Side by side, the two of us reach the edge of the convenience store roof and hop the narrower alley between the store and the next building over. When I don’t screw up the second jump, Lucian stops giving me a critical side-eye. And in nearly perfect unison, we dash three more blocks across the slick rooftops of the rundown neighborhood, then casually slide off the roof of the nail salon next to the alley where the invisible BMW is parked.
As we’re falling toward the concrete, however, both of us notice a major problem: There’s a DSI SUV conveniently parked on the sidewalk in front of the alley. Which means in order to get out of here, we’ll have to go through the backstreet, which is crawling with DSI agents, or ram the SUV like Lucian did back on Blagoveshchensky Lane.
Both of those options will garner a great deal of attention.
We’re not getting out of this without a fight or a car chase.
“Wonderful,” I say as I land in a controlled roll. Ignoring the wetness that soaks into my clothes, I use the remaining momentum from my fall to smoothly push myself back up, coming to a stop a few inches in front of the wall of the hardware store. “So it’s either destroy more DSI property, or beat more DSI agents up.”
“I don’t care either way.” Lucian rounds the invisible car, sliding his hand across the body until he finds the handle for the driver’s side door. “But you better take your pick of the options in the next few seconds, because your pals are coming up on us fast.”
Lucian’s hearing is keener than mine, but not a second after he says that, my ears also catch a disconcerting sound—the rhythmic thump of several pairs of boots pounding along the backstreet, quickly approaching the opposite end of the alley. If we choose to flee via the backstreet, the wards on the BMW will likely end up injuring most of the approaching agents, the same way they did when they took down the DSI team outside Duckstar’s Bar. And there’s also the chance that on such a narrow street, Lucian might inadvertently (or intentionally) mow down multiple agents.
With a sigh, I say, “Ram the SUV.”
Lucian smirks. “My pleasure.”
A moment later, we’re both in the car, belts buckled, ready for a rough start to a car chase through a big city on the cusp of a major snowstorm, the first few flakes already fluttering down. Lucian is looking a lot livelier than he was back in the flophouse room. But there’s still a thick air of weariness around him, even while he strips the veil, shifts the BMW into gear, revs the engine, and laughs at the prospect of destroying another expensive piece of DSI property.
As the BMW charges forward, the wards on the hood flaring brighter for each inch closer we draw to the parked SUV, I take a spare second to wonder just how dangerous a being we have pit ourselves against in this land of ice and snow.
The BMW rams the SUV going no more than ten miles per hour, but the car might as well be a train. The instant the wards on the hood activate, the SUV goes flying across the street. It flips four times, roof over wheels, and lands upside down on the opposite sidewalk, its alarm warbling pitifully. With our path no longer blocked, Lucian pulls the car out of the alley and floors it, the wheels spinning on the slick asphalt for a couple seconds until they finally find enough traction to propel us down the road.
The DSI team that was closing in on the alley from the sidewalk side take aim and empty their magazines at us, but the bullets plink harmlessly off the car’s warded exterior and fall away into the slush. Two of the boldest DSI agents shoot their beggar rings at us, but a wall of force is just as easily repelled as the bullets, and a fireball fizzles out before it even reaches the tail end of the BMW.
We leave that DSI team in the dust, and the last glimpse I get of them before we take a hard turn onto the highway, blowing through a red light in the process and nearly T-boning a truck, consists of nothing but black coats billowing in the wind as they race back to wherever they parked an SUV not currently upside down.
For a minute or so, I think we’re in the clear. But when Lucian starts weaving through the abnormally sparse highway traffic in order to pass a slow-moving van, I spy a flash of blue light. A look around the back of my seat gives me a clearer view of the vehicle. It’s not a Russian police car but in fact another DSI SUV utilizing an emergency light array similar to the type recently installed on all of Aurora’s DSI vehicles. This SUV doesn’t have a blaring siren, but the traffic on the highway is still gradually shifting to allow the SUV to speed past. Which means the DSI team may catch up to us.
“We’ve got a slight problem,” I say.
“I noticed.” Lucian glances between the windshield and the rearview mirror. “Another half-mile, and I’ll get us off this highway, lose them on the backstreets. If I can’t shake them the old-fashioned way, I’ll reactivate the veil for a minute and hide us somewhere until they pass by.”
“That’s workable, but you need to make sure that no bystanders—Ow!”
The maddening itch on the back of my head suddenly morphs into a sharp stabbing pain. But then, like a lightning bolt flickering out in a dark night sky, the invasive sensation vanishes altogether.
The tracking spell has been severed. Which can only mean one thing.
“Shit,” I breathe out. “I think we’re about to have more company.”
“We already do,” Lucian replies in a steely tone, his focus on something up ahead.
That something is a low stone building off the left side of the highway. On the rooftop of this building, standing in plain sight for all the world to see, are the cloaked duo from the satire theater. Though I can’t see their eyes, their identities obscured less by their hoods and more by a spell that has painted their faces with impenetrable shadows, I can sense that both of them are looking directly at me.
“Hold on,” Lucian says.
Without giving me a chance to find something to grab, he jerks the wheel of the car to the right and sends us veering across both lanes of traffic. The front bumper of the BMW clips the fender of a little green car and nearly sends it spinning into the ditch, but Lucian doesn’t relent. He jams the accelerator into the floor even as he makes a dangerously sharp turn onto a narrow side street, and the BMW flies around the corner so fast we drift sideways almost thirty feet down the road, the car blocking both lanes. Through a stroke of pure luck, there are no vehicles in either lane, so Lucian is able to correct the position of the car without causing a deadly accident.
“Are you crazy? You could’ve gotten us killed.” I massage my neck with both hands. “Christ, I think I have whiplash.”
“Let’s get something straight, kid.” He takes one hand off the wheel and jabs a finger toward my face. “I have won no less than fifteen vehicular pursuits in the last twenty years, in eight different countries, in cars way less pimped out than this one. So unless you’ve got some secret history as a high-level street racer hiding under your ditzy expression, you don’t get to criticize my driving. Understand?”
Normally, I would argue with Lucian on a point like this. But I swallow a litany of responses when I notice his extended finger is trembling. Badly. He still hasn’t fully recovered from the psychic attack he experienced at the flophouse, and that bothers me. Because I’ve never seen a vampire spend more than a few minutes shrugging off an injury that didn’t involve total disemboweling, or something equally horrific. The lengthened recovery period can only mean a few things: that Lucian suffered significant physical damage to his brain, that he suffered significant spiritual damage to his mind, or both.
It finally hits me, there in the BMW, with my neck aching, my heart pounding, my pulse racing, with the Children of Enoch hot on our tail and a group of DSI agents poorly stirred into this chaotic mix, unaware of the minefield they’ve stumbled into…Lucian almost died in that dingy flophouse room. The thing on the other end of that tracking spell almost killed him. And it wasn’t even there. It wasn’t even close. It didn’t even touch him. It didn’t even have to.
Somewhere in this city is a creature of untold power, and that creatu
re is hunting me.
Chapter Eight
Cold. That’s the first thing I register. A bone-chilling cold that stuns my limbs and wrenches the air from my chest. And once that air is gone, my lungs empty and aching, I recognize a second, more important sensation: the sensation of being underwater, where there is no more air to breathe.
That revelation sends a panic signal to my brain. My eyes snap open, revealing the dark depths of a rushing river that has caught me in its grasp. Adrenaline surges through my body, sending a brief but vital pulse of warmth to my arms and legs. After I orient myself toward the dim light above, I swim for the surface as fast as I can.
Just when I think I’m about to breach and breathe in some precious oxygen, my hand bumps against something hard. I realize that the surface of the river is frozen. Chest burning even as the frigid water seeps all the warmth from my body, I experience a moment of absolute terror, convinced I’m going to drown and be swept away into the darkness, never to be found. But then a bright flash of common sense breaks through my mental muddle: You have magic, dumbass. Break the ice.
I call up my magic energy and punch the ice with my fist, discharging a force blast. The ice shatters for ten feet in every direction. I push the largest chunks out of my path and kick my legs three times, finally bringing my head to the surface.
The air that smacks my face is so cold that it almost sends my throat into a fit of laryngospasms. But I force myself to take in long, deep breaths, fight off the static buzz of oxygen deprivation that was growing beneath my skull. In less than a minute, the feeling of impending death by hypoxia fades away.
Now, onto my second most pressing problem—death by hypothermia.
I’m close to the middle of a river. Too far from shore to break the ice and swim the whole way there. But the ice appears thick enough to hold my weight, so I paddle over to the edge of the circular hole I created, run my fingers across the ice until I find a notch that works as a handhold, and carefully haul myself out of the water, rolling over onto my back.
Lying splayed on the ice, entire body shivering uncontrollably, I gaze up at the dreary sky, a vague sense of disorientation softening the edges of my every thought. In an attempt to put my mind back in working order, I perform a trick I learned for managing anxiety in a pinch. I clear the jumble out of my head, think of nothing at all, and simply observe the world around me in the simplest terms.
What is currently happening?
Beside me, the river water is gurgling loudly as it rushes past, exposed by the hole I bored into its icy cap. To my left is an empty shoreline, and beyond that, the faint din of traffic. To my right is a second empty shoreline and a row of tall buildings whose occupants have apparently not noticed a lone man on the verge of frostbite. And above me, the dark-gray clouds are vomiting snow, huge flakes coming down in blankets, painting the city white.
The city. What city?
It can’t be Aurora. The buildings aren’t right. But what other city would I…?
Moscow.
The last few hours of my life come back to me in a rush. I sit up, gasping, “Lucian.”
Now I remember. I was in the BMW with Lucian, and we were speeding away from the cloaked duo and a DSI team following us in an SUV. Lucian made a series of wild maneuvers to break the line of sight the cloaked people had on us and activated the BMW’s veil, rendering the car invisible to all of our pursuers.
Despite the fact that no other drivers or pedestrians could see the BMW after that, Lucian kept on driving for almost three miles, barely avoiding a dozen fatal accidents and knocking the mirror off one car, whose owner will have a doozy of a tale to tell his insurance company.
While Lucian was taking me on this crazy ride in the invisible BMW, he spouted a series of anti-tracking spells. Some of which he performed on me himself. Some of which he made me perform on myself, even though I’ve had no practice at that kind of magic.
By some miracle, none of the spells backfired and burned me to a crisp. But by the time we were finished bulking up my protections, I felt like I was wearing a lead blanket, the sort they drape over you when you’re taking X-rays—except it felt like it was inside my skin instead of outside. I complained about the added spiritual weight, and Lucian ordered me to shut the hell up and deal with it until we had the opportunity to come up with a more sophisticated solution.
And then what? Something happened after that. Something bad.
I glared at Lucian, opened my mouth to retort, and…
Something landed on the hood of the car. Something alive. It wasn’t a human being, but rather a massive, red, fleshy creature of some kind. So large that I couldn’t see its head and so heavy that it drove the front end of the car into the asphalt, popping both tires and throwing Lucian and me into the dashboard. The airbags went off a split second before we bashed our faces in, and my sight was completely blocked by the white fabric as the bag expanded and forced me back against the seat cushion.
Before I could pop the bag or bat it away, the windshield imploded, flinging glass into the cabin. A massive hand tipped with long claws tore the airbag away from my face, then grabbed me by my entire torso and ripped me out of my seat.
The next few seconds of my life were nothing but scattered fragments of color and powerful pulses of magic. And then I was flying. Or rather, falling. I’d either been vaulted into the air with a spell, or the enormous monster had thrown me as hard as it could. I soared higher and higher into the air, far across the expanse of the snowy sprawl of the city.
Until finally, my momentum ran out, and I came plummeting back toward the earth, right above the Moscow River. I was so dazed by whatever happened after I was pulled from the BMW that I wasn’t able to loose a proper wind spell to stop my descent. I slammed into the ice, which broke under the force of the impact, and sank into the freezing water.
What the hell was that monster? And where is Lucian? Dead? Dying? Or did he get away?
I need to learn the answers to those questions. But first I have to get off this river, dry my clothes, and warm myself up before the worsening hypothermia kills me. I’m already losing sensation in my extremities.
If I don’t get up in the next few seconds, I’ll lose what’s left of my mobility and end up easy pickings for any enemies that might still be chasing me. The anti-tracking spells Lucian and I heaped onto my body feel like they’re intact. But since that monster somehow found the BMW while it was veiled, I don’t have much faith our efforts will pay off.
With a grunt, I roll over onto my knees, careful to evenly distribute my weight so the ice doesn’t crack. I crawl toward the riverbank, inching along by sliding my hands and knees across the ice in a shimmying motion that probably looks stupid but keeps me from leaning too much in either direction. My progress is slower than I’d like, and by the time I’m halfway there, I’m shivering so badly my eyes can’t see straight, and I can’t feel anything south of my elbows and thighs. But I press on through sheer force of will, and manage to reach the bank with one last push of strength.
Collapsing onto the snow-covered ground, I immediately tug a stream of energy from my soul and expel it from my body, forming a sort of bubble. I instruct the energy to get warm—and definitely not catch fire. When it responds the way I want it to, I slowly crank up the heat with little mental pushes, until I reach somewhere around room temperature. Once the air no longer feels like it’s flaying my skin off, I use another mental push to make the air circulate, like a warm summer wind, to help dry my sopping-wet clothes.
Roughly ten minutes pass, and I begin to feel better, my healing factor helping to stave off any touches of frostbite. I sit up, keeping the air bubble intact, and after a few false starts, I clamber to my feet. I didn’t crash through the ice unscathed, and now that I’ve regained feeling in most of my extremities, the pain from my injuries is nagging at me. A broken arm. A fractured kneecap. Multiple deep lacerations. Numerous cracked ribs. And more bruises than I can count.
But n
othing life threatening, and nothing that won’t heal quickly.
I got off lucky, considering. I can only hope Lucian had the same luck.
Swaying side to side, each step a chore, I drag myself up the steep incline of the riverbank. At the top, I take a few moments to catch my breath and allow my healing factor to repair a couple more of my aching ribs. I’m still shivering, but with my improvised warming spell in effect, my hypothermia is no longer worsening. Confident I’m not at death’s door, I scan the nearby terrain.
The snowfall is dense, but I make out what looks like a couple industrial buildings, maybe a warehouse and a factory, along with a wide lot that’s partially gravel and partially cracked asphalt. There are no cars parked in the lot, and no sounds emerge from the buildings. The place is either shut down for the day or out of business.
The telltale buzz of midday traffic creeps around the corners of the warehouse, indicating a major highway is situated on the other side. I might be able to follow that highway to a store where I can replace the brand-new phone now sitting waterlogged in my pocket. If not that, then maybe I can find a compassionate pedestrian willing to lend me their phone.
Either way, I need to get in contact with Lucian or Foley so I can determine what to do next: bank on the anti-tracking spells and head back to the Hyatt, or hunker down at an alternate location and see if the Children come calling again? Option one risks exposing Foley’s sword acquisition operation to the Children. Option two risks exposing me, without backup, to the Children’s wrath yet again. God, I hope the anti-tracking spells work.
Adding extra energy to my warm wind spell to bat away the increasingly heavy snowfall, I set off toward the warehouse.
I make it halfway there before fate catches up to me.
My only warning is the soft crunch of shoes on snow. An alarm bell goes off in my head—someone is behind you!—and I spin around. But I’m only half turned toward my adversary, the woman in the gray cloak, when her spell goes off and slams into me like Lucian rammed the BMW into those two unfortunate DSI SUVs. The solid wall of force flings me across the lot, and I collide with the sheet metal siding of the warehouse.
Dawn Slayer Page 8