Rachel Caine - Ill Wind

I had already rolled down the window, and the smell of early spring wafted in, sweet with wild-flowers. I knew I looked a mess, and I verified it in the mirror—yep, circles under dark blue eyes, no makeup, lank, needed-to-be-washed black hair. I smelled, too. I needed a shower and sleep.

The cop appeared at my window so suddenly I thought that, like Rahel, he'd planned it for effect.

His mirrored sunglasses reflected my pallid face and mooncalf expression.

"Hi," I said weakly.

"License, registration, and insurance."

I handed them over. He took them without comment, but didn't look at them yet.

"You from Florida, miss?" he asked. The plates on the Mustang were from the Sunshine State. It wasn't a psychic leap.

"Yes, sir. Saint Petersburg."

"Uh-huh." He made it sound suspicious. "You were pushing this beauty pretty hard."

"I'm sorry about that. It sort of got away from me." As if a car had ever gotten away from me in my entire life.

"You really have to watch it, a car like this. It's a lot of power for—" He had been, I thought, about to say such a little lady, but sensitivity training had paid off. " — for everyday driving."

"Thank you, sir, I will." Was that a dark cloud moving too fast overhead? I had only the reflection in his glasses to go by, but I could have sworn there was a cloud….

"Just a minute, miss." He went away with my papers. I leaned over and tried to figure out what was going on above me. I let go of my body just enough to shift into Oversight, and saw myself flickering gold and violet and red, the Mark moving like a nest of worms above my heart. Then I looked up, through the crystalline roof of the Mustang, and I was staring straight down the throat of Hell.

What was happening up there wasn't obeying any natural laws. It was being forced to happen. I tried to reach for the clouds, the winds, the pressures, but I got shoved aside like a child. Something incredibly strong was manipulating everything from the exosphere on down, all the way to the friction layer. Red flickered in the clouds, and as I watched, it shifted spectrums, into photonegative.

Whatever was about to fall on me, it was going to fall very hard.

The cop popped back in my window, and this time I did flinch—in Oversight, he was a burly, twisted-looking bastard, probably neither good nor bad, but nothing I wanted to tangle with. He handed me a clipboard with something signable on it. I signed. He probably said something. I probably responded. He handed back my papers.

I badly wanted to scream at him to get back in his car, but it wouldn't have been a good idea; I clutched the ticket in one sweaty palm, fired up the Mustang, and eased it into gear. Carefully. The cops got in their cruiser and sat there, writing up records. I felt a lurch of relief…. At least they weren't going to be fried like eggs on the pavement. Now all I had to worry about was me.

"Easy," I chanted to Delilah. "Easy, easy, easy." We drove, holding it to the speed limit, and overhead the storm grew and swirled and muttered its hatred. It followed. Again, I tried to defuse it, but whatever force controlled it had effectively shut me out. I had seven hours left to go. I wondered if Hell planned to wait that long.

The storm stayed with me into Pittsburgh, traveling like a balloon tethered to the antenna of my car. The weather channel was in a panic. Meteorologists, not being in the know or having Oversight, were unable to predict the consequences, but their outlook was grim. Hell, I knew the consequences, and they were right—the outlook was grim.

After five long hours of steering, I was sweaty and trembling; the Mustang practically drove itself, but I'd worn myself out, trying to get a grip on the factors that were driving the weather system overhead. I could feel other Wardens trying to work on the storm, but it laughed at us. Heavy magic. Big weather.

It was a special kind of torment. The person who'd created the storm knew I was trying to stop it, and the stress of my not knowing when and where it would strike was half the fun for the sick bastard. I thought longingly of Paul. Maybe if I called him… or Rashid… No, they were in this up to their necks already, and if they hadn't already solved this problem, they weren't going to be able to do anything for me. So who was doing this? Somebody had come along and brute-forced this thing together, and if it hadn't been broken up yet by the combined power of the Wardens, it had one hell of a power supply behind it. When I looked at it in Oversight, there was no clear identification, nobody lurking nearby to blame it on. Which meant it was somebody strong enough to do it at a great distance without traveling in Oversight to touch it. That was—incredible. And really, really scary. Who the hell could manage that kind of thing? Very few, I thought. Senior Wardens, World Council members… Lewis.

I had a very bad feeling suddenly.

The world slid by, shadowed by hovering clouds. Spring still tried to be cheerful but lost color as the sun disappeared. Birds fled with me, heading west. Other cars moved in formation, too, their drivers either oblivious or trying to make it despite the odds; I didn't have a choice. Stopping would be suicide. Driving on was just as bad.

I'd be out of gas by Columbus.

Think. I was a Weather Warden, dammit—maybe not holding on to the best possible reputation these days, but I was damned good at my work. My palms were sweating again. I wiped them, one at a time, and took another swallow of soft drink. My throat was so dry, it clicked. On the seat beside me lay the crumpled wad of ticket that I hadn't even bothered to read. If I survived this drive, I'd survive a fine from the Pennsylvania State Troopers.

Back at school, old Yorenson had always said there was no such thing as an unstoppable weather system. Weather was as delicate as a house of cards. Remove one card, and the structure would start to collapse; the trick was to plan the collapse. A perfect execution, he'd said, would negate the threat and create a beneficial environment at the same time.

Maybe I'd been thinking about it wrong. I'd been prodding at the storm itself, trying to loosen the magic that bound it together; maybe all I needed to do was change its location. I reached for my cell phone and dialed it one-handed from memory.

Paul's growling voice. "You've got to be kidding. Are you crazy, calling me? I thought we had an agreement."

"Listen. I know you're tracking this thing—"

"Yeah, I know it's centered right over you." He sounded depressed; I wondered if there was someone listening in. "You know what they taught you, Joanne. You fuck around with the weather, it will fuck around with you."

"This ain't a storm cell with a grudge, Paul. Somebody's driving."

"The brain trust thinks it's you. That you've gone over the edge."

"Brilliant," I sighed. "Just brilliant. You know better."

"I'm just sayin'."

I bit my tongue hard enough to taste blood. Blood and ozone. The storm was getting stronger overhead, rotating like a pinwheel. Other cars had run for cover. I was driving all alone now, and up ahead I saw another small town on the horizon.

"Listen, we're running out of time," I said. "Help me."

"We're trying, dammit, but if you didn't put this thing together, I don't know who the hell did. It's stronger than anything I've ever seen—"

"We need to do this together. I need you to create a cold downdraft over the top of this thing. You're going to do it fast and hard."

He grunted. "We tried that. Didn't work."

"You do it at the same time I create a hot-air mass underneath. We ought to be able to pop this sucker straight up about twenty miles and start kicking the crap out of it with an adiabatic process. I need it in the mesosphere, Paul. We have to rob it of the fuel or we can't pull it to pieces."