by Karen Chance
The motorcycle must have had a full gas tank, because the entire huge surface of the sign was now covered in flames. The paper had already burnt away, leaving an old wooden frame and heavy support beams to feed the blaze. And they seemed to be feeding it pretty well, judging by the heat that smacked me in the face, even this far away.
In seconds, the conflagration had filled the whole length of the missing windshield, the smoke-laden air whipping my hair around my face and making my eyes water. I glanced behind us, and it looked like the mages had seen it, too. They were staring through the lattice of the fence, watching the approaching inferno in disbelief.
And not watching the deadly war mage above them.
Pritkin lashed out with a heavy boot, snapping one man’s head back and then kicking him viciously in the chest. He went flying, his head lolling at a very unhealthy angle, and Pritkin turned on his companion. But he wouldn’t get a fight there. The last mage just let go of the fence, falling on purpose into the surrounding smoke.
“I guess he doesn’t like fire as well as concrete,” I said in satisfaction, before noticing that Pritkin hadn’t budged. “What the hell is he doing?” I asked Fred, who was looking at me apprehensively.
“What fire?”
“He’s just holding on.” I climbed over the seats to stare out the back, but even a full field of vision didn’t help much. Pritkin’s shields could definitely cushion a fall from this height, but he wasn’t jumping—or climbing or doing anything but staring, and not at the billboard.
“What fire?” Fred asked, a little more forcefully.
I flicked my eyes in the direction Pritkin was looking, but didn’t see anything, aside from a lot of smoke. Part of which seemed to have taken on a very weird form. I blinked, but it was still there a second later, the hazy outline of an impossible shape set against the brilliant skyline.
And headed straight for us.
“Oh, shit. Fire!” Fred screamed, and we crashed into the middle of the sign.
Chapter Twenty-five
Luckily, the smaller support struts were already half charcoal, and they exploded harmlessly in a sizzle of black ash. But something a hell of a lot bigger hit the pylons underneath, sending smoking posts the size of tree trunks spinning into the night. We managed to dodge most of those, since they shot out below us, but we weren’t so lucky with the spell that burned through the air a second later.
It had come from below, where I guessed one of the mages had survived the fall. Red lightning crackled over the dash, raised goose bumps on my arms and caused Fred’s wispy comb-over to wave around madly. It didn’t hurt, at least not us. But the SUV did a sudden, vomit-inducing one-eighty in midair—and stalled out.
I screamed, Fred screamed and we hit the roof, which wasn’t so bad.
And then we tumbled through the missing windshield, which was.
I felt myself start to fall, arms outstretched but nothing to grab. And this time, there was no parachute above me, no strong arms to catch me, no anything but wind and air and a long, long way to fall. Which I did—for about a second, before being jerked around in a parabola that had the city lights streaming in a dizzying dance of color that confused my already confused brain even more.
Until I realized that my scream had turned into a duet with Fred’s, who was clutching me against his chest. He had one arm under mine, holding me face out like a sack of potatoes. And the fingers of the other wedged, white knuckled, between the lattice of the fence.
The one we were now hanging off of.
For a moment, I just hung there, panting and staring at the sight of hotels, casinos and LCD montages. And then I looked up at Fred, his completely freaked-out face backlit by the distant neon. “Thanks,” I squeaked.
He didn’t say anything. He also didn’t move, breathe or even blink. I was grateful for the assist, but it was less than reassuring to find myself gripped by a Fred statue who was apparently having the vampire version of a panic attack.
“Fred?”
Nothing.
I licked my lips, trying not to give in to the real desire to join him and just zone out for a moment. Because I didn’t think we had one. I didn’t see the creature, which was, presumably, ahead of us somewhere. But a glance up showed that the back bumper of the SUV was now hanging half off the vehicle.
Which was a problem, since that’s what the fence had managed to tangle itself around.
It obviously wasn’t designed to take this kind of abuse and didn’t look like it was going to be doing it for much longer. I looked down at Pritkin, who, instead of climbing, was slinging spells at something I couldn’t see off in the smoke. I didn’t know what he was doing or why, but he wouldn’t be doing it in a minute if we didn’t move. Now.
“Okay, Fred? Fred, listen,” I said, trying to make eye contact. That would have been easier if his hadn’t looked kind of dead—set and glassy and not really focused on anything. “We need to climb back up, Fred.”
Nothing.
“And when we need to do that is now.”
Nada.
“Our weight is dragging the fence off the car,” I told him tightly, forcing my voice to stay composed, because screaming at an already panicked person didn’t help. And because if I started, I might not stop. “If we don’t get off, you and me and Pritkin are going to be in free fall in about a minute. Maybe less.”
That got a slight eye twitch, but nothing more.
“And while I’m pretty sure that Pritkin can save himself if that happens, I think you and me are fucked, Fred.”
“And we’re not now?” he asked hoarsely.
“Not if you do exactly what I tell you.”
He shook his head and then froze again, as a gust of wind caused the fence to shimmy like a showgirl. “I can’t.”
“Yes. Yes, you can.”
He looked down for the first time, and his face paled. Which was impressive, as it had been pretty pasty already. “Oh, God.”
“Fred,” I said, sharply enough to snap his wide gray eyes back to me. “Fred, listen. You’re going to get us out of this.”
“And if I can’t?”
“You can. I know you can.”
“But I’m not . . . I’m just an accountant. I don’t—”
“You’re not ‘just’ anything,” I said harshly. “You’re a master vampire, and we both know what that means.”
“Yeah, well, in my case, it doesn’t mean as much as you might—”
“And you’re my bodyguard. You’re the Pythia’s bodyguard. Which means you must be pretty damn badass.”
He licked his lips. “I’m . . . badass?”
“You wouldn’t have been assigned to me otherwise, would you?”
“Well, actually, they said they needed my room for the—”
“Fred!”
He nodded, swallowing. “I’m badass,” he whispered, looking up.
And then his arm tightened around my waist, his body tensed and he jumped. I don’t know what he used for leverage, because the only thing available was the fence, and that probably would have ripped it the rest of the way off the car. But we nonetheless shot up at least a half story, all the way back to the rear door of the SUV.
Which would have worked better if it had been open.
My head hit the door hard enough to stun me, so I didn’t see how we got back inside. But judging from the fact that the next time I looked, the SUV didn’t have a back door, I thought it might have had something to do with vampire strength and extreme motivation. Either way, a moment later we were sprawled on the dented inside of the roof, our butts in the air and our stomachs—at least mine—roiling.
I clutched a dangling seat belt for a moment and concentrated on trying not to lose my dinner. And people wondered why I lived on antacids. The pizza and beer and milk shake were doing some really unpleasant alchemy in my stomach, which was even truer when I saw what glided up alongside the window.
My first thought was that it was beautiful, all sleek, powerful
lines that blended almost seamlessly with the night. A river of ebony scales flowed down a heavily muscled form, from a huge head to a vast rib cage to great, talon-edged claws to a long, barbed tail. They were hard and dagger edged, like shards of obsidian, and shared its color, too. Deepest midnight, they seemed to pull all light into them, reflecting nothing of the fire or the moonlight or the far-off, flickering neon. Only the eyes glowed, like living jewels, gold shading to green to pale chartreuse around catlike, elongated pupils.
I got a good look at them when the great head slowly turned my way.
I stared back at it, knowing what I was seeing. But my mind simply refused to name it. A few minutes ago, I’d been standing on a cracked sidewalk outside a greasy diner, arguing with the usual suspects. It was a little hard to make the transition to being pursued through the air above Vegas by something out of a fairy tale.
Something that was now dropping to come underneath us.
“Fred?” I said calmly.
“What?”
“Move!”
He didn’t ask questions this time. He scrambled under the backseat and I scrambled under him, which was lucky, because a second later, there was no backseat. It had been ripped out as easily as if the SUV was made of paper, crushed in the massive jaws of the thing behind us, along with most of the rear end of the vehicle.
Including the fender.
I twisted around, clutching the middle seat, and stared down at Pritkin, who was still dangling from the fence. A fence that was now hanging from the mouth of something out of a nightmare. He was two-thirds of the way up, which put him close enough that I could see his expression. And the stark panic on his face as he stared up at me wasn’t reassuring.
And then the creature shook its head violently, sending its mouthful of SUV spinning away into the night. I didn’t scream, because Pritkin didn’t go with it. Instead, he slung around in a large arc and then came trailing after us just like before, only this time without any sort of visible support.
“I didn’t know mages could levitate without a platform,” Fred said, his voice preternaturally calm.
“They can’t!”
“Then how’s he—Oh, I see.”
“See what?” I asked, heart in my throat. I couldn’t see anything—except the creature coming up fast, ponderous wings beating the air, great maw gaping for another bite. And then veering off at the last moment for no obvious reason.
“He’s using his shields like a rope.” Fred pointed up at the chewed-off floor, to where a faint glimmer of blue was wrapped around the drive train. “He must’ve slung it up here when he got close enough.”
I stared from the flimsy lifeline to Pritkin and back again, paralyzed by a fear that made my previous panic seem like nothing. Because no mage could project more than one shield at a time. And if Pritkin was using his like a rope, he wasn’t using it to protect himself.
The thought broke my panic fast enough to leave me dizzy. “Keys!” I screamed, grabbing Fred.
“What keys?”
“Our keys!”
“Car keys?”
“Yes!”
“Oh, I don’t know where those—” Fred said, before I threw him aside and lunged for the steering wheel.
The keys were still in the ignition. I ducked under the driver’s seat, forcing myself not to panic, but I was shaking so much, it took two hands to turn them. I mashed my hand to the overhead gas pedal, but for a long second, nothing happened, not even the ominous clicking of a dead battery or a flooded engine. Goddamnit, please—
And then it caught.
“Is it working?” I rasped.
“Is what—Oh,” Fred said. “It’s pulling him up. That’s really—”
He broke off as Pritkin slammed into the drive train and the creature slammed into us, almost at the same moment. And for a brief, horrible second, there was nothing but shrieking metal and screeching creature and a car literally exploding from the inside, as everything behind the front seat disappeared in another huge bite.
I grabbed the back of a seat, staring at the sight of the thing hanging in midair, powerful wings beating madly as its outstretched claws ripped at something above us. I craned my neck, but I still didn’t see anything but black sky and a sliver of moon, looking serene and ethereal in the midst of the chaos. But a moment later, a huge gash was ripped in our attacker’s wing, and it gave a screech that I felt all the way through my skull.
And then I saw them, Caleb and four war mages I didn’t know, hanging over the edge of Pritkin’s beat-up jalopy, firing spells and bullets that bounced off the impermeable hide, appearing only to be making it mad. But not for long. The great tail lashed out, sending both cars tumbling backward, and in the case of the convertible, end over end. But I didn’t get a chance to worry about Caleb.
Because the creature was coming straight at us.
It turned in a sinuous, flowing movement like an eel in water, all sleek muscle and shining scales, and then it dove, the bulk of it blocking out the sky. Breath caught in my throat, my chest, spiked heavy through my lungs. I tried to swallow, but my throat was too dry. Fred was babbling something incoherent beside me, or maybe I just couldn’t understand him. Not with beautiful death slicing through the air toward me.
And then Pritkin grabbed me and a gun and before I had time to wonder what he thought he was going to do with that, he fired. But not at the creature. Instead, he aimed at the mass of crumpled metal still clamped in its huge maw.
Including one shiny, like-new gas tank that he nailed dead center.
The tank ignited in a whoosh of deadly flame, and since it was halfway down the creature’s throat, that’s where the majority of the blast went, too. For a split second, fire boiled under its skin, red and orange and roiling, glowing between those glittering scales. It was strangely beautiful, separating each into a single, perfect diamond of polished ebony for one last, trembling instant—
And then the creature exploded, sending bones and blood and dark, wet meat flying everywhere—along with about a thousand knife-edged scales.
Pritkin had gotten a partial shield up, which saved our bodies, but the SUV was sliced to ribbons around us, peeling away even as the blast hurled us backward. One second we were kneeling on the curve of the mangled roof, staring out at a beautiful nightmare. And the next we were falling, his arms around my waist, my legs wrapped around him to keep him close, cinders and smoking ash stinging my skin.
I saw Fred get snatched out of the air, a lasso spell grabbing him by the ankle and jerking him up like a great elastic band. I saw part of a wing go spinning into the night, visible because of the fire eating its way across the surface, highlighting the delicate tracery of veins. I saw the ground rushing up at us with impossible, deadly speed—
And then something caught us with a lift and a jerk, sending us hurtling back up on a great wash of air.
At first I thought it had to be a lasso, that Caleb had somehow gotten one around us, too—only he hadn’t. I looked up to see an amorphous mass of blue over our heads, like a shield chute, only not. It was flat instead of rounded and lumpy instead of smooth, with thinner areas here and there that the dark showed through. It was also sort of wedge-shaped, with filaments that had reached down to attach themselves to Pritkin’s arms and—
“You can hang glide?” I asked incredulously.
“It isn’t . . . recommended.”
“Why not?”
“Steering problems.”
“Steering problems?”
And then I didn’t have to ask, because a building was coming straight at us. Pritkin tried to miss it, but apparently he was right—shields weren’t designed for aerial acrobatics. We sluggishly moved to the left, but the arc was too faint and the wind was wrong and we were going to be bug splatter on the bricks before we could turn or land or—
And then a spell detonated against a window in front of us, sending an explosion of shards inward as we burst through what was left, slid across someone’s desk,
tore through a flimsy partition, and took out half a dozen cubicles. Right before something the size of a semitruck came crashing through the wall after us. I got a glimpse of a huge head and glowing eyes, and then a wash of flame obscured them both as Pritkin flung us through the fire door.
It must have been pretty highly rated, because it actually lasted a couple of seconds before bursting out over our heads. But by then we were down a story, jumping over the railing and landing painfully. But not as painful as burning to death, I thought wildly, as we tore down the stairs, taking three and four at a time and barely touching down, almost fast enough to qualify as flying again.
Only it wasn’t fast enough.
Pritkin slammed us back against a wall, just in time to avoid a column of crimson fire that ripped down through the middle of the stairs. I only got a glimpse of our attacker through the flames, but that was enough: blackened, smoking bones, some still burning, ruined wings with one tip missing, great rib cage half gone and outlined with gory flesh, huge maw edged with cracked, charred teeth that were nonetheless still hideously sharp—
I stared at it in utter disbelief. It was dead; it had to be dead. When the gasoline ignited, the car parts in its mouth had turned to deadly shrapnel, literally ripping it apart from the inside. Nothing could have survived that amount of damage. Nothing.
And yet there it was.
And for some strange reason, the emotion uppermost in my mind wasn’t terror or even incredulity; it was outrage. I felt cheated, bitter, furious. You killed the dragon and you got to go home. It was some sort of rule—dead dragon=game over. Every video gamer, Hollywood producer and sixyear-old kid knew that.
Only it looked like my life hadn’t gotten the memo.
And then the firestorm ended and we were running again, through a door and down a hallway, four tons of pissed-off dragon crashing through the wall behind us.
For something so huge, it was ungodly fast, maybe because it didn’t bother with little things like hallways. It just tore through the walls, as easily as if they were cardboard, judging by the sounds coming from behind us and the huge cracks running ahead of us. I glanced behind once to see doors flying through a storm of drywall, and then I was yanked through a door and into an office.
