Gale Force Page 0,91

the parking lot, which was littered with burned-out, crushed vehicles, downed trees, fragments of glass and metal. The hotel, which had luckily been scheduled for demolition anyway, was partially destroyed, whether by us or by the Sentinels it was impossible to say. At a certain point, it really didn't much matter.

The news media was out in a huge, baying pack. I tried to count the number of satellite trucks, but my head hurt. I was sure that a fair number of those photo and video lenses were being pointed in our direction, though, and remembered the reporter from Fort Lauderdale. Man, wouldn't she feel vindicated? She now officially had a scoop.

"How much did they get?" I asked.

"Oh, everything. Tornadoes forming out of nowhere. Cars bursting into flame and exploding. Trees getting thrown. Buildings disintegrating." Lewis's shoulders twitched, then straightened. "The FBI wants me to give a statement. Something along the lines of, we're a secret government agency; we'd tell you but we'd have to kill you, blah blah. They'd like me to tie it to terrorists."

I stared at him. "And what are you going to do?"

He shrugged. "Don't know yet."

"You really think this is a good time to lie?"

"Well, I don't think it's exactly a good time to tell the truth." He glanced at David, whose eyes seemed to be fading back to a more normal color. "I'll leave the Djinn out of it, if you'd like."

"That's kind of you, but I think we'd better tell everything if we tell anything," David said. "Let's talk to Kevin. We don't have a lot of time."

Kevin was sitting with his least favorite people. Well, that probably wasn't fair; he didn't like anybody, so most people were his least favorite people, but he reserved a special kind of dislike for the Ma'at. I wasn't really sure why, except that in general, the leadership of the Ma'at was pretty unlikable.

Two of them were flanking him: Charles Spenser Ashworth II and Myron Lazlo. Talk about the Old Boy Network . . . they weren't just in it, they'd laid the original cable. Lazlo had dressed down for his public appearance; he normally liked subtle, tailored suits that reeked old money, but he'd deigned to wear what I supposed was his "field outfit" - khaki slacks, a cotton shirt open at the neck, and a sport coat that undoubtedly cost nearly as much as the sports car he'd probably arrived in.

Even so, Charles Ashworth's outfit made Lazlo look cheap.

Both of them were older than the pharaohs, and twice as stern, both in looks and in attitude. Yeah, I liked them just as much as Kevin did.

I thought it was just about the first time I'd ever seen actual relief on the kid's face as he spotted me.

"About time," he said. "Who put me in fucking detention with the Mummy Twins?"

I had to admit, that made me smile. The Ma'at had taken a lot of their iconography for their organization from the Egyptians, and it was no accident they'd made their headquarters at the Luxor in Las Vegas. I suppose they could have made a case for Memphis as well, but where else do you get a real live pyramid for a clubhouse?

"I did," Lewis said. "Thanks, gentlemen."

The gentlemen in question glared and, in Lazlo's case, gave him a well-I-never patrician huff. "We are not your staff," Ashworth snapped. "Do you have any idea what kind of imbalance this little fracas has caused? Oh, of course you do. You're supposed to be preventing this kind of thing, you know. Protecting people, not putting them in danger. Isn't that the Warden credo?"

He said Warden as if it were an epithet, which it practically was, for the Ma'at. They looked on themselves as the accountants of the aetheric; they were concerned about balance, always balance. Important, yes, but even supernatural double-entry bookkeeping was still bookkeeping, and I couldn't work up much enthusiasm for their way of doing things.

"The credo of every one of us is to stop Bad Bob Biringanine from screwing things up any worse than he already has," Lewis said. "I'll expect your support."

He sent them on their way with a jerk of his head. He was probably the only person in the world they'd have taken that kind of treatment from, another mystery of Lewis Levander Orwell. He had an impressive presence, but not that impressive - generally. And yet we all jumped when he snapped his fingers.

Kevin stayed where he was, slouched in the plastic