Firestorm Page 0,101

Djinn. This would be a prime target. That was why I hadn't wanted to have others on the plane. My life--sure, I'll risk it. But there were a lot of lives at stake here. And I was the point of danger.

"Everybody hang on!" I yelled. Lightning flashed outside the windows, and I felt the plane powering up. They were going to try to get above it, looked like. Good strategy. The only problem was that the storm was going to chase them. "Yves, switch with me."

We unbuckled and fumbled across each other, mumbling politenesses; he was dressed in a pair of blue jeans and a colorful dashiki-style shirt in yellow, blue, and orange patterns. A blaze of brightness in a world that was rapidly turning the color of ashes outside. I settled in his empty chair and buckled in, clutched the armrests, and looked out the window.

I didn't really need the view, but it helped; sometimes, focus could be achieved better with a visual cue. I filled up my lungs, let it out, filled them again, and allowed myself to drift free.

I got battered immediately by currents of force on the way up to the aetheric. It was a war zone, with silent colorful explosions of power snapping and popping in a hundred places at once. The cloudscape roiled, black in places, red in others, everything unstable and bizarre. I spotted an area that had taken on the silvery overlay I knew was going to be a huge problem, and concentrated on it. As I did, I felt myself joined by someone else who boosted my concentration and power, bracing me when I faltered. The power signature felt familiar, but I couldn't stop to wonder about it. I just worked, fast and frantic, trying to make sure the space around our airplane remained relatively disaster-free as our pilots arrowed for the safety of the higher sky.

On the mortal level, the turbulence shook us hard, and then the engines howled louder and suddenly, the ride was glass-smooth again. I gasped in air, feeling the shift on the aetheric at the same time, and recognized the power that had helped me.

Imara. My daughter was with me--not physically, not on the plane, but she was watching over me.

"No," I whispered. My breath fogged the glass of the plane's window on the inside as mist beaded on it outside. "No, stay with Sarah. Stay out of this."

Words wouldn't do on the aetheric level, but she understood what I was saying, I think. I felt a pulse of reassurance from her, from that shadowy flicker of presence; I couldn't see her at all clearly, just as I couldn't see any of the Djinn (or Ifrit, for that matter) while we were on the aetheric plane.

"I mean it!" I said to the flicker that was my daughter. "Stay out of this! Stay with Sarah!" Who, God knew, needed the chaperone.

The flicker moved away from me, but not far. Not far enough. She wasn't minding her mother, clearly; maybe she was under instructions from her father, but I didn't find that too likely. David had been in agreement with me about keeping her out of Ashan's grasp, and yet here she was, hanging about like bait on a hook.

And there was nothing I could do about it.

We stayed high for most of the trip, well above the unsteady clouds; the storms kept forming beneath us, hopscotching across the country. Our passage was causing chaos, no doubt about it, and I had the sick feeling that we were probably causing deaths, as well, but it wouldn't have been better if I'd driven, and it probably would have ended up worse in the end. I couldn't save everyone. Hell, I was no longer sure that I could save anyone.

The speaker gave that distinctive little click, and everyone in the cabin looked up from what they were doing--mostly reading or sleeping. "Hi, folks. Well, we've run about as far as we can at this altitude, we're going to have to start our descent. As you know, this is going to be rough, so please, try to keep those amusement-park screams to a minimum. It doesn't make us fly with any more confidence. Ah, and Captain Klees would like to remind you that today's movie selection of Die Hard Two is now available on your LCD screens. Ah, hell, that was a joke. It's really Turbulence, followed by Con Air. Anyway, you guys keep cool back there. Let us do the