Firestorm Page 0,64

incredible outpouring of energy.

I grabbed hold of a rising superheated column of air and wrenched it free of its source, then directed it at an angle at the falling tree. Twenty feet. It was coming for us fast, and no way were we going to clear it in time. Flames all around us. Ten feet. Heading right for the roof of the SUV...

I let the superheated blast of air go, cooled the outer edge, and it hit the tree like a huge blunt object, hammering it off course. Not by much.

The outer blackened pine branches snapped off on my side of the truck, and the trunk crushed the underbrush just a couple of inches to the right of the SUV's hood.

Emily shot me a disbelieving look. I shrugged and took my hands off the dashboard. Left wet, sweaty handprints behind.

I couldn't see the Demon anymore. Wishful thinking made me hope that Demons weren't impervious to fire, but damn, I pretty much knew better than that. Demons were impervious to everything nature or humans could toss their way. They could be contained by Djinn, but destroyed? Probably not, once they'd achieved full form, as this one had.

We were clear of the fire suddenly. Trees swayed around us, uneasy in the looming smoke, but nothing was aflame around us. Emily had, temporarily, outrun the flames.

She slowed the SUV, stopped, and wiped her hands on her filthy pants. She was shaking all over, and black as a coal miner at the end of a shift. Eyes red and bloodshot.

"That," she said faintly, "was maybe a little too close."

"A little," I agreed. "Nice driving."

"Nice wind management," she replied, and was overtaken by a series of racking, tearing coughs. Sounded painful. I leaned over, put my hand on her back, and concentrated on the air inside her lungs. I oxygenated it as much as possible, then extended it into a bubble within the cab of the SUV. Couldn't do it for long, because we'd both get high and giggly, but it would help, short-term.

"What the hell just happened?" I asked, in between gasps. Emily put the SUV in gear and managed--somehow--to turn it around on the narrow road so we could drive forward instead of backward. Smoke was thick and acrid around us, blowing our direction.

"Something's working against us," Emily said grimly. "Don't know what it is. I thought it was another group of Wardens, but now I don't know. It's not just the typical crap you get in wildfires. You know what I'm talking about?"

I did. Wildfires were dangerous in and of themselves; they hardly needed any villains to come add complications. I still vividly remembered the big Yellowstone fire that had claimed so many lives among the Wardens, several years back... the one that had destroyed Star both physically and mentally. That hadn't been anything but the nature of fire and the cruel purpose of the earth.

I had a good idea of who had been messing with the fire here: a Demon Mark-ridden Warden. And that made sense of why the Djinn had elected to stay away. The hatching of a full-blown Demon out of its human carapace was nothing they'd want to be around. David had fought a full-grown Demon, once upon a time, and I had to assume he'd won, but it couldn't have been an easy fight.

Out of nowhere, I remembered David telling me, We are made of fire. He'd meant Djinn, of course, and he wasn't exactly being literal, but it made me wonder. Djinn reacted to light and heat, to the transformation of energy. I wondered if Demons were the same. If they were drawn to these kinds of events to help them--hatch. If so, there might be more of them out there--Wardens with Demon Marks, moving mindlessly toward something that would finish the process of incubation. Probably they wouldn't even understand why. I remembered how it had felt when my own Demon Mark began to manifest itself in a big way... I'd been euphoric, almost godlike. No thought for consequences. And no sense of self-preservation, really.

I started to tell Emily about it, but then I realized that it wouldn't do any good. Even if she believed me--which was doubtful--there wasn't anything she could do about it. We were on our own out here in the wild Canadian wilderness, apparently. I missed Marion. She'd know, if anybody did, how much trouble we were all in right now.

Emily got us back to a logging road, then out to a