“Duck!”
He pushed me back, falling on top of me as a deep rumble from inside the boulder made me wonder if we were all about to be crushed. Vayl covered us both as a hail of pebbles shot from the door, followed by a spurt of dust and then a door-sealing rock lodged half in and half out of the opening.
We stared at it for five long seconds. I said, “I hear something.”
“Another boulder?” Cole asked as the guys rolled to their feet. He looked up fearfully.
“No,” said Vayl, lifting his eyes to the star-filled sky. “Something unnatural.” CHAPTERTWENTY-NINE
Vayl was the first to leap on the door-blocking boulder, using it as a launching pad for his climb. While I waited for him to clear it so I could start up, Cole slung his rifle over his shoulder and said, “I’m going up the other side.”
“This is stupid,” I said. “They’re just going to throw us off the second they see our hands reaching over the rim.”
“Which is why I’m letting Vayl get a head start. Hopefully he’ll keep them occupied until I can make it up.”
“Wait a second,” I said, grabbing Cole’s sleeve before he could move away. “What about that weird noise?”
He cocked his head. “You know what it is, don’t you?”
“No.”
“Jack’s tired of the kangaroo. Now he’s found a herd of platypi and he’s stampeding them right toward us.”
“Platypi?”
“That clacking is their bills snapping together. They do that when they’re enraged. You should go for higher ground, Jaz. They’ve been known to chew women’s legs off.”
“With beaks?”
“Well… it takes a while. And you kinda have to stand in one place—”
“When you two are quite done,” came Vayl’s voice over the party line. We looked up. He was already halfway to them. Above him, only visible because it had begun to sway, I saw the outline of a wire. The type that lodge owners connect to lifts so skiers can chug up the mountain from dawn to dusk.
“Son of a bitch!”
“What?” Cole shaded his eyes, like we were standing in the noonday sun instead of the blackness that blankets a mountain’s apron at three in the morning.
“Vayl, they’ve got transportation. I’m thinking some kind of open-air, no, check that. I see it now. Sky car, black, roomy. It’s coming in quick! And it’s got passengers—I count five!” Cole pointed into the air. He said, “Hey, Jaz! The car looks like a big nose!”
“Why?”
“Because suddenly I feel like I’ve been transported into an Austin Powers movie, which means any second now the kittybot will probably turn on us and start shooting torpedoes out her tail. I wouldn’t have objected if we’d been able to rescue Ruvin. Had the Odeam guys called our bluff and brought in their ‘A’ team? Or had Ruvin given up on us and decided to save his wife the only way he knew how?
Either way we were pretty—”
I gasped as the sky car hummed away and, at the same time, Vayl launched himself from the boulder, barely managing to grab hold of the axle for the maintenance wheels that jutted beneath the nose like blackened teeth. The car rocked at his impact, causing Ufranites to crowd the windows, but nobody saw him raise his legs to slide them over the second axle.
“Vayl!” I called. “Are you okay?”
“Fine! I believe I can reverse the car’s course from here. If my calculations are correct, it should fly back to its source. Since the warren is under Wirdilling’s primary school, this car must be stored somewhere in the same town. Meet us there!”
“What if you’re wrong?” asked Cole.
“I cannot be,” Vayl replied. “We have no time to spare.”
“Let’s get our asses back to the Wheezer. That means you too, Astral.” I turned to run back down the path, whistling for Jack as Cole called Kyphas on his phone and asked her to join us.
“Jaz isn’t going to wait long,” he told her after a pause.
“Put her on speaker,” I snapped.
He pushed the required button.
“—not quite finished here,” Kyphas was saying.
“If you’re not down the hill when I start that car, I’m leaving you!” I said flatly. “We’ve got to get back to town before everything blows up in Vayl’s face!”
“You sure can pick the rental cars.”
I ground my teeth together and glared at the demon in my backseat. “Shut up,” I said.
Kyphas peered at me over the top of Jack’s furry head. “I was just—”
“I could happily kill somebody right now. And since you’re immortal in this realm, I’m gonna be real tempted to take a few stabs at you if you don’t—just—chill!” For the hundredth time I ignored her smirk and glanced in the rearview mirror. My eyes skipped past Astral, who’d taken her regular window seat. She had an even better view of Cole as he leaned over the Wheezer’s trunk, pushing the car along the road that would eventually end in front of
