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I bit my lip on a retort and instead twisted around to stare behind us. Apollo wasn’t there. He was right—in a world he controlled, there would be nowhere to hide. I might be able to stay ahead of him for a little while, but he’d find me eventually. I doubted I’d care very much at that point, after he finished destroying everything I loved.
“Turn around,” I told Pritkin.
“What?”
I grabbed the wheel and swerved. A war mage shot by us and out of the line, as we banked at an angle that almost had us both plummeting along with him. Pritkin cursed and wrestled the car back into the middle of the stream. “Don’t touch that! And why the hell do you want to go back?”
“Apollo isn’t following us. I’m not sure he realizes I have the ward. I never had a chance to tell him.”
“You want him to follow us?”
“Yes.”
I didn’t get a chance to explain. The wind pushed my hair out of my face, allowing me to see a cloud of pure energy barreling right for us. “I think he knows,” Pritkin said, swerving violently and sending us careening toward the outer edge of the line.
“Back! Back!” I screamed as my half of the car was pushed completely out of the line. I could see Pritkin silhouetted inside all that jumping energy, while on the other side of me the parking lot was racing up at us at breathtaking speed. “No, pull up, pull up!” I screeched as we headed straight for a group of t
ourists who had just come out of the casino doors.
“Would you make up your mind?” he demanded, fighting with the car. I just stared at the tourists, who were now pointing at us with awed expressions, watching them get nearer and nearer, and—Pritkin suddenly swerved upward, maybe two feet above their heads.
“Building!” I yelled as one of Dante’s towers loomed straight in front of us. Pritkin could sail right on through in the non-space of the line. But I was about to be vertical roadkill if he didn’t—
Pritkin swerved sharply and the building slid by, close enough that I could have reached out and touched it. A couple in bed stared out at us from a third-floor window, openmouthed, and then Pritkin jerked the wheel again. Suddenly I was back inside the line, lying against the seat, panting.
Apollo was right on our tail. The energy lines ran slower at the outer edges of the line, and we’d lost most of our lead. I reached over and jerked the steering wheel hard to the left. “Do not touch the wheel!” Pritkin snarled.
“We have to stay in the center, or he’ll catch us for sure!”
“And if you keep attempting to drive, we’re both going to be—” He stopped, staring behind us.
I twisted around, but other than an angry god, I didn’t see anything. “What now?”
“Rakshasas. They’re following us.”
“How many?”
“Many.”
I was thrown back against my seat as Pritkin floored it. “We need to get him as far away from populated regions as possible,” he told me. “Jonas can rally the Circle. However that creature got in, we can banish him again—”
“You told me that spell takes thousands of mages! There’s no time for that.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“I have an idea,” I hedged. I wasn’t taking any bets on how good it was. “Just get us some distance ahead.”
We left the city behind, speeding into an area of high rounded hills and smooth, empty valleys. The ley line twisted and turned among them, and sometimes through them, and that seemed to give Pritkin an idea. “Hold on,” he told me, and raced straight for the very top of the line.
We left the line, sailing into the vast and brilliant canopy above. So many stars, jeweled and burning bright. A meteor slid eastward. Beautiful, I thought dazedly, as a roar split the air behind us.
I turned in time to see the world go briefly monochrome in a tremendous flash of light, the hills jumping up at me against the terrible whiteness behind. Then we plunged back into the line, and a cloud of dirt and rubble incinerated all around us, throwing burning bits against the car’s shield. “What was that?”
“Slowed him down!” Pritkin said with a little of Marsden’s mania in his eyes. “He took off half the hill trying to follow us. But it wasn’t enough. We need bigger mountains!”
He jumped again just as the line curved around another hill. We went one way and Apollo went the other, taking out the hilltop along with him. But I didn’t care because the ground was racing up at us and there was no line to catch us and—
The line curved around the other side of the hill and caught us.
