Yeah." He shrugged, embarrassed. "It's my hideout. I found it a few months ago, but it was empty. When I got here, I found all this stuff, and then this guy showed up. I couldn't get out, but he couldn't get in, either."

  "He couldn't?"

  For answer, Ethan lifted a pistol. It was a matte-black semi-automatic, and the slide was jammed all the way back. My heart did a little stutter, and I held out my trembling hand for it. He gave it to me.

  Empty.

  "You've been shooting at him?" I asked.

  "I had to. He shot at me first." For all his bravery, this was a little boy, and I saw that he was deeply scared. "He missed me, though. I just shot to scare him. That's not mine either. I found it in here."

  "You must have done a really good job of scaring him," I said. "How long have you been down here?"

  "I don't know. Days, maybe. It got really boring after a while. I figured somebody would find me." He gave me a faint smile this time. "I told him I'd blow all this stuff up if he tried to come in."

  "Ah ... and do you have dynamite in your pocket or something?"

  "Kind of," he said, and turned the flashlight away, on another box. It had Army stenciling on it, identifying the contents as MK2. It was also clearly marked as EXPLOSIVE. "I didn't open it, though."

  I didn't have a pry bar, but the wood was pretty old; a well-placed smack shattered the top enough to give me a look at the interior.

  "Sweet!" Ethan said, wide-eyed.

  Grenades, the old pineapple kind. I swallowed hard, thinking about the damage a kid could do to himself in an enclosed space with military explosives. I grabbed two. "Don't touch these," I said. "Promise me you won't, no matter what. I can't take them with me, but I don't want you messing with this stuff. It's very dangerous."

  The kid looked deeply offended. "I'm not stupid."

  At his age, I certainly had been. "Seriously, Ethan. Promise me."

  "I promise."

  I looked at the gun. "I wish we had a reload for this."

  He pulled the top off of another nearby box. In it were three more magazines, fully loaded. "I was going to put another one in," he said, clearly embarrassed. "I kind of forgot, and then when I heard you coming, I couldn't find the box in time."

  Which explained why he hadn't shot me, thank God. I decided to save the gun lecture for later, changed out the magazines and worked the slide to load one in the chamber. "So, this is your hideout?" I asked. It didn't make sense to me, a budding Warden seeking out - even accidentally - a secret hideout in a black corner, where he couldn't feel the earth around him.

  Ethan was quiet for a moment, then said, "It's the only place where I can be me again. You know? Out there, there's all this noise in my head, all this stuff. Here, it's just ... me."

  That made more sense than I'd expected. I remembered what it had been like at puberty - powers waking, complicated by hormones kicking in. No wonder he wanted to have a quiet place to just be. Warden powers were a heavy burden, and he was young. Too young.

  I took a deep breath. "Here's what we're going to do. You stay here until I come back for you, okay? Don't worry, it's all going to be all right. Just chill."

  "Chill? I can do that." He grinned at me, and something struck me full force -- a powerful sense of recognition. I knew that smile. I knew those dark eyes. It was only a glimpse, and then it was gone, and I wasn't altogether sure I hadn't imagined it.

  I heard the snap of a rifle shot overhead, muffled by the concrete and wooden and metal, and realized that I was probably running out of time. "I'll be back for you. Ethan, stay put. Whatever happens, stay where you are."

  "I know," he said. "I'll -- " The flashlight batteries flickered, then gave up the ghost, plunging us into darkness. Ethan's voice stuttered, then strengthened. "I'll be okay."

  "I know you will be." I hugged him, on impulse, and he wrapped his arms around me with near desperation. "Be right back, hero."

  I climbed up on the crates, wary of my weight on the creaking wood, and managed to get a broken piece of concrete wedged near the hinges to hold the door open at an angle as I crawled out. With any luck, the angle and the blowing sand would confuse the rifleman; if not, the metal and wood were at least a thin cover.

  I didn't know where Lewis was, but the sandstorm was in full roar now, except in the area where I was lying. It was eerily quiet here, the eye of the storm.

  It occurred to me, as another shot rang out and shivered the propped-up door, that the shooter wasn't out there.

  He was in here with me, inside the black corner. Very close.

  I crawled over to the side and risked a look around the door. If I didn't have cover, neither did he. I saw a flutter of cloth on the ground, and a glitter of sun on glass. He'd taken a sniper position, probably at the maximum range of the pistol in my hand, and I wasn't that good a shot. Likewise, the grenades were only as good as I could throw, and I was no professional.

  While I was considering the best course to get my message across to Lewis, my phone buzzed in my pocket. Oh. Right. Magic didn't work in the black corner ... technology evidently did.

  Lewis didn't waste time on pleasantries. "I'm at the edge of the black corner, maybe fifty feet away. I got one of them."

  "Bully for you. Mine's the sniper, and he's staying put."

  "You okay?"

  That was beside the point right now. "I found Ethan. He's in a smuggler's box under the sand. We need to get him out of there."

  Lewis was so quiet I thought about saying, over, but then his voice came in a rush. "I'm coming in. Get him ready. I'll pull him out and get him to safety."

  The tacit understanding was that once that was done, I'd be on my own. I was kind of okay with that.

  Ethan nodded. A second later, Lewis's pale, tense face appeared above us in the small opening. "Up!" he said, and reached down. I lifted, and Ethan raised his arms. Lewis lifted him straight up and out, and held the boy close to his chest. I saw relief chase fear across his expression.

  "Get him clear!" I said. "Here, take this!" I tossed up the pistol, and then one of the grenades. "I'm blowing the hell out of this place, so get the kid as far away as you can!"

  Lewis and Ethan disappeared from my narrow view, and I could only hope they were taking me seriously. I jumped for the opening above and hauled myself up by main strength belly down on the hot sand. I saw tracks leading toward the only cover available - the far sand dune where I'd left David.

  As I got to my hands and knees, I heard a voice from behind me say, "Don't move."

  I froze. Through the sweaty, dusty curtain of my hair, I saw a man dressed desert camouflage crouched nearby, aiming a rifle directly at me. He'd made better time advancing than I'd hoped. "Who else is down there?" he demanded.

  "Nobody." I slowly came upright, sitting on my knees, careful to keep my hands at my sides. "Who are you?"

  "Who the fuck are you, you crazy bitch? Cops? DEA?"

  "You wish. Look, I'll make you a deal - forget about your drugs and get the hell out of here. We'll call it even."

  "Know what?" He took aim. "Think I'll just kill you instead."

  "You sure about that?" I turned my left hand over and showed him the grenade. "Already pulled the pin. Shoot me, and we're both buzzard meat."

  "You think I'm stupid? You didn't pull the pin."

  I smiled, cold and certain. "Can y
ou really tell from there? Then shoot me. Or leave. Your choice. But I'm not alone, and you really don't want to screw with us."

  He wasn't sure I was bluffing. He couldn't be, without coming even closer. After a long, frozen second, he took a step back. As he retreated, I edged closer until I was holding the grenade over the door of the smuggler's box. Even if he was tempted to shoot me, he wouldn't dare now. He still hoped to get his drugs out of the deal, if nothing else.

  "Keep moving," I called to him. "I won't drop the bomb if you leave quietly."

  I stayed where I was until he was he mounted a dusty camouflage ATV - it was nearly hidden in a new sand dune, thanks to Lewis's distraction windstorm - and began revving it toward the horizon. Only then did I breathe a sigh of relief and relax my grip around the grenade.

  The pin - still in place - had branded a red ring into the skin of my palm. I pulled the pin, dropped the grenade into the smuggler's box, and ran to join Lewis and Ethan. We all threw ourselves flat.