Chill Factor Page 0,8

it's business as usual for the regular mortals out there. And even if Kevin is doing something, you can't stop it by burning yourself out like this."

"David, they've killed Wardens." At last count, while I'd been lazing around in my hospital bed, two Wardens and their Djinn had gone into the no-man's-land around Las Vegas, and hadn't returned. Plus, there'd been no contact from either the Wind or Fire Warden in Nevada. The Earth Warden, probably feeling like the only target left on the shooting range, was justifiably nervous. "Jesus, I can't just... relax!"

"Chill Factor"

David's voice was low, warm, and gentle. "I know." And he reached out with one hand and brushed his fingertips against my skin. "Sleep now." And before I could protest, I was gone.

* * *

Chill Factor

My dreams were haunted.

I was standing in the desert, staring off to a limitless flat horizon. Sand drifted lazily around, but I couldn't feel any wind... couldn't feel anything.

No, that wasn't right. I could sense the external pressure of the breeze against my skin, feel it ruffling my hair... but I couldn't feel it. Not inside.

I had no sense of the weather at all.

Blind. I was blind. Panic ripped through me, and it felt both overwhelming and weirdly unreal, the way things do in dreams... intense and disconnected.

This is what is.

But it wasn't. I was a Warden; I had powers; I was alive and kicking despite the odds.

This is what is coming.

"It's beautiful," a voice said. I turned my head, and there was a woman standing next to me-tall, glorious, with waves of white-gold hair and amethyst eyes. Her pale, diaphanous robes whipped in the wind I couldn't feel, and she raised her face to the sun and drank it in like a happy child.

I knew her. She'd saved my life not so very long ago, just before she'd given up her own existence, damaged and flawed as it was. She'd once been a Djinn like David, but her love for a human had undone her. Made her into an Ifrit, a creature built of shadows, manifesting in its Djinn form only when it had drawn enough power out of another. Ifrits were vampires at best. Cannibals at worst.

She'd clung to that half-life for hundreds of years, to stay with the one she loved. And she'd given it up for me.

Chapter Three

I still didn't really know why.

"Hey, Sara," I said, like seeing her was the most normal thing in the world. She didn't open her eyes, but her smile deepened and a dimple appeared on her cheek. "Where are we?"

"At the end of the world," she said, and took my hand. Her skin was Djinn-hot, pale and perfect as ivory. "Where all the rivers run."

There weren't any rivers. I pointed it out. Her Mona Lisa smile didn't diminish.

"Figure of speech, love," she said. "For now... how is David?"

"I burn for him all the time," I said, in the obscure honesty of dreams. "If I lose him I'll die."

"You won't."

"I will." Just the idea of it brought on a massive, black wave of grief that threatened to cripple me. Sara squeezed my hand, as if she knew, as if she could feel what I felt. I gulped down a hot, acid breath. "Where's Patrick?"

"Here."

"Where?"

"Close your eyes."

I did, and instantly I was in the aetheric, or the dream-aetheric, anyway. And it wasn't Sara holding my hand. The Djinn who did was drawn in shades of power, lines of tragedy, but there were ice-cool blues and greens shimmering around his aura. An aurora borealis of peace.

Somehow, I wasn't surprised. "Oh," I said. "There you are. Hey, Patrick." Not that it was possible to talk on the aetheric plane, as such, but my dream, my rules. Patrick's form turned toward me, and somehow it overlaid itself with the semblance of humanity he'd worn for more than three hundred years... a big man with an energetic explosion of white-blond hair, eyes as bitter and intoxicating as absinthe. Santa Claus, but the kind who'd drop presents on the ground to look up women's skirts as he bent over.

"I've missed you," he said, and an incorporeal hand grabbed my ass.

"Wrong! Wrong touching!" I yelped, and jumped away. He grinned like a naughty schoolboy.

"Can't blame me for trying."

"You're dead," I accused him. "Shouldn't you be giving up bad habits?"

"Seems a bit late to reform. So. You're here to ask what you should do."

"No, I'm having a dream."

"Are you?" He folded his arms across his chest. It made for