“Jump us to Spain. Pul us back.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “As near as I can tel ? It’s who she is. Al I had to do was stop limiting her, start seeing her possibilities, and now infinite travel destinations are open to us.” His eyes began to glow. “We could go anywhere. Safe from your people and mine.” I nodded. “But we could come back to visit. Because my family is stil mine. And I won’t abandon them.”
“Nor I.”
“Speaking of which.” I motioned to the portal. “Let’s go get that crazy kid of yours.” Vayl’s smile lit up my entire heart. “Indeed.”
He took my hand, I grabbed Jack’s col ar, and together we stepped into the hotel tub, through my guardian’s doorway, into the loudest damn arena I’d crashed since Dave and I had sneaked into the monster truck ral y during our junior year of high school and nearly gotten thrown out when we’d found one idling backstage and decided to take it for a spin. Literal y. Lucky for us we’re real y fast runners.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I’l give this to my portal, she had a sense of humor. She’d set us down at the back of a temporarily fenced-in tract of watereddown dirt that looked like it was normal y used as a range for long-distance target practice. Near the horizon I could see the hulks of bombed tanks and trucks. Closer to hand, set in a semicircle around the fence, mobile spectator stands had been erected. In them GIs and their families cheered on the stuntmen who were currently putting on an engine-revving, tire-spinning show for them in the cool of the Andalusian evening. At the moment three bright yel ow racing-striped cars were taking turns running up to a ramp and hitting it with their front and back wheels, which levered them up into the air. Then they competed to see how long they could run around the ring before fal ing back to their natural state.
“Your son is a nutbag,” I murmured to Vayl.
“Hanzi always was the adventurous one,” he replied.
“Uh-huh. So how do we find him before—Oh, I see.”
Lined up down the middle of the track were five semi trucks with their trailers attached. A ramp led up to the first one and another led down from the last. Hanzi must have intended to jump these, probably at the end of the show, since the hoops at the tops of the ramps looked flammable and it would, no doubt, promise to be the team’s most spectacular stunt.
“Wel , I guess we know which truck Dave saw Hanzi slamming into now,” I said.
“What if I drove off in the last one?” Vayl asked. “Hanzi could hardly do the stunt then.”
“Do you remember how to hotwire a car?” I asked.
“Al right, then, you do it. But I am coming with you.”
“Of course. Who else is going to make me invisible to al those yel ing soldiers?” So Vayl raised his powers, camouflaging us both so successful y that only our footprints in the dirt showed signs of our passage. We careful y walked up to the last truck in line. I eased open the door. And then careful y shut it again.
“We’re outta here,” I said, grabbing Vayl by the arm and pul ing him backward.
“What happened?”
I grimaced with effort, yanking desperately and having no luck in budging my
“The truck is rigged with explosives. I’m assuming it’s supposed to blow during Hanzi’s big performance. I imagine that’s what he’s supposed to see right before we grab him.”
“Who would want to kil my son?”
“It’s a military base, Vayl. Who wouldn’t want to kil an American stunt crew on an American base in Spain?”
“Point taken.”
The sound of a motorcycle revving turned our attention to the dirt oval at the edge of which the stands had been set. The crowd went wild as Hanzi, dressed just as Dave had described in black riding leathers and a tinted helmet, came tearing into the arena, popping such a big wheelie I was amazed he didn’t flip completely over.
I elbowed Vayl and pointed. At the edge of one of the spectator stands stood a group of five men dressed in private’s uniforms. They wouldn’t have looked so out of place to the casual observer. It was just that I’d gotten demonic vibes from them in such strong waves that I figured they’d been sent in hungry. I suddenly doubted that much of Hanzi’s soul was meant to make it to the pit intact.
I directed my attention back to the rider. Once he’d completed his circuit of the crowd he came back, this time balancing on the back of the bike like it was a circus pony.
In the meantime, two stagehands had lit the rings at the tops of the ramps.
“Vayl. We’re out of time.”
He was staring hard at the rider whose soul had once inhabited his son’s body. “Look at the bomb again,” he told me. “Does it have a timer?”
I bit my lip to keep the obscenities from spil ing over my lips as I eased the door open and took more time to study the future Dave had foreseen for Hanzi. “No,” I said final y. “Somebody in this crowd is holding the detonator.”
“Cassandra?” he suggested.
“No, Dave would never be okay with that,” I said, trying to imagine her pressing her hand to al that C4 in order to get a vision of the culprit, if we’d even had that kind of time. Besides.
