Free Three Wishes by Jenny Schwartz Page B

down the cliff. From overhead came the whine and smack of bullets and the first screams. Cali brought the helicopter up and over the cliff, knowing how frightening the black gleaming metal looked. She fired two missiles, dummies, that exploded into the restored castle. It was illusion, but the castle wall fell in a cloud of dust.
    She jerked the helicopter up and over the house, bailing out and sending it back to its research base. Let the Americans puzzle over its reappearance.
    A row of land mines exploded, showering dirt. The heavy thud of explosives made the earth unstable. The ground beneath the spectators’ feet would be shaking, literally. From here on, the weapons display would run itself.
    Cali rematerialized inside David’s house, in the living room.
    The three clients stood by the bombproof windows, glued to the show. They shared a running commentary of appreciation for the finer details of death and destruction.
    Miriam huddled back in a chair, her face bloodless and her eyes tortured.
    Cali’s conscience twinged and she looked hurriedly to David. He watched Miriam for long, painful seconds. Then his hands fisted and he looked away, out to the pseudo-battlefield.
    “God in heaven.” David lunged for the door. He knocked the lock up and ran out.
    Why on earth? She looked out at the screaming warzone. There was the whine and smack of bullets and the heavier whoomph of explosives, and running through it all—
    Oh my God. Cali stopped breathing.
    “David!”
    The American, Gary, caught Miriam around the waist and swung her back hard against him. “Go out there and it’s suicide. Damn fool. He should have built his show with a kill switch. That’s live ammo out there.”
    There’s also a child, Cali thought desperately. A child.
    David ran, hunched low to the ground. A bullet struck near his feet and dirt kicked up.
    Shit, shit, shit. If he trod on one of the land mines she’d keyed to him, it would blow up. And he was close enough that it would catch the child too.
    The child was only a toddler, dressed in blue dungarees and blundering in tears and confusion, terrified. However he’d come to be outside, he was now running and falling in panicked circles, unable to find safety. His wails rose above the fake screams Cali had recorded on her soundtrack.
    David flinched. Something had struck him. But if anything, his pace only quickened. He was within meters of the toddler.
    “Let me go.” Miriam fought Gary.
    A kill switch. Gary had mentioned a kill switch. She had to stop the show. Cali’s reflexes were inhumanly fast, but it felt as if she moved through tar.
    Three guns with live ammunition. She sent a bolt of energy to melt them into useless scrap metal.
    Two live grenades still to explode. She hurled them over the cliff.
    The wired explosives were far enough away to cause no harm.
    That left the land mines primed to kill David. Cali ripped them out with her bare hands and sent them after the grenades.
    Everything else was smoke and mirrors, noise and confusion, but not deadly.
    David reached the toddler and scooped him up. David didn’t know it was safe yet. His body curved, trying to protect the boy from the bombardment.
    Cali’s heart stopped. She knew that brown hair with its tinge of red. The boy wasn’t some villager’s toddler. She knew him.
    Andrew.
    Her breath froze in agony. Andrew.
    Human technology couldn’t kill an angel, but carelessness could hurt him. He’d been in danger. He’d put himself in danger.
    She flung her arm out and her bangles rattled. The bullets stopped. The noise ceased. The castle reappeared, whole and sturdy. The show ended with a suddenness as violent as its performance. Silence held the scene.
    David staggered in with Andrew in his arms. Blood poured down the man’s face. The toddler Andrew smiled.
    It was the last straw. Cali materialized, snatched Andrew out of David’s arms and whisked them out of the room.
    “You reckless, conniving—”
    Andrew shifted