Rachel Caine: Ill Wind

I had to put some distance between me and what was going on. And I had to undo the damage that had been done up in the atmosphere before lightning started striking like blue-white cobras all over the county, mindless and vicious and enraged. I pulled out on the road and started trying to reverse polarity on the charged particles in the air overhead. The trick was not to try to change everything, just enough links in the chain to break the connections. I chose the particles by feel and instinct, turning that one, and that one, then flipping a whole section like a pancake on a hot griddle.

Breaking the chain of destruction.

The particles rolled back over, connecting faster than thought, heading for me and Delilah.

Dammit!

I hit the gas and Delilah jumped, raced like her life depended on it. I abandoned the sky and focused on the thin line of moisture on the road beneath the tires. I couldn't change the charge in the earth, couldn't even sense if the ground had been sensitized, too, but I could control the water. It was something my enemy— whoever that was—might not have thought of.

In the split second before lightning discharged through the open particle chain, I reversed the polarity of the water and snapped its energy feed to the ground.

The circuit broke, and the energy bled off harmlessly in a million directions.

I waited, watching in Oversight, while my body took care of controlling the Mustang's wild gallop on damp pavement. Watched the living, thinking particles turn and turn and turn, whirring, searching for another circuit to complete.

I watched them suddenly revert to their natural random state as whoever was behind it let go.

I pulled in a deep breath and realized I was sweating. The car reeked with it.

I rolled down the windows and kept driving, not daring to slow down.

The weather isn't what you think it is. Not by a long shot.

It's a predator. In fact, the whole world around you is full of predators you can't see, can't sense, that are held in check only by their own whims and the power of about 1 percent of the human population. You want to know why the dinosaurs died out? Look around. They didn't have any Wardens.

We come in three basic flavors. People who control water and air are Weather Wardens, and we're in charge of keeping the furious storms the planet stirs up from scouring mankind off the face of the planet. Earth Wardens keep us from joining the great march to extinction by diverting dozens of planet-crushing catastrophes every year. Fire Wardens control—or try to control—the tendency of the planet to burn things to crispy ash. Mother Nature is schizophrenic and homicidal, and the only thing that stands between you and hideous, painful death is a couple of thousand people worldwide hanging on by their fingernails. Happy, huh? Most people don't want to know that. Hell, most of the time I don't want to know.

The Wardens are people with one hell of a lot of magical ability, but the Wardens Association is, foremost and always, a bureaucracy. Oh, sure, we're public servants, saving lives, doing good works, blah blah, but hey, we get paid, and we have structure and job duties and a very nice dental program. Sort of like the IRS, if the IRS kept you from being horribly killed on a daily basis.

In charge are the High Wardens who make up the World Council (which is, oddly, based in the UN Building in New York, although not on any floor most people are likely to visit). Below them you have your National Wardens, who control entire countries, and beneath them Sector Wardens, Regional Wardens, Local Wardens, and Staff.

Nobody expected there would be anything more powerful than a World Council Warden, but then nobody had expected Lewis to pop up, controlling all the elements. Lewis didn't fit. Or… to be more accurate… he fit in right at the top. A true master of the craft, absolutely unique. Nobody in the great big machine that made up the Association much liked the idea, except they couldn't very well doubt it, not with Lewis demonstrating it every time they asked by calling fire, water, air, earth. For a while after the incident with the frat boys, Lewis lived like a lab rat, hemmed in by people who desperately wanted to control him, disprove him, understand him, stop him, worship him, destroy him. And some who just wanted his autograph.

I tried to find out what was going on, but I was just an apprentice, even if everybody agreed I had lots of power and promise. There was no way I'd be kept informed about decisions made at the World level. But at some point—and this is just a guess—I think they decided mat it would be safer for everybody if Lewis just didn't exist.

I think somebody tried to kill him. Worse. I think they were stupid enough to miss.

Anyway, we know that Lewis flew the coop. He vanished with three—count 'em, three —of the precious bottles of Djinn from the Association vaults. Poof. Crime of the century, committed by the most wanted man on earth.

Since then, seven years ago, a lot of people have been looking for Lewis.

I was just the latest.

Lightning bolts out of the blue. Great. Somebody was trying to kill me. Actively. This was new, different, and not very welcome.

It was possible—okay, likely—that this had to do with a guy named Bad Bob Biringanine. Bad Bob was not quite two days dead, I'd been there for his big finish, and it was entirely conceivable that I was going to be held responsible. I might have a slim chance of avoiding that, but only if I came in from the cold and talked to the Wardens Council… and if I did it wearing the Demon Mark, well, that would be the ball game. I could explain, but they'd never believe me. Never.

And in any case, whether they believed me or not, they couldn't help me.

I was just praying hard that Lewis could. The problem was getting to him before somebody else got to me.

It was possible that the lightning had been an official warning from the Wardens, in which case I was in really deep, no shovel in sight; I needed to know for sure before I decided on my next move. There was only one person I could trust to ask, these days, who was still on the inside. I retrieved the cell phone, checked the charge—down to one slender bar—and speed-dialed another number.

I got Paul on the first ring.

"Jesus fucking Christ, Jo, what did you just do?" It was a bellow, not a question, and I jerked the phone away from my ear, then tentatively moved it back. "Fuckin' power surge the size of fuckin' New Jersey, and it's right in the middle of my Sector! And don't tell me it wasn't you, I know your style!"

"It wasn't me. Well, it was aimed at me, but I didn't start it," I said, and waited out the gush of curses. Paul Giancarlo was one of the good guys. His temper was mostly a lot of sound, very little fury; for a guy with Family connections—in the Cosa Nostra sense— he was surprisingly sweet. However, I was in Paul's Sector, and within it, he was lord and master of the weather, and he took that responsibility very seriously. If I'd been careless with lives, he'd hold a grudge.

Paul bossed about a hundred Regional and Local Wardens, and his chunk of the world ran from somewhere around Montpelier down through Philadephia, Pennsylvania. I was smack in the middle of it. He had the power to make my trip very uncomfortable indeed, since Paul was great in small scale. He could deliver a monsoon with pinpoint accuracy, hang it right over the Mustang no matter where I turned. He could funnel-cloud me up to Oz, if he chose. And I didn't have time. Besides, conflict between Wardens is rarely good for anybody.

"They're looking for you," he said more quietly. "Guess you already know that, since you dropped out of sight like that."