Chapter Thirteen
Last night, when Jean sensed Logan in the woods near Magneto's camp, she'd tried to contact him. But The Eater shoved her so deep into their mind she could barely sense the outside world. After a night of fitful sleep, she woke shortly after dawn and found herself once again in control of their body's shared powers.
Instantly, she searched for Logan. Had Magneto found him while she was buried in her own subconscious? Was he bleeding and dying somewhere in the woods? Jean tracked Logan to the edge of the encampment. He was alert, aware of the sentries, safe for now.
She knew The Eater was playing with her, yet had no idea what it wanted or why it let her use their powers one moment and then stole them back the next. Did it want her to lead Logan into a trap? Was she unwittingly helping it achieve its goals? And even if she was, what choice did she have? Waking Phoenix was the only way to stop Magneto and destroy The Eater.
And only Logan could wake Phoenix.
"The boss is ready. You're to come now." The one they called Juggernaut appeared out of the mists. Jean's mind was wide open, sweeping the area for Logan, so she caught Juggernaut's thoughts as well. He wasn't stupid, merely single minded and cruel. He seemed eager to test his strength against hers.
She felt limitless power flowing below her skin, more than enough to wipe the self-satisfied smile off his heavy face. A cold desire to use that power followed. But the last thing Jean wanted was to provide The Eater with a new child. She rose without comment and followed Juggernaut.
Sunlight cut through the trees sharply, making her squint. Her body flinched in sympathetic pain as Logan struggled to reach her. She refused to let go of the shallow link that would guide him to her. He risked so much just because she'd called.
She was manipulating him. There was no love at the end of this for Logan. But, by calling him here, she knew she'd given him hope. The fact should have invited at least a pang of guilt, but her heart felt dead.
Likewise, waking Phoenix should frighten her. Her alter ego had killed Charles. She was a child with a god's abilities, and no experience with the world. And yet, that risk too left Jean strangely indifferent. She'd grown detached from her emotions. Perhaps that was best. Guilt wouldn't server her in this. Magneto and The Eater had to be stopped. There was no choice.
Picking her way over fallen trees and rocks ached more than it had yesterday. Like her lack of emotions, she suspected these pains were signs of approaching death. Their body had been healed and forced to endure as much as it could.
So little time left. And even that fact no longer mattered except in a coldly logistic way. If Magneto would hold off his army even a few days, it would be too late for The Eater. But the man insisted on playing right into the monster's plans. He intended to make a massive attack tonight. The Eater's children were about to be born. Jean knew she had to stay strong and determined to prevent that disaster.
Magneto had already begun his speech by the time she and Juggernaut arrived at the rise. Jean took a position some distance away from the others, though she knew Magneto wanted her right next to him. She needed to be able to slip away when Logan found her. He'd reached the edge of the crowd now. Soon, it would all be settled soon.
As she took her place, Magneto glanced at her. "They have their weapons. We have ours."
You have nothing, she couldn't help shooting back. If her telepathic flash caught him, he didn't show it.
Logan was in the center of the crowd now, cloaked to hide his appearance from the mob, but looking straight at her. Jean waited, expecting Phoenix to acknowledge him. She wondered what would happen when her other half seized control of body and power. That thought, at last, caused a trickle of fear to course through Jean. But Phoenix didn't move.
"We shall go to Alcatraz Island, take control of the cure, and destroy its source." Magneto was winding up his speech. Soon enough he'd send those with transporting powers into the army to begin moving troops across the country. He'd told his so-called generals -- Scott would have laughed at that designation for most of them -- a thief, a thug, her possessed and dying self, and a boy. The one called Callisto had some leadership skills. But she cared only for the gang she'd brought with her, all of whom were in the chosen elite. No one considered the masses about to destroy themselves.
"And then nothing can stop us!" Magneto had the crowd cheering.
Jean had to get away before she was pulled into some strategy huddle. She ducked to the left, behind a large tree and then up the hill. Logan followed her. Good. Now, if only Phoenix would notice his presence. In their parents' house, Phoenix had focused all her attention on Logan the moment he arrived. Now, she ignored him. Something was very wrong.
There was only one way to discover the problem. Jean would have to talk directly with Phoenix. And for the first time that day, she felt real dread. Avoiding even the existence of Phoenix had been Jean's goal for so long. Her counterpart had been rival and sister and betrayer, but never approachable. Jean had expected to retreat when her twin rose. To talk to her, to touch her … the thought terrified.
She gathered her courage and focused on creating the inner framework for the encounter. Reaching Phoenix meant twisting her consciousness inward, away from the forest and Magneto. Her inner world would become more real than the outer. She'd be abandoning Logan to Magneto while she did this.
Jean allowed herself one narrow window of attention on the outside world where Logan still followed through the woods. She felt his mind. He wondered why she'd called him and now walked away from him. He smelled his own sweat as well as the blood from the fight moments earlier, worried that she wouldn't want to see him like that. Touch him like that. His need was so raw and open.
She had to turn from that longing. She couldn't share it -- not only because her heart had gone so cold, but because it had always belonged to another. Logan didn't understand how hopeless his pursuit had been or that the encouragement he received came from her hidden self, not her, not Jean. Jean had always been Scott's, always would be. But, when she looked at the place where she'd hidden that love the treasure seemed dusty and dull. Even that passion had dried. The fire for life inside her was ash. The only feeling she seemed capable of now was fear.
Perhaps Phoenix's desires had also died. Perhaps she was no longer alive enough to care. Jean couldn't allow herself to give up hope. She had to believe Phoenix could still be reached. She pushed her awareness of Logan back and bent her thoughts inward until the world of her mind became more solid and real than the external one.
She turned away from the sight of her eyes in favor of that inner vision that made thoughts into worlds, houses, and rooms. Her own consciousness took shape within that world, very much like her outer form, and she walked down a curving stairway into the hidden places of her mind.
The air tasted closed in and sour, like sorrow. The farther she went, the less color bled through the walls, until a glance down at her own hand showed it as gray and lifeless as the dank stone. From below she heard a thin keening.
Jean found Phoenix huddled on the floor of a round pit-deep room. Her alter-ego looked like a mirror of Jean herself. Perhaps younger, or at least less work-worn. Perhaps just the woman Jean would have been had she chosen a life that never required all-night shifts at hospitals or labs. Her twin's hair was long, longer even than their body now manifested, and vibrant red. When Phoenix looked up, her tear-bright eyes were green, not brown.
"He's not what I thought," Phoenix moaned. Far from an emotionless husk, her voice trembled with outrage and loss. Far more than fear survived in her. It wasn't too late. "He's a lie. Such a lie."
"Who? Logan?" Jean guessed. She knelt and cautiously embraced her other self. It felt awkward, but no longer frightening. The hatred she'd felt for her sister had been purged in their parents' house, but the fear remained. Phoenix was dangerous, and perhaps unstable. Now, she seemed only a little lost and frightened. A little love warmed the core of Jean's heart again. Phoenix curled into the hug.
"Yes." The voice sounded too small for a personality who thrived on risk and excitement. Her body shivered, and Jean's felt an answering tremor run through her own form. She knew this sense of betrayal and loss, though she had no idea what caused Phoenix's disillusionment.
"Why?"
"I thought he was a hero, but he's a monster. I saw him."
Jean didn't have to ask what she saw. Phoenix was already showing her. The stone walls around them dissolved. They knelt on the edge of a dense jungle. Beyond, mosquitoes hung amid clouds of bluish smoke over a boggy field, half obscuring the cluster of huts perched on a small mound of drier earth. Heat rose from the mushy forest floor, soaking them instantly in sweat, and the stench of flame assaulted their nostrils.
"What is this place?" Jean asked.
"Viet Nam, I think," Phoenix said, her voice quivering as if the memory were her own rather than belonging to some veteran of that long-ago war. "He was here. There."
She pointed and they leapt to the village in one of those instantaneous vaults reserved for dream or memory. Here, explosions rattled their bones. Long, undulating screams counter-pointed staccato gun fire. Then silence, more penetrating than the noise, surrounded them.
"It's over," Jean whispered.
Phoenix shook her head. "It's beginning."
A soldier circled one of the huts. Others appeared out of the jungle, some white, some black, all American, heavily armed and dirty. A commanding voice called them all to order. Jean couldn't see the man behind that voice, but she thought she should know it.
Logan arrived last, and he was unmistakable even with his hair shaved close to his skull and his cheeks smooth. He looked exactly the same age as when Jean first met him, some way station of adulthood between thirty and forty. His uniform was torn in several places and he didn't wear a helmet. Maybe they all knew he didn't need one.
"He's going to kill them," Phoenix whispered. Her voice cracked on the word kill.
"Who? The soldiers?"
"No."
The commander ordered the squad to begin clearing the huts. The voice felt as if it came from inside Jean's own skull. It's his memory, she realized, the commander's. But, she had no time to contemplate that fact.
A boy, not more than thirteen, erupted from a hut. Sunlight flashed on the blade he swung. He caught Logan in the shoulder, the machete stuck. The boy died on the point of Logan's knife. Silence again, that eerie dead quiet from before.
Jean felt Phoenix shaking in her arms, but her eyes focused on Logan's face. His nostrils flared and his brows lowered. He sensed something the others couldn't. Whatever it was, he didn't like it. Even the commander missed the nuance.
"Kill them," Logan said. "Kill everyone here."
"I want to go!" Phoenix cried. The scene clouded. Then the clouds solidified into cell walls once more. "I don't want to watch. He killed them all for no reason."
"There was a reason," Jean told her. "I don't know what it was, but he had one."
"Hatred was the reason." The intruding voice was the commander's, still familiar and not. "Or a love of killing."
"He's a monster," Phoenix whispered.
"He's not," Jean insisted. Phoenix needed to understand what the commander wanted to hide. "He sensed something in that boy, some danger--"
"The boy was already dead." Jean turned to confront the commander's challenge. William Stryker stood in the doorway of their tiny cell, baring the way. He still wore old-fashioned fatigues like those she'd seen in the memory, but his face and body belonged to the declining man controlling the Alkali Lake complex.
"There's more to it," Jean shouted. "Show her!"
"She doesn't want to see the gore." So smug. So self-satisfied.
Jean caught the waves of emotion coming off the mental construct of Stryker -- gloating, cruel pleasure at the pain he caused -- and found another emotion still lived in her. Hatred. She struggled for control of this inner world. It was hers. She should be able to crush him within it.
Stryker stepped back and put his hand on the heavy, wooden door. Had there been a door in this room when she entered? Jean didn't think so. How could a construct alter her inner world? For that matter, how could it give Phoenix memories?
Jean held tight to her power even as she felt The Eater ripping it away. She focused all that energy on the image of Stryker, forced her way into his dark mind. For a moment she feared it would engulf her. Then, she found what she needed. She tore the entire memory free and flung it wildly toward the outside world and Logan.
The wooden door slammed closed, and with the sound her connection to their power severed. The lights in the tiny room went out. She sat alone in the prison with Phoenix, her only contact with the outside world the little window she'd made earlier.
Through that opening, she saw Magneto lift Logan off the ground, pull and torture him, then finally fling him through the trees like an unwanted doll. If she'd still had her power, she knew she would have felt him die. But that was nothing to Logan. He'd wake. She had to hope, when he did recover, he'd still have the horrible gift she'd given him.
And she wondered why the cruelty inherent in that hope didn't bother her.
-----
"I need to know what you're doing here," Ororo said. She felt vaguely foolish talking to an empty space behind Hank's hastily constructed communication device. "All this endless searching, is it just for Jean?"
No matter how she squinted or turned her head, she couldn't see a person. The only indication Scott was real was the series of marks forming on the pressure sensitive paper the machine spat out. She had to trust her friend was really there. And these days -- given what Jean had become -- trust was hard.
Search is for everyone, he typed in his slow, careful code. Leaving Jean to Logan.
She relaxed, liking that answer. She remembered this Scott -- dedicated and certain, the Scott before Jean's death stole his confidence, or hope. Until this moment, she hadn't realized how much she needed him back. But could she believe this transformation? Would the real Scott have ever allowed Logan to lead a search for Jean?
"The president is preparing an assault on Magneto's base as we speak." Hank directed his report to the space where Scott supposedly stood rather than to her. "He's promised to keep us informed."
"So, we can stop looking for him?" Ororo replied anyway.
Scott typed How?
Hank settled his cell phone inside his jacket pocket. "Mystique. She's told them everything she knows."
We keep searching.
In that, Ororo had to agree with Scott. "She's not going to turn on Magneto. If she's telling them something now, it's because she knows the information no longer matters."
"But, he did abandon her to be recaptured." Hank argued.
Hank might be brilliant, but he didn't understand female minds. "And she may well hate him now. But have no doubt that she hates the government more."
Scott's machine moved. Logan?
"I told the president to have his men look out for our operative." Hank turned that way immediately. The image of him talking to empty air still troubled Ororo. It seemed to accentuate what they'd all lost. "It was about all I could do."
"Logan can take care of himself," she said. Of that, at least, she was very sure.
Scott typed Not my worry. And then, Get Kitty. New job
Ororo was just as glad to leave the reading to someone else for a while. That last comment was too damn cryptic. She was tired of trying to decipher the truncated messages, and the secrets behind them -- Scott's, Hank's, the whole world's.
Her world used to be so straightforward. Jean loved Scott and put others first too often. Charles was invincible. The world would eventually come around to understanding mutants, too. But that was yesterday and a lifetime ago.
Now everything good seemed to contain a hidden disaster. Jean's return should have meant rejoicing, but it meant death. Hank might say he'd quit the government to be where he belonged, but Ororo knew he'd leave again when the present danger was over. His heart wasn't with the X-men anymore. And when will that fact stop hurting? she wondered. Logan promised to help, then chose Jean over the rest of them. And the world that so recently seemed to be moving toward understanding instead wanted to cure them. Like Scott's terse messages, each event seemed so simple on the surface. But the surface lied.
Kitty came to take over, and Ororo headed for the door. She needed space and time to think through all the conflicting, complicated emotions inside. Except Hank followed her.
"Are you all right?"
"Fine. Tired." She rubbed her forehead.
"Are you certain?" He rested a hand on her arm, and all the old feelings flooded back. It was damned unfair that she couldn't move on from their years-dead love affair. Even Scott seemed to be moving past the loss of Jean, though it had taken going incorporeal to get him there. She shook off those thoughts. Better to talk about different issues than those long dead between them. "Suspicious too, I suppose."
"Of Scott?"
"A little." Ororo glanced back at the empty space in front of the machine. "He was so lost. Now, he has all his old drive back, and more. I want to believe. How can I?"
"He explained that melancholy. The Eater of Souls attacking him through his link to Jean."
Yes, the mythology come to life. Ororo supposed it wasn't the strangest thing she'd ever been expected to believe. "He's so single minded. Is he over the obsession and guilt, or has he simply found a new direction for it?"
"He wants to make a difference, Ororo, while he can."
Ororo pulled Hank farther out into the hall and closed the door. She didn't want anyone else to hear the shiver in her voice when she asked, "What do you mean by while he can?"
It was clear from Hank's expression that he didn't want to tell her. "He's told us the world he's -- what word did he use again, folded? Yes, folded. The world he's folded into is a void really. He can't interact with his environment more than fractionally. And without Rogue to pull him back into reality, he doesn't have much chance of ever changing that situation."
Count on Hank to dance around a subject he didn't like. She remembered how long it had taken him to get out the simple message that he was leaving for a job in Washington all those years ago. The implications of what he did say were clear enough, though, no matter how cautiously he presented them. Scott couldn't survive long in his folded state, and he had no way out of it now that Rogue was gone.
"You're saying he's going to die." She liked things clear. A sharp edge cut deep, but with less pain than a blunt one.
"In a word, yes. And there is nothing I or anyone else can do to change that."
"Unless Rogue comes back."
"Or Jean returns and recovers enough to unfold him. Neither is very likely."
The muscles of her neck and shoulders tightened. The tension ran down her arms until her fists clenched. In that moment, she felt more alone than she had since coming to Xavier's school. It wasn't that Scott was so much more important to her than the others. He was her friend, certainly, nearly a brother in some ways. But she'd already accepted his death once. She could do that again.
It was the fact that she was already tottering after losing Jean and Charles that made her feel like her legs were going to collapse under her. Logan had left despite her best efforts to hold him, so had Rogue. They'd nearly lost Bobby too. She couldn't take another loss. Not Scott. Not anyone.
"Does he know?"
She noticed how the cold, bluish light of the corridor made Hank's hair look like metal. Everything around her was turning so hard. "I don't see how he can help but know."
She wanted to stalk back into the room and demand Scott tell her he had a plan for staying alive, that he wasn't going to leave again too. She wanted someone's promise to stay. She shoved past Hank.
When she reached Scott's machine, however, she said, "Hank tells me you want to do something that matters before you die. Is that true?"
The machine didn't move.
"You want to fight Magneto, don't you?"
Kill The Eater, he answered instead.
"It still comes down to fighting, though, doesn't it? Even though there are only a few of us."
Probably.
Scott had always hid his emotions behind his glasses. Now, he could hide all his body language. Ororo had no idea how to read him. Was he resigned, eager? "One question. If we destroy ourselves fighting a battle we can't win, who will protect all the students at the school?"
"Maybe no one," Hank said behind her.
She turned to him once more. He might avoid painful subjects, but he wouldn't lie -- a strangely refreshing trait in one bent on a life in politics. If she cornered him, he would tell her the truth about whether he intended to stay with them, or go back to his chosen calling. The problem was, Ororo didn't think she wanted the answer. He wasn't her lover anymore, and never would be again.
Scott's answer was longer in coming. Won't lose.
It was what she'd wanted him to say. Yet, the answer didn't satisfy, perhaps because she couldn't trust it. Death and abandonment has stripped the trust out of her. She saw the loss, mourned it, but couldn't change it.
"Charles put me in charge before he died," she said at last. It was a challenge and Scott had to realize it. So did Hank. She'd been hiding and mourning and waiting for someone to take the burden away from her. No more. The only one she could trust was herself. "He gave me guardianship of the school, and the students. I won't betray that."
"Does that mean you won't fight?" Hank asked.
She couldn't say that. Magneto did need to be stopped. So did the cure. She opened her mouth to say so, but they heard Logan shouting downstairs.
-----
"You can ask, you know." Irene moved the cards around in her hand, but didn't play any of them. "Sometimes questions bring up more details of the vision."
"I suppose you want me to ask about the man you say I'm in love with." That was the safest of the available subjects. Marie had learned in her brief time with Irene that the woman wouldn't be put off once she opened a topic for conversation.
They'd been at the shelter all day, and she'd been playing cards with Irene since dinner ended a few hours ago. The game was boring, but the thought of sitting around staring at walls was worse, though even that wasn't as bad as dwelling on Irene's disturbing vision for her future.
"Not even curious?" Irene finally laid the three of clubs on the discard stack.
The three was no use to her. Marie discarded a ten and took a new card. "Why are you pushing me? You want me to take the cure and now you want me to think about some man I'll meet and love if I don't take it? What's with that, Irene?"
The truth was, she didn't want to know more about any of it. It was bad enough knowing that she might love someone if she kept her powers when the smart choice was still to give them up.
Irene fussed with her cards. "I thought you already knew him. Bobby you said? And I never said he wouldn't love you if you took the cure."
"You don't know what happens to me if I take the cure. You only saw a future where I didn't." And what did that say?
The public address system crackled. Then, a male voice boomed through the shelter. "Everyone waiting to go to the cure clinic, gather at the door. We have two buses to take you. The Brooklyn clinic is opening in half an hour and will take as many people as they can tonight. We've no word on whether there will be hours tomorrow."
Marie hastily pulled on her gloves and took her coat from the bedpost. She grabbed her bag before leaving. Once she'd taken the shot, she was going to find her way to a bus station and buy a ticket for home. It might be the middle of the night, but she had no intention of returning to the shelter with Irene. The woman creeped her out.
On the bus, Marie grabbed a seat by the window. Irene, of course, took the seat beside her, blocking her in. The bus didn't have air conditioning, or the unit was broken, and the interior rapidly became unbearable. In the end, she had no choice but to either push the heavy coat off her shoulders or suffocate.
"First thing I'm doing after I get home is buy some sleeveless T-shirts. Maybe something with spaghetti straps." She worked the coat off her shoulders.
Irene laughed, the sound relaxed and calm. Marie let her own head fall back against the hard seat. Her coat made a lumpy pillow at the bottom of her spine. She turned her face toward the window. The outside world was black, the glass like a mirror reflecting her pale face. It was going to be a long half-hour drive to Brooklyn. But, at the end, all this turmoil would be done. Settled. Over. Until the Armageddon of Irene's prophetic visions became reality.
Maybe she should at least call the school before she went home. She could tell Logan about the visions. The X-men would stop all mutants from going crazy, wouldn't they?
The bus began to slow for the turn that would take them to the clinic. Marie turned her head to look at Irene, thinking she should get more details of the apocalypse. The woman was staring at her with frightening, insane intensity.
"You know," Irene said. "You don't understand the knowledge, but you have it. I need to know."
Marie realized Irene was going to grab her an instant too late. She couldn't get away crushed as she was between the seats and the window. She managed one sharp, "No." Then, Irene's bony hands closed around her face. She felt the dry texture of the woman's palms before the ugly power inside her began to suck.
She could never move in those first few moments as her power took hold. Much as she wanted to shove the other woman away, Irene's skin seemed to fuse with her own. The power locked them together. The sensation was cold, a relentless wind cutting through all the normal, decent barriers between people. First, Irene's pain hit her. Then a torrent of foreign thoughts fell into Marie's mind, washing away her own.
Insanity didn't begin to explain the cacophony inside that brain. Like Marie, Irene's power took a little piece of each person she touched, until all their future memories shouted and argued inside her. Yet, that chaotic mind still focused on the monster that would destroy them all. One monster with a million voices, powers, forms. Screaming.
Calm.
Irene was gone. The bus was gone. A steady, sweet breeze moved Marie's hair. She knew she was up at the reservoir near the school and that no one was going to intrude. She caught brief glimpse of trees and grass, a slice of blue sky, and then fingers turned her face. Her eyes drifted closed. She felt lips against hers.
She pushed a hand into his hair, so soft and not as short as it used to be. He hadn't wanted her to touch his face a moment before. He'd been afraid she'd jostle too much. But, now he didn't seem to notice and she liked his hair. She liked his mouth too, the smoothness and the firmness, a man's mouth not a boy's. He was a little rough, used his teeth. She liked that too.
She let herself lean back, let him press down on her into the grass. The sensation of skin against skin enticed her. More, she wanted more, despite the hovering sense that something was wrong. She tugged his shirt off his shoulders. Someone groaned, she couldn't tell if it was him, or her. Her hands fisted in the fabric of his shirt and she stopped the downward pull. There was a reason she shouldn't do this, but she couldn't quite touch it.
Marie tore Irene's hands away from her face. She held on to the frail wrists as her sight wavered between the fading, erotic vision and the reality in front of her. The scent of the man in her future hung in the air for a moment, as real as the sour stench of the bus. She knew that scent. Marie forced her mind to focus on the present.
Irene was only half-conscious. The veins stood out on her face like wires and she had a pale, waxy cast to her skin. If Marie released her now, she'd collapse on the floor and be trampled. The bus had stopped and people were already filing toward the doors.
"Help," she managed. Only the word came out as a squeak. No one paid attention. Marie braced Irene against the seat and struggled to get her own coat back on. By then the bus was nearly empty. Only three people still waited at the door. She couldn't leave Irene alone. The woman wanted the cure desperately and this could be her only chance to get it. No one knew if the clinics would stay open after tonight. It wasn't right to leave her. What if she died from Marie's touch?
But, the vision confused Marie. That couldn't have been Scott she was kissing. He was dead and the times she'd seen him were delusion, weren't they? And he wouldn't have been kissing her that way, would he? Irene's meager weight drooped against Marie's shoulder. She lifted the smaller woman, careful not to touch skin to skin again. There was no time to sort the contradictions now. She had to get Irene outside where the clinic workers could help her.
Marie struggled to the open door of the bus. Her own choices were now a hopeless muddle. If what she'd seen was really the future, then Scott was alive and maybe he needed her after all. But, his being alive didn't mean the whole of her fantasy about him being folded into some alternate dimension was true. She shook her head. Right now she could only focus on getting Irene the help she needed.
They nearly fell down the steps. Fortunately, a couple orderlies from the clinic were there to catch them. More fortunately, the men didn't touch Marie's skin when they did. Irene was beginning to rouse a bit. She turned still glazed eyes toward Marie.
"You know," she whispered.
"What's wrong with this one?" The taller of the two orderlies asked. He reminded Marie of a cement wall, square and coarse, his features flat.
"She's sick," Marie said. "It's not contagious. She wants the cure."
"Marie!" Irene's voice rose several octaves. Her fingers locked around the collar of Marie's coat. "You know what it is. You know."
"What?" Marie tried to wrench her coat free. The other orderly, this one equally tall but with a body builder's narrow waist and wide shoulders, caught her arm before Irene could pull her off balance.
"The monster who kills the world." Irene was shrieking now. "I saw its face in your mind. The Eater of Souls."