“Hi!” I say brightly. “Just thought I’d check in on my favorite priest, see how he’s doing, let him know Finemdi is on my ass GET UP GET UP GET UP!”
“Wh-what? Crap! Sekhmet? Hey!” he yells. There’s a fumbling noise, then: “Okay, you’re on speaker. What’s happening? Are you okay?”
“Sebastian showed up after I left the club,” I say, jerking the wheel around some stopped cars and running a red light. “Then Garen—freaking Garen—blew his brains out and pinned it on me so Finemdi hunts me down and treats me like an actual threat when they do.”
I pause for a moment, realizing that was basically the exact same thing I did to him at Impulse. I’m briefly impressed at his planning, and then the anger and fear take over again. “I’m heading for the hotel. We need to get the hell out of town, at least until they can’t track me.”
“Understood—I will gather our things and prepare,” Sekhmet says, all ferocity and focus.
“How are they tracking you?” Nathan asks.
“Garen said they’ll use my blood, that it’ll let them find me for hours after it’s spilled,” I say, glaring at the thought of some Finemdi seer crouched over the crime scene, directing his allies to me. “I didn’t have a mop and bucket handy.”
“Okay, should we come to you?”
“No, get packed and meet me downstairs. It’s a straight shot to the hotel down Sunset Boulevard. I’m like five minutes away.”
“Got it, boss,” he says, then pauses. “Be okay, Sara,” he adds, worried. “I don’t know who to pray to when my god’s the one in trouble.”
I smile, glad to hear his concern. “Pray to me anyway! Buck’s gotta stop somewhere. See you soon, Nate!” I say, then hang up.
I yelp and slam on the brakes, bringing the SUV to a halt. There’s a red light ahead and a mix of delivery trucks and taxis are blocking me. With oncoming cars, I’m stuck until it changes. “Seriously?” I scream, slapping the steering wheel. The sun isn’t even up yet and already there’s traffic? What is with this city?
Sighing, I pick up my phone again and find another number in the contacts page. This time, it rings only once before someone picks up.
“Sara?” a wary voice says on the other end.
“Harv! Hey!” I say. “How’s legitimate business?”
“Uh. Great. Is this an emergency, or…?”
“Yes, actually,” I say, revving the engine with a nervous twitch of my foot. The light refuses to change. How long has this thing been red? Come on!
“Oh. Oh! Sorry, you didn’t sound … imperiled,” he says. “How can I help?”
“Yeah, it’s this thing I do where I don’t act like really important things are—never mind. Bad dudes are on my tail and I need trigger-happy friends. Know anyone who feels like shooting up the Sunset Strip?”
“Only half of LA,” he says with a chuckle. “Where are you and what’s the situation?”
I give him a quick rundown of where I’m headed, what I’m planning, and what to expect (doom, and lots of it). Somewhere near the end of that, the light changes and I crush the gas pedal, wondering just how much sand is left in my hourglass.
Then the driver’s side window shatters in a storm of glass, and I realize it’s already gone.
A dark-suited man on a tricked-out motorcycle (seriously, the thing has neon wheels—this can’t be standard issue) is riding alongside me, holstering a pistol and examining me intently. I’m confused until I realize how deeply tinted the SUV’s windows are. He wasn’t trying to hit me; just see who was driving.
“What was that?” Harv asks.
“Your god getting into a car chase! Hurry or you’ll miss the fun,” I say, and toss the phone onto the passenger seat.
I turn back to see the man on the bike consulting a smartphone embedded in the inside lining of his jacket’s left sleeve. It’s hard to make out while keeping one eye on the road, but I think it’s displaying a picture of me. He nods, then reaches into his jacket and begins rummaging around. I jerk the steering wheel to the left, trying to smash him while he’s distracted, but he simply hits the brakes and lets me zoom in front of him, into oncoming traffic. I yell as cars barrel at me and swerve to avoid a head-on collision.
When I return to my lane, I glance in my rearview mirror and notice my pursuer is holding a new weapon now, something that looks like a tuning fork made of swirling air and mist. He points it at the SUV and the device solidifies, sharpening to a metallic black. I realize it looks exactly like the color and texture of the car I’m driving a split second before he gives me a little smirk and jerks his arm up.
The entire SUV launches off the road and straight into the air, following the arc of his hand. He spins it over and around, and the car follows suit, slamming me against its roof. There’s a moment of stomach-churning weightlessness as my descent begins, and then a thunderous crunch as the vehicle completes its spin. Glass fills the air, a thousand twinkling razor stars rattling against the sound of squealing metal as the SUV smashes back onto the road, upside down. The car connects and seems to stick for a heartbeat, and then physics reasserts itself, suddenly remembering that this vehicle and everything inside of it—including me—should be going about forty miles an hour.
Kids, always wear your seat belts.
The inertia rips me out of my seat and sends me through the windshield in an eyeblink. Over the course of seventy feet and several bone-jarring bounces, I become extremely well acquainted with gravity and how poorly the body mixes with it and asphalt at high speed. I spin to a halt far beyond the tumbling ruin of Sebastian’s ride, looking like I lost a fight with a coal separator.
Coughing, I lever myself up on shredded hands and scream in fury. “Am I just NOT ALLOWED to wear nice clothes?” I yell, throwing myself to my feet as pedestrians scream and scatter in all directions. “Is that the message?”
“Miss, we’d like you to come with us,” the motorcycle rider says, edging around the obliterated SUV. He has what looks like a tranquilizer gun trained on me. “We’ll even throw in a new dress,” he adds with another smirk.
I wipe blood from my face with a sigh. I have a pretty good idea what’s loaded in his weapon. If they manage to tag me with it, my escape is going to come to a swift and poisonous end. “Any chance I can convince you I’m just a trendsetter enjoying a night out?” I ask, readying myself.
He looks surprised, then laughs. “Sorry, lady. Nobody walks away from a crash like that.” He takes one hand off his gun and taps his right shoulder.
I glance at mine. There’s a big piece of the windshield sticking out of it. I make an irritated noise, pull the glass out with a grunt, and throw it at my feet. “Well, fine. But I’m still passing on the invite. Beat it.”
He just smirks again, readies his gun, and nods.
I cross my arms over my chest, just like Garen did when I came at him in the restaurant, and channel a hint of my strength into the bracers I took from Sebastian, willing them to activate. They come to life with a hum, a baleful crimson glow highlighting their runes. The motorcycle agent fires his gun at me, sending a little dart jetting out with a sharp hiss of pressurized gas, right on track for my neck.
Then things get messy. What I didn’t know was that motorcycle man had two friends with him, both of them sneaking up from either side with syringes of their own. The three move in perfect coordination, knowing that if I dodge or block the dart, they’ll still have two trained agents tackling me from opposite directions. The antique syringes they carry are probably enchanted to cut through even the toughest skin or armor, making them an excellent backup plan.
What comes next is wholly unexpected and, if you pretend I knew it was going to happen, makes me look unbelievably badass. As the dart sails forward and those two agents leap at me, the bracers ignite with a hellish flare of lightning. I had been hoping these things were defensive, like Garen’s, but their purpose is about as far from that as you can get. Lances of caustic, shuddering energy leap from each, firing
off to my left and right just as the two agents swoop in for the takedown. Both are caught mid-air by the ferocious red beams, sheared in half and tossed away like newspapers swirling through a bonfire.
I’m untouched by the storm of energy, which carves out pieces of the road and incinerates the dart the moment it gets close. The ruby blaze flickers and builds, creating a deadly bubble around me as those lances obliterate the buildings on either side of the street. Then there’s a sputtering electric cough and the whirlwind flickers before dying out. The shops and storefronts around me spark and burn, fires playing through the great swooping gashes I’ve torn into them. I look around in awe, feeling a slight pang of embarrassment for such unintended destruction. My SUV’s crash drew a few onlookers and stopped what passes for traffic at this hour, but after this little light show, everyone with half a brain and the means to leave is making a panicked dash in the direction of anywhere else.
Their energy spent, the bracers crumble and detach, falling from my forearms with a clatter. “Oh!” I say, stepping back from their remains. “Sebastian, I like your style.”
The remaining agent looks shell-shocked, gun shaking as his eyes rove from the bodies of his friends to the postapocalyptic meltdown of the street around us. Then he pulls out another dart and starts fumbling with his weapon, feverishly trying to reload it.
I haul my new revolver out of its holster and point it at him. “Hey! Drop it!”
He freezes, new dart still in one hand, then slowly lowers it and the gun to the ground before backing away, hands up. I focus on his mind as I walk forward, searching not for love or affection, but despair. There’s a good amount of it in there already, and I build upon it, ratcheting it to unbearable levels of pain and self-doubt. The change in his demeanor is instant. Tears shimmer in his eyes as his knees hit the ground, and he flops over to one side, sobbing.
I miss a step as I approach, dizziness bubbling in my head and fuzzing my vision. Inspiring love is part of who I am, which makes its destruction that much harder. I hate this, not only because it’s far more draining, but also because it makes me feel that same loss, if only for a moment. I stop, breathing deeply until the disorientation passes, then move to stand beside the miserable agent.
I scoop up his gun and load it with the dart, pausing to examine it in the light before I begin searching the man. He continues crying, oblivious to the pat-down, and I grimace—I did this to him, and it’s precisely the opposite of what I’m made to cherish. I try to ignore those regrets, telling myself it’s a better fate than his friends got, but even after I pull away with the loot, I can’t help feeling a little down.
Sighing, I strap on his holster and slot the tranquilizer gun into it. He has two extra darts, which I also take. The man didn’t have a pair of bracers, but I did find his crazy tuning fork, a piece of Ahriman—which I leave—and the keys to his bike, which I throw down the street. I have no clue how to ride a motorcycle, and now is not the time to learn. Besides, plenty of people went running and ditched their cars when I torched the block; I’ll just steal one of those rides. Before I leave, I strip the man of his jacket and toss it on, covering the laughably ineffective scraps of my dress.
I glance at the tattered remains of the other two agents and shake my head. Much as I’d like to load up on more weapons, I have a feeling the next Finemdi assault is already on its way. I spend a precious minute hunting for my bag, finally tracking it down in the wreck of the SUV. Of my phone, there is no sign. I loop the bag over my head, adding the extra darts and the tuning fork to it, then head for the nearest intact vehicle.
It’s a minivan, and the keys are missing. The next car is equally unhelpful, but the third, another gigantic black SUV like Sebastian’s, is actually still running. I do a double take, eyes darting between it and my ruined ride, and realize this is probably how the motorcycle agent’s friends got here. How nice of them, bringing me a replacement. I hop in, clip on my seat belt (this time), and take off in the direction of the hotel. Once I’ve skirted the rest of the abandoned cars and begin picking up speed, I allow myself a small breath of relief. Three agents, and I survived! Granted, it was through more dumb luck than I would’ve liked, but I can’t argue with the result.
… though that could have gone horribly if I’d been with my friends, a nasty voice reminds me. I grimace as I imagine what might’ve happened if I’d been trying to “shield” Nathan with those bracers. This is why you have to be incredibly careful with unknown artifacts. Instead of protecting everything in a bubble around me, like I’d been expecting, those things would have melted my closest allies like butter in a blast furnace.
Two police cars flash past, sirens blaring. A few seconds later, an ambulance follows. I notice thick streamers of smoke rising into the lightening sky in my rearview mirror, and start counting seconds in my head until I see fire trucks. At least the streets were fairly empty—dawn isn’t exactly a happening time, even for a place as popular as Sunset Boulevard. I hope that means those buildings I roasted were unoccupied, too.
I look myself over and sigh. It’s not like I got out of there unscathed, either. My magical tour of Asphalt World left long, gruesome, soot-streaked scars in all kinds of fun places, and underneath the agent’s jacket, what’s left of my clubwear would raise eyebrows at a bikini contest. I’m going to need a change of clothes if I want to blend in, and enough time without getting injured to look like I belong somewhere other than the emergency ward. At least I’m healing faster than ever these days. My budding career, combined with the feedback from Nathan and Sekhmet’s bond, is doing wonders for my powers of self-repair.
A screech of tires snaps my attention back to the road. Another big SUV, almost identical to Sebastian’s and mine, tears onto the street behind me, trailing smoke from its wheels as it struggles to make the turn off Fairfax Avenue at high speed. I catch a glimpse of five grim men and women readying weapons and feel my hands freeze on the steering wheel. There’s no sign of mirth there, no sense of excitement like I got from the motorcycle rider—these agents are ready for war, and judging by the arsenal they’re training on my car, I doubt they’re going to start with anything as neighborly as tranquilizer darts.
Then I feel the Valkyrie rising in my chest, banishing those thoughts of fear. Did someone say “war”? Oh, if it’s a fight they want, I’ll give them a showdown that’ll bring this city to a standstill. Screw the plan, screw the danger, and screw these carbon-copy creeps for thinking they could intimidate a girl like me. I stamp the gas, wondering if my struggling car is ready for the fight of its life.
Because I am.
17
THUNDERSTRUCK
FREYA
I didn’t even need to psych myself up.
As one of the Finemdi agents stands through the SUV’s sunroof, aiming gods-know-what at my car, salvation sideswipes them. Harv’s sedan zooms up on their left, pulls away for a moment, then barrels in to crunch against their side. The impact jars the weapon out of the agent’s hands, sending it clattering to the road below, and the man falls back into the SUV’s interior, shaken. There’s a roar of automatic gunfire as two of Harv’s friends unload on the big car from the passenger side and backseat. The barrage punctures the tires, rips through the doors and windows, and sends the SUV careening off the road and into a liquor store.
For a moment I’m stunned, doing little more than following the curve of the road and watching the wreck vanish behind me. Then I stick my hand out the window and wave happily at Harv, who just nods at me from behind the steering wheel like this is another day at the office. He escorts me the last few blocks to our hotel, pulling into its roundabout a moment after I do. Nathan and Sekhmet are waiting beside the main entrance, framed by two planters and several suitcases. They’re both wearing casual clothes and worried expressions.
I lean out the window as I pull up and shout, “Get in!”
The two grab their things. They’re just starting to move toward me when there’s an odd crack
in the air and my car dies. I lean back in and fumble with the keys, trying to restart it, but it’s no good—the engine doesn’t even give a hint of turning over. Confused, I get out and turn to Harv just in time to see him slamming his own door with a displeased look on his face. He raps the roof of his car and his two friends get out, carrying automatic rifles low and close to their bodies, fingers off the triggers. They’re both meaty guys in nice suits. One’s tall and top-heavy; the other’s average but built like a pug—muscled, barrel-like, and furry.
“I think you’d better get ready to make a stand,” Harv says, walking up to me. He gestures at one of his pals, and the man hands him another rifle. “Ms. Valen, this is Gene and Vitty. Guys, this is our new best friend.”
They both nod at me, then go back to watching the street.
“Nathan and Rashida,” I say, pointing at my friends as they join us.
“Hey,” Harv says. “You have any idea what’s coming? All the lights are off in the buildings, too.”
I glance around and realize he’s right—every lamp, window, and car in sight is dark. Nothing’s moving on the street. This can’t be good.
“Bad news,” I say.
“Sara, you look … okay, no offense, but you look like a truck hit you,” Nathan says, voice thick with concern and a hint of nausea.
“Not far off,” I say. “It’s been a rough night. Really glad to see you both.”
“You had us worried, little fighter,” Sekhmet says, putting a hand on my shoulder, then pulling me in for a hug. She doesn’t seem to mind the dirt and blood this gesture leaves on her clothes. Even with everything going on, part of me is just present enough to note this as another change—she was never the hugging type.
“Those storm clouds?” Harv asks.
I look up. He’s right—the predawn sky has just gotten a lot darker in the half minute since our cars died. “That narrows it down,” I say. “Boys, unless you want to tangle with another god, I’d think about getting back to your beds. I called for help with mortals, not my kin.”
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