Firestorm Page 0,124

"Jo, how'd you get here? Where have you been? How did this happen?"

When I kept silent, he finally shook his head and glanced around, then gathered up the backpack he'd dropped on the ground. "Come with me." I had no reason to, and in fact the little voice inside me was still urging me to run, fast, but I was too cold and too weak to obey. Lewis steered me down the gentler slope of the far side of the hill, into a small clearing. Overhead, it looked like twilight, everything masked into smooth gray cotton by the low-hanging clouds. Virgae of rain draped from them, trailing the treetops. "Sit," he ordered, and I collapsed onto the cold ground in a huddle. The coat couldn't warm me. I didn't have enough heat left in my body for it to insulate. As if he knew that, Lewis turned away and grabbed handfuls of fallen wet wood from the underbrush--good-size logs, some of them--and began putting together the makings of a fire. He was good at it. Within five minutes, he had a cleared space, dug down to the dirt, created a firepit, and ringed it with rough stones.

It didn't matter. The wood was way too wet to burn.

Lewis settled down next to the nonstarting fire, glanced at me, and extended a hand, palm out, toward the inert pile of wood.

It burst into immediate hot flame.

I jerked backward, startled, blinking in the sudden dazzle of light, and looked at him. He didn't seem to find anything odd about what had just happened; in fact, he barely paused before he began digging in his pack. He pulled out a rolled-up pair of blue jeans and a denim shirt. Thick thermal socks.

I started to edge away from him, as discreetly as possible.

"Foot," he said, and held out his hand. When I didn't move, he sighed. "Jo, for God's sake, unless you want to lose some toes, let me help you." I slowly extended my bare left foot. His large, long, blissfully hot fingers wrapped around my ankle and propped it on his knee. He frowned at the cuts on my foot. "What the hell happened to you?" It was, by this time, a rhetorical question. He was very intent on the cuts, not my face. I got the sense that he didn't want to look at me too closely. "Okay, these are mostly superficial, but it's going to hurt like hell later if I don't do something about it. So please, hold still."

I expected him to reach for the first aid kit I could see in the neatly packed backpack. Instead, he just cupped my foot in both hands, and I felt a sudden pulsing warmth go through me, following by a dull shearing pain. I flinched, trying to pull back, but he held on, and in a second or two the pain subsided and faded altogether. My foot felt deliciously warm. Tingling.

He let go and tugged one of the thermal socks up to my ankle, sealing in the warmth. I wanted to be grateful, but the truth was, I was scared. Scared to death. I didn't know this guy, although he claimed to know me, and he could start fires just by snapping his fingers. Not to mention whatever he'd done to my foot, which felt really good now, but wasn't natural. I might not remember my last name (I was trying, really I was) but I knew that whatever was happening here, with this guy named Lewis, it wasn't normal.

"Next," he said, and held out his hands again. I hesitated, then gave him the right foot. I'd need those cuts sealed up if I had to make a run for it.

Maybe he's the one. The one who kidnapped you and knocked you over the head and dumped you out here to die. Maybe, but in that case, why was he doing the magical first aid? He could have just let me go. I'd have died out here, without help.

Wouldn't I?

When the right foot was healed and thermally socked, he put the blue jeans and shirt on the ground between us, and looked up into my face.

I waited for some memory to make it past the big black wall. Anything. His name was Lewis, he acted like he knew me, I should know him.

I didn't.

He must have taken my long stare for something else, because he shrugged. "Sorry. I don't know where he is."

He? There was another one? I looked down, trying not