Chill Factor

I passed the broken-out window, caught a glimpse of Lewis standing stark-pale, shielding his face against the fierce wind, blood-streaked from flying glass cuts.

He reached out to try to catch me, but it was too late. I felt the hot graze of his fingers against my bare ankle and then I was going up into the storm.

Taken hostage.

EIGHT

I had time to take about six breaths before I was too high up for it to matter, and then the gasping started. The elevator kept rising. I can't breathe… . No, I was breathing, but it wasn't doing any good. Oxygen content too low. I was filling my lungs to no effect. Create oxygen. You can do it. Sure, I could; it was just a matter of forming new molecules out of the available surroundings, but God, I couldn't think, I couldn't…

I just couldn't. For the first time, I found myself unable to do what I knew I had to do.

Which left dying. Normally, that would have been one hell of a motivator, but my brain was fraying into threadbare strands, and I couldn't feel my body anymore. Dying was more like fading. It hardly hurt at all.

Something white exploded through me like a surge from a cattle prod.

No, please, I just want to rest… Tired…

Another white flare, crawling up my spine to catch fire in my brain. Panic. Panic from some part of me buried so deep it couldn't even express itself in words, just flashes.

I opened my eyes.

It had hold of me. It had been a Dji

… with a black, glowing Mark that burned and rippled on its distended chest.

This wasn't a Dji

They were both desperate.

Black spots danced madly in my vision. Lack of oxygen. I blinked and tried to remember again how to fix that, but there were too many missing pieces, and it was much too difficult…

The Dji

Crawling toward me.

I had a helpless, suffocating flashback of coming to on Bad Bob Biringanine's couch, his cold blue eyes on me, a bottle full of demon in his hand. Hold her down, he'd snapped at his Dji

Maybe I didn't mind dying so much, but I minded that. Without even a second's thought, I grabbed at the energy around me, cha

At the last instant, I remembered that if I hit the Dji

The lightning hit the Dji

The sky was screaming.

I emerged from the clouds, falling like a star. Friction heated my skin, lashed my clothes into shreds around me. I was spi

One good thing: plenty of fresh air. I breathed, fast and hard, pumping up the oxygen in my bloodstream, and began working on slowing my fall. My head was clearer. It almost felt like a nightmare, except that nightmares generally didn't come with partial blindness and singed hair. I still saw the afterimages of the flash, the frozen, distorted scream of the demon-infected Dji

I hadn't killed it. You don't kill a thing like that, or at least humans don't; David had succeeded in destroying a demon once, but he was a Dji

I wasn't slowing much, and the ground looked closer. My skin had gone numb from the cold rushing air. I'd stopped spi

At this rate, I'd manage to break my fall just enough to die breathing through a tube in ICU.

I went up to the aetheric. Instinct and panic, rather than a conscious plan, like rats climbing the spars of a sinking ship… up there, the demon-infected Dji

Below me there were some brilliant lights-not the neon glare of the strip; the blaze of Wardens, cha

One was an orange torch big enough to light up the entire aetheric… that had to be Kevin. The other was a rich golden color, like summer sun.

Kevin had Lewis's stolen powers, and he could act if he wanted to, but I knew better than to assume he'd save me, even if he understood how. And the other Warden, glittering like summer, wasn't a Weather Warden.

I was so screwed.

I sucked in a deep breath and concentrated, hard, managed to slow my descent enough that it didn't feel like terminal velocity, but when I opened my eyes again I saw that the ground was rushing up, close, God, closer than I'd thought, and there was no way I could stop myself in time.

I wasn't going to hit the street. I was heading for a stretch of desert somewhere near the airport. Dirt and thornbushes and a death that was going to hurt-a lot.

A flash of lightning lit up the patch of pale sand that was going to be my final resting place.

I screamed, threw up my arms in a useless, instinctive move to cover my face, and hit the ground.

It was like hitting a bed full of the softest down feathers. It exploded up in a fluffy cloud, and I sank, slowly.

Drifted. I felt weightless, floating.

I felt oddly giddy, and realized I was holding my breath; my eyes were squeezed tightly shut. When I opened them, I didn't see anything. The air I gasped in tasted dusty.

It was dark.

I reached out and felt loose, drifting particles, fine as talcum, and then there was solid ground under my feet, lifting me up.

I emerged on my feet, borne out of the ground in a shower of powder-fine quicksand.

Oh. The other Warden had been an Earth Warden. Not to mention favorably inclined. I'd have to thank somebody, big-time…

I took one step forward, and keeled over to my hands and knees, coughing and gagging. Somebody patted me helpfully on the back, raising dust clouds.

I looked up to see the face of my savior.

" Marion?"' I paused to cough up some more of the desert. "Jesus-"

"Breathe," she advised me.

Marion Bearheart looked pretty much exactly as she had back at the De

"Thanks," I finally managed to gasp out, and spat grit. Uck. I so needed a toothbrush. She gave me a faint smile. "What… how…"

She ignored me, looking up into the clouds. "Can you stop that thing?"