Chill Factor

I never finished that, because all of a sudden I was just simply… not there. I'd been yanked out of the car with tremendous, magical force, far up into the sky. Below me, a dot of a blue car veered wildly, corrected, and shuddered to a screeching halt. The silver one braked after a two-second delay.

Then I was spinning out of control, heading…

… down.

Thump.

I landed in a dusty sprawl, out of breath, sweating, gasping, and blind. I clawed hair back from my eyes and saw that I was in shadow, lying on a soft bed of sand. To either side of me, canyon walls crawled up hand over hand toward the sky. They were astonishing… harvest gold shading to brick red shading to dull brown, a muted but glorious rainbow of layers. Overhead, the sky was the perfect, supernaturally bright blue of a Djinn's eyes. Where the sunlight hit, it hit hard and woke glassy sparkles from the sand.

The place wasn't completely devoid of life; there was a raw scuttling in a thin, straggly cactus that probably meant either a lizard or a rabbit, or both. It wasn't even devoid of hints of human visitation. There was a cool silver moon slice of a beer can partially visible near the canyon wall.

But nobody in sight.

I licked dry lips and called, 'Jonathan?' I couldn't think who else would have had the ability to yank me out of the driver's seat and deliver me here without also delivering me in pieces. I got up and slapped dust from my jeans-what use it was, I have no idea, since the rest of me was thoroughly caked. I ached. I stank. I was grimy and horribly itchy and pissed off as hell.

I was also scared to death.

'Quinn?' I tried. 'Hello?'

His voice came down to me like God from the mountain, amplified into a divine echo. 'Shouldn't have come after me, Joanne. I didn't come after you.'

Like hell. 'You tried to shoot me!'

'You wouldn't leave well enough alone,' he said. His voice sounded hollow but self-satisfied; I couldn't see a thing, couldn't tell if he was up at the top leaning over or standing on some concealed ledge. 'Sooner or later, you'd have figured it out. You're like a bulldog. I respect that. I was just removing a risk. And now you just won't leave me the fuck alone, will you? I'm just trying to leave, you know. Get on with my life.'

'News flash, now the Ma'at know. And the Wardens will know. And whether you've got Jonathan or not, there's no place you can hide. They'll hunt you down and-'

'And kill me, yeah, I know. Very dramatic.'

An explosion echoed through the canyon, louder than a scream; I felt stone chips dig hot into my shoulder, and dived for the dirt again. As if that would help. He was shooting down at me, and I had no place to hide. But then, if he'd been all about the shooting of me, he could have easily put one or two through my head.

'What do you want?' I yelled, and spat sand. 'Hey, grab a knife, come down here, and stage a rematch, you bastard! I'll give you a really good time!'

'You know, I used to just want to get away with this, but you're pissing me off. Now I'm thinking, maybe I need a little recreation before I hit the road.'

Another shot pinned me to the sand. He could drill me anytime he wanted; I knew it. And there wasn't a lot I could do to stop him.

'You remember what I asked you at the end? In the cave?' His voice sounded worse than hollow now. It sounded like a shell, and something lived in it that wasn't human. I stayed very still. 'Joanne?'

'I remember,' I said. I didn't know if he could hear me.

'Is it still what you're most afraid of?'

I felt the vibration coming up through the rocks. Next to my eyeline, sand jittered madly, and I felt a sudden cool, damp breeze.

I clawed my way up to my feet and looked at the canyon walls. Far, far up at the top, I saw a black dot of a head looking down.

I knew how he was going to kill me.

Fuck him. I wasn't going to die like this. Not like this.

I kicked off my shoes, ran for the wall, and grabbed for my first handhold.

I'm going to ask you one last question, he'd said, there in the dark, when all my screaming had died down to whispers, when he'd stopped cutting me and left me to bleed for a while. The scrape of his fingertips over my sweaty, bloody face had made me want to crawl away, but I'd been too weak. Too afraid.

What are you most afraid of? What's the one way you don't want to die?

And because I'd been too numbed to lie, I'd whispered, Drowning. As soon as I'd let myself say it, I'd tried to take it back, tried to pretend I'd lied, but he knew.

Orry knew fear when he heard it.

He'd dragged me to the edge of the pool, and he'd held me underwater until I'd stopped moving.

I'd had just enough power left, just enough skill, to keep the oxygen in my lungs refreshed as his hand shoved my face down to the bottom of that shallow pool and held me there with his fist knotted in my hair.

He was careful. Let me stay under for a full two minutes before he let go, and he left me there, floating facedown.

When I was sure he'd gone, I'd rolled out of the water and huddled in the dark, trembling. Weeping without sound and without tears. Then crawling, inch by torturous inch, back out of the caves into the hot sunlight.

Four hours later, I'd made my way outside to the highway, where a passing motorist had found me.

Just another victim.

What are you most afraid of?

I'd told him, and now he was going to use it against me again.

Son of a bitch, screw you, I'm not dying like this.

I hauled myself up with my right hand, found a grip for my left, and jammed fingers in. Nails broke, but I barely felt it. My bare toes scrabbled at the rock wall and clung to a tiny outcropping.

Three feet up. I found the next handhold, and hauled against the shattering strain in my arms and shoulders. Need to lose some weight. That was the crazy, insane, stupidly optimistic part of my brain that just never quite failed to see the funny side of dying horribly.

I could feel the vibration in the canyon walls. The breeze was picking up speed. Climb! The air in the canyon was unstable, already swirling. Trying to control it was a sucker bet.

I climbed another three feet, painfully achieved.

'Give it up,' Quinn said from somewhere way up there, hundreds of feet above. 'You know how this goes. A flash flood rips through these canyons, it pulverizes boulders, rips up trees like kindling. You won't even be a little bitty scrap of skin by the time it dumps you out in the river. Maybe you won't even have time to drown. Would that make you feel any better?'

Two more feet. My sweating toes slipped, then my left hand; I bit back a scream of rage and reached again. Pulled. Felt the burning tear in my triceps grow stronger.

A whip of wind lashed my hair back, and I heard the low grumble.

'Holy shit,' Quinn said. 'Looks like a real gully washer, there. Sorry. Want me to shoot you, put you out of your misery?'

'Fuck you,' I gasped, and lurched another two feet higher. I glanced down. I was maybe ten feet up now, enough to make me dizzy but no way enough to save me. The low grumbling sound was getting louder, and the wind stiffer. It smelled like wet sand and death. Nothing clean about the water hurtling down the canyon toward me. It had started out as a flood at least half a mile back, maybe more, picking up speed and debris by sweeping the canyons. Foaming and raging like a sea, taking with it birds, rabbits, snakes, people, cars, anything in its path.

It was coming fast.