Firestorm

'Hey, Paul,' I said. 'It's Joanne. They've got you answering phones?'

'I've got damn graduate students answering the phone. You wouldn't even believe the magnitude of the trouble we're in. Where are you?'

'I'm up at the Canada fire, with Emily. Who else is up here?'

'Canada? Fuck if I know. Hang on, let me check.' He clicked off. I knew how the Crisis Center worked—there'd be a huge write on-wipe off board with events and Wardens assigned—usually. Today, who knew. I had the feeling that it was all just happening too fast. 'Yeah. Jo, Emily's Earth and Fire—you've got a second Fire Warden located about eleven miles away from your current position, on the other side of the fire. Gary Omah. He's not real high on the scale, by the way. Not a lot of heavyweights left up there.'

'I don't think we can count on Gary Omah,' I sighed. 'Who else?'

'Weather Warden out of Nova Scotia. That's what I've got for you.'

'Who is she?'

'Janelle Bright.'

I didn't know her, but that wasn't unusual; she was probably young, and probably lower level. Those seemed to be the survivors, so far. Probably because they hadn't earned any Djinn, and hadn't encountered any along the way. Also, Nova Scotia wasn't exactly the crossroads of the world. She'd probably be safe enough, if she didn't make a target of herself.

But then again, there were no longer any guarantees of anything, were there?

'Okay,' I said, and then remembered to click the button. 'Right, Paul, I'm going to organize this one, okay?'

'Fine by me. We're up to our necks around here. You're senior on the ground pretty much wherever you go right now. Take charge.'

Now that was a really scary thought. It told me more than a Weather Channel documentary just how much trouble we were in.

I glanced over at Emily. 'Um, Paul? One other thing.'

'Please, let it be something fluffy and happy.'

'Not so much. Demon.'

'What?'

'There's a Demon loose. I saw it break out of a dying Warden—Gary Omah, I'm presuming. It tried—' I swallowed hard and kept my voice even with an effort, because the crispy zombie flashbacks weren't easy to suppress. 'It tried to get to me, but I managed to fight it off.'

Paul was quiet for so long, I thought I was having a conversation with static, and then he said, 'I can't spare anybody else to help you.'

'Make it happen, Paul. I need someone.'

He put me on hold. Mercifully, there was no annoying music, it was just straight static. I listened to white noise and thought about Gary Omah, wondered how he'd come in contact with a Demon Mark, wondered whether taking it on had been his own choice or an infection that had happened against his will. I couldn't afford to agonize over Gary, though. If he was the blackened, hollowed-out corpse I'd met in the forest, then he was better off dead, and I had bigger problems.

Paul came back on the line. 'Paul, I need—'

He interrupted me by covering the phone and bellowing, 'You! Yeah, you in the fucking yellow! I told you, get those people over to the west side of the thing, do you understand me? West!' The muffling came off the phone, not that it had concealed much. 'Shit. I've gotta go. Do your best. I've got to go be the first officer of the goddamn Hindenburg.' He was trying to sound light, but somewhere underneath I could tell he was genuinely, grimly terrified. 'At least Lewis is the one wearing the shiny hat.'

'I know,' I said softly. 'Keep bailing, buddy.'

'Jo, just get the fuck out of there. Do what you've gotta do. We can't save everybody. Not this time.'

'I can't just walk away.'

'Learn how,' he said. 'People are dying. People are going to die. It's all just a question of how many, and how bad they go. We need the Djinn back, and we need them now. So you've got to stay focused. Do what you can, but stay on mission.'

He clicked off before I could respond. I sat back, looking at Emily; she was staring out the window at the orange-colored distance.

'I can't get anybody besides one Weather Warden out of Nova Scotia,' I said. 'They're swamped.'

She nodded. 'We're really fucked, aren't we?' she asked, like it was an academic consideration.

'Not necessarily. All we have to do is pile in the Jeep and leave.'

She gave me a bleak, absent smile.

'Yeah,' she said. 'That's likely.'

Of course, we didn't leave. We didn't even discuss it. We just went to work. I spent time up on the aetheric, trying to move weather patterns around and layer cooler air over what was increasingly a troubled system. The fire was generating enormous amounts of heat, and that heat was affecting the already-unstable weather. It kept sliding out of my control, finding ways to twist back like a snake trying to strike. Lightning, for instance. Just when I thought we'd gotten things contained at a reasonable level, the energy began churning around and creating vast random pulses. It had to go somewhere. I deflected most of them as sheet lightning, or sent the energy flaring across the sky instead of down to earth, but it only takes one, sometimes.

And one slipped through, hit a giant pine, and ignited it like a torch.

Beginning of the end.

'Emily!' I yelled, and pointed. She was busy trying to contain the forest fire itself, but this was a second front, and we couldn't afford to let it get busy at its job. I shot up into the aetheric and looked for the other Weather Warden who was supposed to be helping us. Janelle. She was a weak spark indeed, barely glowing up on the aetheric; she was, I sensed, exhausted. Whatever was going on in Nova Scotia, it wasn't good. She was working the systems from the back, which was about all she could do, with the strength she had at hand. I wasn't about to push her for more. We were all redlining our limits today.

I caught sight of something in the aetheric. No, caught sight of wasn't exactly accurate—I sensed something, although everything looked just about as normal as an unsettled higher plane could look… The fire was a gorgeous lavalike cascade of colors, pouring out over everything in its path, but there was something going on that didn't belong. I couldn't pin it down, exactly. I just knew something wasn't right.

Then the fire arrived at the first human structure, a luxurious hunting lodge that was, luckily, empty of inhabitants, and set to work industriously licking at the propane tanks in the yard as if it had made straight for them.

That hadn't been a natural progression. That had been a choice.

'Crap,' Emily said from her post at the window. She sounded matter-of-fact, but she was pale and shaking with strain. I didn't have an up-close-and-personal relationship with fire—well, not until recently—but I understood that the stress of being a Fire Warden was unique. I could see that she was caving under the pressure, and there was nothing I, could really do to help. I had my hands full already; lightning was jumping around in that storm, struggling to find new targets. My newly discovered Fire powers were too raw to be of any real use in a situation like this. Fire Wardens, even more than Weather, needed fine control.

I had no idea how long it had been since my call to the Crisis Center; time is funny when you're in the middle of something like this. It can make minutes crawl, and hours fly; there wasn't a clock in easy view, and I was too busy to consult one anyway. Any little slip in my attention meant the fire gained new ground against the rain I was directing over it. Janelle, my remote support, was weakening further; she wouldn't be able to last long, and when she was gone, the weather system would swirl out of control out to sea, and the winds whipping in would spread this fire far and wide. I remembered how it had happened at Yellowstone, the day Star had gotten burned. The day so many Wardens had paid the price. Once a wildfire took control, it would be coming after anything and everything it sensed might be able to fight it.

This one was right on the edge. You could feel it thinking, and, boy, not nice thoughts, either.

The propane tanks at the hunting lodge blew with movie-spectacular effect. It bloomed white-hot at the