I broke out of the smoke into a temporary little clearing—green trees swaying with agitated winds, not yet on fire. I wiped sweaty palms on my shirt and firmed up my grip on the wheel, and hit the gas…
… and a massive—and I mean massive—tree toppled over across the road, slamming down with pulverizing force about ten feet from the battered hood of the SUV.
I screamed and hit the brakes. Felt the thump as Emily's limp body hit the back of my seat and fell into the floorboard; she made a weak moan, so at least she was still alive. The SUV fishtailed, tried to yaw left, and lurched to a halt.
Oh fuck.
I turned frantically to look behind. The advancing fire was moving fast again, leaping from tree to tree like some demented flaming Tarzan. I felt the heat notch up inside the car.
We were going to die. If we were lucky, we'd expire of the smoke first, but I didn't think the fire was feeling especially generous about it…
I ducked my head as the tree to my left caught with a bubbling, hissing snap of pine sap combusting. Smoke clogged my throat. I coughed and slid sideways to try to find some clean, breathable air. Panic made it hard to do anything Wardenish with the situation; my body was acknowledging imminent death, and it had no time to spare for rational thought.
I tried to breathe, but it was too hot, and there was a dry, hot, sere blanket pressing down on my mouth and nose and I couldn't breathe…
And then, I felt a breath of fresh, cool air, as if somebody had turned on the biggest air conditioner in the world. I sucked it in with a gasping whoop, coughed, and kept breathing as I forced myself back up to a sitting position.
David was standing in front of the truck, arms spread wide, coat flared out like wings. He looked fragile, standing framed by a curtain of fire, although I knew he wasn't. He reached out and rested his hands lightly on the hood, staring in at me through the haze of cracks in the glass, smoke, and dust.
Cool air filled the cabin of the truck. Sweet and pure as an early spring morning. Except for the surreal roar of the fire outside, we could have been parked for a picnic.
David gave me a faint, unreadable smile, then straightened up and walked over to my side of the vehicle.
"We don't have a lot of time," he said. Master of the obvious, he was.
"What the hell are you doing here?"
"Other things," he said. "Surprisingly, I don't spend all my time following you, but then, I didn't think I had to. Imagine how surprised I am to see you in the middle of this. Have you lost your mind?"
"You can psychoanalyze me when we're not getting burned alive," I gasped. "For now, could you just help us get out of here?"
"I will. Once I move this tree, don't stop, whatever you see. Understand?" He reached in and traced a finger down the side of my face, a hot sweet touch that ended too soon. "Go now. Time's short. I'll yell at you later."
"But—" I gestured helplessly at the gigantic felled tree in the way.
He walked over, and grabbed a fragile little twig of a branch that should have snapped off in his hand the second he pulled on it.
Instead, he picked up the entire tree, like some balsawood stage prop. Only, clearly, it was the real thing, heavy and groaning, shaking dust and splinters as he hauled it around like a toy. He casually dragged it in a quarter circle, like a gate on a road, and dumped it along the side in a thick crash of pine needles.
"Go!" David shouted. "Don't stop!"
I gunned it. The SUV's tires flailed for purchase, caught, and rocketed us forward. As we passed David, he reached out to touch the truck, just a brush of his fingers across the finish.
The broken and cracked glass healed with an audible, singing crack. I couldn't tell about the other damage, but I was willing to bet that Emily was getting her SUV back in like-new condition.
And then he was gone, a dot in the mirror, vulnerable and fragile next to the rising giant fury of the forest fire, standing in front of the oncoming flood of plasma and flame.
I was shaking all over. Too much information, delivered wrapped up in too much personal death-threat, to absorb all at once. At least I'd seen David for all of thirty seconds. That was something…
Yeah, I'd seen a Demon hatch out of a crispy-baked Warden, too. And been attacked by a burning zombie.
I wished I could say that it was an exceptional day.
"What happened?" a hoarse voice asked at my ear. I screamed, took my foot off the gas, and then jammed it back on as my forebrain caught up with my instincts. "Sorry. Scare you?"
Emily. She was sitting up, looking weary and smoke-blackened and red-eyed, barely better than something from a horror movie herself. Clinging to the seat for support.
"No," I lied. "Are you okay?"
"Fuck no, you've got to be kidding," she said, and let herself drop back against the seats. "Is it out? The fire?"
I checked the rearview mirror. The whole sky was red and black, a churning fury of destruction.
"Not quite," I said bleakly.
"It's only a couple of miles from Drumondville. We have to—"
"No," I said flatly. "It's enough, Emily. We can't do any more."
She lunged upright, grabbed the back of my seat, and thrust her face next to mine. I got an up-close look at her red-rimmed eyes, furious and brimming with moisture.
"There are peopleout there! People who are going to die! We're Wardens! You can't just leave!"
I knew that. I felt it inside me, the same desperate yearning to make everything right, set the crooked straight, save every life and fix every broken thing in the world.
I turned my stare back to the bumpy road, blinked twice, and said, "Sometimes you have to let it burn, Emily."
She stared at me in disbelieving, weary silence for a few seconds. "You coldhearted unbelievable bitch," she said. I didn't answer. I kept driving. She was too weak to try to take the wheel from me—hell, she was too weak to be sitting up for long, and she proved it by letting go and slithering back down to a supine position on the backseat. When I looked in the rearview, she turned her face aside, but there was no mistaking the startlingly pale tracks of tears on her dirty face.
"They were right about you," she said. "You should have been neutered when we had a chance. You don't deserve to be a Warden."
I felt her words like a blunt, cold knife shoved right under my heart. If she'd been trying to rip my guts out and decorate the truck with them, she couldn't possibly have done a finer job. Since the night I'd fought for my life against Bad Bob Biringanine, the surly but beloved old codger of the Wardens, I'd been persona non grata in a big way. The black sheep of the family. Blamed for everything, and praised for nothing.
But I was a Warden, dammit. I loved the sky, the sea, the living air around me in cell-deep ways that only another Warden could ever understand. I wanted to help people so much that the impulse ached inside me. I was a Warden, and the Wardens loved the world. But it was strictly a one-way love affair, and we forgot that, the closer we got to our duties.
"Bitch," Emily mumbled distantly. She was sliding into unconsciousness again, or sleep. Too tired to be angry. I turned on the radio, glided it over to a station that had some decent music, and kept it on for the rest of the bumpy escape from the forest to cover up the quiet, uneven sounds as I gulped back tears.
The SUV growled to the top of the ridgeline, and I had a spectacular view of the inferno of the valley behind us, and what lay ahead.