Firestorm Page 0,61
the evaporation would occur anyway, and for a lot less constructive a reason.
When I had enough airborne moisture, I sent wind to blow it toward the unburned areas around the fire. Just a strong breeze, and I kept careful hold of it; it wouldn't do any good to send my carefully made fog right into the blaze itself, where it would be instantly zapped. No, I pushed it just far enough to layer it over the outlying underbrush, a thick wet blanket that would make it much more difficult for the advance scout sparks to take hold.
Once that was done, I shot up into the clouds. I'd long ago learned to deal with the dizziness of altitude, but this was just plain disorienting... I could see the heat rising up from the twisted trauma of the forest being destroyed below me, and it came in waves of red and pink and purple, like some crazy 70s acid trip. I hadn't usually been this close. It was--different.
I decided not to look down. My business was with what was overhead, in any case.
The updraft was making inroads, getting the attention of the weather system, but it was more of an annoying dinner guest than a partner in crime so far. If I could turn the weather system against the fire, so much the better, but if I couldn't, then at least I could cut off any kind of sympathetic energy exchange that could make both more dangerous.
I lowered the temperature at the higher elevations, forcing the moisture in the air closer together. My goal was rain, but I wasn't sure if there was enough aggregated moisture to really bring it off, without feeding the process out of the ocean. That would take time I wasn't sure we had. Best to get started with what there was, then work on the supply lines to keep it going.
Even a good downpour wasn't going to put out this kind of a fire, not as well-established as it was, but it could help contain it. With a decent Fire Warden--which Emily was, as far as I remembered, in addition to being an outstanding Earth Warden--this could come to a peaceful conclusion.
If everything went right.
Of course, there was no reason everything should go right. Especially not now, with everything I'd grown up knowing as fact turned into rapidly shifting fiction. The laws of nature were only laws so long as nature intended them to be. And I wasn't sure where we stood anymore. The rain started to fall--not a downpour, but a nice steady shower, anyway. It would raise the humidity and bring down the temperature, and if it couldn't douse the fire, at the very least it could soak the surrounding areas and intensify the fog layers.
It was, I decided, a pretty damn good job.
I let go on the aetheric and plummeted back down into my body, a scary thrill ride of fast-moving colors and a sense of imminent disaster that ended suddenly--and safely--as I found myself back in my body again. I sighed, breathed deep, and gagged on the taste of smoke.
And I opened my eyes and realized the trees right in front of me were burning.
"Shit!" I screamed, and slid off the bumper of the SUV. The air was intensely hot, well over a hundred degrees; my clothes were dripping with sweat. While I'd been doing all that careful manipulation, the fire had slipped up like the serial killer in the movies, and as I looked wildly around, I saw that the fire was leaping from one treetop to the next. The rain--which hadn't yet reached this spot--was doing its job; it just wasn't doing it fast enough.
The underbrush was a wall of fire that roared like a jet engine, sucking in air. I covered my head as sparks drifted down out of the sky and sizzled holes in my shirt. I smelled burned hair. I willed my Fire sense into action, covering myself; I wasn't sure if that extended to hair, but dammit, I had way too many hair issues already. Having it scorched again wasn't going to make things better...
I dived into the SUV and slammed the door. As I did, fire rolled like plasma through the underbrush to my left, on the driver's side, and I realized it was going to cut off my escape route. Once I was encircled, I'd roast, then burn.
The interior of the SUV was already hot. I remembered Emily's comments about the gas tank blowing up,