by Dean Murray
"No time for that! It was just a scout. There are two Awakened headed our way."
I started to ask her how she knew that, but before I could get the words out I realized that I could feel them too. They were out there at the very edge of my range like an itch, but so faint I didn't notice it until she'd pointed it out to me.
"Get in the car, Selene."
The jeweler looked shocked. "What was that thing?"
Kat spared him half a glance, but she didn't stop in her mad dash toward her car. She slowed just enough to grab the metal briefcase she'd dropped at the beginning of the fight. "Trust me when I say you don't want to know. Call the cops and get your door replaced. Tell them you fought off a gang—by the time they get here that thing will be gone."
"But your money—"
"We don't have time. Keep it—if we survive the catastrophe that's headed this way we'll eventually be back for it."
I'd headed back to get the second briefcase—even though it was empty—before I'd completely understood that we were up against more than just one Unseelie fae. It was a good thing that I was still amped. I slipped past the jeweler, grabbed the empty briefcase and was back at my door fumbling with the latch by the time Kat got the car started.
Now that we were out of immediate danger, my mind was having a hard time functioning. I kept thinking that my body felt wrong, that my shoulder was too light.
It wasn't until I got my door open that I realized what was wrong. I turned around, looking desperately for Bethany, but Kat was still one step ahead of me.
"Bethany, get your butt into the car or I swear I'll leave you to make your way back home by yourself."
Bethany had stayed on my shoulder for the entire fight. It made no sense. She was too small to make any kind of difference. She'd be way safer taking to the sky, but she'd once again showed a strange reluctance to leave me when the crap hit the fan.
I hadn't even noticed her leave me, but sometime between when Kat had landed her final blow on the snake-dog and when I'd made it to the car, Bethany had flown over to the fallen fairy and landed on its shoulder.
My mind was working better now—I managed to get the door open without looking away from Bethany. "She's right, Bethany, there are two Awakened on their way and who knows how many more Unseelie fae running around here. You need to be in the car now!"
I dropped down into my seat and lowered the window as I shut the door. Bethany zipped over faster than I could have blinked now that my effects had all been dropped. One part of me was trying to remember when I'd let all of my augmentations drop away, but most of me was trying to decide how Bethany was moving so quickly while she had all of that money still shifted over to the unseen realm.
Kat dropped the Mercedes into gear and tore away from the curb like she had demons chasing her—which wasn't all that far from the truth. I managed one last wave urging the jeweler into his store, and then the window was closed and we were turning off onto another road.
"You get your fill before we left?"
Kat asked the question without looking away from the road, so I didn't realize at first that she was talking to Bethany instead of me.
"Yeah, mostly. I could have probably absorbed a little more if we'd had another hour, but I sucked down all of the easy-to-grab stuff. It's still probably not enough to allow me to survive a disembodiment, but between that and what I absorbed from Selene during the fight I'm feeling a lot peppier than I've ever felt before."
I hadn't realized that I'd been channeling any happiness at all. Despite all of my effort, anger still showed up a lot easier and in a lot more force than happiness, but apparently I'd managed to tap in at least a little to the happiness that I'd been trying to nurture. That was good, but the fact that Bethany had retained enough presence of mind to drain away some of the free memories from our having disembodied the Unseelie fae was even better.
There was no use letting them go to waste and, my recent worries about her loyalty notwithstanding, anything that made her stronger made all of us safer.
"What are we going to do, Kat? They're getting closer."
She nodded. "Yeah, I can feel them too. That's why I was headed out of the store. I should have known that thing wasn't working alone—not with them coming in from two different directions like that. In order for them to know where we were, they had to have a spotter."
"The snake-dog."
"Yeah, the snake-dog. It must have seen us stop off at one of the last few places and then gone off to get help. It's just dumb luck that it was able to make it back and attack before we left town."
"Not so dumb considering that we were planning on staying there for a few hours if that was what it took to get the rest of the metal exchanged for diamonds."
"Yeah, you've got a point there. I should have expected something like this. First Mephistoles and then Kyle. It looks like the Unseelie Court has decided to abandon its traditional neutrality where the Awakened are concerned."
"They were neutral?"
"Yeah…or maybe it would be better to say that they hated all of us equally. This is a big deal, Selene. It was bad enough when we just thought it was Kyle and a few other Awakened causing all of this. If the dark court is helping the bad guys out, things are about to get a lot tougher. We can't sense the fae like we can our own kind. That means these kinds of excursions are completely out of the question. One Unseelie fairy will generally leave two Awakened alone, but if they can call in reinforcements who they don't have to worry will steal the excess memories, we won't dare go anywhere unless we're all together."
Kat whipped the steering wheel around and grabbed the parking brake. The back end of the car slid forward until it was almost even with the front wheels and then we were moving at a right angle from the direction we'd been traveling just a second before. Kat had apparently dropped her strength amp, but she was still running with a time amp.
"I wish I'd had time to really get to know Denver. I'm going to have to try to convince them I'm headed somewhere other than where we're actually headed."
"What's the use? They'll know as soon as we change direction."
"Yeah, but I'm not worried about actually losing them right now. I'm just trying to out-think them so that we can get on the interstate without them getting in our way. Once I've got a long straightaway, I should be able to stay ahead of them for long enough to make it back home. Unless they brought something really high-performance."
Kat took another turn still moving at more than twice the posted speed limit, and for a second I thought my lunch was going to come up. I'd survived Kat hot-rodding in Jace's Viper, but this was something else entirely. Then Kat had been driving crazy fast, but she'd been amped so it hadn't been as crazy as it had seemed from the outside. Unlike now, she hadn't been driving like her life depended on employing every bit of speed the car could muster.
This time her driving ability was the only thing between us and a quick death at the hands of two Awakened who were coming into the fight fresh.
The back end of the car hit the curb, and Kat swore. I looked over at her hands and they were shaking.
"It's okay. I thought for a second that I'd messed up the alignment, but everything still seems to be more or less working like it's supposed to. Hold on, we've got another turn coming up."
Kat threw the Mercedes into another turn and I tried to match up our location with my somewhat spotty knowledge of Denver.
"Kat, aren't we headed the wrong way? The closest-on ramp is over there."
"Yes—I'm hoping that this will convince them that home's in the other direction. If they reposition based on that I should be able to get us onto the interstate before they realize that they lined up to ambush us in the wrong spot."
"What if you're wrong?"
"Then they'll be waiting for us on the interstate, one in front of us and one behind. They'll vaporize our car without even having to slow down."
Bethany was on my shoulder again, holding onto my hair for dear life. I
told myself that it was probably just my imagination, but she felt heavier than she had before the fight.
Kat looked away from the road just long enough to meet my eyes. "Is your phone still down, Selene?"
I pulled it out and checked. "Yeah, no bars at all."
"Okay, Bethany, you need to shift all of that money back into the car—you're going to need all of the speed you can manage."
Bethany dropped down to my feet and tightly-bound stacks of hundred dollar bills started appearing one right after another.
"You want me to go get Jace?"
"Yeah. Sandra won't be any help, but if Jace thinks that Byron is at all trustworthy now is the time to bring him along."
My stomach started tying itself into knots, which was ironic. I wouldn't have thought that anything could make me more worried than I already was.
"If Byron is at all dirty he'll just wait until Jace's back is turned and kill him."
"Yeah, but that was already a risk from the moment that you and I left. We don't have a choice though—I'm not sure that the three of us will be a match for whoever is back there, not with you and me already running almost depleted from that last fight. By the way, from now on you don't go anywhere without some kind of weapon on you. That fight would have been completely different if both of us had been armed."
"Noted. So you want Bethany to go on ahead of us and have Jace and Byron ambush the guys chasing us?"
Kat spun the wheel to the right and the car screeched onto the on-ramp. I extended my senses, desperately trying to locate the other two Awakened. One was definitely behind us—quite a ways in fact. The other felt like he was…just ahead of us.
I looked over at Kat to ask her if I was interpreting things correctly and saw sweat running down the side of her face. That was all the confirmation I needed. A second later, the road shook and I felt all four tires lose their grip on the road.
Kat swerved, overcorrected, and then a chunk of the overpass we were on dropped away in front of us. I wasn't amped and even if I had been I still wouldn't have been able to dodge the gaping hole we were headed towards, but Kat managed to skirt by the trap, wheels within inches of the concrete that was still falling away.
"Hell, yes!"
I started to ask her what she meant and then realized that I could still feel our pursuers, and both of them were now behind us.
"The second guy was in front of us, but he wasn't on the interstate."
"That's right. I was hoping as much, but I wasn't sure until we were crossing over the top of him."
"How did he make the road collapse like that?"
Kat shrugged. "I'm not sure—I expected them to use something flashier than that, but maybe they're under orders not to make a big scene right now. He probably increased the effect of gravity inside of a small area of space. We're lucky that he didn't have a direct line of sight on us or we would have been squished flat. As it was, all he could do was take his best shot and he wasn't quite strong enough to bring down the entire interstate."
Bethany finished rematerializing the money and hopped up onto the back of my seat so she could watch behind us.
"What do you want me to tell Jace?"
"That depends, how fast are you?"
"I'm faster than Kregor. Over short distances I can do almost two hundred and fifty miles per hour. Over longer distances I can maintain two hundred."
Kat did some quick math in her head and sighed. "I'll be driving with the accelerator all the way to the floor, which means that you're not going to have as big of an advantage over us as I'd like, but that can't be helped. Tell Jace to meet us where the road goes around that big hill before dropping into that canyon. Coming up out of the canyon like that should mean that whoever is behind us will be going slower and be an easier target."
Bethany darted around in front of me and nodded. "You want me to come back and try to find you after I drop off the message?"
"No, it's going to be too dangerous. The Mercedes is pretty fast, but I can feel whoever is behind us gaining already. They'll have caught up with us long before you could possibly get back, and there's no point risking you getting caught in the crossfire."
Kat looked over at me as she lowered the window behind her. "Don't unroll the window, she'll never make it out that way. Count to three and then push your door all the way open. That should flush her out the back corner of the car and give her the best shot of getting clear of the vehicle without hitting anything."
Bethany had moved closer to me as the window came down and the air inside the car got more and more turbulent. She landed on my shoulder and grabbed the side of my face. She'd touched my skin dozens of times before this, but there was something different this time around. It was silly, she was only a year or so older than I was and she'd spent most of that time unable to interact with anyone, but in that moment she felt like an older sister, one with a hundred times more life experience than I'd ever had.
The feel of her tiny hands touching my face sent waves of calm radiating outward. "You can do this, Selene. You just need to hold them off for a little while, just long enough for Kat to get you two to the rendezvous so Jace and Byron can put down whoever is following you."
I hadn't realized that I needed reassuring until that moment, and I was so overcome with gratitude that I couldn't manage to get any words out. I just dropped the metal briefcases on top of the money at my feet before nodding and grabbing my door handle tightly. Bethany seemed to know that I wasn't going to be up to a countdown. She gave me another smile and then repositioned herself to the edge of my seat, grabbing onto the headrest with everything she had.
"Open it!"
I'd never tried to open a door while doing more than a hundred and twenty down an interstate, and for the briefest of seconds I worried I wasn't going to be strong enough, but I threw my shoulder into it and suddenly a gust of wind tore through the car. I caught a flash as Bethany was sucked out of the car, and then she was gone.
Kat rolled her window back up as I closed my door, and then looked over at me. "Go ahead and get as much of that money as possible into the second briefcase. It's probably not going to make any difference, but we might as well give ourselves a fighting chance of coming out of all of this with something to show for our efforts."
I nodded numbly and grabbed the empty silver briefcase. I was pretty sure she was mostly just trying to give me something to do, but she was right. I needed a distraction from the fact that we were still in way over our heads.
By the time all of the loose money was safely stowed away, even I could feel our pursuers getting closer. One was definitely in a faster vehicle than the other, and it wasn't too long before Kat was paying more attention to her mirror than she was to the road in front of us.
"Stop doing that, Kat, we're going too fast for you not to pay attention to where you're going. Tell me what to look for."
"You're looking for the guys chasing us. They'll be the only people on the road moving as fast as us."
Kat bit off another curse as someone switched lanes unexpectedly and she was forced to hit the brakes to avoid rear-ending them. The force of our deceleration slammed me forward against my seatbelt, but before I could even adjust to the change Kat threw us to the right and gunned the car again so she could pass on the inside.
"What do I do once I see them?"
I was proud that my voice came out nearly normal despite how terrified I was. Kat's driving was getting more and more desperate with every minute. We weren't passing on the right because there was an actual lane there, we were passing on the right because Kat figured there was just enough room there to intimidate the person next to us into shifting over enough to let us by. It was like she'd invented a whole new way of playing chicken, and I still wasn't okay with the old way.
"Try to anticipate any attacks they might throw at us so I can try to dodge them."
"What, like sun lances?"
"Yeah, if they stick their hand out the window that's a pretty good si
gn they're about to take a shot at us."
"What about the gravity attack they used to bring down most of the overpass?"
"I don't have any idea what we're up against there. It's entirely possible that they can throw that from inside their car without ever giving any indication of what's coming."
"That's not very reassuring…"
"We're not in a very reassuring situation. At least an attack like that is tougher to aim."
I considered responding with something snarky, but right then didn't seem like a good time to be giving Kat grief. Instead, I just turned around as far as I could go in my seat. I would have unbuckled my seatbelt, but given the way that Kat was swerving in and out of traffic that was asking to be thrown against a window.
We made it another five minutes before I caught my first glimpse of one of our pursuers. They were in a black sports car that looked like something out of a science-fiction movie. It was low-slung and so fast I was astonished it hadn't managed to catch up with us before then.
"I see the first one, Kat. There's a black sports car behind that group of cars that cut you off."
"Which lane is it in?"
"The left one."
Kat nodded and shot into the left lane, putting several more cars between us and the other Awakened.
"Tell me when you see him change lanes and I'll try to keep something between him and us."
"There's not that much traffic back there right now."
"Yeah. I know."
It took the black car maybe another twenty seconds to work its way around the two cars that had given Kat so many problems, twenty seconds in which Kat managed to stretch out the distance between us a little more, but then our pursuer was in the clear and he surged forward with an abruptness that took my breath away.
"He's coming, Kat!"
Kat was already reckless, but now she stopped using her brakes. We shot through a rapidly-closing gap between two cars like a bat out of hell, but this time I was too freaked out about other things to worry about the possibility of wrecking.
"I'm not going to be able to keep stuff between us for much longer, Selene. Roll down the windows and throw some sun lances back in his direction. If you can hit him that would be phenomenal, but right now I'll be happy if you can just manage to slow him down a little."
