Luckily, it wasn't quite that bad. An F2 at most, with wind speeds of about a hundred miles per hour - not bad, and not nearly as bad as it could have been. The Sentinels know how to make it look nasty, but that wasn't the same thing as truly building it right in the first place. I needed to reduce the core temperatures inside of the vortex, and I needed to do it fast. But as I reached out for it, the Sentinels sprang the trap.
A second tornado - this one a slender rope, and definitely built to the most exacting specifications - shot down out of the cloud beside the wedge I was focused on, and this one packed deadly, razor-edged debris. Metal, all kinds of metal junk and scraps. It was also spinning at a rate of more than two hundred miles per hour: F4.
One of them was going to hit. I could handle only one at a time, and I had no choice but to go for the worst. I abandoned the wedge and went for the rope, ripping into it with desperate force, drawing heat out of it as quickly as I could.
Not fast enough. I heard it hit the roof, which shuddered and groaned, and then heard the rising roar of the wind as it drilled through steel and wood and concrete.
People were screaming, running, looking for cover. They wouldn't find it, not in the store. "Outside!" I grabbed my salesclerk, who'd thrown my dress to one side, and pushed her to the door. David was grabbing everyone else he could find and shoving them that way as well. "Run! Get to cover! Go now!"
I'd succeeded in weakening the vortex down to an F2, but just then, the slower-moving wedge slammed down like a clenched fist, and the whole building shivered and began to come apart.
The two tornadoes, too close together for even the Sentinels to fully control, began to merge and feed off each other. The metal inside the smaller vortex spread out wider, slashing and cutting like the edges of knives as it whirled. Nobody had been hit yet, but they would be.
This had to stop. Now.
"David!" I screamed his name over the roar of the wind as the roof ripped off, disintegrated into a million tiny fragments of blowing chaos, and I felt the eye of the storm focus directly on me.
David put his arms around me from behind, anchoring me, and we faced it together. The power that flowed out of him was rich and strong, golden. It was easy to direct, capable of the finest touch and control.
Nobody did tornadoes better than me. I knew that without conceit; it was a gift, and one I'd had since childhood. For all their fury and force, they were fragile constructs, held together by finite forces. Like everything else, they had keystones. Change that one point, you could change everything.
This tornado's keystone was hard to find, hard to get my hands around, but once I found the specific area I needed to affect, I poured David's power into it, added my own, and the weight of oxygen and nitrogen cooled, slowing the tornado's spin, shattering the forces that held it in form.
It blew apart in a confusion of winds, pelting down debris like deadly, sharp rain. I yelped and ducked, and David formed a shield above us. Good thing he did. The Sentinels took one last, spiteful swipe at me, arrowing a metal girder directly for me, but it met the shield and bounced off . . . and slammed into the bag that held my dress, shredding plastic and fabric as the girder was driven a foot into the concrete below.
I stayed where I was, sucking in deep breaths, until it was over and the rain started to fall in a drenching downpour.
I'd just destroyed a second bridal shop.
David helped me up. He was keeping the rain off - a minor task, after the shield that had saved us - and I felt the subtle change in him as the Mother opened the flow again, connecting him back to his power base. His whole body brightened, as well as the light in his eyes.
"Did you see them?" he asked. I shook my head, frustrated and furious. "I think I might have."
"Still in Key West?"
"No. Kissimmee. But they're staying close. Maybe they can't do this at too great a distance." He looked around, an odd expression on his face. "Nobody hurt. They'll call it a miracle."
I glared at the ruined wedding dress. "Some miracle," I said. "My credit card charge already went through."
I checked in with Lewis. He'd gotten word from Rahel that Kevin had been approached by the Sentinels, but it was early days; they were checking him out pretty thoroughly, asking around. No problems there. I doubted anybody had unreserved approval for Kevin; he simply didn't invite people to like him. He was respected because he was strong, not because he was in any way a team player.
The Sentinels wouldn't find anything that would put them off. Kevin was an arrogant little shit most of the time, and he could give drug dealers lessons in insensitivity. I'd seen him do murder. Granted, it had been well-deserved murder, but his reaction to it had been disturbingly vacant.
Still, Lewis believed the kid was redeemable, and I had to agree. I'd seen firsthand the horror his stepmother had made out of his life, and while I couldn't really like him, I felt for him.
If Kevin held it together, I was going to owe him big-time.
Not a pleasant thought, really.
My sundress, amazingly, had survived the freak tornado incident, and my shoes weren't too bad. My hair had a bit of a windblown do, but all in all, I'd gotten off lucky for a change.
Or so I thought.
When David and I emerged from the store and waved away the unnecessary medical attention, we headed back toward where we'd left the car, several blocks away. David was doing some subtle work to keep the rain off, so we were relatively dry. The effect became less subtle when a van pulled up at the curb next to us, launching a wave of dirty water waist-high; it hit David's shield and rolled off, leaving us dry.
Then I saw the camera in the window, and realized that it was a news van.
"Oh crap," I breathed. "Drop the shield. Drop it now!"
Too late, I realized. They couldn't have missed it. In fact, they'd counted on it, and they'd gotten it on tape.
I saw it in the triumphant smirk on the reporter's face as the van door slid open. "Hi, Ms. Baldwin," she said. "Want to talk to us about why you're once again at the scene of a disaster? And how exactly you are staying dry in the middle of a thunderstorm? Who's your friend?" She gave David a special twice-over, which burned me even more than the fact I'd been caught on tape. "What exactly happened back there?"
I realized I was clenching my fists, and tried to relax. The rain was plastering my hair to my face, and my dress was becoming a soggy, ill-fitting mess. I tried not to think about the shoes. "Tornado," I said briefly. "At least, that's what they tell me." I took David's arm and pulled him along.
"Reporters?" he whispered.
"Vultures. Keep going, no matter what. They can smell fear."
His voice turned warm with amusement. "Not really afraid of reporters, given what just happened, but I'll keep that in mind."
"Shhhhh!"
The reporter donned a transparent raincoat, complete with a cute little hood to protect her hair, and climbed out of the van. Her camera guy and boom guy came after. The equipment was better protected from the weather than they were. "Ms. Baldwin, wait! We want to talk to you about the Wardens! Was this the work of the Wardens? If so, why was there so much damage? Weren't you supposed to contain that kind of thing? Was anyone killed or injured?"
"No one was hurt," David said. I made a frantic shushing motion and kept him walking. It didn't matter. They kept pace, and now the camera guy had his portable light glaring on us in the downpour.
"How do you know that? Sir? Sir?"
"No comment," I snapped, and tried to get between David and the camera. I must not have been as photogenic, because they broke off. I toyed with the idea of sabotaging the equipment, but I had the feeling somehow that was a bad move this time. Then I spotted it: Across the street, another news team was following, photographing separately. They were trying to provoke me into a response.
Great. As if I hadn't had enough trauma in the past few days to last a lifetime.
"Look, this will be a lot easier on you if you talk to us now, rather than force us to run without your side of the story - "
"Run it," I said. "Somehow, I can't see you guys having a lot of credibility left once everybody asks you what brand of crack you were smoking. Now, leave us alone."
They dropped back, mainly because we'd reached the car and were already getting in. I was sure the videographer had a great shot of me getting into the car, looking pissed off; the only thing missing from a humiliating fleeing-the-cameras expose was me shoving the cameraman or giving him the finger. Not that I wasn't tempted.
Once we were inside the car, I tried calming, deep breaths. It didn't really work, but it made me feel as if at least I was making an effort. David wasted no time, exerting a pulse of power to dry out our clothes, hair, and shoes, not to mention the seats, even as he locked the doors in case they decided to try one more time. I hastily got the car in drive and pulled away into traffic, leaving the reporters behind.
I distinctly saw a high five behind me in their van.
"That," I said, "was not the plan."
"What, the tornado? Or the reporters?"
"Both. Either. Not the plan." I chewed my lip; too late to worry about my lipstick at this point. My carefully applied makeup, not to mention my hairdo, was long gone. "Right. Enough making like a target for the day. Let's give the Sentinels some time to chew over their options while we go home and . . ."
"And?"
"Do whatever comes naturally."
"I can think of a few things that aren't quite that natural. Are they off the table?"
"Depends." My heart rate was slowly declining from the triple digits, but I still felt jittery. Too many shocks, too close together. "I think I'll have to ask for a massage first. I'm a bundle of nerves right now."
He put his hand atop mine on the gear shift, and a slow warm pulse moved through my body, steadying me. "I would like that," he said. "And if you want to take the phone off the hook and turn off that damn cell phone . . ."
"We'd have Lewis and a bunch of paratroopers storming the apartment," I said. "Being out of contact, not really an option right now. You know, since we're bait."
He sighed. "Yes. Bait." Beat. "I'm sorry about the dress. You seemed very happy."
"Yes." I bit my lip, unreasonably distressed, and was glad he sent another pulse of energy through my nerves to counteract my ridiculously out-of-proportion reactions. "It was gorgeous. Well, I'm sure I'll find another one." Maybe.
"We can look tomorrow."
I couldn't help it; I laughed. He'd said it in all seriousness, as if our little outing hadn't netted a significant and near-fatal attack. As if that was just par for the course, an everyday hazard of going to the store.
"Yes," I said, when I was able to speak around the chuckles. "Oh, absolutely. Shopping tomorrow. But maybe we should try to pick someplace easier on bystanders. "
He nodded soberly. "Internet."
"Internet."
"I hear there's pornography on the Internet."
"Filthy pervert."
His eyebrows quirked, then settled into a severe line. "I take exception. I'm quite clean, actually."
"Too bad. I like a scruffy man."
"I can be scruffy." His tone changed. "Pull over."
"What?"
"Pull over now."
Oh. Not part of the banter, then. I looked in the rearview mirror but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Still, David wasn't exactly one to overreact. I took the next left and found a shopping center parking space, right between a nail salon and a Spanish-language video rental store. "What is it?"
"We're being followed," David said.
"I didn't see - "
"By a Djinn." He was already opening his door. "Stay here."
"David! No, you can't - " I was having flashbacks to the horrible scene in my apartment, David on his knees and helpless at the hands of his fellow Djinn. I didn't trust any of them now, certainly not any of them who felt compelled to follow us in secret.
"I have to." No point in arguing, because I'd be arguing with the rain; he was already gone, and even though I hurriedly scrambled out after, I saw no trace of him.
And then I did, in the deep shadows at the side of the building. David was in conversation with a very tall man - Djinn - with hair too long to stand up in the nearly pompadour style he was wearing. Thin, intense, and entirely unfamiliar to me. He was wearing retro clothes, circa the mid-1950s, but he didn't seem at all Father Knows Best to me; he radiated an unfocused kind of don't-mess-with-me menace.
The Djinn's gaze fixed on me, and I saw his eyes flare into a bright crimson. He bent his head and said something else to David, and blew apart into mist and was gone.
David came back in no particular hurry, hands in his pants pockets, lost in thought.
We both got back into the car at the same time, and I dried us off, a flick of power that felt satisfyingly productive for a change. He hardly noticed.
"Who was that?" I asked. David stirred, glanced at me, and looked surprised.
"Roy," he said.
"Who's Roy?"
"One of mine," he said. "You don't need to have him over for drinks. He's not polite company. In fact, I'd rather you never met him. But he's very useful for some things."
"Such as?"
"Such as keeping an eye on Kevin and Rahel." He cocked an eyebrow at my expression. "You didn't seriously think I would let them do this without some kind of backup plan?"