I leaned against the counter and sipped my coffee, watching the shadowy form move, and when the water shut off, I went back into the bedroom.
Luis dressed quickly. While he was doing so, I washed myself in the overheated bathroom. The cooler air of the bedroom felt good on my damp skin when I walked out, my clothing over my arm.
Naked.
Luis looked, a kind of involuntary inspection, but then he turned his back. I made no comment as I dragged on my underwear and clothing, layer by layer, with the leather on the topmost. “I am not shy,” I assured him. “It’s not a Djinn trait.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I get that, actually.” He sounded very odd. He glanced over his shoulder, saw that I had clothed myself, and faced me again. “We’ve lost a lot of time.”
“No more than we would have if we’d gone as we were, faced our enemies, and lost,” I said. “I have her trace now, on the aetheric. I won’t lose them again.”
Not unless they realized the trick I had used to form the link, and found a way to break it.
I had to hope that they had taken the child for a reason, because the easiest possible way to sever the link was by killing her.
Luis drained the last of his coffee. “Let’s roll.”
A quick stop to outfit us both with helmets, and we were on the trail. It was a short enough drive into the Jicarilla reservation. Outside of Albuquerque, the New Mexico landscape edged away into dusty sages, ochers, and reds. There was vegetation, but it was the hardy kind, living on little and surviving much.
I felt an odd kind of kinship with it.
As we traveled, I assessed Luis’s condition. He was stronger today, and his reservoir of power had replenished itself. That reservoir, in human Wardens, seeped in from the world around them, a kind of osmosis that I seemed incapable of copying. It would be easier to absorb some of that power through the contact of skin, but I found that if I concentrated and was cautious, I could siphon small amounts even through the shielded contact where his hands held my waist.
I trembled with relief as his warm energy sank through my starved tissues, but I did not think he could feel it. The sensation was likely lost in the road vibration of the Victory as we sped through long, empty miles.
The map had shown us the route that Isabel had followed, but our analysis of alternatives showed us better-paved highways where I could open the throttle on the motorcycle and rocket us along at much higher speeds. Illegal, and therefore a risk, but like Luis, I felt desperate to make better time.
Ibby’s captors might be the same who’d launched such vicious attacks against Manny, against me, against Luis. If so, they’d shown little mercy or regard for innocents, and I could not be sure that Isabel’s tender age would make any difference to them.
In two hours, we crossed the border into the Jicarilla reservation. There was little to mark it—faded signs and the same harsh country. State Highway 537 led through the heart of it.
I pulled over to the side of the dusty road, into soft sand, to go up into the aetheric. Isabel’s position had moved on, but it was not far ahead . . . another two hours at most.
I wondered why our enemies were moving so slowly. Surely a five-year-old child couldn’t hold back their progress so drastically.
Unless . . . they meant us to follow. Why attack us, wasting their own energy, when they could force us to waste ours in pursuit, and trap us in the end?
I didn’t speak of it to Luis, but I knew his thoughts would have led him to the same conclusions. The technique we had used to track the girl was rare, but not unknown among Earth Wardens; we had perhaps used a less common tactic, but if our opponents were as determined as I expected, they could have planned against it.
And the Jicarilla reservation stretched across the border, from New Mexico into Colorado.
“What are you doing? We need to get moving!” Luis said. He’d taken care of his call of nature, and mine could wait. “Something wrong?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “How many Wardens between here and the Colorado border?”
“Zero. We’re stretched a little thin, you know, and besides, far as I know, there’s only one or two left in the entire state. Most of the top rank went to answer Lewis’s call on the coast. They’re gone now, out of the country.”
I turned my head slightly. “Were you asked to go?”
“Yeah.” His tone didn’t invite further conversation on the subject. “Why are you worried about Wardens all of a sudden?”
I fixed my eyes on the far, shimmering horizon, where the black ribbon of the road rose up to meet the sky in a vanishing point, and I held out my hand to him. After a hesitation, he took it, and this time, I was the leader rising into the aetheric. We did not go far. We didn’t have to.
When we dropped down again, Luis shuddered as he entered his flesh again, and said, “Damn. I was hoping they wouldn’t know we were coming.”
“So was I,” I said. “Helmets.”
“Helmets won’t help visibility,” he pointed out. “You’ll be driving blind.”
“Put your hand on my back,” I said. “On my skin. I can use Oversight if you don’t let go.”
“You think you can drive like that?”
Blind? Using only the confusing information available on the aetheric to see? Possibly. What choice did I have?
I watched the vanishing point on the horizon grow hazy, then disappear as dirty red smudged the clear blue sky in an uneven, growing line.
What I was showing him in the aetheric was a sandstorm coming. A bad one.
I donned my helmet. It wouldn’t keep out everything, but it would do enough to allow me to breathe—unless the plastic broke. I didn’t want to consider that possibility. Behind me, I felt Luis adjusting his own helmet, and then his hands slid up under my jacket, tugged my shirt from my trousers, and settled in a warm span on either side of my waist, skin on skin.
The connection snapped tight between us, stronger for the touch, and I took in a deep breath.
“Keep your head down,” I told him. “I don’t know what else might come out of the dark.”
I pressed the throttle and threw sand on the still air, achieved the solid surface of the road, and the Victory dug into the asphalt, growling its challenge. I edged the speed faster and faster. It reminded me of old days, of horses thundering toward the enemy lines, of knights jousting, of a pure, clean purpose. Kill or die.
The red line on the horizon boiled up and out, like ink dropped in water. I felt the forces driving it—not Earth but Weather, the interaction of cold and warm air creating this deadly and explosive windstorm. In wetter climates, it would have brought thunder and rain, but here it only lashed the land, picked up abrasive grit and rubbed it together, building its own energy within the sandstorm.
The first gust of wind danced across the prairie, heading for us at a right angle. Tornado, my mind named it at first, but I knew that was not right. Gustnado. It didn’t matter what it was called, only that it hit us broadside in a stinging, powerful rush, and I felt the back tire of the Victory skid a bit, then grab traction again. The oncoming wall of sand grew darker as it came on—still red, but shading now toward brown as more and more light was blocked. It would blot out the sun altogether.
“We can’t do it!” Luis yelled behind me. I didn’t have the time to answer. It was true: we couldn’t possibly affect the entire sandstorm, but I wasn’t trying to. All I wanted was a tunnel through it, a lessening of the intensity. We could do that. I was certain we could.
I was certain until the moment I realized how huge the storm truly was. It had looked large from a distance, but it was monstrous now, and still growing larger. It covered the horizon in red-brown waves, rippling like silk, stretching to the heavens.
A dusty, rattling pickup truck roared up from a side road, took the turn, and sped past us going the other direction. I heard the driver shout a warning to us. He was running.