Total Eclipse

Chapter Three

The Port of Miami looked weather-beaten but under repairs, and as far as I could tell, life was going on just fine. That seemed . . . odd. I stood at the rail and watched people strolling the boardwalks, coming in and out of shops with hands full of bright-colored bags, eating at outdoor cafes. It seemed so normal.

It didn’t seem like the end of the world as we knew it. In the movies, everybody’s looking up at the skies (conveniently, all at the same daylight hour, everywhere in the world, all at once) when the big disaster is coming. But in real life, people just carry on until the disaster’s in their face, and sometimes even after. I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve personally fished out of flooded homes and businesses during hurricanes, for instance—and the ones that the Wardens couldn’t save. All because they denied the ability of the world around them to destroy them.

There were potentially big losses of life brewing everywhere around the world, but so far they were just breaking news stories happening (for most people) somewhere else. Interesting and tragic, not personal and panic-bringing. Nothing to interrupt dinner at Pascal’s on Ponce over, for sure.

That would change, very soon. I knew it, even though I couldn’t sense the aetheric disturbances anymore. Wardens were talking about it, and I could sense the suppressed anxiety in their voices.

This lovely day in Miami was the last we might ever see. I had a sudden, crazy impulse to start yelling like some wild-haired, sandwich-board-wearing street preacher, but I held my breath until it passed. Doomsaying wouldn’t make anybody’s day better. Or postpone the inevitable.

The ship was maneuvering up to the docks, and I could see, in the distance, a massive presence of cars, vans, and trucks. I nudged Lewis, who was standing next to me at the railing. “What is that?”

“The transportation you arranged,” he said. “Cars and vans to shuttle people where they need to go.”

“All of that?”

“Plus the press.”

My palms immediately got damp, and I scrubbed them against my blue jeans. “What’s our plan to handle them?”

“Benign neglect. We’re going to be neck-deep in Apocalypse tomorrow. I can’t see how issuing a press release is going to make a damn bit of difference, so we’re not talking.”

Worked for me. “David’s going with me. To the Oracles.”

Lewis didn’t take his eyes off the docking process. “Good. I didn’t like sending you alone.” He paused, and then said, very quietly, “I don’t like sending you at all. You know that.” Yeah, and I knew why. So did David. Uncomfortably personal territory, so I skipped it.

“It’s a dirty job, but that’s why you picked me to do it,” I said cheerfully. “Besides, if I can pick up some of my powers along the way, this might not be the rush to martyrdom you think.”

“It’s a big if, Jo.”

“It’s a gi- normous if. Not to mention an embarrassingly large how. So let’s not dwell on it. Besides, you’re the one going up against Djinn and insane planets with a grudge. I’ve got the easy job.”

He shrugged, because I wasn’t wrong. Nobody was guaranteed to come out of this thing with a whole skin—Lewis, the most powerful Warden in several hundred years, least of all. The more powerful you were, the more the bad things tended to want you dead. At least, in my experience.

Which meant I was practically bulletproof right now, ironically. I literally wasn’t worth noticing. Was that a comfort? I really wasn’t sure.

“You’ve been taking the hits for a long time,” Lewis said. He hadn’t even glanced at me, but he could read me just fine. “Let the rest of us get the battle scars for a change. We’re big kids.”

“Did I ever say you weren’t?”

“No, but your hero complex scares the crap out of me,” Lewis said, and straightened up. “Here we go.”

I thought he meant that we were ready to disembark, but he turned toward me, and before I even knew he was intending to do it, he kissed me. Not one of the desperate kind of kisses he’d given me in the past, none of that longing or anguish or pure lust I knew was still locked up inside of him. This was surprisingly . . . pure. Chaste.

It was a good-bye kiss.

I didn’t fight it.

He didn’t say another word, and it wasn’t necessary. I watched him stride away, already calling orders to the Wardens who flocked around him like birds, swooping in to get instructions and then breaking off on their own.

That left me alone at the rail, until I sensed a warm presence next to me, and looked over to see that David had joined me. He had no particular expression on his face. It was just—studiously neutral.

“You saw,” I said.

“Yes. I know what it was,” he said. “And he’s right. We might never see him again. I’d kiss him myself, but he might kill me.”

Which made me laugh, as he intended. Though, knowing how ancient David was, I wasn’t entirely putting that kind of flexibility past him, either. “You’re a good man,” I said.

“Am I?” He frowned down at the docks, as if it was a difficult question. “Maybe I was, once. Maybe I can be. But I’ve done a lot of things that wouldn’t qualify as good. I think—I think this is a chance to remember what that means.”

“Bullshit,” I said crisply. “We’re not in the navelgazing business, my love; we’re in the world-saving business. Don’t you forget it.”

That surprised a smile out of him, a spark that reminded me of the fire he’d had before . . . before the island, and that black corner. “I won’t.”

Cherise arrived, out of breath, rolling two suitcases. She had on a Miami- length sundress (as in, just too long to qualify as a shirt, and illegal in forty-nine other states), clunky platform shoes, an enormous sun hat, and designer sunglasses. Very Cher. “Well?” she snapped as she breezed on past us, leaving a smell of crisp lemony perfume in her wake. “Hustle it up; what do you think—the world isn’t ending or something? I am not holding a cab for you slackers!” Kevin trailed her, looking as slouchy as ever but somehow a little less unkempt—maybe Cherise had been after him with a comb—dragging two more suitcases. Considering we’d come on this journey with almost nothing, that was quite an accomplishment. Only Cherise could pump up her wardrobe while evading death. I generally just ruined mine.

David offered me his arm. “She’s right,” he said. “So are you. Fight first; introspection later.”

“We’re going to make it,” I said. “You believe that, right?”

He looked around—at the seemingly normal sea-front, at the Wardens disembarking from the ship, at the world all around us. And he said, softly, “Not all of us.”

I shivered.

Four in a cab was a stretch, but we voted Kevin to sit up front, much to the displeasure of the driver, who groused about rules and such until I tossed money at him. The money had been issued to all of us out of the ship’s treasury—another thing that was going on the Wardens’ already staggering tab for saving the world again. It wasn’t going to be enough, but it was enough to get us moving, and that was all that mattered.

I had the driver drop us at a car rental place—not Avis and Budget, which were already swarming with Weather Wardens attempting to secure their own preferred methods of transpo, not liking what I’d booked for them—but a luxury place, where I plunked down the gold American Express Warden card to the clerk behind the counter. She was a professionally lovely girl, the way a lot of South Beach ladies are, and she had a practiced, customer-service-approved smile. “What kind of vehicle are you—”

“What’s the fastest car you have?” I asked.

“Um . . .” She glanced down, and I’m pretty sure she would have frowned except that the Botox no longer allowed that particular expression. Not that I wasn’t in favor of Botox; I was starting to develop some disturbing furrows in my own brow. “We have a Porsche Carrera. . . .”

“Something that seats four,” I said.

“Comfortably,” added Cherise.

“Okay, well, we have a classic Mustang that I understand is really fast. . . .”

I couldn’t believe my ears. “What kind of classic Mustang?” Because with my luck it would be a 1974, which was the start of the Mustang Dark Ages.

“It’s a Boss 429,” she said, reading from a card with the air of someone who really didn’t speak the language and was sounding it out phonetically. “From 1970.”

She hadn’t even thought about being born when Ford had rolled that racing car off the assembly line, but my heart was starting to pound. “Seriously? You’re sure it’s a Boss 429?”

“We just got it in,” she said. “It has about sixty thousand miles on it.”

I swallowed hard and tried not to get my hopes up. “Can I see it?”

She gave me another professional smile—not quite as polished as the last one—and then brightened the wattage considerably at David. “Sure,” she said, and nodded to another woman, identically lovely (only with dark hair), who came from the back to take her place at the counter. Out we went—although Cherise left the mountain of suitcases sitting in the lobby, thankfully—into the parking lot behind the reception building.

It was like a candy store for car addicts. Seriously. There were a lot of very rich people in Florida, and a lot who visited, and this was their toy box. Classic red Lamborghini? Choose from dozens of identical clones. Want a high-end Porsche? A Jag XJ220? No problem. Even I slowed down and stared as we passed the sleek, rounded chassis of what surely couldn’t be . . . “Hey,” I said, and pointed. “Bugatti Veyron?”

“Reserved,” our guide said. “And you’d need more than a gold Amex, I can tell you that.”

No doubt, because the last time I’d seen a price tag attached to one of those monsters, it was soaring up into the $1.5 million range. I felt I should genuflect or something, because that was definitely one of the Gods of Cars.

Then we cleared a giant, gleaming, black row of tricked-out Hummers, and found . . . my car.

There was just no doubt about it, really. This was mine. The thick, hot pleasure that spread through me at the sight of it couldn’t have felt better if accompanied by a shot of heroin, administered by a male stripper.

Yes, cars are my drug of choice.

She wasn’t wrong. It was a Boss 429, absolutely cherry, painted in Intimidator Black. No stripes, no frills. It looked dangerous. Oh, and it was.

Rental Car Girl was holding a set of keys. She handed them to me and opened the driver’s- side door. It smelled faintly of cigar smoke inside, but the interior was beautifully maintained. The seat was comfortably broken in, and even the leg length was almost right. One minor adjustment, and I fired it up.

A low, deep-throated throb of an engine, hot with power and hungry for speed. Yes.

I realized I was obsessively running my hands over the steering wheel, with a lust that was making David look at me funny. I cleared my throat, shut the engine off, and got out of the car. “Fine,” I said, trying to sound normal. “I’ll take it.”

“Day rate?”

“For the month,” I said.

She didn’t even blink; I supposed the rich did rent things on that scale on a regular basis. Probably for longer. “You’ll have to pay the deposit plus two weeks,” she said. “The car has LoJack, of course. We maintain our own insurance, which we will require you to carry if you can’t provide valid coverage that would include—”

“Fine,” I said. “Whatever. Charge it. We’re in a hurry.”

Surprisingly, that phrase did not inspire confidence. We waited through ID checks, credit checks, whispered conversations, and finally a massive set of paperwork, including a clause that I was fairly sure included forced organ harvesting in the event of nonpayment.

I just signed it, scribbling as fast as I could anywhere her well-manicured finger pointed. She wished us a pleasant stay in Miami. I didn’t correct her, just stood tapping my foot impatiently until the uniformed valet had brought the Boss around to the front.

Cherise opened the trunk and looked inside. “You’re kidding, right? My luggage will never—”

“Downsize,” I said. “You’re not packing for a photo shoot, you know.”

“How do you know? There’s always time to book a good gig before the end of the world. . . . Okay, fine.” She crammed two of the suitcases in, and rolled two more back inside. She came out empty-handed, and I raised my eyes. She scooted her big round sunglasses down to roll hers. “They’re shipping them to Warden HQ,” she said. “What, you really thought I’d just leave them? Girlfriend. There is Elie Saab in there. Ready-to-wear, but still. Respect.”

“Hey, you’ve got your drug. I’ve got mine.” I made sure the trunk was closed, and opened up the door for her as I flipped the driver’s seat forward. She got in with care. I was glad, because I really didn’t want to see any tabloid flashing. Kevin piled in next to her, and I smirked a little as I slammed the passenger seat back into place. With those long legs, he was not going to be overly comfortable . . . but then again, he wouldn’t have been comfortable in much except a stretch limo.

David and I slid into the front seats, and I turned the key. The vibration of the engine came straight up my spine, doing interesting things in all kinds of key pleasure points, and I hit the clutch and shifted into first gear.

The Boss scratched right out of the box, leaving a thin mist of smoke behind us as it roared off. Zero to thirty, way too fast, and I had to back off dramatically on the fuel mix. He was temperamental, this beast. I liked that. It took a few experimental shifts to find the sweet spot in the clutch and get the feel of the pedals, but not more than a minute. The rental company had added a plug-in GPS, which showed me the route to the nearest freeway, and by the time I hit the on-ramp me and the Boss were good friends.

Oh God, it felt good to be behind the wheel again, in control, heading somewhere with a purpose. No more Bad Bob. No more old ghosts haunting me. Just me, the car, my lover, and . . . okay, Cherise and Kevin. And a trunkload of couture. But still. I felt . . . light.

And oh Lord, the Boss had power. I had to watch to keep it hovering at reasonable speed, and it was still blowing the doors off Italian sports cars in the other lanes. I was glad it wasn’t a convertible. We might have died of the wind buffeting.

“Storm coming in,” Cherise said, after we’d put about twenty miles under the fast-turning wheels. I glanced in the rearview. She was facing west, out the window, with an odd expression on her face. I looked, and saw a smear of clouds on the horizon. I automatically tried to reach out and grab information from the aetheric, but I had that phantom limb syndrome that amputees sometimes have. Nothing there. Just a sensation that there had once been.

“Doesn’t look like much,” I said.

“It’s bad,” she said. “I think it’s bad.”

I gave her a sharper look. “What?”

She shook her head and slipped her sunglasses on, leaning her head back. “I’m going to take a nap. Wake me if we pass a hot male strip bar.”

Kevin growled, and she smiled and tucked her small hand in his. “Could we at least have some tunes?” he said. “Or is this car too sacred for a radio?”

“No car is too sacred for a radio,” I said. Sure enough, there was one—not factory original, apparently an upgrade from the rental agency. Satellite radio. I fiddled until I found a classic rock station. Billy Preston, “Will It Go Round in Circles.” Sweet. I cranked it up, opened the throttle a little more, headed for trouble.

Feeling better than I had in months.

I drove like the devil was after me.

As it was, because Cherise had been right about the storm. Even I could tell now that it was going to be a bad one; the clouds were massing up, boiling in black towers as warm and cool air collided. A huge anvil formation, spreading out over the entire western horizon. It hadn’t been moving fast, but it had been moving, the last I could see of it before it blocked out the sunset and sent us into premature darkness. I shifted stations from rock to weather, and caught reports of massive winds, fleets of tornados, flooding. The Weather Wardens were having one hell of a bad time, though so far they’d kept the tornados from touching down in any heavily populated areas. That was the best maintenance strategy—let the storm vent its energy where it wouldn’t do as much damage and injury. But just from the news reports I could tell how much power was stored in that storm. Massive. And even the best Weather Wardens weren’t going to be able to get to everything.

The rain hit us viciously about two hours later, right about the time that my body began urgently waving the yellow caution flag. I checked the clock; it was after midnight, and I’d been driving for far too long. I found a halfway decent roadside motel—a bland chain thing, but I wasn’t concerned about originality right now so much as availability of pillows and mattresses. Cherise and Kevin had both fallen asleep some time back, and I had to wake them to check in. I hated leaving the Boss unescorted—somebody was going to recognize its value—but the best I could do was park it outside the two rooms I rented, under a strong light, and hope for the best. I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer.

One hot shower later, I crawled into bed next to David, who was flipping channels on the television. Looking for a twenty-four-hour news channel, apparently, because that was where he stopped. I sat there rubbing my wet hair to get it as dry as possible while I read the screen crawl at the bottom. The news airing at the moment was about the very storm we were in—not just us, but most of the eastern seaboard. Nasty. Easily as nasty as anything I had ever handled as a Weather Warden. There was a lot of damage. The death toll was already well into the hundreds and still rising.

What caught me, though, was the screen crawl, because it was all about disasters. Not just the storm, or its attendant deadly little brother, flooding . . . earthquakes along the New Madrid fault line, a whopping 7.5 on the Richter scale—more than twice as powerful as the biggest thermonuclear weapon ever exploded. It could have been worse; the scale went all the way up to 10, though the worst humans had ever lived through had measured a 9.5. Past that, it wasn’t really going to be our problem anymore.

The quake had shaken pictures off of walls in South Carolina, and rung church bells as far away as Boston. At the epicenter of the shift, in Portageville, it was going to be much, much worse. There’d be nothing much left standing.

The Portageville quake was far from the only thing going on, aside from the storm. The screen crawl tallied up unexplained increases in animal attacks, particularly by bears and mountain lions, and an unexpected increase in poisonous snakebites in the Western states. Wildfires had started up in the deep forests, in total defiance of wet conditions, and seemed to be getting the better of fire teams and—presumably—Fire Wardens.

And that was just the U.S. The devastation wasn’t confined to our shores. Virtually every continent was under attack. End-of-the-world prophets were out in force already, and they’d only get loonier and louder as things got worse.

The thing was, the end-of-the-world prophets probably weren’t wrong on this one.

I found myself holding David for comfort. He shut off the TV, and we sat in silence, watching the afterimage burn for a few seconds before we collapsed together back to the mattress and pillows I had, just a little while ago, so greatly lusted after. Now I wasn’t sure I could—or should—sleep. My body was still exhausted, aching, and needing to find some oblivion, but my mind was playing the Blame Game. We did this. We started this. And we have to do something to stop it. People are dying.

“Shhh,” David whispered, and kissed my temple. His arms were warm and strong around me, even though I knew instinctively he was right now despairing of how much power he’d had, and lost. How frustrated and grief-stricken he was, too. How helpless in the face of the inevitable. “Let it go, Jo. You have to let it go, just for now. Rest. Please.”

I didn’t want to, but he seduced me into it, with the comforting heat of his body curled around mine, the steady calm rhythm of his heartbeat, his love obvious even to all my blinded senses in every touch and caress. He was being strong for me. Maybe he needed to be.

Maybe I needed him to be, too.

I fell asleep finally, wrapped in his arms, and we woke up hours later to a clap of thunder so loud it rattled pictures bolted to the wall, and set off car alarms in the parking lot. I felt blinded, instinctively terrified, and cringed against David. Clinging for comfort. How long since I’d been afraid of a storm?

I got hold of myself and crawled out of bed to look out the motel room window. It was like looking into a strobe flasher; the lightning was bright, constant, and close. Thunder followed, so loud that I could see the glass vibrate under the pressure of the sound waves. The lights were out in the parking lot, and, I realized, in the room as well; even the low-level night-light glow from the bathroom had gone dark. We’d been busted back to the primitive days, hiding in a cave, cowering from the storm.

It kind of pissed me off. So instead of retreating back into the dark and hugging David, I stood there in front of the glass window, practically daring the storm to do its worst. If I’d still been a Warden, it probably would have taken me up on it, too—but a normal human? It didn’t even know I was there. That wouldn’t keep it from killing me, just as it would ants, birds, cats, or anything else that got in its way, but it wasn’t personal.

I would officially be collateral damage. Which really pissed me off.

Another eye-searing flash of lightning, and this time I saw the blue pop of a transformer blowing on a pole not far away. The pole caught fire, blazing like a creosote-smeared torch even through the driving rain. It gave the whole thing a hellish glow that was really, really unsettling.

“I think we need to get out of here,” I said. David was already out of bed and dressing in the dark—cursing softly in a language I didn’t recognize, mainly because he probably hadn’t had to dress himself in the dark for, oh, about five thousand years, and in those days, there weren’t quite as many challenges to the process anyway. “Is the phone working?”

His cursing got louder as he knocked the receiver off, but paused when he checked the line. “Yes,” he said, and handed it to me to continue his fight with pants. I dialed Cherise’s room number by touch. She picked up on the first ring.

“Holy crap, we need to go!” she said breathlessly. “That’s what you were going to say, right?”

“That’s what I was going to say.”

“So glad I didn’t unpack the luggage from the trunk. Let’s do it. But you go first and unlock the doors, okay? Because I am not standing out in that.”

She hung up before I could tell her that the castle had called and wanted its princess back. She was right, actually. I had the keys. I was the point person for this little expedition.

“Stay here until I get everything open,” I told David, and tossed a towel over my head as I opened up the door. The wind promptly blew the wood back against the wall with a crash, and knocked me back two steps by sheer force before I got control and leaned into it.

Then I stepped outside, into the teeth of the monster.

I didn’t dare look up, or around, or anywhere but at the Boss, sitting there with its chrome blazing in the flashes of lightning. Water was running off it in silver strings, and I lunged for the driver’s-side door, got in, and manually unlocked the passenger side before diving out again, honking the horn. Cherise’s door opened, and Kevin ran out, heading for the other side of the car.

Cherise followed him, staggering in the buffeting wind like a post- happy-hour drunk on her clunky platform shoes. The wind definitely made that flirty little South Beach dress not safe for anywhere, but in seconds rain had flattened it securely down against her body. It was the next best thing to a swimsuit, really. Not that my shirt and jeans weren’t waterlogged and streaming.

I didn’t feel it coming the way I would have as a Warden. I felt the hairs rise on my arms, as if trying to escape my body, and for a blank second I wondered, What the heck is that?

And then a pure white bolt of power hit Cherise.

The force of it blew me over, and if it made a sound I don’t remember hearing it. The shock lasted for at least three heartbeats, and then the cold rain brought me back around and I realized that Cherise had just been struck by lightning.

I staggered up. Cherise was still standing there, exactly as she had been. Wisps of steam curled off her bare arms and legs, up from her hair, and I screamed and closed the distance fast, waiting for her to collapse into my arms.

Instead, she opened her eyes, looked at me with a drugged, blissful expression, and said, “Wow. That felt . . . great.”

I stopped, fighting for balance in more ways than one. She looked utterly relaxed. Unafraid. Maybe it was some weird side effect . . . ?

No, I realized. No, it wasn’t, because over the two of us, the rain had stopped falling. It was running off a clear shield that enclosed us in a warm, still cone of air.

I knew what that was. I’d done it myself, many times.

Not Cherise. Cherise doesn’t have Warden powers. . . . She can’t . . . She never . . .

The shock was slowing me down, obviously, because I should have known already. David did, as he threw open the door of the Mustang and got out again. I saw the sudden, rigid set to his body, and the way he went completely still, even pounded by the rain.

Kevin got out, too, and in the next lightning flash his face looked ghostly and haunted, his eyes gone huge as he stared at Cherise. He looked empty. No, he was empty, I realized; he had gone up into the aetheric, and for a few seconds his body was just a waiting shell. Then he flinched and shook his head. “It can’t be,” he said. “She’s—she’s—”

“She’s got Warden powers,” I said flatly. “What are the odds that they came from someone else but me?”

Cherise smiled, warm and sweet and lovely, and said, “And it is awesome, by the way. Just so you know. It feels so—big! Like I’m part of everything, everywhere in the world—there’s all this energy, and—”

“Cher!” I grabbed her by the shoulders, hard, and shook her until the bliss faded from her eyes. “Cherise, listen to me. You’re not trained. You have no idea what you’re doing. Don’t—”

Electric shocks zapped through my hands, straight up my arms, and knocked me back with a stunning blow all the way to the Mustang. I found myself on the ground, skin tingling and aching, shaking all over. My muscles were buzzing.

David no longer moved at Djinn speed, but he was just as fast as any man seeing a threat to someone he loved, and as I tried to shake off the shock he did a classic cop roll over the hood of the car and went for her.

Kevin summoned up a fireball and dropped it neatly between David and Cherise, sending my husband stumbling back. “Don’t try it, man,” Kevin said. “It’s not her fault.”

I wasn’t the only one in shock. Cherise hadn’t moved since she’d given me the zap, but now, as the fire flamed unnaturally high between her and David, she let out a sharp, horrified cry and dropped to her knees next to me in the filthy water. “Oh my God, Jo, I didn’t mean—I just—I just wanted you to let go of me, I—” She reached out to touch me, then hesitated, staring at her hands.

I coughed and sat up. My ribs ached. I could feel residual trembles in all of my long muscles, but my heart seemed to be ticking along, if rapidly, and I was in control enough to be able to push dripping hair back out of my eyes. Even if it felt like a lot of effort to do so. “I think that proves my point,” I said, and then had to pause for a racking round of coughing.

David tried to get to me. Kevin moved the fire in front of him, and I saw David really get angry—angry enough to do anything. He was only human now, but that kind of anger was nothing to fool around with. There was still a trace of Djinn in there somewhere; I could just feel it—even if it was only a memory of power. It made him fearless, and a little bit crazy.

He plunged through the fire.

Kevin yelped, surprised, and damped the flames down quickly—including the ones that had taken hold of David’s clothes even in that brief instant of contact. David ignored the burns. He grabbed Kevin and slammed him back against the car with a hand around his throat, and I saw his muscles tighten. Kevin’s eyes widened, and he clawed at David’s hand, wheezing.

“David, don’t,” I managed to gasp, and got my coughing under control. There was something unpleasant in my mouth. I spat it out and tasted blood, but not a lot. That was good, right? Not a lot? Some part of my brain was grasping desperately for good news. “We don’t have time for this.”

“Don’t,” David said, attention still locked on Kevin’s face, “ever do that again. Do you understand me?”

Kevin managed to nod. David let go, shoved him away, and knelt down to gather me in his arms. The look he turned on Cherise was black with fury.

“It’s not her fault,” I told him. “Kevin’s right. She got slammed with a ton of power, and she has no idea how to use it. She’s like a baby with a nuclear bomb and a big shiny red button.”

“Hey!” Cherise said, in almost her old tones. “I’m right here! Have a heart.”

“No offense,” I said, “but Wardens get trained. They get trained a lot. And even then, we make massive mistakes, and people die. You don’t have that luxury, Cher. You’re too powerful, all at once. Your learning curve means death tolls. Now take down the shield.”

“What?” Cherise seemed blank. I pointed up at the invisible umbrella she was holding over us. Rain was pouring off of it in silver sheets. “I’m not—oh. I guess I am, huh?”

“Instinct. It’ll kill you. Or actually, other people,” I said. “Drop it. I’ll show you how to build it right.”

“I—don’t think I know how to drop it. I mean, I didn’t know how to put it up in the first place.”

“Talk later, flee now,” Kevin said, rubbing his throat and glaring at David. “Seeing as how we’re going to die if we hang around here in Lightning Central.”

I looked up at David, and saw his fierce love and anger and desire to lash out. And protect me. He was taking this being human thing harder than I was, after all. “Kevin has a point,” I said. “Let’s work it out in motion.”

He didn’t like it; I could see that, but he nodded and helped me to my feet. I was shaky but serviceable. Wetter than a sponge on the bottom of the ocean, but maybe I could get Cherise to dry me off as a training exercise. Then again, she’d probably desiccate me completely and leave me a dry, dead husk, so maybe not such a great plan after all.

“Maybe you shouldn’t drive,” David said.

“Ha! The day I can’t drive the Boss is the day that you need to wrap me in plastic and leave me by the side of the road for the buzzards.”

“Jo, I’m serious.”

“So am I,” I said. “Nobody drives it but me. Those are the rules. Now get in the car. Please. I don’t need to argue, I just need to drive.”

He didn’t like it, but he nodded and helped me in. Cherise was maintaining the rain shield above the car, which was convenient even though it worried me in a Warden sense. There were all kinds of ways to power that kind of defensive capability, but the best ways, the ones that would ultimately have the least impact on the world around us, were the most difficult to learn. Cherise was, without a doubt, just grabbing raw power and slamming it into a form without regard for how out of balance the equations fell.

The storm had already noticed her. And it was going to get very interested now.

Everybody piled into the car, and I found the keys and started up the Boss. His engine caught with a fierce grumble, and I threw it into reverse as another lightning bolt slammed home, this one torching a tree near the corner of the parking lot. Combined with the still-burning telephone pole, the place was starting to look like it needed to be renamed the Disaster Drive-In.

“Sorry,” I whispered, and peeled out of the parking lot. Once I hit road speed, I began to really start liking Cherise’s shield, even if it was an energy suck monster. It was like driving under a mobile bridge, and it kept the rain from hammering the windshield, which was excellent. I opened up the Boss as we gained the access road for the freeway. When we reached the top of the ramp, I glanced over and saw three stabs of white-hot light smash down from the boiling clouds into the roof of the motel.

The trees weren’t the only thing on fire anymore, and now there were innocent lives at risk—not just ours. The roof was burning, and it was possible that even with the rain, it would spread. The tree and telephone pole weren’t showing any signs of going out.

“Kevin,” I said. “Get that fire out.”

“The rain will take care of it. I don’t need to—”

“Did you hear me ask? Because I’m pretty sure I put it as an order, not a request for your opinion. Just do it. Now, Kevin!”

Kevin shut up and looked toward the burning roof. Seconds later, it snuffed itself out. He ended the blazes on the telephone pole and tree for good measure. Show-off. “Anything else, boss?”

“Yeah. Be quiet.”

He shot me the finger, which did not shock me, and slumped back in his seat with a mutinous, pouty expression. Still not out of his teen angst, I saw. Or maybe he’d just grow up to be a pouty, petulant man. Yeah, that was going to be attractive.

I took a deep breath and looked over at David. “Are you okay? Not burned?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “He put it out before it did any damage.”

I made sure I had the Boss aimed straight and steady on the nearly empty rain-slick highway, and focused on the blurring lane markers for a while. Finally, I said, “Cherise, I need you to think how it felt when you put up the shield. What made you do it?”

“Um . . . I guess . . . I was getting wet. I didn’t like it.”

“Okay. Are you getting wet now?”

“Obviously not . . . Oh. Right. Okay. But I’m still wet. And kind of cold.”

I turned up the heater and directed the blast toward the back, although I was cold and shivering, too. “Once your body is convinced you don’t need it, you’ll be able to let go,” I said. “Your instincts are controlling your power, and that’s a very bad thing, Cher.” The other bad thing, although I didn’t dare say it, was that in my experience, regular people weren’t Wardens for a reason. There were changes in body chemistry in Wardens: different nerve conduction times, subtle differences that allowed us to handle and channel the kinds of power that would destroy—sooner or later—non-Wardens who tried to handle the same forces.

I didn’t know whether the transfer of powers from me to Cherise—if that was what had happened—had also given her an upgrade on the physical side. If it hadn’t, it was like putting jet fuel in a car’s gas tank. It would run for only a short time before it exploded under the stress.

I needed her to back off from using them until a specialist, an Earth Warden with real knowledge, could get a look at what was happening inside of her. But if she allowed instinct to dictate how those powers were used, we were all in serious trouble, and there was no way she’d be able to control any of it. I didn’t feel much like Yoda, but I’d have to do as a mentor.

“There is no ‘try,’ ” I said, and then swallowed a laugh. “Okay, how is it now?”

“Better,” Cherise said. “I feel better. Not as cold.”

And sure enough, overhead, the shield holding the rain off us cut in and out for a few seconds, then collapsed completely. Instant white noise, from the rain pounding on the Boss’s metal, and I engaged the wipers on full. No trouble seeing the road ahead, even with the torrential downpour. . . . Lightning was a constant event, strobing everything into horror- movie shadows and glares. “Good,” I said, and put warm approval into my voice, even though I was freezing, still. “Good work, Cher. Did you feel it when it let go?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“All right, here’s your first test. Try putting the shield back up again.”

It took about thirty seconds, but she reestablished a flickering, uncertain rain shield above the car, then, at my direction, let it go. We did that three times, until she could put up and take down the shield on command. “Good,” I said. “Now you’re controlling it; it’s not controlling you. You feel that pulse of power that comes when you call? If you feel it coming when you didn’t mean to call it, stop it. You know how. It’s the same way you dropped the shield.”

As teaching went, this was desperately inadequate. She ought to be sitting safely in a secured facility, hooked up to biofeedback equipment, getting instruction from a qualified Earth Warden who could walk her through things properly. But this was the Warden equivalent of first aid to the injured. . . . I just needed to get her stable for now. That meant teaching her whatever I could, as quickly as I could, while limiting her use of powers to the smallest expenditures possible.

It also meant outrunning this storm.

I opened up the Mustang and let him fly, and oh man, could he fly. The road vibration that was noticeable at lower speeds vanished as he hit his stride, and then it settled into a power glide so smooth it was like levitating as the speed needle hit a hundred.

This was dangerous. It wasn’t that I hadn’t driven this fast, under these conditions, before; I’d even done it while splitting my attention between controlling external supernatural forces and the road. But now I felt acutely human, powerless, and exposed. David couldn’t cover me. Cherise was now as much of a hindrance as a help, and Kevin—God only knew what Kevin could do, other than blow things up. Which he would do with great enthusiasm, of course. That wasn’t always a downside. . . .

“Something’s happening,” Cherise said suddenly. There was suppressed panic in her voice, and when I looked in the rearview mirror I saw that her eyes had gone wide, her face tight with fear. “I feel—it’s like a spike, in my head, this feeling—something’s looking at me. . . .”

I knew that feeling. It was the storm, and it had found her. We were about to be targeted.

“Easy,” I said, in my most calm and soothing voice. I gripped the steering wheel tightly to keep my hands from shaking. “That’s okay, that’s normal, all right? Take a deep breath. I need you to close your eyes now, and tell me what you see.”

“What I see? With my eyes closed?” She laughed wildly. “I can tell you that right now. Black!”

“Just do it, Cher.”

“Bitch, you are on my last nerve right now.”

“I know. Just do it.”

She shut her feverish, terrified eyes, and said, “Okay, happy now? It’s dark. And—” Her words fell away into a sudden silence, and then she said, “Oh,” in an entirely different voice. “What the hell is that?”

“Oversight,” I said. “It’s sort of the heads-up display version of going up into the aetheric, the energy realm. In the beginning you have to close your eyes to see it so you can concentrate. What do you see?”

“Uh . . . colors? Lots of colors. It’s a trippy lava-lamp groove thing up in here. Which is cool, I guess.” She was back on firmer ground now, and I could hear the relief in her voice. “What am I looking at?”

“Remember those Doppler radar maps we used back at the TV station?” I asked, and that helped steady her, too: the reference to our time together working at that low-rent local station as your stereotypical weather girls. Not that we hadn’t gotten our own back on that one. “The neon-colored ones?”

“Oh yeah. Those things. So this is the storm I’m seeing.”

“You’re seeing the energy flows. I need you to tell me where it looks worst.”

“Worst how, exactly?”

“You’ll feel it.” I couldn’t explain it any better than that; I wasn’t sure that how I’d perceive it would be a guide to how she would be able to process the information.

After a few seconds, she said, “That spot looks radioactive.”

“Where?”

Without opening her eyes, she lifted a hand, and pointed.

Straight through the front window.

Ahead of our speeding car.

I jerked my attention away from her and took my foot off the gas exactly one second before the next lightning flash revealed what Cherise had seen in Oversight. . . .

A person.

Standing in the road.

Waiting for us.

“That’s a Djinn!” Kevin yelled.

Like I didn’t know that already, even without powers.