under his breath as he fought to slip behind the wheel before Edward was completely out from behind it. The SUV swayed, but we stayed on the road.
Edward was climbing past us and into the far back. “What are you going to do?” I asked.
“Shoot them if they get too close. Shoot anything that moves around that barrier.” He was rummaging around in the back in some of the weapons that were too big or too cumbersome to carry easily. It always scared me when Edward started getting into his big stuff. The last time it had been a flamethrower, and he’d damn near burned a house down with us in it. But I did what he asked. I rolled down a window and divided my attention between the barrier on the road and the way we’d just come.
Tilford had stopped the car. “What do you want me to do?”
“Move forward, slowly,” Edward said. His upper body was mostly below the back of the seat.
I did my best to ignore him and do my part of the plan. Edward had a plan, and I didn’t, so he was in charge until either he ran out of plan, or the plan turned out to be too crazy. Though right that second, I couldn’t think of anything crazy enough to make me say no.
Newman said, “Holy Jesus!”
It made me glance back at Edward. For a blink, I thought it was just a bigger gun, and then I forgot to watch the dark or hunt for vampires. I took a few seconds to stare at what he had in his hands.
“Is that . . .” I said.
“Light anti-tank weapon,” he said.
“It’s a LAW,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. He rolled back over the seat so he was kneeling between Newman and me. “Open the sunroof,” he said.
“If you had this, why didn’t you use it on the tree?” I asked.
“It’s the last one I have,” he said.
“Last one,” Newman said. “How many did you have?”
“Three.”
I said, “Don’t argue, just open the door. Watch the road edge and the sky and be ready to jump back in when Tilford guns it.”
“Why not just aim through the windows?”
“Because we can’t watch the sky as well from the window.”
“But . . .”
“Just do it,” Edward said.
Newman glanced at me, then at Edward, and opened his door. I did the same on my side. When I was standing with one foot on the ground and the other on the running board, MP-5 snugged at my shoulder, I said “Edward.”
“Anita?”
“Do it.”
I heard him slithering up through the sunroof. I just trusted that he was halfway through the sunroof.
Tilford asked, “Do you want me to start easing up toward the roadblock?”
“No,” Edward said, “we don’t know what they put in the pile; better farther away until it blows.”
I kept staring out at the moonlight and trees as I said, “What could they put in the pile to make it dangerous?”
“Ask me later,” Edward said. I heard him move again. Enough that it made me glance back to find that he was standing on the headrests on the front seats, as if height were important.
I got a glimpse of Newman staring, too, and pointed at my eyes, and at him, and back out into the night. He went back to looking sort of guilty, as if I hadn’t been doing the same damn thing. I went back to glancing up at the star-filled sky, and then down at the trees. Nothing moved but the wind. It made the leaves shudder and gave that sound that always makes me think of Halloween, as if the leaves are skittering across the ground like little mice. Normally I like the sound, but tonight it was distracting, and the leaf movement made me jumpy.
Newman shot into the dark. It made me jump. Newman yelled out, “Sorry.”
“Nothing there, Newman,” Edward said.
“I said, sorry.”
“Get a grip, rookie,” I called.
Tilford spoke from the front. “We all shoot at shadows when we’re new, Blake.”
He was right, but I’d apologize to Newman later if I needed to. I went back to watching my own windy section of trees, and dark sky, and road. They came onto the road behind us, two of them in the same long black cloaks and white masks. It made them anonymous, impossible to tell if they were new Harlequin or ones we’d seen before. The only thing I was almost certain of was that they weren’t the ones Edward and I had wounded in the woods. These two moved in a slow, athletic glide. The moment they moved, I knew they were wereanimals and not vampires. Vamps move like people, just more graceful.
I called, “Newman, watch in front. I’ve got the shifters behind us,” I said.
There was a
But there was only one thing in the road now. It was on fire, a blazing, burning shape, so bright that it chased back the dark in fire shadows, as it crouched on the road.
I heard Newman say, “Holy Jesus.”
It made me glance behind me to the roadblock that wasn’t there anymore. The road was clear. Tilford yelled, “Blake, get in!”
I got to my feet, the gun aimed back at the figure in the road. I realized he wasn’t crouching; he was trying to shift form. I stood on the running board, one hand on the handle by the roof, the other pointing the gun at the burning mass in the road. Did he think shifting form would help him heal, or put out the fire? Or maybe it was all he could think to do. Then he started to scream. It was a low growl of a scream as if a human throat and some large growling animal were both screaming at once. It was the kind of sound that would haunt your nightmares, or cause them. I’d seen vampires burn “alive,” but never a wereanimal. Vampires burn faster and more completely than humans do, but wereanimals are just people that heal almost anything. Anything but fire.
The SUV jumped forward. I grabbed the inside edge of the roof, one foot on the running board, the other on the door edge. My free hand aimed the MP5 out at the trees as they began to rush by. The open door brushed the trees and swung in on me. I used my knee to keep it riding just out from me. Edward was still at the sunroof. I wasn’t sure if Newman was in or out. Tilford was driving. I knew as much as I could. The car picked up speed. It bounced hard, and I was almost airborne. I couldn’t stay like this. I slipped into the open door and closed it behind me and hit the button for the window to rise. I had a moment to see Newman securely inside the car on his side. Edward slipped out of the sunroof and hit the button to close it. Then he yelled, “Anita!”
I was aiming at the window before I saw anything to shoot at. There was a gleam of silver, but it wasn’t at my closing window, it was at Tilford’s open one. I fired, and the bullet went past his head and into something dark at the end of that gleam of sword, because that was what it was, a sword, a fucking sword.
The shot was thunderous in the car, too small a space to be shooting without ear protection. I was deaf for a moment, but the figure fell and didn’t come back. The sword stayed like an exclamation point in Tilford’s shoulder and the seat. He was pinned.
Edward crawled over the seat and took the wheel. “Stay on the gas, Tilford.” He took Edward at his word because the car leapt forward as if he’d buried his foot to the floorboard. Edward steered one-handed, the other keeping the gun up and ready, though he had to watch the road, which left Newman and me to watch everything else. Fuck.
There was a noise from the roof, soft. I wasn’t even sure why I heard it over the engine and the ringing in my ears. It was almost as if I’d been listening for that soft slither of a sound. “They’re on the roof,” I said.
Newman didn’t react, so I said, “Newman, one of them is on the roof.”
He gave me wide, startled eyes. It was hard to tell in the dark, but he looked pale. The pulse in his throat looked like it was trying to jump out of his skin. He was scared, and I didn’t blame him. If I’d had time I’d have been
