Free Grounded (Out of the Box Book 4) by Robert J. Crane

problematic.
    Oops.
    I touched back down on the curb and saw movement inside the van, in both the passenger and driver’s seats. Oh, lucky me. Survivors.
    “Hey—” I started to shout, and then I saw it.
    One of my bursts of superheated gas that was directed at the first guys had burned straight through its target and was now sitting on the floor of the van like an ash that had fallen off a giant cigar. I caught a glimpse of it as the carpet flared around it, little flickers of flame around a fingertip-sized pellet of hotter-than-hell. As I stood there, it slipped through the floor of the van, presumably into the machinery below, including—I don’t much about cars, but I knew this—a gas line.
    Damn. That wasn’t good.
    It took a couple seconds, and they were seconds in which I was frantically preparing for the worst. Gavrikov , I called frantically inside my head. With his power, I could pull the heat and fire off the impending explosion, absorbing it into my body, but there was nothing I could do to keep the metal blown out of the van from becoming shrapnel that would drive into the air around me, possibly hitting innocent bystanders just sitting on their porches or huddling in nearby homes.
    I hoped for a near-empty fuel tank.
    I didn’t get it.
    The explosion lit off big, the van bursting with flame and force. I felt the shockwave start to billow outward, expanding as it blew. It was way too big for just a tank of gas; my attackers must have had some sort of explosives with them, because I watched the van’s metal deform as I sucked the fire and heat toward me in a desperate bid to rip it out of the air before it could turn the van into a giant frag grenade.
    It was like trying to hold the sun in the palms of my hands, like trying to draw the heat off a propane stove with a vacuum cleaner. The world slowed around me as the flames drove toward my fingers, coming out of the explosion just a little too late. I could see the seams ripping as the metal blew out in 1/16 th time; the ripple of the flames, moved down to a gentle motion, gradually arced the fiery portion of the explosion from its path of least resistance and sucked it toward me.
    It wasn’t gonna be enough, and I knew that less than a second into the attempt.
    There was no one on the planet good enough at absorbing explosions to draw this one out of the van without it shredding metal and sending it flying on its way out. Worse yet, if the metal hit me and killed me, the rest of the explosion would proceed without me drawing it off, making everything so much worse for the people who lived on this street.
    Damned mercenaries. If I ever found out where these rent-a-assholes came from, I was going to personally pull a Gavrikov and nuke that place.
    Something slid above the van, something like a dark cloud that blotted out my view of the fire. It sailed over my head and then paused there, joined by another piece, from another direction. Then another, and another, clouds of darkness that formed the upper part of a sphere. I saw motion out of the corner of my eye and another piece of—was that dirt?—rolled along the ground and broke into clumps that formed a solid shield between me and the explosion.
    In another second, the van was completely covered with a cloud of dirt, and I was cut off from absorbing the heat and flame. I blinked, watching as the dirt pushed down, seemingly of its own will, tightening like it had been contracted over the explosion.
    I closed my eyes from the sound of the explosion finally hitting me, a continuous roar that filled my ears and sounded like hell itself had grabbed a lobe and yanked me close, the better to bellow right into my canal. I couldn’t help it, I averted my eyes and covered my face, like that would do anything.
    The roar subsided in seconds, and I forced myself to look back. The dirt shield that had been thrown over the explosion seemed to be … hardened. I took a few steps closer, tentative, and I could feel