Chill Factor (Weather Warden #3)

"Five," Kevin said. His voice cracked on the word.

We all looked at the kid, then at each other. "Not like I'm joining up or anything. It's just... he killed Siobhan. And you can't leave me here. With them."

Whether it had been true love or not, there was suffering in Kevin's eyes. An awareness of something beyond himself, even if it had just been for one other person in the world. Even psychopaths can love. I couldn't remember who'd said it, but it seemed applicable.

We reached a sort of silent consensus, a la Ma'at, and Lewis said, "Stick close to me, kid."

Kevin's never-flat hackles rose. "So you can what, suck the rest of me dry?" We all stared at him. He flushed. "You know what I meant."

"Well, I meant stick with me because Quinn's going to see you as the biggest threat, since he'll think you've still got my powers," Lewis said. "I plan to use you as a human shield."

Kevin eyed him. "Yeah?"

"Would I lie to you? Besides, you kicked the crap out of me, kid. I'm still weak. I need the support." Oh, clever Lewis. The one thing Kevin craved and never got... respect. Responsibility.

Kevin tried not to look impressed. "Yeah, okay. Whatever."

Marion sent me a clear you-trust-him? look. My feelings for Kevin were too complicated to put into squints and eyebrow moves, so I just deadpanned. Truth was, I suspected Jonathan felt something for the kid, too, and that would help us. Quinn had a lot of liabilities he didn't yet understand.

"Stupid question," Marion said apologetically, "but exactly where will we find him? We can't track the Djinn, not even Jonathan. Unless you...?" She addressed it to Rahel. Rahel shook her head. "Okay, then how do we find him?"

"Jonathan told us," I said.

She looked mystified. "He was cut off in midword."

"Doesn't matter. I know what he was trying to tell me." I turned to Ashworth, who was glaring at me with undisguised contempt. We weren't mending any fences, I sensed. Not that I was worried about it much. "Your son's house," I said. "Fantasy Ranch. The one in White Ridge. Do you still own it?"

"No," he said, and turned to go. Rahel blocked him again. Glaring ensued.

"Who bought it?"

Ashworth's hand tightened on the cane; I watched the knuckles go white. "I'm sure you already know," he said.

"Thomas Orenthal Quinn." I didn't have the slightest doubt. "Keeping it all in the family."

"I never liked the slippery bastard." Ashworth kept walking, cane stabbing carpet. "Go and be damned. Do me the courtesy not to die in my son's house, if you please." This time Rahel stepped aside and let him exit with dignity intact.

White Ridge. Fantasy Ranch. Orry.

I was going back into my worst nightmare, but at least this time, I wasn't going alone.

ELEVEN

Rahel, not being claimed anymore, couldn't jump us magically from one place to another. A drawback, but not a huge one... I didn't think that Quinn could use Jonathan to do any transportation, either. I'll delay him as long as I can, Jonathan had said, before he'd been yanked out of the world. I grabbed Myron Lazlo, who was having some sort of old-guys meeting in the corner of the room that seemed devoted to snuffboxes and cigars and brandy. Literally. By the arm. He didn't take it well, but I'd come to realize that manhandling the Ma'at was a whole lot less dangerous than taking on a militant Warden. Ashworth had caned me pretty handily, back in the lobby of the Luxor, but Lazlo had done nothing but called one of the associated Free Djinn to take care of me.

Lazlo just retained his personal dignity and shrugged free of my grip.

"Yes?" he asked neutrally. "I've already made it clear, the Ma'at will not-"

"Provide transportation? Think again. We need to get to White Ridge. What've you got?"

He frowned at me for a full thirty seconds, then said, "Are you asking me for the loan of a vehicle?"

"No, Laz, I'm telling you that I'm taking a couple of cars. You pick which ones, but the faster the better." Warmth registered near my back. Lewis, Marion, Kevin, and Rahel had tagged along with me, to lend support. Lazlo's eyes skipped over them, unreadably, and focused back on me. "Time's wasting. He's your mess, in case you forgot, which means you're just as bad a judge of character as I am."

"I liked him," I said. It burned me to admit it, made parts of me flutter uneasily as memory reasserted itself. Darkness, pain, violation. I'd looked him in the eyes and I hadn't recognized him, not even the capacity for violence. I'd trusted him, like a complete brainless moron. "Cars, Laz." I snapped my fingers.

Behind me, Rahel murmured, "I believe you'll find them outside at the valet stand."

"Oh?"

Lazlo's face shut down hard. "Take what you'd like. We'll speak of this when you return. If any of you return. I don't give you very good odds. He'll know you're coming, of course. By now, he will know that his attempt to silence you failed."

I waited for him to wish me luck. He didn't.

I turned and led the way out to the lobby. It was still mostly deserted, thanks to the excitement over Bellagio way, and we walked straight out the doors, past Ma'at security, to the covered portico where uniformed valets waited. They were clustered together, nervously gossiping, but sprang into action when we approached.

"Rahel?"

She pointed to two matching Dodge Vipers. One was a deep, glistening midnight blue, flirting in the sunlight; the other was silver.

I knew the blue one. She was unmistakable.

"Mona?" I felt stupid asking it, but Marion nodded. "You had David bring it with you when you came here?"

"I thought we might need it," she said. "And he knew it would please you. I confess, I thought it would be to make a quick escape, not to go riding off to... whatever we're riding off to..."

"And the silver one?"

Rahel buffed her talons on her shirt. "It wasn't being used." She opened her palm and dropped keys into my hand. I tried to hand them back, but she stepped away with an expression of distaste. "I do not drive."

It was, apparently, a Djinn thing; David had claimed not to, either, but he'd come around when I'd needed him to. I tossed both sets of keys in the air, thinking, and then underhanded one set to Marion. The silver car.

"Take Rahel and Kevin," I said. "Rahel, watch out for trouble." I didn't look at Kevin, but I didn't think I needed to. Her hot amber eyes glowed just a little brighter. "Marion-"

"I'll watch out for it, too." Neither one of us trusted Rahel completely either; I could see the acknowledgment of it in her serene face. I wouldn't have trusted anyone but Marion to shepherd those two. "How fast are we driving?"

I stepped out from the thick shade into the molasses-thick glare of the Las Vegas sun and walked to the driver's side of the blue Viper. It was too hot to put my hand on the blue finish, but I held it a couple of inches above the blazing metal. Petting her was almost irresistible.

"What?" I asked absently. Marion, unlocking the silver Viper, repeated the question. I looked across the car at Lewis, who had opened the passenger side.

I laughed, and said, "Just try to keep up." It sounded hollow, felt worse. I should have felt free, opening the driver's-side door and easing into Mona's comfortable seat, feeling the potential of her ignite at the turn of the key. Cars had always made me feel safe. Powerful.

But I was driving this one into the past, and that was one place I didn't want to go.

What surprised me was that I hadn't recognized his voice. Not recognizing his body or face, sure, that was understandable; the only clear look I'd ever had at Orry was that morning in the desert, and it had been fifteen seconds long, at a distance, with a baseball cap shadowing his face and panic jittering my focus.

But the voice. I should have recognized the voice.

When the shadow in the dark grabbed me in the caves and held me underwater, I'd honestly thought that I was dead. Coming awake again in the darkness, I still thought I was dead; combine the trauma with the heat exhaustion and dehydration, not to mention the head injury, and dead was what I probably should have been.

Instead, I opened my eyes in the dark and for a few seconds there was nothing, nothing but the drip of water and the sound of my own heart slowly, steadily working its way toward death, one beat at a time.

I licked dry lips-even though there was water beaded on them, they felt dry and painfully cracked- and whimpered as pain stabbed through my head. I tried to pull in a deep breath, but it gurgled in my lungs, and I coughed.

Coughing with a head injury, not recommended. My head exploded in pulsations of white agony, and I couldn't stop hacking. By the time I stopped I was huddled in a sitting position, my back against what felt like wood. It creaked when I moved against it. My chest was on fire, but that was nothing compared to the complete devastation of my headache. I carefully leaned my skull back against the wooden boxes, in the hope that not moving it anymore would help the nauseating throbbing to settle down. I had both hands clutching my temples, but that didn't seem to be helping-it felt like it was holding the pain inside-so I let them fall back into my lap. The air tasted damp and cool. Not a breath of wind.

I heard the scrape of footsteps. My first thought was to call for help, but my second was a memory of being held underwater, and I kept still. I stared into the dark-which was complete-and saw nothing. Not a flicker of light. Maybe I'm blind. That was a freak-inducing thought that I tried to put well behind me.

The sound of someone coming got louder. Pebbles rattled. He must have misstepped once; I heard someone curse softly-male voice-and there was some scuffling that sounded like things being rearranged. Metal, maybe, dragged over rock. Tough to say.

I was still trying to figure out which direction the footsteps were coming from when he flicked on a flashlight, and I was hit squarely but a rush of light so bright it felt like he'd set my eyeballs on fire. I screamed and covered my eyes, turned my face away, but even then I could see the halogen flare, burning bright red on my eyelids.

He'd meant to do that, just in case. He wanted me blind and disoriented.

I felt something grab my foot and drag me suddenly forward; I was able to save my head from smacking into the rock, which might very well have killed me, and then there was a weight astride me, a belt buckle digging painfully into my stomach as he leaned forward. The light was still in my face. I couldn't see him at all.

"Open your eyes," he said. I couldn't have, even if I'd wanted to; I was already crying from the blaze of light. I tried to bat the flashlight away, and he grabbed both my hands in one of his and slammed them back to the stone. The light loomed closer, bloodred on the other side of my eyelids, like a giant blazing eye. "Open your eyes!"

I tried. I think I must have managed to get them open just a little, because I heard him say, "Blue. Huh. I'd have bet they were brown."

He didn't sound crazy. In fact, he sounded very normal, as if we were standing at a cocktail party with our little drinks, making small talk. As if he hadn't just tried to drown me and killed another woman and was kneeling on my chest with a light in my eyes.

"What's your name, sweetheart?" he asked. I could almost see him smiling, saluting me with a martini.

No reason to lie. "Joanne." My voice sounded weak and fractured. Nothing like what I wanted it to be. "You already know that."

"Smart girl. Indeed I do know. Chaz told me." He leaned over closer. That made it harder to breathe. I coughed again, and couldn't help a sobbing moan when the headache dug claws deeper. "You're in sad shape, Joanne. Wish I could say that I was here to help you out, but you already know that's not true, eh?" I felt a sharp sting as he slapped me to keep me focused. "Eh?"

I nodded.

"What did Chaz tell you? Oh, by the way, I saw what you did out there. Very impressive. Chaz tells me most of you can do that by yourselves, right?" He bent very close, close enough that I smelled aftershave and a hint of herbal shampoo. "Without a Djinn. That how you say it? Djinn?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." It didn't matter. He wasn't a Warden. When I went up on the aetheric-I could barely catch a glimpse of it in Oversight now-I saw no power in him. No potential. He was as absolutely normal as the guy next door. "I don't know what that is."

"You don't have one." He sounded definite about it. "Chaz didn't have one, either. Guess it's just the really high ups that get them, huh? Or... the ones who need them? Out in the middle of nowhere, storm central? Places that get out of control quick?"

He was too close to the truth. There were more Wardens with Djinn in trouble spots; half of the ones in Oklahoma and Kansas were equipped, and an even greater portion of the ones in California. He understood an awful lot more than he should have.

Starting with the fact that there were Wardens. "Chaz told you," I whispered.

The flashlight switched off. It was like being doused with cold water in the desert-sweet, shocking relief. Felt like the darkness was a place of safety, a place to hide, even though I knew better. I heard the soft sound of plastic and metal on stone as he set it aside.

"Chaz told you things," he said. "About me. Blabbed his stupid head off. Right?"

I didn't answer. Saving my breath for the screaming part.

"This is going to go better if you just tell me now. The end's the same, but like the Chinese say, it's the journey that counts."