After being shot three times?
Alright; maybe not.
I could have checked to be sure, but that would have meant going toward the people who’d just shot at us.
Sorry, Your Majesty. At some point, it’s every Crow for himself.
Not a Cape sort of thing to do, I guess, but I wasn’t a Cape just yet. Wouldn’t ever be one if I couldn’t survive the next few minutes.
Live to run away and fight another day, am I right?
I’d made it all of ten feet off the road when something struck me in the head. No white light, like there’d been at the testing center. Just darkness.
Hurt almost as much though.
•—•—•
“This him?”
I don’t how long I’d been out this time, but it couldn’t have been more than a minute or two, because night was still in the process of falling. Against a backdrop of grainy twilight and a handful of cold stars, I made out the darker shapes of two figures standing over me.
“Better hope it is,” answered the second guy, “since you shot the shit out of the other one.”
“I don’t got your special tricks, but my eyes work just fine. Boss man said get the boy, and that driver weren’t no boy.”
“Boss man also said to take the boy alive.”
A hard boot caught me in the side, driving all the wind out of me and provoking a gasp.
“And he’s alive. So why are you riding my ass?”
When the second man spoke, his voice had dropped to a low growl. “I’m riding your ass, Dale, because your dumb-fuck move could have cost us our cut. More importantly, I’m riding your ass because I’m the motherfucker in charge of this op. Unless this is you making a move?”
A bright light flared crimson and orange, illuminating the two men above me. Both unshaven, both dressed in layered clothing, both hard men with scarred faces and eyes that looked black as death in the night. One had a rifle in his hands, but he was the one backing away. And the other man… a snake of living fire was looping around his left hand, pulsing like a heartbeat.
“You’re in charge, man,” said Dale, still backing away. “All I was saying—”
We never got to find out what he was saying.
Smiley’s motorcycle was quieter than a car, but it still made some noise; the hum of its motor, the squeal of tires against asphalt, and a half dozen other things that kept it from being entirely silent.
Except when it came flying through the air like a five-hundred-pound missile.
It hit Dale square in the back, taking him right off his feet and into the darkness. Judging by the sounds both he and the bike made hitting the ground, I didn’t think either one was ever getting back up.
“What the fuck?” asked the other man, who had to be a Pyromancer. “Cole? Jackson? You guys up there?”
“Your men are dead, sweetling.” Smiley stopped just short of the fire’s light, glossy leather glistening amidst the greater darkness. “Time for you to join them.”
“Fuck that shit.” The Pyro crouched low, and a second snake ignited around his other hand. “Come and get it, puta.” With a flick of his wrists, both snakes spat a torrent of orange fire at the woman.
Flames crackled, spit and eventually died, leaving nothing behind but darkness.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he muttered.
Over the rush of blood in my ears, I heard something… the rasp of metal against metal, as if someone was running a crowbar over the teeth of a saw. Then I saw it.
It didn’t snow much in Bakersfield—and when it did, all we got were small, dirty flakes that melted almost before they hit the ground—but I’d seen blizzards on vid; cold air thick with snow and a howling wind that sent the whole mess horizontal.
I’d never seen a blizzard quite like this though.
What came at us wasn’t ice or snow or anything natural. It was shrapnel and steel and sharp, jagged edges, a cloud of gonna-fuck-you-up rocketing forward out of the windless dark. The Pyro’s scream cut off in mid-crescendo as three rods pierced his chest and a half-dozen metal shards perforated his skull. The long, sinuous strands of barbed wire that followed—enveloping his body and twisting to shred exposed flesh—were a particularly gruesome bit of overkill.
The Pyro’s flame died when he did, but the fires he’d set off on either side of the road gave enough light for me to watch the cyclone of shrapnel pull itself together, regaining the shape of a tall, leather-clad woman, a yellow smiley-face painted across her helmet’s visor.
“Fucking hill trash never learn,” growled Her Majesty.
CHAPTER 9
Our attackers were all very, very dead. That was the good news. The bad news was that the bike was a wreck, its frame bent out of shape, and its battery leaking something that smelled like farts and death.
Or maybe that last part was the corpses. Her Majesty had drafted me into moving the bodies into a pile down the hill, but I could still smell them on me; blood and piss and all the other foulness that comes spilling out of people at the end. With night well and truly fallen, I was now sitting by the road, trying hard not to smell myself, and watching Smiley stoke the dregs of the Pyro’s last fire into something that might keep us warm through the night.
She tossed down her saddlebags on the far side of the fire and took a seat next to them, riding gear creaking noisily with the motion. She had yet to take off the helmet, and that giant yellow face—reflecting the flickering flames between us--wasn’t doing a damn thing to calm my nerves.
It didn’t help that we had company.
Mom stood nearby, smiling as usual, and taking very little notice of
