Thin Air Page 0,94

cold gravel shoulder of the road, and there was a smoking heap of metal a dozen feet away that wasn't immediately recognizable as anything like a motorized vehicle. Certainly not the lovely, gleaming car that I'd been driving. But I saw a glint of unblemished midnight blue paint, and felt a mournful stab of anguish. The poor Camaro wasn't coming back from that with a little body work, even if there'd been a way to save the engine.

When I focused past the wreckage, I forgot to breathe, because the Camaro hadn't taken the brunt of the brute-force attack...and it hadn't exactly been a surgical strike. It was like a bomb made of air had exploded, and the Camaro had been ground zero. The indescribable sound I'd heard had been the howling wind slamming into old-growth trees and snapping them off their bases, or uprooting them completely to crash into their neighbors.

It was a veritable crop circle of downed trees.

I tried to sit up, and something in my back lodged a loud protest. I groaned, told it to shut up, and compromised by rolling over on my side. No sign of Venna or Ashan. No sign of anybody, actually. Just me, a bunch of killed trees, and the dead Camaro puffing black smoke into the empty sky.

"Venna?" My voice sounded thin. I tried again, but it didn't work any better. Mindful of my back pain, I rolled to my hands and knees, then got to my feet. Gonna be sore in the morning, I thought crazily.

Somebody had destroyed almost a quarter mile of forest to try to kill me. Being sore was the least of my problems, and if Venna hadn't acted as my Djinn air bag...

I wondered if Ashan was still in the twisted wreckage of the car.

"Venna?"

A car topped the ridge, heading toward the devastated area. No, a truck, an SUV, and there was another one behind it. It was moving slowly because of the debris, but steadily enough. I didn't want any Good Samaritans right now; I wasn't sure I could protect them against whatever had just put the unholy smackdown on me. No, actually I was sure...I was sure I couldn't. My heart sank as I saw it was a family, and they slowed radically as they got close to the crash scene.

"Keep going!" I yelled as the father rolled down his window. I forced myself to get up to my hands and knees, then to my feet. I managed not to black out doing it. "I'm fine! Don't stop; it's not safe!"

He seemed like a nice enough guy, but he had kids in the back of his truck, and a wife who looked hugely pregnant, and I did not want their lives on my conscience. "I'll call nine-one-one!" he yelled. I waved frantically, trying to shoo them on by sheer force of will, and it seemed to work.

He negotiated his way around the maze of downed trees and got the hell out.

I remembered there'd been a second SUV behind it, and turned to look.

It had stopped about fifty feet away-a large black SUV, tinted windows, very classy. I thought I saw something shimmer on the paint, and blinked, then went into the aetheric and saw a stylized sun symbol on the door not visible to the naked human eye. It was where an official seal would have been for a government vehicle.

Wardens.

I backed up out of the center of the road and looked around for some kind of cover, but of course there wasn't any. I didn't feel like cowering in a ditch, especially when they'd undoubtedly already spotted me. Maybe they're friendly, I thought.

Yeah, and maybe the next Djinn I met was going to look just like Brad Pitt and grant me three wishes, too.

The SUV eased forward very slowly. It crunched to a stop a few dozen feet away and idled its engine. Nobody got out. I couldn't see inside. I felt an odd sensation, as if every hair on my body were stirring-static electricity, maybe.

"Let's get this over with," I muttered. "What're you going to do, stare me to death?"

The driver's side of the SUV opened, and David got out. He looked fantastically good to me in that moment, and I let out a sigh of relief and took a step toward him...

And stopped, because there was no welcome in his face. Nothing but blank fury.

"David?"

I felt the energy gathering above me, and flung up a hand to catch it before it could