Better off Dead Book Three Page 11

  “Hold on,” I muttered as I sprinted forward. I kept an ear out as I ran as fast as I could. I watched every shadow – every damn dust mote that fell from the cavernous ceiling above. Heck, I watched those the most – I couldn’t forget how Hilliker had managed to sneak into my castle.

  The rat clenched his front paws together and braced against me as I let magic sail over my muscles and give me the speed I needed to shoot right out of the main entrance into the tunnels.

  As soon as I reached the abandoned street above, I realized something was wrong. It had been quiet before, but now it was deadly so. There wasn’t a sound – not a car backfiring, not a pedestrian walking softly by – not even a bird cheeping. It was as if someone had siphoned all the noise out of the street as effectively as a vampire bleeding a corpse dry by slicing its throat.

  I clenched onto the rat tighter. The little guy held onto me tightly too, his whiskers twitching with fear. “I sense magic descending, my lady. You must run.”

  “Or fight – and I choose to fight.” I rounded my spare hand into a bloodless fist, pulled my stiff white lips away from my teeth, and got ready to face Hilliker’s forces.

  “It isn’t appropriate,” the rat tried.

  I let out a gruff laugh. “Maybe not for a real lady – but trust me,” my voice dropped low enough to start an earthquake, “I’m not one of those.”

  I heard the first priest before I saw the man. He was standing in a shadow. I did not mean by that that he was trying to hide within the long darkness cast by one of the many open shop front restaurants or blinking signs. I literally meant that he was trying to encapsulate himself within a shadow. It rendered him almost invisible – until he started to move, that was. As soon as he twitched, my eyes locked on him like targeting lasers.

  I darted to the side just before the guy could get off a round of magical fire. It peppered the street where I’d been standing, smashing into the bitumen and ripping it up in great chunks that scattered over the hoods of nearby parked cars. One was a fancy yellow corvette thing, and its alarm blared.

  I ducked to the side again, the rat now gripping onto my leather jacket and nuzzling his head against my chest.

  I ran up the side of the alarmed car, smashed my fist into the hood, and ripped out a chunk of metal. Yeah, it was damaging the car – but I hadn’t started it. I also would not be hanging around long enough to pay for the insurance fee.

  Bringing the metal up like a shield, I imbued it with a strong blast of darting magic that sailed into every molecule of the metal and knitted them together until they were as tight as locks.

  The priest let out a blood-curdling roar and sent another fatal blast of magic smashing my way. I just brought up the shield and let it cop the brunt of the attack. Flame slammed around it as my magic absorbed the rest.

  This priest was no joke. He’d obviously been sent as an advanced party to keep me occupied until Hilliker’s real forces arrived. I needed to deal with this guy and get out of here before the rest of them came.

  So it was time to do something brave, if stupid – and if downright illegal.

  The priest was continuing to pepper the street with magical blasts. Some of them were directed – the rest strayed off, smashing into and through anything in sight. Soon this peaceful little laneway was completely aflame. It was time to add to the destruction.

  I jumped off the car and landed beside it down on one knee, my makeshift magical shield held in a strong grip right in front of my face. I closed my eyes – not really recommended in a fight as crazy as this, but something I took the time to do as I attuned to the car.

  “My lady – or warrior. Whatever you’d like to be called,” the rat squeaked. “Do something!”

  “I intend to.” I let magical strands blast from me. They sank into and around the car, surrounding it like a lasso.

  The priest sensed an opportunity. He assumed I was trying to catch my breath. I wasn’t. I was trying to catch him. With a car.

  I screamed and let rip. I plunged right into the magic of the Deep until it sang in my veins. I lifted the car right up, its yellow paint glimmering under the fire that covered everything.

  The priest had a chance to stare at the car in total wide-eyed shock. Then I brought it down on top of him. At the same time, I opened the driver’s side door. I smashed it down on him until he was crammed head-first into the car.

  “Effective,” the rat stammered, clearly impressed.

  “I’m not done yet.” Shifting my hands to the side in an elegant move, I twisted the car around and set it back down on the road with an almighty shake that blasted dust and debris out in a great cloud. I ignored the way it flattened my hair over my head. I concentrated on connecting to the car until I accessed the engine. I made it rev into life, the powerful vibrations shaking through the road and up into my legs.

  “Get out of here,” I snapped at the priest as I sent the car careening down the road at top speed. It smashed into things – a lot of things. But that was the point.

  Soon it was out of sight, its wildly revving engine getting fainter.

  I took a shaking breath, but the rat wasn’t about to let me rest on my laurels. He gripped my jacket. “I sense more of them coming. It is time to run, my lady.”

  “Onto it.” I whirled to head back to the top of the steps that led to Sato’s.

  The rat gripped me harder. “Do not take them,” he hissed as quickly as he could. He spoke so fast, it looked as if his whiskers would fall off.

  “What?”

  “I failed to mention before, but Hilliker has spelled the transport node to take anyone departing from it to one of his many lairs.”

  “Crap,” I spat, the word barely making it out of my shaking lips.

  I turned on the spot. I didn’t need the rat to shudder closer to me to realize more priests were on their way. They practically poisoned the air. They did something to the waves of energy and magic that ran through everything. More than that, they did something to the Deep. I could feel this shaking within me as they neared. It told me they and everything they stood for was an abomination.

  “Don’t just stand there. There are other transport nodes in Tokyo, however I fear he might have spelled those too. You need to run until you get somewhere safe.”

  I heeded the rat’s advice and pushed off into a blinding sprint. Behind me as I left that cramped laneway far behind, I heard the priests. As they arrived, they pulled themselves from the shadows. I didn’t want to believe it was possible. I’d assumed that other guy had been waiting for me, but it quickly became apparent that he’d transported in through the shadow instead.

  And that – that should be completely impossible. You couldn’t use a mere lack of light or occluded illumination to transport across the globe. You required a transport node or hellfire at the very least. But clearly Hilliker’s priests were now rewriting all the rules. As the Banished became more powerful, I shuddered to think of just what else they’d be able to achieve.

  I ran through the streets of Tokyo with a scared but still gentlemanly monster rat in my arms. I didn’t slow down for anything. Not the police, not pedestrians, not for the shrieks of priests climbing out of the shadows. I kept my mind locked on the target of finding somewhere safe, and I did not look back once.

  The problem was, finding somewhere safe would not be easy. I quickly directed myself close to another nearby transport node I usually used. Now I knew I had to scan them, I used my new Deep senses to scan the node before I arrived. The rat was right – it had been spelled by Hilliker. I could sense his unique dark, chaotic energy.

  Damn, damn, damn. There was nowhere to go. Without a node, I couldn’t get out of Japan. That was the least of my troubles – the priests were still on my tail.

  “You should find a car or some other form of transport and head out to a more remote location – one that does not have a transport node,” the rat suggested as I ran across a packed highway without dying – though I did cause quite a bi
t of driver distress as I ran up people’s cars and flipped over their hoods. I even kicked one guy’s tires to use the rubber to help propel me up the side of a highway wall.

  “How will that help?”

  “Hilliker is using the proximity of transport nodes to send his priests here. They are not capable of transporting without them.”

  I furrowed my brow as I tried to think through what he was suggesting. “How the hell would that work?”

  “Not hell – chaos,” the little guy said gravely. “As the Banished’s magic increases and infects more of this world, Hilliker and his men can use that magic to spread the effectiveness of existing spells. His priests can appear in shadows within a proximity of ten kilometers of an existing transport node.”

  “Damn,” I swore under my breath. I was done questioning if this rat knew what he was talking about – that was by now obvious.

  I concentrated on what he’d said. Ten kilometers didn’t sound like much, but it was a heck of a lot when you considered the distributed transport net in Tokyo. It was a popular magical haunt. There were 200 transport nodes that I could think of. There would be more, too.

  I swore again.

  “Instead of becoming vulgar, I suggest you go through with my plan. Find transport and head to somewhere without transport nodes.”

  I thought of the bullet train. That would be quick. But it would also be as dangerous as hell. If I got trapped on it with Hilliker’s priests – sorry, when, not if – it would be a shit show.

  I had to steal a car instead. I suddenly regretted using that cute yellow corvette on that other priest. It had looked fast and mean. I’d have to settle for an old sedan instead.

  I lurched toward the first parked car I could see on the street. It did not look fancy. At least, however, it had been maintained. As I used a blast of magic to open it, I saw that the leather was plush, the dash was free of dust, and the windscreen was clear.

  I didn’t want to steal this – but I didn’t have a choice. Before I escaped in a cloud of exhaust, I leaned out of the window, concentrated, and pulled something out of my subspace pocket. It was the incense burner. I locked it down on the street and wrote a quick magic note above it. It would explain I’d taken the car in exchange for the incense burner. It was a very good deal. As I’d already stated, that incense burner was the most expensive thing I owned. It could be traded for 1000 spunky yellow corvettes.

  When that was done, I finally used magic to hotwire the vehicle, and I pulled out from the curb with nothing but the screech of tires and a growl from me.

  I was thankful for the fact it was night. That meant there were fewer vehicles on the road. But that was the one and only thing I could be grateful for. It took approximately two damn seconds until I came across a cop car.

  “Seriously?” I hissed as I instinctively ducked my head down to get out of its way.

  “You cannot hide from the law by simply pretending you are not there. I suggest you drive as fast as you can, maiden.”

  Despite the situation, I still whipped my head around to stare at the rat. “I can put up with a lot, but I am not a maiden.”

  “I surmised as much, considering you’re engaged to a demon.”

  “What’s that meant to mean?” Indignation rang through my voice as loud as a shrill beep.

  “That you will have, presumably, felt the immeasurable pleasure of a demon’s—”

  I yanked a hand off the steering wheel to silence him. “I don’t want to know. While we’re driving, tell me everything about how Sato’s was attacked.”

  “First I suggest you concentrate on the fact a truckload of priests is on their way.”

  “I’m sorry – what do you mean a truckload?”

  The rat did not have to explain himself. Through the ear-splitting squeal of the police siren, I picked up the sound of a powerful, revving engine. I yanked my head to the side and stared up at a section of highway that crossed over the one we were traveling through. I saw a massive truck that looked as if it was meant to haul tanks around. On the back was a virtual army of priests.

  “What the hell?” I stammered.

  “I am sure you are by now aware that Hell has nothing to do with your current predicament. You should rather be asking what in chaos’s name is that.”

  I did not correct myself. I locked my foot on the accelerator until the car shot forward with an almighty growl. While I’d already pointed out that this car wasn’t the fanciest on the planet, at least the owners had kept it in good condition. While it didn’t purr along like a race car, and it rather rattled and spluttered like a drunk old dragon, I would take what I was given.

  I kept my eyes on that priest truck until it was out of sight.

  “Rat, do you know much about this highway? Does that overpass join onto this one?”

  “Not technically.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That when chaos and magic are involved, technically is irrelevant.” Scarcely were the words out of the rat’s lips when an unholy rev hit the air.

  My eyes widened all the way. I watched the truck smash out of the other side of the overpass.

  I’d seen some pretty crazy things in the past couple of days, from Purgatory to writhing rain, but this took the cake. As the truck came hurtling down, magic blasted around the wheels and burned through the sky.

  For a few seconds it looked as if it would smash down on top of my car, but I flattened my foot all the way until I could have punched through to the road below. It gave this old sedan just the revs it needed to get ahead.

  The priest truck smashed down behind us, sending up chunks of road and breaking the highway in front of us. Massive fissure lines spread everywhere. I had to drive with maximum attention and magic to avoid them all.

  “Keep driving,” the rat squeaked, his whiskers moving so fast, they could have turned to dust.

  I had absolutely no damn intention of dropping behind now. The cop car, however, had other plans. Its siren quickly abated with a low-pitched whir. Either the police within had decided it was time to leave this fight before they were blown up and/or popped right out of reality, or the priest truck had done something to them.

  I gritted my teeth. I would not let these bastards have free rein of this highway. We were coming up on a pocket of thick traffic, and be damned if I was going to let them kill anyone or cause more mayhem.

  “I can’t believe I’m about to do this,” I hissed under my breath as I yanked on the steering wheel and suddenly turned it all the way around. The car spun, smoke billowing out of the tires like a volcano getting ready to explode.

  “Not recommended,” the rat squealed.

  “No choice,” I shot back as the car completed the bootlegger and started to drive right at the oncoming priest truck. Sorry – the car didn’t do anything. I was the crazy nut behind the wheel.

  Sweat slicked my brow, and I pressed my lips so hard against my teeth, I should’ve been able to taste blood. I kept my foot on the peddle, though, and we shot right at the priest truck. There was only about twenty meters between us. For two speeding oncoming vehicles, that was not a lot. It disappeared in a flash.

  I wasn’t planning on ending this all by sacrificing myself. I had something up my sleeve.

  Just before we reached the truck, I spun the car to the side again until we were traveling alongside it.

  “I really hope you have a plan – otherwise you have just driven yourself into a trap,” the rat pointed out.

  I didn’t mutter that he should just trust me – it wasn’t like I trusted myself right now. Pressing my tongue against my teeth, I let my magic surge. I called on it. It was getting easier and easier to plunge my mind into the Deep. All I had to do was imagine it as this never-ending path. This journey with no destination and no start. It didn’t matter where you began, and it didn’t matter where or how you stopped – all that mattered was that you moved.

  So I moved, all right. I let magic bleed through me, never-endi
ng, unstoppable, and here to do as much damage as it damn well could.

  With a roar, I shoved my hand forward. I was now connected to the car, and it wound down the window for me. I pushed my fingers out into the air, the wind shear immediately whipping at my jacket sleeve and sending it flapping around me. As I opened my fingers wider, I attuned to my magic and sent a yellow-golden blast spiraling out into the priest truck.

  It was a truly massive contraption. I hadn’t been lying earlier when I’d said it looked as if the thing should be used to haul tanks. While the driver compartment was boxy and not too big at the front of the vehicle, there was a long platform at the back that was chock full of priests.

  Though I tried to knock them off with my blast, my shot immediately slammed into a force field. The shield hungrily lapped up my power, extinguishing it, despite where it ultimately came from.

  I swore. Maybe I was getting arrogant, but I’d assumed that the power of the deep would be able to help me dispatch these priests with ease.

  Easy it was not. It was the priests’ turn to reply. I heard their sonorous humming picking up, even over the sound of our high-speed chase.

  The highway in front of me suddenly shattered.

  “The road!” the rat shrieked.

  Yeah, I’d seen it. Or rather, I’d seen it disappear. For the priests didn’t just try to destroy it – they used a charge of some unreality hex to suck it right out of reality. Now there was nothing but a black void right in front of my car’s spinning tires.

  I grabbed the steering wheel so hard, I could have melted it down to its constituent parts. Then I pulsed magic down and into the rest of the car. I let it sail into every nut and bolt, every wheel and mechanism.

  Earlier, I’d moved a car with my magic. Yeah, I hadn’t technically made it fly – I’d just made it airborne for a few seconds. Now it was time to do something much more impressive. As my magic expanded into absolutely every nook and cranny of the vehicle, it started to glow like the heavens.

  It reached that black void in the road. Rather than fall down it to whatever trap Hilliker had prepared, it sailed right over the top. The car just continued to drive as if facing an unreality hex was as routine as a bit of dirt and a twig or two.