Windfall

The shore won’t be so lucky.

Those curiously ribbonlike swells roll toward land, traveling impossibly fast—flat humps that reach shallow water and roar into explosive life. The waves shatter with stu

As the winds increase, trees rip free of ground that has held them safe for a hundred years or more.

As the storm approaches the first large island, the storm swell raises ocean level by more than twenty feet, and many parts of the land are already sinking into the sea.

Nothing can survive this one.

It is not lethal.

It is legend.

Chapter Five

I dropped straight down, sliding through slippery, frictionless sand, arriving on a solid surface with a bone-jarring thump that transmitted through my legs, up my spine, and exploded in my skull like a grenade. I pitched forward and reached out blindly, felt something like stone under my hands. Bedrock. I’d fallen a long way. Lucky I hadn’t broken anything.

Hands grabbed my shoulders, jerked me backward, off balance. I flailed and screamed, caught myself, and whirled around, striking blind. I co

It was black as pitch in this hole under the ground. Not good for me. I’d had bad things happen in a cave; I wasn’t comfortable in caves, and I could feel the tense freakout potential in my guts.

Calm. I had to stay calm.

I was facing someone with Earth powers, that much was obvious; it took a pretty special talent to suck someone through the beach and into a cave, especially since Fort Lauderdale wasn’t exactly known for caves in the first place.

I felt like a powdered doughnut. I’d been nicely sweated from my beachside run, and the fine-textured sand coated me in a gritty layer that wasn’t going to come off without benefit of a shower and a washcloth.

Oh, someone was going to pay.

First things first: I wasn’t about to do this in the dark. I needed light, and I was flashlight-free. However, even though I wasn’t a Fire Warden, the basic principle of making fire wasn’t beyond my powers; I’d created hard-shelled little bubbles of oxygen before and ignited them. A shake-n-bake lamp.

When I reached to do that very simple thing—disengaging the O2 molecules from the long chemical chain of breathable atmosphere and segregating them together inside a vacuum—it was like trying to do microsurgery with oven mitts. Under anesthesia. I fumbled it, felt the air go wrong and stale around me.

Yeah. I wasn’t up to doing even the simple things. Great news. I decided I’d better stick to feeling my way through the problem.

Said problem was large, human, and coming at me again. I felt something brush me and instinctively ducked; fingernails grazed my cheek. Not talons, so this wasn’t a Dji

I moved back, got a wall against my back, and swept my foot out in a roundhouse kick. It co

I was feeling nicely ferocious when blinding light suddenly erupted, and I had to flinch backward with my eyes covered.

“For God’s sake, Jo, stop!”

The voice was Lewis’s. I peeked through my fingers and saw that the dazzle was a plain old garden-variety flashlight. He tilted it slightly, and the backwash of light gave me the long, ta

And there was blood on his cheek. Fresh blood. More splattering his shirt.

“What the hell is going on?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

“It isn’t my blood,” he said. “I need your help. Come on.”

“With what?” Because it wasn’t going to be easy explaining to Lewis that my help would be strictly of the moral-support variety, at the moment.

“Kevin,” he said, and turned away, already moving to focus the flashlight on … Kevin Prentiss’s thin, acne-bubbled face. The kid who had once been the bane of my existence, not to mention my master when I was a Dji

And then I realized that Kevin wasn’t sitting on the ground, back to the wall, because he was being a sulky little bastard, although that wasn’t beyond him; he was pale, leaning, and breathing in shallow gasps.

Hard to tell against the black, but it looked as if the front of his shirt was wet. I didn’t think he’d taken a splash in the surf.

“They came after us,” Lewis said. “Wardens. I got us hidden, but I didn’t know the boy had been hit until we were already down here. I can’t leave him.”

“Why?” It was mean, but hell, Kevin deserved it. “All right, fine. He needs medical help, I get it. Let’s get him out of here.”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

He sent me a look, then nodded at the cave around us. I realized—belatedly—that the hard-packed walls were really just packed, sculpted sand. Sand being held together by his willpower. Yep, Lewis had hollowed himself a secret hideout, which was pretty damn cool, but the idea that the whole thing could collapse in on us at any moment didn’t exactly make me glow with confidence.

“I need your help,” he said. “Actually, I need David’s help. I can’t do everything at once. He can hold back the sand while I treat the wound…”

Oh, shit. “Um… I can’t do that.”

Lewis’s expression turned even more tense, which really wasn’t good. “Jo, I just need to borrow him. I won’t keep him.”

“I can’t.”

“I need him.”

“He’s not—he’s not well, Lewis. He’s—”

“Jo! The kid’s going to die!”

I sucked in a deep breath. “I’m not calling David. What’s Plan B?”

For a second I saw sheer fury erupt in him, which was pretty frightening, considering he was the human equivalent of what Jonathan was in the Dji

“Fine. Just lift me back up, I call an ambulance, we get him out of here. Regular, mundane medical treatment. It does work, you know.”

Lewis shook his head, watching Kevin’s shuddering breaths. Kevin seemed to not be hearing us. “He’s got a torn artery,” he said. “I’m holding it shut, but between that and keeping this cave open I’m at the limit. You’ll need to get yourself out.”

Something occurred to me. “Where’s Rahel? Why isn’t Rahel helping you do this?”

Another flare of anger in his face. He didn’t bother to hide the edge in his voice. “Rahel doesn’t think he’s worth saving,” he said. “She also thinks she has better things to do. She left. Jo, I wasn’t kidding. I need David. Please.”

Cell phone. I dug it out and checked for reception.

Uh-oh. A couple of dozen feet of sand resulted in a flashing NO SIGNAL. “Um … the answer’s still no. Look, if I call wind down here—”