Page 47 of The Elementalist
“Two reasons. First—” She yelped and grabbed the roof handles, clinging for dear life as I hurled the truck into a sliding right turn when the road decided to go all hairpin on meunexpectedly.
Branches hammered the roof and side of my truck like a Neal Peart drum solo for a few seconds before we skidded back onto the road. Both the Caddy and the Dodge chasing us decided to hit their brakes hard for the same curve. My driving like an idiot bought us about sixty yards of distance.
“First,” said Crystal, giving me an intense ‘you’re not supposed to kill us either’ stare, “The families don’t have anywhere near the same amount of influence there. They haven’t bothered infiltrating the police, town council, or mayor’s office as deeply. Second… there’s a ton of werewolves.”
I damn near stomped on the brakes to take my chances with the guys behind us… but didn’t. “Werewolves?”
“Don’t sound so incredulous. You’re fully aware that vampires exist. You have magic, and you’ve met me.” She sprouted her horns long enough to wink at me.
If anyone had ever asked me if I’d have considered a girl with little curved ram horns adorable, I’d have laughed and probably made a joke about people doing illegal drugs. But… somehow, they worked for her. And yes, adorable.
“Great. Werewolves.”
“Relax. They won’t give you any problems at all. They’re big on nature, too.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah. You know,wolves? They’re nature spirits.”
“What about that full moon stuff? Murder sprees?”
She pointed at the rear window. “They’re getting closer. And I dunno. I’ve never heard of a werewolf seriously losing their mind at a full moon. They revere the Moon as a force of nature. It’s probably vampires giving them bad PR.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at that—but not the ‘they’re getting closer’ part. The truck had taken the lead, better able to cope with the rough road than the Caddy. Of course, as carchases went, we basically sped along at the equivalent of a lazy Sunday drive. Sixty MPH didn’t make for breakneck speeds on a freeway, but on back country lanes, I expected death to leap out at us any second.
Thecrackof a rifle startled an F-bomb out of me and made Crystal yell in surprise.
So much for slowing down. The narrow road with thick trees on both sides didn’t offer me much room to evade gunfire, and constant blind curves ahead made the idea of going into the oncoming lane about as fun as a game of Russian roulette. This area didn’t exactly have a lot of traffic, but it would be just my luck that the one other car on the road within fifty miles would show up as soon as I strayed out of the lane.
More gunfire went off behind us in an urgent, albeit random peppering. Nothing—as far as I could tell—hit us. I swerved randomly between lanes on a maybe quarter-mile stretch when the firing intensified. There, I picked it up to about ninety.
Crystal screamed as I slammed on the brakes ahead of a hard left turn. Something—branch or bullet I couldn’t tell—clanked off the truck bed. Fading daylight made the road even more treacherous. If I hadn’t spent most of my life driving around this area, I’d have been scared shitless. Though, the approaching darknessdidmake us a harder target to shoot.
Unless they were vampires...
Trees flashed by in the glare of my headlights, bullets whistled overhead, and time blurred. Some part of my brain knew it would take us about a half hour to circle Shadow Pines on the outskirts and reach the highway connecting to Ironside. I called it a highway, but around here, that only meant it had been paved and didn’t have too many curves. And the half-hour estimate also included driving like a sane person.
The road ahead of us straightened out for about two miles… and the forest receded back, leaving us out in the open.
Crap. We’re going to be sitting ducks. “Take the wheel.”
Crystal glanced at me with an ‘are you serious?’ face for only a second or two before she climbed into my lap and grabbed the steering wheel. Good thing she’s thin.
Distracting as that was, I managed to slide out from under her and crawl into the passenger seat, where I faced backwards. Using my newfound abilities on people bothered me, but I’ve never been a big fan of body piercings and I certainly didn’t want one from a bullet. The Dodge behind us might be carrying vampires, might not. Either way, I didn’t have to kill them to protect myself—and Crystal.
I could just stop them.
And if they were vampires... well, I would deal with them later.
Both hands up, I concentrated on the earth. A shaft of stone about as thick as a man’s thigh sprang up—behind the truck. The Caddy swerved around it, though scraped the side, the mirror exploding in a blast of shimmery glass bits. Shit. The ground is moving by so fast, aiming at the road between us won’t work. Against my instinct, I focused my—magic for lack of a better term—straight down and drew another rock spire upward.
It took a second or two to form, plenty of time for us to be away before it erupted.
The Dodge attempted to swerve but didn’t have anywhere near enough time. They crashed into the column close to the passenger side, smashing that headlight. While the column broke away from the ground from the force of the collision, the truck’s rear end swung out into a spin… and the Dodge careened out of sight. Two of the guys in back fell out of the bed before it went off the edge of the road... and down into the stone quarry.
A flicker of spiraling headlights illuminated the wall of the quarry canyon.
Before I could think ‘aww, shit,’ a loud metallicwhumpechoed up from below.
