Before Dev could stand, several of the escaped rats pounced on him.
He was sweating with the effort of all the tricks, the scratches on his chest and hands stinging, his burns throbbing. His head was tight with the toll of the triggered spells. Falling all the way over would be appreciated right then, but he reached for the rats, triggering the nitrogen trick over and over.
Then some of them began disappearing without his intervention. Looking up, he found Hawkins wrestling with one of the big rats. His face was twisted with bone-deep horror but he tossed the squirming thing away, then reached for the next one.
The moment he was clear, Dev sprang upright. Back to back with Hawkins, he blasted the surrounding rats with wind. Behind him, Hawkins’ gun barked, suppressed but still distressingly loud in the long, empty corridor.
“Clear,” Hawkins snapped.
“Great. Could use some help here.”
Coming around, Hawkins did a quick sweep of the numbers Dev was holding at bay. His strength was fading and the wind was losing power, the rats crawling closer and closer. They gnashed long teeth, driven by the alterations of the earth sorcerer.
“What do you need?” Hawkins changed clips by feel alone, stuffing the empty one in a pocket.
“A moment to switch tricks.” Slowly, Dev crouched again, keeping the dying wind on the animals.
“Right. A moment’s all I can give you, and probably not even that.”
“Whatever you can get me.” Dev took a deep breath, the pain in his head bringing tears to his eyes. “Right, again, on my word.”
Hawkins took a shooter’s stance, gun angled toward the floor.
“Now!”
Dev cut off the wind and slapped his hands to the floor. Hawkins began firing. A couple of rats went snapping away with the shots, but most were clear and scrambled forward, their claws seeking traction on the smooth floor.
“Nitrogen kuvuta katika.” Condensed nitrogen coated the floor. It spread with Dev’s intent, flooding out from his hands across the corridor and up the walls. The forerunner rats skidded through it, their paws freezing on contact. Unsatisfied with that, Dev added, “Kushinikiza nje!”
The freezing trick lashed upward and wrapped around every object a foot off the ground.
Rat bodies shattered in crystalline sprays of black, brown and red.
A couple at the rear managed to avoid the trap, skittering at the edges of the ice, screeching in frustrated madness. Hawkins picked them off in two easy shots.
In the echoing silence, Dev realised how much the tricks had taken out of him. He slumped to the floor, breathing hard. Hawkins hit the wall, gun dangling from his hand, eyes closed as he clutched at his head with the other.
“Let’s not do that again for a while,” he muttered.
“Ever,” Dev corrected.
Surprisingly, Hawkins chuckled. There was still a hint of mania in it, but it was, at least, not a panicking shout.
Not really in the mood for laughing, Dev concentrated on catching his breath.
Slowly, he began to hear the frantic scrabbles still coming from inside the storage unit. A shudder went down his spine. Hawkins must have heard it too, because his laughter died away.
“God,” he hissed a moment later. “I hate rats.”
“I got the impression you did. I’m none too fond of them, either.”
“No, you don’t get it. I hate rats. Like, pathologically.” He stuffed the gun in the back of his pants. “It’s called murophobia. I was diagnosed in prison.”
That got Dev’s attention. So, he did have a history with the law.
“Went in for a ten month stint,” he said softly. “About two months into it, there was this plague of rats come through. No matter what they did, they couldn’t keep them out. Spent two weeks on the lookout for the fuckers. I barely slept. Those who did would wake up in the middle of the night with two or three of them in bed with them. They’d chew on the sheets, the mattress, toes, fingers. I lost it so many times they transferred me to maximum security until it was over. Weren’t as many rats there. I put up with the murderers and the rapists because I could handle them better than the rats.”
“Shit.” It took a lot to get Dev to cuss.
“Yeah, it wasn’t pleasant. So, that’s me and rats.”
Dev hauled his ass off the floor. “Okay. All those girly screams are excused.”
Hawkins flashed a startled look at him, then scowled. “They weren’t girly.”
“You admit you were screaming then.”
“Of course. Rats!” He looked at the rattling roller-door worriedly. “Do you think they’ll be contained in there?”
“Long enough for them to die, I think.” Dev explained about the fault in the spell used on them.
Shoulders shivering, Hawkins muttered, “If it weren’t rats, I’d almost feel sorry for them.”
Dev nodded along for appearance’s sake. What Hawkins didn’t understand was for a sorcerer to make that sort of mistake, then things weren’t just bad.
They were rapidly heading toward catastrophic and there was nothing Dev could do about it until he found the rogue sorcerer and put him down.
Chapter 21
“You need another new shirt,” I said to Dev as we hobbled back to the car.
The sorcerer looked about as bushed as I felt. He’d flung around so much power in there my skin still felt as if it had been rubbed all over with a cheese grater. His shirt, what was left of it, was soaked with sweat, his hair drying in finger-combed waves.
“I need a new brain,” he returned dryly. “Or at the very least, some more ibuprofen.”
“And some antiseptic cream on those scratches. Who knows what sort of diseases those things were carrying.”
Dev winced. “Yeah.” Then he stopped in his tracks, head snapping around sharply.
I felt it a moment later.
The slow prickle of sorcery. It wasn’t Dev. His hands weren’t glowing and he hadn’t said anything. And the expression on his face was stony.
“Your sorcerer?” I asked, reaching for the gun again.
“Yes,” he hissed. “Close.”
I turned slowly, Beretta Cougar held at my side, ready but not immediately obvious. We were on the street, half way across to the Monster Mobile. It wasn’t that late in the day but there was no traffic and still quite a few cars parked on the side of the road. A few people were leaving the businesses around the storage units, but no one looked particularly suspicious. We, however, were getting a few odd looks.
“What’s he doing?”
Dev twisted around, searching frantically. He had his hands up, ready, though what he could do looking as exhausted as he did, I had no idea. I’d depleted my stores of energy on those telekinetic blasts, with an equivalent physical drag on my muscles as if I’d hurled the rats—shudder—with my hands and arms. It was the gun or nothing at this point.
“Watching, I think.”
I nodded. “Come to gloat, or see the damage.”
There was a sudden spike in the acidic tingle on my skin. Dev spun and pointed.
“There!”
I followed his line of sight, finding a tall, skinny figure hurrying away from us. He wore a dark coloured hoodie, head covered, hands tucked into the pockets of a pair of loose pants. A shapeless body rapidly disappearing.
Without a word, we both gave chase.
The psycho sorcerer didn’t even look around. Just sprang into a sprint and raced away.
Dev opened up his throttle and took off, long legs eating up the ground.
There was no way I was going to keep up, not feeling like I’d already run a marathon in cement shoes. So I turned and hurried back to the car. I must have broken at least two time records on getting the Incredible Bulk going and heading after the fleeing sorcerers. I definitely broke the front left headlight on the back of a truck getting it out of the park. Oops.
Dev was disappearing around a corner by the time I caught sight of him again. I fol
lowed, grinding the 4WD through its gears like it was a V8 Supercar at Bathurst.
One of the reasons I resent having to drive Roberts’ car, apart from the fact it’s a stupid size for driving in the city, is that it’s manual and it has a clutch that’s as heavy as a sandbag. I have an artificial left knee. I don’t like clutches. I swore and cursed my way through the corner, the engine grating and screaming in quick, not-at-all-healthy gear changes. And the fucker cornered like an elephant on crutches.
Thankfully, the light was actually red, so there wasn’t anyone else currently going through the intersection. There was, however, a possible flash of a red-light camera. Great. Roberts was going to kill me.
Still, I passed Dev and roared after the hooded figure. The bastard cut across the road and ducked around another corner. I followed, nearly tipping the car up on to two wheels. Did stall the 4WD.
“Fuck!” I turned the key, clutch depressed with every ounce of strength I had. My leg ached, fingers of dull pain creeping up my thigh.
Dev came around the corner as I got the engine turned over. He jumped up onto the running board just as I took off again. Ahead, the sorcerer looked over his shoulder quickly, then faced forward again and really took off this time.
“What the fuck?” I demanded of the world in general. No one ran that fast. Absolutely no one!
The passenger door ripped open and Dev scrambled in, just as the sorcerer found another corner and took it.
Curses! It was like this guy knew all my weaknesses. Rats and hauling this lump of a car around corners at speed.
I hit the corner so hard it rocked Dev across the car and into my shoulder. The door he hadn’t yet shut slammed closed with a resounding bang.
“What the fuck is that?” I waved at the rapidly vanishing sorcerer.
“Upgrades,” Dev panted. “Earth sorcerers like to fiddle with their bodies. Faster, stronger, super hearing, everything you can imagine.”
“And you? Is that why you’re so fast?” I tromped on the brakes and took the next corner at less terrorising speeds.
“Nope. Four years track and field. Got a scholarship on it. Watch it!”
I floored it, charging through the next intersection just as the light turned red.
You know, if I’d had my car, we probably would have made it.
A bus clipped the back end of the Monster Mobile and gave us a mighty shove across the road. The car stalled again and the bus came to a stuttering stop. I noted that it was out of service, so thankfully no passengers, just a very irate driver screaming at me through his window. I had my window up, too, and didn’t hear a word.
I gave him a big smile and a wave, got the car going—again!—and tore out of there. Well, chugged out of there. Fucking diesel engines.
“We’ve lost him,” Dev said, defeated.
“You never know,” I said brightly. “He might be waiting for us around the next corner.”
Around the next corner, I decided I’d go back to Caroline and ask her to check for precognition.
The disguised sorcerer waited for us. Standing in the middle of the road, hood pulled all the way forward, hands tucked into pockets. Close enough that if I’d been in my car, and if he hadn’t been supped up, it would have been a real nail biter seeing who would win in a game of chicken. As it was, it was no competition.
Gave it a red hot go, though.
Dev braced his feet and got his hands up in preparation for either a trick or impact, wasn’t sure. I just concentrated on getting clutch and gears working in sequential order while stamping on the accelerator so hard the floor creaked.
Rubber burned, tyres squealed, the engine roared and, then, between second and third, my hand spasmed and slid off the gear stick. The car went into neutral as I automatically put my foot back on the accelerator. The engine whined but we got absolutely fucking nowhere fast.
I reached for the gear stick again and missed it, my fingers glancing off the plastic and ramming into the centre console. My left leg, depressing the clutch for another go, locked up. Then my vision went black.
A second later, light came back into my world. By the time I’d focused my eyes, the road ahead of us was empty of super-powered psychos. The 4WD was coasting along at a leisurely pace. A few cars passed us, one honking at the inconvenience of having to steer around the listing Titanic in its path.
“What happened?” Dev asked.
“Don’t know.” I shook my hand, realising it had gone numb. I rubbed my left leg with my right hand and the muscles unclamped almost immediately. “Maybe I overworked my telekinesis and this is some sort of backlash.” I did feel like I’d won a game of holo-chess against a wookie.
“Possibly. Everyone’s different.” He was staring through the windshield as if he could divine the sorcerer’s plan in the glass. “It doesn’t matter. We weren’t goin’ to catch him that way, regardless.”
Feeling was returning to my hand in sharp flashes. “How can we catch him?”
“Corner him, preferably somewhere with little or no biological matter for him to manipulate.”
“Cause there’s an abundance of those places in the city.” Sirens began in the distance. “Shit. We have to get out of here.”
“Need me to drive?”
I seriously considered it. If I was going to have any more… episodes, then it might be best. Then I thought if we did get pulled over, it would probably be better if I was behind the wheel.
“I’ll be fine,” I said, curling sparking fingers around the gear stick. “If it gets bad, I’ll let you know.”
Dev frowned, but nodded.
“Besides, I’d only have to keep reminding you which side of the road to drive on.”
He smirked. “Because you’re in the correct lane right now.”
We were, in fact, in both lanes, technically.
“I’m half right, at least.”
With studious concentration, I got us back underway. My hand slowly went back to normal and my leg only carried on with the usual reconstructed-knee complaints.
“Where to now?” Dev asked.
“Back to Erin. It’s early, but you need to get cleaned up and she has a damn fine scotch in the office.”
“For my cuts?”
“For my nerves.” I shuddered. “Rats.”
We hauled the first aid kit up from the car to Erin’s office. She greeted us with a wide-eyed expression of worry mixed with surprise, that quickly faded to one of resignation.
“What happened?”
I swear, those words were becoming imprinted on my ear canals.
Leaving the explanation to Dev, I cleaned his rat scratches—the little fuckers—and handed over another of the ‘5 Seeds’ t-shirts. He put it on with a weary sigh then went to the toilets down the hallway to wash up.
“You okay?” Erin asked me when we were alone.
“I’m fine.”
She peered in my eyes intently. I looked away before her aura could reach out to me. After everything that had happened with Amaya and Asmodeus, I’d decided that indulging in Erin’s aura wasn’t exactly healthy. I don’t know what it was like for her, but for me, it was very intimate. Almost physical when I really let myself taste her, like the relief I used to get from whatever opiate-derivative I could get into my body. And that wasn’t a good habit to get into again.
Of course, Erin took it the other way entirely.
“Don’t lie to me, Matt. Have you ever had something like that happen before?”
“No, but in the past, you may have noticed that I pretty much pass out after blasting something with my telekinesis.”
“Then why didn’t you this time?”
I wiped my hands over with an antiseptic cloth. “I’ve been practising with it. I don’t have to unleash the whole lot at once anymore.”
She eyed me sceptically. “I guess that’s a good thing. Do you honestly think the thing with your hand and leg was just a result of using up all your energy?”
“It seems logic
al. I’ll talk to Caroline, I suppose.”
“Now?”
“Later.”
Erin was shaking her head at me when Dev came back in. He looked a lot better than he had, face clean, hair slicked back with water.
“And you?” Erin demanded of him. “Are you okay or are you going to fob me off like this idiot?”
Dev looked between us, then graced Erin with a charming smile. “If you wanna play nurse, darlin’, I’ve got a fever.”
Her eyes narrowed but her lips twitched, as if fighting off a smile.
Seriously! What was it with that accent? It definitely got stronger around women, and those women, even a tough, no-nonsense, practical as hell PI like Erin, got all gooey.
“Right, I’m not needed here,” I muttered and headed for the door. “I’m going home to collect Merce. Let me know how it goes with Kermit.”
“Call me if you find anything,” Erin called after me.
I waved acknowledgement and left.
No. I wasn’t jealous.
Shut up.
Chapter 22
Contrary to popular opinion I made it home without any more mishaps, parked the slightly battered Monster Mobile in the garage and checked out the damage. Yeah, I was going to have to grovel pretty hard to get back into Roberts’ good books on this one. The front left headlight was toast and the back right corner was crumpled and smashed, those lights left somewhere back in Coorparoo. Thanks to getting the Monaro into a few scrapes over the years, I did know a pretty good and reasonably priced panel-beater. I sighed and went into the house. At least I knew where the money from Sol Investigations was going.
It wasn’t quite sundown yet so I went for a shower before waking up the vampire. Under the hot, hard spray, I clenched and unclenched my left hand. Ever since the accident that smashed my knee, I’ve had to learn I couldn’t always rely on my body. It was just flesh and bone, relatively easily damaged and sometimes, despite everyone’s best efforts, it doesn’t recover fully. I did what I could to mitigate the deficiencies by keeping fit and eating right (well, mostly), but when it’s a hunk of metal in your leg, not bone and cartilage, nothing’s going to be 100% ever again.
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