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Louis-Cesare laughed, and even Ranbir’s lip twitched.
Tomas, luckily, took a moment to parse that, and as soon as the last rider arced overhead, we darted into a crumbling edifice.
We’d been trying to stay on the streets, because the structural soundness of a lot of the buildings was in question. Half of the obstructions were composed of the remains of fallen houses and shops, and even some of the ones still standing weren’t looking like they’d be doing it much longer. Like this one, in fact.
But there wasn’t a lot of choice, so we got busy wading through the almost knee-high soot in a lobby, then pelted down a smoke damaged corridor and through a door at the end that let out onto a narrow alley.
Only to find that our pursuers had flanked us.
Ev and Jason let off a barrage that would have discouraged a platoon, strafing them with suppressing fire, only it didn’t suppress much. Bullets from my .44 Magnum likewise rattled off the samurai’s armor, barely even leaving dents in the surface. And when I threw an incendiary, it had no effect at all.
Like the birds, they looked like paper but acted like high grade steel.
The kind that ricocheted weapons’ fire.
“Don’t shoot inside!” I yelled, as more bogies showed up behind us and we ducked into a building across the alley. But either nobody could hear me over the ringing in our ears, or the cluster of animated horrors had freaked them out. Because bullets were suddenly flying everywhere, with Ev and Jason letting loose with a weapon in each hand.
Sarah was yelling and crying and covering her ears, because it was loud enough to hurt. Louis-Cesare got in front of me and her, backing us toward the door to the next room, and taking a couple of bullets in the process. And then Sarah and I abruptly found ourselves standing in what looked like a nursery school.
I glanced back through the door to see that the two vamps had pulled swords, meaning that the sounds of steel on steel had probably just been added to the cacophony of engines revving, people yelling, and a sustained barrage, but I couldn’t tell. My ears were temporarily out of commission, giving me back only ringing white noise.
Which was why I had nothing to distract me from our newest problem.
Sarah looked at me, her eyes huge, and yeah. Wasn’t sure how bad this was gonna be, either. Because a bunch of faded, painted pandas on the walls had just brightened and turned their huge, fuzzy heads toward us.
They looked like a cutesy kid’s mural, with a forest of eucalyptus trees in the background, some improbably large flowers, and some happy insect friends.
They weren’t.
“No weapons,” I mouthed, and I guessed she read lips, because she nodded slightly, and slipped her .357 back into its holster.
Bear #1 regarded me curiously, with a slightly tilted head. He was still chewing on some leaves, which I took to be a good sign. But the black eyes were shiny and suspicious as he checked me over.
“Get behind me,” I told Sarah, because she was bristling with weapons and we were playing nice here. I had the arsenal with me, so I hadn’t bothered with anything but the stuff concealed by my jacket and in the outer pockets of the bag. The jacket was pretty ripped up, thanks to the Stymphalian birds out there, but it covered the hardware.
Hers didn’t.
She got behind me.
“Okay,” I said, turning my face so that she could see my lips move. “These things are popular protection wards. I saw some in a couple shops when I was here before. Play nice with them; they play nice with you.”
“What happens if we don’t play nice?”
she screamed, because she couldn’t hear shit right now.
It was right in my ear, and I guessed I’d had some hearing left, after all. But probably not now. I winced, and then immediately smiled again, because the eucalyptus chewing had just stopped.
“We get our asses kicked,” I said. And since these things, like every-fucking-thing else in the dead zones, had been bathing in some high-quality magic for a while now, said ass kicking was likely to be epic.
“Okay,” she yelled. “What’s the plan?”
“We tell the guys. If they come in nice and easy, we can probably just walk on through. If not—”
And, of course, it was ‘if not’, because two first-level masters don’t take long to deal with a room full of enemies. The next moment, our little group of Rambos came rushing in, guns and swords in hand. And immediately spotted the bright-eyed pandas on the wall.
“No!” Sarah and I yelled. “Don’t—”
They did. Ev and Jason let loose and—yep. I hate being right, I thought as the walls went 3-D and in a hurry.
