They’d sped past the oncoming motorcycles, but now the three were fast approaching again, having braked in unison and spun around, kicking loose gravel up behind their wide tires as the rubber squealed against the asphalt.
Izzy twisted in her seat as one of the cyclists pulled ahead of them. He reached with one hand to push up the visor on his helmet, and the face that Izzy saw gave her chills. Folds of flesh and beady little eyes utterly lacking in humanity.
The thing grinned, showing broken teeth and a blackish tongue.
“Henchmen.” She closed her eyes and sighed. “Great. More Henchmen.”
Henchmen were stupid and brutal, but they played for keeps. She and Mordi had been lucky at the awards ceremony, but the simple fact was that if someone was sending Henchmen after her and Mordi, that someone didn’t want them to survive.
A chill raced up her spine, and she shivered.
“You okay?” Mordi asked, his eyes never leaving the road.
“Yeah. Fine. No worries.” But she wasn’t. Not really. She’d told herself time and again that she could take care of herself, that she didn’t need anybody. But she wasn’t a field agent. This wasn’t what she did day after day. And right then, she couldn’t help but wonder how the hell she’d get out of this mess if Mordi wasn’t there beside her.
Then again, if it weren’t for Mordi, perhaps she wouldn’t be in the mess in the first place....
“One of your old catches?” she asked.
This time, he took his eyes off the road long enough to shoot her a glance. “Maybe someone you turned down for re-assimilation,” he shot back. “Or
this
re-assimilation. My father, maybe.”
She let out a groan of frustration. “The reason doesn’t really matter right now. The question is, what are we going to do?”
“My current plan involves running like hell for civilization. If you’ve got a better one, now’s the time.”
She frowned. She didn’t have a better plan. So instead of actually
doing
anything, she just sat there, watching the motorcycles advance on them, while Mordi drove like a bat out of hell.
Damn, but she hated being out of control!
“See if you can levitate one of their tires,” Mordi said. “I can’t concentrate long enough to get a bead, but if we can lose even one of these guys, it’ll even up the odds a bit.”
Not a bad plan, Izzy thought. With the minor hitch that she couldn’t levitate a flea, much less a leather clad Henchman on a motorcycle that was gaining on them.
She started to explain to Mordi, saw the determined clench of his jaw, and thought better of it. No sense adding to his worries. Instead, she just twisted in her seat, focused on the first cyclist, and muttered, “I’ll try.”
And she really
did
try. She focused, concentrated, gathered her internal energy, then released it with pinpoint accuracy, just as Zephron had taught her.
Nothing.
Not that she’d really expected something to happen, but hope springs eternal and all that.
“Any luck?” Mordi asked.
Her cheeks burned. “Moving too fast,” she said. “Can’t get a bead on them.”
“Try—what the ... ? Hold on!”
She whipped back around in time to see the Porsche that had been tailing them whip around a stand of trees and cut off their path. Apparently, the Porsche had been pacing them, following on a parallel dirt road. Even as she realized what had happened, the red Viper careened in behind them, effectively sandwiching them.
Mordi cursed, and Izzy clutched the dash with one hand. His other hand pressed against the door for balance as Mordi spun the steering wheel and shot the car away at a ninety-degree angle, clipping one cyclist and sending him flying. There was no median, just a four-foot-wide dirt ditch separating the north- and southbound traffic.
The Ferrari raced over the ditch, fishtailing slightly and spewing small rocks and debris. The two remaining cyclists were still on their heels, and so were the cars. Mordi pulled another right angle as soon as they hit the street, and now they were racing the wrong way down the small, deserted highway.
The bad guys were still following, and Izzy bounced in her seat, desperate to do something.
“Of course!” Mighty Zeus, she was such an idiot!
“What?” Mordi demanded.
“Just drive straight,” she demanded as she rolled down her window and unfastened her seat belt.
“Izzy...” His voice was low, demanding a response. She didn’t give him one. Instead, she scrambled onto her knees on the bucket seat and leaned out the window, one hand hanging on for dear life. The other was outstretched, the warm summer air caressing her fingertips.
“Come on, come on, come on.” Her words tripped over each other as she willed the two cyclists closer. A little bit... a little bit... and then ...
yes! Now
!
She thrust out her hand, sending a rush of focused energy out of her fingertips. A fountain of ice sprang from her fingers, coating the roadway in front of the cyclists.
They hit the patch and immediately went flying, leather jackets catching the breeze, ugly fleshy faces startled into absurdity, tires flying over handlebars in an almost graceful display of chrome and leather. It was a beautiful sight—
evil Henchman wins international ice-cycling competition with triple sowcow maneuver
—and Izzy clapped her hands, delighted with herself as she slipped back into the car.
Beside her, Mordi was grinning like a fiend. “That was brilliant!” he said. “Did you see the look on their—uh-oh.”
She spun back around to peer out the window. One of the cyclists was sprawled spread-eagled on the ice, his bike a mangled mess behind him. The second, however, had managed to right himself, and was even now racing—well,
carefully
racing—toward them.
That, however, wasn’t what worried Izzy. She was more concerned about the fact that she didn’t see the Porsche or the Viper anywhere. And they were coming up on a bridge. The cars couldn’t be in front of them— there was no other way across the river. So where had they gone?
“Can you manage more frost?” Mordi asked, apparently unconcerned with those little details.
“Not this soon after,” she said. Her euphoria faded as the familiar tinge of uselessness settled back in her bones.
“Maybe a little fire, then,” Mordi said. “I mean, they probably caught a chill, right? It’s only polite to warm them up.”
He sounded so damnably self-confident that she couldn’t help but smile. “Sounds like a plan to me,” she said. She reached to take the steering wheel so that Mordi could pull his hands free.
He drew in a breath and, when he opened his hand, she saw a ball of fire dancing on his palm. He leaned toward her open window, ready to pitch the dancing flame that she knew would grow into a huge fireball. As he did pitch it, though, an unexpected flash of lightning ripped across the darkening sky ... and the Porsche careened over an embankment to land right in their path.
Izzy reacted automatically, but it wasn’t good enough. If she’d been seated in the driver’s seat, maybe she could have succeeded. But she and Mordi were still tangled, and the Ferrari was on cruise control while she operated the steering. She cut to the left, and the car veered toward the pilings that supported the bridge. Ahead, the air seemed to drop away, and the car looked to be headed down, down, down toward the murky water of the river.
“Turn!” Mordi shouted, reaching over to grab the steering wheel even as Izzy was spinning the thing.
It didn’t matter. The Porsche doubled back and rammed them from behind, sending them soaring over the embankment. They landed with a horrible splash in the water.
No longer strapped in, Izzy lurched forward, her forehead slamming against the windshield. And the last thing she thought as the car began to slowly sink below the surface of the water was that this really, really couldn’t be good.
“
No
!” Mordi grabbed Izzy’s arms, shaking her, then slapped her face soundly, trying to wake her up. Nothing.
No,
no, no
! Everything he’d feared was coming true, and that was simply unacceptable.
He blinked, trying to see past the thick liquid that filled his eyes. Blood. He must have cut his forehead in the accident. Not that it mattered. All that mattered right then was getting Izzy out of the car and to safety.
He thrust his arms under her, then tugged her toward the driver’s seat. The nose of the car was completely submerged now, and water was fast rising toward the open window. He needed to get Izzy and himself out of the car before water filled the Ferrari and dragged them under.
The water rose, and the river poured in, filling the space under their feet. He sat on the car door and tugged at Izzy, but her foot lodged under one of the pedals. With a quick glance out the back window—one of the cyclists was dusting himself off, and the other two cars were on the embankment, headlights burning like evil eyes as their engines revved—he scrambled down. If they came, they came. But he had to try to get Izzy free first.
Her foot was completely submerged, but he managed to pry it free. Her ankle had swollen to the size of a grapefruit, but he didn’t think it was broken. He didn’t want to hurt her, but they had no time for gentleness. As soon as her foot was free of the pedal, he curled his arms around her chest, locked his hands, and tugged.
She made a slight moaning noise, but she slipped along the seat toward him. Up he dragged her, up to be propped on the door. The car was sinking faster now, bobbing at almost a right angle to the water’s surface. The river was still invading, flooding the interior with even more purpose than before.
And still, Izzy didn’t wake.
The water was up to Mordi’s knee now, Izzy’s waist, warm and dark and determined to draw them under. Mordi kept a tight hold on her with one hand; with the other, he grappled in the backseat for his cooler. His fingers found the handle and he tugged it forward, then dumped out the sodas and sandwiches he’d brought. They bobbed in the water in the car.
He shoved the cooler out the window, watching as it floated. Good. Then he scooted out the window himself. His legs were hanging in the river, and he stretched, trying to find the bottom. Nothing. He grabbed the door and pulled himself up, then leaned forward at the waist until he had a hold of Izzy again.
He had her halfway out the window when he heard the howling. It was a high-pitched keening sound, one that he knew. He should know it; he’d heard it often enough while working for his father.
It was the sound of a Henchman, changed back into its native, squid-like shape, and letting out its native yelp... right before it attacked.
Hopping Hades
, this was not going to be good.
He didn’t waste time looking at the river’s edge. He needed to get Izzy free of the car; he needed to make sure she was safe.
The car was almost under now, and the extra water actually made it easier to pull her free. She moaned, her eyelids fluttering, as he held her tight around the waist and kicked off toward the cooler. “Hang on,” he said, wrapping her arms around it. She started to sink, but the Supra Styrofoam did its job, and she bobbed there, forehead furrowed, eyes fluttering in half-consciousness, her mouth curved into a question.
A
schlurp
sounded a few yards downstream as the Ferrari finally succumbed to the weight of the water. Behind Mordi and Izzy the keening sounded again, echoing across the river. The Henchman had fully transformed, and now he slipped into the water, his squid-like body moving with unusual grace as he swam toward them with undeniable menace.
Anger burned in Mordi’s gut, and Mordi fought the urge to swim forward and meet the squid halfway. He wanted to sink his hands and feet into that soft flesh, to rip the creature apart, to do anything and everything to end this episode and keep Izzy safe.
That wouldn’t do it, though. The only thing to do—the only
smart
thing—was to swim away. In the opposite direction. To try to get to the far side of the river and then race for safety.
He kicked backward, then grabbed the cooler, clutching it as he kicked toward the far shore. In the distance, he saw the Henchman slither through the water, closing the distance between them.
He’d shoot a ball of flame, and then—
What the...?
Suddenly the horizon was filled with the writhing, slimy creatures. They marched forward, filling the sky, outlined against the setting sun, like something out of
Night of the Living Dead
.
Suddenly, staying and fighting seemed even less like a good plan. Getting the hell out of there seemed the only option. If they could manage it.
“Izzy,” he hissed. Nothing. He splashed water in her face. “Izzy. Wake. Up.”
She blinked, her eyes opening, groggy and bloodshot. “What? Where are we?”
“You got conked in the head,” he said, kicking for all he was worth. “You passed out. But right now I need you to stay awake. I need you to
kick
.”
“The chase,” she whispered. Then she peered over her shoulder, saw the Henchmen, and the little color that had remained in her face drained away.
“Fire?” she whispered.
“Not enough. No way can I conjure enough to get us out of this mess.”
She started kicking.
It helped some, but not enough. The gap was closing fast.
“Can you shapeshift?” she asked. “Turn into a shark or blue fin or something and swim us the hell out of here?”
He frowned. “I don’t do fish,” he said. “I can’t.”
“A whale? A dolphin? Some other water mammal?”
“Sorry.” A wash of disappointment filled him. He’d failed her.
Then the corner of her mouth twitched. “Well, nobody’s perfect,” she said. And idiotically, even though the Henchman was closer and they were still trying to kick their way out of an endless river, he felt better.
Something cold and slimy gripped his leg, and he was underwater, Izzy’s scream echoing in his ears.
Another Henchman
. He’d been watching the first, and somehow another had sneaked up on him.
He twisted and managed to grab hold, his fingers digging into the thing’s squishy flesh. The monster flipped him over, and he gulped, swallowing a gallon of water. He struggled to right himself, but a tentacle lashed out, twisting around his leg and pulling him down, down, down.