by Karen Chance
“The mage who hit me!”
She shrugged. “Couple minutes ago. Right before bad man came.”
“Did you see which way he went?”
“Bad man?”
“No, Caleb!”
She shrugged again, and gestured around.
Yeah, visibility was not so great.
“He try to steal from you,” she added indignantly. “And you not even dead yet!”
“Bad form,” John rasped, and grabbed some ammo that had been piled on top of a handful of little glass vials that sparkled like starlight in the gloom.
He paused for a moment, staring at them, and then shoved them in a pocket, too.
The dancer nodded in agreement. “I beat him. I protect you!”
“That’s . . . very kind.”
She beamed at him, showing off a pair of dimples.
“But aren’t you supposed to be . . . on me . . . somewhere?” John asked, throwing clothing out of the cart until he came across a pair of boots that almost fit.
“No. I supposed to be on card like my sisters.” She shot him a look out of heavily made up eyes. “This very weird day.”
No shit, John thought, and then jerked his head up as a bunch of flying cabs came speeding across the battlefield, straight at him.
“You’re supposed to be on a card,” he repeated quickly. “Are there more of these cards?”
“All over city. My mistress pays touts to put them out every week.”
“And they’re enchanted with the same spell as you, all in one bunch?”
She nodded.
John smiled grimly. “I have an idea.”
“Is it sexy idea?” she asked, batting her eyelashes at him.
“You know, it’s pretty sexy,” he said, and shoved her down the hill.
Chapter Twenty-One
T he dancer slipped and fell, not surprising considering her four-inch heels, and rolled the rest of the way down the incline. Before coming to rest in the middle of the bunch of rickshaws, which had stopped at the bottom of the hill, not wanting to risk flying into the trees. The drivers did not seem to know what to do with a mostly naked temple dancer who was now cursing up a storm.
She was still full-sized, still 3-D, and still very human in appearance. Except for glowing faintly around the edges, leaving her looking like a slightly profane angel as a bit of the magic she’d absorbed leaked out into the air. Because her original spell had been a crappy animation type and not anything substantial enough to handle the amount of power that had been poured into it.
It was a commonplace enchantment around here, usually used for advertisements, since it allowed them to clamber off their signs and chase prospective customers down the street. Or, with a little more magic in the mix, to act as doormen, greeters, and bouncers, like the samurai back at the noodle shop. Or as distractions, John thought, as the golden dancer climbed back to her feet and glared up the hill.
“This not sexy! This not sexy at all!” she yelled, right before the war mages opened fire.
But not at John. They were firing where she was looking, but he was no longer there, since a distraction doesn’t do much good if you don’t take advantage of it. But something else was.
The vulture’s cart was missing its umbrellas, which were currently dark, folded, and tucked under John’s arm, but retained a healthy supply of explosives. Along with potion bombs, acid grenades, and other touchy magical devices the peddler had collected, none of which reacted well to getting the shit blown out of them by a bunch of war mages. And neither did the grove of trees.
Their trunks—the ones that didn’t immediately explode—served as the pins in a giant pinball game, rattling spells back and forth between them before sending them flying outward in all directions—including back at the mages.
They, of course, weren’t in place anymore, either, having shielded and started up the hill on the heels of their magic. And were now hunkered down, waiting out the storm. Assuming, John supposed, that he was the one lobbing dozens of spells their way.
Whereas, in fact, he was the one attempting to steal one of their vehicles.
Which would have been easier if they were idling closer to the ground!
“Kong was right!” the dancer told him, coming up behind him. “You asshole man!”
“Shut up and help me!” John panted, tossing the umbrellas into a cab.
“You shut up!” she said, poking him with a long, golden nail. “I lost my hat!”
“It was a stupid hat,” John said, before bending her over, putting a boot on her back, and launching himself after the umbrellas.
“It not stupid! You stupid! And short! My mistress say, no man under five six worth a damn!”
“I’m almost five nine,” John said, bending down to grab her by the arm and pull her up.
“Only short men say ‘almost’,” she sneered. “You ever hear six-foot-four man say he almost six-five? No. You short.”
“And fucked, if you don’t shut up and start shooting,” John pointed out, because a couple of the mages were smarter than he’d hoped, and had figured out what was going on.
He slapped a gun into her hands, which she looked at in shock. “I not know how to shoot!”
“Point it at the fan blades and pull the trigger!” John yelled, to be heard over the mages’ yells and the revved-up sound of the engine. Which he really hoped was a good one, as they tore out of there with maybe a thirty second lead.
If that, John thought, as a spell shot right over them and the dancer screamed and let off a volley—at the wrong damned target.
“Not our fan blades!” John snarled.
“Well, how I supposed to know?” she demanded shrilly. “You say shoot fan blades so I shoot fan blades! I lover not fighter!”
“You’re not going to be anything soon,” John pointed out, as a strafe of gunfire rattled against their backside
“Go down! Go down!” she yelled, but John couldn’t go down. Her bullets had done something to the blade, or more likely, to the mechanism that tilted the device up and down. He could fly, in other words, but he couldn’t land and he also couldn’t go any higher.
Which was a problem considering that the mages were gaining as he sped into the midst of the only cover around—the maze of bridges.
“Are you crazy?” the dancer shrieked, grabbing him. “Turn around! Turn around!”
John did not turn around. “Take the wheel,” he told her.
“It not have a wheel!”
“Then take what it has!” he snapped, and climbed over the seat.
He grabbed the umbrellas, popped them back open, and secured their reactivated shields to the back of the cab. They kept wanting to fly off, their broad surfaces catching the wind, but he managed to stop that by weaving the handles in and out of the fan like supports for the roof and then looping the curled handles around the sturdy bottom one. It wasn’t a perfect system, but it provided some protection.
Which was needed, because their pursuers were right on their ass.
“Augghhhh! It won’t go up and down!” his driver screamed, as several spell bolts flew over them and demolished a bamboo bridge.
Parts of the fiery mass fell on either side of them as they sped past, but John batted it away. “I know that—”
“Then why you bring us here?”
“We’re not going to be here long.”
“I know we not be here long! We be dead!” she shrieked, and then shrieked again when they scraped across the surface of another bridge that they couldn’t move to avoid.
“I don’t think you can technically die,” John assured her, as he started unloading the contents of his coat onto the back seat.
“I not want to find out!”
Neither did John, which was why he was hurrying. Well, that and the fact that they were fast approaching a big stone expanse that he and Zheng had passed coming the other way. It was the sturdiest bridge in the area, with a covered walkway and thick concrete sides, and thus
the only one that might work for his needs.
Or not, he thought, his eyes blowing wide at the sight directly ahead. Because the once deserted conduit was now packed with people. The ones in the area had been retreating into their homes when he came through before, to get away from the fighting. Now, a great number of them seemed to be doing the opposite, choosing to flee instead.
Leaving the bridge crowded with bodies and completely unsafe for his plan. He had hoped to fly under the covered area, giving him a second to jump off without being seen. And then to blow the cab as it shot out the other side, making it look like one of the mages’ spells had destroyed it. Because that was the only thing likely to get them off his tail!
But not now, he thought, as they went barreling toward a bunch of terrified faces.
“Turn! Turn!” he yelled, grabbing the joystick, and getting batted at by perfectly manicured hands.
“Let go! I drive better than you!”
“How the hell would you know?”
“Cause I know better than to turn into that!” she yelled, as a spell hit and popped two of their umbrellas at the same time.
“It’s better than hitting the wall with a backseat full of explosives!” John said, and saw her blink. And then crane her head about and—
“Why there explosives?” she screamed, just as John jerked the craft around.
Leaving them facing a swarm of war mage driven cabs instead.
And it looked like whoever was behind this wasn’t taking any chances, because there had to be a couple dozen of them. Making his new plan to barrel through the middle look like suicide. Which it was, he thought, as a whole raft of spells came flying at them all at once, turning the storm-tossed darkness crimson and gold and reflecting in the little dancer’s suddenly huge eyes.
Before tearing right over their heads, because John had just done the only thing he could under the circumstances.
And switched off the engine.
“Auggghhhh! I hate you, I hate you, I hate—” the dancer screamed, right before they hit the road below—
And bounced.
They bounced some more, before wildly careening across the narrow street. Because John had thrown himself backwards as they fell, ensuring that they landed on their big, blue, heavily warded arse, instead of slamming straight down. Which popped most of their remaining shields, but left them, and their explosives, intact.
For the moment.
“Move!” the dancer said, shoving him out of the way. She reengaged the engine and slammed the joystick all the way forward, right before a dozen spells crashed into the roadbed where they’d just been. Cobblestones exploded behind them, flying everywhere like chunky bullets, but they were already speeding away, into a market.
It looked like the area had been abandoned when everyone started to flee. The result was a mostly deserted plaza filled with stalls, pushcarts, and trucks, along with acres of food and merchandise that were currently serving as obstacles. Big ones, John thought, as they slid up a ramp, into an opening in the body of a delivery truck, through the crates of cabbages within, and out the other side.
Right before it exploded.
The rest of their umbrellas gave up the ghost, blocking the fiery cloud of magical fire from overwhelming them, although it did set their backside alight. And left burning cabbages raining down everywhere as they left the market behind and ricocheted through a maze of wet, cobblestone alleys barely wider than the cab itself. Which . . . might just work, John decided.
“All right, here’s what we do!” he began, but the dancer wasn’t listening. Probably because a bunch of cabs had just appeared in the alley ahead of them, having flanked them while they were evading the first group.
Good one, John thought, some clinical part of his brain appreciating the tactic even as he wrenched the cab abruptly to the right—and into a building.
They scraped through the door—barely—because their ride was a narrow, one-person vehicle. Some of the ones the corpsmen had commandeered were the larger, twos seater variety, which couldn’t follow. And a couple of those got in the way, momentarily barring the smaller vehicles from the pursuit, although that wouldn’t last.
“All right,” John said, trying again. “The only way we get out of this is if they think we’re dead—”
“We about to be dead!” the dancer yelled, over the sounds of the spells the mages were shooting through the door behind them.
“Not if you do what I tell you!” he yelled back, as they crashed through another doorway, tore down a hall with their sides scraping paint off the walls, and burst back into the street—
Right into the middle of another group of mages.
This one was on foot, not that it mattered much. But some of them did go down from the cab’s momentum, like leather coated bowling pins. And the rest ducked and shielded to avoid its sharp-edged fan blade.
Giving John time to sling his vehicle around and to plunge headlong back into the hallway again.
Where he met a bunch of the smaller cabs coming the other way.
“Shit!”
And then something exploded, but it wasn’t coming at them, John realized, after a second. It was coming from them. Because the little dancer had grabbed the explosives.
“Don’t use them all!” he yelled, jerking the cab into a room off the hall.
“You shut up!” she screamed, and threw some more, practically obliterating the wall behind them. And in the process, making it that much easier for their opponents to follow.
Not that it mattered. The enthrallment had the mages’ brains set on utter single-mindedness, to the point that they’d have knocked down the damned wall themselves if they had to. Or risked firing through explosions, falling masonry, and a collapsing ceiling, John thought, as bright bolts of death slammed past on all sides.
Including one that sent them spinning through some windows and out into the night.
They crashed into the opposite building, fan first, destroying their ride and dumping them onto the street alongside the remaining explosives. Where they were sitting ducks for what had to be fifty mages, some on foot and some in cabs, coming from all directions and all focused on the same thing. For a second, John despaired, a dozen plans running through his mind, none of which were likely to work.
And none of which proved to be necessary.
Because another group of flying death machines suddenly swooped down and grabbed him and the dancer off the street, just as the remaining mages burst out of the building behind them.
And were met by a massive fireball caused by someone firing into the middle of their spilled explosives.
The resulting blast almost caught John and his sidekick, too, the fireball chasing them and the cab they had somehow ended up in four stories into the air. Or maybe more. John couldn’t be sure, feeling a little dazed and more than a little confused as he caught sight of his rescuer.
“Kong?”
“We even, war mage,” the vampire spat as they jerked around the side of a building. And then suddenly stopped, abruptly enough to almost throw John out of the cab, except that he had a death grip on the top of the door. “Go!”
“What?” John sat there, trying to catch up, since all that had happened at vampire speed.
Kong said something that sounded profane. “Get. Out,” he repeated. “We’ll lead them away. You run!”
John nodded and rolled onto a flat rooftop.
“You better make this worth it!” Kong snarled, and then he and the other vamps, who had also commandeered cabs, tore off into the sky—in all different directions.
John crawled under a line of wet laundry and waited, his chest tight, his breathing labored, as a mass of mages in cabs emerged from the alley below, their leather coats flapping out behind them like superhero capes. They hung in the air for an instant, caught between the greenish light from above and the orange glow from below, heightening the otherworldly effect. Before abruptly taking off after the vamps.
John c
ollapsed back against the wet concrete, and just breathed for a moment.
Lightning flashed overhead, rain slapped him in the face along with somebody’s abandoned laundry, and he found himself struck with a strong desire to giggle. It was absurd; he knew that. But he was alive when he shouldn’t be, and the sheer relief had laughter bubbling up anyway, while the storm winds howled and the city burned and the little dancer glowered at him from behind a soggy cheongsam.
“What now, asshole?” she asked, after a moment.
John got himself under control and rolled back to his knees. “Now,” he told her breathlessly, “we go talk to your sisters.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
T he pharmacy was dark and silent. Too much so. Especially considering the footprints headed in the door.
John crouched down, put a finger to what looked like a drop of liquid gold on the wooden planks of the entryway, and brought it up to his nose.
And then reared back, because the shining energy tried to glom onto him, to merge with him, to sink into his skin and to—
“Son of a bitch!” he whispered, and flung it onto the road.
“What is it?” his little helper asked, squatting down to balance on her stilettos. She started to reach for the same golden smear, but John pushed her hand away.
“Don’t,” he said tersely, while doing a quick inner assessment, to make sure it hadn’t gotten a hold on him.
“Why? It dangerous?”
“It’s demon blood.”
“Demon?” Her eyes widened. “What kind of demon?”
“The bad kind,” John snarled, and pulled her around the side of the building, to where they were hidden by the shadow of the roof. Not that that would be enough; not against one of them.
There was only one type of demon whose blood glowed like that, and they didn’t have to see you to kill you.
Goddamnit, he should have known!
“I’m going inside to check it out,” he told her roughly. “You stay here.”
“And do what?” she asked, looking panicked at the idea of being alone.