I growled something under my breath, and swung aboard the seat behind her. Molly slammed the Vincent into gear and we shot off up the slope, pursued by bullets, and straight out into the main flow of traffic. Outraged horns and voices greeted us from every side as we appeared out of nowhere and just bullied our way in. Fortunately, the average speed of London traffic is rarely more than about ten miles per hour between traffic lights, so we were able to dodge and weave in and around the slower-moving vehicles and build up a healthy acceleration. I held Molly tightly around the waist with my right arm. I tried to use the left as well, but it was just too painful, so I let my forearm rest on Molly’s left thigh. She didn’t seem to mind. Even tucked in close behind her, the air still hit my face like a slap and tugged at my hair. I put my mouth next to Molly’s ear.
"Would it have killed you to conjure up a couple of crash helmets too?"
"Helmets are for sissies!" said Molly, shouting back over the roar of the Vincent’s engine. She laughed joyously. "Hold on, Eddie!"
"I’ll just bet you’re not insured," I said.
We weaved in and out of moving cars as though they were standing still, steadily building up speed. Taxi drivers shouted insults, and shop fronts blurred past on either side. We’d already taken so many turns I hadn’t a clue where we were any longer. A big red London bus pulled out in front of us, because London buses don’t give way to anything, and my heart practically leapt out of my chest as Molly gunned the throttle and shot us through the narrowing gap like a lemming on amphetamines. I may have screamed, just a little.
"Try to lean with me on the curves, Eddie!" Molly shouted back cheerfully. "It makes manoeuvring so much easier."
We howled across intersections at scary speeds and treated stoplights with contempt. The bike swayed this way and that, dodging and weaving as it plunged in and out of traffic, slowing for no one. It would have been quite exhilarating, if I’d been driving. As it was, I just clung on with my good arm and threw a series of hopeful prayers up to Saint Christopher, the patron saint of travellers. He’s been officially decommissioned these days, but no one asked my permission, so…
The first I knew that we were being pursued came when a bullet whined right past my ear. I grabbed Molly tightly and risked a look back. Two big black cars were coming up fast behind us. They must have been really heavily armoured, because they built up speed by just shunting and slamming aside everything in front of them. When there wasn’t any room, the big black cars would drive right over whatever was in front of them, crushing the lesser vehicle like a tank. Other cars were driven right off the road or intimidated into taking sudden side turnings they hadn’t intended to. The traffic between the black cars and us thinned rapidly, and men leaned out of the cars’ shaded windows to fire automatic weapons at us. Luckily, that’s a lot harder than it seems in the movies.
I turned back and yelled into Molly’s ear. "Manifest Destiny, right behind! And they’re shooting at us!"
"I had noticed, actually. You sure it’s not your family?"
"Positive. They wouldn’t use guns. They’d use something much more extreme."
Molly sent the bike flying around a tight corner, leaning right over. I did my best to help, leaning with her, but it was all I could do to hang on with just the one arm. The ground did look awfully close there for a moment. Molly wrestled the Vincent upright again and opened the throttle all the way. We roared down the street, flashing in and out of startled cars, sometimes close enough to scrape their paintwork with our wing mirrors, all the time dodging gunfire from behind. They were starting to get our range. I risked another look back, turning right around on the leather seat. The black cars were smashing through everything in their path, ramming cars out of their way. Skidding civilian cars slammed into each other, some overturned, and there were pileups the length of the street behind us. The black cars just kept coming, and the bullets got closer and closer, no matter how much we dodged and weaved.
I armoured up. The living metal flowed smoothly over and around me in a moment, sealing me off from a hostile world. Bullets hit my back and just ricocheted away. They couldn’t touch me or Molly now. The rate of gunfire increased as the black cars drew nearer, bullets spraying across my back, my shoulders, and the back of my head. I didn’t feel the impact, but I could hear it. Armouring my left arm had made it strong again, if no less painful. I slipped it carefully around Molly’s waist, and felt a little more secure.
The Vincent was really hammering along now, the passing world just a blur. Molly was laughing out loud, whooping with the joy of speed. I was more concerned about what would happen if just one of the bullets happened to hit the Vincent’s fuel tank. I mentioned this to Molly.
"Don’t worry!" she yelled back. "This isn’t really a motorbike. It just looks like one."
"Not a real bike? Not a real Vincent Black Shadow?"
"Come on," said Molly. "What did you expect from a charm bracelet?"
"Just as long as it doesn’t turn back to a pumpkin at midnight…"
Molly laughed again and pushed the bike’s speed even harder. I took my right arm away from Molly’s waist and drew the Colt Repeater from its shoulder holster. It took me a while, and hurt my shoulder like hell, but I finally wrestled the gun out. I breathed hard for a moment, controlling the pain and bracing myself for what I had to do next. I tightened my hold around Molly’s waist with my strengthened left arm, turned around on the seat, and looked back at the cars behind me. There were four of them now, with a fifth catching up, ploughing their way through any traffic that didn’t get out of their way fast enough. Men were leaning out of the car windows and firing at me with a whole assortment of weapons. One even had a rocket launcher. He fired the thing, and the rocket shot out, slammed into my armoured side, and ricocheted away to blow up a Gap store. I hoped there was nobody inside, but I had no way of knowing. Manifest Destiny didn’t care who got hurt or killed. And that was when I decided that just escaping these bastards wasn’t good enough.
They were all firing at me now, bullets bouncing off my chest and golden face mask. The bike slammed this way and that as we shot in and out of a traffic jam. The extra pain in my arm made me cry out, and tears ran down my face under the mask. But the Colt Repeater in my right hand was steady as hell when I trained it on the pursuing cars.
I tried shooting out the tyres first. That always worked in the movies. But though I hit every tyre I aimed at, not one of them blew. The armoured cars were running on solid rubber tyres. Manifest Destiny must have seen those movies too. So I aimed at the driver of the nearest car. He laughed at me, through his bulletproof glass windscreen, right up until the Colt Repeater sent a bullet through the windscreen and blew his head apart. The car swerved wildly, mounted the pavement, and rammed through three parking meters before sliding to a halt. I aimed carefully and shot dead the other four drivers, and their cars skidded and crashed and slammed into storefronts.
But more black cars were already joining the chase, screeching around corners from every side street we passed. Soon there were a dozen new cars on our trail, swerving back and forth to make my aiming harder. I kept blowing away their drivers, one at a time. Such aim would have been impossible under normal conditions, but luckily the Colt Repeater did most of the work for me. Thank you, Uncle Jack. Still more cars joined the pursuit, seeming to come from everywhere at once, ploughing through the civilian traffic like it wasn’t even there, tossing lighter cars aside or grinding them underneath. There was a chaos of crashed and burning vehicles behind us for as far back as I could see. Wide-eyed men and women huddled in shop doorways, yelling into mobile phones as we shot past.