Thin Air (11 page)

“You going to talk to me about her?” I demanded. It came out sharper than I intended.

“No,” he said. “It's one complication you don't need right now. One thing at a time, Jo. Let's get ourselves safe before—”

“Before we talk about my dead
kid
?” I shot back. “Well, if you're worried about me breaking down, don't. I can't even remember her. All I have is a name and a face.” That wasn't true, but I didn't want him to know how raw and bloody that simple vision had left me.

Cherise stopped in her tracks, puffing hard. “She's
dead
?” she blurted, and made a gesture as if she were going to reach out toward me, but then thought better of it. “Oh, my God. What happened?”

“I don't know,” I snapped. “I don't know
anything.
That's the problem.”

Lewis poked the stick into the snow with unnecessary violence.

“I want to know how she died,” I said.

“If wishes were horses, you'd be doing one fifty in a cherry red Mustang on the autobahn.” He sounded bleak and cool. “No.”

“You son of a bitch.”

“Probably.” He gave me a smile that was equal parts apology and sadness. “But I've always been like that. You've just forgotten about—”

He stopped in his tracks, straightened, and held up a hand for silence. Cherise and I both froze, too. Wind swirled across the clearing, picking up snow crystals and peppering me in the face with them, but I didn't move.

In the distance I heard a faint chopping sound. “What is that?” I whispered, and then I recognized it. That was the sound of a helicopter. “Trouble?”

“No,” Lewis said. “That's what I was hoping for. We just arrived here a little early, that's all.”

“Here?” Cherise turned a slow circle. “Where's here, exactly?”

Lewis held up his GPS device, which had a blinking red light. “Rendezvous point. That's our ride out of here.”

That suddenly.
Wow.
Except that even though that had to be good news—right?—Lewis didn't look any less tense. He shrugged out of his backpack and unzipped pockets, moving quickly and competently.

“So what's the problem?” I asked. “Because there's a problem, right?” There was always a problem.

“I think we're being followed,” he said. “Head for the tree line,” he said. “Both of you. Move it.” Cherise took off instantly, plunging through the snow as quickly as possible. When I didn't immediately snap to obey, Lewis yelled it at me, full throat: “Move!” A drill sergeant couldn't have put more menace into it. I galloped clumsily along, my feet sinking deep into the snow. I prayed I wouldn't hit a sinkhole, because a broken leg right now would be inconvenient.

When I looked back, Lewis was standing in the middle of the clearing, looking up at the gray sky. His backpack was at his side, and in his hand was a black, angular shape—the gun he'd fired at Cherise.

He scanned the far side of the clearing, but it was obvious it was a useless effort; he might have sensed trouble coming, but he wasn't sure which direction it was heading. He saw me hesitating, caught in the open, and motioned for me to keep running. Cherise had already made it to the trees; I saw a flash of pink as she found cover and stayed there.

And I would have followed her, really, but I caught sight of motion to Lewis's left, out in the deep forest shadows, and I sensed a blurring, as if someone were trying to avoid notice.

“Lewis!” I yelled it, but the increasingly loud churning of the rotors drowned me out. “Lewis! Over there!” I waved my arms frantically, trying to catch his eye, and just as I did something hot ignited in the tree line where the blur had been, incandescent and round, and it shot straight toward me.

I didn't even think; I just hit the snow face-first. The fireball sizzled over my head right where my midsection would have been had I been caught flat-footed, and rolled away, hissing into open snow, where it quickly melted drifts in a five-foot radius to the bare dirt.

That
caught Lewis's attention. He whirled just as Kevin stepped out of the trees. The teen looked grimy and scraped, but there was a burning light in his eyes, and as I wondered what to do he held up his hand, palm up, and formed another ball of fire in it.

Apparently my dive-for-it tactic was Warden-Approved, because Lewis did the same thing; he waited until Kevin threw the fireball, and then threw himself flat in the snow. Kevin's fireball streaked through the air and exploded like a bottle of napalm against a tree on the far side of the clearing—he'd thrown that one with a lot more fury. Lewis rolled, brought up the gun, aimed…

And didn't pull the trigger. I held my breath, horrified, because Kevin was already reloading, forming fire in his hands and snarling in rage.

No.
Dammit, why didn't Lewis shoot?

Kevin threw the plasma straight at Lewis, who was helpless and prone on the ground, and Lewis
still
didn't pull the trigger.

He also didn't try to avoid the impact of the flame.

It hit and erupted in white-hot fury, sizzling the snow around him into an instant spring thaw, and then Lewis was
on fire.
I screamed and started toward him, then stopped, because Lewis—burning all over, fire clinging to him like a second skin—calmly pushed himself up to his feet, brushed a hand over his chest like a man flicking away dust, and the flames just…died.

Not a mark on him.

Kevin's eyes went wider, but then he shut down, went hard and cold. “You cold-blooded son of a bitch,” he spit at Lewis. “I'm going to kill you.”

“Good luck with that,” Lewis said. “I think the waiting list is into double digits by now.”

“Where's Cherise? What did you do to her?”

Lewis took a step toward him. He was still holding the gun, but carefully, at his side. I doubted Kevin could even see it. “Kevin, relax. She's all right.”

“No. No, she's not, or she'd be here. She'd be with me.” Kevin's fingers, consciously or not, were dripping with fire. “You're lying. You hurt her.”

“I've got no reason to lie to you,” Lewis said. His voice was still and quiet, very gentle, and he continued moving toward the boy without seeming to be in any hurry at all. “She was hurt, Kevin, but she's better now. You're hurt, too. I need you to stop fighting me. Can you do that?”

“No!” Kevin screamed, and extended both hands toward Lewis. Fire erupted in a hot, incandescent wall that swept toward Lewis at a frightening rate, searing the snow into instant steam, leaving everything dead and smoking behind it….

And I caught a flash of pink, and Cherise ran out in front of the advancing flames, and stopped just in front of Lewis.

“No!” I screamed, and lunged up. “Cherise, no! He can't see you!”

Kevin's view was blocked by the flames. Maybe he could see Lewis, I didn't know, but he couldn't possibly have seen Cherise, and he was going to kill her.

And she wasn't going to move.

Lewis put out one hand, palm out, and stopped the wall of fire cold. His fingers curled down, and so did the blaze, collapsing into a confusion of hot streamers and flickering out of existence a bare two feet from Cherise's pale, terrified face.

When he saw her, Kevin's mouth opened, a dark O of horror, and he lurched forward at the same time she started toward him. I climbed up to my feet, brushing away the snow, as the two of them collided to form a frantic pile of arms and legs.

Kevin was talking as he kissed her, but the words were only for Cherise, and besides, the noise of the approaching helicopter was rattling around the valley like thunder. I moved back toward Lewis, feeling tired and achy and even more anxious than before. What if Kevin was still possessed? What if we had to kill him?
Oh, God.

Lewis was ready for that; I could see it in the way he was standing, watching the two of them. Nothing but calculation in his eyes. If he thought it was adorable, the slacker and the beach bunny reuniting, he kept it well hidden behind a blank, empty expression.

“Stay behind me,” he said as I approached. I nodded and obeyed. “Watch for the helicopter. Signal it when you see it.”

I risked a glance over his shoulder and saw that Cherise had taken Kevin's hand and was leading him over toward us. “Cherise,” Lewis called. “Let go and step aside.”

“But—”

“Do it.”

I'd have done what he said, too; that tone didn't leave any room for negotiation. I scanned the skies—still nothing but low, gray clouds—and peeked again. Cherise let go of Kevin's hand and moved away—not far, but far enough for Lewis's purposes, apparently.

Kevin glared at him. The kid looked ill, pale, frostbitten, and on his last legs. As Lewis took a step forward, fire began dripping from Kevin's fingers.

“Stop fighting me,” Lewis said, voice dropping low. He was using some kind of power, something that made me feel sleepy even in the corona effect; I saw Cherise yawn and stagger. “Cherise is fine. Let us take care of you now. I know what happened. You have to stop fighting, Kevin. I'm not your enemy.”

Kevin swayed. His hands fell to dangle at his sides, and fire dripped and smoked from his fingertips, hissing into the snow. “Don't,” he said. “Don't touch me. You shouldn't touch me. In case.”

“I know,” Lewis said. He was nearly within grabbing range. “It's okay. It's gone now. You're going to be all right.”

Kevin staggered and collapsed to his knees in the snow. Where his hands met the white powder, the snow sizzled into steam. “I tried,” he mumbled, and shook his head angrily. Fire flew like drops of sweat. “I tried to stop it. It came out of the forest fire; I'd never seen anything like that before; I didn't know what to…I couldn't protect her. I thought I could, but—”

Lewis was there by then, and without any hesitation at all he grabbed Kevin and pulled him upright. “It's not your fault,” he said. “There's not a Warden alive who could have done any better. Including me. You survived. That's the important thing.”

Kevin was barely conscious, and Cherise moved to help support him, casting looks at Lewis that silently pleaded for him to make things right. I heard the
thump-thump-thump
of rotors overhead growing clearer, and finally spotted a shadow moving through the mist.

I started scissoring my arms. The color of my down jacket—green—might not be enough for them to pick us out, but I did some jumping up and down and yelling, even though I knew the yelling was useless. The helicopter headed toward us, hovered overhead, and started circling in for a landing.

As I lowered my arms to shield my eyes from blowing snow, I saw someone standing in the shadows across the clearing. She was tall, and she had long, dark hair that blew in a silken sheet on the wind. She wasn't wearing a coat, just a pair of blue jeans, some not-very-practical boots, and a baby-doll tee in aqua blue. I had that disorientation again, the same as when I'd been watching myself through Cherise's eyes, but this was different. For one thing, it wasn't a memory. She was there, facing me, in real time.

It took exactly one second for the full implications to hit me, hard, and run me down like a speeding train.

“Imara?” I whispered. Or tried. My voice was locked tight in my throat. I glanced desperately at Lewis, but he was occupied with the kids, and besides, he couldn't possibly have heard me over the roar of the descending machine. “Oh, God. Imara, is it you?” Because it had to be my daughter, didn't it? She looked just like me—the same height, the same curves, the same black hair, although hers looked better cared for at the moment.

And the wind blew her hair back, revealing her face fully. She smiled, and my whole skin shivered into gooseflesh, because that smile was
wrong
. I felt the dark impact of it all the way across the open snowy space. She was
not
my daughter. There was a crawling, sticky sense of
evil
to it. There was also an overwhelming feeling of danger, even though she wasn't making any overt moves in my direction.

She was…
me.

“Lewis!” I said, startled into a yell.

He can't help you
, she said, as clearly as if she were standing at normal conversational distance. It wasn't a voice, though. Not really.
If he does, I'll have to take action. Do you want me to destroy him? And the children? I will. It means nothing to me, really.

She wasn't my daughter.

She was the
Demon
.

Walk toward me
, she said.
Walk toward me, and no more have to be harmed. That's what you want, isn't it? I promise you, I will make it painless.

“Lewis,” I said, louder. “Lewis, dammit,
look
!”

You'll only make this harder in the end.

She turned and walked back into the trees. Gone. I couldn't even seen tracks where she'd been standing.

“What?” Lewis shouted to me, suddenly at my side and bending his head close to mine to be heard over the noise. The dull blunt-force thud of helicopter blades was very loud now. “What's wrong?”

Would he believe me if I told him? Or would he think I'd just finally lost my last screw? There was nothing to see there now, and as I extended the senses that Lewis and David had been showing me how to use, I got…nothing. Nothing but whispering trees and a slow, sleeping presence that I assumed was how I now perceived the Earth.

“Nothing,” I said. “Never mind.”

I watched as the helicopter began its descent. I held my hair back against the harsh, ice-edged wind it kicked up, and backed up with Lewis to give it room to land. The helicopter touched down, and the rotors slowed but didn't stop. The emblem on the side was some kind of seal, and nothing I recognized.