by Dean Murray
I found myself in the back seat with no recollection of having unbuckled myself or of crawling over the center console. The windows came down with a glacial slowness that was my first indication that I'd amped myself up.
It was like someone else was giving the orders inside my own head. I'd amped up my time sense, but left everything else alone. I debated letting the effect drop—I wasn't in a position to waste any of my emotional reserves—but I was only functioning at twice normal speed. Besides, somewhere along the way my terror had transmuted into anger. I tapped into the raging heat inside of me and sent a line of vibrant gold light back at the black car that had just finished darting around the last obstacle between it and us.
My attack was thinner than a pencil. I had no idea if that was going to be enough to cut all the way through a car, but I didn't want to waste any power unnecessarily. Besides, I was very aware of the fact that we weren't the only ones on the road and I didn't want to vaporize some poor soccer mom on her way home from a game.
The sun lance shot out, moving at the speed of light, and lasted for only a split second before I let it go. For less than a heartbeat a thread of molten gold connected my hand to the front corner of the sports car. I nearly cheered until I realized that my attack hadn't managed to hit anything vital.
The Awakened behind us swerved out of the line of fire and a tree behind him started on fire as the last of the energy from my attack was expended against it.
"Change lanes, Kat!"
She didn't question or yell that there wasn't room, but the fact was that she'd just swung out around another car in an attempt at passing them. There wasn't anywhere else for us to go, so Kat took us right up to the edge of the railing that separated us from the other two lanes of oncoming traffic. I snatched my hand back inside just in time to avoid having it shattered against a sign, and then the car was filled with the high-pitched sound of metal ripping into metal. As fast as Kat had reacted, and as completely as she'd thrown herself into the evasive maneuver, she'd still only barely been able to dodge the attack that the other Awakened launched at us.
A bolt of golden light shot through the space the car had occupied less than a second previously and tore a massive gouge in the road ahead of us.
"Crap, our aerodynamics profile is all shot to hell! That's going to make us even slower. You've got to keep him busy or they'll blast us into a million pieces."
I bit off a scathing response about the difficulty of hitting anything while a crazy woman was swerving across the road, and threw myself over to the other side of the car. I stuck my hand outside the window and forced another sun lance into existence. This one was even thinner and shorter-lived than the first one, and it wasn't due to the fact that I could feel my emotional reserves continuing to drain away. I could, but this was more about the fact that the angle wasn't any good and I was worried about my attack blasting through the black car and taking out whoever was behind him.
I was used to aiming sun lances with my hand positioned just in front of me and it was harder than I'd realized to hit something when my hand was dangling outside the car. I still managed to score on my target, but it was just another grazing shot—this time to the back corner of the car.
Now I was the one swearing, and Kat swerved across the road without any prompting necessary on my part just before another sun lance went hissing past us and demolished most of the back half of a minivan less than fifty yards in front of us.
It looked like someone had planted a bomb in the back of the minivan. One second it was driving along normally and then in the next instant shards of metal and glass were flying everywhere.
Even with my time sense amped up to twice normal speed, I still would have plowed the Mercedes into one of the guardrails. There was simply too much debris and no way to avoid it all. Luckily Kat wasn't me—she didn't even try. She just headed for the least dense patch of space and shot through the potentially lethal cloud like it was nothing more than confetti.
The glass in front of Kat went almost opaque from the white spider web of cracks, but she still somehow guided us past the front half of the minivan, which was still skidding to a stop in a spray of sparks and fire.
"Selene!"
Kat didn't bother turning back to give me the look of reproach I deserved for not keeping our enemies occupied, but that was only because she was focused on trying to keep us on the road. She reached forward with her right hand and I felt an angry prickle of energy a split second before a misty white pulse of force shot away from her hand and blew the front windshield up and away from our car as she grabbed her sunglasses.
It was another desperate move; now there was nothing but some flimsy plastic blocking the blinding wind headed towards her, but I couldn't blame her—the alternative was just a different kind of blindness. It was good though because her action made me realize what it was that I'd been doing wrong.
"I can't hit it hanging out the window like this. Can you blow out the back window for me?"
Kat didn't ask questions and I almost didn't have time to duck before she turned in her seat and let loose with another pulse of power that blasted the glass out of its moorings. I didn't waste any time sticking my head over the seat and shooting another sun lance back at the pursuing car.
I was still using relatively weak attacks, milking my remaining strength for everything I had left, but I managed to connect with an attack that blasted away a big chunk of the passenger side roof.
Kat cheered as the other Awakened darted back behind another vehicle. "Nice, you almost took off his ear that time."
I shook my head—even though I knew she wouldn't see it—as I peeked just over the top of the seats.
"It wasn't good enough. He's still back there and now he has all of the advantage because I can't attack him until he decides to dart back out and attack us."
"At this point I'll take whatever we can get, Selene. Besides, he'll be fighting more wind resistance now too. Even a Ferrari will eventually struggle to break one-ten if you blast enough pieces off of it."
Before I could respond the black car—the Ferrari—swerved back out onto open road and a sun lance that was bigger around than my head shot towards us. It was perfectly aimed—right for the middle of the car—and it should have consumed both Kat and me in a fraction of a second.
My head knew that sun lances moved at the speed of light, that there was no time in which to dodge once the attack actually materialized into existence, but some other part of me felt the attack coming and knew it was going to hit.
As the Ferrari broke to the right, I threw my hand up intending on blasting the other car off of the road, but instead of launching another sun lance as I'd intended, I forced a rippling, clear barrier into existence just behind the car. I would have said that nothing could withstand the ravening forces that had just been thrown my way, but somehow the barrier I'd created managed to hold.
It had been the perfect response. I'd managed to throw it up even before our attacker had forced the sun lance into existence, but nobody had ever taught me how to do anything like that.
"What the—Selene, when did you learn how to create barrier effects?"
Kat cranked the wheel hard to the left as she asked the question, forcing me to grab the seat in front of me or risk being thrown free of our vehicle.
"I haven't. I'm not sure how I just did that."
Kat looked back just long enough for me to see something that looked almost like fear in her eyes, but this time I knew that the fear wasn't because we were being chased by two Awakened who currently outclassed us. This time she was scared of what I represented. She was scared of all of the questions my actions raised, questions that the rest of our kind thought had been settled long ago.
I wanted to explain, tell her that I was still just me, but there wasn't time for that. Besides, actions always spoke louder than words—I was most definitely not just another Awakened girl only seventeen years into her latest incarnation.
I turne
d back around so I was facing our pursuer and tried to get a good enough angle on him to have a chance of tagging him with another sun lance. I was just about to tell Kat to break to the left again so that I could get off another attack, when whoever the Ferrari was hiding behind finally got over the shock of being caught in the middle of a war zone and veered off to the side of the road.
It was exactly the chance I'd needed. Another finger-sized fusion of light and heat flashed into existence and this time I hit his car lower down, vaporizing big sections of the hood and passenger seat before the beam burrowed into the engine block in the back of the vehicle. The gigantic puff of black smoke was the first real evidence of something going our way and it was immediately followed by a sharp decrease in the speed of the Ferrari.
"I'm such an idiot; take out the road, Selene."
I could barely hear her over the roar of the hundred-mile-per-hour wind pummeling me.
"No way! We'll cause a huge wreck."
"We're never going to get another chance like this. With everything that's happened over the last few seconds everyone behind him is already slowing down. Don't take it completely out, just cut it down to one lane. That will be enough to slow them down and buy us enough time to make it to the rendezvous."
I took a deep breath and nodded. A split second later a wrist-sized blast of power lashed out and turned the entire left lane into a twisted field of rubble.
Chapter 8
Somewhere along the way the Mercedes had sustained more damage than I'd realized. My bet was that it had happened when the back end of the minivan had exploded and Kat had been forced to drive through a cloud of shrapnel. It shouldn't have taken me by surprise, not given the way that there were holes in the hood where shards of hot metal had burrowed past the thin sheet metal, but somehow I'd thought we were home free once I cut the road behind us down to a single lane of traffic.
I'd been able to feel the distance between us and the two Awakened who'd been trying to kill us stretching back out, but then the Mercedes started running rough. Kat slowed down, trying not to stress the engine, and I went back to sitting on my hands in an attempt to force myself not to bite my nails.
When we finally started back up the climb to the big hill where Jace was supposed to meet us, I wasn't sure that the Mercedes was going to make it, but a few minutes later we crested the hill and pulled over to the side of the road.
Kregor found us a second later. "Jace says that the pair who are following you are at least a few minutes back?"
Kat nodded. "Yeah. They're pushing out their signatures in an effort to make sure they don't lose track of us. Selene wrecked the road, so the second car just barely made it back up to highway speed. I'm guessing both of them are in the same car now. Where's Jace?"
"I'll go get him."
I checked my phone while we were waiting. "The phones are still down. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"
"Depends. It may mean that our buddies out there haven't been able to call back to Kyle and let him know where we are located. Kyle obviously suspected that we were still in Colorado—that's probably why that Unseelie fairy was hanging out in Denver. I knew it was a mistake not to move after the fight with Mephistoles."
I shook my head at her. "It wasn't just me that wanted to stay. We all talked and agreed that there were risks associated with staying in Cold Springs, but there were risks involved in traveling too. I just didn't see anything like this happening as a result of Kyle knowing where we lived."
Jace stepped out of the darkness and I was surprised that I hadn't noticed him getting closer. "You didn't see it because you're still not used to the idea of thinking of Kyle as the enemy."
I felt like I'd been slapped, but he held a hand up. "That wasn't a criticism. I'm dealing with some of the same issues. He and I haven't seen eye to eye on things for a really long time, but even now I'm having a hard time thinking of him as an active threat."
Jace nodded to Byron. "I thought about leaving when we got news of the Helena pantheon's fate, but I kept thinking that we were safer there at the house where we already had wards set up than dashing out into the world unprepared because of information that might have been provided to us for exactly that purpose."
Kat gave Jace an inquiring look. "So does this mean you trust our new arrival? I assume he's the one who taught you the little trick you just used to sneak up on us?"
"Yeah. Apparently the Helena pantheon managed to come up with a few tricks before they swore off using their abilities. They found a way to suppress a person's signature for a period of time."
Jace grimaced and I suddenly realized that Byron was gritting his teeth. "There's a reason that we never viewed signature suppression as a valid…lifestyle. It burns memories the entire time it's active, and it's unpleasant in the extreme, but it seemed like the perfect way to deal with whoever is back there."
Kat walked around and popped open the trunk of the Mercedes. A few seconds later she had pulled up a false bottom and armed herself with a sword that was almost as big as she was. She tossed me a slightly smaller weapon and then turned back to Jace.
"Okay, so what's the plan? I was thinking that you could meet us out here and that would be enough to convince whoever is out there to back off until we could find a way to drop off their radar, but obviously we've got other options now."
"Yeah. Regardless of what we ultimately end up deciding as far as the house goes, we'll be better off if Kyle has two fewer goons working for him. Byron and I will walk down the road and wait at the top of the climb. The two hostiles will be able to sense you sitting here motionless and they'll assume that your car broke down. As soon as they get within thirty yards of us, Byron and I will take them out."
Jace was looking at Kat the entire time he explained the plan, but there was something about his expression at the end that told me he was trying to pass a message to her. He wanted her to know that he still didn't trust Byron—not completely.
Kat sighed and then nodded as Bethany fluttered over and landed on my shoulder. I half expected Bethany to insist on getting her two cents in, but she just stood there and waited to see what Kat was going to say.
"Understood. Selene and I will wait here for the ball to drop. If the bad guys survive your initial attack we'll be already moving towards the four of you to help out however we can. Just remember we're both running pretty low on juice right now. Selene especially—she was throwing sun lances at the lead car and at one point she even managed a shield effect."
I opened my mouth to tell everyone that I was okay, that I didn't feel as depleted as I expected to, but at the last second something stopped me. Maybe it was the double-take that Jace and Byron both did when they heard that I'd managed a barrier.
It made sense for that to surprise Jace—he knew that I hadn't had a chance to learn that particular effect yet—but I wasn't sure what had thrown Byron for such a loop. That would have been plenty of reason to keep the state of my emotional reserves to myself, but there was something else too. I'd been exhausted just a short time before, wrung out and having a hard time feeling anything other than despondency, but now I seemed to have a reserve of happiness and anger both that was ready and waiting to be tapped.
I told myself that I was keeping quiet because it made sense to keep a few cards up our sleeves in case Byron turned out not to be trustworthy, but I had a sneaking suspicion that I just didn't want another look from Kat like the one she'd given me in the car.
I was already a freak just by virtue of the fact that I was one of the Awakened. If I was unusual even for an Awakened, there wasn't anywhere else I could go in order to feel normal.
"Yeah, I'm pretty tuckered out."
The lie sounded flat even to me, but Jace and Byron just nodded and set out to get into position before the other Awakened arrived. Kat and I watched them get set—I half expected them to both go invisible, but maybe whatever they were doing to suppress their signatures precluded using any other effects.
&n
bsp; Kregor looked like he wanted to fly back and forth between us and Jace, but Bethany waved him over to my free shoulder and suddenly my exhausted legs were supporting ten extra pounds. I just forced a smile and worked a slight strength amp—nothing major, just enough to keep my legs from buckling out of sheer exhaustion.
"Just hold on for a few minutes, Selene. Amping lets us function beyond our usual abilities, but it's not without a price. Some of the energy you burned during that fight still came from your muscles. Thanks, by the way. That was pure brilliance to grab that stop sign pole like that."
"Thanks, but it didn't feel like brilliance—it felt like good old-fashioned desperation."
"Yeah, well, necessity is the mother of invention and all that. Really, thanks."
I looked over at her and saw a shadow of what I was feeling in her eyes. I reached over and took her hand. "You're welcome, Kat. Thank you for keeping me from falling apart out there. I don't know how you do it."
"Give it a few decades and you'll have done all of this so many times it will become second nature."
"Wow, that's a loaded statement. If I had a choice, I wouldn't have picked this life. The idea of always having to be on guard is terrifying, but I guess if I have to be on the run for the next few centuries I couldn't be in better company."
"Don't you forget that."
I didn't know what else to say, but as it turned out there wasn't time for any more talking. Even my less-practiced ability to sense others of our kind was telling me that our pursuers were nearly to the top of the grade.
My heart rate sped up, and I found myself reaching out for the pulse of our surroundings and amping my time sense up to four times normal. It meant that the next ten seconds of real time stretched out to something that felt like forever, but it also meant that I had plenty of time to see Byron and Jace stand and unleash their respective attacks at the same time.
