barrier. If the highway department were so inclined they could drive their tractors right up the thing, mow the hill, and then motor back down without a hitch. I had a slightly different plan.
“So,” said Jericho as I climbed into an old suit of body armor someone had thrown behind the driver’s seat of his truck, “you’re going to turn Evel Knievel on us?”
From our current vantage point, crouched by the 4?4’s front tire, we gazed first at the ramp, then at his precious cycle. “It’s going to be a steep little jump,” I told him. “But we’ll give ourselves plenty of room to build up speed. And we’ve got to get wheels on that hill. Nothing else is going to catch our reaver. Unless you can think of a better, faster way?”
As Jericho pondered the possibilities, my armor began to press down on me. Hard. So of course that was the moment my motherboard decided to do a short internal scan, throw up its hands, and screech, “Dear Lawd, a VAMPIRE has taken mah blood!” and initiate a general shutdown. I took a seat on the nearest flat surface—the truck’s running board.
“You all right?” asked Jericho. Cole, squatting by the back tire as he helped Vayl on with his helmet, gave me a worried look.
“I’m fine,” I said, pulling on my own helmet before my pallor could betray me. This was the immediate price I paid for increased Sensitivity. I had a feeling there would be long-term implications as well, but now was no time to obsess.
Problem was, once that cushioned Kevlar dome encased my head, not even the pinging of badly aimed bullets could distract me from the bone-chilling realization that, this time, I just might have bitten off one that would choke me blue.
I leaned back, banging my head against the door. “Goddammit!”
“What is it?” Vayl asked.
Since I didn’t want to discuss my current need to roll up in my blanky and snooze for a week, I risked a look through the window. “Yale has reached the top of the hill.” He was leaning over, both hands on his knees, puffing like an overweight smoker. Sergeant Betts hit him and he went down.
“Yes!” Betts shook his head in disbelief as Yale got back up. “What the hell?”
“Middle of the forehead, boys!” I yelled. But they couldn’t hear me. As if it would do any good. Yale would never turn toward us. Not willingly.
Vayl had mounted Jericho’s Ninja and started it up. He drove it over to me and Cole helped me on. “Aren’t we just a pair of lightweights?” I told Vayl as he gunned the engine, driving us across the street and into the lot of a rundown gas station.
“We would be if we were on the moon,” he replied, which somehow struck me funny. I laughed, and hoped to God Jericho’s tires were fully inflated.
I looked up the hill. As if on cue, Yale opened up another secret compartment in those dandy leather pants of his. I’d have made some smart-ass comment about setting up the reaver’s tailor with Mistress Kiss My Ass, but then he pulled out a plastic bag. The dark red organ inside seemed to squirm, as if trying to escape its fate.
“Oh my God.” I wanted so badly to look away. Save that little bit of myself that still thought it wasn’t a complete waste to wish upon a star and that Santa Claus was a dandy old dude, even if parents had to do the heavy lifting for him. But part of my job required me to be a witness. You couldn’t aim true if you kept closing your eyes.
Yale launched the heart, splattering it against the side of the defiled church, releasing a rain of blood that slowly built itself into a door. Just as it began to throb, Vayl hit the gas.
I clutched him around the middle, thankful for the sudden spurt of adrenaline that allowed me to hold on. We shot toward the ramp like a couple of stunt junkies, hit that puppy right in the sweet spot, and jumped the barrier so clean you could’ve driven a semi underneath us as we flew up the hill.
If my bladder hadn’t been empty I might have peed myself as Vayl nearly lost the front wheel on our landing. We swerved so far to the right I smelled earthworms, then overcorrected so badly to the left my calf spent a long moment pinned between the grass and the muffler. The heat burned completely through my jeans and left a blistering souvenir on my skin. Only Vayl’s vampire strength saved that bike—and us—from major wreckage.
Halfway up the hill a couple of bullets zinged off Vayl’s armor, but they stopped when I pulled Grief and returned fire. It’s tough to hit your target when you’re accelerating up a bumpy incline, but I got close enough and my backup shooters were doing their jobs so well, the reaver gang decided maybe they should keep their heads down for a while.
We motored toward Yale, quickly regaining the ground we’d lost at the bottom of the hill.
“This is going to be close,” Vayl said.
Yale had nearly reached the door. It had begun to open. Unearthly light, black and razor sharp, like the kind that shielded him, gaped through the crack.
I took aim at Yale, trying to steady my hand though it was like balancing a marble on a bowling ball. I squeezed off a shot. It pinged off Yale’s temple. He staggered and fell to his knees. Without even trying to get up, he crawled toward the door, lunging for it when he finally came close enough. It opened farther and he wrapped his fingers around the edge, giving it a helpful tug.
Vayl drove the Ninja right over the top of Yale’s legs, forcing a scream from him that made bats fly out the church’s chimney. We both rolled off as Vayl ditched the bike. I struggled to rise, but something punched me in the back so hard I thought for a second my lung was going to come flying out of my chest. I keeled over onto my face, realizing instantly that I’d been shot. The body armor had done its job, but it still hurt like hell.
“You son of a bitch!” I looked up.
“Jasmine! Some help, please!” called Vayl.
Another boom from Cole’s gun and another scream let me know it was time to get a move on. I scrambled to
