Seanan McGuire - An Artificial Night

May nodded, nearly falling over as she dragged the wheel to the right. The car wasn’t cooperating, and I couldn’t blame it; if she’d been trying to steer me, I wouldn’t have been terribly cooperative either. Connor whimpered, squeezing his eyes more tightly shut as we swerved off the bridge and down the street, barely avoiding a collision with a commuter bus. Five of the Riders managed to change direction and follow us; the other two missed the turn and went shooting off down the bridge, trapped in the flow of traffic.

“Two down!” I shouted, jubilant. “Take the first right and floor it!” Turning, I elbowed Connor. “Look for things to throw.”

He uncovered his face, eyeing me. “What?”

“Look for things to throw out the window. Clothes. Cans. Whatever.”

“Why?”

“Distraction!” The rest of the explanation was lost as May found the turn and roared around it without slowing down. For one dizzy moment it felt like the car was going to flip over. I fell back against my seat, accompanied by a chorus of giggles and cheers from the back. At least some of us were enjoying the ride. Turning my attention back to the windshield, I choked. We were driving straight for a brick wall, and May wasn’t stopping. I caught my breath, and shrieked, “Turn around! Turn around! Turn around!”

She turned and blinked, keeping the gas pedal pressed down hard. “What?”

In unison, Connor and I shouted, “Watch the road!”

“Okay …” May shrugged as she looked back to the road, and then yelped in surprise. “Toby, there’s a wall!”

At least one of us was surprised. I slammed my fists down on the dashboard, yelling, “Turn around turn around!”

That got through. She hauled on the wheel, sending us into a wide spin. Andrew tumbled away from the window, slipping out of his seat belt, and bowled Raj over. The two of them landed in a heap on top of one of the smaller Cait Sidhe. She started to howl, surprised, and the rest of the children joined in. The noise startled May enough that she pulled us out of our spin and into a smooth turn.

You can say anything you want about the Volkswagen bug, but never, ever claim that it doesn’t have a good turning radius. We somehow avoided slamming into anything, instead winding up pointing toward the mouth of the alley we’d mistakenly tried to use as a getaway route. Problem: the five remaining Riders were lined up across the alley’s mouth, blocking our escape.

And May still had her foot on the gas.

What followed was a quick and dirty lesson in the law of relative mass. The Riders were fierce, armed, and possibly deadly; they were riding magical horses that could move as fast or faster than a car and were a lot more maneuverable. These were all things to their advantage. We had a hysterical Selkie, an age-slipped changeling, and a car being driven by someone who had no concept of her own mortality. Guess who had the overall advantage?

We plowed into the Riders at almost full speed, hitting one while two others dove out of the way, losing control of their mounts in the process. The illusions on the two freed horses dissolved, the motorcycles replaced by fae steeds who wheeled and fled.

Only two Riders were left as we pulled out onto the street, and they were following at a cautious distance. “Connor, give me something to throw,” I said, rolling down the window.

“Like what?”

“Anything! I don’t care!” He stared at me, then bent to remove his shoe and pressed it into my hand. I paused to gauge my aim, and then chucked it out the window.

In a perfect world, I’d have hit something. This isn’t a perfect world. The shoe flew wild, landing on the sidewalk. “Damn it. Give me something else.”

May interrupted, shouting, “Toby, the sign says ‘stop’!”

“Don’t stop!”

“But the sign—”

“If you stop, I will kill you myself! ” I shouted, flinging several empty soda cans and Connor’s other shoe into the street. May gave me a panicked look, but didn’t slow down. The kids saw what I was doing and cheered. Then they rolled down the back windows, starting to throw anything that wasn’t nailed down out of the car. This wasn’t the sort of thing I would’ve normally encouraged, at least in part because it would have caused their parents to kill me, but these were definitely special circumstances. A little lifesaving misbehavior seemed like exactly what we needed.

Spike hissed and fled to the front seat when an overenthusiastic child tried to pull it out of Jessica’s lap, having sensibly recognized the rose goblin as something that would cause a lot of damage if thrown. Jessica glared at the kid, removed her one remaining shoe, and pitched it out the window. That was promising; it was the first real action I’d seen her take since we got out of Blind Michael’s lands.

Maybe it was the combination of our speed and the objects flying out of the car, or maybe it was just sheer, dumb luck. Whatever the reason, we made it through the intersection just ahead of a turning Metro bus. So did the first Rider. The second Rider didn’t. The sound of crashing metal has never been that sweet.

The last Rider was still behind us, and we were running out of things to throw; we needed to lose him. To make matters worse, the excitement was starting to wear off for the children, and it was being replaced by fear. I could hear whimpers starting under their continued giggles. Kids get upset easily. They also recover fast, but that doesn’t make it a fair trade.

I threw the last of the cans out the window, demanding, “How are we supposed to get rid of this guy?”

“I don’t know!” snapped Connor.

“Then what good are you?” I threw a bad paperback romance out the window, followed by my trash bag from the week before.

“Toby? Toby?”

“Shut up, May!”

“Um …”

I turned toward her, glaring. “What is it?”

She had time to whimper, “Hill,” and then we were going down, fast. Very, very fast. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the last Rider pulling his steed to a halt at the top of the hill, staring. He wasn’t dumb enough to follow. Lucky us, we were already committed.

“Turn! Turn!” I shouted. The kids weren’t whimpering anymore—most of them were cheering like wild things. The few that had the sense to be scared were screaming, but the screams were almost indistinguishable from the cheers.

San Francisco was built on a series of hills. I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time. Some of them are steep enough that sane people won’t drive down them even at a normal pace; they go around instead, using the side streets with gentler inclines. Yet here we were, plummeting down one of the tallest hills in the city at a speed so ludicrous that I was willing to bet we were close to breaking a record. Slowing down would have been suicide. The brakes weren’t good enough, and parts of the car simply wouldn’t stop.

“Turn where?” wailed May. Connor was staring at the street as it unspooled ahead of us, all the blood drained from his cheeks. He looked terrified. I couldn’t blame him.

“Find a smaller hill! Turn!” We could lose some speed by turning. The car probably wasn’t going to recover—the damage to the engine had been done—but we might still be able to save ourselves if we could slow down enough.

May wrenched us hard to the left, and this time the car did lift up onto two wheels before dropping back to the ground with a bone-jarring thud. The shocks weren’t going to like that. The brakes probably weren’t too happy about it either.

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” said an unhappy voice from the back.

Privately, I agreed. Out loud I said, “Try to wait, okay? Let us stop the car first.”