Dearest Mother of Mine (Overworld Chronicles) (17 page)

The woman released another fireball. I anticipated it this time and veered to avoid it. My eyes flicked to the rear-view mirror and saw the other car racing to catch up. This terrain favored Darkwater. We couldn't outrun them. We couldn't outfight them for long. I spotted an exit sign ahead. The other driver seemed to sense my intentions, and blocked access to the lane while the blonde woman shot fireballs into the road, trying to disable us. I had a feeling they didn't want to outright kill us. That privilege was probably reserved for their boss, Kassus.

The car rattled. The wheels thumped as though one might already be going flat. I smelled the distinct odor of burning oil. I had a feeling this contraption wouldn't last much longer. The exit ramp loomed a hundred yards away. I had to make a move.

"We need to make the exit," I shouted. "Get them out of the way."

He took another shot at the woman, but I could tell he wasn't trying to hit her, just scare her. She seemed to figure that out pretty fast. I saw the grin spread across her pretty face.

"Hit their tires!" I said.

"I tried," he said. "I think they're made of diamond fiber."

I growled. Diamond fiber was made to resist magic, and it was nearly indestructible. "I guess we'll do it the hard way." I jerked the wheel toward the ramp. The other car blocked. I slammed against them, but their tires were too solid, their car too heavy. The other car came up from behind, and slammed into our trunk. The car blocking the ramp pulled away to the right just enough to let me move over another few feet.

The minute, I did, I realized my mistake. A crash barrier with yellow drums lay right in my path. I tried to steer away, but white lines of energy from the woman's staff suddenly gripped the car, holding it on course. The car behind us crashed into the trunk again.

No way out.

Chapter 15

I hit the brakes, desperate to avoid slamming into the barrier. Metal screeched on metal as the brakes tried to stop our forward momentum. I could already see this rolling pile of junk wouldn't stop in time. Colliding with the water-filled drums wouldn't kill us, but we'd be sitting ducks for the Darkwater agents.

Shelton roared like a wild beast. I saw him aim his staff out the right window. A white wave exploded from the end, slamming into the side of the blocking sedan, and shoving it sideways. Tires screeched and smoked as the car jetted sideways even as momentum carried it forward at the same time. I twisted the steering wheel right. The car clipped a barrel. The front end sparked against the concrete barrier. And then we zoomed up the exit ramp. The car riding our tail slammed on the brakes too late. Water exploded as it plowed into the crash barrels.

"Yes!" Shelton shouted as we whizzed past the car to our right. I took a right off the ramp since the light was red, and took the next left. I wasn't sure where we were, exactly, but kept going, checking the rear-view mirror for pursuit.

"We need to dump the car," Shelton said. "The tracker."

I pulled down a road where a giant warehouse store had gone out of business and now stood empty and boarded. A loud pop preceded the thumping noise of a flat tire. I urged the car further. As if in answer, the tire made one last squealing noise before the metal rim rasped atop the asphalt.

I hit the brakes. The car slid a few feet and skidded to a halt sideways across the road. I got out while Shelton wrestled with his staff as he slid out of the other side. A steep hill on the side of the road opposite the warehouse led to an apartment complex. Since I didn't feel like hiding in an abandoned warehouse-sized building with angry Arcanes after me, I scrambled toward the hill.

The screech of rubber on road caught my attention as the two poser police cars rounded the corner and roared toward us like dogs on the scent of a fox. Shelton sent a meteor flying at the lead car. It swerved as the sphere cratered into the asphalt. The nose of the second car dived into the hole. The rear flipped up. The car teetered for a moment before toppling over onto its roof with a crunch.

I saw the driver of the lead car snarl. He hit the gas, and the sedan lurched forward. The blonde woman sat on the window sill firing blasts of energy at us. Shelton and I dove behind the cover of his ruined car. He poked up his head and ducked as another crackling strand of lightning flickered past. Another blast rocked the car. My teeth clenched tight and anger boiled through me.
I've had enough of these clowns.

My demonic side surged through the cage door, flooding through my veins, swelling my muscles and causing my skin to strain against my clothes. I felt my tail punch through the back of my pants. I stopped the demon from taking over at the last second as a roar burst from my throat.

When I stood up, all seven feet of me, muscles bulging like some obscene steroid user, the blonde woman's eyes went wide. She aimed at me. I tore the rear passenger door off Shelton's car and flung it like a Frisbee at the sedan. The woman screamed. The door smashed into the hood, shattered the windshield, and bounced off the roof as the car veered out of control. The tire caught the curb and the car flipped, catapulting the woman from her perch.

I saw her body fly through the air, a scream trailing from her wide mouth as she sailed toward a future as a blood smear on the asphalt. I knew she would die. I knew she'd been trying to capture us so her leader could kill us. But a part of me couldn't take the guilt of seeing her splatter all over the road. I blurred, the scene slowing as my supernatural reflexes kicked in. I caught the woman, swinging my arms to lessen the impact.

The car rolled toward me, glass flying everywhere, metal sparking. I jumped, felt the car clip my feet from beneath me as I failed to avoid it. I landed with a thud on my back. The woman lay atop me, her eyes wide with fear and loathing as she looked into my demonic face.

I scrambled to my feet, leaving her on the ground with a look of astonishment on her face. She suddenly crawled on hands and knees toward something—her staff. I snatched it, and broke it into four pieces. I looked at the flipped car and saw the driver woozily pulling himself out while the other two Darkwater people did the same from the second car.

"Let's go!" Shelton said.

I ran to him, scooping him up beneath an arm.

"Wait," he said, aiming his staff at the blue sedan. He said a word, and the vehicle burst into unnatural flames, melting the vehicle down to slag in seconds.

I clambered up the hill and leapt the fence into the apartment complex where trees hid my monstrous form. I put Shelton down, suppressed my demon essence. Thankfully, my clothes hadn't torn completely, but they were definitely ruined. I kicked off my now useless shoes and cursed. "How many clothes am I gonna go through if this keeps up?"

"Think about it later," Shelton said, motioning me on. We entered the parking garage. He walked down the row of vehicles and chose an identical make and model to the car he'd just blown up, though this one wore a disgusting shade of mint green. He aimed his wand at the lock, and made a flicking motion. The handle sprang up. The inside of the car reeked of pine air freshener as we slid inside, though it was infinitely better than the stale food odor from the last vehicle. Shelton aimed the wand at the ignition. After a few false starts, the car thrummed to life, sounding more like a cheap lawnmower than a car.

"Couldn't you have chosen something a little faster?" I asked.

"It might take me too long to steal a car I'm not familiar with," he said, backing it out of the spot and steering it from the parking deck. "If you think magically hotwiring a car is easy, maybe you should give it a try sometime." His brow furrowed. "On second thought, don't do that. You might blow it up."

"Ha, ha," I said, taking a deep breath to calm my frayed nerves. I felt weak with relief for a moment before realizing something. "They know I'm Daemos now," I said.

Shelton nodded. "Yep, their search list just got a lot smaller." He waved a hand dismissively. "Nothing else you could've done."

"If I could master my damned magic," I said. "Hell, even throwing standard fireballs would've been better than giving away the one thing that makes me different."

"They'll probably figure out your name," Shelton said. "I don't know of too many other Daemos who hang with us regular folk." He took a left to avoid going back past the road we'd just come from.

"As if you're regular," I said, keeping an eye on the back window in case Darkwater had magically repairing cars.

Shelton's phone rang, and we both nearly jumped out of our seats. He answered. I heard Bella's cheerful voice on the other end for several seconds before Shelton interrupted and told her we would be at the hideout in fifteen minutes and send her a picture so she could open a portal for us. He parked the car in an alley when we arrived, and ran a simple cleansing spell to wipe down the interior of fingerprints. We walked a few blocks back to the spot where Shelton had stored the blue sedan, and opened a hidden staircase.

I recognized the hideout as one of the few we'd circulated through while on the run from the numerous jackasses who wouldn't leave me alone. Bella was already waiting inside, standing outside the portal. She looked from Shelton's rumpled state to my stretched clothes and groaned.

"Oh, dear. You two did something terrible, didn't you?" she said.

Shelton held up a hand to stop her. "I don't want to hear it now. I'm starving, and I want a beer."

She pressed her lips together, as if it was an effort not to say something, and nodded. "I brought you some potion beer from town. It's in the cooler."

He sighed, bent down, and kissed her on the lips. "You're the best."

She giggled.

I went through the portal back to the mansion cellar and ran upstairs to find Elyssa and Stacey hunched over a game of Scrabble. A third spot at the table—presumably Bella's—remained empty while she and Shelton smooched downstairs and a thousand miles away on the other side of the omniarch. From what I could tell, Bella was beating the other women handily.

"I've never cared for these board games," Stacy said, her British accent loading the sentence with disdain. She looked up at me, and a sensual smirk drew up her lips. "I see someone has been naughty as usual."

Elyssa's forehead scrunched. She rose from her chair and inspected me. I told her what had happened before she could ask.

"If they figure out your name, they'll know you're going to school here," she said. "That narrows down the search parameters by several million people."

"Survival was higher on my priority list at the time," I said.

She rubbed my arm. "I know. I'm not blaming you, but we need to be even more on guard now." Her eyes lost focus. "Posting sentries to watch the way station entrance was a smart move on their part, though I would have put people at the entrance to the pocket dimension instead of at the bottom of the parking ramp."

"We didn't see them until the last minute," I said. "For all we know there were others waiting at the door, too."

"I doubt it," she said. "Unless they have more manpower than we thought." She kissed my cheek. "For what it's worth, I'm glad you saved that woman even if she was trying to catch you."

I shuddered. "I'm already responsible for one death. Plus, I don't think I could stand the sight of seeing her hit the asphalt at fifty miles an hour."

"You've seen worse."

I'd cut vamplings to bloody chunks before. Crushed a man's skull with my bare hands after a drug lord had taken me captive. I'd seen Maximus blow his master's head off with a gun. Yeah, I'd seen worse, but that didn't mean I wanted to see it ever again. I knew with absolute certainty my wish was an impossibility.

Shelton and Bella appeared from the cellar. Bella looked concerned. She locked eyes with Elyssa, probably communicating something in girl code. Women had a knack for saying more in a silent look than most guys did shouting what they wanted in everyone's faces.

"Justin, let me grab a potion beer, and we'll go over the footage on this ASE," Shelton said, heading toward the kitchen.

"Need help?" Elyssa asked me.

"Always," I said with a smile. I leaned in and whispered in her ear. "You can sit in my lap."

Bella laughed, her supernatural hearing obviously picking up my words.

Elyssa blushed and pecked my lips.

"How adorable," Stacey purred, her hearing no worse than Bella's.

It was my turn to blush. I still had trouble remembering to keep certain things to myself if I didn't want every super in the vicinity to overhear me. Or maybe I just needed to learn how to craft a muffling spell.

We gathered in the briefing room slash war room, presumably the safest place to discuss super-secret things. Cutsauce followed the crowd, growling and yipping at anyone that didn't bend over to scratch his ears. He snuggled into Bella's lap as the meeting commenced.

Shelton copied the ASE by waving his wand at it, and directing four streams of aether to blank ASEs so everyone would have one to look at.

"We're looking for a specific limo," he explained. "According to the informational brochure Walter gave me, the illusions last for up to twenty minutes. Each illusion is spelled to drive a random route and find a good spot to pull off the road, like a parking garage, before vanishing." He pulled up the images, and showed an overhead view of Phipps Plaza. "We need to eliminate the limos that vanish in plain sight. The ones that vanish into parking garages make things a little more difficult because we won't know if they disappeared or not."

"A bloody needle in a haystack," Stacey said.

"Let's count the limos as they exit the garage," Elyssa said, zooming the image of her ASE on one limo, and slashing her finger across it to number it. "That way we can eliminate the fakes."

"How do we even know this is the right set of cars?" I asked. "I don't remember Oliver giving a specific time."

Shelton grunted. "I called him a minute ago. He told me he doesn't remember the exact time because he was in the stable. He also said there were four limos using similar illusions that day."