Rachel Caine - Firestorm

He made a low-throated sound of amusement. "So in other words, it's been a busy couple of days."

I gestured around at the wreckage in the office, piled like driftwood in the corners. By extension, at the chaos swirling around in the world. "You could say."

"Come here."

I frowned, but took a step closer. He reached out and took my hand, then pulled me into a body-to-body hug. I relaxed against him, letting the comfort of his warmth sink deep. He needed a shower. Hell, so did I. We were well beyond little things like that. After a few seconds, I felt the surge of power building between us… a cell-deep vibration, like calling to like. We had harmonics, we always did have, and the one time we'd allowed it to build out of control, we'd called up storms and shattered windows.

It built so fast, it was breathtaking. Glass and steel rattled around us. I took control of myself and stepped back, breaking the circuit. I glimpsed something wild and a little desperate in Lewis's eyes, quickly covered.

"Did you feel that?" he asked. "Looks like we're getting stronger."

"Just the two of us?"

"No idea, I'm afraid; I could feel it happening to me, but I've always been kind of the far end of the curve." That wasn't ego, just fact. "Still, nothing's what it was yesterday. Not the Djinn, and not us. Maybe in breaking the contract, Jonathan reset some kind of equilibrium. Maybe the Wardens were originally a lot stronger on their own. It could be that we've been bleeding off some of our own power to feed the Djinn."

Interesting notion. "So maybe we don't need the Djinn after all, if this keeps up."

"Oh, I wouldn't go that far." He was still watching me. Warm brown eyes, always fired with a little bit of amusement. "It's also possible that maybe you and I are a little more connected to the source."

"Meaning?"

He stretched out a palm, and a tiny flame flickered into life, lemon-pale and growing redder as I watched.

Redder and larger. Lewis wasn't watching this minor miracle; he was watching me, still with that sly bit of amusement lighting his eyes.

And then he pitched the softball-size ball of fire straight at me. Not a girly pitch, either. He put some English behind it.

I yelped, ducked, and felt the heat singe my hair as the fireball streaked past me. It hit the wall, bounced, landed in a pile of scattered papers, and ignited.

"Shit! What the hell are you doing?" I yelled, and without even thinking about it, felt blindly for the structure of the fire. Delicate as glass, strong as steel, but fragile.

I put it out. Not even a wisp of smoke to show it ever existed.

I rounded on Lewis, shocked and furious; he had his arms crossed, leaning back against the desk, and he was… grinning.

"What the hell was that ?" I demanded.

For answer, he extended his hand again and called another tongue of flame. "Put it out," he said.

" You put it out! This is a nonsmoking building!"

"You're missing my point."

"No, I'm not! You're trying to make me—" I stuttered to a stop, because I realized what he was trying to do. Or, more accurately, trying to demonstrate. Hey, I never said I wasn't a little thick. "Oh."

I extended my hand, cupped it over his, and felt the fire's warmth spill over me. Fire is a kind of fluid, when all is said and done: plasma dynamics. It flowed over my skin, persistent and gentle, and when I opened my palm, it was burning there. A steady tongue of flame like a pilot light, red and gold and blue.

I closed my fist around it and put it out, then opened my fingers again and called fire.

It came without even a hesitation, a flutter and a sense of pleasant warmth on my skin. I stared at it, fascinated, letting it drip from one finger to another, then rolling it back up to my palm.

"See?" he asked. He sounded smug about it. "You're Water and Fire. Interesting combination. Pretty rare, too, there's been, what? Six or seven in recent history?"

I looked up at him. "But I never had any power over fire. Never. They tested me."

"Was that before you died and got yourself reborn?"

I'd died in a fire, and David had brought me back, as a Djinn. Then Patrick and his lover Sara had given their immortal lives to make me human again, and in his youth, Patrick had been… a Fire Warden .

I could feel it coursing through me now, a kind of awareness that I'd never noticed before—a sense of the electricity inside the walls, like bright glittering lines. Of static hovering like glitter in the air. Of the aura surrounding Lewis himself, glorious as a rainbow.

I blinked, and it was gone. Good. I wasn't sure I wanted to live in a world that distracting full-time. "But—why now? I didn't feel this before—?"

"Maybe it took some time to build the power channels." He said. "Or maybe something else has shifted. Hell, Jo, you just gave birth to a Djinn. Who knows what's changed inside you?"

Queasy thought. "Um, one little problem. I don't have any formal instruction for fire powers."

"Consider it on-the-job training. And don't get cocky. You still need a third black belt to land yourself a shot at my title."

I laughed, and in the next blink, the glitter was back in the world. I stared, mesmerized by his glow, by the revealed glory of the world around me. Beautiful and complex as a machine made of crystal. Was this how Fire Wardens saw everything? No wonder they always looked spaced out…

"Jo," he said, and drew my eyes back into focus. "We're running out of time."

I sobered up quickly. "We are," I agreed. "Not to mention manpower. We've lost who-knows-how-many Wardens, and effectively all the Djinn. I hope you're right that we're getting stronger, because we need it—"

"Damn straight," said a weary voice from the doorway. I turned to see Paul standing there. He walked in and slumped with a sigh in the nearest unsplintered chair, visibly gathering strength to speak. Dirty pale. "Lewis."

Lewis nodded silently, clearly worried at Paul's state. "Do you want me to—?"

Paul waved it aside irritably. "I'll live, and you've got better things to do with your power than heal my boo-boos. Listen, kids, we need to decide some things."

Lewis glanced at me, then at Paul. "Maybe this isn't the best time."

"It's the only time," Paul sighed.

"You need rest—"

"No. I need to retire," Paul said bluntly. "The thing is, I can't handle this anymore. It's out of control, and I'm not the guy for the job. I couldn't get their attention out there earlier, Jo, and you know it. You did."

"Not me," I replied, and held up my hands to push the implied offer back his direction. "I can't stay. David gave me some ideas on how we might be able to solve this without a lot of further bloodshed, but I need to do it alone."

"Yeah? How do you know you can trust him?" Paul demanded.

I met his eyes and held them. "I know. And I have a plan, which is more than anybody else has right now." Well, more or less. At least, I had a place to start. Didn't seem to be the moment to worry him with details, frankly.

Paul sighed and turned his gaze to Lewis, who straightened up fast. "Oh, no," Lewis said. "I'm not going to take command. That's your job."

"Hell, kid, I inherited the damn job, and I never wanted it in the first place. I'm a field guy. Now I'm a field guy treading water. I want you to take it, Lewis. I need you to take it. You're the one guy everybody trusts around here, because you're the one guy who walked away from all this rather than play the games."

"He's right," I said quietly. "It should be you." I bit my lip, because it felt like being a traitor to say so—a traitor to Paul, who deserved my support even if he didn't want it, and a traitor to Lewis, who patently didn't want the responsibility. Especially not now. "This is what you were born to do, Lewis. We all knew it, right from the start. And—there might be something else."