Gale Force

This was weird, and it wasn’t normal. Lewis knew I was coming; he knew David was traveling with me. Why send Antonelli, of all people, whom he knew I couldn’t stand? Lewis might work in mysterious ways, but that was downright impenetrable. I bought time to think by digging a pair of big sunglasses out of my purse and putting them on. There. Without a clear view of my eyes, Antonelli was going to have a tougher time figuring out what I’d do. “Shotgun,” I repeated, “so you’re the bodyguard. Flattering.”

Antonelli ran one hand over his bullet-shaped shaved head and gave me a grim-looking smile. “Most ladies would say so.”

“Save the smarm, I’m not in the mood.”

He shrugged. Flirting was reflexive for him; he didn’t fancy me, except in the abstract way that somebody like Antonelli fancied anyone with internal sex organs. If I stood still long enough, he’d gladly take a turn, but other than that, I was furniture. “Playtime’s over, then. Let’s move. In the van.”

I stayed right where I was, next to the door of the Mustang. “I’m driving my own car.” Technically, David was driving, but Antonelli might not know that. In fact, he didn’t look nearly worried enough, so I doubted he had any idea there was an angry Djinn standing a couple of feet away, eyes lit up like Halloween lanterns.

“Look, I don’t know the plan; I’m just following orders. Lewis says take the van; we take the van,” Antonelli said. “I don’t ask no questions; neither do you. Come on, sister, let’s go. I’ve got things to do.”

There was a ring of sweat around the high neck of his muscle shirt, and dark streaks under the arms. Unless Antonelli had come straight from the gym, something was up. He was nervous.

“We can sort that out,” I said, and pulled my cell phone from my pocket. “Let me just call—”

The circuitry inside the phone fried, boiled into vapor in an instant. I dropped the red-hot case and blew on my blistered fingers. Antonelli hadn’t moved, but something about him had changed. I could almost smell it: the burned-metal bite of desperation, mingled with a coppery odor of fear.

“Get in the fucking van,” he said. “I’m not playing, bitch. Don’t make this a showdown; there are too many people around. Kids. I don’t want to do that, and neither do you. Let’s keep this calm.”

Oh God, he was serious. I could tell it from the sweat on his skin, the dark shadows in his eyes. He was a whole lot more scared of someone else than he was of me.

That needed to change, right now.

I dropped my purse to the ground, glad I’d donned the sunglasses. I made sure my feet were firmly planted, shoulder-width apart, the right slightly forward to give me a more stable base.

“You’re right,” I said quietly. “I don’t want to do this. You don’t want to do this. But somehow, I think it’s going to happen anyway, because I can’t get in that van, Lee. Whatever’s going on, I can’t take the chance. Let’s think this through before we both start something that will end badly.”

David had not moved. Hadn’t spoken. Still, I was feeling the vibration of menace from him like the subsonic pulses from a volcano about to blow; this was going to go south, very badly, very fast.

“Who is it?” I asked. “Lee, tell me who’s making you do this. It’s not Lewis. It’s not the Wardens. Somebody’s forcing you to take me out of circulation. Come on, man, we don’t have to make this a throw down. We can talk about it, work it out.” While I talked, I used my Earth powers, subtly sending calming vibrations to him, lulling him into a state in which he might be more inclined to listen. To trust.

Antonelli shook himself, as if he were throwing off a wrestling hold, and I knew my brief second of opportunity was gone. “Save it,” he snapped. “I’m not some wet-behind-the-ears trainee. You can’t con me.”

And then Lee Antonelli, one of the best natural Fire Wardens I had ever seen, declared war.

I’ll give him credit; it was a strategic strike, not just a general firestorm. He formed a fireball and lobbed it not at me, but at my car. Clearly, he did not understand my relationship with cars. He’d have gotten off easier if he’d gone ahead and set my hair on fire. I’d have taken it less personally.

I formed an invisible cricket bat of hardened air, swung, lined up, and hit a solid line drive, sending the fireball right back into Antonelli’s midsection. It hit him hard enough to drive him against the body of the van, which rocked and creaked on its springs, and his muscle tee caught fire. He glanced down, annoyed, and brushed a hand over it. The fire went out, but there was a nice round hole with scorched edges baring his carefully developed abs. He’d had a tattoo put around his navel—a woman’s face, with the navel representing her open mouth. Classy. “Bitch!” he snarled.

“Repeating yourself already? We just started,” I said. I didn’t alter my stance, and I didn’t go after him. “Walk away. Just get in your van and go. We’ll all be happier.”

Only it wasn’t going to happen. He was scared, and he clearly didn’t think walking away from this was an option. Instead, he pointed his finger at me, and from the tip of it blazed a pinpoint of red light, hot as the sun. Coherent light, concentrated a thousand times stronger than the brightest earth-based laser developed by men.

Air wouldn’t slow it down. Neither would water, although it would bend the beam and eat up some of its energy in steam. Both options were sure to fail, and I knew from experience that if he could break my concentration, he could hurt me badly enough that I’d have a hard time defending myself at all.

Instead of defense, I went for offense. I had to end this fast, before some innocent bystander traipsed out of the diner and into the line of—literally—fire.

First, I summoned up a gale-force wind that slammed into his chest and pinned him against the van. Then I took away his air.

It’s damn hard to concentrate when you feel like you’re suffocating. I started with the air going in, filtering out the oxygen as he gasped. Then I focused on the oxygen inside Antonelli’s body—in his lungs, in his blood. I knew what I wanted to see, and it glowed bright blue for me.

I separated the hydrogen and oxygen atoms, took away an atom from the oxygen molecule, and within seconds, he was shaking in desperation, nearly out. I let him continue to breathe, because if anything it increased his panic, but I destroyed the oxygen before he could metabolize it.

There was a side effect of this, of course. Destruction creates energy, and I burned off the excess in sharp blue sparks that danced on the antenna of the van, the metal rims of the wheels, even Antonelli’s showy belt buckle.

It felt as though I were killing him, in a cruel and inhumane way, and that was exactly what I wanted him to feel. I wanted him to know that I wasn’t going to give in, and I wasn’t going to screw around. If he wanted to play hardball, he was going to have to live through the opening innings, and I’d taken the game to the professional level.

“Think about it,” I said. “I could just as easily put water in your lungs. Drowning on dry land. Sound good to you, tough guy?”

Antonelli sank to his knees, eyes wide and desperate.I hadn’t noticed before, but he had brown eyes, big and somehow childlike despite all the ’roided-up muscles.

I felt oddly detached about what I was doing, but there was no way I was going to let go until I sensed he was more afraid of me than of the theoretical bad guys.

“Jo.” David’s soft voice. His hand touched my shoulder. “You don’t have to kill him.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “But if he’s one of them, it’d be a damn sight safer in the long run.”

He didn’t say anything. I could tell he’d dropped the veil concealing him from Antonelli, because Antonelli’s mouth stretched wide, and he tried to croak out something that was probably a plea. His lips had gone the color of iron, and his skin looked dead and pale and rubbery.

He was about to lose consciousness, so I let him have a torturous, cruel gasp of air, loaded with O₂. He gagged and pitched forward, openly weeping; he wasn’t coming after me, that much was certain. He just wanted to live to get away.

But I didn’t want him to get away. I let him have just enough oxygen to survive, not enough to get his arms and legs in any kind of working order. Then I picked up my purse and walked over to him, crouched down to where he was sitting against the wheel of the van, and pulled down my sunglasses to look into his eyes.

“What were you going to do to me, Lee?” I asked him. “Don’t lie. It’ll only make me angry, and you won’t like what happens when I lose my temper.”

I let him have more oxygen, just enough. I’d scared him, all right. I’d terrified him almost more than was strategically necessary, and I knew—again, in a detached, academic sort of way—that it might bother me later.