grains of sand.
You can do this. You have to do this.
I'd done it before. It was a party trick, something Wardens did to amuse each other during boring patches. Fire and air, interacting. I could do it in my sleep.
Usually.
I took a deep breath and threw everything I had into the effort, and stepped up on top of the fire.
The air cushion felt squishy and unsteady, like a waterbed. Not at all the firm platform it should have been. And it was warm. Verging on, well, hot. And these were not shoes I wanted melted.
I exerted pressure on the hardened layer of air under my feet to pull it tighter together. This would never work unless the heat could push against it...
I started rising. Slowly. I opened my eyes and gasped as the fire's energy started cooking through my running shoes, blinked away tears, and bit my lip.
Hang on.
Up. Slowly. Dammit, a year ago I'd have done this in five seconds flat.
The heat was intense now, and I was sure my shoes were melting. I smelled burning rubber. Maybe something else, something worth panicking over.
The sky crawled slowly closer, the walls of the sand pit shifting and sagging around me. The thing was starting to lose its coherence. If I didn't do this right, if I didn't get help, Kevin and Lewis were going to be buried alive...
I realized I was panting, partly from the relentless pressure of the heat, partly from the pain that was quickly turning to agony. It felt as if flames were licking the backs of my calves. The air under my feet softened like pudding, threatening to drop me the seven feet I'd traveled back down into the flames.
I sank my teeth into my lip, raised my hands to the sky, and chilled the air above me. Blew the molecules far apart, slowed their movement, dropped the temperature at least twenty degrees. Easy stuff. Child's play. I could barely manage it, and when I did, it felt as if I were seconds from an aneurysm.
Intense pain in my head, shortness of breath. I tasted blood in the back of my throat.
I rose faster. Faster.
I didn't dare look down because I knew my feet were burning now, dear God, it felt as if the flesh was already roasted off and now the muscles were cooking, but if that were true then I wouldn't feel anything once the nerves died...
Hang on. Hang on. Hang on.
I clung to the vision of Kevin's parchment-pale face, of the blood pouring out of his side, and then, suddenly, my face was passing ground level and I was out.
I pitched forward, pushed with the last of my strength, rolled and kept on rolling until I splashed into a shockingly cold surf. A wave curled over me and I heard a hiss as my smoking shoes hit water.
I breathed liquid, coughed, choked, tasted salt and decay, and rested my face on cold, wet sand with a relief so intense it felt like orgasm.
"Son of a bitch!" A pair of hands rolled me over on my back, and I blinked and focused on the barely visible glimmer of Armando Rodriguez's face. For the first time, he had an easily readable expression: shocked. "What the hell was that?"
Like I could explain. I coughed salt, gagged water, and croaked, "Two people down there in the hole; one's hurt bad. Get help, now."
He had a gun in his hand, which wasn't useful. He put it away and came up with a cell phone, dialed, and gave the rescue bulletin.
"Get an ambulance," I added. He nodded and kept talking.
I squirmed up to a sitting position and peeled my melted jogging shoes off of my feet. They were pink and tender, but not Cajun-fried.
God, that was going to hurt tomorrow.
"We can't wait," I said. "Find some rope, blankets we can tie together, anything. Run!"
He raced back the way we'd come, heading for the glow of headlights that marked the three kids tailgating on some unlucky parent's SUV. I squirmed back over to the hole. It was widening.
"Kevin!" I yelled. "Help's on the way!"
No answer. I scrambled back from the hole and looked around. Rodriguez was MIA.
I couldn't see anybody else on the murky stretch of beach. Time was running out.
Call David, my worst angels whispered in my