Gale Force

with him. Most of them I knew by sight, and some I counted as closer friends. There wasn't a

single unfriendly face, which was something of a relief.

Unless you counted Kevin.

Kevin Prentiss was seated at the table like an equal member of the war council, and next to him

sat Cherise. My best friend wasn't a Warden; she was way cool of course, but controlling the

elements wasn't her bag. So I had to wonder what she was doing in such a high-powered i

circle.

She caught my look, raised her eyebrows, and shrugged. ''Don't ask me,'' she said. ''Lewis

wanted everybody here. Kevin was with me, and he said I could come along.'' The subtext was

that nobody had wanted to piss Kevin off by demanding his ride-along girlfriend step outside. He

was maturing, but I suspected he'd always have more than a little of that sullen, aggressive

attitude he was known for. He was at that startling age when the changes come fast and furious;

his weedy physique was filling out, developing into a fairly impressive chest under that battered

black T-shirt. He avoided my eyes, but then, he always did. We had shared some very

unpleasant, even embarrassing moments, and neither of us wanted to get too cozy. It had been a

big step for him to spend time with Cherise (and coincidentally with me) on the roof of the

hospital; he'd made up for it by ignoring me the rest of the day. I'd returned the favor.

Kevin was here because he was a seriously talented young man. Not trained, not restrained, but .

. . talented.

And maybe he cared about me. A little.

I was surprised to recognize that there was a Dji

of the room, long, elegant legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, displaying lethally

gorgeous shoes. I hadn't seen Rahel since the earthquake in Fort Lauderdale, so it struck me how

much better she was looking these days. She'd taken a beating at the hands of a Demon, not too

long ago; for a while, we'd been worried she wouldn't recover.

When she turned her head slightly, I could see the scars on the right side of her sharp-featured

face– etched grooves, as if she'd been clawed. I nodded to her. She inclined her head, and her

thousands of tiny black braids slithered over her shoulders with a dark rustling sound like old

paper on stone.

She was sticking with purple again for her outfit. It looked good on her.

Lewis got me and David seated at the table, and didn't waste any more time. He hit a control

inset in the table, and a projector beamed a picture onto a screen at the far end of the room. It

was grainy surveillance video, and it took me a few seconds to recognize that it was my parking

lot, in front of my apartment. I started to ask what was going on, but then I got my answer . . . a

delivery person got out of a dark-colored panel van and jogged up the steps toward the second

floor. Lewis froze the picture. ''Ring any bells?'' he asked me. I studied the face of the man on

the screen, but it was an awful picture. I shook my head. Lewis released the freeze frame, and I

watched the deliveryman disappear into the hallway with a familiar-looking box in his hands.

When he came back ten seconds later, no box. Surveillance showed him getting into his van and

driving away. It was the kind of thing that happened a dozen times a day at any apartment

complex, nothing that would alert anyone to potential trouble. ''License plates?'' I asked.

''Covered with mud,'' said one of the Power Rangers down the table-Sasha, his name was, a

nice-looking guy with a ready smile. I called him a Power Ranger because he worked with

Marion Bearheart, and was part of the unofficial police force of the Wardens. When someone

broke the codes, Sasha and those like him took it on. I didn't much care for the system-it

bothered me to have so much power in the hands of so few-but most of them were honest.

More of them were honest than the rank and file of the Wardens, to be fair. ''We've been in

contact with every delivery service. None of them had drop-offs at your apartment that day.''

''Which leaves us with . . . ?'' Lewis asked. For reply, Sasha appropriated the controls, bringing

up another video on the screen. This one was better defined, but at an odd angle. One of the

traffic cameras, maybe.

''We tracked the delivery van back, but we lost it in the warehouse district. They were damn

careful. It took hours to trace them this far, but I don't think we'll get much farther, not with

these methods. If they're smart-and I think they are-they'd have had Earth Wardens ready to

reduce the entire truck to slag and spare parts in a few minutes.'' Sasha blanked the screen. ''If I

had to guess, I'd say we ought to be looking for warehouses rented out in the last two months.''

''Put somebody on it,'' Lewis said.

Sasha folded his arms and sat back with a cocky smile. ''Already done.''

Lewis turned his attention to another Earth Warden, young but sharp. Heather something or

other; I'd heard good things. ''What about the package itself?'' Lewis asked her.

Heather ducked her head shyly and studied her interlaced fingers. ''Still analyzing,'' she said, so

softly I could hardly hear her. ''But there is definitely a high decay rate to what's inside. It's

dangerous, most certainly.''

''But not a bomb.''

She looked up at him, then at us, wide-eyed. ''Oh yes,'' she said. ''It had a delivery system and a

trigger. If you'd opened the package, it would have gone off and spread the contents.''

''And the contents are . . . ?'' David asked, in that cool, controlled voice so at odds with the look

in his eyes.

''Antimatter,'' Heather said. ''Antimatter colliding with any kind of matter will produce a

violently energetic reaction. The by-products are-''

''There was a trigger?'' I asked. ''What kind of trigger?''

Her gaze slid away from mine, toward Lewis, and then back, as if she'd been seeking approval.

''It looked as if it was adapted from a more traditional bomb-making approach. Timer and a

small charge designed to crack the shell holding in the antimatter, spilling it out into the world.''

''Not a skill you pick up at your local community college,'' Paul grunted.

''Unfortunately, it's not exactly rare, either. And with the Internet so helpfully offering tutorials

for this kind of thing, it will be hard to track.''

''The paper?'' Lewis got us back on track. ''The wrapping, the card?''

Heather brightened immediately. ''That's a possibility, '' she said. ''If the Dji

may be able to trace the card's history back and find out who came in contact with it.''

But that experiment failed. I could have told them it would. When they brought in the card-in a

heavily shielded container, since it was saturated with radiation-and presented it to Rahel, she

just shook her head. ''Nothing,'' she said. ''I see nothing at all.''

It was the same with David, and I could see his frustration and growing alarm. He'd dismissed

all this at first, but there were too many of us now, and we were too credible. The Dji

believe us-but believing us meant accepting half a dozen impossible things. Heather,

disheartened, reclaimed the thing and began to have it carted back to the lab for more tests.

I stopped her. ''Can I see it?'' I asked. She looked surprised. ''Well, it was addressed to me. It

stands to reason that I might see something others don't.''

I doubted she bought that theory, but I really did want to see it. It had been meant for me. So had

the bomb-for me and David. I supposed the first explosion would have killed me, and the