“No!” I said, as we pelted off the side of the garage, snatching Pritkin along for the ride.
The charm caught us before we’d fallen more than a story, sending us dipping and bobbing and listing in a circle, heading back in exactly the wrong direction. I grabbed the wheel and wrenched it to the right, but it was too late. The two mages launched themselves off the side of the garage, one grabbing the fence in midair, and the other—
“Crap,” I said, as heavy boots dented the top of the SUV.
And then my gun was up and I was firing.
There was no way I missed him this time. I emptied a clip into the roof, saw bullets punch through felt and metal, knew they must have connected. But no body hit the roof or fell over the side, and a second later a spell slammed down through the middle seat, crumpling the roof like aluminum foil and knocking a two-foot hole through the bottom of the chassis.
The next one would probably have knocked a hole in me, too, but we suddenly streamed under an overpass, missing the clearance by pretty much nothing at all. It was close enough to skin the top of the SUV, to pop the headlights and to bathe the car in a shower of sparks. Close enough to have me hunkering down, seriously afraid that the roof was about to cave the rest of the way in.
Close enough to smash our assailant face-first into concrete.
I stared at Fred as we exited the other side, sans unwanted passenger. “I thought you didn’t know how to drive!”
“I don’t!”
“Then what was that?”
He stared at me, confused. “What was what?”
I didn’t answer, too busy vaulting over the seat to stare down through the smoking hole. I spotted Pritkin getting dragged along underneath, clinging to the fence and staring up at me with a bone white face. And then smacking into a pylon and yelling something that looked really profane.
I seconded the emotion, because three mages were somehow still dragging along after him.
“Son of a bitch!”
“What is it?” Fred demanded.
“There’s three more mages down there!”
“What? But there should only be one!”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” I snarled, as one of them tried to sling another spell at us, only to have Pritkin all but wrench his arm off. One of the others responded by trying to do the same to Pritkin’s head, but he must have gotten his shields back up, because it didn’t work. But shields wouldn’t last long, not against these guys.
I crawled back up to Fred. “Change of plan.”
“We have a plan?”
“We do now.”
Pritkin’s shields might not work against the mages, but they worked well enough on most other things. I just had to find the right other things. Fortunately, there were plenty of options.
“Aren’t you taking this thing?” Fred demanded, as I got a knee up on the seat so I could see outside.
“No, you’re driving.”
“Didn’t you hear me? I don’t know how!”
“You’re doing fine so far. Just hold the gas pedal down and keep the steering wheel steady. I’ll correct if you get off course.”
“Gas pedal,” he said, looking panicked. “Which one is that?”
“The one your foot is on.”
“And which is the brake?”
“You’re not going to need the brake,” I told him, and yanked the wheel hard to the right.
We zipped back toward the garage and the row of buildings it serviced, the fence streaming out behind us like the tail on a very strange kite. “You can see, right?” Fred asked nervously.
“Yes.”
“Good. ’Cause with this damn hood in my way, I’m almost—Auggh! What was that?”
“It’s okay, you’re doing fine.”
“But I hit something!”
“You should probably get used to it,” I told him, staring out the back window.
The mostly flat-topped Vegas roofs are nothing like the slick fronts presented to the public. Along with the usual clutter of satellite dishes, old antennas and solar cells, they also house the city’s massive air conditioners, since sand clogs up the works if they’re left on the ground. And I made sure that we didn’t miss a single one, hurling the mages back and forth between giant units like very unhappy Ping-Pong balls.
Pritkin was still yelling, but I couldn’t hear him over the wind and Fred’s cursing and some weird noises coming from overhead, like leather sheets caught in a hurricane. But at least no one was trying to kill him right now. They were too busy hanging on for dear life.
And, unfortunately, they were hanging on pretty damn well. The mage near the end went flying when we tore around a corner, snapping out the wildly bucking fence like a towel in a locker room. But the other two were higher up and they grimly held on, despite smashing through a greenhouse, skimming across a pile of old bricks and then slapping face-first into a wall.
“I don’t believe this!” I said, as we dragged them over the top of the wall and through somebody’s patio set.
“These guys really want you dead,” Fred said, staring in the rearview mirror.
I didn’t answer, because one of those lightning-bolt spells sheared off the passenger-side mirror, rocking the car violently. It didn’t look like the rooftops were providing enough in the way of distraction. If we wanted to lose these guys, we were going to have to get a little more extreme.
I nudged the steering wheel slightly to the right.
Within seconds, smoke billowed up in front of us, like a dark curtain held against the sky. It felt like we’d been in the car half an hour, but it couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes. Although I heard sirens in the distance, no emergency vehicles were yet parked around the crash site.
“Is the diner still burning?” Fred asked, frowning.
“Not exactly,” I said, as we plunged for the middle of the fiery billboard.
The motorcycle must have had a full gas tank, because the entire huge surface of the sign was now covered in flames. The paper had already burnt away, leaving an old wooden frame and heavy support beams to feed the blaze. And they seemed to be feeding it pretty well, judging by the heat that smacked me in the face, even this far away.
In seconds, the conflagration had filled the whole length of the missing windshield, the smoke-laden air whipping my hair around my face and making my eyes water. I glanced behind us, and it looked like the mages had seen it, too. They were staring through the lattice of the fence, watching the approaching inferno in disbelief.
And not watching the deadly war mage above them.
Pritkin lashed out with a heavy boot, snapping one man’s head back and then kicking him viciously in the chest. He went flying, his head lolling at a very unhealthy angle, and Pritkin turned on his companion. But he wouldn’t get a fight there. The last mage just let go of the fence, falling on purpose into the surrounding smoke.
“I guess he doesn’t like fire as well as concrete,” I said in satisfaction, before noticing that Pritkin hadn’t budged. “What the hell is he doing?” I asked Fred, who was looking at me apprehensively.
“What fire?”
“He’s just holding on.” I climbed over the seats to stare out the back, but even a full field of vision didn’t help much. Pritkin’s shields could definitely cushion a fall from this height, but he wasn’t jumping—or climbing or doing anything but staring, and not at the billboard.
“What fire?” Fred asked, a little more forcefully.
I flicked my eyes in the direction Pritkin was looking, but didn’t see anything, aside from a lot of smoke. Part of which seemed to have taken on a very weird form. I blinked, but it was still there a second later, the hazy outline of an impossible shape set against the brilliant skyline.
And headed straight for us.
“Oh, shit. Fire!” Fred screamed, and we crashed into the middle of the sign.
Chapter Twenty-five
Luckily, the smaller support struts were already half charcoal, and they exploded harmlessly in a sizzle of black ash. But something a hell of a lot bigger hit the pylons underneath, sending smoking posts the size of tree trunks spinning into the night. We managed to dodge most of those, since they shot out below us, but we weren’t so lucky with the spell that burned through the air a second later.