Ill Wind tww-1

by Rachel Caine

  I waited.

  The wind snapped my hair back like a battle flag, even with a drenching rain; I used enough power to clear a bell of stillness around myself and immediately drew a lightning strike. I diffused it down into the ground and felt no more than a tingle, and the subtle, stealthy movements of the Demon Mark under my skin.

  I told it to shut up. It was going to get a lot worse before it got better.

  When the hail started—golf balls smashing out of the sky to shatter on the road around me at first—I extended my protection over the Viper, too; no point in winning the war and being stuck thumbing for a ride. The hail pounded harder, like white rain, growing into fist-size misshapen chunks that exploded like bombs when they hit. Ice shrapnel sliced through my clothes, cold and then hot as blood began to run. Hundreds of tiny cuts. I strengthened the shield around me, but it wasn't going to be easy to keep all of it out.

  Out in the field to my right, dust and grass began to swirl and twist. A delicate streamer of gray shredded off from the clouds above it. Not much force to it yet, barely an FO, hardly more than a dust devil. The storm was testing me.

  I chopped through the top of the baby tornado by freezing the air molecules. The sucking updraft lost force, and the dust funnel blew apart.

  Round one to me.

  I sensed something happening behind me, happening fast. Before I could even turn, I felt the tingle of another lightning bolt coming; I split my focus three ways into protection, diffusion, and moving my body to face whatever this storm was throwing at my back.

  Another tornado, this one forming fast and ugly. The full cone was already visible, shivering and dancing through the hard curtain of rain; it was lit from within by an eerie blue-white light. Ball lightning. I felt the hard plasmatic blobs of energy bouncing around inside the wind walls.

  Tornadoes are simple, gruesomely effective engines of destruction. They're caused, by the humble updraft—the updraft from hell, driven by wind shear and Earth's own rotation. Imagine a column of air speeding three hundred miles per hour, straight up, blasting up into the mesosphere and erupting like an invisible geyser. As the air turns cold again, it sinks and gets drawn back into the spiral.

  Sounds easy. When you're looking at that shifting, screaming wall of destruction heading straight for you, all the knowledge in the world doesn't help you maintain objectivity. This one was already formidably armed with found objects—pieces of wood, twists of wire torn from fence posts, nails, rocks, whipping grasses and abrasive sand. A human body trapped in the wind wall could be sawed apart by all that debris in a matter of seconds.

  I went up into Oversight. The storm was gray with pale green, unhealthy light… photonegative, full of destructive energy and the instincts to deliver it with maximum damage. It circled up in the mesosphere like a vast clockworks. There were other Wardens there, working, but nobody came near me or offered to link; they were focused on working the weak points of the storm, trying to warm the air at the top and disrupt the engine cycle that was spawning tornadoes.

  They wouldn't be successful. This storm had its parameters well under control, and it wasn't going to let us cut off its food supply. We had to be creative about this if we—if I—expected to survive. Truthfully, the rest of the Wardens probably weren't worried about my survival. They wanted to contain the storm where it was, over open country, until it burned itself out. Any risk to me was a bonus.

  Another lightning stroke was forming. Instead of diffusing the power, I channeled it, focused, and slammed that white-hot energy directly down into the vulnerable throat of the tornado roaring toward me.

  It choked, stuttered, coughed on its own superheated breath. The residual heat on the ground radiated up, disrupting the cooling end of the cycle.

  In seconds, the wind wall fell apart and fled back up into the water-heavy clouds, dropping its weapons of opportunity as it went. A thick whip of barbed wire snaked down from the sky and fell almost at my feet.

  I grinned up at it and screamed defiance. "That all you got? You think you're going to stop me with that? Please!"

  It hit me with more lightning, five times to be exact, one on top of the other. I fumbled the last, and it bled off into me, not enough to fry me but enough to scramble my already-abused nerves. I fell, rolled over on my stomach, and looked up into the heart of my enemy. There were no eyes to this storm, no face, but there was a kind of center… the cold still place around which the rest of it rotated and screamed and rattled.

  I stayed down, relaxed my body, and again flew up into Oversight. More chains were forming; it sensed weakness and was preparing a massive lightning attack. I snapped the links and drove the polarity back, all the way back, into the center of the storm.

  And then I did something that I'd been told never, ever to do.

  I reached for the rotation of the storm itself.

  It's a funny thing about momentum. It's a force multiplier for objects in motion, like kids on bicycles.

  But momentum only aids force when force operates according to logical, controlled rules.

  When kids on bikes go too fast, they begin to lose control. Handlebars shake. Wheels wobble. Lines of force operate at angles instead of straight on.

  Speed can be the enemy of momentum.

  I didn't try to act in opposition to the storm—it would be worse than useless; it would actually add to the fury of the energy circling me. No. I reached for the disturbed, chaotic winds operating at the fringes of the storm and added them to the storm, like a drain sucking in more water. I fed the storm. Pumped energy into it with abandon.

  Other Wardens noticed what I was doing, and some of them tried to stop me. I shoved them back, hard. One or two had Djinn support, but I had the Mark; the power in me was black and hot and blending with mine to such an extent now that I didn't need a Djinn anymore.

  One or two of the other Wardens fell out of Oversight and didn't come back. I didn't let myself wonder what I'd done. The storm was what was important. Spinning it faster, faster, pouring more energy into the sink until it was overflowing.

  The storm was rotating, in the physical world, with a speed that was eerie to look at. Tornadoes popped and bubbled all over the underside of it as power struggled to regulate itself; but there was too much, no control, angles of force intersecting and canceling each other out.

  Faster. Faster. Faster.

  I laughed out loud, looking up at the spinning pin-wheel, and the center of the storm stared furiously back. Lightning was firing so continuously that the whole black-green-purple mass was lit within, pulsing with energy.

  Not a single tornado touched the ground. A massive one formed in the air, almost a mile wide, struggling to reach damp earth and rip apart everything in its path. I warmed the air under it so quickly that rain turned to steam.

  The storm readied another lightning bolt. The chain of polarity led straight to me, and it was as strong and inflexible as braided cable. No way I could break it.

  Let it come, something in me said, something black and hard and riding the edge of my adrenaline. Bathe in the power. It is your right.

  The idea was so diverting that I lost my grip on the air below the F5 tornado chewing its way out of the sky. Temperatures dropped.

  The tornado hit ground, bounced, ripped up earth and plants and fence and began to roar toward me.

  I felt the energy come up through my body. It arched my back, pulled a breathless scream out of my mouth, bathed every cell in my body with pure, primal force.

  The thing in me ate it, and I felt it happening to me, felt the Demon change from the tentacled horror into a thing of ice and angles, grating on my bones, barely fitting beneath my skin.

  I hardly felt the massive nuclear energy of the burn-off, the energy manifesting in visible light and heat.

  I was transformed in the fiery inferno.

  Made whole.

  When I stood up, my shredded, melted clothes fell away, and I stood pure against the storm.

  I
stretched out my hand and touched the life inside it, caressed it, tasted the dark furious essence of it. Attuned myself to its vibrations and rhythms, learning it, being the storm.

  And then I surrounded it with the enormous strength inside me, and I crushed it.

  Twenty feet away, the enormous gnashing strength of the tornado fell in on itself, dead. The storm's energy patterns flared and tore.

  In the breathless stillness, I heard myself laughing. Naked, soaking wet, infused with the furious power of the deepest darkness, I still found it funny.

  I heard the unnaturally loud grate of footsteps on gravel, and came back to myself. Or what was left of my self now.

  "My God," Marion whispered. I turned my head to look at her and saw her flinch. "What you did—"

  "Saved our lives," I said. I stood up, looked down at myself, and started feeling the shock take hold. So cold. So many cuts and bruises. I looked like a road map of been there, done that. "Got any clothes I can borrow?"

  They didn't want to come near me. Shirl stripped off her flannel shirt, leaving herself the T-shirt; Marion dug a pair of loose blue jeans from a bag in the back of the Xterra. They tossed them to me, along with a pair of mud-caked hot pink Converse high-top sneakers. I pulled everything on without worrying about who was watching me; even Erik wasn't interesting in checking me out, right at the moment.

  They hadn't even wanted to touch me. I couldn't say I blamed them.

  I looked down at myself when I was finished and decided that I wouldn't win any fashion awards, even at the homeless shelter, but it would do. Good enough to die in, or kill a friend in.

  You don't need to look good for that. You just have to look scary.

  I'd made it seven miles down the road, almost into the Oklahoma City limits, when I ran into the first obstacle.

  Wind wall. It was a ferocious east-to-west current whipping across the road at right angles, like a tornado lying down. It wasn't a natural phenomenon— at least, not anywhere other than high elevations with hair-trigger climates—but it was undeniably powerful; lose control, and the Viper would get slammed into a spin that might well turn into an end-over-end movie stunt, only without the padding and professional stuntmen. I could control a lot of things. Gravity and basic kinetic energy weren't among them.

  I had one second to recognize the distortion across the road, one second more to make a decision about what to do. No time to focus or do any delicate manipulation.

  I flattened the pedal and felt Mona jump forward like a champion racing for the finish.

  The wind slammed the front left quarter panel like a speeding freight train, and the front wheels lost traction; I was going into a spin. If it had just been a single fast wind shear, that would have been one thing, but this was a fierce continuing blast, and as the car spun, it slammed directly into the back end, shoving the Viper toward the shoulder; I did exactly the opposite of what you should do; I turned the wheel against the skid, gave it more momentum, kept the car turning so that the momentum spun it like a top down the center line. The wind kept buffeting me, but it was only adding to the car's rotational force, not slowing me down.

  I gulped and hung on for dear life as the world beyond the windshield turned into a long brown-black-green blur… road, shoulder, field, road, shoulder, field… and then I felt the pressure of air against the car suddenly drop off.

  I turned into the skid, smelled burning rubber and my own nerves frying, and the Viper fought me and fought the road like a bucking bronco.

  I hit the brakes gently, gently, struggling with the wheel as we did one last, slow spin and jerked to a stop, still on the road.

  I was about two inches over the dotted white line.

  It would have been a real good moment to open the door and throw up, but I had no time for any of that. The yellow Xterra had been just a few hundred yards behind me, and a higher-profile vehicle stood no chance at all against that wind wall. The force would flip the truck over like a toy.

  No time or energy to do it the careful way, the right way; I just brute-forced an equal and opposite force by slamming cold air down into the stream, and held it there while the Xterra blasted through. There was still enough wind to shake it, but not enough to flip it over.

  I slipped Mona back in gear and popped the clutch, and we flew toward the city limits with Marion's SUV right on our tail. I expected trouble. In fact, I counted on it.

  You can imagine how spooky it was not to have any at all, not even a hint, all the way into the suburbs, all the way to the merge with I-40. There was more and slower traffic now, and I had to slow Mona down from our breakneck gallop. Every passing car made me flinch, because this was a recipe for disaster; if Star wasn't choosy about the body count, this could end up in one of those spectacular forty-or fifty-car pileups, the kind that make the evening news and have the words "death toll" in the tag line.

  But nothing happened.

  I got Star's cell phone and dialed it one-handed from memory.

  "Crisis Center," said a voice that sounded too young and too friendly for comfort. What kind of grade school had they raided now? Had I been that young when I'd been on the Help Desk? Probably. It just raised chills and goose bumps to think my life and everybody's around me now might rest in the hands of somebody barely old enough to buy a legal drink.

  "Hi, this is Joanne Baldwin, Weather. I'm in Oklahoma City, and I need to call a Code One general alert."

  Dead silence on the other end of the phone for at least ten seconds, and then a very quiet, "Excuse me?"

  "Code One," I repeated. "General alert. Look it up."

  "Please hold." She was gone for thirty full seconds this time, and when she came back on, her voice was trembling. "Um, Warden Baldwin? I've been told that you need to surrender yourself to the Wardens who are following you. Please."

  "Well, here's what I'm telling you: Oklahoma City is about to be a wide smoking hole in the road if you don't do exactly as I tell you. Call a Code One. Right now."

  She sounded stronger. There was probably a supervisor standing over her. "Can't do that, ma'am."

  "Do not ma'am me, kid. Let me talk to whoever you've got quoting rules and regulations at you."

  I'd been right about the supervisor. There was a click, and a basso profundo male voice said, "Jo, you got any idea how pissed off I am right now at you?"

  "Paul?" I couldn't help it; beaten, scared, half-evil, I still grinned at the sound of his voice. "Save it for later. I'm on my way to Estrella Almondovar's house, or I will be as soon as you give me the address. Marion and her crew are on my tail."

  "Pull the car over, and let them do their jobs! Jesus, Jo, Bad Bob was right all along about you. You got any idea what kind of hell you stirred up out there? Killer storm, followed by so much hellfire in the aetheric that we might as well call it a day and evacuate the whole friggin' state. And don't tell me it wasn't you. I saw you up there."

  "Shut up and listen. I've got a Demon Mark, so does Lewis, and we're about to go at it down here. If you don't want to be cleaning up a whole hell of a lot worse than just some blown-down shacks and road signs, I suggest you get off your ass and call a Code One, right now."

  He put me on hold. Bastard. I switched off and tossed the phone into the passenger seat.

  Twenty seconds later, as I was squinting at exit signs, the mobile phone warbled for my attention. I flipped it open and said, "Shoot."

  "1617 Fifty-Sixth Street," Paul said. "Code One's going in place. You're not serious, right? About going at it with Lewis?"

  "I sure as hell hope not."

  I dropped the phone and downshifted, whipped the Viper around a family station wagon and two identical red Hondas, and saw the exit sign flash by over head. Fifty-Sixth Street, two miles.

  The weather looked clear. Too clear.

  It was just too damn easy.

  I exited the freeway and took the turn at a screech that should have raised police attention in six states, but my luck was holding; no civilian
cops taking a coffee break at the wrong intersection. I scratched the gear change and blasted through two yellow lights, had to stop for a red, and felt every nerve in my body snapping and shaking with the urge to move.

  The neighborhood was industrial, mostly blue-collar stuff like stamping factories and printing presses; the buildings were square, gray, and grimy. Saffron-colored streetlamps gave everything a jaundiced look, and there wasn't a soul in sight on the sidewalks, only a few cars still hidden in parking lots behind chain-link and razor wire.

  I'd gone four blocks when somebody stepped out into the street in front of me. I jammed on brake and clutch and rode the Viper to a shaking, screaming, smoking halt.

  David was standing in front of me. He no longer had the road dude persona; this David was brown-haired, brown-eyed, dressed in a loose white shirt and dark pants that ended in a mist around his knees. This was the look Star had imposed on him, along with her will. I remembered the hot bronze of his eyes and felt a sharp stab of mourning.

  Don't mistake foe for friend. Rahel's excellent advice, and yet, looking at him, I could only remember his hands touching me, stroking peace into my fevered skin. He wasn't just Djinn, not just a tool or a tap of power to turn on and off. He wasn't a slave.

  And if he wasn't… maybe none of them were. Maybe none of them should be.

  "Don't do this," I said. I knew he could hear me, even through the closed windows of the car. "Don't make us enemies. Please."

  "You made us enemies," he said, and extended his hand, palm first.

  I felt gravity increase around me, jamming me into the seat, holding me down.

  The air around me turned thick and sweet and poisonous. I gagged and stopped breathing, tried to reach for the automatic window controls, but he was too strong, too prepared. I felt my skin burning. The air had taken on a slight green tinge. Chlorine? Something worse?