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I looked around, dizzy and disoriented, trying to figure out the direction. But it was a little hard when all I could see was a slurry of bricks and cars and impossible horrors all sliding together in a gut-wrenching stream of what-the-hell. And then whoever-it-was did it again.
From inside my head.
“Shut up!” I yelled, smacking my blistered hand down on the floor, hoping the pain would help clear my messed-up brain. It didn’t, but something else happened, although I wasn’t sure it was an improvement.
Because suddenly I was hearing voices.
“Wha—who? Is someone there? Who is that? Who is THAT?”
“Stop. Screaming,” I grated out, because the voice had almost been as loud as the initial shriek.
“Whoisthatyoutellmerightnow!”
“Augggh!” I replied, because a pinkish blur had taken that moment to come soaring at me through the air.
I managed to put a bullet in it, and it flew back, squelching against something out of sight. Which didn’t make me feel much better, because the other things had figured out that they could jump, too—I guess by muscle contraction, although I really wasn’t into analyzing it right then. I was into not letting them get on me, which meant shooting them out of the air while scooting backward through a room that was still fun-housing around me.
And while a hysterical voice demanded that I save its ass.
“Would you shut up until I save mine?” I hissed, and it abruptly cut off.
With the reduction in sound came an easing of the carnival ride in my brain, allowing me to scramble behind a concrete barrier. I crouched there, eyeing the approaching hoard of vamp parts in disbelief and trying to slam home a new clip. It was the second of only two I’d had in my emergency kit, because I don’t use a .45 that much.
Or at all, if I couldn’t get this one in, which was taking forever because of the blisters.
And maybe because a random bit of Slava had just leapt off the floor and smacked against the barrier. And then another and another, splattering the other side like acid freaking rain. Until one missed, flying over my head and taking out the windshield on a BMW.
I stared at the cracks spidering across the supposedly shatterproof glass. And decided I could really live without finding out what that felt like. I slammed the clip home and moved.
Tap, tap, tap.
I swear, it felt exactly like a finger hitting the inside of my skull. I had a sudden vivid image of that annoying paper clip guy that Microsoft created to torment people. It looks like you’re having a nervous breakdown. Would you like some help? I thought wildly, and flung myself behind a car.
“What? What did you say?” The voice was back.
I ignored it, being kind of busy not dying. It was like the damned things knew where I was. I was doing everything right—keeping low, using the cars as cover—but wherever I went, they took out windows, dented doors and sent the smell of molten rubber into the air when they smacked into tires.
It was like being in the world’s grossest shooting gallery.
It was also impossible.
&
nbsp; Leaving aside that no vampire could still be alive after that kind of damage, there was the fact that even magical creatures have physical rules. Whacked-out physical rules, but still. And without some kind of sensory organs, there was simply no way for them to—
Tap, tap, tap.
Is this thing on? I thought irrelevantly.
“Stop it! Stop it right now! Oh my God, this is typical. This is so— They finally send someone after me and she’s insane.”
“Only part of the time,” I said, because for some reason, talking to myself didn’t seem all that strange right now.
There was a sudden silence. And then the floodgates broke. “Dory? Dorina? Oh God, oh my God, is that you?”
“Yes, and I’m kind of busy—”
“Don’t give me that! You come get me, do you hear me? Youcomegetmerightnow—”
