Rachel Caine - Unknown

I heard a full-throated roar behind me, and looked in my side mirror to see the entire pack of black-clad bikers spilling out into formation behind me, following. So. They had been biding their time, after all. Well, it was their choice. I had been very clear about the fact that I was in no mood to play games to enhance their egos. I considered the best way to disable their Harleys without undue violence; I could easily shred their tires, for instance. I could soften the metal of the frames, breaking the bikes apart under their own torque. I could simply disengage a few critical connection points to force them out of control.

I was spoiled for choices, and spent a few empty miles considering which of them might result in the least amount of injuries. They pulled steadily closer.

The leader yelled something at me, and I felt a raw, wild excitement in his voice. He meant to take his power back, redeem himself in front of his men.

He meant to fight.

I was not necessarily opposed to obliging him . . . and then I felt a raw surge around me. Wild energy, sweeping through the aetheric and down into the real world like an invisible tornado.

“Get away from me!” I shouted to the bikers, who had closed in around me, engines roaring. The leader leered at me. He thought I was afraid. Idiot. “Get out of here or you’ll be killed!”

For answer, he pulled a pistol from under his leather vest and pointed it at me. “Don’t threaten me, bitch.”

I hadn’t been. I’d been warning him.

It happened before either of us had a chance to make our next moves in this pointless chess game. I felt heat, unnatural heat, emanating from the gas tank of the Victory, and realized my time was up. I couldn’t stop combustion, but the gasoline was a product of the Earth, and subject to Luis’s Warden powers. It took only a minor adjustment to render it inert within the tank of my motorcycle, a second of concentration, and I felt the Victory lurch as the inert fuel fouled the engine. It coughed, sputtered, and died.

The biker riding close on my right wasn’t as lucky. His motorcycle simply exploded. Fragments blew out in a terrifyingly beautiful ball, like a flower with a heart of fire blooming lethal, twisted petals. The man riding it simply . . . ceased, as a coherent presence. I felt the psychic blow as the impact rippled the air, but I couldn’t note it in any significant way. I didn’t have the time. I dived off the wobbling Victory just as the other motorcycle exploded and flattened myself; heat rippled over me, and an expanding wave of concussion pressed me into the pavement for an instant, then passed. I had two pieces of luck—first, the Victory took the brunt of the shrapnel. Flying metal shredded the beautiful form of my bike, mutilating it, but it protected me from the worst of it for a critical instant as it was blown out, over me, and spun end over end to crash into the ditch on the side of the road. I curled into a ball, well aware of the danger as the bikers lost control all around me; one thick wheel came within a half inch of my face, but somehow missed doing worse than laying greasy road marks on the edge of my sleeve. Metal shrieked and crashed, men yelled, and I smelled burning rubber even over the stench of burning human flesh.

Another gas tank exploded. Screaming erupted.

I rolled clear, moving fast, and dropped into the ditch where my Victory had landed in a sad and twisted heap. It was good that I did, as more explosions sounded, flinging lethal shrapnel—including human bones—through the air above me.

Someone else landed in the ditch with me . . . the leader of the bikers, his leather vest shredded and torn, skin shimmering with blood, eyes wide and dazed. Not dead, surprisingly. Not even badly wounded, beneath the splatter of blood. Unlike some of his fellows, he still had all his limbs.

“Jesus,” he panted, and crawled to put his back to the raw earth of the ditch. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus! What the fuck? ”

“They’re not after you,” I told him, and got a blank, uncomprehending look from him. “I told you to leave me alone.”

“Fucking hell, lady, who’d you piss off, the fucking Marines?”

“I wish,” I said. I’d learned the expression from Luis, but from the man’s look, I wasn’t sure I had delivered it properly. “Stay down.”

“Like hell I will. Those are my brothers up there!”

I didn’t know if he meant literally, as in blood relations, or figuratively; it was difficult to determine human relationships at the best of times for me. “Stay down!” I almost snarled it this time, and grabbed him bodily by the shredded leather vest as he tried to put his head up above the road level. “This isn’t your fight!”

It was, however, mine. I looked down at the mournful remains of my beautiful Victory, sighed, and bent my knees to jump up and out of the ditch.

The biker hit me in a flying tackle from the side, taking me completely by surprise. He slammed me down into the packed dirt and scratchy weeds an instant before another motorcycle skidded drunkenly off the road and crashed down right where I had been standing. It had been blown over by another explosion, which hit my ears with a dull crump of sound that told me my hearing had already begun to shut itself off in trauma.

The Harley was undamaged, except for some superficial dents and splatters. I stared at it, then shoved the biker off of me without much regard for his shouted concerns. I turned back to reach into the waistband of his blue jeans and pull out a semiautomatic pistol from a holster he’d concealed there. I checked the magazine— full, and stocked with hollow points—and slammed it home before removing the safety catch.

“Stay. Down,” I said, soft and precise, and straddled the Harley, which was still somehow running. The vibration of the engine sent waves of heat through my body, almost sexual in its intensity, and I took a deep breath before backing the Harley out of the ditch, up the other side, and back another few feet.

The road was carnage. Broken bodies, some weakly moving still. Shattered vehicles. Blood and bone.

And nothing else. No enemy. No face to put to my would-be killer.

Without the anchor of Luis’s presence, it was very hard for me to view things on the aetheric plane, where the reality of mere physics took on different aspects; it was like trying to fly while holding a concrete block. I managed it for only a few long seconds, overlaying the burning wreckage and bodies and serene moonlit desert with the floods and flows of intention, power, and truth.

Most of those lying on the road did not benefit from the illumination of their souls; their crimes had warped them into hideous shapes, disfigured their faces beyond recognition. I didn’t linger on their self- mutilations. Energy rose up from the destroyed motorcycles in shimmers of gauzy color, but there was something more.

The hot, glowing presence of two Wardens, drawing power.

I saw something lance at me across the aetheric, straight and intense as it cut through everything in its path. It was narrow, and it looked exactly like a laser beam, save that its lurid red color didn’t exist at all in the real, physical world.

I pulled broken metal up from the road in a rush, building a steel shield between me and the beam rushing toward me. It hit my improvised defense and blasted it to even smaller component pieces, but the shield had taken the energy and dissipated it into a splash that only melted and seared the remains into a ball of slag.

I snarled and throttled the borrowed Harley into a full scream of power. Tires dug sand, then gravel, and then I was airborne as momentum carried me forward over the ditch and onto the surface of the road. I avoided the worst of the wreckage and aimed the motorcycle for the spot where the beam of power had originated.