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“Shit,” Fred said faintly.
And then we both had to grab the dash when the SUV was battered by a billowing cloud of dust and debris. I tried to spot Pritkin in the chaos, but it was impossible. But at least it looked like the Corps had evacuated the diner before the explosion. Panicked people were scattering in all directions—including a blond racing just ahead of a line of cars parked along the street.
She was petite and busty, with short hair that was closer to brown than my strawberry blond. It also didn’t curl like mine, and we weren’t dressed the same, but I guess the resemblance was close enough. Because something was knocking cars out of line left and right behind her.
Yet, amazingly, no one seemed to have noticed. Amid the choking dust and the burning lot and the blaring car alarms and the screaming people, the blond’s predicament had attracted zero attention. And by the time it did, my doppelgänger was going to be toast.
I started working to get the stalled-out car started again.
“Did you ever see anything like that?” Fred demanded.
“Uh, maybe a few things.”
“Well, I haven’t. I mean, damn!” He stared at the lot, the fires reflecting in his wide gray eyes. “I guess a spell must have hit a gas main or something.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Maybe? What else could it have been?”
“We’re about to find out,” I told him, as the reluctant engine finally caught.
I hit the gas and we careened across the road, still listing a little, but moving. The girl ran straight under the car, so panicked that the sight of a levitating SUV didn’t even register. I flicked on the brights and the emergency lights and sat on the horn, staring around for some glimpse of what I was taunting. But all I saw was the carnage, not what was causing it.
An invisible fist caved in the side of a nearby delivery van, knocking it on its side and sending it skidding back a dozen yards. An old VW Beetle gave up the ghost in a fiery crash with a new Lincoln. And someone’s motorcycle took an Evel Knievel–type leap over the rest of the cars before flaming out against the side of a billboard, setting the whole thing ablaze.
And then nothing.
The metal massacre suddenly stopped, the invisible cause pausing as it assessed the oddity of a battered, airborne SUV lit up like a Christmas tree. And a blond behind the wheel who actually looked like she wanted to be caught.
I beeped the horn again, just in case it had somehow missed us, and Fred gripped my arm. “What are you doing?” he asked shrilly.
“Getting some attention.”
“Getting some—Why?”
“Because whatever’s out there went after the limo and then the diner and then the blond. It’s looking for me.”
“Well, of course it’s looking for you!” he said, shaking me. “That’s why we need to get out of here!”
“We’re about to,” I said, as something huge and dark forgot about the girl and shivered through the air toward us, visible in movement as it hadn’t been before.
I still couldn’t tell much about it, just a vague shadow that dimmed but didn’t obscure the city lights behind it. And I didn’t have time for a closer look. I mashed the gas pedal to the floor at the same time that something lashed out at us with the speed of a striking cobra.
It would have hit us full on, but we’d scooted forward enough that it only caught our rear end. But that was enough to send us spinning like a roulette wheel into the chain-link fence. We hit backward, bowing out the mesh, and the car tried hard to die on me. But I punched the gas and, with a sputter and a groan, it leapt forward, tearing across the lot and down the street like we’d been shot out of a gun.
I kept my foot against the floor, hard enough to feel the blood pounding in my leg, but something was wrong. The back of the car was dragging badly, pulling the nose so far up that I could barely see anything over the hood. And considering how close together buildings were in this part of town, that was a very bad thing.
“What’s going on?” I asked Fred, who was peering back through the seats with his mouth hanging open.
“Oh, shit.”
“Oh, shit what?”
“Oh, shit, we have passengers!”
I whipped my neck around, but there was nobody in the car but us. And all I saw outside was a lot of night—and a huge shadow that was eating up the air faster than we were. It wasn’t entirely dark, after all; there were flashes here and there, like glints of sunlight through
a storm, or a veil with rents in it that gave glimpses of the face underneath. But it didn’t look like Morrigan, or whatever had attacked me before. It was too big, for one thing, and the little I could see looked more like it was covered in scales than—
