Twice, I caught a glimpse of people I recognized. Avery on one screen, in San Francisco, and another man I thought might have been Colin somebody from London.
Part of me hoped that I’d see Esteban’s face pop up, that I could find out where Mira was, make sure my family was safe. It didn’t, and even when I went out to the Suburban to get Cole’s phone, I had no luck locating anyone. As far as I knew, Kansas City had dropped off the face of the planet.
I found Cameron’s phone number on Cole’s contact list, too (because that’s how anal my little brother is), but I got nowhere with it, either. Figured. The Goody Two-shoes actually turned his phone off in the hospital.
As more and more people checked in (And why didn’t I know about this? Were we all kept in the dark this way?), Viljo became more and more absorbed in his duties, alternating between his phone and a dozen different Webcam windows on his many screens.
About the time I heard Ivan’s booming voice come through Viljo’s cell phone, I ducked out of the room, taking a short walk through the trailer to stretch my stiff muscles. Twitching one of the heavy curtains open a bit, I realized that it was getting dark outside already. I’d blown the five-hour time limit I’d given Cole, and he was going to be fretting. I’d done all I could here. I needed to get back to the guys.
“Hey, Viljo? I’m gonna take off, okay? Come lock up behind me.”
The geek emerged from his fortress of nerditude, nodding his agreement. “Ivan says you are ‘to beink careful.’ ” He mimicked the accent almost perfectly, if not the deep gravelly voice, and I chuckled.
“I’ll do my best.” I picked up my holy-loaded paintball gun, then had second thoughts and handed it to Viljo. He gave me a questioning look. “Blessed ammo. Just… in case. I noticed you don’t have wards on your doors.”
He blinked at me in nerd horror. “Do you know what that kind of spell does to sensitive server equipment?”
“Vil, I just watched you whack one with a wrench.”
“It was a highly specialized wrench.”
I showed him how to take the safety off the marker, and gave him a quick how-to in case a ball broke in the barrel. “It won’t kill most things, but it’ll make them think twice. I’ll be back to get this later, so don’t break it.”
He snorted, obviously offended by my doubts.
“Hey, Vil? Who were all those people?”
His eyes narrowed behind his glasses. “What do you mean?”
“All those champions. That’s way more than ten or twelve of us.”
The geek frowned and shook his head. “You talk to Ivan about that. He has given instructions.”
I didn’t like that answer, but knowing Viljo’s rabid devotion to our Ukrainian leader, I didn’t think I’d get any more out of him.
It was dark by the time I got on the road. I’d forgotten how far into autumn we really were. Gone were the nine p.m. sunsets, the long summer days. Winter was knocking on the door, and I had to scrape a little frost off the windshield before I could get going. I was so not dressed for an early cold snap.
Getting out of Viljo’s place was easy. Remembering which godforsaken back road led toward civilization, not so much. Twice, I got turned around in the dark, and had to backtrack, using the distant lights of Manitou Springs and the looming presence of Pikes Peak to guide me. And trust me when I say that turning a Suburban around on a narrow gravel road is not easy.
All the while, Cole’s phone sat silently on the seat beside me. I tried to mentally will it to ring, to vibrate, something. Surely, they’d contacted Mira by now. Maybe I was just out of the service area, or Cole forgot his own number. (Hey, it happens. How often do you dial your own phone?) Whatever the excuse, I was a good three hours from being able to find out if the dill-wads didn’t call!
This was how I felt last spring, I realized, and quite a few nights since then as I waited for some strange car behind me to run me off the road again. It was the feeling that something horrible was approaching, and I couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it, could only sit and wait for it to land on me with both feet. Months ago, I was helpless to save Miguel and Guy. I was helpless now to produce Mira and her life-saving magic, helpless to reach out and protect the other people around the world who followed my same calling.
I hate being helpless. Even more than I hate zombies.
I won’t say that my mind was entirely on what I was doing (driving a two-and-a-half-ton death machine) and I was probably going too fast considering the road and the unfamiliar vehicle. But when I say that someone appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the road, I mean literally no where. Suddenly, there was a tall figure in my headlights, arm raised to shield his eyes from the glare.
In that frozen “oh shit!” split second, I saw the blond Mohawk, the glint of too much metal in his face, and I knew in some back corner of my brain that it was Axel. But that couldn’t stop my instinctive swerve, foot mashing hard on the brakes as the enormous truck pirouetted gracefully off the gravel road and into the ditch.
I came to a stop with a jarring metal crunch, establishing first that I didn’t seem to be injured, and second that the truck was still running with no noticeable noises of impending death. The third thing that I established was that when I got out of the truck, I was going to kill Axel.
18
“J esus freakin’ Christ, Axel!” I hopped out of the truck, landing in ankle-deep, freezing muck, and slammed the door harder than I needed to in my frustration.
The demon appeared at the front of the vehicle and grimaced. “Again, can we not bring him into this?”
The left front fender was dented in, and I anxiously examined the truck for broken lights, happy when I found none. The fender damage was mostly cosmetic, and Marty could get it beat out in no time. That didn’t make the accident any better, really, but at least I hadn’t totaled someone else’s truck.
“Have you ever heard of the phone? Or like… a singing telegram or something?” The demon actually looked a bit abashed when I turned my furious glare on him. “You could have gotten someone killed!”
“I needed you to stop. There was no time for a polite request.”
I clambered out of the ditch, my feet making a nice “ssssshluck!” noise with every soggy step. As best I could tell in the dark, the rest of the Suburban seemed all right. “What’s the freakin’ emergency, then?”
“He’s after the boy.”
That made me stop, which was no doubt his intent. “The Yeti?”
The blond demon nodded. “At the hospital. If he touches the boy, it’s all over.”
“He’s… in public? In full view of-” Axel was already nodding emphatically. “Why the hell would he do something crazy like that?”
“Because he knows you. He knows you’ll do anything to protect that child.” Axel’s eyes glowed cherry red, beacons in the darkness. “He knows the only way for you to save the boy, from here, is to call him away. To call your challenge due.”
“The guys are there. Are they all right?”
Axel shrugged his lanky shoulders. “They were when I last saw them.” That wasn’t an answer. He’d been giving me a lot of nonanswers lately.
“You could be lying.”
“I could be. But think. Have I ever told you a lie? Even a little one?” He smirked and nodded toward the truck. “Try to call your friends. See if they’ll answer their telephones while they’re under attack.”
I advanced on him and poked my finger into his chest, mostly to see if Mira’s protective spells would trip. They didn’t. Again. “You’ve been pushing me around like a damn pawn for the last week, for whatever agenda it is that you have, and I’m getting pretty tired of it.”