As soon as I saw the van I felt an ache between my shoulder blades. Confirmation that the vehicle contained one, if not all, of the reavers. How had they found me?
I looked at my watch. “Shit! It’s a new day!” I slapped my hand to my forehead, as if that could cover up the Mark. I felt my arm for the syringe of holy water I usually kept there. But it was gone. I’d given the sheath to Cole to feed his oral fixation and had stored the syringe back in my weapons case.
“What is happening?” asked Asha. His eyes had moved from the van to the rooftops and gone as round as campaign buttons. The mahghul were gathering.
“The reavers are coming for me. Remember that one you wouldn’t let me kill?”
Asha nodded, wincing at the bite of my tone.
“Well, his sponsor is a mortal enemy of mine who found him a bunch of willing bodies working at a local TV station. Now he’s dumped the demons he was carrying in his head into those bodies, and at least a few of them are in that van.” I took a second to think. No way could I fight off the reavers if, indeed, all six of them had piled into the van for this showdown. I was about five miles from home base, so no time to run for cover. Cirilai would’ve told Vayl I was in trouble, but he’d never get here in time to help. And Asha. Well, we’d already established his status.
I turned to him. “Do you have a car?” I asked, as I looked over my shoulder. They were two blocks away now. I could see reavers in the driver and passenger seats as well as one glaring out the front window between them.
“A car? Yes. But . . . I rarely drive it. I mean —”
“Good.” I pushed him inside the gate, slammed it shut, and barred it from the inside. “I need it.”
We ran around to the back of the house. Asha opened the garage door while I pulled Grief. I thumbed off the safety as I heard the van screech to a halt in front of the house.
“In here,” Asha whispered. I followed him into the garage and stifled a whistle as he opened the driver’s side door of a black BMW 3.
Sweet. He handed me the keys, shielding his face from me as we made the transfer. Still, I caught the glint of tears on his cheeks. Aw, for — are you kidding me? The guy could probably kick my ass into the Persian Gulf while juggling the reavers with three fingers if he wanted to. But I’d called him a name and made him cry. And now I felt bad. Because the truth is I do have a big mouth that I absolutely need to learn to keep shut, and he did have an excellent reason for avoiding the mahghul. I was just so desperate, at this point I’d smack the angel Gabriel upside the head if I thought it would make him mad enough to get down here and yell at me for three days. Because sometime within that span I’d need backup, he’d be there, and voila. Problem solved.
I slipped into the driver’s seat and closed the door. Asha reached through the open window and poked the remote attached to the visor. The back gate began to roll open. I started the car. “I’m sorry, Asha. I was a real shit to you back there, and here you are, lending me your wheels.”
He leaned down, his sad eyes nearly level with mine. We couldn’t hear the reavers, but they were coming. My back muscles spasmed, as if at any moment they expected the reavers to jump up from the rear seat, rake the meat off my spine, and yank out my still-beating heart.
Asha wiped the tears off his face with both hands. “Here,” he said gently. “Take them.” He cupped my cheeks. I sucked in my breath as the moisture burned into my skin.
“Asha.”
“Now go!”
He made a commanding motion and of its own accord my foot slammed the accelerator.
Chapter Twenty
I believe in miracles. E.J.’s my main proof. I can’t look into those wide green eyes, feel those perfect little fingers wrapped around mine, realize this complete little girl with her own personality, made of my sister and her husband and a little bit of me, shares my world, without knowing our family recently experienced a miracle. That’s a biggie. Sometimes God throws me small ones too. Like the fact that I didn’t crash Asha’s BMW as I took a sharp right coming onto the road out of his back gate despite the fact that most of my attention was on the rear view mirror.
Four reavers had come after me. Two of them ran after the car. One actually jumped onto the trunk, but flew off as soon as I turned the corner. The other two had entered the garage to confront Asha, and I felt my chest tighten with fear for him. I’d just decided to turn the car around when I saw the reavers fly out of the garage and the door thump down. Then I was on the street, wailing down the asphalt like a bank robber, heading back to base through choppily lit, third-world-looking neighbourhoods on roads that were often so narrow I wasn’t sure how vehicles passed each other during the day.
I’d made it maybe halfway back when the TV van caught up with me.
It tried to ram me in the rear end, but I gunned the engine and pulled far enough ahead to wonder if I was giving them too good of a shot at my back tires. I took the next left before I could find out, watched the van nearly roll in its attempt to follow me, and decided a zigzag course might be the best way to keep them from flattening any part of Asha’s ride.
As we raced through the eerily quiet streets of the city, I debated whether or not to call the team. I’d put it off because, although I knew the Wizard would want them to defend me from the reavers and would, therefore, let Dave help me, I didn’t want any of them hurt because of me. More important, I didn’t want the local authorities to get wind of our operation. Something they were bound to do if the neighbors heard gunshots.
I slammed the brakes, spun the wheel hard to the left, accelerated almost before I straightened out again. Behind me the van’s tires squealed in protest and a glance in the mirror showed me reavers being thrown around the interior like balls in a batting cage.
“Dammit, would you monsters wreck already?” I headed down a narrow alleyway, watched the van throw sparks as it squeezed past the buildings that flanked it. “I need Vayl. Come on, Cirilai.” I rubbed the ring against my thigh like it was Aladdin’s lamp and if I wished hard enough Vayl would just waft out of one of the rubies, sink onto the seat beside me, and calm me with that ultracool demeanor of his even as he and I worked out our battle plan.
Vayl was out, though. The closer I got to the house, the surer I was of that fact. “Shit! Why didn’t I tell Cole to chew on his own holster? Then I’d still have that holy water on me and this Beemer and I could’ve disappeared into
