Ill Wind Page 0,50

of the ground, held it lightly between her fingers. It sprouted a bud, which exploded into luxuriant color. Red, this one. Brilliant bloodred, with a black center like an eye. "You didn't try to, say, immobilize him instead, as you must have been trained to do."

"Hey, this was Bad Bob, not some fifth-year apprentice with a bad attitude. The higher level a Warden is, the worse the consequences if he loses control- hell, Marion, you know that. Power and responsibility. Well, I had to fight him, and I had to use the big guns to do it. You want me to say I'm sorry?"

"No," she said. The flower in her hands blazed brilliantly through summer, faded, withered into winter, and died. A life in less than a minute. Marion's little silent demonstration: You control the weather. I control life itself. "I want you to understand that you will have a chance to tell your side of it. But when the judgment comes, it is final."

"Bullshit. You've already decided, all of you. You think I'm a danger. You want to-" To neuter me. Scrub my head with steel wool. Take away everything that I love.

"I don't, actually," Marion said, and dropped the flower. "But if the Council decides that you cannot be trusted with the powers you control, then those powers have to be taken from you. I know you know this. You can't keep running like this. You have to go back."

"I can't. Not yet."

"The Council meets tomorrow. Nobody sent me after you today, but if you don't submit yourself for judgment tomorrow at the Council offices, somebody will, and my orders will be very different."

"You're traveling with a hunting squad," I pointed out. "Two Earth Wardens and a Fire Warden. That's to counteract my powers without fighting me on the weather front. Right?"

She didn't answer. Didn't have to, in fact.

'Tomorrow's tomorrow," I said finally. The storm had crawled closer on its little cat feet, and I could feel distant tingles at the edges of my awareness; the storm talked to me, the way that the forest and this meadow talked to Marion. My power, and my enemy, all at once. "You going to let me go or what?"

Marion smiled, and I knew what that meant.

I felt tiny, stealthy ropes of grass moving around me, sliding over my shoes, climbing my legs, and I yelped in absolute disgust and ripped free, hopping from one foot to another. The earth softened under my feet, and even though they were relatively low-heeled, my shoes sank in fast, heels first. I kicked them off, scooped them up, and ran like hell.

It was like running on razors. Every stone turned its sharpest edge toward me; every branch whipped at my body or my face. Grass struggled to slow and trip me. I broke into a cold sweat at the thought of having to flail through those trees, but I didn't have a choice; I huddled low, below the reach of most branches, and tried to hop over the thrashing whirlwinds of grasses and roots that reached for me.

Fire blasted bright in a straight line between me and Delilah's open door, and on the other side of the car I saw Shirl, her hands outstretched, placing the fire and directing it toward me. Damn, I hate fire.

There was plenty of fine dust afloat, exactly what I needed to condense water in the air; I quick-froze the air in a twenty-foot circle, crowding molecules closer, forcing water molecules to attach around the tiny grains of dust. Mist hazed the air, and I felt my hair crackle and lift from the power. I poured energy into it, never mind the consequences; out here in the country, there wasn't as much damage to be done by a mistake, and I was damn near mad enough not to care.

Within ten seconds, I had a thick, iron-gray cloud overhead. I flipped polarity above it, and the charge began the process of attraction and accumulation, drops melting and merging and growing until their own weight overcame the pressure of droplet attraction.

The cloudburst came right on cue and right on target. Cold and hard and silver, slicing down from the sky in ribbons. The fire sizzled; Shirl cursed out loud and tried to counter for it, but I'd saturated the whole area with as much moisture as possible, and physics were against her. She couldn't get