Ill Wind

They wouldn't be successful. This storm had its parameters well under control, and it wasn't going to let us cut off its food supply. We had to be creative about this if we—if I—expected to survive. Truthfully, the rest of the Wardens probably weren't worried about my survival. They wanted to contain the storm where it was, over open country, until it burned itself out. Any risk to me was a bonus.

Another lightning stroke was forming. Instead of diffusing the power, I cha

It choked, stuttered, coughed on its own superheated breath. The residual heat on the ground radiated up, disrupting the cooling end of the cycle.

In seconds, the wind wall fell apart and fled back up into the water-heavy clouds, dropping its weapons of opportunity as it went. A thick whip of barbed wire snaked down from the sky and fell almost at my feet.

I gri

It hit me with more lightning, five times to be exact, one on top of the other. I fumbled the last, and it bled off into me, not enough to fry me but enough to scramble my already-abused nerves. I fell, rolled over on my stomach, and looked up into the heart of my enemy. There were no eyes to this storm, no face, but there was a kind of center… the cold still place around which the rest of it rotated and screamed and rattled.

I stayed down, relaxed my body, and again flew up into Oversight. More chains were forming; it sensed weakness and was preparing a massive lightning attack. I snapped the links and drove the polarity back, all the way back, into the center of the storm.

And then I did something that I'd been told never, ever to do.

I reached for the rotation of the storm itself.

It's a fu

But momentum only aids force when force operates according to logical, controlled rules.

When kids on bikes go too fast, they begin to lose control. Handlebars shake. Wheels wobble. Lines of force operate at angles instead of straight on.

Speed can be the enemy of momentum.

I didn't try to act in opposition to the storm—it would be worse than useless; it would actually add to the fury of the energy circling me. No. I reached for the disturbed, chaotic winds operating at the fringes of the storm and added them to the storm, like a drain sucking in more water. I fed the storm. Pumped energy into it with abandon.

Other Wardens noticed what I was doing, and some of them tried to stop me. I shoved them back, hard. One or two had Dji

One or two of the other Wardens fell out of Oversight and didn't come back. I didn't let myself wonder what I'd done. The storm was what was important. Spi

The storm was rotating, in the physical world, with a speed that was eerie to look at. Tornadoes popped and bubbled all over the underside of it as power struggled to regulate itself; but there was too much, no control, angles of force intersecting and canceling each other out.

Faster. Faster. Faster.

I laughed out loud, looking up at the spi

Not a single tornado touched the ground. A massive one formed in the air, almost a mile wide, struggling to reach damp earth and rip apart everything in its path. I warmed the air under it so quickly that rain turned to steam.

The storm readied another lightning bolt. The chain of polarity led straight to me, and it was as strong and inflexible as braided cable. No way I could break it.

Let it come, something in me said, something black and hard and riding the edge of my adrenaline. Bathe in the power. It is your right.

The idea was so diverting that I lost my grip on the air below the F5 tornado chewing its way out of the sky. Temperatures dropped.

The tornado hit ground, bounced, ripped up earth and plants and fence and began to roar toward me.

I felt the energy come up through my body. It arched my back, pulled a breathless scream out of my mouth, bathed every cell in my body with pure, primal force.

The thing in me ate it, and I felt it happening to me, felt the Demon change from the tentacled horror into a thing of ice and angles, grating on my bones, barely fitting beneath my skin.

I hardly felt the massive nuclear energy of the burn-off, the energy manifesting in visible light and heat.

I was transformed in the fiery inferno.

Made whole.

When I stood up, my shredded, melted clothes fell away, and I stood pure against the storm.

I stretched out my hand and touched the life inside it, caressed it, tasted the dark furious essence of it. Attuned myself to its vibrations and rhythms, learning it, being the storm.

And then I surrounded it with the enormous strength inside me, and I crushed it.

Twenty feet away, the enormous gnashing strength of the tornado fell in on itself, dead. The storm's energy patterns flared and tore.

In the breathless stillness, I heard myself laughing. Naked, soaking wet, infused with the furious power of the deepest darkness, I still found it fu

I heard the u

"My God," Marion whispered. I turned my head to look at her and saw her flinch. "What you did—"

"Saved our lives," I said. I stood up, looked down at myself, and started feeling the shock take hold. So cold. So many cuts and bruises. I looked like a road map of been there, done that. "Got any clothes I can borrow?"

They didn't want to come near me. Shirl stripped off her fla

They hadn't even wanted to touch me. I couldn't say I blamed them.

I looked down at myself when I was finished and decided that I wouldn't win any fashion awards, even at the homeless shelter, but it would do. Good enough to die in, or kill a friend in.

You don't need to look good for that. You just have to look scary.

I'd made it seven miles down the road, almost into the Oklahoma City limits, when I ran into the first obstacle.

Wind wall. It was a ferocious east-to-west current whipping across the road at right angles, like a tornado lying down. It wasn't a natural phenomenon— at least, not anywhere other than high elevations with hair-trigger climates—but it was undeniably powerful; lose control, and the Viper would get slammed into a spin that might well turn into an end-over-end movie stunt, only without the padding and professional stuntmen. I could control a lot of things. Gravity and basic kinetic energy weren't among them.

I had one second to recognize the distortion across the road, one second more to make a decision about what to do. No time to focus or do any delicate manipulation.

I flattened the pedal and felt Mona jump forward like a champion racing for the finish.

The wind slammed the front left quarter panel like a speeding freight train, and the front wheels lost traction; I was going into a spin. If it had just been a single fast wind shear, that would have been one thing, but this was a fierce continuing blast, and as the car spun, it slammed directly into the back end, shoving the Viper toward the shoulder; I did exactly the opposite of what you should do; I turned the wheel against the skid, gave it more momentum, kept the car turning so that the momentum spun it like a top down the center line. The wind kept buffeting me, but it was only adding to the car's rotational force, not slowing me down.