Authors: Rachel Caine
Thin Air (2 page)
NE
There were worse things than being naked, freezing, and alone in a forest. For instance, there was being naked, freezing, not alone, and not sure of who the hell you were. And having people depending on you.
That was worse.
Lewisâthe man who'd found me, the tall, ragged-looking specimen with the cheekbonesâhad put my silence down to shock, which was probably not far from the truth. When I just clung to him, shivering in the frigid wind, he finally stripped off his down jacket and draped it over my shoulders. I watched him, shivering and numb, clutching the down coat hard around me. It smelled of dirt and feathers and sweat.
“Say something,” he commanded. I didn't. I couldn't. All I could do was shake. What was that in his eyes? Anguish? Fury? Love? Hate? I had no frame of reference for him, or for what he was feeling. “Jo, how'd you get here? Where have you been?”
Jo.
I waited for some kind of internal recognition, some circuit to activate. I waited for some confirmation that Jo was my name.
Nothing.
When I kept silent, he finally shook his head and glanced around, then gathered up the backpack he'd dropped on the ground. “Come with me.” I had no reason to, but I was too cold and too weak. Lewis steered me down the gentler slope of the far side of the hill, into a small clearing. Overhead it looked like twilight, everything masked into smooth gray cotton by low-hanging clouds. Virga draped from them, veiling the treetops. “Sit,” he ordered, and I collapsed onto the cold ground in a huddle. I'd lost too much body heat; the coat couldn't warm me. Lewis turned away and grabbed handfuls of fallen wet wood from the underbrushâgood-sized logs, some of themâand began putting together the makings of a fire. Within five minutes he had cleared a space, dug down to the dirt, created a fire pit, and ringed it with rough stones.
It wouldn't matter. The wood was way too wet to burn.
Lewis settled down next to the nonstarting fire, glanced at me, and extended a hand, palm out, toward the inert pile of soaked wood.
It burst into immediate hot flame.
I jerked backward, startled, blinking in the sudden dazzle of light, and looked at him. He didn't seem to find anything odd about what had just happened; in fact, he barely paused before he began digging in his pack. He pulled out a rolled-up pair of blue jeans and a denim shirt. Thick thermal socks.
I started to edge away from him as discreetly as possible.
“Foot,” he said, and held out his hand. When I didn't move, he sighed. “Jo, for God's sake, unless you want to lose some toes, let me help you.” I slowly extended my bare left foot. His large, long, blissfully hot fingers wrapped around my ankle and propped it on his knee. He frowned disapprovingly at the cuts on my foot. “What the hell happened to you?” It was just a murmur and, by this time, obviously a rhetorical question. He was very intent on the cuts, not my face. “Okay, these are mostly superficial, but it's going to hurt like hell later if I don't do something about it. So please hold still.”
I expected him to reach for the first-aid kit I could see in the neatly organized backpack. Instead, he cupped my foot in both hands, and I felt a sudden pulsing warmth go through me, followed by a dull, shearing pain. In a second or two, the pain subsided and faded altogether. My foot felt deliciously warm. Tingling.
He let go and tugged one of the thermal socks on and up to my ankle, sealing in the warmth. I wanted to be grateful, but the truth was, I was scared. I didn't know this guy, although he claimed to know me, and he could start fires just by snapping his fingers. Not to mention whatever he'd done to my foot, which felt really good now, but clearly wasn't
natural.
“Next,” he said, and held out his hands again. I hesitated, then gave him the right foot. I'd need those cuts sealed up if I had to make a run for it.
Maybe he's the one. The one who kidnapped you and knocked you over the head and dumped you out here to die.
Maybe, but in that case, why was he doing magical first aid? He could have just let me go. I'd have died out here without help.
Wouldn't I?
When the right foot was healed and thermal-socked, he put the blue jeans and shirt on the ground between us, and looked up into my face.
I waited for some memory to make it past the big black wall. Anything. His name was Lewis; he acted like he knew me; I
should
know him.
I didn't.
He must have taken my long stare for something else, because he shrugged. “Sorry. I don't know where he is.”
He?
There was another one? I looked down, trying not to show how tentative I was. How confused and scared.
“Jo?” He sounded grim. “Whoever took youâ¦did theyâ¦Ah, dammit. I'm just going to ask it, all right? Were you raped?”
Had I been? The word made me feel sick and dizzy, and I had no idea how to reply. I didn't remember my clothes coming off. I must have fought, right? I must have tried to get away. I wouldn't have just ended up out here, naked and dying in the cold, without some kind of a reason.
Abducted and raped and left for dead. I tried it on as an explanation for the panic I felt inside, but it didn't feel right.
He was waiting for an answer. I didn't look up at him. “I don'tâ¦I don't know.” My voice sounded shockingly cracked and small. “I can't remember,” I whispered. “Can't remember anything.” Tears suddenly boiled up hot in my eyes, and I couldn't get words out past the constriction in my throat. The panic hammering in my chest.
Abducted and raped and left for dead.
Maybe it was true. Maybe it was just one of those sad stories that filled the daily newspapers and got the TV news industry good nightly ratings.
I felt so cold. If I kept shaking like this, pieces were going to start flying off.
“Ah, God, Jo. You're in shock,” he said. “Look, I'm going to touch you, all right? We need to get these cuts closed up and this frostbite taken care of, and I can tell if there'sâ¦anything else wrong. Justâ¦hold on. Don't fight me.” He reached out very carefully.
I flinched. I couldn't help it. I got hold of myself somehow, and held still as his hands closed around both of mine. He moved to get on one knee in front of me.
“I have toâ¦I have to get closer,” he said. “I need you to lie down.”
Lie down. Lie down on this freezing ground.
Lie down, at his mercy.
Not easy. Not at all. I kept telling myself that if he could heal meâhowever he was doing itâthen I should let him. I needed to be healthy. I needed to be able to run.
I slowly let myself sink back, holding on to his hands, until I was flat on my back. The coat didn't go very far down. The backs of my thighs felt instantly ice-cold in contact with the damp leaves, and although the fire was casting some warmth, I could barely feel it. My shaking was getting worse, not better.
“Easy,” he murmured, as if I were some wild thing he was out to tame. “Try to relax.”
Yeah, sure. Relax. I couldn't watch what he was doing, and the darkness behind my eyelids was too frightening, too much of a reminder of everything I'd already lost. I looked up instead, at the clouds, and saw a ghost image of a vast wind flowing like a river, separated into layers. Every little eddy and swirl was suddenly visible to me. I stared, puzzled, entranced, and then gasped as I felt Lewis start in on me.
It
hurt.
Live-wire-on-the-tongue kind of hurt, every nerve in my body sensitizing and responding and burning, and I made a moan of protest and tried to yank free, but he held on, leaning closer, on his knees in front of me with his head bent. It looked like prayer. It felt like torture.
Oh, Godâ¦
He was inside of me. Not in a sexual way, although there was something in it that resonated along those nerves, inside those aching spaces; no, this was more invasive than that. I could feel him moving through every part of me, climbing the ladders of my nerve endings, searchingâ¦.
Out. Get out!
I was aware that I was panting, groaning, and trying to pull my hands free of his.
Let GO OF ME!
I was screaming it inside as I writhed on the ground, squirming, trying to suppress the terrible feelings welling up inside of me.
I got my wish with a vengeance as a pair of hands grabbed his shoulders and
threw
Lewis across the clearing to smash against a tree trunk. Lewis yelled and flopped, rolled over and came to his hands and knees, then slammed facedown into the leaves before getting up again, more slowly. His face was dirty gray with shock and rage.
“You asshole,” Lewis said shakily. “I was trying to help her.”
I looked up at my rescuer.
For a moment my mind just didn't want to acknowledge what it was seeing, becauseâ¦he wasn't human. No man had skin like that, like living metalâflickering copper and bronze, cooling into something that was more like flesh, but still too burnished for anything outside of a special effect. His hair was longish, like Lewis's, a barely subdued blazing auburn. Although he was dressed like a regular guy, in blue jeans and a checked shirt, I had no sense of him being anything like normal.
His eyes were
illuminated.
Backlit, the way a cat's can seem in beamed light. A rich, scary color like melting pennies.
He was staring straight down at me, riveted.
Expressionless.
Lewis spit blood and climbed painfully to his feet. “Make up your mind, David. Do you want her to freeze to death? Or can I get back to healing her?”
Davidâshould I know the name? Or was he a complete stranger? I couldn't tell, because he had absolutely no clues in his expression, in those crazy inhuman eyes, or in the tense, still set of his body.
Lewis must have taken his silence for assent, because he was coming back. He elbowed David aside and reached for my hands again. I yanked them free.
“No!”
“Don't be stupid. You've got frostbite. I'm restoring circulation.” Lewis made a frustrated sound and grabbed my wrists, hard, when I tried to pull away again. “Dammit, quit fighting me!”
“Let her go,” David said very quietly. “She doesn't recognize you. She doesn't understand.”
“What?”
“I can't see her,” he said. “She's not on the aetheric.”
Lewis frowned at him and rocked back on his heels. “That's impossible.”
“Look.”
Lewis turned the frown toward me, and his eyes unfocused. For a long few seconds, nothing happened, and then a very odd expression overtook his irritation, smoothed it out, and made it into a blank mask.
“Oh, shit,” he breathed. “What the hellâ¦?”
“I can't see her past,” David said. Which made no sense to me at all, but then, this was making less sense as it went along. “Someone's taken it from her.”
“How is that even possible?”
“It isn't.” Suddenly David crouched down, startlingly graceful about it, and stared into my eyes. “Joanne. Do you know me?”
I recoiled from him, crab-walking backward. Answer enough. For a long moment he didn't move again, and then he smoothly got back to his feet and stepped away. He crossed his arms across his chest and bowed his head, relieving me of the pressure of that stare, at least for a little while.
“Who
are
you people?” I blurted. “He's got some kind of superpowers. And I don't know what the hell
you
are!” I pointed shakily at Lewis and then at David. I'd gotten farther from the fire, and I could already feel the chill biting hard on my exposed skin. “No! Don't touch me!”
Lewis had started moving after me. He stopped, frowning again. “What are you going to do?” he asked in a voice that sounded way too reasonable. “Run around in socks and a coat in an ice storm? It's suicide. Let us help you.”
“Why? Why should I believe you?”
“Because you'll die without us,” David said. He hadn't looked up. “We've been out here looking for you for days without rest.” He slowly raised his head, and I saw something that rocked me back as if he'd pushed me: tears. Very human tears, in those not-human eyes. “Because we love you. Please.”
This time, when David came toward me, I forced myself to hold still for it. I still felt that nearly uncontrollable urge to run, to hide, and I couldn't stop the way I flinched when he slid his arms under my shoulder blades and my knees. Unlike Lewis, he didn't smell like a guy who'd been living rough. He smelled like fresh wind and sunlight and rain, and against my will I buried my face in the hollow where his neck flowed into strong shoulders. He felt solid and real, and he picked me up as if I weighed less than an empty plastic bottle. Heat cascaded out of him, crashed into me, flooded me in a drunken tsunami of warmth. Oh, so good. I clung to him, my hands fisted in the fabric of his shirt, and shuddered in sheer animal pleasure.
“I'm going to need to touch you,” Lewis said. I glanced up into David's face.
“I'll hold you,” he said. “I won't let go.”
I nodded. Lewis's hands pressed against me, palms flat, this time against my shoulders, and jolts of electric fire began to flood through me. I might have resisted, but if I did, David was more than enough to keep me still.
When it was over, I felt nerves still firing in white-hot jerks, but as it passed a sense of numbing exhaustion took over, and I felt myself going limp.
“That'll do it,” I heard Lewis say in carefully colorless tones. “Better get her dressed. It's going to get colder out here tonight, and she's still very weak.”
David's voice seemed to be moving away from me, growing thinner and fainter. “Wait. What did you find?”
“Nothing,” came Lewis's faint, smeared whisper. “Apart from nearly freezing to death, there's nothing wrong with her. Physically, anyway.”
“Then what happened?” David's question came as a ghost, lost in darkness, and then I was gone.
