by Ben Zackheim
“Yeah, Lins,” Fox said.
“What are Lins?” Rebel asked.
“A Chinese clan of Blues,” I said. “They like to tear out the heart of their prey, through its throat.”
“Oh yeah,” Rebel said, nodding her head. “I saw them trying that on you, Ali.”
“Alistair,” Fox corrected.
Rebel wiped some gunk off of her forearm. It landed on the floor with a wet smack. “Why did they attack us?”
Fox and I shared a glance. His expression said what I was thinking.
“It means the vamps know we’re in L.A,” Fox said. “I was afraid of this. They’re in our hotel rooms right now, looking for the sword.
I chuckled.
“You find that amusing?” Fox asked.
“The relic’s not in the hotel,” I said. “It’s in my vault.”
“It doesn’t matter, Arkwright. If they catch a scent they could follow it to you. Like I told you, you cannot open that portal until we reach Tibet. If you do they’ll find you. Do you understand?”
I waved him off. I didn’t have the energy to deal with a vampire’s hissy fit. Not after burning 4500 calories on killing about a dozen of his kind. “Yeah, fine. Just stop talking at me.”
Cassidy and Rose both stirred and opened their eyes at the same time. They glanced around, looked at each other and laughed. No idea why. Fucking twins.
Sirens blared in the distance.
I lifted Rose out of her seat. “Come on. We need to get out of here before the cops arrive.”
“Parking lot,” Fox said.
“We have to get our stuff,” Rebel said, sternly.
“There’s no time!”
“We have our gear in…”
“Leave it,” Fox said. “We can get supplies when we arrive in Hong Kong.”
Rebel waited for my decision.
“Fox, get Cassidy,” I said. Fox scooped the kid up and threw him over his shoulder.
“Hey! I can walk!” Cassidy protested. Fox didn’t listen.
We ran past some hotel employees who struggled between deciding to help us, or hold us for the police. The gore we wore all over us made them decide on just backing off.
We ran through the parking lot entrance and toward the rear exit. A pair of Ferraris were parked next to each other, one cherry red and one lime green. I whistled. Even I had to be impressed and I’d driven everything. The new Ferrari 812 Superfast was just stunning. Top speed of 211 miles per hour stunning.
Fox threw me a set of keys. “You drive,” he said. “I don’t know how to.”
“How did you get these cars?” I asked.
“You’re not the only one who comes prepared, Arkwright.” He threw the other set of keys to Rebel. “You take the kids. Follow the directions on the GPD…”
“The GPS, old man,” Rebel corrected.
“Whatever. Follow it to the pier.”
“Get in,” Rebel ordered the twins.
“Yeah? Cool!” Cassidy yelled, his voice echoing in the lot. “Hey! There’s only one passenger seat.”
“Squeeze,” Rebel muttered. “You two were in tighter quarters for nine months.”
The handling on the Ferrari 812 was astonishing. I let myself have a daydream that I’d trade in my Bugatti for a couple of them. If I made it through this mission in driving condition.
My daydream didn’t last long.
I turned out of the garage in the red machine. Rebel was on my tail in the green one.
Three black pickups roared their engines and surged up behind Rebel’s rear bumper.
Another three black pickups screeched to a stop in front of my front bumper.
Six missile launchers sat on the shoulders of six Lins, aimed right at our heads.
“No more hand-to-hand combat for them, I guess,” I said to Fox.
Chapter 20
I rolled down my window and showed the assholes my empty hands.
“The sword!” one of them shouted at us.
I poked my head out, and smiled. “Hey, you guys can speak! Yeah, we have it. I wouldn’t fire that thing or it goes bye-bye.”
Now they had a dilemma. Which car had the sword? They glanced toward the black pickup right in front of us. I saw the silhouette of someone hold up a hand and make some gestures. The boss, no doubt.
The police sirens were right around the corner now. These guys had a few seconds to make up their minds.
Two heavily-armed Lins hopped off the back of their trucks. One walked to our car and stood at Fox’s door. Another one went to Rebel’s car and tapped his gun metal on Cassidy and Rose’s door. Each car was getting its very own Blue.
“Good luck,” Fox said, getting out of the car.
“Any tips?” I asked.
“Don’t be yourself.”
Fox slid out of the seat, and the Lin slipped in.
I watched Fox get into one of the black trucks.
“Follow them,” the Lin mumbled. I watched Cassidy and Rose get pulled into the cabin of one of the other trucks.
None of the trucks had license plates. I’d have to try to keep track of which vehicle was which.
Our caravan took a right turn onto Lincoln Boulevard. Sure, I could have caused a scene. We were rich in nearby police cars. But I didn’t want any of the officers to get hurt. I’d make my move when there was the least amount of danger to the good people of L.A.
So there we were. A posse of black pickups leading us to the gallows.
“Anyone secretly psychic?” I called out in my brain. I really threw it out there, too. I even craned my head forward in the hopes that that would toss the request with more force.
Hey, why not try? You never know. No one answered, of course. My weird head movements made the Lin glower at me.
“Eyes forward,” he said. He had a gun trained on me. Maybe a new Nighthawk North Sky Hawk Revolver? Pretty distinctive muzzle. Nice. I’d enjoy using it against him. The lines were starting to form in my mind’s eye. I could see how things would come together. I knew L.A. Well. Especially the surrounding neighborhood. Skyler lived in a house in the hills where we’d trained a few years prior.
No matter what route we took from there, I had a plan.
“This whole blue look you’ve got going is cool,” I said. “Do you turn when you’re a kid or does it just happen slowly when you eat, you know, whatever comes along?”
He didn’t say anything.
“You guys are good fighters, too,” I continued. “I took on a few of you back there. They’re no longer with us, but… Hey, did you train in Krav Maga. Great martial art. Take no prisoners. For some reason really hot girls love it. You ever notice that?”
Silence.
“Maybe you and I can be buds, Blue,” I said. Let’s take Excalibur and see what kind of mischief we could get into.”
He looked at me with his best shut-the-fuck-up look.
I nodded. “Okay. Okay. I see you didn’t go to etiquette school. Too bad. I made Cassidy and Rose spend some time learning about courtesy and…”
“You talk a lot,” he said, barely louder than a whistle.
“And you don’t. Sounds to me like the beginning of a beautiful friendship!”
“Shut up.”
“I could be wrong.”
The lead truck was coming to a freeway entrance.
Please go straight, I pleaded with the Fates.
They went straight. Perfect. We were going to take the Olympic Boulevard on-ramp. It had a sizable median. If I could manage to use the Ferrari’s torque to squeeze past the black beasts I’d have a lot of options to make my own express lane.
The trucks had done a masterful job of sticking to their pattern. Two trucks on every side — a tight circle all the way around our two Ferraris.
Still, I was better. I’d been driving fast cars all my life. I could figure any vehicle out within minutes. Except the Nissan GT-R, otherwise known as Godzilla, because that thing is just crazy.
We entered the on-ramp
at 40 mph. I slammed the brakes and kept control of the car. My Lin passenger slammed his forehead into the dashboard. His head bounced back off of the headrest and I elbowed his nose.
I snagged his Nighthawk pistol.
He wrapped his hands around my neck. I lost control of the car. The idiot was willing to take us both over the edge of the freeway.
Okay. If he wanted to play hardball.
I slammed the pistol butt into his sharp teeth, reached over him, popped the door open, and kicked him out of the car.
All while keeping control of a Ferrari. Not bad.
“Seat belt!” I yelled at his tumbling body. Being immortal makes you stupid.
I accelerated and the trucks up ahead tightened formation. They thought they were ready for me.
I slammed the brakes again and steered left toward the wide median. The truck behind me rear-ended me. My airbag popped out and smacked me good but I kept control and the Ferrari dropped onto the green grass.
I stomped on the gas like it was a black widow. But so did one of the trucks behind me. He pulled up to my right. Now it was just a question of whether or not I could scrape past him. He veered into me a couple of times. The side airbags activated this time and blocked my view. The car jerked around like a carnival ride but when I hit the edge of the median and dropped onto the freeway, I knew I’d done it.
I slammed the brakes. One 180 later and I was facing oncoming traffic. Most cars slowed down and pulled aside. They’d seen all of this before. L.A. drivers know to just wait it out on the sidelines. To them, this was entertainment. I was happy to oblige.
I tore down the emergency lane of Interstate 10.
I had to get to Skyler’s house.
Yeah, I hated him. But I needed him.
Chapter 21
I hoped Rebel had her situation under control.
I tried to not feel guilty. I’d left her and the twins to fend for themselves. But there was nothing to gain by hashing it out. I had to focus on getting myself to safety first, and then I’d find a way to save them.
My cell rang.
“You son of a bitch!” Rebel yelled at me.
“Hi Rebel…”
“Don’t you Hi-Rebel me. I just barely got away from those fucker-suckers. No thanks to you.”
“I tried to sow chaos and discord! You know. Rule 23.”
“I’ll Rule 23 crayons up your ass, Kane!”
“That doesn’t actually make any sense.”
“It’ll make sense when I’m ruling 23 crayons up your ass!”
“Did you get the twins? Fox?”
“No I didn’t get the twins or Fox!”
“You abandoned them?”
I could feel the lava pouring from her ears from all the way down Interstate 10.
“I’m going to Skyler’s house,” I said before she exploded. “Meet me there.” Rebel knew this area well. The old man had shown her off during training, too.
I waited for a response, wondering if I’d pushed one too many of her buttons.
She hung up on me.
23 crayons danced in my head.
❖
I pulled up to Skyler’s intercom at the estate iron gate.
I pressed the button and tapped my fingers on the steering wheel to the beat of my internal soundtrack, which was ‘Helier Skelter’ at the moment for some reason. I glanced over at the passenger’s seat while I waited. Something small and metal flashed on the black leather, sparkling in the security lights.
Either the Lin or Fox had dropped something.
“What do you want?” Skyler’s voice slithered from the intercom. A red light blinked on above the speaker, like a red eye judging me for worthiness.
I nodded. “Skyler.”
“What?”
“It’s me.” I nodded at the camera that was, no doubt, watching me.
I rode out the long pause, as usual. Skyler lived his long pauses. “Come up.”
He wasn’t being chatty. That was another trait of his when he was determined to annoy me. My best guess was that he’d heard from someone at Spirit that I was on a job. Rebel and I were given a wide berth to choose how we handled our job, but they liked us to check in before we traveled.
And what Spirit knew, Skyler knew.
I pulled the car up to a Mission Revival-style mansion. Beautiful place. The pool’s deep-end went 100 feet down. It was one of the places I used to hide from Skyler’s hounding near the end of my training. I’d sink to the bottom and revel in the peace and quiet.
I was about to exit the car when I took a second look at the thing on the seat. It was a Wad, which is a kind of magic coin Skyler liked to craft. His crest, a pair of bull horns bound at their base by a chain, was etched into it just like all of his Wads. He was the only wizard who could craft them anymore. Lost art, I guess. Most new Spirit recruits kept them around until they were in deadly danger. You had to be careful with Wads, though. They can work against you if you’re not careful. A friend of mine used his while running away from a werewolf. It opened a portal to who-knows-where. He stumbled through it and we still haven’t found him. The werewolf got away.
The problem here, as my stomach sank into my knees, was that Skyler only gave it to his own students.
If the Wad belonged to the Link, did that mean my old teacher was instructing Lins? Had he turned on us?
As if in answer to my questions, a dozen Lins streamed out of Skyler’s house.
They lit up the night with some big-ass guns.
I slammed on the gas and drifted around the circle. I managed to right the Ferrari just in time to almost crash into Rebel’s Ferrari coming the other direction.
As we passed each other, we made eye contact and I pointed toward the street while mouthing, “Get the fuck out.” She slammed on the brakes and twirled until she faced the same direction I faced.
Like an amateur I shot from the driveway and onto Outpost Drive without looking for traffic first.
Being sideswiped was a new experience. It hurt. A lot. I felt like a puppet pinned to my seat as the car twirled like a top. It came to a sudden stop and faced the car that had hit me.
The cracked windshield was tough to see through. It was a web of shattered white.
I broke through my door’s window with the butt of my pistol.
A large black truck with its headlights blown out revved its engine in my face.
I aimed at the center of the glare, and looked for movement.
Chapter 22
My pounding head made it tough to aim.
I had to put the pain aside long enough to give the Lins my best fight.
“Kane!” Cassidy yelled from somewhere in front of me.
The headlight beam in my face flicked off and Fox got out of the black truck’s driver’s seat. Cassidy slammed the passenger’s door shut and ran to me.
Rebel, meanwhile, slammed on her brakes and missed my rear bumper by a few inches.
“Where’s Rose?” she called out from her open window. Apparently, she’d missed out on the whole truck-ramming-into-Kane thing. I was sure that her concern for me was imminent. I tried to open my door but it was stuck.
“She’s been taken,” Fox said.
I heard the car engines rev at the top of Skyler’s driveway. We were about to get some company.
“She’ll be fine,” Cassidy said, not betraying a bit of worry. I knew he was concerned, though. That’s just how the twins rolled. No real emotion on the outside and a storm of it on the inside. It made them predictable 90% of the time and dangerously unpredictable the rest of the time, which I think is 10%, but math has never been my strong suit.
Rebel got out of her car and walked right up to the vampire. “Tell us everything, bloodballs!” Cassidy, Fox and I all made the same cringe-face. Bloodballs? Really?
“Hey guys, it’s not a good time for a committee meeting,” I yelled from my crunched metal coffin.
Fox got in Rebel’s face. “I took out the two Lins in the truck cabin
and grabbed the steering wheel. I ran the other truck off the road.”
Cassidy heaved his chest out, and smiled. “The truck with me and Rose in it. It was badass.” He loved it when he got to see action. “I managed to slip out and get into the vampire’s truck.”
Rebel crossed her arms. “What about your sister?”
“She was out cold. One of the blue guys woke up and took a few shots at me. I barely escaped, right creepy guy?”
Fox nodded, clearly annoyed at the barrage of nicknames. “But they got away with Rose.”
“I’m fine in here,” I yelled from the crushed car. “Don’t worry about me!”
No one even glanced my way.
Rebel walked up to Fox and crossed her arms. “Which way did they go?”
“Uh, guys?” Cassidy broke in. His wide eyes were looking at something on the top of the hill. I rammed the door with my shoulder but it didn’t budge.
Fox threw his arms in the air, and leaned down to put his face in Rebel’s. “I don’t know! We had to get out of there. I didn’t…”
“Which way?” Rebel yelled. She positioned a long fingernail right under his nose. It may have actually stuck just a little bit into the tip of it, but I couldn’t see well through my swelling eye.
“Guys,” I hollered, as loud as possible. I couldn’t quite shout with my windpipe jammed into the airbag. Contrary to popular opinion, those things are not soft. “I really don’t think that now’s the time to…”
Cassidy pushed his way in between Rebel and Fox. “Fuck Fangs and Nail Lady,” Cassidy pleaded. “There are bad people coming down the hill in loud cars.”
I leaned hard to the left and managed to squeeze my head through the broken window. “Will someone please help me out of here?”
Rebel stood on her toes and yelled at the vampire. “If anything has happened to her, I’m putting it on you, Fox!”
“Me? It’s not my fault!”
“This whole mess is your fault! I thought we were going to do this all stealth-like!”
“Hey, some help here, please?” I yelled. “The Blues are coming,” I repeated to myself more than to anyone else since no one else was listening to me.