“No,” I told Fred, as Jules shook it off and leapt back into the fight. “This is pretty calm, actually.”

“What are you doing?” he asked, watching me check the cushions, the floor and then the visor over the driver’s side. The keys were under the visor, and they fell into my lap.

“Putting a stop to this. If they’re going to act like children, they can at least do it out of sight of norms.”

“And you think they’re gonna listen?”

“No. But if I leave, they’ll have to follow.”

“Well, I don’t know how you’re gonna get out. They’ve parked that big-ass limo of theirs right across the exit. And the fence goes right up to—”

He cut off as a metallic shriek rent the air, bouncing off the surrounding buildings and echoing down the street. “What the hell was that?” he demanded, staring around wildly.

I didn’t answer. I was too busy watching the limo rise into the air, its long body twisting and writhing as if in pain, metal screeching, car alarm screaming and window glass popping. A windshield wiper flew off like an arrow, spearing the old sign above the diner and sending a wash of sparks across the pavement.

“What is this?” Fred yelled, gripping my shoulder as the limo was wrenched in two, the violence of the movement sending half of it crashing into the building opposite.

And the other half spinning straight at us.

“How things usually go,” I told him, and floored it.

Chapter Twenty-four

The engine must have caught at some point, because we shot ahead, the luxury projectile missing us by inches. I swerved and stomped on the brakes, avoiding another car but slinging us into the fence. I barely noticed, because I was sure the limo had just taken out the diner and everyone in it.

Only it hadn’t.

I stared through the cracked and bloody windshield at the limo’s backside, which was sticking, cantilevered, out of a wavering field of energy. Unlike Pritkin’s seamless blue shields, this one was a patchwork of colors and textures that ran and muddied together as they fought each other and the car. But somehow, they’d stopped it. Like a fish caught in a net, the huge hunk of twisted metal hung there, eight or nine feet off the ground, quivering and shaking—and leaking.

Something was dripping from the tail end, enough to form a puddle on the ground below. It reflected the sparks still shooting from the ruined sign, which were showering both the car and the puddle. It took my half-frozen brain a second to realize what I was seeing, and then I was fumbling with the gears, shoving the SUV hard into reverse.

“What now?” Fred demanded.

“Gas!” I said, stomping on the pedal while the war mages scattered, shields retracting around their owners or being thrown in front of the diner in a last-ditch attempt to protect the people inside. And the car—

“Shiiit!” Fred screamed as it exploded midfall, sending a cloud of lethal projectiles scattering in all directions.

I ducked—there was no time for anything else—only to find the floor already occupied. I covered my head as we bounced backward, still moving but not fast enough to avoid the spear of metal that obliterated the remains of the windshield. Glass exploded through the small space, stinging my arms and sending a wet trickle sliding down my temple. But thanks to the dash, the rest of me fared better.

Although not as well as Fred, who had been cowering on the floorboard.

“You’re supposed to be a bodyguard!” I said, hitting the brake.

“I am.”

“Then what are you doing down there?”

“I’m not a very good bodyguard.”

“Get up!” I yanked him off the floor, intending to use vampire vision to help me spot Pritkin in the chaos. But before I could get a word out, the scene in front of us tilted, the diner skewed wildly to the left and then disappeared entirely, replaced by a dizzying view of darkened buildings and a star-flung sky.

“What’s happening? What’s happening?” Fred demanded hysterically, grabbing me as I grabbed the steering wheel to keep from sliding through the missing windshield.

I didn’t reply, because it was taking all my concentration not to lose my grip while spinning in a kaleidoscope of falling glass and debris. Like the limo, the SUV had risen into the air; unlike the limo, it was slowly flipping end over end, slinging the headlights in a wide parabola that intermittently highlighted the escalating fight below.

“Where’re the controls?” I yelled at Fred, as we tumbled around like two sheets in a dryer.

“What controls?”

“For the charm!”

“What charm?”

“The one you just hit!” I said furiously, as half a dozen mages suddenly went flying.

It looked like they’d been blown sky high by some sort of explosion, only I hadn’t seen one—or much of anything else except for Fred’s size-nine shoe. But something scary was down there. Because the man who rocketed by the windshield had the closest thing to fear I’d ever seen on a war mage’s face.

I knocked Fred’s foot aside and started frantically searching under the dash.

A lot of cars in the supernatural community are equipped with levitation charms to access the ley lines, many of which don’t follow the ground. But those usually belong to mages, who are the main users of the earth’s magical highway system. Vampires tend to avoid areas that can incinerate a person in seconds without proper shields, which even masters don’t have.

As a result, I’d come into contact with the lines and the vehicles that used them only recently. And it hadn’t been in the kind of leisurely way that allowed for a lot of questions—like what the damn charm was supposed to look like. But if it wasn’t so goddamned dark—

I’d barely had the thought when a blow interrupted the spin cycle, sending us sailing backward on a wash of heat and light. That turned out to be a good thing, since the space we’d been occupying was suddenly filled with diner. We slammed into a building across the street in a crunch of whiplash-inducing speed, and the chrome roof of the restaurant shot spaceward, shedding burning detritus like a Roman candle rocket ship out of an old Buck Rogers film.

The car scraped off the bricks and drifted back into the street, listing a little to the left like an old drunk, while the diner arced impossibly high above us. It trembled against the night for a long moment, as if it really intended to leave gravity behind. And then it plunged back to earth in a hail of bricks and old floor tiles and flaming orange Naugahyde.

“Shit,” Fred said faintly.

And then we both had to grab the dash when the SUV was battered by a billowing cloud of dust and debris. I tried to spot Pritkin in the chaos, but it was impossible. But at least it looked like the Corps had evacuated the diner before the explosion. Panicked people were scattering in all directions—including a blond racing just ahead of a line of cars parked along the street.

She was petite and busty, with short hair that was closer to brown than my strawberry blond. It also didn’t curl like mine, and we weren’t dressed the same, but I guess the resemblance was close enough. Because something was knocking cars out of line left and right behind her.

Yet, amazingly, no one seemed to have noticed. Amid the choking dust and the burning lot and the blaring car alarms and the screaming people, the blond’s predicament had attracted zero attention. And by the time it did, my doppelgänger was going to be toast.

I started working to get the stalled-out car started again.

“Did you ever see anything like that?” Fred demanded.

“Uh, maybe a few things.”

“Well, I haven’t. I mean, damn!” He stared at the lot, the fires reflecting in his wide gray eyes. “I guess a spell must have hit a gas main or something.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Maybe? What else could it have been?”

“We’re about to find out,” I told him, as the reluctant engine finally caught.

I hit the gas and we careened across the road, still listing a little, but moving. The girl ran straight under the car, so panicked that the sight of a levitating SUV didn’t even register. I flicked on the brights and the emergency lights and sat on the horn, staring around for some glimpse of what I was taunting. But all I saw was the carnage, not what was causing it.

An invisible fist caved in the side of a nearby delivery van, knocking it on its side and sending it skidding back a dozen yards. An old VW Beetle gave up the ghost in a fiery crash with a new Lincoln. And someone’s motorcycle took an Evel Knievel–type leap over the rest of the cars before flaming out against the side of a billboard, setting the whole thing ablaze.

And then nothing.

The metal massacre suddenly stopped, the invisible cause pausing as it assessed the oddity of a battered, airborne SUV lit up like a Christmas tree. And a blond behind the wheel who actually looked like she wanted to be caught.

I beeped the horn again, just in case it had somehow missed us, and Fred gripped my arm. “What are you doing?” he asked shrilly.

“Getting some attention.”

“Getting some—Why?”

“Because whatever’s out there went after the limo and then the diner and then the blond. It’s looking for me.”

“Well, of course it’s looking for you!” he said, shaking me. “That’s why we need to get out of here!”

“We’re about to,” I said, as something huge and dark forgot about the girl and shivered through the air toward us, visible in movement as it hadn’t been before.

I still couldn’t tell much about it, just a vague shadow that dimmed but didn’t obscure the city lights behind it. And I didn’t have time for a closer look. I mashed the gas pedal to the floor at the same time that something lashed out at us with the speed of a striking cobra.

It would have hit us full on, but we’d scooted forward enough that it only caught our rear end. But that was enough to send us spinning like a roulette wheel into the chain-link fence. We hit backward, bowing out the mesh, and the car tried hard to die on me. But I punched the gas and, with a sputter and a groan, it leapt forward, tearing across the lot and down the street like we’d been shot out of a gun.