Gale Force Page 0,11

on wedding dresses when it hit. Two, I worked with Luis Rocha to try to figure out what was causing it and lessen the damage. Three - " Number three was my middle finger, unaccompanied by the other two.

"Classy," Lewis said. "I'm sure the Wardens Council would be impressed with the summary."

I repeated the gesture for the missing Wardens Council. Because I didn't much like most of them, anyway.

"When you and Rocha went up on the aetheric, what happened?"

I described it for him - the red boil of forces out of control; Rocha diving down toward the source; me following; the ice black shard of - something - driven into the skin of the planet.

"You touched it," Lewis said, "and it knocked you away."

"Like it was Sammy Sosa and I was the baseball."

"Nice sports reference. You do that because I'm a guy?"

"No, I do it because I like baseball. Back to the subject. I couldn't hold on to it, and if I couldn't - " The only Warden walking around who was stronger than me was currently driving the Hummer. "You want to give it a shot?"

"I'd like to see it," he said. We came to a stoplight; he turned right, found a deserted parking lot, and parked. "Show me."

I took his hand. It wasn't strictly necessary, but it made me feel better. We launched up together, out of our bodies and into the aetheric, and I was as always interested to see that Lewis didn't really look all that different on the astral planes than he did back home. Most people tended to reflect the person they wanted to be - prettier, fancier, stronger, taller, skinnier. Hell, our friend Paul manifested as a kind of King Arthur- era knight, although I was pretty sure he didn't know that.

I had no idea how I looked up top. Did I want to ask? Yeah. But it just Wasn't Done. Warden protocol.

The aetheric was abuzz with Warden activity. Lewis and I stayed out of it, floating high and looking down on the teeming, busy swirl of light that was the city of Fort Lauderdale. I pointed to a cluster of Warden activity, and tugged on his hand. Down we went, hurtling fast, flashing past startled colleagues I didn't even vaguely recognize.

We headed down into the disturbance, which, though still roiling, was contained in a tight, glassy shell of power. It looked fragile - the shell, not the disturbance.

Lewis touched the surface, and it took on a milky swirl; then his hand passed through it. He went inside, pulling me after, and when I looked back I saw the bubble sealing itself behind us. Pressure closed in on me, real and intense, and I was glad I didn't have blood vessels to rupture, because there would definitely be rupturing going on, followed by copious hemorrhaging.

Down we went, sliding through what felt like molten glass, and then I saw the black otherworldly glitter below and pulled on Lewis's hand to let him know. He nodded, and we touched down on something that wasn't ground, wasn't surface, wasn't anything really except a shadow of reality.

And there it was: the black thorn of glass, driven deep.

Lewis mimed that he was going to grab it. I shook my head. He mimed again. I shook my head again.

Fat lot of good that did. He grabbed it anyway.

Lewis held on for longer than I had - long enough that I began to think he was actually going to manage to yank the damn thing out - but then was thrown back, just as I'd been. Well, more violently. And he hit and bounced and drifted, seemingly unaware of anything until I grabbed on and began hauling him upward, away from that . . . thing. I couldn't explain why, but it gave me the serious creeps. It glittered. It looked deadly sharp, no matter what angle you looked at it; there was a sense of purpose to it that made my skin crawl.

It meant to be there. And it meant to defend itself.

Lewis came awake again, thrashing, and broke free of my hold. I fumbled for him, but he was already swimming away from me, heading back down.

Crap. This wasn't going well.

I couldn't yell on the aetheric, but I damn well felt like shouting. I pushed after him, feeling sick from the pressure, and grabbed hold of his ankle. He shook free of my grip and kept going, arriving back in front of the black shard. He didn't touch