Chicks Kick Butt

“Oh, are we sorority sisters now?” I shot back. “Bite me, Bayou Barbie. What are you doing? Where do you think you can go? That car doesn’t exactly blend in!”

“Doesn’t have to,” she said. “You know, if we were sorority sisters, that would be one kick-ass ball of fun, don’t you think?”

“Whitney, what are you doing ?”

“Having fun,” she said, and there was a second of silence. When her voice came back, it sounded different. “Until it’s time not to have fun. And that’s coming up quick.”

“You know, Bikini Spice, you might try being a little less vague and a little more informative, if there’s something important going on.”

“Where’s the fun in that? Oh, by the way, heads up. Incoming!” She giggled, and then the static washed over it, and she was gone.

In the next instant, I saw something hurtling out of the sky into the path of my car, rolling out limply and lying flat on the pavement.

This one was no gator.

This was a man.

Instinct took over, and I slammed the brake and clutch, screaming rubber and pulling the emergency brake for added force. I didn’t want to drag the guy out of the way—for one thing, I wasn’t sure what kind of injuries he had, but they had to be pretty grievous, considering the height from which he’d fallen. “You bitch !” I panted, and managed to skid to a sideways stop with the smoking tires about three inches from the fallen body.

I scrambled out, legs shaking from the adrenaline rush, and fell on my knees next to him. The pavement was scorching hot, and the humid air felt suffocating; a swarm of mosquitoes instantly found me and started in on the bonanza. I blew them away with a pulse of Earth power and carefully put a hand on the man’s forehead. I didn’t know him. He was, as best I could tell, some stranger who’d just gotten caught up in things. I had no idea what he had to do with any of it.

David had described Whitney as a sociopath. This was real evidence that he was right.

The guy was alive, but he was unconscious and pretty badly hurt—internal injuries, a couple of broken bones. I was no expert at healing, but I did what I could, and as I did, I reached deep inside and tugged on the connection that existed between me and David—a kind of permanent cord binding us together. It didn’t take long for him to blip back in, landing at a run on the pavement and kneeling next to me.

“The officers are okay,” he said. “Shaken up and bruised, but no significant injuries.” His face set like stone as he put his hand over mine on the stranger’s forehead. “This one’s different.”

“You noticed,” I said. I had already expended a lot of energy, and now I felt waves of warm, thick, golden power flooding into me, through me, speeding relief to the injured areas of the man’s body. It burned, but I took it without complaint. If Whitney hadn’t felt compelled to stop me, this wouldn’t have happened. A little discomfort was the least I could do. “Okay, I think he’s stable now. Thanks.”

David nodded and eased off the flow of power, which stopped being a painful burn and settled into a gentle mist that soaked into every fiber of my body. It felt glorious, and I took in a deep breath as I savored it. He knew how much power I’d already spent, and this was his way of evening the scales.

“I need you to go back,” I said. “Get him help. I can’t take him with me—there’s no telling what else Whitney will try to pull, and he could get hurt or killed if I put him in the car. Would you?”

He kissed me lightly and faded away in a golden blur on the hot, still air. I crouched down and grabbed the man—whose name I still didn’t know—under the arms and dragged him across the road to a narrow strip of shade, as far out of the way as I could get him without moving him into the swamp. Then I put down a layer of protections around him that soaked into the ground, a kind of keep-away perimeter for all of the biting insects and bigger, more predatory killers that lurked out here, including the snakes. It wasn’t perfect, but it would keep him safe and comfortable for a while.

Best I could do. Whitney had hoped to weigh me down with responsibility, but that was the advantage of having David—we could split the responsibility. He’d return in only a few moments, and I could keep moving.

I got back in the car, geared it up, and took up the chase. The Bugatti was, of course, well out of sight, so I let myself slide out of my body just a little, taking advantage of the aetheric to get a look at the power signatures at work in front of me. It was a kind of supernatural heads-up display, in a confusing array of colors and patterns that didn’t necessarily reflect the real world I lived in, but I’d learned how to process the information as effectively as anyone born human could.

She was ahead of me, still driving, and the Bugatti was a hot silver scar on the riot of color and life around it. Djinn were difficult to see on the aetheric, but the Bugatti had its own signature, and a distinctive one at that. She wouldn’t be able to slip away quite that easily.

And, frankly, she wasn’t even trying. Maybe she was just enjoying the chase.

I concentrated on making up for lost time. In a sense, I was a little glad she’d brought this chase on, selfish as that was; I loved being so tightly bonded with the machine I was driving, feeling the power of the engine and the press of acceleration thrumming through my whole body. It gave me a sense of purpose, of control, of fierce joy that wasn’t like anything else I did. Not even working the weather.

The weather.

I was an idiot. David would have every right to say so when he caught up to me. Of course, working the weather patterns and driving like a bat out of hell on treacherous roads, in pursuit of a supernatural enemy, was a bit of a stretch, but what the hell. Whitney and I had a lot in common when it came to ambition.

As part of my consciousness handled the necessary mechanics of the road, I split off part of it to do something that sprang from instinct, aptitude, and power—reading the flows of energy that moved through the air, the currents of disturbance and calm. Today was a beautiful day in Florida, which was (now) a little unfortunate; there wasn’t a lot of potential energy to work with. Not impossible, though. Never impossible, in a world where action always brings a reaction, and if you’re clever, you can create a storm out of a breeze without destroying the entire balance of the system.

I didn’t say it was easy, okay? Just possible.

Once you get a certain amount of air disturbed and bouncing off of other, less excited air, you get energy. Every collision of molecules creates energy, and that energy has to go somewhere—in the creation of heat. Heated air pushes on cooled air. Wackiness ensues.

That’s an obvious simplification, but if you’ve ever seen a storm form from the collision of a warm front and a cold front, seen those clouds boil up and turn dark and tower up into the heavens … well. That’s how it works.

And you can start a forest fire by rubbing sticks together, if you’re using the right kind of sticks and the right amount of force. The trick is being able to contain the beast you create, because once you get enough energy together, the dynamite is going to go boom. All you can do is direct the force the way you want it to go.

Needless to say, this is not a job for the timid.

The other complication was that Whitney could have known what I was doing … but then again, if, as David had implied, she was really young for a Djinn, she wouldn’t think of everything. She couldn’t. Someone like David on the run … that was something that was a much harder target. Whitney, in her see-me-from-space bikini and one-of-a-kind sports car? Not so much.

But damn, I hated the idea of hurting that car. Which was why my first lightning strike came down on the road in front of the Bugatti, as close as I could nail it without actually hitting it, and I watched in the neon energy trails of Oversight as the sports car wavered, skidded sideways, and then started to straighten out again. That was okay. The lightning had been a diversion, anyway.

What I was really doing was blowing out her tires with needle-sharp shards of black ice lined up on the road like shredder strips.

Whitney hit them at a reduced speed, thanks to my lightning feint, which saved her from a fiery matinee- worthy crash. I zoomed in on Oversight and saw the wheels explode—both front tires, then both back. And the Bugatti instantly went from a precision racing machine to a hunk of metal clumsily trying to plow the pavement.

Ouch. That was really going to hurt, but it was better than the alternatives.

My radio spit static, and Whitney said, surprised, “You bitch ! You are so sneaky!”