Chill Factor

'Sure you don't want me to shoot you? 'Cause if you're waiting on your friends, they're a little busy. Jonathan's helping out with that.'

I lunged upward. My fingers were bloody, the nails ripped off at the quick, and my shoulders and arms were trembling. I flailed for a right handhold, found one and shifted my weight…

… and the shale under my fingers shattered like glass.

I screamed, clung to my left handhold, and felt my shoulder pop hot as a gunshot. The wind turned cold, flapped my hair like a flag, and when I reached up again for a grip my bloody left hand slipped. I scrabbled like a doomed cartoon character, managed to find something to cling to, and hung there, trembling.

No way could I get high enough. It was going to lick me off the wall.

I turned my face toward the first damp breath as the roar burst open. The flood was rounding the corner up ahead. It was a wall of black of mist and foam and death, thirty feet high. I saw the bloody, torn hindquarters of a cow being tossed on the leading edge.

I felt my fingers slip again, and there was no point in trying to stop it this time.

As the wall of water slammed into me like a speeding truck, I let myself fall.

What are you most afraid of?

Drowning.

That wasn't actually true, after all. It hurt, but what hurt worse was the knowledge that Quinn was going to get away. He was going to take Jonathan's bottle and he was going to get in his SUV and go bouncing across the desert, and if there was revenge to be had, it wouldn't be had by me, and dammit, I couldn't let myself go down like this. I couldn't. I'd survived him before, in the dark, when there was no hope.

I felt something warm move inside of me.

I might let you kill me, you bastard, but you will not kill my daughter.

The current had knocked me fuzzy and gray, but the real problem was the debris churning in the water with me, and the impacts with canyon walls that were going to rip me limb from limb. I had seconds left, maybe less. The water was moving so fast that the walls were a blur sweeping past, and all I could do was try to stay on top of the roiling cold surge. Swimming was stupid. I focused on the water itself, but it was driven by so much force and so much chaos that I couldn't grip anything, couldn't hold it…

Ma'at.

It wasn't about gripping and holding.

It was about removing the need for the water to move at all.

I took a deep, scared breath and ducked under the surface. It was almost black, laden with silt and debris, and the silk of the water swallowed me whole.

I left myself go. Drifting. Listening to the water's heart.

Letting it flow through me like a river. Surfing with it, undulating. Finding the frequency of the water and creating the counter vibration, exactly opposite.

Waves began to still instead of amplify. Surges became still patches.

Slowing.

I opened my eyes and bobbed up to grab another breath, and saw that the flood was still fast but no longer the roaring monster it had been. I could try to swim, at least. Stay ahead of the heavier debris, ride the crest of the-

There was a boulder straight ahead, jammed in a narrow part of the canyon, and I was heading straight for it.

Five seconds left.

Two.

Oh, God…

I felt myself lifting on the surge of the wave, and waited for the fall, the impact, the end.

I kept rising.

Rising out of the water.

Someone was holding me from behind, arms clasped around me under my breasts, and I felt a wild and burning heat that turned water between us to steam.

'Rahel?' I asked, and turned to look.

Not Rahel.

It was David.

He smiled at me with so much love and relief that it broke my heart, and said, 'You think I'd let you go, after all this?'

I cried out and turned in the circle of his arms, and held him as we floated over the foaming, churning flood.

At the top of the canyon we had a welcoming committee. It consisted of Rahel, Lewis, and Marion. Rahel, of course, was spotless; Marion and Lewis were sweaty and dirty and breathless.

We touched down, and I winced at the burn of hundred-degree sand on my bare feet, but then David was collapsing in my arms and I forgot all about the discomfort. My shoulders couldn't take the strain. I had to let him fall.

'David?' I hovered anxiously over him. His eyes were flickering copper, turning brown. 'David-'

'He's too weak,' Lewis said, and fumbled the blue glass bottle out from his pocket. 'David, back in the bottle.'

He faded into mist. I rounded on Lewis in a fury, but he held up a hand to stop me. 'If we leave him out, he'll fade again. The bottle is all that's keeping him alive right now. Djinn life support.'

'And you called him out?' I didn't know what made me more angry. 'Do me a favor-don't help, okay?'

'I was supposed to let you get smashed to pieces?'

'You were supposed to take down Quinn!' I yelled. 'Did you?'

They looked anywhere but me. Rahel said, 'We will.'

'We will,' I mocked. 'Yeah, fine, whatever. Just let me find him and do this thing.' I staggered when I tried to get up. Marion took my arm and hauled me upright, frowning.

'You're in no shape to take on anything more dangerous than a week in bed,' she said. 'You've torn muscles, damaged your shoulder-'

'I don't care.' I bit the words off furiously and wiped wet hair back from my face, wishing that I were still a Djinn so I could clean myself up and smite somebody with a truly righteous amount of smiting. 'He's got Jonathan, and he's got God knows how many bottles, and he's not getting out of this without a fight, and where exactly is Kevin?'

I ran it all together, alarm sharpening my voice, and saw Marion and Lewis look around in shock.

'He was right here,' Marion began, but I wasn't watching her. I was caught by Rahel's expression. Alone among us, she wasn't surprised by his absence.

'Let him do this,' she said. 'It's his right.'

'Do what!'

She shrugged. I shook free of Marion's hold and turned around, looking down the edge of the canyon. It couldn't be that far, a few sand dunes in the way, maybe a thousand yards of desert in the way…

Something blew up out there.

Something very, very big.

The shock wave rippled over me, and the noise whited out my eardrums; a fireball the size of a blimp rose up into the air, curling in on itself in reds and crimsons and ropes of hot yellow, in waves of smoke like tattered silk.

A shattered metal frame rose up off the ground, powered by another explosion. The massive steel monster, turning end over end, sailing out over the canyon and dropping down to smash into the foaming water with a hiss of superheated steam.

'That was a Hummer,' I said numbly.

'And I think that was Kevin,' Lewis said.