Gale Force

clouds, heading for the crowded street. Heading for the bridal store.

Heading for my dress.

I took a deep breath, tightened my grip on David's hand, and prepared for battle.

''I'm with you,'' he said. ''I'll give you what I can.'' I understood, in that second, that the

Mother had cut his circuits again, stranded him from the core of his power. He had whatever was

in him, and no more.

Just as I did. Why was she on the side of the Sentinels? Or maybe it was simpler than that: Maybe

she didn't want the Dji

I could understand that. It did seem a massive waste of resources.

''Watch our backs,'' I told him, and focused on the glittering, complex, deadly snake of the

tornado that was dropping toward us with the speed of a freight train.

It wasn't the classic rope-style tornado; this one was a brutal wedge of power. That was not

necessarily a bad thing; the intensity of a tornado doesn't depend on its width. But if it was an F4

or F5, being a wedge tornado would make things that much worse.

Luckily, it wasn't quite that bad. An F2 at most, with wind speeds of about a hundred miles per

hour– not bad, and not nearly as bad as it could have been. The Sentinels know how to make it

look nasty, but that wasn't the same thing as truly building it right in the first place. I needed to

reduce the core temperatures inside of the vortex, and I needed to do it fast. But as I reached out

for it, the Sentinels sprang the trap.

A second tornado-this one a slender rope, and definitely built to the most exacting

specifications– shot down out of the cloud beside the wedge I was focused on, and this one

packed deadly, razor-edged debris. Metal, all kinds of metal junk and scraps. It was also spi

at a rate of more than two hundred miles per hour: F4.

One of them was going to hit. I could handle only one at a time, and I had no choice but to go for

the worst. I abandoned the wedge and went for the rope, ripping into it with desperate force,

drawing heat out of it as quickly as I could.

Not fast enough. I heard it hit the roof, which shuddered and groaned, and then heard the rising

roar of the wind as it drilled through steel and wood and concrete.

People were screaming, ru

''Outside!'' I grabbed my salesclerk, who'd thrown my dress to one side, and pushed her to the

door. David was grabbing everyone else he could find and shoving them that way as well. ''Run!

Get to cover! Go now!''

I'd succeeded in weakening the vortex down to an F2, but just then, the slower-moving wedge

slammed down like a clenched fist, and the whole building shivered and began to come apart.

The two tornadoes, too close together for even the Sentinels to fully control, began to merge and

feed off each other. The metal inside the smaller vortex spread out wider, slashing and cutting

like the edges of knives as it whirled. Nobody had been hit yet, but they would be.

This had to stop. Now.

''David!'' I screamed his name over the roar of the wind as the roof ripped off, disintegrated into

a million tiny fragments of blowing chaos, and I felt the eye of the storm focus directly on me.

David put his arms around me from behind, anchoring me, and we faced it together. The power

that flowed out of him was rich and strong, golden. It was easy to direct, capable of the finest

touch and control.

Nobody did tornadoes better than me. I knew that without conceit; it was a gift, and one I'd had

since childhood. For all their fury and force, they were fragile constructs, held together by finite

forces. Like everything else, they had keystones. Change that one point, you could change

everything.

This tornado's keystone was hard to find, hard to get my hands around, but once I found the

specific area I needed to affect, I poured David's power into it, added my own, and the weight of

oxygen and nitrogen cooled, slowing the tornado's spin, shattering the forces that held it in form.

It blew apart in a confusion of winds, pelting down debris like deadly, sharp rain. I yelped and

ducked, and David formed a shield above us. Good thing he did. The Sentinels took one last,

spiteful swipe at me, arrowing a metal girder directly for me, but it met the shield and bounced

off . . . and slammed into the bag that held my dress, shredding plastic and fabric as the girder

was driven a foot into the concrete below.

I stayed where I was, sucking in deep breaths, until it was over and the rain started to fall in a

drenching downpour.

I'd just destroyed a second bridal shop.

David helped me up. He was keeping the rain off– a minor task, after the shield that had saved

us-and I felt the subtle change in him as the Mother opened the flow again, co

back to his power base. His whole body brightened, as well as the light in his eyes.

''Did you see them?'' he asked. I shook my head, frustrated and furious. ''I think I might have.''

''Still in Key West?''

''No. Kissimmee. But they're staying close. Maybe they can't do this at too great a distance.''

He looked around, an odd expression on his face. ''Nobody hurt. They'll call it a miracle.''

I glared at the ruined wedding dress. ''Some miracle,'' I said. ''My credit card charge already

went through.''

I checked in with Lewis. He'd gotten word from Rahel that Kevin had been approached by the

Sentinels, but it was early days; they were checking him out pretty thoroughly, asking around.

No problems there. I doubted anybody had unreserved approval for Kevin; he simply didn't

invite people to like him. He was respected because he was strong, not because he was in any

way a team player.

The Sentinels wouldn't find anything that would put them off. Kevin was an arrogant little shit

most of the time, and he could give drug dealers lessons in insensitivity. I'd seen him do murder.

Granted, it had been well-deserved murder, but his reaction to it had been disturbingly vacant.

Still, Lewis believed the kid was redeemable, and I had to agree. I'd seen firsthand the horror his

stepmother had made out of his life, and while I couldn't really like him, I felt for him.

If Kevin held it together, I was going to owe him big-time.

Not a pleasant thought, really.

My sundress, amazingly, had survived the freak tornado incident, and my shoes weren't too bad.

My hair had a bit of a windblown do, but all in all, I'd gotten off lucky for a change.

Or so I thought.

When David and I emerged from the store and waved away the u

we headed back toward where we'd left the car, several blocks away. David was doing some

subtle work to keep the rain off, so we were relatively dry. The effect became less subtle when a

van pulled up at the curb next to us, launching a wave of dirty water waist-high; it hit David's

shield and rolled off, leaving us dry.

Then I saw the camera in the window, and realized that it was a news van.

''Oh crap,'' I breathed. ''Drop the shield. Drop it now!''

Too late, I realized. They couldn't have missed it. In fact, they'd counted on it, and they'd gotten

it on tape.

I saw it in the triumphant smirk on the reporter's face as the van door slid open. ''Hi, Ms.

Baldwin,'' she said. ''Want to talk to us about why you're once again at the scene of a disaster?

And how exactly you are staying dry in the middle of a thunderstorm? Who's your friend?'' She

gave David a special twice-over, which burned me even more than the fact I'd been caught on