18

DRIVING RANE

Dru huddled behind Greyson’s body as he pushed her away from the roaring blue flames and toward Hellbringer. The long, black demon car waited in the tiny alley lot behind the shop, engine revving with impatience. She could hear it, but she couldn’t see it.

Without her glasses, everything more than an arm’s length away was a threatening blur in the night. The wraith-induced power blackout had darkened the entire block. The only source of light was the crackling magical flames behind them. They lit the narrow space between buildings with an unearthly flicker and threw jumping shadows in every direction.

Greyson’s strong hands guided her, and she stumbled along.

“Are you okay?” he said.

Dru coughed and waved ineffectively at the smoky air. “Think so. Except I can’t see a thing.”

His hand swam into focus, holding a gratifyingly familiar object: her glasses.

Thankfully, she slipped them back onto her face and was rewarded with Greyson’s lopsided smile. “How did you—?”

“I can see in the dark.” His fiery eyes swiveled toward Hellbringer. “Come on!”

The speed demon’s doors were already swinging open. Dru jumped into the passenger seat of the old black car. Greyson slid into the driver’s seat beside her and shoved the chrome lever into gear. With a peal of screaming tires, they launched down the alley.

Clutching the scroll tight against her chest, Dru stared out the window at the total darkness and wondered if this is what the end of the world would look like.

They reached the end of the alley, and Greyson spun the wheel. Hell-bringer’s long tail, with its tall wing, slewed around with a howl of tortured tires. They swung around the corner, circling toward the front of the shop.

She gripped the armrest so tightly that it hurt. But despite the fear pounding through her, the analytical part of her brain realized that the end of the world would actually be much hotter than this. Towering flames. Boiling oceans. Stars falling.

She knew, because she had combed through every book she could find containing the lore of the apocalypse, and taken copious notes—filed under “E” for Eschatology—but there was more to it than that. She hadn’t just studied the end times. She had seen the opening volleys of it firsthand.

On three separate occasions, three different threats had pushed the world right up to the edge of doomsday. First came the Four Horsemen. Then, legions of the dead had risen from the grave. And after that, everything was nearly destroyed by an all-consuming earthquake.

Three doomsdays averted so far, and each one had come closer than the last. Sooner or later, their luck would run out. She was starting to think that had already happened. Especially when she saw Rane lying in the rubble of her destroyed shop.

At the sight of her, Dru’s heart leaped into her throat. Rane was physically the toughest and strongest person Dru had ever known. To see her sprawled out on the ground, her towering body tossed aside like a broken toy, was almost too jarring to comprehend. It froze Dru in her seat.

Hellbringer skidded to a hard stop, landing at an angle so that the bright headlight beams spilled across Rane’s motionless form. There was no sign of Salem, except for his black silk top hat lying dusty and alone in the middle of the sidewalk, abandoned.

Was he still alive? Were either of them?

Knowing even seconds could make the difference between life and death, Dru forced herself out of the car. She left the door open behind her as she sprinted on shaky legs toward Rane. She wanted to shout her name, but her voice couldn’t escape past the choking lump in her throat. She dropped to her knees in the rubble and swept the blonde hair back from Rane’s face.

Since Rane spent nearly all of her time outside, especially during the warmer months, the intense Colorado sun tanned her skin bronze. But right now, she looked unnaturally pale. Bruise-like smudges spread out above her cheeks. Her lips were bloodless. Angry red stripes marred her throat, and Dru realized with a start what they were. The imprint of long, bony, undead fingers.

Dru fought down her panic and focused. Rane’s skin was cold and clammy to the touch. Fearing the worst, Dru checked for a pulse. At first, she couldn’t find it. But there it was. Faint and slow, still beating beneath Rane’s chilly skin.

Dru nearly sobbed with relief. She pushed her curly hair aside and lowered her ear to Rane’s lips. Still breathing.

Boots crunched on the rubble as Greyson raced to her side. He knelt down next to Rane. “Is she—?”

While Dru struggled to get any words out, Rane’s eyes flew open. Unfocused, they looked around wildly until they latched onto Dru.

“I love you, dude.” Rane’s voice came out rough and slurred.

That brought a teary smile to Dru’s face. “Yeah, I love you too, sweetie.” A flood of happiness washed over Dru. She gently patted Rane’s shoulder.

With a fumbling hand, Rane tugged at Greyson’s leg. “I love you, too.”

At Greyson’s curious look, Dru explained. “She lost a lot of magical power. She might act a little loopy.”

Blue and red lights flickered across Greyson’s back, and the night was split by the wail of approaching sirens. He glanced back over his shoulder. “Maybe we can get her into an ambulance. Or drive her straight to the hospital.”

“No. An undead wraith did this. The doctors won’t know how to help her. Traditional medicine will only make this worse.”

Rane tugged hard enough at Greyson’s leg that the fabric of his jeans threatened to rip. “She didn’t want me to spank you. But I would. I would.”

He looked uneasily at Dru. “This could get worse?”

“We need to help her.” Dru looked forlornly at the gaping ruin that used to be the front of her shop. Healing Rane would require a long list of crystals. But even if they could avoid the dangerous wraith trapped inside, she would have little chance of finding what she needed in all of that wreckage.

“Opal,” Dru realized out loud. “We need to get to her place. She might have the stuff we need. But we have to move fast. Can you carry Rane?”

Rane giggled as Greyson scooped her up. “Tickles.”

“What about him?” Greyson pointed his chin down the street, in the opposite direction of the approaching sirens. Dru followed the line of his gaze and saw the spindly figure of Salem charging down the street for all he was worth, one outstretched arm bright with blistering cold white fire. The wraiths swirled before him, hissing and screeching as they fled his spell.

Dru blinked. Salem was actually driving the wraiths down the street. Chasing them away.

“Looks like he’s got that in hand,” Greyson said. With a grunt, he carried Rane to the car and, with some difficulty, squeezed her into the back seat. As Dru tried to force her giant size 12 running shoes into the car, the front door of the liquor store next door opened and the wrinkled little proprietor stepped out, eyeing them suspiciously.

“Everything okay?” he called.

Dru waved and smiled with forced cheer. “We’re fine, thanks, Mr. Chen! We’re all good here! Um, how are you?”

In reply, he silently regarded the demolished front of her shop, and then turned back to her. As usual, his expression was entirely unreadable. But it certainly wasn’t friendly. “Your shop?”

“Yeah, no, it’s…It’s fine. Really.” The scope of the destruction made her want to crumple to the ground and curl up into a tiny ball. “This sort of thing happens all the time, honestly.” Which was unfortunately true, she realized. As a career choice, sorceress was the worst.

Some deep and dysfunctional part of her brain immediately coughed up several alternative careers: pet food quality taster, sewer blockage worker, professional armpit sniffer—which was, at least according to one of Opal’s magazines, a real thing.

No, sorceress was definitely not the worst job in the world. But it was possibly the weirdest.

“How about your friend?” Mr. Chen pointed one knobby finger at Rane’s giant feet. “Not looking so good. Need the police?”

“Me? Nope.” Dru tried to act casual as she pushed on Rane’s enormous feet, trying to picture what this probably looked like to an outside observer. She didn’t come up with anything good. Besides, judging by the volume of the sirens and the blue and red lights bouncing all around them, the police would be there any moment. And Dru had absolutely no intention of sticking around to answer well-intentioned but ultimately pointless questions. So instead, she just shoved Rane’s feet behind the passenger seat.

“Ow,” Rane complained.

“Sorry.” Dru climbed into the front, giving a friendly wave to Mr. Chen. “Well, gotta run. Bye!”

Two police cars and a long red fire truck pulled up behind them as Hellbringer rocketed away down the street. A block later, their headlights illuminated Salem’s running feet.

“Slow down!” Dru told Greyson. She rolled down the window as they pulled up alongside Salem.

Dru had no idea how someone as injured and generally unhealthy as Salem could possibly run so fast, but she suspected it had something to do with the spell engulfing his right hand. It was alight with a roaring magical fire so bright and icy blue that it looked nuclear.

Unfortunately, she happened to know firsthand exactly what a nuclear Cherenkov effect looked like, again thanks to having one of the weirdest jobs in the world. Salem’s shiny new spell, whatever it was, didn’t have exactly that same spooky electric blue spark of radioactivity. But it definitely looked unhealthy.

Keeping one eye on the ghostly wraiths swirling and fleeing a dozen yards ahead of them, Dru leaned out the window. “Salem! Get in the car!”

With an electrifying sizzle, Salem raised his flaming arm and released a blinding bolt of magic at the wraiths, driving them further into the darkness ahead.

Dru flinched back. “Salem!”

He was obviously breathing too hard to answer. His pale face was slick with a sickly sheen of sweat, making his angular cheekbones look even more gaunt. He was so totally focused on the wraiths that he didn’t even glance her way.

Something bumped against her shoulder. Greyson, keeping one hand on the steering wheel, held up Salem’s dusty black top hat. He must have grabbed it, and she was thankful for that fact. Maybe it would shake the sorcerer loose from his berserk rage. She took it and waved it out the window at him. “Salem! Your hat!”

He spared her only a cold glare. The normally snarky, sarcastic look on his face was gone, replaced by a chilling fury she had never seen. It was so disturbing, so dark and hideous, that it made her pause.

Behind her, Rane struggled and flailed in the back seat. With a deep, heartfelt groan, she flopped over and pushed herself up until her face squeezed out the angular gap at the back corner of the window.

“Dude,” she croaked.

That grabbed Salem’s attention, snapping his head toward her. He stopped in his tracks, making the car overshoot him. Greyson hit the brakes, stopping with a quick chirp of the tires.

The unholy flames around Salem’s arm went out instantly, as if dunked in water, leaving his arm steaming and smoking in a way that Dru found truly alarming. He staggered toward Rane, and all of the vitality drained out of him at once. He tottered, and suddenly it didn’t look like he could even make it past the curb.

Dru darted out of the car and got an arm around him, careful not to touch his smoking hand, which looked and smelled like a high school science experiment gone horribly wrong. “Get in the car. Fast.”

At the end of the block, the wraiths had apparently realized they were no longer being chased by Salem’s atomic zappy fist of death. One by one, the burning outlines of their ghostly bodies wheeled around and flew back toward them, long arms outstretched.

Heart pounding, Dru tilted the front passenger seat forward and half-helped, half-shoved Salem into the back seat next to Rane. The two of them collapsed into a sad, wounded heap as she pushed the seat back into place, slid inside and slammed the door. “Okay, let’s—” She was about to say more, but it was drowned out by the thunderous roar of Hellbringer’s engine and the warbling of smoking tires.

Greyson swung them around in a tight knot of burning rubber and launched them away down a pitch-black alley, hurling old newspapers and empty fast-food cups into the air behind them. The cackle of Hellbringer’s exhaust reverberated off the narrow brick walls, nearly deafening Dru.

“Which way?” Greyson yelled over the noise.

But she didn’t have an answer for him. They had the apocalypse scroll, but they were in no condition to defend it. And the wraiths knew that. There was nowhere they could go. No way to escape.