And oh, crap.
I turned back around, flattened out, and stared underneath the rigid edge of our sail. And saw to my horror that in a few short minutes we’d managed to cover almost as much ground as it had taken us hours to walk. Which meant that the portal to this world was coming up, and coming up fast.
It was already visible, the twin peaks of the canyon where the doorway to Rosier’s court originated, well away from the city. So, I assumed, he’d have some warning if he was attacked. But I hadn’t, and I didn’t know for sure that I could do this, and Casanova’s outraged face demanding why I hadn’t tested Mother’s theory was starting to sound a lot more like the voice of reason and—
“Shiiiit!” I yelled as the wind howled and the dust whirled and the guards around the portal saw us and hit the ground. And Casanova and Caleb screamed by again, and somehow snagged hold of the side of our carpet in the process, slinging us around in a huge arc. Because no one knew if the gate would stay open for anyone who wasn’t with me.
Assuming it was going to open at all.
I couldn’t tell if I was doing anything, because we spun back around, and then around again, still headed for possible oblivion, but in wild, whipping arcs that made concentration all but impossible. Or sight. Or anything that wasn’t clinging to our crazy craft and screaming.
But vaguely, through the bands of golden-red sand I saw another swirl of colors, a bright azure twist that glowed from the inside. And that was all right, but I couldn’t tell if the shield was covering the portal or not because it was mostly transparent even in good conditions and these weren’t good conditions. But Pritkin, damn him, was doing his best to aim for it like I knew what I was doing when we’d conclusively proved that that was pretty much never the case, and suddenly Casanova and I were shrieking in unison but I didn’t care because oh God—
And then we were through, tearing across a mad swirl of colors that usually made me dizzy but—too late—and then out into darkness.
But not that of Rosier’s secondary court. That darkness was filled with sandstone and hushed servants and stately foreign elegance. This one was neon streaked, with flashing lights and peppy spend-more-money music and screaming slot machines. And a screaming guy, too, who we’d scooped up from the floor when Pritkin tried to course correct to keep us from plowing straight into some butt-ugly carpet, and instead sent us careening straight for a stalactite-littered ceiling.
Including an enormous one looming like a dagger directly in our path.
“Auggghhhh!” said the guy in the pink pig shirt.
“Auggghhhh!” said Casanova, straight in my ear, because he’d somehow ended up on our carpet.
Auggghhh, I didn’t say, because he’d grabbed me around the neck, trying to hold on, and was strangling me in the process.
Which wasn’t healthy but wasn’t any worse than hitting the giant mass of fake rock that was about to skewer all three of us—
Until Caleb sent a spell at the last second that burst the thing into a cloud of plaster dust and a zillion flying pieces.
And then I was just coughing and hacking and trying to hold on. And simultaneously working to throw off Casanova’s death grip while also attempting to keep pig-man from sliding off the rug ahead of me. Because we were at least half a dozen stories up, careening around a cavernous space like a . .
Well, actually, there is nothing else quite like a speeding, sand-filled flying carpet full of freaked-out passengers.
And then Pritkin finally managed to get it stopped, pulling up hard and sending us falling back into him. And then sprawling back onto the middle of the rug as it flattened out, the spell that had felt so flimsy in hell perking right up now that we were back. On earth?
I didn’t understand, but the view through the carpet fringe was unmistakably Dante’s main drag, where the theme was supposed to be ghost town, not Aladdin, but nobody seemed to care. A crowd was gathering, and staring up at us expectantly, like we were a better variation on the street performers who usually prowled around trying to scare people. Only this time, it was the other way around, judging by the way Casanova was still shrieking.
I wasn’t, for the same reason that I hadn’t been yelling.
“Help,” I choked, not able to get any air past the hundred and seventy pounds of vampire lying on my back. And as a result, a certain porcine T-shirt and the panicked guy wearing it were slowly sliding out of my hands—
Pritkin reached over and grabbed the guy, jerking him back onto the rug, right before he gave the crowd the spectacle they were hoping for. A bunch of Dante’s security ran up underneath us, a moment too late, and then just stood there, staring upward like everyone else. Because their training stopped just short.
Until the boss crawled across me, dirty and naked except for a battered pair of tighty whities, and stuck his no-longer perfectly coiffed head over the edge. And screamed again. Only this time, it was actual words.
“Get me down, you cretins! Get me down, get me down, get me down!”
The guards started looking at one another, and then a bunch of them linked hands and looked back up at him. Hopefully. Which you had to kind of admire considering who their boss was.
I’d have thought he’d beaten that out of them years ago.
I guess Casanova did, too, because he started yelling some more, but I couldn’t hear it. The wind had just picked up noticeably and blew the words away, like it was suddenly wafting my sweaty hair against my face. And since we were inside, that probably wasn’t a great—
“John!” Caleb said urgently.
“I know.”
“Get us down!”
“No time.”
And there wasn’t. A second later, a storm swept through the hotel like a cyclone on a prairie. The crowd screamed and ran for cover, a couple of tumbleweeds went spinning by, and we started wafting around again, our makeshift sail partially reinflating before Caleb could snatch it off.
I clung to the gently rotating rug, but it wasn’t the fear of falling that had me worried. It wasn’t even the storm, which we seemed to be in the eye of anyway. No, my fear was kind of occupied with the pair of elegant boots that were materializing on the carpet, as the storm swirled and spun and came together into the shape of a very pissed off demon lord.
Who grabbed for me almost before he’d finished consolidating, but I rolled to the side and he got pig-man instead.
Who he promptly dropped over the side.
“Oh my God!” I lunged for the edge of the rug, and got a split-second glimpse of a stunned-looking TV reporter sitting on a bunch of crossed vamp arms, until they unceremoniously dumped him on the floor. And then I was jerked up to meet a pair of furious green eyes.
“Try again,” Rosier breathed.
“Drop her!” Pritkin snarled, pulling his knife and causing Rosier’s eyes to briefly flick to him.
“Good plan,” he said, and dangled me over the edge. “It was the woman!” he yelled, apparently at the storm. “She deceived him! Take her and do as you will!”
But the storm didn’t seem impressed. If anything, it got louder and more ferocious, and new shapes started to coalesce out of the blowing sand. One landed on our rug, causing the whole thing to bounce and throwing me into Rosier.
Who promptly threw me off, only that turned out to be a good thing.
A flash of light seared my retinas as I fell back, and the piece of rug right beside my body went spinning off on its own trajectory, with Casanova clinging to it like a shipwrecked sailor to the last barrel left afloat.
For a second, I didn’t realize what was happening, until Pritkin shoved me behind him. And lashed out with his knife, sending a hand and the curved sword it held spinning out over the void, neon running along the blade like blood until it hit one of the fake storefronts. And stuck there, quivering.