Rachel Caine - Gale Force

I put my back into pulling Silverton down the hallway, trying to avoid the worst of the debris. It seemed like a very long way, and I had to superoxygenate my lungs to keep spots from dancing in front of my eyes. I’d pay for it later, but for now, I just wanted out .

My heels hit an inconveniently placed broken computer monitor, and I tipped backward.

David caught me. “What the hell is going on?” he asked. “What are you doing?”

I whirled to face him. I can only imagine how I must have looked—wild-eyed, sweating, scared. He took a step back. “Help me get him outside,” I panted. Without comment, he scooped up Silverton in his arms and walked down the hall, olive-drab coat belling behind him. I hustled after, feeling a shake in my knees that definitely hadn’t been there before. In fact, I felt distinctly sick now, wobbly, light-headed, but I was determined not to show it. We had enough problems to talk about.

David simply blew the glass doors off their hinges at the entrance—effective, if a little showy. The resulting hail of broken glass melted away in midair and formed a soft mound of sand, which served as a bed on which he placed Silverton. “Now,” he said, and turned to me, “what the hell —”

He caught me as I collapsed. Which actually came as a surprise to me—the collapse, not that he caught me. I hadn’t felt it coming on; I’d thought I was coping just fine. David pressed his warm hand to my forehead as he lowered me to the sand beside Silverton. “Jo?” He muttered under his breath, something about stupid Weather Wardens and their foolish sense of invulnerability, which really wasn’t fair because I didn’t feel at all invulnerable at the moment. I felt scared.

David’s magical touch poured warmth into me, but it was like pouring it into a black hole. Whatever was affecting me, it was wrong in ways I couldn’t even begin to realize.

“Wait,” I said, and held his gaze with all the determinationI had left. “David, I need you to go into the basement. There’s a dead Djinn there, and a thing— a thing we think is antimatter. Don’t go alone. Be careful—”

I had more to say, but it got lost somewhere, and the light was too bright in my eyes, and then it was dark and still and quiet, and I was all alone, floating.

Well, dying always had been kind of peaceful for me.

I woke up in a hospital, hooked up to tubes, and I was alone. No David by my bedside. No Lewis loitering in a chair. No Cherise, even.

All alone.

I pressed the call button, wondering if I was in a Warden hospital. Pressing the call button seemed like an Olympic event, and one I wasn’t likely to medal in at that. I was unreasonably exhausted, considering I’d just woken up. While I waited for attention, I looked over the room I was in. Typical hospital issue—an adjustable bed, with rails that were up. Machines that beeped. A silently playing TV high in the corner, tuned to the Weather Channel, which led me to believe that at the very least I’d had Warden visitors.

Nobody was responding to my call. I pressed the button again, sweating with effort. My mouth tasted like metal, and it was sticky and dry. Everything smelled wrong. My whole body ached, the kind of nasty, all-over body aches you get with high fever, and there were some white-hot spots of pain in various joints. I’d been hurt worse, but somehow, being all alone, hooked up to machines and left ignored, made this seem worse.

I gulped down a breath and pressed the button again, convulsively.

The door banged open, admitting a nurse wearing the latest scrub fashions—floral print, with a predominantly red color. She didn’t look familiar, and she didn’t look happy. “Ms. Baldwin,” she said. “Awake, I see.”

I tried to nod. Appallingly, I couldn’t seem to get my throat to produce sounds. I gestured at the water pitcher; she poured me a glass and held it for me. I gulped. Water had never tasted quite so good . . . until I realized that it was taking on a red tinge. I was bleeding into it. I pulled back, gasping, and wiped my lips. Blood on my fingers. It was coming from my gums, which were seeping red.

“Relax, honey,” the nurse said, unbending a little bit when she saw the obvious distress in my face. “You had a pretty high dose of radiation. You’re getting treatment, though.”

The water had lubricated my vocal cords. “Where am I?”

“Extension Hospital Fourteen,” she said, which meant I was in the Warden system, not general human health care. Thank God. “I’m sorry we didn’t have anybody with you, but you’ve been out for a while, and we had other patients. Do you have a lot of pain?”

I managed to keep my nod to a measured sort of response, not a frantic oh-my-God-yes-give-me-drugs sort of gesture. She got the point, though, and showed me the meds button, which I pushed for all it was worth. Liquid gold painkillers slid through my veins, and I breathed a deep sigh of relief. Even tasting blood didn’t seem that disturbing, suddenly.

“David?” I asked. My voice sounded horribly weak.

The nurse hesitated and didn’t quite meet my eyes. “Your friend and Lewis Orwell brought you in, but they had to leave. Some kind of emergency.”

“Haven’t been back?”

“No, not yet. But I’m sure they’ll be back as soon as they can.”

Not good. That meant something had happened. She’d said it had been days. . . .

Someone else hip-bumped open the door, and came in carrying two tall coffees. It was Cherise. She looked tired, but still glamorously touseled, and the smile she gave me was pure relief. “I knew a mocha would get you up,” she said, and flopped into a chair next to me. “You are so predictable. So. How are you?”

“Sick,” I said. “What the hell happened?”

The nurse cautioned her about hot liquids and my invalid state, which both of us ignored, and left the room. Cherise leaned forward and helped me manage the mocha. It was warm, not scalding, and the caffeine/ sugar/fat combo made me feel much steadier inside. “Well,” Cherise said, “you pretty much freaked everybody the hell out. Including people I’ve never heard of, who flew over from Switzerland and Australia and places like that.”

“Wardens?”

“Some of them, yeah. There’s some kind of big meeting going on. That’s where everybody is.” Cherise’s big blue eyes focused on mine, and I saw an internal debate going on for a few seconds before she said, “Your friend’s dead.”

“I—what?”

“Your friend Mr. Silverton. He didn’t make it, Jo. They tried, but he was too far gone. David and Lewis both tried, but nothing worked. They were scared about you, too.” Cherise’s expression told me everything I didn’t want to know about how bad off I really was. Bleeding gums were the least of my problems. “You’re going to have to rest up this time. Seriously.”

“But . . . did they say anything about the Djinn? The dead one? And the—”

“They said that under no circumstances was Joanne Baldwin supposed to jump out of bed and charge to anybody’s rescue. Seriously, Jo. Not your problem. Not anymore.” She reached out and smoothed hair back from my face. “You look like crap, by the way.”

“Gee, thanks. So glad you’re my affirmation girl.” I actually was glad, but I couldn’t let her know that. There was love, real and soothing, in the touch of her fingers. It lulled as much as the morphine. I felt sharp grief at the death of Jerome Silverton, and guilt. We’d gotten in over our heads, and that was the last thing we’d intended. I’d counted on Jerome, as the expert, to know when to back off. Instead, he’d continued though he’d known it was likely a suicide run. I guessed he thought it was necessary.