Rachel Caine: Ill Wind

Must have been a lot of pressure, but you'd never have known it from the way he acted. Lewis was quiet; he did his work, went to classes, had some friends but gave the strong impression that if any man was an island, it was Isla Lewis. I admit, I pined after him. I had my reasons.

Unfortunately, Lewis avoided Program girls like the plague—which was kind of my fault, because our first encounter had been, shall we say, memorable. Anyway, he deliberately went for the normal girls. Sociology majors, psych grad students, the occasional goofy art student. Girls whose biggest aspiration was to get a secretarial job at Smith Barney and vacation with their bosses in the Bahamas… unlike those of us in the Program, who dreamed of facing down F5 tornadoes and calming raging rivers.

Because I was not stalking him, just keenly aware of his presence, I happened to be around for The Event, which was what we began calling it later when there was some perspective on what had happened.

That was the night Lewis got the shit kicked out of him by six frat boys on a bender.

It was the Kappa Kappa Psi party, which was a music fraternity… for some odd reason, the band geeks always knew how to throw a bitchen party. Four of us from the Program crashed the scene— Lewis, who came on the arm of some miniature brunette flute player; and Paula Keaton, Ed Hernandez, and me, who came looking for free drinks and the slim possibility of getting charmed out of our underwear. I glimpsed Lewis early on, talking to his flute player but not looking very comfortable; he didn't drink much, and the party was rolling pretty well.

Flute Girl eventually got swept away on a tide of Everclear punch, and Lewis was left to ramble around on his own. He knew I was there—I think— but we didn't hook up. If we had… well. Water, bridges, et cetera.

Sometime around 2 a.m., he knocked over a guy's drink. Pretty stupid reason for what happened, but the reason ceased to matter after the third or fourth round of insults, and suddenly there were six of them and one of him, and punches started flying. Two of them held him down, the others took turns kicking him when he went down. Like everybody else standing around at the party, I was frozen in shock, cold beer in hand. Violence happens so quickly. Unless it's you taking the beating, it takes time for it to sink in, especially when alcohol's involved. If you're an onlooker, reaction comes later, when you're asking yourself why the hell you didn't do anything to help.

It couldn't have been long as serious beatings go, maybe less than a minute, but a guy can get really fucked up in sixty seconds when it's a free-for-all, six on one. About the time some of the other guys at the party realized they should be doing something and I opened my mouth to scream, Lewis got kicked in the head and he rolled on his side toward me, and I saw his face.

Bloody. Scared to death. Desperate.

He reached out to me. No, that's wrong; he reached out toward me. He reached for power, as unconsciously as a child reaching for its mother.

The Mother Of Us All reached back.

I felt power sweep over—out of me—in a storm of pins and needles, felt the air gasp around me, felt water drops pulled off my skin and my beer bottle by the sheer power of his call.

The wind hit with the force of a freight train. It was targeted, specific, and it was hungry. I felt its tugging passage, but it barely ruffled my hair; it slammed into the six frat boys and picked them up and swept them across the parking lot, into the side of a brick building, and pinned them there thirty feet off the ground.

Nobody except those who study weather really understands the incredible nature of wind. A fifty-mile-an-hour gust is brutal, but a seventy-five-mile-an-hour gust is more than twice as powerful as that because of the increased pressure per square inch. A ninety-mile wind, three times worse.

These college boys were crushed by, at minimum, a wind of above 120 miles per hour. Enough to fracture bones from the sheer force of the impact. More bones broke from the pressure acting on them as they were held up against the wall. I remember thinking, as I looked at this incredible display of power, My God, he's going to squeeze them into jelly, but in the next second Lewis blinked and the wind died and they fell thirty feet to the grass.

Chaos followed. Lewis lay on the ground, gasping for air, staring at me. I stared back in total shock. After what seemed like ages, I hurried over to him, hunkered down, and put my hand on his forehead. He felt burning hot.

"Jesus, Lewis, you called the wind," I blurted. "You've got everything. Everything."

He just managed to nod. He probably didn't understand exactly what it meant, the state he was in. The Association got there before five minutes was out, and he was loaded into an ambulance accompanied by three of the most powerful Wardens in the entire world, all of them arguing furiously about what had just happened.

He looked afraid. And woozy. I keep thinking that if I'd done something then, said something to him, tried to stop them from taking him away, maybe things would have been different.

But, realistically, probably not.

I drove for about half an hour before I decided the radio wasn't going to make any more mystical-musical pronouncements. I fished the cell phone one-handed out of my purse and checked the battery level. Two bars. No chance of recharging; I hadn't had time to pack for basic hygiene, much less handy phone accessories. I paged through the numbers in memory— Mom, Sarah, my dry cleaners, my massage therapist… Ah. Estrella Almondovar. Just who I was looking for.

I punched the speed dial and waited through the clicks and rings, lots of rings, before a sleep-mashed voice mumbled, "This had better be important."

"Kinda," I said, with as much fake cheer as I could pack into my voice. "Gooood morning, my little jumping bean."

She cleared her throat. I could just see her dragging a hand through midnight-black hair, trying to rub away the dreams.

"I got your salsa right here, bimbo," she said. "Jesus Maria, what time is it?"

"Eight a.m. on the East Coast."

"Yeah, that's like six here. You know, big hand on the six, only you can't see it 'cause it's dark? What, they don't teach you time zones in Florida?" I heard sheets rustling. Static clawed the line. "I guess you want something."

"Great sex," I sighed. "With a gorgeous man, with a great big—"

"Bank account," she finished. "Some things never change, eh? Sad thing is, you'll probably get it. Meanwhile, I get to listen to your wet dreams at you've-got-to-be-fucking-kidding-me in the morning."

I downshifted and drafted behind a semi tractor-trailer hauling ass in the fast lane. With cars like my lovely Delilah, and ever-rising gas prices, it pays to conserve all the fuel you can. The Mustang shuddered from the buffeting before we settled into the slipstream, then purred out her pleasure.

Somewhere in the wilds of Oklahoma, Estrella banged what sounded like metal around, dropped the phone, picked it up. "It's your dime, Jo. You've got until my coffeemaker fills up the first cup, and then I'm gone whether you're finished or not."

"Places to see, people to do?"

She snorted. "Chica, you ought to cut down on the crack. I got no place to be and nobody to do, as usual." That was closer to the truth than either of us wanted to explore.

"Then this would be good news: I'm headed your way."

"Seriously?" Her tone turned guarded. "What's wrong?"

"Wrong? Why would it be wrong?" I thwacked myself on the forehead. Estrella—Star, to her friends— knew me too well.

"You're kidding, right? You —leave a life of topless beaches and hot hard bodies to vacation in Oklahoma?"