Thin Air

And then there was a shadow in the trees, something flickering and indistinct.

Cherise blinked and said, “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

But there was. There most definitely was. Whatever that was in the trees was not right; I could feel it like a sick black ache in my chest that was only getting worse with every breath.

The shadow seemed to be flickering in time with my heartbeat, and with every frantic beat it looked a little bit…darker. More real. More distinct.

I saw the curve of a pale face, dark hair.

I didn’t want to see what came at the end, but I felt weak now, and bitterly cold. My knees threatened to fold up under me, and I thought, This is it. I’m done.

And then something inside me just refused, cold and furious, and I felt myself get steadier again.

“There’s something to be afraid of,” I heard myself say to Cherise. “Me.”

And I reached up into the sky and pulled at the air, pushing a whole wall of it like an invisible hard shield at them, driving her and Kevin backward.

Driving away the shadow.

I turned and ran, dodging blooming flames, barely managing to avoid slipping in the squelchy mud under my boots. Overhead, the downpour sputtered, let loose a final shower of ice-cold drops that froze into sleet as they hit the ground, and subsided. I kept running, and checked over my shoulder. I could see Cherise and Kevin standing there, dumb statues, and that shadow, that shadow was with them, and for a second…

For a second, in a flash of lightning, it looked just like me.

And then it just…vanished.

Cherise and Kevin toppled over facedown to the ground. Dead, stunned, I couldn’t tell, but there was no way I could go back; I knew the shadow was still there, hoping to lure me in, and I couldn’t fight it.

I hated myself for running, but I ran. It was survival instinct, nothing more, nothing I could be proud of, and tears streamed down my face, self-pitying and turning to ice in the cold, cold wind. You should have tried, something was screaming inside me, but I knew better. If I’d tried, I’d be dead.

I was alone, and I couldn’t risk it.

I had no warning of another approach, but suddenly there were hands on my shoulders, and I was spun around, violently, slipping in the mud. I instinctively raised my arms, trying to block a punch, trying to break free, but stopped when I recognized the stark pale face, dark eyes, and rough growth of beard.

Not dead, but definitely singed around the edges. There was a quarter-sized raw burn on his cheek, and bruises forming.

Lewis looked terrible, but he was alive.

“I thought you were dead!” I yelped, and his hand closed around my left wrist. He silently jerked me into a run. I barely had time to gasp, because we were running straight for a thicket of thorns and he wasn’t slowing down…

And the thorns pulled right out of the way. I tripped, trying to twist around and stare, but Lewis’s grip around my wrist was unforgiving.

“Wait,” I panted. “We can’t just-”

“Damn right we can. Run or die.” He sounded raw and exhausted, but he was outpacing me. I concentrated on not slowing him down; for some reason, having Lewis afraid and vulnerable was worse to me than my own terrors. The forest flew by in a blur of tree bark, flashing leaves, the occasional glimpse overhead of gray cotton sky.

It felt like we ran forever. I caught one glimpse of what might have been the shadow standing at the top of a hill, but it misted away like a bad dream.

We just kept on running. When I looked back again, I didn’t see anything. No sign at all, just the sullen smoke still rising from the place where Lewis and Kevin had combusted.

“Where’s David?” I finally gasped. Lewis shook his head without answering, still struggling for breath. He was holding his side with his left hand as we ran, and I didn’t like the color of his face and lips. Or the bubbling sound when he took in air. “You need to stop!”

“Not yet.”

“No, we have to stop now!” I insisted.

His effort to reply brought on a coughing fit, and when it was over he spat up blood. A lot of it. Enough to make my skin shrink all over.

We needed help. We needed it badly. And we needed it now.

And he must have known it, because he finally nodded. I could read the exhaustion in his face.

“Cave,” he said. “Over there.”

Over there proved to be a long way off. I forced him to move more slowly, and I kept watch behind us for any telltale signs of a hot-pink sweater, or fire sprouting up around us. Nothing. The whole thing could have been a dream, except for the burned patches in my clothes. We walked for a good half hour before an outcropping of rock came into sight-the end of the ridge. It commanded a good view of the valley floor below, and had a low shelf of rock that jutted out over the cliff. Below-far below-a shining ribbon of river glittered in the dull light. The trees, tall as they were, reached only about halfway up the cliff face.

“This way,” he said, and edged around the side of the hive-shaped rock formation. There was a crevasse that was larger than the others. Not what I’d call large, though. Big enough to squeeze through, if you didn’t mind claustrophobic shock, and somebody was going to kill you if you didn’t find a hiding place.

Lewis, without comment, wedged himself into the tiny space, wiggling his way through in grim silence. How that felt with broken ribs I didn’t even want to imagine. I took a deep breath and then had to let half of it out-my chest was a little bit larger than Lewis’s, and shoving my way through the opening in the rock was panic-inducing. I thought for a few seconds that I’d be stuck, but then my flailing right hand found something to hold, and I pulled myself all the way through…

…into fairyland.

“Careful,” Lewis said, and pointed up when I started to straighten. Stalactites, dripping frozen from the roof in needle-sharp limestone. I gulped and ducked, following him as he crouched against the wall. There was a pool of dark, perfectly still water in front of us, and the cave was cool and silent. Not warm, but not freezing, either. The only sounds were ones we made-shuffling on the rock, chattering teeth, the drips my soaked clothes made pattering on the floor.

“I can’t make a fire,” Lewis said. “Too dangerous in an enclosed space. Not sure I can manage the carbon monoxide.” He sounded mortally tired, but he opened the backpack he’d dumped on the floor-how the hell had he had the presence of mind to hang on to it through all that?-and dug out some packages. He threw two of them toward me, and I saw they were some kind of silvery thermal blankets. “These work better if you get undressed. Your clothes are too wet. It’ll just-”

If he was waiting for me to have an attack of modesty, he was sorely disappointed. “Whatever,” I said, and began unbuttoning. The drag of wet clothes was making me nuts, and the cold had driven deep enough into me to make me uncaring about things like strangers watching me undress. Or maybe I was normally immune to that kind of thing. Hard to tell. I only knew that I didn’t feel inhibited with him. Boy, and didn’t that open up a ten-gallon drum of worms?

Lewis politely faced away while I skinned out of the sopping-wet pants. I decided to leave on the underwear, and wrapped myself up in crinkling silver foil. My skin felt like cold, wet plastic. “So,” I said through chattering teeth. “What the hell just happened?”

He glanced over his shoulder at me, saw I was more or less decent, and fussed with his own crackling thermal sheets to avoid answering. Or at least, that was how it looked. I waited. Eventually Lewis said, “Those two weren’t right. They weren’t themselves.”

“No kidding,” I said. I was feeling the cold now like sharp needles all over, and shivering violently. “There was something else, too.”

“What else?” He paused, staring at me. “What did you see?”

I didn’t want to tell him, exactly. “Nothing definite. Kind of a shadow.” A shadow that kind of looked like me. No, I didn’t want to say that.