Thin Air

free of his. Let GO OF ME! I was screaming it inside as I writhed on the ground, squirming, trying to suppress the terrible feelings welling up inside of me.

I got my wish with a vengeance as a pair of hands grabbed his shoulders and threw Lewis across the clearing to smash against a tree trunk. Lewis yelled and flopped, rolled over and came to his hands and knees, then slammed facedown into the leaves before getting up again, more slowly. His face was dirty gray with shock and rage.

“You asshole,” Lewis said shakily. “I was trying to help her.”

I looked up at my rescuer.

For a moment my mind just didn’t want to acknowledge what it was seeing, because…he wasn’t human. No man had skin like that, like living metal-flickering copper and bronze, cooling into something that was more like flesh, but still too burnished for anything outside of a special effect. His hair was longish, like Lewis’s, a barely subdued blazing auburn. Although he was dressed like a regular guy, in blue jeans and a checked shirt, I had no sense of him being anything like normal.

His eyes were illuminated. Backlit, the way a cat’s can seem in beamed light. A rich, scary color like melting pennies.

He was staring straight down at me, riveted.

Expressionless.

Lewis spit blood and climbed painfully to his feet. “Make up your mind, David. Do you want her to freeze to death? Or can I get back to healing her?”

David-should I know the name? Or was he a complete stranger? I couldn’t tell, because he had absolutely no clues in his expression, in those crazy inhuman eyes, or in the tense, still set of his body.

Lewis must have taken his silence for assent, because he was coming back. He elbowed David aside and reached for my hands again. I yanked them free.

“No!”

“Don’t be stupid. You’ve got frostbite. I’m restoring circulation.” Lewis made a frustrated sound and grabbed my wrists, hard, when I tried to pull away again. “Dammit, quit fighting me!”

“Let her go,” David said very quietly. “She doesn’t recognize you. She doesn’t understand.”

“What?”

“I can’t see her,” he said. “She’s not on the aetheric.”

Lewis frowned at him and rocked back on his heels. “That’s impossible.”

“Look.”

Lewis turned the frown toward me, and his eyes unfocused. For a long few seconds, nothing happened, and then a very odd expression overtook his irritation, smoothed it out, and made it into a blank mask.

“Oh, shit,” he breathed. “What the hell…?”

“I can’t see her past,” David said. Which made no sense to me at all, but then, this was making less sense as it went along. “Someone’s taken it from her.”

“How is that even possible?”

“It isn’t.” Suddenly David crouched down, startlingly graceful about it, and stared into my eyes. “Joanne. Do you know me?”

I recoiled from him, crab-walking backward. Answer enough. For a long moment he didn’t move again, and then he smoothly got back to his feet and stepped away. He crossed his arms across his chest and bowed his head, relieving me of the pressure of that stare, at least for a little while.

“Who are you people?” I blurted. “He’s got some kind of superpowers. And I don’t know what the hell you are!” I pointed shakily at Lewis and then at David. I’d gotten farther from the fire, and I could already feel the chill biting hard on my exposed skin. “No! Don’t touch me!”

Lewis had started moving after me. He stopped, frowning again. “What are you going to do?” he asked in a voice that sounded way too reasonable. “Run around in socks and a coat in an ice storm? It’s suicide. Let us help you.”

“Why? Why should I believe you?”

“Because you’ll die without us,” David said. He hadn’t looked up. “We’ve been out here looking for you for days without rest.” He slowly raised his head, and I saw something that rocked me back as if he’d pushed me: tears. Very human tears, in those not-human eyes. “Because we love you. Please.”

This time, when David came toward me, I forced myself to hold still for it. I still felt that nearly uncontrollable urge to run, to hide, and I couldn’t stop the way I flinched when he slid his arms under my shoulder blades and my knees. Unlike Lewis, he didn’t smell like a guy who’d been living rough. He smelled like fresh wind and sunlight and rain, and against my will I buried my face in the hollow where his neck flowed into strong shoulders. He felt solid and real, and he picked me up as if I weighed less than an empty plastic bottle. Heat cascaded out of him, crashed into me, flooded me in a drunken tsunami of warmth. Oh, so good. I clung to him, my hands fisted in the fabric of his shirt, and shuddered in sheer animal pleasure.

“I’m going to need to touch you,” Lewis said. I glanced up into David’s face.

“I’ll hold you,” he said. “I won’t let go.”

I nodded. Lewis’s hands pressed against me, palms flat, this time against my shoulders, and jolts of electric fire began to flood through me. I might have resisted, but if I did, David was more than enough to keep me still.

When it was over, I felt nerves still firing in white-hot jerks, but as it passed a sense of numbing exhaustion took over, and I felt myself going limp.

“That’ll do it,” I heard Lewis say in carefully colorless tones. “Better get her dressed. It’s going to get colder out here tonight, and she’s still very weak.”

David’s voice seemed to be moving away from me, growing thinner and fainter. “Wait. What did you find?”

“Nothing,” came Lewis’s faint, smeared whisper. “Apart from nearly freezing to death, there’s nothing wrong with her. Physically, anyway.”

“Then what happened?” David’s question came as a ghost, lost in darkness, and then I was gone.

I didn’t sleep for long, but when I woke up, I was dressed-blue jeans and a denim shirt over a thermal tee-and wrapped up in a sleeping bag next to the fire. I tried to figure out which one of them might have taken the liberties, but gave up. Either way, it was a deeply unsettling question.

“I can carry her,” David’s low voice was saying from somewhere on the other side of the crackling fire. Night had fallen, and with it an absolutely deathly chill. Even in the sleeping bag, fully clothed, I could feel it nipping at me. “I don’t like keeping her out here longer than necessary.”

“I know,” Lewis replied. He sounded agitated. Exasperated. “Dammit, I know! But it’s more than a day’s hike to the closest rendezvous point, and no matter what I do, the temperature just keeps falling. You think she’s strong enough to make the trip? Like this?”

“She won’t be any stronger tomorrow.”

“Okay, I give. It’s not just her I’m worried about. If I don’t get some sleep, I could collapse on you, too.”

“You think I couldn’t carry you both?” David asked. He sounded amused. “All the way back, if necessary?”

“I’m pretty sure you could, but my pride’s already taking a serious beating, and you know I love you, man, but I’m not ready for us to be quite that close.” Lewis’s voice was as dry as old paper. “And besides, if I start losing it, we start losing the weather. If you start messing with things, they’ll find you, and us, and her.”

“Ah.” Evidently a convincing argument.

“I’ll put up the tent,” Lewis said. “Won’t take long.”

I peered out from under half-closed eyelids and saw David walking toward me around the fire. Something different about him now-oh, he was wearing a coat. Not a modern hiking accessory; this one was a long olive-drab affair, like something out of the First World War, and it came down almost to his boots. He looked antique. Out of place.

Beautiful.

He noticed me. “You’re awake,” he said, and crouched down beside me. “Thirsty?”

I nodded and pushed myself up on my elbows. He unscrewed a plastic bottle and handed it over. I guzzled cool, sterile water, almost moaning with ecstasy as the moisture flooded into me. I had no idea how long I’d been without a drink. Too long.

He leaned forward to move hair back from my face, and I instinctively jerked back, putting air between us. He