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.
And a dead
end.
I stared around
frantically, but there was nowhere to run or even to hide, not that
that was likely to work, anyway. No windows, no closets, not even a
bathroom cubicle. Just a fake wood desk, a sickly plant and gray
industrial carpet tiles, several of which needed a
change.
They’re about to get
one, I thought blankly, and then Pritkin grabbed me by the
shoulders. “We have to split up!” he yelled over the sound of the
building imploding.
“What?”
“I hit it with a
spell to blind it. I doubt it took entirely, but its vision should
be blurry. If we can get it off our tail, I can lead it
away—”
“First of all, no.
And second of all, hell
no!”
“This isn’t a
discussion!”
“The hell
it—”
I cut off when he
flung something against the floor and then flung us against the
wall, his battered shields taking another blow as an explosion
blasted a chunk out of the floor. And then we were sliding through
the new exit into the office below, which, apparently, took up the
entire story. There were no halls here, just a ton of cubicles with
plants and family portraits that I really hoped nobody was all that
attached to, because a second later, something tore through the
ceiling after us.
And suddenly, there
was nowhere left to go. The space was huge and the creature was in
between us and the stairs. The only other door was impossibly far
away, and I doubted we’d have made it even if there hadn’t been a
maze of tasteful gray partitions in the way. We couldn’t punch
through to the next floor with it right on our ass, and judging by
the desperation on Pritkin’s face, I didn’t think his shields were
going to hold up to another firestorm.
It really is game
over, I thought, and then he threw us out the window.
We burst back into
the night along with a storm of paper and a suicidal watercooler.
It kamikazied someone’s car below, caving in the roof like a body
would, just as Pritkin’s makeshift glider caught us. And then it
caught a draft, wafting up the side of the building just as a swell
of fire burst out below, incinerating the mass of fluttering paper
midair.
The creature paused
on the window ledge, looking even more impossible when framed by
modern glass and steel. And then it threw back its head and gave
another screeching cry, loud as a foghorn, loud enough that I
thought my eardrums might burst in my head. Loud enough to shiver
the mirrored side of the building across the street, making its
reflection shudder.
I watched it ripple
like a stone thrown in water as we rode a circular air current a
few stories above the creature’s head. Pritkin wasn’t even trying
to move away from the building, and I didn’t have to wonder why. If
we couldn’t outrun that thing on land, we sure as hell couldn’t in
the air. Not in something that had little steering and no
propulsion.
Seconds ticked by as
it peered around, its firelit eyes searching for us in the
darkness, the nauseating smell of half-cooked flesh mixing with the
ozone taste of its magic. I held my breath until I was dizzy, while
my heart tried its best to beat through my chest. Because all it
had to do was crane its head; all it had to do was
look—
And then it spotted
us, and I didn’t even have time to draw a breath before it launched
itself into the sky, huge wings carving the air with deadly
precision. It’s still strangely beautiful, I thought dizzily.
Streamlined and elegant, a magnificent instrument of death, even in
its ruined state.
Right up until it
crashed into the opposite building.
And our
reflection.
It hit like a bullet
before exploding like a grenade, pieces of the once-powerful body
flying off in all directions. I saw what remained smack down amid a
waterfall of glass, saw it flatten a car like a pancake, saw the
spatter fly up three stories high. And then I didn’t see anything
else, because we were falling, too.
Pritkin’s overtaxed
shield gave out a few seconds too soon, sending us tumbling through
the air, with me desperately trying to shift, even knowing it
wouldn’t work. And all I could think in those last few, furious
seconds was that we’d won, against all odds we’d won, damn it, and it still wasn’t—
And then we were
jerked up, so hard I thought my bones might separate.
I just hung there for
a moment, bouncing on air, too dazed to feel much of anything
except some blood slipping ticklishly down my spine. Then I noticed
Caleb overhead, leaning dangerously far over the side of the
convertible, something close to terror on his habitually calm face.
And his hand outflung in an odd gesture.
I thought that might
have something to do with the faint golden glimmer wrapped around
Pritkin and me like—well, like a lasso. Nice
catch, I didn’t say, because my mouth didn’t seem to work.
Until Pritkin slumped against me, his face slack, his body a
deadweight in my arms, and I got a good look at his
back.
And
screamed.