Barbara shook her head. “I’m not going with you,” she told him. “I have to stay here.”

“What?” Ray sputtered. “Are you insane? After this?”

“I knew it would have to be this way from the start. Jayewardene will need a scapegoat. And if nothing else, all of this proved that I’m better dealing with your bureaucrats than in a firefight.” As Klaus knew. Thinking of him made the fear knot her stomach again.

Ray shook his head. “You’re insane. You could be stuck here in St. Gilles for years taking the blame for the rest of us.”

Barbara managed to smile wanly at that. “Not altogether a bad outcome, assuming that the rest of you manage to save the world.” She waved her hand at him, not moving. Ray, still shaking his head, pushed Bruckner ahead of him through the portal and went through himself. The portal shimmered, pulled once, then vanished. There was nothing but a concrete wall behind her.

She was alone in the prison. With a sigh, Barbara let the barriers drop in her mind and closed off the wild card power, feeling the usual exhaustion that followed. Forcing herself to stand erect, she lifted her hands in the air.

“I surrender,” she called out to the nearest guards in French as they began to cautiously approach her, weapons at ready. “You must call Secretary-General Jayewardene of the UN for me. Bring me to the Secretary-General.”

The Angel’s heart was beating heavily in her chest as she flew through the streets of a devastated Talas, twenty feet or so above the ground. The surrounding destruction no longer made an impression on her. It was just the way things were. Perhaps, once this danger was past, she would organize her people to clean things up a little, make them nice again. She had no desire to rule from a ruin. She wanted a palace, bright and shining and clean. She deserved a palace …

Certainly, it worried her but at the same time she felt her anger rising as she considered the fact that the outside world was interfering in her domain. They’d fled, abrogating all rights to this realm, and now they were trying to destroy it? They dare attempt to attack my domain? the Angel thought. Fuck them. She would teach them the meaning of destruction.

She flew on, ignoring the pain and weariness that the last few days had brought. She tried to keep her mind focused on her task. She couldn’t be distracted by thoughts of her recent actions or by the vague notions that troubled her mind about earlier days she’d spent in a world that was now more dream than reality. She was the Madonna of the Blade, the Angel of the Alleyways, She Who Must Be Obeyed and this was her world. No one or no thing would take it from her.