We took our next refugee down to Erin. Dev filled her in on the new developments while I paced.
A couple of hours. That was it. I’d been thinking we might have another day to prepare. We knew who we were after now, it was time to plan the final take down. But this… this threw the chance to get around the war table right out of the window and into the river. With an anchor tied around its ankle.
Belinda had kept ahead of us this entire time. How were we going to get her in the next couple of hours? And when Carver said ‘couple’, did he mean precisely two? Or a bit less? Maybe a bit more? Three? Christ. I’d been half-convinced of my death a time or two in the past but never like this. Well, it’s not like I was actually going to die then, but pretty much as good as.
Mercy paced with me. She was a steady, quiet presence that kept me calm. I could feel something zinging across the link between us, something I’d not felt from her before and it took me a while to recognise it.
Regret.
“I’m sorry I was nasty,” she whispered to me in the deepest shadow between two street lamps.
“When?”
“Before,” she answered vaguely. Shrugging, she added, “For all the times, I guess.”
“Wasn’t your fault, Merce. You don’t have to say you’re sorry.”
“Then why do you?”
I hit a stop like a mime artist finding an invisible wall. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, you say sorry for things that aren’t your fault.”
“Such as?”
Mercy vented an exasperated sigh. “Such as when you took over my head.”
“I did that, Mercy. That is my fault.”
“It’s no one’s fault. Nothing went wrong. For us,” she added wryly.
“Then why did you run? Why did you block me out for so long?”
Another shrug. “I don’t know. I just… ran. Then I heard the music and followed it. It made me sad and I didn’t want you to be sad, so I didn’t let you hear it.”
Might have spoken too soon about those tear ducts. “Okay. What about earlier tonight? When you disobeyed me about the bike?”
“You always tell me what to do. I’m not dumb, Matt. I can do things on my own.”
I stared at her for a long, confused moment. Then I laughed. Small and weak, but definitely laughter. Mercy eyed me cautiously. I pulled her into a hug.
“My little girl’s growing up,” I mumbled into her soft, curly hair.
“Let me go or I’ll bite you.”
I let her go and she gave me a disgusted look, then stalked away.
“You all right?” Erin asked from behind me.
“Yeah.” I actually believed it when I said it. “Mercy’s okay and there’s a chance I might be, so yeah, I’m good.”
I suppose it was only natural Erin give me that look. The who-are-you-and-what-did-you-do-with-Matt? look.
“I mean it.” I ran a hand back through my hair, preparing to… well, share. “I think you were right, about what happened to Sean. I’m not… dealing with it. I was trying to deflect it onto Mercy but she’s okay. It’s all me.”
Erin touched my arm. “You probably have a touch of PTSD. It can cause erratic emotional responses, anxiety, avoidance issues, reliving bad memories.”
“Got the lot. So, um, if Carver can fix me, I’ll have to start dealing.”
“That’s good. Right now, we have to get that spell. Come on, Dev’s got a plan.”
“We need to get the sorcerer somewhere he… she can’t use her powers,” Dev explained. “Somewhere with little or no biological matter for her to manipulate. Somewhere we have enough room to not get too close, so she can’t use us against ourselves.”
I knew he meant so she couldn’t use me against them. I wasn’t as completely under her control as the monkeys or Tanqueray, but she’d stopped me from reaching Roberts’ car earlier. With the growing numbness in my arm and chest, I guessed she had more area to grab onto now. Who knew what she could make me do?
“So, where do we go?” I asked.
“Back to the botanic gardens,” Dev said, holding up a hand before we could all protest. “There’s a quarry there. Nothing but open ground and stone.”
“She can use stone,” Erin reminded him.
“No living sorcerer can use stone,” Carver interjected.
“And I think she can only manipulate stone created by the spell,” Dev added. “Otherwise she would have used it at the cemetery.”
There had been a distinct lack of marauding gravestones that night. We all conceded with his logic.
“So, how do we get her there?” Mercy asked.
“I don’t think we have to do anything other than go there,” I murmured. “I think she’s been watching us.”
Erin looked around cautiously. “What makes you say that?”
“She’s been ahead of us the entire time. When Dev and I went to the storage unit, she was there. At the cemetery, she was waiting with Tanqueray. At the monkey house, she made them attack us. She destroyed Roberts’ car while I was on stakeout. I think she knows exactly where we are right now. And that her decoy with Dr Carver didn’t work. She’ll come after us.”
“Can she hear us?”
We all looked at Dev.
“It’s possible she has enhanced hearing. How close she’d have to be, I couldn’t hazard a guess.”
“Merce?” I asked.
“The only sorcerers I feel are right here.”
“Does it matter if she hears us or not?” Erin asked. “She’s going to come after us again.”
“Actually,” Dev said grimly, “she might not. Hawkins seems to be her only real target and in a couple of hours, he stops being a threat to her. When I was caught, she said she wouldn’t kill me because she doesn’t want the Council to officially have a reason to hunt her. Same would go for killing Erin. Carver might be in danger but possibly not. He can’t match her for power and therefore isn’t a threat. No one on the Council would believe the word of a rogue, either. Mercy? No one would care if there was one less vampire in the world.”
Mercy snarled at him.
Again, we couldn’t exactly fault his logic.
“She is behaving erratically,” Carver opined. “It is possible her psychosis will drive her to keep attacking Mr Hawkins until he is no longer a definite threat.”
No longer a definite threat. Awesome. I felt confident, supported.
“There is something we can do,” I said.
“What?”
I let the internal seesaw tip all the way across to the bad side. It was shockingly easy to do. In the past, it’s at least taken a token effort. Now, with everything already so precarious, over it went with barely a touch. The primitive berserker arrowed down the link to Mercy and her eyes flashed silver in the night. She went from rational to crazy in an instant. A red haze filled my vision like sinking into a pool of blood.
What the others saw in us I don’t know, but it prickled the hairs on the backs of their necks and ignited a fight or flight response. Erin reached for her gun and Dev cranked up the sorcery.
“We give her a reason to chase us.”
The barrel of the Baby Glock was pressed to Dev’s head before I’d even finished the first word. Mercy put herself between us and Erin and Carver, fangs gleaming, fingers curled into claws.
“You say she doesn’t want you dead because the Council would hunt her down,” I said to Dev. “Then she should do something to save you. So much as think too hard, pardner, and I’ll put a bullet in your half-cooked brain.”
“Matt,” Erin said, gratingly soothing. “This isn’t the way to go.”
“No, I think it is. Come on, Randy. Let’s go.”
“It’s okay, Erin,” Dev drawled and I nearly smacked the accent out of him. “If this works, it’ll be over.”
“Fine speech,” I congratulated him. “Get in the car.”
He went willingly, folding his lanky form down into the Monaro. Mercy got on the bike and revved the engine.
Gun still pointed at Dev, I said to Erin, “Get out of here. I don’t need you messing things up again. This time, it gets done. Whatever it takes.”
I got behind the wheel and gun in my left hand and trained on Dev, I started the car, putting it into gear with my right.
“Well?” I asked Dev.
He just nodded. “Let’s do it.”
Erin, predictably, followed us. The headlights of the BMW burned in the rear-vision mirror all the way through Kangaroo Point and onto the Story Bridge. Massive steel girders climbed overhead in a peak, swooping down in the middle of the bridge, rising to another peak at the far end. Its shape was traced out of the night by bright yellow lights. Mercy roared ahead, weaving in and out of three lanes of traffic.
“Do you really think this will work?” Dev asked grimly.
“It’s the best—”
Something huge and grey dropped in front of the Monaro. The bonnet simply crumpled on impact, splitting to either side of the obstruction.
My world was all airbag for a second, all sudden, jarring pain and shattering glass. Momentum spun the car around the anchor of whatever it’d hit. Then something hit us from behind, tossing the Monaro into oncoming traffic.
I was back there, in another accident. Thrown around a violently-stopped ambulance, tumbling through the broken windscreen, vividly aware of falling in front of an oncoming car.
It happened without thought. Burst out of me in an expanding ring of force, stopping anything and everything from hitting me. From hitting Dev and the Monaro. Cars crashed into the invisible barrier, crumpling in designed waves. A couple glanced off the edge, skidding across lanes. Brakes screamed, metal screeched. The world was chaos for half a minute, then it stopped.
Inside my bubble, I lifted my head. Every bone in my neck protested, my chest was heavy and my right wrist was definitely broken. If the odd bend in the bone was anything to go by. Oh, and the pain. Hot blood trickled into my eyes. My head rang. The bubble collapsed.
“Matt?”
“Yeah.”
Dev looked about as good as I felt. Cuts along one cheek, a lump already coming up on his forehead and he pressed a hand to his chest like he was having a heart attack.
“What’s the worst you got?” I asked.
“Chest,” he wheezed. “Feels like I can’t breathe too deep.”
“Broken ribs?”
“Not sure. What hit us?”
“One guess,” I hissed and struggled with my seatbelt. “We have to get out of here. We’re sitting ducks.”
My seatbelt was jammed. Dev was digging for his blade when the first people reached us.
“Hey, buddy! You guys okay?”
I waved meekly at the concerned man. My window had come through it with only a few cracks. Dev’s was shattered, along with the windscreen. The man began tugging on my door.
“I think it’s jammed, mate.”
“Yeah,” I agreed because I couldn’t do anything else right then.
With a snick, Dev had his switchblade out and he sliced through his seatbelt, not even bothering with trying the buckle first. Then mine. Moving in slow, cautious degrees, Dev hauled himself out through the windscreen.
“I don’t think you should be moving,” another Good Samaritan advised.
Dev ignored her and reached back in to help me. It didn’t matter if he hauled a bit too harshly on my left arm. I couldn’t feel it. Cradling my broken wrist to my chest, I scrambled out and we clambered off the wreak of my car.
“Matt!”
Mercy skidded to a stop, just short of bowling me over. Behind her, the Moto Guzzi was dropped on the road, wheels still spinning, motor still going. Gingerly, she put an arm around my waist and supported me.
The Story Bridge had been bought to a standstill. The scattered remains of the Monaro was smeared across three lanes. Two northbound, one southbound. The fan of secondary impacts effectively blocked traffic in both directions. People were milling beside their crunched up cars, some angry, some dazed, some trying to create order in the confusion.
On the far side of the bridge, I spied the white BMW. It appeared unscathed, stopped just past the site of the initial impact. Erin jumped out and, Glock at the ready, raced across to us.
“We have to clear the bridge,” she said urgently.
“Why?” Dev asked, still trying to catch his breath.
Overheard, there was a loud scratch of stone on steel.
“Because of that,” I said, then shouted, “Everyone, move!” as the giant stone monkey came swinging down through the girders toward us.