Gale Force Page 0,68

sexy V of skin down the spine beneath the lacings. It was demure enough, but I could sense, like a vibration on the aetheric, that it would drive him absolutely mad.

"I'll take it," I said. The clerk raised both eyebrows.

"Don't you want to know - "

"If you tell me the price, I'll chicken out, so no. I don't want to know. Just ring it up."

She cleared her throat. "I really think I should warn you about the cost - "

"You really shouldn't," I sighed.

The Warden AmEx was about to get a serious workout. Even though she was undoubtedly making a commission, my saleslady looked concerned for the state of my financial future. As well she should. If it cost anywhere near what it looked, I was going to be paying approximately the cost of a new car.

She fussed around with the dress, looking for necessary alterations and marking them. A thorough professional. We discussed indoor versus outdoor, potential hazards of having a court train to manage, and other things that I couldn't imagine ever discussing again in my entire life.

But it was done. I had a dress. And it was the dress.

I walked out of the dressing room feeling happier than I had in weeks, trailing the salesclerk like a lady's maid. I was smiling widely, anticipating the pleasant shock of seeing David in his still-new finery, and I wasn't disappointed; he was sitting sprawled on a velvet couch, looking ready for a fashion shoot. Women were finding reasons to shop in his vicinity. I couldn't really blame them.

"Done," I said serenely.

"Really? That was fast." It wasn't, but he was being kind. He kissed me, and that was very nice, especially when, as he pulled back, he whispered in my ear, "I want to take you home now."

"Let me mortgage my future first."

I don't think a sale ever went through faster. In fact, I didn't even notice the total amount as I signed the slip.

And then, of course, everything went wrong.

David sensed it first, by a couple of seconds; he looked up sharply, all the ease and humor draining away from him, and his hand closed around mine in an iron grip. He wasn't letting us be separated again, not this time.

"What is it?" I asked, or tried to. I never got to the last word. David pointed to the world beyond the glass windows.

The clouds were thickening so fast overhead that it looked like special effects from the most expensive disaster movie ever made.

I turned my focus out to sea, out to that calm and tranquil sea. There were no hurricanes brewing there, only the normal cycle of thunderstorms that needed no Warden regulation.

But someone was tampering with the clouds, forcing energy into a stable system - taking a standard garden-variety thunderstorm, which hadn't even really been threatening rain until later, and packing it with energy until it was a mesocyclone. I'd seen it done, but never this fast, never with so little to work with. The Sentinels were creating an emergency, and doing it so quickly that it made my whole body shiver with the corona effect of the power. Lightning ripped through the sky, blue-white and purple, and struck three times that I could see, blowing up transformers, destroying a metal light pole, stabbing into the lightning at-tractors on a building only two blocks away.

People began to react nervously.

Outside the windows, I saw the classic formation take shape: anvil cloud, hard and gray as lead; cloud striations below, showing the shredding forces at work; wall cloud pushing rapidly toward us, forming and hardening as it came.

An occlusion downdraft was taking shape, leading the forces into a spinning, fatal vortex.

I felt the forces coalescing, and turned my face upward as I rose into the aetheric.

Yep. Tornado. Right over the store.

David was right with me. We rose up into the boiling storm of opposing forces. I couldn't see the perpetrator; there was too much confusion, too much random energy masking his presence, but I sensed he was here, watching. Waiting.

The tornado was a trap, but it was one I couldn't help but spring. It was dipping down out of the clouds, heading for the crowded street. Heading for the bridal store.

Heading for my dress.

I took a deep breath, tightened my grip on David's hand, and prepared for battle.

"I'm with you," he said. "I'll give you what I can." I understood, in that second, that the Mother had cut his circuits again, stranded him from the core of his power.