SNEAK PEEK: Virtual ConDFW reading

As a make-up for those folks who went to ConDFW this weekend hoping to see me (but truly, you wouldn't find me very good conversation, as I have a scratchy voice and pause frequently to cough like a TB patient) I am posting what I *would* have been reading on Friday.

Which is an excerpt from TOTAL ECLIPSE, the 9th Weather Warden novel, coming out in August. :)





A little setup:

In the last book, Cape Storm, Joanne and David won the day but got hit hard by the parting blow from the enemy -- a parting blow that literally knocked the paranormal right out of them. Joanne and David are human, and although the other Wardens have recovered, there are complications -- for one thing, the Earth is waking up, and she's recalled the Djinn to her to do her bidding. Their free will is gone. David remains unaffected, because of his damage, but the Wardens are in real trouble now, as the angry Earth begins to strike back. They need Joanne and David back to full strength, and that means sending them on a hazardous quest to regain their powers while the rest of the Wardens try to hold the line and save what they can ...

-------------------------

The Port of Miami looked weatherbeaten, but under repairs, and as far as I could tell, life was going on just fine. That seemed ... odd. I stood at the rail and watched people strolling the boardwalks, coming in and out of shops with hands full of bright-colored bags, eating at outdoor cafes. It seemed so normal.

It didn’t seem like the end of the world as we knew it. In the movies, everybody’s looking up at the skies (conveniently, all at the same daylight hour, everywhere in the world, all at once) when the big disaster is coming. In real life, people just carry on until the disaster’s in their face, and sometimes, even after. I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve personally fished out of flooded homes and businesses during hurricanes, for instance – and the ones that the Wardens couldn’t save. All because they denied the ability of the world around them to destroy them.

There were potentially big losses of life brewing everywhere around the world, but so far they were just breaking news stories happening (for most people) somewhere else. Interesting and tragic, not personal and panic-bringing. Nothing to interrupt dinner at Pascal’s on Ponce over, for sure.

That would change, very soon. I knew it, even though I couldn’t sense the aetheric disturbances anymore. Wardens were talking about it, and I could sense the suppressed anxiety in their voices.

This lovely day in Miami was the last we might ever see. I had a sudden, crazy impulse to start yelling like some wild-haired, sandwich-board-wearing street preacher, but I held my breath until it passed. Doomsaying wouldn’t make anybody’s day better. Or postpone the inevitable.

The ship was maneuvering up to the docks, and I could see, in the distance, a massive presence of cars, vans and trucks. I nudged Lewis, who was standing next to me at the railing. “What is that?”

“The transportation you arranged,” he said. “Cars and vans to shuttle people where they need to go.”

“All of that?”

“Plus the press.”

My palms immediately got damp, and I scrubbed them against my blue jeans. “What’s our plan to handle them?”

“Benign neglect. We’re going to be neck-deep in Apocalypse tomorrow. I can’t see how issuing a press release is going to make a damn bit of difference, so we’re not talking.”

Worked for me. “David’s going with me. To the Oracles.”

Lewis didn’t take his eyes off the docking process. “Good. I didn’t like sending you alone.” He paused, and then said, very quietly, “I don’t like sending you at all. You know that.” Yeah, and I knew why. So did David. Uncomfortably personal territory, so I skipped it.

“It’s a dirty job, but that’s why you picked me to do it,” I said cheerfully. “Besides, if I can pick up some of my powers along the way, this might not be the rush to martyrdom you think.”

“It’s a big if, Jo.”

“It’s a gi-normous if. Not to mention an embarrasingly large how. So let’s not dwell on it. Besides, you’re the one going up against Djinn and insane planets with a grudge. I’ve got the easy job.”

He shrugged, because I wasn’t wrong; nobody was guaranteed to come out of this thing with a whole skin – Lewis, the most powerful Warden in several hundred years, least of all. The most powerful you were, the more the bad things tended to want you dead. At least, in my experience.

Which meant I was practically bulletproof right now, ironically. I literally wasn’t worth noticing. Was that a comfort? I really wasn’t sure.

“You’ve been taking the hits for a long time,” Lewis said. He hadn’t even glanced at me, but he could read me just fine. “Let the rest of us get the battle scars for a change. We’re big kids.”

“Did I ever say you weren’t?”

“No, but your hero complex scares the crap out of me,” Lewis said, and straightened up. “Here we go.”

I thought he meant that we were ready to disembark, but he turned toward me, and before I even knew he was intending to do it, he kissed me. Not one the desperate kind of kisses he’d given me in the past, none of that longing or anguish or pure lust I knew was still locked up inside of him. This was surprisingly ... pure. Chaste.

It was a goodbye kiss.

I didn’t fight it.

He didn’t say another word, and it wasn’t necessary. I watched him stride away, already calling orders to Wardens who flocked around him like birds, swooping in to get instructions and then breaking off on their own.

That left me alone at the rail, until I sensed a warm presence next to me, and looked over to see that David had joined me. He had no particular expression on his face. It was just – studiously neutral.

“You saw,” I said.

“Yes. I know what it was,” he said. “And he’s right. We might never see him again. I’d kiss him myself, but he might kill me.”

Which made me laugh, as he intended. Though, knowing how ancient David was, I wasn’t entirely putting that kind of flexibility past him, either. “You’re a good man,” I said.

“Am I?” He frowned down at the docks, as if it was a difficult question. “Maybe I was, once. Maybe I can be. But I’ve done a lot of things that wouldn’t qualify as good. I think – I think this is a chance to remember what that means.”

“Bullshit,” I said crisply. “We’re not in the navel-gazing business, my love, we’re in the world-saving business. Don’t you forget it.”

That surprised a smile out of him, a spark that reminded me of the fire he’d had before ... before the island, and that black corner. “I won’t.”

Cherise arrived, out of breath, rolling two suitcases. She had on a Miami-length sundress (as in, just too long to qualify as a shirt, and illegal in forty-nine other states), clunky platform shoes, an enormous sun hat, and designer sunglasses. Very Cher. “Well?” she snapped, as she breezed on past us, leaving a smell of crisp lemony perfume in her wake. “Hustle it up, what do you think, the world isn’t ending or something? I am not holding a cab for you slackers!” Kevin trailed her, looking as slouchy as ever but somehow a little less unkempt – maybe Cherise had been after him with a comb – dragging two more suitcases. Considering we’d come on this journey with almost nothing, that was quite an accomplishment. Only Cherise could pump up her wardrobe while evading death. I generally just ruined mine.

David offered me his arm. “She’s right,” he said. “So are you. Fight first, introspection later.”

“We’re going to make it,” I said. “You believe that, right?”

He looked around – at the seemingly normal seafront, at the Wardens disembarking from the ship, at the world all around us. And he said, softly, “Not all of us.”

I shivered.


###

Four in a cab was a stretch, but we voted Kevin to sit up front, much to the displeasure of the driver, who groused about rules and such until I tossed money at him. The money had been issued to all of us out of the ship’s treasury – another thing that was going on the Warden’s already staggering tab for saving the world, again. It wasn’t going to be enough, but it was enough to get us moving, and that was all that mattered.

I had the driver drop us at a car rental place – not the Avis and Budget that were already swarming with Weather Wardens attempting to secure their own preferred methods of transpo, not liking what I’d booked for them – but at a luxury place, where I plunked down the gold American Express Warden card to the clerk behind the counter. She was a professionally lovely girl, the way a lot of South Beach ladies are, and she had a practiced, customer-service-approved smile. “What kind of vehicle are you – “

“What’s the fastest car you have?” I asked.

“Um ... “ She glanced down, and I’m pretty sure she would have frowned except that the Botox no longer allowed that particular expression. Not that I wasn’t in favor of Botox. I was starting to developing some disturbing furrows in my own brow. “We have a Porsche Carrera ...”

“Something that seats four,” I said.

“Comfortably,” added Cherise.

“Okay, well, we have a classic Mustang that I understand is really fast ...”

I couldn’t believe my ears. “What kind of classic Mustang?” Because with my luck it would be a 1974, which was the start of the Mustang dark ages.

“It’s a Boss 429?” she said, reading from a card with the air of someone who really didn’t speak the language and was sounding it out phonetically. “1970?”

She hadn’t even thought about being born when Ford had rolled that racing car off the assembly line, but my heart was starting to pound. “Seriously? You’re sure it’s a Boss 429?”

“We just got it in,” she said. “It has about sixty thousand miles on it.”

I swallowed hard and tried not to get my hopes up. “Can I see it?”

She gave me another professional smile – not quite as polished as the last one – and then brightened the wattage considerably at David. “Sure,” she said, and nodded to another, identically lovely woman (only with dark hair) who came from the back to take her place at the counter. Out we went – although Cherise left the mountain of suitcases sitting in the lobby, thankfully – into the parking lot behind the reception building.

It was like a candy store for car addicts. Seriously. There were a lot of very rich people in Florida, and a lot who visited, and this was their toy box. Classic red Lamborghini? Choose from dozens of identical clones. Want a high-end Porsche? A Jag XJ220? No problem. Even I slowed down and stared as we passed the sleek, rounded chassis of what surely couldn’t be ... “Hey,” I said, and pointed. “Bugatti Veyron?”

“Reserved,” our guide said. “And you’d need more than a gold Amex, I can tell you that.”

No doubt, because last time I’d seen a price tag attached to one of those monsters, it was soaring up into the $1.5 million range. I felt I should genuflect or something, because that was definitely one of the Gods of Cars.

Then we cleared a giant, gleaming, black row of tricked-out Hummers, and found ... my car.

There was just no doubt about it, really. This was mine. The thick, hot pleasure that spread through me at the sight of it couldn’t have felt better if accompanied by a shot of heroin, administered by a male stripper.

Yes, cars are my drug of choice.

She wasn’t wrong. It was a Boss 429, absolutely cherry, painted in Intimidator Black. No stripes, no frills. It looked dangerous. Oh, and it was.

Rental Car Girl was holding a set of keys. She handed them to me and opened the driver’s side door. It smelled faintly of cigar smoke inside, but the interior was beautifully maintained. The seat was comfortably broken in, and even the leg length was almost right. One minor adjustment, and I fired it up.

A low, deep-throated throb of an engine, hot with power and hungry for speed. Yes.

I realized I was obsessively running my hands over the steering wheel, with a lust that was making David look at me funny. I cleared my throat, shut the engine off, and got out of the car. “Fine,” I said, trying to sound normal. “I’ll take it.”

“Day rate?”

“For the month,” I said.

She didn’t even blink; I supposed the rich did rent things on that scale on a regular basis. Probably for longer. “You’ll have to pay the deposit plus two weeks,” she said. “The car has LoJack, of course. We maintain our own insurance, which we will require you to carry if you can’t provide valid coverage that would include – “

“Fine,” I said. “Whatever. Charge it. We’re in a hurry.”

Surprisingly, that phrase did not inspire confidence. We waited through ID checks, credit checks, whispered conversations, and finally, a massive set of paperwork, including a clause that I was fairly sure included forced organ harvesting in the event of non-payment.

I just signed it, scribbling as fast as I could anywhere her well-manicured finger pointed. She wished us a pleasant stay in Miami. I didn’t correct her, just stood tapping my foot impatiently until the uniformed valet had brought the Boss around to the front.

Cherise opened the trunk and looked inside. “You’re kidding, right? My luggage will never – “

“Downsize,” I said. “You’re not packing for a photo shoot, you know.”

“How do you know? There’s always time to book a good gig before the end of the world ... okay, fine.” She crammed two of the suitcases in, and rolled two more back inside. She came out empty-handed, and I raised my eyes. She scooted her big round sunglasses down to roll hers. “They’re shipping them to Warden HQ,” she said. “What, you really thought I’d just leave them? Girlfriend. There is Elie Saab in there. Ready to wear, but still. Respect.”

“Hey, you’ve got your drug. I’ve got mine.” I made sure the trunk was closed, and opened up the door for her as I flipped the driver’s seat forward. She got in with care. I was glad, because I really didn’t want to see any tabloid flashing. Kevin piled in next to her, and I smirked a little as I slammed the passenger seat back into place. With those long legs, he was not going to be overly comfortable ... but then again, he wouldn’t have been comfortable in much except a stretch limo.

David and I slid into the front seats, and I turned the key. The vibration of the engine came straight up my spine, doing interesting things in all kinds of key pleasure points, and I hit the clutch and shifted into first gear.

The Boss scratched right out of the box, leaving a thin mist of smoke behind us as it roared off. Zero to thirty, way too fast, and I had to back off dramatically on the fuel mix. He was temperamental, this beast. I liked that. It took a few experimental shifts to find the sweet spot in the clutch, and get the feel of the pedals, but not more than a minute. The rental company had added a plug-in GPS, which showed me the route to the nearest freeway, and by the time I hit the on-ramp me and the Boss were good friends.

Oh God it felt good to be behind the wheel again, in control, heading somewhere with a purpose. No more Bad Bob. No more old ghosts haunting me. Just me, the car, my lover, and ... okay, and Cherise and Kevin. And a trunkload of couture. But still. I felt ... light.

And oh lord the Boss had power. I had to watch to keep it hovering at reasonable speed, and it was still blowing the doors off of disgruntled Italian sports car enthusiasts in the other lanes. I was glad it wasn’t a convertible. We might have died of the wind buffeting.

“Storm coming in,” Cherise said, after we’d put about 20 miles under the fast-turning wheels. I glanced in the rear view. She was facing west, out the window, with an odd expression on her face. I looked, and saw a smear of clouds on the horizon. I automatically tried to reach out and grab information from the aetheric, but it was that phantom limb syndrome that amputees sometimes have. Nothing there. Just a sensation that there had once been.

“Doesn’t look like much,” I said.

“It’s bad,” she said. “I think it’s bad.”

I gave her a sharper look. “What?”

She shook her head and slipped her sunglasses on, leaning her head back. “I’m going to take a nap. Wake me if we pass a hot male strip bar.”

Kevin growled, and she smiled and tucked her small hand in his. “Could we at least have some tunes?” he said. “Or is this car too sacred for a radio?”

“No car is too sacred for a radio,” I said. Sure enough, there was one – not factory original, apparently an upgrade from the rental agency. Satellite radio. I fiddled until I found a classic rock station. Billy Preston, Will It Go Round In Circles. Sweet. I cranked it up, opened the throttle a little more, headed for trouble.

Feeling better than I had in months.


###


I drove like the devil was after me.

As it was, because Cherise had been right about the storm. Even I could tell now that it was going to be a bad one; the clouds were massing up, boiling in black towers as warm and cool air collided. A huge anvil formation, spreading out over the entire western horizon. It hadn’t been moving fast, but it had been moving, the last I could see of it before it blocked out sunset and sent us into premature darkness. I shifted stations from rock to weather, and caught reports of massive winds, fleets of tornados, flooding. The Weather Wardens were having one hell of a bad time, though so far they’d kept the tornados from touching down in any heavily populated areas. That was the best maintenance strategy – let the storm vent its energy where it wouldn’t do as much damage and injury. But just from the news reports I could tell how much power was stored in that storm. Massive. And even the best Weather Wardens weren’t going to be able to get to everything.

The rain hit us viciously about two hours later, right about the time that my body began urgently waving the yellow caution flag. I checked the clock; it was after midnight, and I’d been driving for far too long. I found a halfway decent roadside motel – a bland chain thing, but I wasn’t concerned about originality right now so much as availability of pillows and mattresses. Cherise and Kevin had both fallen asleep some time back, and I had to wake them to check in. I hated leaving the Boss unescorted – somebody was going to recognize its value – but the best I could do was park it outside the two rooms I rented, under a strong light, and hope for the best. I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer.

One hot shower later, I crawled into bed next to David, who was flipping channels on the television. Looking for a twenty-four hour news channel, apparently, because that was where he stopped. I sat there rubbing my wet hair as dry as possible as I read the screen crawl at the bottom. The news airing at the moment was about the very storm we were in ... not just us, but most of the Eastern seaboard. Nasty. Easily as nasty as anything I had ever handled as a Weather Warden. There was a lot of damage. The death toll was already well into the hundreds and still rising.

What caught me, though, was the screen crawl, because it was all about disasters. Not just the storm, or its attendant deadly little brother flooding ... earthquakes along the New Madrid fault line, a whopping 7.5 on the Richter scale – more than twice as powerful as the biggest themonuclear weapon ever exploded. It could have been worse; the scale went all the way up to 10, though the worst humans had ever lived through had measured a 9.5. Past that, it wasn’t really going to be our problem anymore.

The quake had shaken pictures off of walls in South Carolina, and rung church bells as far away as Boston. At the epicenter of the shift, in Portageville, it was going to be much, much worse. There’d be nothing much left standing.

The Portageville quake was far from the only thing going on, aside from the storm. The screen crawl tallied up unexplained increases in animal attacks, particularly by bears, mountain lions, and an unexpected increase in poisonous snake bites in the Western states. Wildfires had started up in the deep forests, in total defiance of wet conditions, and seemed to be getting the better of fire teams and – presumably – Fire Wardens.

And that was just the U.S. The devastation wasn’t confined to our shores. Virtually every continent was under attack. End of the world prophets were out in force, already, and they’d only get loonier and louder as things got worse.

The thing was, the end of the world prophets probably weren’t wrong on this one.

I found myself holding David for comfort. He shut off the TV, and we sat in silence, watching the afterimage burn for a few seconds before we collapsed together back to the mattress and pillows I had, just a little while ago, so greatly lusted after. Now I wasn’t sure I could – or should – sleep. My body was still exhausted, aching, and needing to find some oblivion, but my mind was playing the Blame Game. We did this. We started this. And we have to do something to stop it. People are dying.

“Shhh,” David whispered, and kissed my temple. His arms were warm and strong around me, even though I knew instinctively he was right now despairing of how much power he’d had, and lost. How frustrated and grief-stricken he was, too. How helpless in the face of the inevitable. “Let it go, Jo. You have to let it go, just for now. Rest. Please.”

I didn’t want to, but he seduced me into it, with the comforting heat of his body curled around mine, the steady calm rhythm of his heartbeat, his love obvious even to all my blinded senses in every touch and caress. He was being strong for me. Maybe he needed to be.

Maybe I needed him to be, too.

I fell asleep finally, wrapped in his arms, and we woke up hours later to a clap of thunder so loud it rattled pictures bolted to the wall, and set off car alarms in the parking lot. I felt blinded, instinctively terrified, and cringed against David. Clinging for comfort. How long since I’d been afraid of a storm?

I got hold of myself and crawled out of bed to look out the motel room window. It was like looking into a strobe flasher; the lightning was bright, constant, and close. Thunder followed, so loud that I could see the glass vibrate under the pressure of the sound waves. The lights were out in the parking lot, and – I realized – in the room as well; even the low-level night light glow from the bathroom had gone dark. We’d been busted back to the primitive days, hiding in a cave, cowering from the storm.

It kind of pissed me off. So instead of retreating back into the dark and hugging David, I stood there in front of the glass window, practically daring the storm to do its worst. If I’d still been a Warden, it probably would have taken me up on it, too, but a normal human? It didn’t even know I was there. That wouldn’t keep it from killing me, just as it would ants, birds, cats, or anything else that got in its way, but it wasn’t personal.

I would officially be collateral damage. Which really pissed me off.

Another eye-searing flash of lightning, and this time I saw the blue pop of a transformer blowing on a pole not far away. The pole caught fire, blazing like a creosote-smeared torch even through the driving rain. It gave the whole thing a hellish glow that was really, really unsettling.

“I think we need to get out of here,” I said. David was already out of bed and dressing in the dark – cursing softly in a language I didn’t recognize, mainly because he probably hadn’t had to dress himself in the dark for, oh, about five thousand years, and in those days, there weren’t quite as many challenges to the process anyway. “Is the phone working?”

His cursing got louder as he knocked the receiver off, but paused when he checked the line. “Yes,” he said, and handed it to me to continue his fight with pants. I dialed Cherise’s room number by touch. She picked up on the first ring.

“Holy crap, we need to go!” she said breathlessly. “That’s what you were going to say, right?”

“That’s what I was going to say.”

“So glad I didn’t unpack the luggage from the trunk. Let’s do it. But you go first and unlock the doors, ‘k? Because I am not standing out in that.”

She hung up before I could tell her that the castle had called and wanted its princess back. She was right, actually. I had the keys. I was the point person for this little expedition.

“Stay here until I get everything open,” I told David, and tossed a towel over my head as I opened up the door. The wind promptly blew the wood back against the wall with a crash, and knocked me back two steps by sheer force before I got control and leaned into it.

Then I stepped outside, into the teeth of the monster.

I didn’t dare look up, or around, or anywhere but at the Boss, sitting there with its chrome blazing in the flashes of lightning. Water was running off of it in silver strings, and I lunged for the driver’s side door, got in, and manually unlocked the passenger side before diving out again, honking the horn. Cherise’s door opened, and Kevin ran out, heading for the other side of the car.

Cherise followed him, staggering in the buffeting wind like a post-happy-hour drunk on her clunky platform shoes. The wind definitely made that flirty little South Beach dress not safe for anywhere, but in seconds rain had flattened it securely down against her body. It was the next best thing to a swimsuit, really. Not that my shirt and jeans weren’t waterlogged and streaming.

I didn’t feel it coming the way I would have as a Warden; I felt the hairs raise on my arms, as if trying to escape my body, and for a blank second I wondered what the heck is that? ...

And then a pure white bolt of power hit Cherise.

The force of it blew me over, and if it made a sound I don’t remember hearing it; the shock lasted for at least three heartbeats, and then the cold rain brought me back around and I realized that Cherise had just been struck by lightning.


-- continued in TOTAL ECLIPSE, available August 4, 2010!




I know. I'm mean. But hey, cliffhangers are what I do, right? :) Also, apologies for the first draft quality, I haven't gone through and blended in my edits yet from the other file.

Apologies to my ConDFW peeps for the no-show.

-- Rachel