Firestorm

There was a ranger station seven miles down another logging road—abandoned, since the rangers were out doing fire spotting, and had field radios with them. Emily and I commandeered the radio that had been left behind—a huge old clunker of a thing, and proof positive that upgrades weren't high on the federal budget triage scale. I tried to figure out the ancient technology. Seemed simple enough. I spun the dials to the right frequency—the Wardens' emergency frequency—and clicked the old-fashioned button on the old-fashioned microphone.

Now, if I could only remember all the codes…

"Violet-violet-violet," I said. "Anyone reading? Respond."

Static. White noise. I looked over at Emily, who was washing her filthy face in the sink; she needed more than a little soap to get clean, but that did a fair job. She only looked like a chimney sweep now, instead of a smoke eater. As she scrubbed a second time, I clicked the button again. "Violet-violet-violet," I repeated. "Respond, please."

This time, I got a sharp metallic click, and a ti

Not exactly the approved format for responding to emergency calls, but I understood. It wasn't shaping up to be a normal day anywhere in the world, but least of all in the Warden Crisis Center.

I waited. The voice came back, eventually, right about the time Emily finished her third ablution. "Name and location," it said. Not the same voice. This one was male, authoritative, and familiar.

"Hey, Paul," I said. "It's Joa

"I've got damn graduate students answering the phone. You wouldn't even believe the magnitude of the trouble we're in. Where are you?"

"I'm up at the Canada fire, with Emily. Who else is up here?"

"Canada? Fuck if I know. Hang on, let me check." He clicked off. I knew how the Crisis Center worked—there'd be a huge write on-wipe off board with events and Wardens assigned—usually. Today, who knew. I had the feeling that it was all just happening too fast. "Yeah. Jo, Emily's Earth and Fire—you've got a second Fire Warden located about eleven miles away from your current position, on the other side of the fire. Gary Omah. He's not real high on the scale, by the way. Not a lot of heavyweights left up there."

"I don't think we can count on Gary Omah," I sighed. "Who else?"

"Weather Warden out of Nova Scotia. That's what I've got for you."

"Who is she?"

"Janelle Bright."

I didn't know her, but that wasn't unusual; she was probably young, and probably lower level. Those seemed to be the survivors, so far. Probably because they hadn't earned any Dji

But then again, there were no longer any guarantees of anything, were there?

"Okay," I said, and then remembered to click the button. "Right, Paul, I'm going to organize this one, okay?"

"Fine by me. We're up to our necks around here. You're senior on the ground pretty much wherever you go right now. Take charge."

Now that was a really scary thought. It told me more than a Weather Cha

I glanced over at Emily. "Um, Paul? One other thing."

"Please, let it be something fluffy and happy."

"Not so much. Demon."

"What?"

"There's a Demon loose. I saw it break out of a dying Warden—Gary Omah, I'm presuming. It tried—" I swallowed hard and kept my voice even with an effort, because the crispy zombie flashbacks weren't easy to suppress. "It tried to get to me, but I managed to fight it off."

Paul was quiet for so long, I thought I was having a conversation with static, and then he said, "I can't spare anybody else to help you."

"Make it happen, Paul. I need someone."

He put me on hold. Mercifully, there was no a

Paul came back on the line. "Paul, I need—"

He interrupted me by covering the phone and bellowing, "You! Yeah, you in the fucking yellow! I told you, get those people over to the west side of the thing, do you understand me? West!" The muffling came off the phone, not that it had concealed much. "Shit. I've gotta go. Do your best. I've got to go be the first officer of the goddamn Hindenburg." He was trying to sound light, but somewhere underneath I could tell he was genuinely, grimly terrified. "At least Lewis is the one wearing the shiny hat."

"I know," I said softly. "Keep bailing, buddy."

"Jo, just get the fuck out of there. Do what you've gotta do. We can't save everybody. Not this time."

"I can't just walk away."

"Learn how," he said. "People are dying. People are going to die. It's all just a question of how many, and how bad they go. We need the Dji

He clicked off before I could respond. I sat back, looking at Emily; she was staring out the window at the orange-colored distance.

"I can't get anybody besides one Weather Warden out of Nova Scotia," I said. "They're swamped."

She nodded. "We're really fucked, aren't we?" she asked, like it was an academic consideration.

"Not necessarily. All we have to do is pile in the Jeep and leave."

She gave me a bleak, absent smile.

"Yeah," she said. "That's likely."

Of course, we didn't leave. We didn't even discuss it. We just went to work. I spent time up on the aetheric, trying to move weather patterns around and layer cooler air over what was increasingly a troubled system. The fire was generating enormous amounts of heat, and that heat was affecting the already-unstable weather. It kept sliding out of my control, finding ways to twist back like a snake trying to strike. Lightning, for instance. Just when I thought we'd gotten things contained at a reasonable level, the energy began churning around and creating vast random pulses. It had to go somewhere. I deflected most of them as sheet lightning, or sent the energy flaring across the sky instead of down to earth, but it only takes one, sometimes.

And one slipped through, hit a giant pine, and ignited it like a torch.

Begi

"Emily!" I yelled, and pointed. She was busy trying to contain the forest fire itself, but this was a second front, and we couldn't afford to let it get busy at its job. I shot up into the aetheric and looked for the other Weather Warden who was supposed to be helping us. Janelle. She was a weak spark indeed, barely glowing up on the aetheric; she was, I sensed, exhausted. Whatever was going on in Nova Scotia, it wasn't good. She was working the systems from the back, which was about all she could do, with the strength she had at hand. I wasn't about to push her for more. We were all redlining our limits today.

I caught sight of something in the aetheric. No, caught sight of wasn't exactly accurate—I sensed something, although everything looked just about as normal as an unsettled higher plane could look… The fire was a gorgeous lavalike cascade of colors, pouring out over everything in its path, but there was something going on that didn't belong. I couldn't pin it down, exactly. I just knew something wasn't right.