Gale Force

wouldn't be able to resist its pull.

Lewis was watching us from the back of the room, having completed his own blood donations;

he looked tired, but alert. ''Everything okay?'' he asked.

''Do you think Rahel is okay?'' I shot back, and saw the flinch. ''Sorry. I know you-care for

her.'' I wasn't exactly sure what that entailed, between Lewis and Rahel; I wouldn't have been

surprised if they'd been casual lovers. Rahel wasn't the type to fall in love, and Lewis . . . Lewis

already had, with the wrong person.

''He hasn't hurt her yet,'' David said. He had his back to us, but he was listening. ''They're

hiding their tracks, but the co

Was that a good thing, or a bad thing? I thought about the trap Bad Bob had laid this time

around. He'd known-because of Paul, oh God, Paul, you fool-that Kevin and Rahel had been

planted to spy on him. Surely he was assuming that David could sense and track Rahel's

position, too.

Surely he would just lay another trap.

Depressing as that was, we'd won a kind of victory here. Yes, Ortega was dead, but so was Paul;

not only that, but the Sentinels had been forced to regroup and retreat. The current count was

twelve dead in total.

Problem was, all of them were Wardens. And it was impossible to tell which of them had been

Sentinels, except for anecdotal information about which side they'd been fighting for. I was sure

about Paul, Emily, and Janette. The rest . . .

Once again, we just didn't know who our enemies really were.

Lewis stood up and walked to where David was standing, facing the window. Facing Ortega's

desiccated body. ''We can't follow them,'' he said. ''They've got weapons that can destroy the

Dji

information we don't.''

That was coolly logical, something that neither David nor I seemed capable of being at the

moment. David nodded, and the three of us left the treatment area.

Or tried, anyway. An FBI agent got in our way. She was a tall woman, curved but in that I-work-

out kind of way. Feathered dark hair around a heart-shaped face. Cool, impartial green eyes.

''Sorry,'' she said. ''Nobody moves. We haven't finished our interrogations yet.''

David was likely to just walk over her, in the mood he was in, and that would at the very least

lead to a confrontation we didn't need. I looked over at Lewis, who sighed and dug something

out of the back pocket of his jeans. ''Right,'' he said. ''All-access pass.''

He held it up. I couldn't see what it said, but the woman's eyes widened, and she took a step

back. I got the impression she hadn't done that in a while.

''Yes sir,'' she said. ''Sorry. And they are-''

''With me,'' Lewis said. ''Thanks for your vigilance, but it's not necessary, Agent. We're the

good guys.''

She looked as if she sincerely doubted that, but she didn't say anything, just moved out of the

way with a be-my-guest motion. Then she went to tell her boss, a tall gray-haired man. Cover

your ass. It was the absolute code of any governmental agency, no matter how well-intentioned.

''This,'' Lewis said, ''is a cluster fuck.'' He was looking at the parking lot, which was littered

with burned-out, crushed vehicles, downed trees, fragments of glass and metal. The hotel, which

had luckily been scheduled for demolition anyway, was partially destroyed, whether by us or by

the Sentinels it was impossible to say. At a certain point, it really didn't much matter.

The news media was out in a huge, baying pack. I tried to count the number of satellite trucks,

but my head hurt. I was sure that a fair number of those photo and video lenses were being

pointed in our direction, though, and remembered the reporter from Fort Lauderdale. Man,

wouldn't she feel vindicated? She now officially had a scoop.

''How much did they get?'' I asked.

''Oh, everything. Tornadoes forming out of nowhere. Cars bursting into flame and exploding.

Trees getting thrown. Buildings disintegrating.'' Lewis's shoulders twitched, then straightened.

''The FBI wants me to give a statement. Something along the lines of, we're a secret government

agency; we'd tell you but we'd have to kill you, blah blah. They'd like me to tie it to terrorists.''

I stared at him. ''And what are you going to do?''

He shrugged. ''Don't know yet.''

''You really think this is a good time to lie?''

''Well, I don't think it's exactly a good time to tell the truth.'' He glanced at David, whose eyes

seemed to be fading back to a more normal color. ''I'll leave the Dji

''That's kind of you, but I think we'd better tell everything if we tell anything,'' David said.

''Let's talk to Kevin. We don't have a lot of time.''

Kevin was sitting with his least favorite people. Well, that probably wasn't fair; he didn't like

anybody, so most people were his least favorite people, but he reserved a special kind of dislike

for the Ma'at. I wasn't really sure why, except that in general, the leadership of the Ma'at was

pretty unlikable.

Two of them were flanking him: Charles Spenser Ashworth II and Myron Lazlo. Talk about the

Old Boy Network . . . they weren't just in it, they'd laid the original cable. Lazlo had dressed

down for his public appearance; he normally liked subtle, tailored suits that reeked old money,

but he'd deigned to wear what I supposed was his ''field outfit''-khaki slacks, a cotton shirt

open at the neck, and a sport coat that undoubtedly cost nearly as much as the sports car he'd

probably arrived in.

Even so, Charles Ashworth's outfit made Lazlo look cheap.

Both of them were older than the pharaohs, and twice as stern, both in looks and in attitude.

Yeah, I liked them just as much as Kevin did.

I thought it was just about the first time I'd ever seen actual relief on the kid's face as he spotted

me.

''About time,'' he said. ''Who put me in fucking detention with the Mummy Twins?''

I had to admit, that made me smile. The Ma'at had taken a lot of their iconography for their

organization from the Egyptians, and it was no accident they'd made their headquarters at the

Luxor in Las Vegas. I suppose they could have made a case for Memphis as well, but where else

do you get a real live pyramid for a clubhouse?

''I did,'' Lewis said. ''Thanks, gentlemen.''

The gentlemen in question glared and, in Lazlo's case, gave him a well-I-never patrician huff.

''We are not your staff,'' Ashworth snapped. ''Do you have any idea what kind of imbalance

this little fracas has caused? Oh, of course you do. You're supposed to be preventing this kind of

thing, you know. Protecting people, not putting them in danger. Isn't that the Warden credo?''

He said Warden as if it were an epithet, which it practically was, for the Ma'at. They looked on

themselves as the accountants of the aetheric; they were concerned about balance, always

balance. Important, yes, but even supernatural double-entry bookkeeping was still bookkeeping,

and I couldn't work up much enthusiasm for their way of doing things.

''The credo of every one of us is to stop Bad Bob Biringanine from screwing things up any

worse than he already has,'' Lewis said. ''I'll expect your support.''

He sent them on their way with a jerk of his head. He was probably the only person in the world

they'd have taken that kind of treatment from, another mystery of Lewis Levander Orwell. He

had an impressive presence, but not that impressive-generally. And yet we all jumped when he