Rachel Caine - Thin Air

When he saw her, Kevin’s mouth opened, a dark O of horror, and he lurched forward at the same time she started toward him. I climbed up to my feet, brushing away the snow, as the two of them collided to form a frantic pile of arms and legs.

Kevin was talking as he kissed her, but the words were only for Cherise, and besides, the noise of the approaching helicopter was rattling around the valley like thunder. I moved back toward Lewis, feeling tired and achy and even more anxious than before. What if Kevin was still possessed? What if we had to kill him? Oh, God.

Lewis was ready for that; I could see it in the way he was standing, watching the two of them. Nothing but calculation in his eyes. If he thought it was adorable, the slacker and the beach bunny reuniting, he kept it well hidden behind a blank, empty expression.

“Stay behind me,” he said as I approached. I nodded and obeyed. “Watch for the helicopter. Signal it when you see it.”

I risked a glance over his shoulder and saw that Cherise had taken Kevin’s hand and was leading him over toward us. “Cherise,” Lewis called. “Let go and step aside.”

“But-”

“Do it.”

I’d have done what he said, too; that tone didn’t leave any room for negotiation. I scanned the skies-still nothing but low, gray clouds-and peeked again. Cherise let go of Kevin’s hand and moved away-not far, but far enough for Lewis’s purposes, apparently.

Kevin glared at him. The kid looked ill, pale, frostbitten, and on his last legs. As Lewis took a step forward, fire began dripping from Kevin’s fingers.

“Stop fighting me,” Lewis said, voice dropping low. He was using some kind of power, something that made me feel sleepy even in the corona effect; I saw Cherise yawn and stagger. “Cherise is fine. Let us take care of you now. I know what happened. You have to stop fighting, Kevin. I’m not your enemy.”

Kevin swayed. His hands fell to dangle at his sides, and fire dripped and smoked from his fingertips, hissing into the snow. “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t touch me. You shouldn’t touch me. In case.”

“I know,” Lewis said. He was nearly within grabbing range. “It’s okay. It’s gone now. You’re going to be all right.”

Kevin staggered and collapsed to his knees in the snow. Where his hands met the white powder, the snow sizzled into steam. “I tried,” he mumbled, and shook his head angrily. Fire flew like drops of sweat. “I tried to stop it. It came out of the forest fire; I’d never seen anything like that before; I didn’t know what to…I couldn’t protect her. I thought I could, but-”

Lewis was there by then, and without any hesitation at all he grabbed Kevin and pulled him upright. “It’s not your fault,” he said. “There’s not a Warden alive who could have done any better. Including me. You survived. That’s the important thing.”

Kevin was barely conscious, and Cherise moved to help support him, casting looks at Lewis that silently pleaded for him to make things right. I heard the thump-thump-thump of rotors overhead growing clearer, and finally spotted a shadow moving through the mist.

I started scissoring my arms. The color of my down jacket-green-might not be enough for them to pick us out, but I did some jumping up and down and yelling, even though I knew the yelling was useless. The helicopter headed toward us, hovered overhead, and started circling in for a landing.

As I lowered my arms to shield my eyes from blowing snow, I saw someone standing in the shadows across the clearing. She was tall, and she had long, dark hair that blew in a silken sheet on the wind. She wasn’t wearing a coat, just a pair of blue jeans, some not-very-practical boots, and a baby-doll tee in aqua blue. I had that disorientation again, the same as when I’d been watching myself through Cherise’s eyes, but this was different. For one thing, it wasn’t a memory. She was there, facing me, in real time.

It took exactly one second for the full implications to hit me, hard, and run me down like a speeding train.

“Imara?” I whispered. Or tried. My voice was locked tight in my throat. I glanced desperately at Lewis, but he was occupied with the kids, and besides, he couldn’t possibly have heard me over the roar of the descending machine. “Oh, God. Imara, is it you?” Because it had to be my daughter, didn’t it? She looked just like me-the same height, the same curves, the same black hair, although hers looked better cared for at the moment.

And the wind blew her hair back, revealing her face fully. She smiled, and my whole skin shivered into gooseflesh, because that smile was wrong . I felt the dark impact of it all the way across the open snowy space. She was not my daughter. There was a crawling, sticky sense of evil to it. There was also an overwhelming feeling of danger, even though she wasn’t making any overt moves in my direction.

She was… me.

“Lewis!” I said, startled into a yell.

He can’t help you , she said, as clearly as if she were standing at normal conversational distance. It wasn’t a voice, though. Not really. If he does, I’ll have to take action. Do you want me to destroy him? And the children? I will. It means nothing to me, really.

She wasn’t my daughter.

She was the Demon .

Walk toward me , she said. Walk toward me, and no more have to be harmed. That’s what you want, isn’t it? I promise you, I will make it painless.

“Lewis,” I said, louder. “Lewis, dammit, look !”

You’ll only make this harder in the end.

She turned and walked back into the trees. Gone. I couldn’t even seen tracks where she’d been standing.

“What?” Lewis shouted to me, suddenly at my side and bending his head close to mine to be heard over the noise. The dull blunt-force thud of helicopter blades was very loud now. “What’s wrong?”

Would he believe me if I told him? Or would he think I’d just finally lost my last screw? There was nothing to see there now, and as I extended the senses that Lewis and David had been showing me how to use, I got…nothing. Nothing but whispering trees and a slow, sleeping presence that I assumed was how I now perceived the Earth.

“Nothing,” I said. “Never mind.”

I watched as the helicopter began its descent. I held my hair back against the harsh, ice-edged wind it kicked up, and backed up with Lewis to give it room to land. The helicopter touched down, and the rotors slowed but didn’t stop. The emblem on the side was some kind of seal, and nothing I recognized.

A burly shape, well muffled in winter gear, hopped out of the passenger door, ducked the way people instinctively do when there’s sharp metal chopping the air just about head level, and hurried toward me through the snow. He shouted something to me that sounded like, Need a ride? which was fine with me.

I helped Lewis load Cherise and Kevin into the helicopter, and belted myself in for the rattling, noisy ride.

You’re safe now , I told myself. It’s all okay.

But I didn’t really believe it.

If I’d ever been in a helicopter before, I didn’t know it, but one thing was for certain: I sure didn’t like it. The dull roar of the rotors never let me forget that those fragile blades were all that stood between this clanking metal insect and a catastrophic crash, and I shuddered to think about all of the things that could happen to all those very breakable parts involved, including my own.

It was also a rough trip, full of bounces, jounces, drops, sideways lurches, and other exciting contraventions of gravity. I kept my eyes squeezed shut, clung to the handhold strap, and pretended not to be scared out of my mind.