Thin Air Page 0,13

time."

I wished I'd picked up Lewis's gun. I felt hot, sick, disoriented, and oddly on the verge of tears. I didn't know the guy, not really, but...I couldn't believe what Kevin was saying. Lewis, going to kill me? No. That couldn't be true.

I needed to think, but I didn't have time. The fire was spreading. It had already jumped from one winter-dried treetop to another, and there were tendrils of flame and ash falling on us. Kevin might be fireproof, but I was pretty sure I wasn't.

Cherise yelped as a branch exploded from the heat, spraying us with burning splinters.

I didn't even plan what happened next. I don't even know how it happened. I just reached blindly for help, any kind of help.

And it came in a blinding, disorienting flash. Rain, driving down like a firehose to douse me to the skin. Cold water met hungry flames, and the resulting steam flooded the clearing in fog. The rain kept falling, a tap I didn't know how to turn off. Hell, maybe I'd broken off the knob. The underbrush was still smoking, but the flames were out, and they couldn't flare up again while the downpour continued.

Kevin looked like a stunned, drowned rat. He stared at me with narrowed eyes, measuring me, while rain beat down on his head and plastered his lank hair to his skull. "You shouldn't be able to do that," he said. "How did you...?" Weirdly, I could almost hear another voice overlaying his, a female voice. Not Cherise's, who was just mutely staring at me.

"How'd you get here?" I yelled over the roar of the rain.

"Not that again!"

"It's a good question! How the hell did you two find me?" I backed away, and saw Cherise and Kevin exchange a glance. Not one that was particularly reassuring. Man, I wished I'd picked up the gun-not that it had done Lewis a lot of good. But I felt particularly vulnerable right now. "Lewis was going to a lot of trouble because he thought somebody was following. He thought we were in danger."

"Not from us," Cherise said, and I almost believed her. She just had that kind of innocent trust-me face.

But I caught Kevin smiling, and my heart went cold.

I backed away a few more steps. Kevin's smile faded, and Cherise's blue eyes turned cool and expressionless.

"All right," she said. "I guess we do this the hard way."

The downpour was localized around us, but as I reached the margins, fire suddenly flared up. Kevin. I could feel the energy pouring out of him. I held my ground, because running would be damn near suicidal; once I got outside of the downpour's zone, he could toast me up like a s'more. I wasn't sure I had a second trick up my wet, dripping sleeve.

Cherise and Kevin didn't make a move toward me. They just watched me, and I got the strangest feeling, like they were just...there. And not there. Like they weren't really present anymore.

And then I sensed something else. I couldn't even put a name to it-big, dark, wrong. Very, very wrong. It wasn't a real shadow, but I could feel it, spreading over the ground toward me.

And then there was a shadow in the trees, something flickering and indistinct.

Cherise blinked and said, "There's nothing to be afraid of."

But there was. There most definitely was. Whatever that was in the trees was not right; I could feel it like a sick black ache in my chest that was only getting worse with every breath.

The shadow seemed to be flickering in time with my heartbeat, and with every frantic beat it looked a little bit...darker. More real. More distinct.

I saw the curve of a pale face, dark hair.

I didn't want to see what came at the end, but I felt weak now, and bitterly cold. My knees threatened to fold up under me, and I thought, This is it. I'm done.

And then something inside me just refused, cold and furious, and I felt myself get steadier again.

"There's something to be afraid of," I heard myself say to Cherise. "Me."

And I reached up into the sky and pulled at the air, pushing a whole wall of it like an invisible hard shield at them, driving her and Kevin backward.

Driving away the shadow.

I turned and ran, dodging blooming flames, barely managing to avoid slipping in the squelchy mud under my boots. Overhead, the downpour sputtered, let loose a final shower of ice-cold drops that froze into sleet as they hit the ground,