Rachel Caine: Thin Air

It wouldn’t matter. The wood was way too wet to burn.

Lewis settled down next to the nonstarting fire, glanced at me, and extended a hand, palm out, toward the inert pile of soaked wood.

It burst into immediate hot flame.

I jerked backward, startled, blinking in the sudden dazzle of light, and looked at him. He didn’t seem to find anything odd about what had just happened; in fact, he barely paused before he began digging in his pack. He pulled out a rolled-up pair of blue jeans and a denim shirt. Thick thermal socks.

I started to edge away from him as discreetly as possible.

“Foot,” he said, and held out his hand. When I didn’t move, he sighed. “Jo, for God’s sake, unless you want to lose some toes, let me help you.” I slowly extended my bare left foot. His large, long, blissfully hot fingers wrapped around my ankle and propped it on his knee. He frowned disapprovingly at the cuts on my foot. “What the hell happened to you?” It was just a murmur and, by this time, obviously a rhetorical question. He was very intent on the cuts, not my face. “Okay, these are mostly superficial, but it’s going to hurt like hell later if I don’t do something about it. So please hold still.”

I expected him to reach for the first-aid kit I could see in the neatly organized backpack. Instead, he cupped my foot in both hands, and I felt a sudden pulsing warmth go through me, followed by a dull, shearing pain. In a second or two, the pain subsided and faded altogether. My foot felt deliciously warm. Tingling.

He let go and tugged one of the thermal socks on and up to my ankle, sealing in the warmth. I wanted to be grateful, but the truth was, I was scared. I didn’t know this guy, although he claimed to know me, and he could start fires just by snapping his fingers. Not to mention whatever he’d done to my foot, which felt really good now, but clearly wasn’t natural.

“Next,” he said, and held out his hands again. I hesitated, then gave him the right foot. I’d need those cuts sealed up if I had to make a run for it.

Maybe he’s the one. The one who kidnapped you and knocked you over the head and dumped you out here to die. Maybe, but in that case, why was he doing magical first aid? He could have just let me go. I’d have died out here without help.

Wouldn’t I?

When the right foot was healed and thermal-socked, he put the blue jeans and shirt on the ground between us, and looked up into my face.

I waited for some memory to make it past the big black wall. Anything. His name was Lewis; he acted like he knew me; I should know him.

I didn’t.

He must have taken my long stare for something else, because he shrugged. “Sorry. I don’t know where he is.”

He? There was another one? I looked down, trying not to show how tentative I was. How confused and scared.

“Jo?” He sounded grim. “Whoever took you…did they…Ah, dammit. I’m just going to ask it, all right? Were you raped?”

Had I been? The word made me feel sick and dizzy, and I had no idea how to reply. I didn’t remember my clothes coming off. I must have fought, right? I must have tried to get away. I wouldn’t have just ended up out here, naked and dying in the cold, without some kind of a reason.

Abducted and raped and left for dead. I tried it on as an explanation for the panic I felt inside, but it didn’t feel right.

He was waiting for an answer. I didn’t look up at him. “I don’t…I don’t know.” My voice sounded shockingly cracked and small. “I can’t remember,” I whispered. “Can’t remember anything.” Tears suddenly boiled up hot in my eyes, and I couldn’t get words out past the constriction in my throat. The panic hammering in my chest.

Abducted and raped and left for dead. Maybe it was true. Maybe it was just one of those sad stories that filled the daily newspapers and got the TV news industry good nightly ratings.

I felt so cold. If I kept shaking like this, pieces were going to start flying off.

“Ah, God, Jo. You’re in shock,” he said. “Look, I’m going to touch you, all right? We need to get these cuts closed up and this frostbite taken care of, and I can tell if there’s…anything else wrong. Just…hold on. Don’t fight me.” He reached out very carefully.

I flinched. I couldn’t help it. I got hold of myself somehow, and held still as his hands closed around both of mine. He moved to get on one knee in front of me.

“I have to…I have to get closer,” he said. “I need you to lie down.”

Lie down. Lie down on this freezing ground.

Lie down, at his mercy.

Not easy. Not at all. I kept telling myself that if he could heal me-however he was doing it-then I should let him. I needed to be healthy. I needed to be able to run.

I slowly let myself sink back, holding on to his hands, until I was flat on my back. The coat didn’t go very far down. The backs of my thighs felt instantly ice-cold in contact with the damp leaves, and although the fire was casting some warmth, I could barely feel it. My shaking was getting worse, not better.

“Easy,” he murmured, as if I were some wild thing he was out to tame. “Try to relax.”

Yeah, sure. Relax. I couldn’t watch what he was doing, and the darkness behind my eyelids was too frightening, too much of a reminder of everything I’d already lost. I looked up instead, at the clouds, and saw a ghost image of a vast wind flowing like a river, separated into layers. Every little eddy and swirl was suddenly visible to me. I stared, puzzled, entranced, and then gasped as I felt Lewis start in on me.

It hurt. Live-wire-on-the-tongue kind of hurt, every nerve in my body sensitizing and responding and burning, and I made a moan of protest and tried to yank free, but he held on, leaning closer, on his knees in front of me with his head bent. It looked like prayer. It felt like torture.

Oh, God… He was inside of me. Not in a sexual way, although there was something in it that resonated along those nerves, inside those aching spaces; no, this was more invasive than that. I could feel him moving through every part of me, climbing the ladders of my nerve endings, searching…

Out. Get out! I was aware that I was panting, groaning, and trying to pull my hands free of his. Let GO OF ME! I was screaming it inside as I writhed on the ground, squirming, trying to suppress the terrible feelings welling up inside of me.

I got my wish with a vengeance as a pair of hands grabbed his shoulders and threw Lewis across the clearing to smash against a tree trunk. Lewis yelled and flopped, rolled over and came to his hands and knees, then slammed facedown into the leaves before getting up again, more slowly. His face was dirty gray with shock and rage.

“You asshole,” Lewis said shakily. “I was trying to help her.”

I looked up at my rescuer.

For a moment my mind just didn’t want to acknowledge what it was seeing, because…he wasn’t human. No man had skin like that, like living metal-flickering copper and bronze, cooling into something that was more like flesh, but still too burnished for anything outside of a special effect. His hair was longish, like Lewis’s, a barely subdued blazing auburn. Although he was dressed like a regular guy, in blue jeans and a checked shirt, I had no sense of him being anything like normal.

His eyes were illuminated. Backlit, the way a cat’s can seem in beamed light. A rich, scary color like melting pennies.

He was staring straight down at me, riveted.

Expressionless.

Lewis spit blood and climbed painfully to his feet. “Make up your mind, David. Do you want her to freeze to death? Or can I get back to healing her?”