by Karen Chance
They jumped back to their feet and, a second later, they jumped Pritkin.
I’d have thought they were using shields, but I didn’t see any, except for Pritkin’s—right before it popped. I stared, getting a really, really nasty feeling of déjà vu all of a sudden. And then I grabbed Fred with my free hand. “Do you have a gun?”
“What?”
“A gun! A gun!”
“Of course I have a gun. I’m a bodyguard,” he said, with no irony whatsoever.
“Then shoot them!”
“I . . . I’m actually better with a sword—”
“But you do know how to shoot, right?”
“Well, you know. Sort of—”
“Damn it!” I grabbed a gun out of the holster under his arm and thrust him into the driver’s seat. “Drive!”
Pritkin saw me as we careened back toward the fight, listing badly now thanks to our blown back tire, and his eyes widened. He ducked a punch that cracked a pylon and then shook his head violently, shouting something that I couldn’t hear over the ear-piercing screech of metal on concrete. And then he threw himself to the ground as I squeezed off a shot.
It must have missed, because the mage I’d been aiming for didn’t so much as flinch before throwing out a hand—and a spell. But the very familiar red lightning bolt crashed into the ceiling instead of our heads, due to Pritkin swiping the guy’s legs out from under him at the last second. A choking cloud of dust and rubble poured down from above, along with pieces of mangled rebar and the front half of a Nissan Sentra. And then a spell from the other mage took a man-sized chunk out of the floor, spraying concrete hail in my face.
But none of that seemed to intimidate Fred, who had apparently decided to solve the problem by just running everybody down. At least, I assumed that was why we were suddenly headed straight for the trio and picking up speed. They paused, staring at the mangled SUV with the flapping tire and the crazy vamp driver and the dustcovered woman brandishing a gun like she actually knew how to use it.
And then they abruptly hurled themselves to either side.
“What are you doing?” I yelled at Fred, who looked at me wildly.
“Did I mention that I don’t know how to drive?”
“No!” I said, as we pelted off the side of the garage, snatching Pritkin along for the ride.
The charm caught us before we’d fallen more than a story, sending us dipping and bobbing and listing in a circle, heading back in exactly the wrong direction. I grabbed the wheel and wrenched it to the right, but it was too late. The two mages launched themselves off the side of the garage, one grabbing the fence in midair, and the other—
“Crap,” I said, as heavy boots dented the top of the SUV.
And then my gun was up and I was firing.
There was no way I missed him this time. I emptied a clip into the roof, saw bullets punch through felt and metal, knew they must have connected. But no body hit the roof or fell over the side, and a second later a spell slammed down through the middle seat, crumpling the roof like aluminum foil and knocking a two-foot hole through the bottom of the chassis.
The next one would probably have knocked a hole in me, too, but we suddenly streamed under an overpass, missing the clearance by pretty much nothing at all. It was close enough to skin the top of the SUV, to pop the headlights and to bathe the car in a shower of sparks. Close enough to have me hunkering down, seriously afraid that the roof was about to cave the rest of the way in.
Close enough to smash our assailant face-first into concrete.
I stared at Fred as we exited the other side, sans unwanted passenger. “I thought you didn’t know how to drive!”
“I don’t!”
“Then what was that?”
He stared at me, confused. “What was what?”
I didn’t answer, too busy vaulting over the seat to stare down through the smoking hole. I spotted Pritkin getting dragged along underneath, clinging to the fence and staring up at me with a bone white face. And then smacking into a pylon and yelling something that looked really profane.
I seconded the emotion, because three mages were somehow still dragging along after him.
“Son of a bitch!”
“What is it?” Fred demanded.
“There’s three more mages down there!”
“What? But there should only be one!”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” I snarled, as one of them tried to sling another spell at us, only to have Pritkin all but wrench his arm off. One of the others responded by trying to do the same to Pritkin’s head, but he must have gotten his shields back up, because it didn’t work. But shields wouldn’t last long, not against these guys.
I crawled back up to Fred. “Change of plan.”
“We have a plan?”
“We do now.”
Pritkin’s shields might not work against the mages, but they worked well enough on most other things. I just had to find the right other things. Fortunately, there were plenty of options.
“Aren’t you taking this thing?” Fred demanded, as I got a knee up on the seat so I could see outside.
“No, you’re driving.”
“Didn’t you hear me? I don’t know how!”
“You’re doing fine so far. Just hold the gas pedal down and keep the steering wheel steady. I’ll correct if you get off course.”
“Gas pedal,” he said, looking panicked. “Which one is that?”
“The one your foot is on.”
“And which is the brake?”
“You’re not going to need the brake,” I told him, and yanked the wheel hard to the right.
We zipped back toward the garage and the row of buildings it serviced, the fence streaming out behind us like the tail on a very strange kite. “You can see, right?” Fred asked nervously.
“Yes.”
“Good. ’Cause with this damn hood in my way, I’m almost—Auggh! What was that?”
“It’s okay, you’re doing fine.”
“But I hit something!”
“You should probably get used to it,” I told him, staring out the back window.
The mostly flat-topped Vegas roofs are nothing like the slick fronts presented to the public. Along with the usual clutter of satellite dishes, old antennas and solar cells, they also house the city’s massive air conditioners, since sand clogs up the works if they’re left on the ground. And I made sure that we didn’t miss a single one, hurling the mages back and forth between giant units like very unhappy Ping-Pong balls.
Pritkin was still yelling, but I couldn’t hear him over the wind and Fred’s cursing and some weird noises coming from overhead, like leather sheets caught in a hurricane. But at least no one was trying to kill him right now. They were too busy hanging on for dear life.
And, unfortunately, they were hanging on pretty damn well. The mage near the end went flying when we tore around a corner, snapping out the wildly bucking fence like a towel in a locker room. But the other two were higher up and they grimly held on, despite smashing through a greenhouse, skimming across a pile of old bricks and then slapping face-first into a wall.
“I don’t believe this!” I said, as we dragged them over the top of the wall and through somebody’s patio set.
“These guys really want you dead,” Fred said, staring in the rearview mirror.
I didn’t answer, because one of those lightning-bolt spells sheared off the passenger-side mirror, rocking the car violently. It didn’t look like the rooftops were providing enough in the way of distraction. If we wanted to lose these guys, we were going to have to get a little more extreme.
I nudged the steering wheel slightly to the right.
Within seconds, smoke billowed up in front of us, like a dark curtain held against the sky. It felt like we’d been in the car half an hour, but it couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes. Although I heard sirens in the distance, no emergency vehicles were yet parked around the crash site.
“Is the din
er still burning?” Fred asked, frowning.
“Not exactly,” I said, as we plunged for the middle of the fiery billboard.
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 e
ven 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.
