“I think when she dies, you’ll go to sleep.” Baba Yaga’s smiling. “That will give me plenty of time to figure out ways to placate you when you awaken.”
“There isn’t a way to placate me,” Xolotl says, his voice almost too calm after all that yelling. “I’ll destroy you and everything else.”
“She’s not the only one who can save Whitney.” Leonid points at me. “I’m the one who caused the damage. I could fix it.”
“Then do it,” Xolotl says. “And I might spare your life.”
Leonid shrugs, and I can barely see it. “I could, but I don’t want to. You bonded her against her will, and now you won’t free her. At least this will set her free.”
“Save her, and I won’t retaliate, even if filling her with that much healing light breaks the bond.” Xolotl’s warm, strong arms around me make me smile. I’ll die happy.
Only, I don’t die.
As I feel my spirit leaving, light floods my entire body. I feel like I’m standing on the surface of the sun. I can barely make out the tiny black anchor holding me to my body.
It burns.
The pain’s unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. Every single cell in my body’s throbbing, rejecting this light, this brightness. The bond dwindles, and shrinks. Pain explodes all the way up the line. I scream. My back bows outward, and I shudder.
And then I discover what real agony is.
I’m not sure how long it lasts, but it’s a very, very long time. When I wake, Xolotl’s gone.
“It worked.” Izzy’s smiling at me. “He’s gone to sleep!”
18
Xolotl
I’m asleep, but I’m not sleeping.
I sense the miles of stone around me clearly, and the heat from the earth’s core warms me perfectly, as usual. But it’s not enough. Something’s wrong.
I shouldn’t be here.
I can’t rest the way I’m supposed to. Something’s not right.
My body isn’t working—it’s supposed to be hibernating, but my mind’s racing. Why would I be stuck in this mountain, awake? What happened the last time I woke up?
The reality of everything punches into me like a missile.
A glorious, deadly, powerful bomb, like the one the humans fired at me before they finally capitulated. It’s still inside me now. I feel it, pulsing and rippling in all its miraculous power. The thrumming of it calms me, and I try to remember what else happened. I’m purposefully hard to wake. I’m not needed very often up above.
But things still feel strange.
Like the sunlight dawning over the day, the truth rises up in me.
Whitney.
Whitney Brooks.
She’s changed everything. I bonded her as my champion, and I was terribly upset at how bad she was at her job. She wasn’t eager to kill or destroy. She shared no information about the humans voluntarily. In fact, I could barely even read her thoughts. The small things I got made me even more insane.
She forced me to try human food.
And I liked it.
She made me smile and play, like some dog.
