Windfall

It was the single most inhuman thing I’d ever seen him do.

David was still two or three steps away when Prada let out a high-pitched shriek like ripping metal, and let go of her hostage. David lunged forward, but he was too late. The man windmilled for a fraction of a second, and then his head and shoulders leaned back, and his battered cross-trainers slipped off the slick metal of the railing.

And then he was gone. Heading for a fast, ugly death.

“David! Do something!” I screamed. Everybody else was screaming, too, but David heard me; he turned his head, and even at this distance I saw the hot orange flare of his eyes. As alien as the perfect balance he demonstrated up there on the railing. I saw the doubt in his face, but he didn’t argue, and he didn’t hesitate. Without a sound, he spread his arms and jumped off the overpass.

Graceful as a plummeting angel.

At the same moment, Alice moved forward in a blur, launched herself up and out, and took Prada in a flying tackle out into space. The other four Dji

I lunged forward, gasping, and if there were people in my way I didn’t care.

They moved, or I moved them. I banged hard into the railing, hot metal digging into my stomach, both hands reaching down as if I could somehow grab hold, do something.

Anything.

“David!” I screamed.

I didn’t see anyone down below. The cops had arrived on the street below, a sea of flashing lights and upturned faces. No sign of David. No sign of the Warden.

Movement in the deep shadows of the overpass drew my frantic eyes. They were hanging in midair. David had hold of the man. The two of them were suspended, turning slowly and eerily in the wind. A silent ballet.

Nobody else could see them, I realized. Just me.

I felt sick and cold and terribly, terribly weak, and realized that the flow of energy from me to David had gotten bigger. Wider. Deeper. As if we’d broken open some dam between us, and there was no stopping the torrent until the reservoir was dry.

“Oh God,” I whispered. I could literally feel my life ru

He looked up, and I was struck by the white pallor of his face, the bitter darkness of his eyes. “I can’t,” he said. I could hear him, even across the distance, as if he were speaking right next to me. “Jo, I’m killing you.”

“Put him down first.”

He tried. I felt him start to move but then he lost control, and it was free fall. He managed to brake, but it wasn’t going to hold, and then he was going to plummet. I had about three seconds to act.

I wasn’t a magician, able to suspend the laws of gravity at will. I had power, yes, but it was best used on the massive scale if I had to move fast, turning forces that measured in the millions of volts. Power that could destroy, but rarely heal. To grab the Warden required pinpoint control of very treacherous forces, precisely balanced winds from at least three quarters, and an exact command of how much force was being exerted on fragile human flesh at any given instant.

David was a bright spark, fading. Between us was a black bridge, a fast-flowing river of energy going out of me, into him. Being devoured.

I stretched my arms and reached out until I felt I might unravel and break and be swept away. I tasted blood and felt my body starving for air and dying inside as its energy poured out onto the wind, screaming. I tried to do what I’d done a thousand times before, and alter the temperature of the air at the subatomic level, creating friction and lift and heat and wind.

For the first time… I failed.

I felt David break first with a bright, hot, shattering pop, and the black drag on my power fell away. The rebound slammed into me with stu

Who fell, screaming, to his death.

There was nothing I could do. Nothing.

I screamed and covered my eyes from the sickening sight of his body crushing on pavement, his blood splattering in an arc as his skull shattered.

I felt his life snap like his bones.

David froze in midair, fixed in place, eyes dark and strange, body transforming from the fire of the Dji

“Oh God…” It wasn’t stopping. I felt every bit of energy being sucked out of me; the life, the heat, the baby oh God not the baby you can’t David…

I felt everything around just… suspend. In some odd way, I kept on… outside of time, of life, of breath. It felt like being a Dji

Time had stopped. Pain hadn’t.

Someone had intervened.

I heard the scrape of shoes on the asphalt behind me.

I turned and looked, gasping for breath, and saw Jonathan walking toward me through a flash-frozen world. People were locked in midstep, midword, midgasp.

He and I were the only things moving.

Unlike most Dji

Middle-aged, with graying short hair. A ru

Black eyes, and a face that could be friendly or impassive or cruel, depending on the mood and the light. Just another guy.

And yet, he was so far from human he made David look like the boy next door.

“You have to help me,” I began. I should have known that the sound of my voice would piss him off.

He walked right up to me, grabbed me by the throat, and shoved me against the rail so hard that my back bent painfully over open air.

“You’re lucky,” he said in a whiskey-rough growl, “that I’m in a good mood.”

And then he looked over my shoulder at the frozen, twisted shape of David, stopped in midtransformation. The shocking ruin of the Warden’s body on the pavement below. Jonathan’s face lost all semblance of humanity, all expression.

There was a sense, even more than before, of some vast and terrible power stirring around him.

Even the wind was utterly silent, as if afraid to draw his attention.

“Jonathan—” I began hoarsely.

“Joa

There was absolutely no mistaking the fury in him, even though it was cloaked behind a good-looking face and eyes that had all of the charm and warmth of black holes.

“I don’t have time for this crap,” he said, and turned those eyes back to meet mine. And oh, God, the rage simmered, red flashing points in black. Ready to break free. Ready to rip apart me, this bridge, the city, the world. He was that powerful. I could feel it rising off of him like heat from a lava flow. “I let you have your stupid little games and your stupid little romance, and it’s destroying him. I don’t have time for this. I need him back. Right now. This isn’t some goddamn game I’m playing, do you understand that?”

Because he was in the middle of a war. I did understand. The battling Dji

“I don’t know how to help him,” I croaked. “I’ve tried. I just don’t understand how to do it.”

I felt his grip on my throat tighten again. He pressed right against me, his thighs against mine, bent over me in a parody of a dance.