with a flash of light and a snapping of branches, he, and Phoenix, and the love of Sylvia's life, were all gone.

  Sylvia hauled herself to her feet. Her limbs felt gelatinous, still, her motions just a little more jerky than normal. There was a small remnant of Phoenix’s energy within her, and try as she might, she couldn’t seem to dislodge it.

  She was distantly aware of his presence, as he streaked away through the woods. She could feel his position, as inherent and instinctive as her knowledge of right and left.

  None of the acolytes around her made any attempt to seize her. They were all bracing themselves, staring off into the same point in the woods, their Auras flaring to life. Sylvia reached to the ground, felt for vibrations.

  Something moving far faster than she’d ever seen anything move was rocketing their way. It crossed the last few miles in a flash, and the forest around her erupted at her arrival.

  A girl - no, a short woman - in all black came lancing out from the pine canopy, at one instant maybe eighty feet up, and the next on the ground. She’d flown through an unlucky acolyte before landing, and then, still splattered with gore, her hands were up, and green bolts of light were flashing from her like the opening salvo from a machine gun.

  Sylvia gawked at her for a moment, completely uncomprehending. She knew that Auras often had their own defining texture to them: her own was snakelike and tendriled, Shiv’s was razor-sharp and jagged, Marco’s was solid and beveled. This woman’s Aura was unlike any she’d ever seen.

  It was tight, smaller than even her own, but gave the impression of being extraordinarily dense, as if she’d stuffed ten Auras' worth of material to fit around her small frame. And with every wave of her hands, it pulsated rapidly, shunting its own material free from her, sending bits of Aura, loaded with kinetic or light or heat energy, shrieking through the sky like bullets.

  As quickly as the material was lost, it was replenished, brought to the surface, dragged from the seemingly infinite stores contained within her infinitely condensed Aura.

  In the time it had taken Sylvia to make this observation, the woman had cut a swath through the acolytes, had killed maybe eight of them with perforations to their heads and torsos. The other acolytes were screaming now, crying and gnashing as their bodies launched themselves, unbidden, toward her.

  The woman danced around them and landed at Toby’s feet. The huge Apostle roared, desperate and furious, and let loose with a wave of energy that nearly severed a nearby pine in two.

  The attack missed the woman by a mile, as she was behind him, now. A chunk of Aura surrounding her fist was folding and re-folding itself, condensing over and over. A light and a deafening whine began to leak from the Aura around the woman’s hand as she charged it, dancing effortlessly around Toby’s clumsy blows.

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  After two seconds of buildup, she released whatever energy she’d been storing, directly into Toby’s chest. There was a deafening thunderclap, an explosion of green light that obliterated Sylvia’s vision. Panicked, she dropped to the ground, resorted to her sense of touch.

  Toby was gone, she could feel. All that remained of him was a pair of shoes, strewn almost a hundred yards apart, the smoldering flesh of his feet still stuck inside.

  For maybe fifty yards behind where Toby had been standing, trees had been felled or stripped of their branches. The woman was far away, now, across the clearing, scything more energy through the horde of acolytes. As each of them died, a faint tadpole of light oozed from their chests to hover in the air, tethered to their corpse, and the woman scooped them up as she passed, integrated their essences into her own as she slaughtered with a dancelike economy of movement.

  Sylvia crawled beneath one of the nearby trucks and quailed, waited for her vision to return. She reached up, felt along the bottom of the truck, until she found the telltale buzz of electricity, stored in its alternator and battery, and started to siphon.

  She knew she’d never be able to beat this woman in a head-on confrontation, but maybe the energy would be enough for her to make an escape. Her absorption rate had never been very fast, however, and second after excruciating second was passing while she slowly drained the car of its charge.

  Too late. The acolytes were all dead, and the woman lanced over to the car, her feet cutting furrows in the dirt where she landed at its side. She bent to a knee to peer under the carriage, and Sylvia finally saw her face.

  Or the lack thereof. The woman’s head was completely obscured by an opaque green mask, part of a full-body fabric suit that seemed to cover every inch of her beneath her black outerwear, which was stained with blood and dirt and grime. She smelled awful.

  The woman’s hand clamped around Sylvia’s ankle and yanked her from beneath the car, back into the sunlight.

  “Wait!” Sylvia pled, her hands raised protectively over her face. She concentrated all of her energy into her feet, ready to explode out and away in an all-or-nothing kick. “Wait wait wait!”

  The woman reared a hand back, summoned another one of her green bolts. Sylia let loose with her energy, and the woman barely flinched as she absorbed nearly all of it -- God, nearly all of it -- at once. Sylvia was trapped.

  “Don’t, please, I’m not-” Sylvia writhed on the ground, fresh tears squeezing from her eyes. She thought of Shiv, draped over that henchman's shoulder, and despaired. The misery was so much stronger than her fear, made her desperate. “I’m not one of them!”

  The woman’s faceless head tilted in confusion as she studied her, and she seemed to hesitate. Sylvia could feel the fraction of Phoenix still latched onto her, and the woman seemed to sense it as well, seemed to redouble her motivation.

  “Wait! I want to kill him too!”

  The woman paused, hand frozen in the air.

  Sylvia felt her fear and grief coalesce, just for a moment, a single second of brief, intoxicating fury. She looked the woman in the eyes -- or, where she assumed her eyes would be, and repeated:

  “I want to kill Phoenix too.”