Kate’s jacket wasn’t doing anything to keep her dry, but she wore it for warmth. This was supposed to be the tropics, but they were in the mountains, and it was cold. Didn’t seem fair. Water dripped in streams off the brim of her baseball cap, a blue one with the UN logo John had given her. The poor thing was starting to look ragged, like it had been through a war zone or three. Which it had.
She helped Tinker with the evacuation, but she always kept an eye on Ana.
Now Ana knelt on the muddy slough covering one of the houses. She looked feral, kneeling in mud that had splashed her legs, shorts, and T-shirt. Her black hair was coming loose from its braid and sticking to her round face. Hands on the mud, she glared at it with a knotted expression, setting her will. She called to someone in Spanish, and someone shouted back. People were digging, scooping, and flinging away buckets of dirt in the search for survivors.
A sound rumbled, like distant ocean waves. A couple of the guys on the roof cried out and jumped to the road. The dirt under them started moving, particles slipping, falling in waves, dirt pouring out of windows, slumping away from the house. In moments, Ana knelt on a sheet of mud-streaked corrugated tin.
Bodies broke free.
A woman and a child rode the swell of earth that came out the windows. They were limp, their limbs pushed to odd angles by the dirt’s movement, their clothing tangled around their bodies. Another child remained hung up on the windowsill. Shouting erupted, and people surged toward the victims.
Kate fought her way to the woman. She was still warm, still had color. Still had a pulse. Her hair and skin were caked with mud. Kate cleaned the mud out of her mouth. Please, let us have gotten here in time.
The woman choked, sputtering back to life. Other rescuers revived the children. People wearing Red Cross jackets appeared. The convoy must have caught up with them. Kate, Ana, and Tinker had pushed ahead in the hopes that Ana’s power could save lives.
Ana didn’t stop after freeing the house. She scrambled off the roof and set her hands on the road, which cleared before her. Buildings emerged, and still the wall retreated, groaning, reluctant. Ana crept forward, always keeping one hand on the ground, and pushed the earth back. Rescuers searched the other houses and found more victims who’d been swallowed up, and now spit back out. Not all of them lived, but many did.
When Ana reached the end of the street, a wall rose at the edge of the town, a barren mound of churned-up mud, a tumor against the backdrop of the green jungle. The wall of mud served as a dike, diverting the flood of water around the village, buying them time.
Kate approached her, hesitating, not wanting to break her concentration. Ana, head bowed, was breathing hard, her back heaving.
“Ana?” Kate touched her shoulder.
Ana said something in Spanish. Then her eyes focused, and she smiled. “Wasn’t that something?”
“Will it hold?”
She shook her head. “Not with this rain. They’re still going to have to evacuate.”
“What about you? You holding up?”
“Same as always.” She took a deep breath and briefly touched the quarter-sized medallion she wore. Kate offered her a hand up and was startled at how heavily Ana leaned on her. She held her side, at the place where a bullet had struck her a year before. The wound still hurt her sometimes. “I’m going to go help clear the rest of those houses.”
Kate knew better than to try to argue, however hurt or tired Ana seemed. She went back to Tinker and the jeep.
The Red Cross had set up a tent and was distributing blankets and coffee. Hypothermia was an issue in the rain and cold. Tinker—Hal Anderson, a burly Australian ace with a beach-bum tan and weight-lifter muscles—had let the jeep stall out, which meant he was now burrowed under the open hood, doing who-knew-what to the engine. He’d rigged the thing to run on tap water—great publicity, not using any of the local fuel supplies during a global oil crisis. If he could mass-produce his modification, he’d be rich. But the device needed adjusting every time the engine shut off.
They’d been at this for three days, driving from village to village, staving off mudslides and evacuating towns. They needed a chance to catch their breaths. That was all she wanted.
Someone screamed and cried out a panicked stream of Spanish.
A river was pouring off the mountain. Water lapped the top of the wall Ana had made to hold back the flood. The edges crumbled. Suddenly the whole thing disintegrated. It was just gone, turned to soup by the rain, and the flood roared through the village. Ana was in the middle of it. Holding a little girl’s hand, she knelt in the street, hand on the ground, looking up at the wave pouring toward her. This wasn’t the slow, creeping wall that Ana had pushed back earlier. This was a mass of water so powerful it had picked up tons of debris—rocks, trees, a mountain’s worth of topsoil—and carried it barreling down.
Too fast for Earth Witch to hold it back. More water than mud, she couldn’t control it.
“Ana!” Horrified, helpless, Kate watched.
Ana reacted instinctively. She held the child close to her body and hunkered over, protecting her. Then, both of them disappeared in the torrent.
Kate started to run to her, but Tinker held her back, hugging her to him.
“I can break them out, I can blow through the mud!”
“No, you can’t!”
She struggled anyway, trying to break free, but he held her trapped.
Then someone yelled, “¡Mira!” Look.
The river of mud flowed in a steady stream, but something in the middle of it moved, turning like a whirlpool. Then, a shape broke the surface. A platform of stone rose, carrying two figures clear of the flow, which frothed around the interruption. The tower of bedrock stopped some six feet above the surface. It was only a few feet in diameter, but it was enough. Ana crouched there, the child safe in her arms. Both were drenched in dripping mud. Even from where she stood, Kate could see Ana gasping for breath.
“Christ,” Tinker breathed.
Kate cheered, laughing with relief.
The little girl shifted in Ana’s arms and clung to the woman. Ana cleared the mud from both their faces. She looked up, raised her hand. Kate waved enthusiastically.
Ana touched the ground, and a faint rumble sounded, even over the sound of the flood. More ground broke free, a line forming a narrow bridge from the platform to the hillside. Soon, Ana was able to walk to safety, carrying the girl.
One of the refugees, a young woman, broke from the crowd and cried out. The girl in Ana’s arms struggled. “Mama!”
Ana let her go, and she ran to the woman, who swept her up, sobbing. Holding her child, she went to Ana, touching her reverently, crying, “Gracias.” The ace bore it with a smile.
Kate ran to meet her and pulled her into a hug, mud and all. Like she would notice a little more mud after this week. “Are you okay? Come on, you have to get warmed up, get something hot to drink.”
Smiling vaguely, Ana hugged her back. “I’m okay. It’s nice to be saving people for a change.”
And it was.
The next morning, back in their hotel room at Quito, Ana was asleep. She’d been asleep for ten hours. She didn’t even look relaxed, curled up in a ball, hugging the blankets tightly over her shoulders, like she was trying to protect herself from something.
They all needed a break. They’d been running all over the world for a year now. Ana, Michelle, Lilith, and a couple of others had been asked to use their powers almost nonstop. What did that do to a person?
Kate pulled a chair close to the window, took out her cell phone, dialed. John answered on the first ring.
“Hey, Kate. You okay?”
“Hi, John,” she said, smiling. That was always his first question: you’re okay, you’re not hurt, you’re coming home. “I’m fine. We’re all fine. We saved a lot of people.”