“You’re in shock. I’ll drive you to the hospital. They can contact your family.”

He scanned the roads along the beachfront—no cops, no cars at all. “I’m sorry, but you need a doctor.” She was light, but fought him, biting his hands and arms. He set her on a seat and slid the door shut. He grabbed his bag and the tripod. The video camera belched a black line of smoke.

A pattern crossed the sand. The wide, twisting line where the funnel had come ashore had melted—the sand fused into a glossy crystalline sheet. He pressed a foot onto it, shattering the glass like pond ice.

He turned to the van to see the back window spidering, cracking like the sand. The woman’s bright eyes refracted through fissures, her pale hands pressing against the glass.

Jacob slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine.

“Just calm down, please—I’m going to take you to the hospital.”

She opened her mouth, gasped, and her sternum collapsed against a cage of bones. She screamed a clap of thunder that shattered all the windows. The car alarm yelped, and the airbag knocked Jacob back against the seat.

A funnel of cold mist shot from her mouth and blasted the side of Jacob’s face. Icy water ran down his shirt and pooled in his seat.

Jacob wiped the water from his eyes and stared at the woman. Her mouth closed and her sternum reflated. Eyes cooled to a muddy grey.

Droplets of rain shook from Jacob’s hair. “Who are you?”

She watched his mouth. Licked her lips with a scaled tongue.

“I’m a tempest,” she said, in a voice like swelling wind.

Jacob stared at her, at how clouds seemed to pass through her eyes. “You’re a storm. That storm?” He gestured to the sky, now void-blue, the raging system gone. Now in his back seat.

“Give me my blade,” she hissed.

“Are there others like you?”

“We are one storm. We are many. Give me my blade so I may return. I was not finished. I have a gale yet in my throat.”

Jacob ran his eyes over the creature’s anatomy. “But you’re a woman. Where does the wind come from? Where does it go?”

“It came from my sister to the south. It goes north and east.”

Jacob’s eyes widened. “You know the wind. All of it. All the time?”

The charge of yellow was rebuilding in her eyes. “I am the wind.”

Jacob turned and wrenched the van into gear. “I know where to go. Someplace safe.”

He backed over dunes toward the seaside road. The gutters flowed with runoff rain. He splashed onto the street and headed for the highway.

“Do you have a name?”

She concussed the car with a roll of thunder.