19

FORBIDDEN PLACES

Aflare of headlights split the night, and Hellbringer shot out of the alley, leaving behind only a blast of swirling wind and exhaust, and the angry red gleam of its taillights. The demon car skidded onto a nearly deserted side street. The screeching tires left curving black trails of rubber on the pavement as the muscle car straightened out and streaked away down the dark street.

At the wheel, Greyson glanced up in the rearview mirror. Flickers of golden light from passing windows reflected on his grim expression. “Lost sight of them. But I know they’re back there. Somewhere. Following us.” His jaw worked. “I can feel it.”

Dru glanced around at the sleepy city street. Behind these closed doors, innocent people went about their nightly routines, unsuspecting of the soul-draining evil that hunted the streets tonight. As a sorceress, it was Dru’s responsibility to find a way to stop the wraiths. But how?

Outside the speeding car, the blue light of television screens flickered in apartment windows. Streetlights zipped past. Tiny pools of light broke up the darkness of the night. A thought struck Dru. “The power is on in this neighborhood. We must be putting some distance between us and the wraiths.” She mulled that over. “I wonder what the range is on their electricity-draining power? And can they control that consciously, or does it just happen spontaneously? Is it a result of their undead presence disrupting the natural laws of physics? Or do they feed on the electricity? I mean, do they cluster around power stations and get charged up?” She realized she was babbling only when Greyson gave her a worried look, his forehead wrinkling.

“Sorry,” she said. “Sometimes when I get freaked out, I tend to over-analyze.”

He nodded once, more in encouragement than agreement. “Right now, we need it to survive. All the analysis we can get. Question is, how fast are these things?”

“Hopefully, not as fast as Hellbringer.”

“And hopefully we don’t run into any traffic.” The road took a sharp turn, and the bright lights of the highway swung into view downhill from them. Lines of slow red taillights ran on the right, matched by motionless headlights pointing the opposite direction.

Dru’s stomach, already tight with fear, clenched into a hard knot at the thought of all those innocent lives at stake. “Don’t take the highway! Stay on the streets. Too many people could get hurt if anything goes wrong.”

Her own words echoed around inside her brain: If anything goes wrong. She shook her head. Everything was going wrong.

Greyson turned onto the frontage road and accelerated, hurtling past a trailer park, a junkyard, and then a brightly lit gas station. Dru watched the fluorescent lights nervously as they drove past, expecting them to wink out at the worst possible moment. If the wraiths were fast enough to catch up to them, and they had another magical battle in front of the gas station, sparks would fly, literally. She could only imagine all of the horrible incendiary things that could go wrong.

As if reading her nervous thoughts, Greyson glanced up into the mirror again. He shifted slightly in the seat, and she realized he wasn’t looking at the road behind them. He was checking on their passengers in the back seat.

Dru turned and looked back over her shoulder at Rane and Salem huddled close together. Salem sat behind Dru, holding his arm down out of sight. Rane, sitting behind Greyson, gripped her fist so tightly around a small chunk of rock that beads of sweat broke out across her forehead. It wasn’t clear what she was doing, but Dru didn’t want to interrupt her concentration.

“Salem,” Dru said, speaking only barely louder than the engine noise. “Let me see your arm. What did you do to it?”

He just shot her a warning glare and said nothing. His attention was focused on Rane.

She let out a pained breath and relaxed her grip on the rock. “It’s not working. I can’t transform.” Her face scrunched up with frustration, and she looked like she wanted to hit something.

“That’s because the wraith almost got you for good,” Dru explained, as gently as she could. “You’re wounded, spiritually, and you’ve been drained of almost all of your energy. Don’t try to transform. Conserve your strength.”

Rane scrubbed her fingers into her hair and let out an uncharacteristic whine. “I feel so messed up.”

Salem put a comforting hand on hers, but unfortunately he chose to use the arm that had been warped by his dark magic spell. In the gloom, Dru caught only a glimpse of glistening skin that looked plump and shiny, almost reptilian. At his touch, Rane jerked away, as if he had just put a large iguana on her wrist. “Dude! Why is that all sticky?”

Salem, pale-faced, muttered something Dru couldn’t catch. He stretched out his arm, holding it down low, below Dru’s line of sight.

Rane peered closer, with a kind of horrified fascination. “That’s so nasty. Does that hurt?”

The squinty-eyed expression on Salem’s face plainly answered that question.

Salem did something Dru couldn’t see, and suddenly Rane looked ill. “Ulp.” Her throat worked. She touched her lips.

Worried, Dru turned to Greyson. “Better open the window.”

“Huuhh . . .” Rane let out a noxious-sounding burp. “Huuuunnhh . . .”

Hellbringer abruptly spun the steering wheel out of Greyson’s grip and pulled over to the curb. The driver’s door swung open.

“Rane! Listen to me!” Dru tried not to let the panic show in her voice. “Hellbringer is a world-destroying speed demon from the deepest pits of the abyss. This car is not known for being merciful. You know this. Whatever you do, do not puke in this car.”

Rane nodded. A cool wind through the open door tussled her blonde hair. It didn’t make her look any less green. “I’m good,” she managed, swallowing down hard between the words. It didn’t exactly inspire confidence. “Best part of my day.”

“Salem,” Dru said sharply, earning a venomous look from him. “You have to let me look at your arm. We have to figure out how to treat it.”

“With what?” he snapped. “Positive affirmations? Last I checked, this demon car of yours doesn’t feature a laboratory or a library of arcane lore. There’s nothing we can do right now.” He turned to Greyson. “Take me home. I’ll tend to myself.”

Greyson glanced at Dru, seeking confirmation.

She was determined to help Salem with his arm whether he liked it or not, but he did have a point. There wasn’t much they could do until they got off the road. And his place wasn’t a bad choice of destinations. “Rane? You okay to go?”

Rane sagged back against the seat, head lolling. “Rock and roll.”

“Good.” Dru nodded to Greyson, who got the car moving again.

Seeing Rane and Salem like this—injured, exhausted, defeated—frightened Dru nearly as much as the wraiths pursuing them through the darkness. How could the two most powerful sorcerers she knew get knocked down so quickly? If the wraiths could do that to Rane and Salem, what chance did she stand? And what would they do to someone who didn’t even have powers, like Opal?

“Oh, my God. Opal.” Dru’s hands flew to her mouth. She caught Greyson’s eye. “She was headed back to the shop.”

Hellbringer’s engine abruptly dropped in pitch as Greyson took his foot off the gas. “We need to go back.”

“No! No. We can’t stop. We have to keep going. The wraiths must have some way of tracking the scroll. As long as we have it, they will never give up. They will keep following us. And we can’t risk leading them back to Opal.” Her mind raced, trying to come up with a plan. “That being said, I don’t know if maybe one of them is still lurking around the shop. I have to warn her, just in case.” She dug through her purse, pulling out her keys, some Tic Tacs, and a ballpoint pen from the corner bowling alley.

She finally found her phone, only to remember too late why the screen stayed obstinately dark. “Oh, dump cakes! The wraiths drained the battery. This night just keeps getting better and better.” She thrust her fingers deep into the debris at the bottom of her purse until they found the wiry pigtail of her emergency car charger.

“Aha!” She straightened up, fiddled with the stubby pigtail cord until she had it plugged into her phone, and then looked around in vain for a power socket. She surveyed Hellbringer’s wide black dashboard with its chrome rocker switches and deep-set analog gauges. “Wow. I count exactly zero charging ports in this car.”

“No cup holders, either. Welcome to 1969.” Greyson took a corner at dangerously fast speed.

“Shoot.” Dru stared dejectedly at her phone.

Greyson reached down in front of the gearshift and yanked open a little steel drawer. “Good news, though. There is an ashtray.” He popped out the stumpy metal lighter, nearly the size of his thumb, and plugged her phone charger into the socket. “Give that a shot.”

Thankfully, the phone’s screen lit up. As Dru was about to text Opal, the phone rang.

It was Opal.

Dru hunched over in the seat, hampered by the charger’s obnoxiously short cord. “Opal! Don’t go back to the shop!”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Opal said, sounding miffed. “Why is it that you never answer your phone when everything blows up? What did you do?” Before Dru could answer, Opal plowed on ahead. “Ruiz hit a giant wolf with his van, turns out he’s trying to warn Rane.”

“Ruiz is? Or the van?”

“No. The wolf is. His name’s Feral. And he says he has to tell you about the wraiths.”

It took Dru a moment to place the name Feral. He was the protean sorcerer that Rane had been bench-pressing in her backyard. Which was highly inappropriate in so many ways. “What about the wraiths?”

The phone rustled, and in the background, Opal said, “Here. Tell her what you told me.”

“Hello?” A deep, breathy voice burst out of the phone, loud enough to be heard clearly over Hellbringer’s raucous engine. Greyson glanced at the phone. But more importantly, so did Rane, who perked up in the back seat. Next to her, Salem’s crazy eyes narrowed dangerously, and Dru had to wonder how much he knew. Or what there even was to know. The tension level in the car suddenly cranked up.

Cringing under the sudden scrutiny, Dru spoke as neutrally as she could. “Hey, Feral. It’s Dru.”

He grunted. “Is Rane there?”

Salem’s slitted eyes slid straight over to Rane.

She moistened her lips and pushed her windblown hair out of her face. “Yeah,” she said slowly. “I’m here.”

“We’re all here,” Dru said, and gritted her teeth. Her finger hovered over the screen, ready to terminate the call the instant things went over a cliff. Which could happen with a single wrong word. The last thing she needed was Salem, in his condition, to freak out and blow a hole in Hell-bringer’s roof.

Luckily, Feral didn’t head down that particularly thorny path. But what he said next worried her even more.

“This wraith you all have been dealing with. Is there more than one?”

She wondered how he knew about that, but decided not to ask. “Yes. Why?”

“How many? Are there six of them?”

Dru looked to Rane, trying to ask what she had been saying to him. But as usual, Rane didn’t get the hint.

“These wraiths,” Feral continued. “They’re dispossessed. Dispossessed sorcerers.”

“How do you know?” Dru said.

“Because I know Lucretia. These wraiths, there’s no way to stop them. There’s no way to fight them.”

To Dru, the mention of Lucretia’s name was like dropping a bomb on the conversation. The tendons in her neck clenched up, and the muscles in her legs quivered with the sudden urge to flee. It didn’t matter that she was already belted into a demonic muscle car doing twice the speed limit, fleeing the undead creatures that swooped through the darkness somewhere behind them.

Lucretia had all of Dru’s magical powers, and more, made even stronger by decades of experience. She was the most vicious, cunning, and insanely powerful sorceress Dru had ever tangled with. And before Lucretia had fled into the netherworld, she had tried to destroy the entire world with a cataclysmic earthquake. Dru and her friends had only barely managed to stop doomsday by the skin of their teeth.

The mention of Lucretia’s name changed everything. Mentally, Dru disassembled everything she knew so far about the wraiths, their abilities, and their single-minded obsession with the scroll. Then she pieced it all back together in an entirely new and far more disturbing combination. In a blinding flash, all of these disconnected fragments of the puzzle fit together. And the picture that emerged quite frankly terrified her.

She drew in a deep breath. “These wraiths are the Harbingers.”