Rachel Caine: Chill Factor

"I remember," I said. I didn't know if he could hear me.

"Is it still what you're most afraid of?"

I felt the vibration coming up through the rocks. Next to my eyeline, sand jittered madly, and I felt a sudden cool, damp breeze.

I clawed my way up to my feet and looked at the canyon walls. Far, far up at the top, I saw a black dot of a head looking down.

I knew how he was going to kill me.

Fuck him. I wasn't going to die like this. Not like this.

I kicked off my shoes, ran for the wall, and grabbed for my first handhold.

I'm going to ask you one last question , he'd said, there in the dark, when all my screaming had died down to whispers, when he'd stopped cutting me and left me to bleed for a while. The scrape of his fingertips over my sweaty, bloody face had made me want to crawl away, but I'd been too weak. Too afraid.

What are you most afraid of? What's the one way you don't want to die?

And because I'd been too numbed to lie, I'd whispered, Drowning . As soon as I'd let myself say it, I'd tried to take it back, tried to pretend I'd lied, but he knew.

Orry knew fear when he heard it.

He'd dragged me to the edge of the pool, and he'd held me underwater until I'd stopped moving.

I'd had just enough power left, just enough skill, to keep the oxygen in my lungs refreshed as his hand shoved my face down to the bottom of that shallow pool and held me there with his fist knotted in my hair.

He was careful. Let me stay under for a full two minutes before he let go, and he left me there, floating facedown.

When I was sure he'd gone, I'd rolled out of the water and huddled in the dark, trembling. Weeping without sound and without tears. Then crawling, inch by torturous inch, back out of the caves into the hot sunlight.

Four hours later, I'd made my way outside to the highway, where a passing motorist had found me.

Just another victim.

What are you most afraid of?

I'd told him, and now he was going to use it against me again.

Son of a bitch, screw you, I'm not dying like this .

I hauled myself up with my right hand, found a grip for my left, and jammed fingers in. Nails broke, but I barely felt it. My bare toes scrabbled at the rock wall and clung to a tiny outcropping.

Three feet up. I found the next handhold, and hauled against the shattering strain in my arms and shoulders. Need to lose some weight . That was the crazy, insane, stupidly optimistic part of my brain that just never quite failed to see the funny side of dying horribly.

I could feel the vibration in the canyon walls. The breeze was picking up speed. Climb ! The air in the canyon was unstable, already swirling. Trying to control it was a sucker bet.

I climbed another three feet, painfully achieved.

"Give it up," Quinn said from somewhere way up there, hundreds of feet above. "You know how this goes. A flash flood rips through these canyons, it pulverizes boulders, rips up trees like kindling. You won't even be a little bitty scrap of skin by the time it dumps you out in the river. Maybe you won't even have time to drown. Would that make you feel any better?"

Two more feet. My sweating toes slipped, then my left hand; I bit back a scream of rage and reached again. Pulled. Felt the burning tear in my triceps grow stronger.

A whip of wind lashed my hair back, and I heard the low grumble.

"Holy shit," Quinn said. "Looks like a real gully washer, there. Sorry. Want me to shoot you, put you out of your misery?"

"Fuck you," I gasped, and lurched another two feet higher. I glanced down. I was maybe ten feet up now, enough to make me dizzy but no way enough to save me. The low grumbling sound was getting louder, and the wind stiffer. It smelled like wet sand and death. Nothing clean about the water hurtling down the canyon toward me. It had started out as a flood at least half a mile back, maybe more, picking up speed and debris by sweeping the canyons. Foaming and raging like a sea, taking with it birds, rabbits, snakes, people, cars, anything in its path.

It was coming fast.

" Sure you don't want me to shoot you? 'Cause if you're waiting on your friends, they're a little busy. Jonathan's helping out with that."

I lunged upward. My fingers were bloody, the nails ripped off at the quick, and my shoulders and arms were trembling. I flailed for a right handhold, found one and shifted my weight…

… and the shale under my fingers shattered like glass.

I screamed, clung to my left handhold, and felt my shoulder pop hot as a gunshot. The wind turned cold, flapped my hair like a flag, and when I reached up again for a grip my bloody left hand slipped. I scrabbled like a doomed cartoon character, managed to find something to cling to, and hung there, trembling.

No way could I get high enough. It was going to lick me off the wall.

I turned my face toward the first damp breath as the roar burst open. The flood was rounding the corner up ahead. It was a wall of black of mist and foam and death, thirty feet high. I saw the bloody, torn hindquarters of a cow being tossed on the leading edge.

I felt my fingers slip again, and there was no point in trying to stop it this time.

As the wall of water slammed into me like a speeding truck, I let myself fall.

What are you most afraid of ?

Drowning.

That wasn't actually true, after all. It hurt, but what hurt worse was the knowledge that Quinn was going to get away. He was going to take Jonathan's bottle and he was going to get in his SUV and go bouncing across the desert, and if there was revenge to be had, it wouldn't be had by me, and dammit , I couldn't let myself go down like this. I couldn't. I'd survived him before, in the dark, when there was no hope.

I felt something warm move inside of me.

I might let you kill me, you bastard, but you will not kill my daughter .

The current had knocked me fuzzy and gray, but the real problem was the debris churning in the water with me, and the impacts with canyon walls that were going to rip me limb from limb. I had seconds left, maybe less. The water was moving so fast that the walls were a blur sweeping past, and all I could do was try to stay on top of the roiling cold surge. Swimming was stupid. I focused on the water itself, but it was driven by so much force and so much chaos that I couldn't grip anything, couldn't hold it…

Ma'at.

It wasn't about gripping and holding.

It was about removing the need for the water to move at all.

I took a deep, scared breath and ducked under the surface. It was almost black, laden with silt and debris, and the silk of the water swallowed me whole.

I left myself go. Drifting. Listening to the water's heart.

Letting it flow through me like a river. Surfing with it, undulating. Finding the frequency of the water and creating the counter vibration, exactly opposite.

Waves began to still instead of amplify. Surges became still patches.

Slowing.

I opened my eyes and bobbed up to grab another breath, and saw that the flood was still fast but no longer the roaring monster it had been. I could try to swim, at least. Stay ahead of the heavier debris, ride the crest of the-

There was a boulder straight ahead, jammed in a narrow part of the canyon, and I was heading straight for it.

Five seconds left.

Two.

Oh, God …

I felt myself lifting on the surge of the wave, and waited for the fall, the impact, the end.

I kept rising.

Rising out of the water.

Someone was holding me from behind, arms clasped around me under my breasts, and I felt a wild and burning heat that turned water between us to steam.

"Rahel?" I asked, and turned to look.