Water to Burn

by Katharine Kerr

  “Say what?” I snapped.

  Ari shoved the phone into his pocket and spun around. By then I was dripping wet, soaking with seawater that swirled around me in midair while the rest of the slope and the cliff top across the road stayed dry. Ari swore in Hebrew and grabbed my hand.

  “Let’s get out of here!” he said. “Back to the road.”

  I took a few steps toward him, but I was shivering so hard that I could barely walk. He threw an arm around my shoulders and guided me as I stumbled through the ice plants and weeds. The icy-cold water followed. It dripped, flowed, welled up with every step I took, just as if someone were pouring it from an inexhaustible pitcher. I had trouble breathing without choking on it.

  I fought back. I raised a Shield Persona, then formed images of desert, dry, hot, parched, soaking up the water. I imagined a gust of wind that slammed into the downpour and blew it away from me. Abruptly the salt flow stopped. I looked around, dazed. We were still about twenty yards above the road, where our gray Saturn sat waiting. I heard a distant engine and the squeal of tires.

  “Car approaching,” Ari said. “I hope it’s the police.”

  A sleek white sedan came racing down the road. With the screech of tires it pulled off and came to a stop next to the Saturn, but the driver left its motor running. He flung open the door. I felt an ASTA like a stab of ice to the heart.

  Ari let go of me and drew the Beretta in one smooth motion. Caleb slid out of the car and stood up behind the open door. He raised both hands as if he were going to surrender. Ari lowered his gun and took a step toward him.

  “Ari, no!” I screamed.

  Caleb laughed aloud and flung his hands forward to release a net of Qi. I could see glittering strands like ice as it swept over Ari and bound him. I was expecting him to fall, but he took one step backward to brace himself, then froze in the tangled ensorcellment. I summoned Qi of my own in a ball of fire between my hands, but before I could free Ari, Belial attacked.

  A wave of pain slammed into me and forced me to my knees. I felt it as claws, ripping holes in my shield. I threw my readied flaming ball, then thrust back with the image of lightning, dancing blue fire on the water that he commanded. The electricity flared. Water boiled. He screamed and pulled out his claws. I summoned more Qi, struck again, and shoved him back in time to see Caleb bringing some kind of pistol out of his jacket.

  I had no time to gather enough Qi to both ensorcell Caleb and protect myself. From behind my Shield Persona I flung one last bolt of energy at Belial. He bubbled and retreated. I dropped the shield. With one hand, I managed to summon just enough Qi to form a tiny sphere, a weak sphere, but when I flung it at Caleb, it hit him so hard that I knew he’d failed to raise a shield of his own.

  Caleb yelped and fell back against the body of the sedan. The net of Qi around Ari disappeared. Ari swore and fired. I had just time to hear a staccato of shots before Belial leaped on my mind again, as savage as a hungry shark.

  I fought him off, symbol after symbol, electric bolts, parching desert winds, thrusting them into his mind, shriveling his ocean waves to a trickle. He backed off long enough for me to raise my Shield. Cold, freezing cold, I’ve never felt so cold, utterly drained of Qi, of body heat, of everything but a numb dim awareness that Ari had flung his arms around me, two ropes of warmth.

  “Caleb?” I whispered.

  “Don’t worry about that now.”

  I heard a rumbling sound, the pounding of waves on earth. Ari swore again. He picked me up and slung me over his shoulder like a sack of dirty laundry, then ran, halfstumbling, for the road. My arms flopped, my hair covered my face, I could do nothing but concentrate on breathing, forcing air into my lungs one gulp at a time. The sound grew louder. What it meant finally reached me, a rumble, a thump and crash, rocks rolling somewhere, huge rocks if I could hear them over the sound of the battering waves.

  Ari stopped and slid me around, catching me in both arms. I heard sirens rushing toward us.

  “We’re at the road,” he said. “Not too close to the edge, I hope. The cliff is falling away.”

  He sat down and let me settle into his lap. He squirmed out of his sport coat and began to pull up his shirt.

  “What are—” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “Warmth,” he said. “You need it.”

  He flung the jacket around my shoulders, then pulled me against his bare chest. I could feel the heat from his body and began to soak up Qi, mentally forcing it through my skin. The sirens came closer, louder. They had almost reached us when Belial attacked again. I’d lost track of him in my exhaustion.

  I had my shield up, or he would have killed me right then and there. I could hear him splashing and bubbling as he grasped my mind with his. I struggled and summoned the last of my Qi. I dropped my shield, sucked up the Qi from it, and threw a bolt of fire. He howled as he pulled back. One last bolt—I threw again, heard him scream, but he, as desperate as I was, struck back with every bit of Chaos force he could summon.

  I saw an enormous wave fill the sky, emerald-green water tipped with white foam. It broke and roared as it plunged down. It swept over me, grabbed me, tore me out of Ari’s arms, and thrust me down into an ocean that opened under me. The world turned green, light-shot and strung with lines of bubbles.

  I’m drowning, I thought. Crud!

  INTERLUDE: AUNT EILEEN

  AT ABOUT THREE O’CLOCK THAT AFTERNOON I had the first premonition. Nola, I knew, had to be ill or injured. I tried calling her flat—no answer—then her cell phone—no answer there, either. When Michael came home from school, he told me he’d received a warning, too.

  “Could you reach her by phone?” I said.

  “No,” Michael said. “This is hella gross.”

  I considered calling various hospitals to see if she’d been admitted, but for all I knew, she might have merely sprained an ankle or gotten the flu. My waking talents tend to be too shapeless to trust in any detail. I had too much to do that day to take a nap in hopes of a dream, which would have been more accurate. Still, I felt more and more worried as the afternoon went on.

  When Ari finally called me, I’d just put dinner—a pair of roast chickens and a stir-fry of mixed vegetables with rice, of course—on the table. Jim told me to just let the answering machine pick up, but I knew the call was important and grabbed the receiver. I had trouble breathing while I listened to the news. Jim, Sophie, and the two boys sat staring at me. I relayed what Ari told me.

  “Oh, Mother Mary, help us!” I said. “Something awful’s happened to Nola. She’s in a coma. They’re at the Kaiser hospital on Mission Street in South City. The doctors are calling it hypothermia, but Ari said, ‘Like hell it was,’ whatever that means.” I took off my apron and threw it onto a chair. “I’m going down. Go ahead and eat. I’ll call when there’s news.”

  Michael shoved his chair back and stood up.

  “I want to go with you.”

  “They won’t let that many people in the room, dear,” I said.

  “I’ll make them let me in.” Michael crossed his arms over his chest. “You’ve got to let me go.”

  “Michael, I said no.”

  “I don’t give a damn about what you said.”

  Jim put his whiskey glass down on the table and got to his feet. “Don’t you talk to your aunt that way.” His voice was soft and controlled, which meant he was truly angry. “I won’t have it in my house.”

  They stared at each other. Michael looked away first. He glanced at Brian, who winced, and Sophie, who mouthed a couple of words. I think they were “shut up.”

  Michael sat back down. Jim smiled and sat down himself.

  “I’m sorry, Aunt E,” Michael said. “I’m just hella worried.”

  “We all are, dear,” I said. “You call Father Keith and tell him what’s happened. Ari’s so upset he could barely get ten words out.”

  I hurried upstairs to our bedroom to get my car coat and purse. As I was leaving, I saw the ros
ary Ari had given me in its special box on the dresser. For the comfort it offered, I put it into my purse. When I came back down, Jim followed me out to the car.

  “It’s that damn dangerous job of hers, isn’t it?” he said. “For Chrissakes, be careful! What if there’s an assassin prowling around? You never know what some foreign bastard’s going to do these days.”

  “Darling, Ari would have warned me. He’ll be right there, and after all, he is a police officer.”

  “Well, okay. He’s probably armed. Good.”

  “Of course he’s armed. It’s sweet of him to try to hide it, but every time he’s been here, he’s been carrying a gun.”

  My poor darling husband looked honestly shocked. He hadn’t noticed, but then, I’m not surprised.

  “Anyway, I’ll call as soon as I know anything,” I said and got into the car.

  Since the freeway would be crowded thanks to the evening rush hour, I went out Mission Street, which was busy enough but not as bad as the rush. Just past Daly City the traffic thinned out, which meant I could say a few prayers to the Holy Virgin as I drove. The rainstorm had broken up into long streamers of cloud scudding away in the sunset, all streaked red and gold. When we were children, Keith always called that kind of cloud the banners of the church militant, strange for a child, but there you are, that was Keith. We all called him Key, when we were children, short for “key to the mysteries.” I suppose it’s no surprise that he took holy orders.

  Ari had told the hospital receptionist to be careful about whom they allowed to see Nola. They called the room to check, then gave me her room number, at the top of the green tower, they said. I followed the green tape on the floor to the correct elevator and from there found the private room with no trouble. When I walked in, Ari got up from the chair he’d been sitting in.

  “You came down,” he said.

  “Of course. Did you think I wouldn’t?”

  He managed a twisted sort of smile.

  Dressed in one of those flimsy hospital gowns, Nola lay on her back on the bed, which had been cranked up at an angle to help her breathe better. Wires hooked her up to monitors, and a tube from her left hand connected to an IV. Her face—I’d never seen her so pale. It was hard to tell her skin from the pillowcase. Her eyes, which were open, looked like green glass, just by contrast.

  I walked over to the bed and began to brush away the wisps of hair sticking to her face. Her skin felt cool and as dead as damp paper.

  “Nola darling,” I said. “It’s Eileen. I’m right here.”

  I could tell that she didn’t hear me. I perched on the edge of the bed and took the hand that didn’t have the tube in it into both of mine. Her fingers lay limp as a dead fish against my palm, but she blinked once and closed her eyes.

  “What happened?” I said to Ari.

  He shrugged and seemed to be fighting for words. All of that nice curly hair of his was matted down in some places and standing up in others. He needed to shave, too. He’d buttoned his white shirt up wrong, and it was stained with what looked like dirty water. His sport coat and trench coat lay on the floor with the holster and his pistol—whatever kind it was, I wouldn’t know—on top of them.

  “We were investigating that idiot friend of Jack Donovan’s,” Ari said finally. “He was camping out in one of those condemned apartment buildings on the cliff top.”

  “In Pacifica? I thought they had security guards watching them.”

  “They should have. But while we were scouting the situation, a rogue wave soaked her to the skin.”

  “You were on the beach?”

  “Not exactly.” Ari paused with a nod of his head toward the door. “I’ll explain later.”

  “All right, I understand.”

  He looked away, and his eyes moved as if he were watching an inner movie. “We never should have gone out there, but she wouldn’t listen to me.”

  “Nola rarely listens to anyone, dear. Well, not to anyone real, that is.”

  “So I’ve learned.” He tried to smile and failed. “I was trying to keep her warm, but she went under. The doctors say it’s hypothermia, because she was wet and cold. I’d already called in police backup, and they arrived just as she fainted. I suppose you’d call it a faint.”

  “Was it some sort of psychic attack?”

  He shrugged again. “I’d assume so.”

  I could tell that other things had happened, things I probably didn’t need to know. If I did need to, I’d dream about them, so I didn’t press the poor man.

  “What have they been doing for her?” I said instead.

  “When we got to the ER, they wrapped her in electric blankets to get her body temperature up.” His eyes began to move as if he were watching the scene all over again. “They told me that the IVs they gave her were warm fluid, and they gave her warmed oxygen, too. She should have woken up then. She didn’t.”

  We heard voices out in the hall. Ari reached down and pulled part of his old Army trench coat over the gun to hide it. A woman wearing green scrubs came in with a dinner tray, glanced at Nola, and frowned.

  “I don’t know why they ordered her a dinner,” she said. “Either of you want it?”

  “No, thank you,” I said.

  Ari shook his head no.

  “You need to eat,” I said to him. “If you could leave that for him?” I said to the nurse.

  She smiled and put the tray down on the slide-over tabletop or whatever you call those things that they use in hospitals to feed people on. It was on Ari’s side of the room, anyway, and once she left, he did eat some of the rather awful looking chicken and noodles dish and the white bread roll. I don’t see how anyone gets well on that food they serve in hospitals, I really don’t.

  Ari had just finished when the nurse returned and took the tray away. He leaned back in the chair and looked at me.

  “If you want to go get something to eat in the coffee bar,” Ari said. “They have one downstairs.”

  “I’m fine, dear,” I said. “By the way, Father Keith will probably come down later.”

  “Good.”

  Ari turned slightly in his chair so he could look straight at Nola. I tried to rub some warmth into her hand, but after a few minutes I gave up and arranged her hand and arm across her chest in what looked like a comfortable position.

  “Nola, I’m right here,” I said. “So is Ari.”

  I received not the slightest sign that I’d reached her, but at least she was breathing steadily on her own. There was hope, I decided, in that and in the steady if slow beating of her heart, which I could see on the monitor above the bed. By then my back was aching, so I got up and moved over to the second chair, on the opposite side of the bed from Ari’s.

  For some while we sat and never spoke, while outside the sunset faded into night. I turned on the light beside her bed, then sat down again. Ari made an odd noise. When I looked at him, I realized he was choking back tears.

  “You really love her, don’t you?” I said.

  He nodded a yes and wiped his face on his shirt sleeve. “It frightens me sometimes,” he said, “just how much I do.”

  “She’s frightened, too, not of you, I mean, but of how much she cares for you. She’s had an awfully hard time with boyfriends in the past. They all ran away eventually, some quicker than others.”

  “You needn’t worry about that now.” He paused and looked away. “Their loss, my gain, and all that, but why?”

  “Because of the rest of us.”

  Ari spoke without looking at me. “I like the rest of you.”

  “Well, you’re as odd in your own way as we are in ours, so you fit right in. Whether that’s a blessing or a curse for you, I couldn’t say.”

  Ari smiled at that. I kept things light, because he was the kind of man who’d regret any emotional scenes later, and he had enough to worry about as it was.

  “You really look exhausted. Do you think you could nap in that chair? I’ll wake you if there’s any change.”


  “Not in this wretched chair, no.” Ari got up, stretched, then sat down on the floor and began to bunch his jacket into a pillow. “I’ve slept in worse places than the floor.”

  There was an extra blanket on a little shelf under the tray table. Ari took that, too, but he used it to wrap the gun. He laid it down right next to him. I’m afraid I was reminded of a little boy and a teddy bear, though I certainly never would have told him that. He used his damp trench coat for a blanket. Even with all the noise out in the hall—hospitals are always so noisy, I don’t know why—he fell asleep right away.

  I regretted not bringing some mending or a book, but I did have the rosary, so I took it out. I decided that the Five Sorrowful Mysteries were really the only ones appropriate, even though I would have preferred to meditate on the Joyous, and started off on the Apostle’s Creed. For some reason, that night, I began speaking the Latin I’d learned as a child, rather than using the English versions as we’re supposed to do now. It was comforting, somehow, to form those ancient words.

  I had just finished the first set of three Ave Marias when I heard someone come into the room. I looked up, expecting to see Keith, but I could see no one. Yet I could hear someone or something breathing, just very quietly. I think it was breathing. It sounded like a fish blowing bubbles in a tank. I heard the scuff of a foot or perhaps a flipper on the linoleum as it moved a few steps closer to the bed. It brought a waft of cold air with it, and a smell like ozone after an electrical discharge. I stood up, clutching the rosary in my left hand. It hesitated and began to breathe more quickly.

  “Get out of here!” I said. “Ari, wake up!”

  I heard Ari roll over with a grunt, but I kept looking in the direction of the thing at the door. I knew someone stood there, even though I saw nothing. The cold exhalation deepened.