Read Ill Wind for Free Online Page A

thought about how close I’d come to being a fuse in that current.
    Lightning can come from a clear sky, but it has to be driven by energy from somewhere, and the storm that I’d doctored no longer had the charge necessary.There wasn’t any potential—and yet, I could feel it all around me, a strong positive charge in the ground, negative charges building overhead in the clear but humid sky.
    In Oversight, chains of electrons formed and rippled like translucent snakes in the sky—a cold hard glitter striking straight for me. Dear God, somebody was doing this. Somebody really powerful.
    I rolled over, clawed hair away from my face, and saw that the ground was blackened and smoking where I’d been standing. The diner’s front door banged open, and Molly and the other patrons—even the yuppie couple—crowded around the opening. Too sensible to come outside, too interested to be really safe. I waved at them to show I was all right and started to pull the door of the Mustang shut.
    The interior of the open door was charred in a straight line, up and down, poor baby. I hesitated, touched the metal carefully, and found it hot but not scorching. It squeaked in protest when I hauled it closed, but the engine started and the gears still fit.
    I had to put some distance between me and what was going on. And I had to undo the damage that had been done up in the atmosphere before lightning started striking like blue-white cobras all over the county, mindless and vicious and enraged. I pulled out on the road and started trying to reverse polarity on the charged particles in the air overhead. The trick was not to try to change everything, just enough links in the chain to break the connections. I chose the particles by feel and instinct, turning that one, and that one, then flipping a whole section like a pancake on a hot griddle.
    Breaking the chain of destruction.
    The particles rolled back over, connecting faster than thought, heading for me and Delilah.
    Dammit!
    I hit the gas and Delilah jumped, raced like her life depended on it. I abandoned the sky and focused on the thin line of moisture on the road beneath the tires. I couldn’t change the charge in the earth, couldn’t even sense if the ground had been sensitized, too, but I could control the water. It was something my enemy—whoever that was—might not have thought of.
    In the split second before lightning discharged through the open particle chain, I reversed the polarity of the water and snapped its energy feed to the ground.
    The circuit broke, and the energy bled off harmlessly in a million directions.
    I waited, watching in Oversight, while my body took care of controlling the Mustang’s wild gallop on damp pavement. Watched the living, thinking particles turn and turn and turn, whirring, searching for another circuit to complete.
    I watched them suddenly revert to their natural random state as whoever was behind it let go.
    I pulled in a deep breath and realized I was sweating. The car reeked with it.
    I rolled down the windows and kept driving, not daring to slow down.
    Â 
    The weather isn’t what you think it is. Not by a long shot.
    It’s a predator. In fact, the whole world around you is full of predators you can’t see, can’t sense, that are held in check only by their own whims and the power of about 1 percent of the humanpopulation. You want to know why the dinosaurs died out? Look around. They didn’t have any Wardens.
    We come in three basic flavors. People who control water and air are Weather Wardens, and we’re in charge of keeping the furious storms the planet stirs up from scouring mankind off the face of the planet. Earth Wardens keep us from joining the great march to extinction by diverting dozens of planet-crushing catastrophes every year. Fire Wardens control—or try to control—the tendency of the planet to burn things to crispy ash. Mother Nature is schizophrenic