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Pritkin practically dislocated my shoulder, not so much dragging as ripping me off the ground. But I didn’t complain. Because trees were erupting from the dirt on all sides of us now, like a maze of wooden spears flying upward into the otherworldly sky. They would have been hard enough to avoid on their own, but as they shot up, a dark rain of mud and burning leaves and clods of earth was pelting back down, on us and on the mass of now desperate-to-flee vampires.
They had lost their undead cool and were running in all directions, including into each other. If the scene had had a sound track, it would have been full of kazoos. Instead, it was full of creaking wood, cursing vamps, burning leaves, and—
And the sound of a colossal tree ripping through the ground, right beneath our feet, throwing us in different directions.
“Pritkin!” I screamed, even before I hit the ground on my back, a ground that was bucking and tearing like an earthquake had hit it, and throwing me around like a drop of oil on a hot griddle.
My ears rang over the mad thud of my pulse. The ground heaved again and again and debris pattered down onto my head and shoulders. Dust caught in my eyelashes, making it hard to see, and dirt clogged the back of my throat, making it almost impossible to breathe. And then an arm grabbed my waist, wrenching me back and up.
And suddenly, I was flying through the trees at an insane speed, but not on foot.
For a couple of extremely disorienting seconds, I didn’t know what was happening—until I looked down. And then I still didn’t. I saw a river of wood flowing underneath my butt, Pritkin’s legs gripping it on either side of mine, and their owner holding on for dear life—to a steadily expanding root that was shooting out tiny feelers to tickle my face.
“What—” I yelped, in disbelief, because I was not riding a giant root like a goddamned motorcycle.
Only I was.
Somehow I totally was. Pritkin had snagged one of the crazy feelers this place was putting out, using it as a fast track out of here. A little too fast, I thought frantically, as trees raced by on either side, the smaller ones being shoved up and thrown aside as our wild ride threaded madly in between, seeking God knew what. And threatening
to decapitate the two of us in the process.
“Duck!” Pritkin yelled; I don’t know why. Since he simultaneously shoved my head down to the wood between my legs, to avoid the wood slashing by over my head as we tore through a particularly dense area.
Straight at the huge old oak looming up ahead.
I stared at it, openmouthed and horror-struck, because I knew this tree. Everyone at Tony’s did. They called it the General. A leviathan of the forest, it had already been old when Washington and his mangy crew crossed the Delaware not far from here. It was ragged and timeworn now, with hoary old arms as thick as other trees’ trunks and wearing a coating of gray-green moss. But it was solid as a damned mountain and almost as big. If a tree could look crotchety, it managed it. It clearly was not going anywhere.
Which meant we had to.
I felt Pritkin’s arm tighten around me a fraction more, and then he tore us off the side and we were flying again. And this time without a safety net, if a massive, insane tree root can be called that. Only it was looking pretty good a second later, when we hit the ground without the benefit of Pritkin’s shields.
I guess he’d been through a little too much to manage them just now. But that was okay. That was fine. Since a couple of seconds later, the irresistible force met the unyielding object and a wooden firework exploded through the forest.
It would have exploded through us, too, but by then, Pritkin had managed to get up a shield. Sort of. It was thin and wobbly and looked about as substantial as a soap bubble, and was likely to be as long-lived. But it was really, really appreciated, especially when a leg-sized sliver of oak came hurtling through the air, straight at us.
And the shield didn’t break.
It did bend, though. Inward, to be precise, allowing me to watch as a column that wouldn’t take my eye out because it would just cave in my whole head came closer, closer, closer, its ungodly inertia fighting Pritkin’s faltering protection. Until I could barely see it anymore, because it was all of half an inch away from the end of my nose.
And then it fell over with a giant crash, smashing into the undergrowth hard enough to shake the ground beneath us. And to cover the sound of Pritkin’s shield giving up the ghost a second later. I doubted I’d have heard the tiny pop anyway, next to all of the other crashes and explosions and trunks cracking in half that was still going on. And my heart, which sounded louder than all of them put together.
For a long moment, I just lay there.
I wanted to check on Pritkin, who was being uncharacteristically quiet. I wanted to get up and run screaming in a direction, any direction, that meant getting the hell out of here. I wanted to check out my body for damage, which was kind of feeling like it might add up to a lot right now.
I wanted to do a lot of things, but I didn’t.
Because we were no longer alone.
Two more of the junky Tin Man clones crashed through the trees as I lay there, trembling and helpless. One’s glass bits were filled with evil, bubbling red, the other with an equally sinister green, and both were loaded down with more globules of the golden net spell. But before I had a chance to get worked up about it, not that I really felt able anymore, something else came through the trees.
Or, more accurately, someone.
Slashing through the undergrowth with a stick and a scowl was a long, horsey face under another floppy hat. The owner of the face stopped a yard off, taking in the burning forest, the flailing roots, the naked war mage and the screaming vamps. And me, sprawled over the partner I really hoped I hadn’t just killed. For a long time, he didn’t say anything. And then he sighed.
“Just like your mother,” he told me. “You really know how to make an entrance.”
Chapter Nine
