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knees gave out and I dropped to the snow. The chill helped me focus, and I
used the energy that had been keeping me on my feet to try to keep the wall
torn asunder. It had life of its own, forced and vicious, with no purpose
beyond keeping me out. Destroying me, if it could.
And it was going to. I crumpled farther into the snow, pressure bearing
down on my weakening breach in the wall like so much newspaper. I
knotted my fingers in snow, feeling icy chunks bite into the lines of my un-
gloved hand and then melt into bone-aching cold. I was going to be
pulverized by someone who wasn t even there. What an embarrassing way
to die.
At least Morrison wasn t there to see it. For a moment I went in a mental
circle, annoyed that that was my last thought, then realizing it couldn t be,
because this was my last thought
Power slammed into me, drawn from a depth that I could barely fathom.
Deep purple, burnt sienna Billy s colors, but at their most profound. I
could feel the love he drew on, lacing his colors with such gladness I was
happy to stop breathing, so long as I could do it for them
I didn t come to my feet. My body was irrelevant, left behind as I sprang
forward on the force of the power Billy gave to me, unstinting. I slammed
my fingers, all swirled with dominant purple, into the barely existent
crack all that was left of my opening in the wall and tore it apart.
Redness shattered all around me, breaking in huge chunks of raw-edged
power that collapsed into fragments as they hit the ground. I boiled through
the opening and stood against the waves of blood rage that had gone into the
killings. The bodies were gone, but the black power that linked one woman
to another was still there, seeped in the earth beneath the snow like their
blood. I could see lines that hadn t been there the day before or that I
hadn t been strong enough to see. Billy s outpouring of energy made my
skin tingle, even if I d left my actual body behind.
He can t keep this up forever, Joanne. Stop fucking around. Did other
people have little voices in their heads that said things like that? I could
stretch myself out a little and touch a hundred thousand minds in Seattle just
to find out, but I was afraid the answer would be no. I refrained, instead
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focusing on the thin lines rising up from each of the three points where the
women had died.
They came together in thready blackness, like oil-smeared string that
glimmered and twisted with unhealthy light, making three points of a
pyramid. They joined at the apex and braided together, reaching higher until
the braid grew watery and distant. I could see it cut through the clouds and
into the blueness of the sky beyond, but it faded before it reached the dark
curve of space above the world. I was almost certain it faded, not that my
vision was failing. The power diamond wasn t complete. The Blade needed
one more body to finish building his stairway to heaven. That was the good
news.
The bad news was it obviously didn t matter that the bodies themselves
were gone. The power their deaths had bought was there, seared into the
ground. Taking the three women away from the park hadn t broken the spell,
and I wasn t sure what would.
The worst news was I could only think of one way to find out. The rich
colors of Billy s power hadn t faded at all, memories coalescing around me:
moments of love, laughing until the tears came; moments of holding sick
children, afraid of what the night might bring. The bright spark of his wife s
smile; the open acknowledgment that his girls had him wrapped around their
little fingers, that his boys made him puff up with a fatherly pride he felt a
little silly about, in this enlightened day and age.
What he was giving me was the part of him that would never, could never,
give up. It was his center, his family, the core of all his strength, and just as
surely, the center of all his weaknesses. He embraced every bit of it, flinging
it toward me with everything he had, giving me the power to reach all the
way to the stars. He knew what he was doing: he could protect himself from
the lethal drain but chose not to. Instead he offered up power far beyond the
limits of safety. I could take it and follow the Blade s black thread into the
heart of its darkness, and learn what lay behind him.
This morning and almost thirty years ago, my mother had had the same
choice.
I fell back into my body with a jolt so hard it made my teeth ache, refusing
the maelstrom of power offered to me by my friend. Refusing to take what
he would give until the moment his system went into critical failure. I
wouldn t take it, not even to fight the thing that wielded the murderous
Blade.
Weak with exhaustion, I was still able to turn in time to catch Billy as he
fell, the very life of him drained almost to the sticking point.
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The earth itself had power to spare, a thin green-and-blue flow far beneath
its frozen surface. I reached for it with a worn-out plea, dragging the offered
trickles of energy up through the snow and into myself. I couldn t reach
even as far as the scattered trees, much less beyond the park s boundaries to
beg for some of Seattle s teeming life energy. I had to wait, bent over Billy s
chilled form, drawing in tiny spurts of strength until the swirling core of
silver-blue inside me gave a little groan, and let power flow into my hands.
I fell back on the analogies I knew best. Billy s battery was drained and
needed a jump. The thought of jumping Billy made me burble a snicker. His
wife would beat me up.
The logical side of my mind said that if part of a person was the battery, it
would probably be his mind. My hands drifted over Billy s heart without
paying any attention to the logical part of my mind. I actually made little
pinchers of my fingers, like jumper-cable heads, and clumsily stabbed one
hand against my own heart, the other staying over Billy s.
It was a long and slow transfer of strength, my eyes half-shut and my head
bowed over his. I was gaining very little for myself; what I could draw from
the frozen ground beneath the snow I simply siphoned into Billy. His color
improved gradually and he finally chuckled, more shaking his body than
sounding in my ears.  Think we can walk out of here if we lean on each
other?
 Mngrnf. I thought that was supposed to be  maybe. Billy seemed to
understand, and we took a couple of long minutes to climb to our feet,
giggling with exhausted clumsiness.
 You find anything out? he asked once we were both on our feet.
 Yeah. I tried out this whole walking thing, one shaky step. I could feel
weary relief spill through him and into me.
 What? His first step wasn t any steadier than mine. I smiled wearily and
pulled myself up a little straighter, letting him lean on me.
 I found out I ve got the best friends in the world. C mon. Let s go,
Holliday. Your wife s expecting us for dinner.
Chapter Nine
 I swear on my wife s grave. Gary herded me up the stairs to Billy s front
door, maneuvering Billy into line behind me. Mel stood in the open
doorway, looking bemused. Gary spoke to her, not to me or Billy, which was
just as well, because we d gone well past punch-drunk sometime in the past
hour of work and were howling with laughter every time anybody moved.  I
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