I didn’t say it was easy, okay? Just possible.
Once you get a certain amount of air disturbed and bouncing off of other, less excited air, you get energy. Every collision of molecules creates energy, and that energy has to go somewhere—in the creation of heat. Heated air pushes on cooled air. Wackiness ensues.
That’s an obvious simplification, but if you’ve ever seen a storm form from the collision of a warm front and a cold front, seen those clouds boil up and turn dark and tower up into the heavens … well. That’s how it works.
And you can start a forest fire by rubbing sticks together, if you’re using the right kind of sticks and the right amount of force. The trick is being able to contain the beast you create, because once you get enough energy together, the dynamite is going to go boom. All you can do is direct the force the way you want it to go.
Needless to say, this is not a job for the timid.
The other complication was that Whitney could have known what I was doing … but then again, if, as David had implied, she was really young for a Djinn, she wouldn’t think of everything. She couldn’t. Someone like David on the run … that was something that was a much harder target. Whitney, in her see-me-from-space bikini and one-of-a-kind sports car? Not so much.
But damn, I hated the idea of hurting that car. Which was why my first lightning strike came down on the road in front of the Bugatti, as close as I could nail it without actually hitting it, and I watched in the neon energy trails of Oversight as the sports car wavered, skidded sideways, and then started to straighten out again. That was okay. The lightning had been a diversion, anyway.
What I was really doing was blowing out her tires with needle-sharp shards of black ice lined up on the road like shredder strips.
Whitney hit them at a reduced speed, thanks to my lightning feint, which saved her from a fiery matinee-worthy crash. I zoomed in on Oversight and saw the wheels explode—both front tires, then both back. And the Bugatti instantly went from a precision racing machine to a hunk of metal clumsily trying to plow the pavement.
Ouch. That was really going to hurt, but it was better than the alternatives.
My radio spit static, and Whitney said, surprised, “You bitch ! You are so sneaky!” She laughed, long and loud, and then said, “I think I like you.”
Right about then, David blipped in on the passenger seat of the car.
“The guy on the road?” I asked.
“Safe in the hands of emergency help,” he said. “He’s stable. You blew out her tires?”
“Had to try something. Are you ready to spank this little brat before she gets somebody killed?”
“I’d better let you do it. You’d accuse me of enjoying it too much.”
David knew me all too well, and it made me laugh as I pressed the accelerator and gained ground on our fleeing Djinn.
She was trying all kinds of tricks now, including forming new tires out of random shreds of rubber left on the side of the road by other luckless drivers, but David was focused entirely on undoing whatever she was up to, and I was completely locked into the car, the acceleration, the chase. Overhead, the weather darkened, and clouds formed to block out the hot sun. We were going to get rain, as a consequence of my actions, but it was a good rain. A washing shower, not a flood.
Suddenly, the Bugatti stopped. I could see it now, the silvery gleam of it unreal against the violent greens and dull browns of the swamp, like some crash-landed alien spacecraft. “What’s she doing?” I asked.
“She,” said my radio, “is thanking you very much for completely following the script, sugar. Hang on, now. It’s going to get interesting.”