A Bone to Pick, page 22
Maya actually stared at me. Then her face snapped into a grin. “Showoff.”
It’s not showing off, since when is that worth letting the Duvals escape first—but arguing that would slow them down too. I just motioned the three of them together, one quick gesture.
Sybil shook off her own surprised look to wave at the flames, and they whuffed out, banished with only a greasy smoke in the air. Then she, Maya, and Dom were gone too.
That left me alone, alone in the room with the stubborn fire alarm that drowned out whatever last cracklings came from the wreckage settling, and almost covered the world of shouts beyond the window.
I crawled and scrambled deeper into the apartment—forcing my gaze past all the furnishings and nicknacks and the signs this had been someone’s home, to search only for stairs to take me up and beyond the invaders’ line of sight.
A crash came through the alarm behind me, back at the front door, then another crash just seconds later. So the magic was holding, but how long before they came in the windows?
There were no stairs, there was no way out but those windows—
Then I found the steps, and dashed up. A gunshot boomed from where the crashes had been, and a curse loud enough to reach through the alarm.
Crouching by an upper window, I reached out with the Pulse again. Several of the enemy clustered down where the door must be, and two others were still outside. I kept my senses locked on those, as I slid the window up.
Nothing flickered, not one spike of emotion that would mean they’d seen the window move. Good.
I reached out and clamped a hold onto the wall, then another. With the magic’s grip, I could have been twisting myself out from some basement cubbyhole, not sliding out and climbing into the night air and crawling out onto the roof.
Still pressed low on the tiles, I looked around at the shadows below. The sounds were clearer up here, the fire alarm more contained and the voices of anger growing, thickening around the neighborhood.
Three dim figures fled into the night. The Pulse picked them out as rough cracks of dismay, frustration.
A different alarm howled in the night, far away, but of course those police sirens would be coming closer. Because Poe would have called in backup, as soon as he was sure we were here.
And then he’d rushed in to rescue us, and he hadn’t moved since Ian had touched him... But still, we’d gotten away, we’d left those little figures running blindly around those paths below.
I watched them scurry away. Lights winked on below, and here and there people stepped outside... but the thugs ran right past them, with no time to make trouble now.
Ian’s car moved out along the street. The dark gold shape moved at a steady, controlled pace along the curb, already well past where the action had been. So Jason and Lucy had stayed safe too—my going in without them had turned out right after all.
Now I just had to tell them to keep going and get clear. I dug out my phone and sent Lucy a quick text, not ready to speak just yet.
When I looked up from the screen, Maya was beside me.
If there were any sounds around us now, the breeze must have swallowed them. There was only that familiar shape crouched on the roof.
Then she chuckled. “We need to have a talk about you risking your life,” she said.
“As long as we talk, you know?” Just saying that, saying all of it, brought relief sighing out of me.
She held out her hand, and my fingers closed around it.
And we froze. Having her here, with our problems so close to settled, and so much between us we’d never had a chance to sort out... No, don’t forget she was the one who pulled away from me to lead the Duvals...
Someone shouted below, one shocked voice calling out in the aftermath. The police sirens were closer than I thought.
Maya whirled us away, away through streams of motion—dropping down inside a hollow shell—
The landing shoved us together, us and all the other shapes already crowded into the suddenly-dark space. I blinked at the outlines: all three massive Duvals, an open space that must be Poe and Mrs. Weems lying still with Ian between them, all of us stuffed and sprawled over the flat metal floor of what had to be the back of a van.
“About time!” Ian grabbed at my arm. “Help me wake them up!”
Somewhere outside the van, the sirens and the clamor were still raging... what had Maya called it, finding us a getaway? So taking us down the block was as far as she could carry this crowd.
Maya squeezed away from me and climbed over the others to reach the driver’s seat—she bumped into a few of them, more sluggish and tired than I’d ever seen her. The van had no keys, but she only reached for the wheel and her telekinesis brought the engine to life.
Over its low rumble she called out “Where are the Mob, and the cops? We need to leave these two somewhere safe, and they’re helpless.”
“No!” Ian said. “I’m starting to get her system cleansed, see?” He waved at what had to be the unconscious old woman beside him—as if we could see a thing in the dimness.
Willard snarled “Don’t you lose her now!” His booming threat seemed to press in from the whole tight space all around us.
I blocked out the voices and the jostling to look up at the windshield and the street ahead: dim night shapes the van simply rolled by, making its steady and unassuming way out of the neighborhood. Too many sounds outside were screened out, but reaching the Pulse out tracked fear, outrage, and some distant knots of tight purpose that could be approaching cops.
Gold paint glinted in the night ahead. The car up there, that was Ian’s car, cruising along as if Jason and Lucy had no idea we were drawing closer behind them.
But the black car between us—“That’s the Mob, next car up!” Or it felt like it, if I could tell one texture of angry frustration from another now.
Our van slowed a fraction, Maya easing us back and letting the black car creep away from us. Instead it closed on Jason and Lucy.
Grabbing this van might keep us hidden, but if those thugs recognized Ian’s car...
“Easy, we’ve got this,” Dom said.
Ian said nothing. He hadn’t looked up from his patient at all, he hadn’t noticed his friends up there.
Then the gold car reached a turn and swung smoothly around it. And the Mob drove straight on, right past them. I let out a slow breath.
I was just breathing in again when the black car slowed, pulled over at the curb.
“Stay down, all of you.” Maya’s voice had just a faint quaver in it.
The van trundled on toward them, and we squeezed down away from the front and the back window, seven people pressed in out of sight.
The Pulse tracked them as we drew near. I caught no suspicion, no flares of alertness... not an ambush, the mobsters could have just pulled over to take a call or plan their next move...
They never reacted as we rolled by. As we moved on past them.
Our back door swung open—Sybil had been peeping out the window, she swung it open—
Orange flames erupted inside the black car. A sheet of orange, bursting up to swallow the several figures inside... I stared, tried to hold the last image of them in my mind, the last anyone would ever see...
The door slammed shut.
A gasp tore from Maya up front, and the van surged forward, it pressed forward in a slow, heavy push toward speed as if it could sweep us away from what Sybil had done. As if anything could.
Ian started up from his patient. “Are you out of your mind?”
The van raced down the street. I dragged my gaze away from Sybil and forced my thoughts into the Pulse—reaching hurriedly beyond the pack of killers around me but sharing a glimpse of Maya’s horror—and strained around for any emotion on the street that was more than blissful ignorance. For anyone who’d seen the murders.
The van lurched and slowed and tumbled us around a turn. Then it slowed to a mild, innocent-seeming pace.
Sybil snapped “What the hell? Get us out of here!”
Now this woman was making demands—
“You killed them!” I slapped the words across the cramped shell we were trapped in. “My God, is there anything you don’t break or burn up, is that all you ever do??”
“They already came for revenge, and nothing stops that until you stop them.” Sybil’s voice settled into a harsh growl, a tone confident as an old friend for her. “I took out a whole team in that car. We can keep them running in circles, picking them off—”
“You—”
I choked down the rest of it; calling a maniac a maniac was only pouring gasoline on these firebugs. We were crammed in here with three of them.
The van lumbered on, past house after house.
“Alright, quiet!” Ian’s voice shrilled up in the midst of us. “I’m telling you, I think she’s responding!” He pointed to Mrs. Weems lying beside him. Her head stirred in the dimness—was that the van jostling her or something more?
“We have to leave her somewhere,” Dom said. “It’s not safe—”
“Or you’ll burn me too? Again? Come on, give me a hand here!” and he grabbed at me again.
I twisted away from his stubbornness to look at the van’s side and reach the Pulse out again. Out in the saner world outside, the street and the neighborhood had only scattered glimmers of emotion, sleepy or busy or hostile—
There. “There’s some anger behind us, but I can’t tell if—”
Ian seized my wrist and dragged me across to press my hand on Mrs. Weems’s bony shoulder.
Alright, just a quick test—I turned my senses toward the flicker of emotion in her. Not asleep, not a faint coma like Lawrence Neal had lain in... what I sensed felt more like a reaction slowed by some thick mire around her, some pressure I could only guess at from how that presence struggled... could a shock of fear break her out of that...
“Adrian! Come on, Adrian, are they after us or not?” That was Maya shouting.
“But—” I pulled my gaze from the old woman I’d fallen into reading, up at the others and their more brutal fight...
Trust Maya. I cut off my protest and sent the Pulse reaching out again.
Sparks of sharp anger flickered in the night, far back...
“I think it’s them. Somewhere back on that block, closing in—”
Maya swung the van toward the side. As it started to slow, she called out “Sybil, take the wheel. Keep this thing moving—and I mean you do it, ‘sis!’ ”
Sybil glowered at her. Then she clambered over and squeezed past Maya into the driver’s seat.
The moment she settled in place, Maya reached past her. Her hand closed on me—
The world vanished and we shot through fragmented space, rocketing away before I could look back, already gone—
We thumped down onto cushions. Inside another car, a higher view of the night street’s side, the big passenger seat of a parked SUV.
“Don’t you blow this, Sybil...” Maya’s voice was right at my ear.
She leaned close against me, but she stared up past the windshield—at a big, pale van up ahead on its way from us. Where we must have left the others.
Another car swept by. I drew on the Pulse and caught the Mob’s anger inside the black sedan, but it had already passed by and missed us before I could even duck down.
Maya pulled back from me and vanished.
Someone gasped behind me—I looked back to see Ian and Mrs. Weems in the back seat, and just a glimpse of Maya before she was gone again. I startled backward, opened my mouth, and she was there again with Willard and Poe. Another moment, just fast enough for her hands to move, had her gone and reappearing with Dom and Sybil, all stuffed into the back seat and the foot space in front of it.
And she vanished again.
I looked around. The van up on the street had just begun to slow, when Sybil had left the wheel, and it was already gaining speed again. With Maya in her place.
Is that how fast she can jump?
The black car closed in behind her.
“That’s them?” Sybil grunted, twisting around in the tangle of bodies around the back seat. “The girl’s setting me up a perfect ambush—”
“Just try it.” I leaned around in my seat, free to move the way none of their crowd were. “One spark and I’ll scare years off your life. You know I can.”
I saw the hesitation cloud her eyes, and turned to watch the two vehicles pull away. Maya would get out of there, she had to.
The van wove around a corner. The car swept after it, making a nimble turn that ate away the gap between them.
Both of them were gone. Out of sight, fading out of reach of the Pulse.
Dom whispered “We can’t keep this up—”
Maya was back. Right in the driver’s seat, and reaching for the wheel.
Then her hands stopped, trembled in the air. All those instant teleports, all that strain, and she still had to do the driving?
Then the SUV’s engine roared to life, tripped by her telekinetic magic again. She twisted the wheel and pulled us out in a slow, careful U-turn and up the street away from where the Mob had chased the abandoned van.
Low cheers echoed around us.
Sybil laughed. “Guess you did learn to drive. Your way of grabbing cars works better than mine too.”
I shook my head. That was Sybil making jokes about their foster sister days. But from my seat beside Maya, I could see her blinking, fighting to stay focused as she drove.
“You need rest, now,” I said. “There’s got to be somewhere we can stop—anywhere you don’t have to drive or carry us all.”
“Sounds nice.” Exhaustion thickened her voice—and Maya hated showing weakness.
A hush settled over the vehicle. The eight close-packed bodies actually sounded still, letting the deep rumble of the engine carry us along.
“Wha... what did... why...” Mrs. Weems’s voice. Awake.
“It’s alright, it’s—oof—alright.” Dom’s concern clashed with the grunts that had to be him trying to twist around to face her. I couldn’t look back, I could feel the crazy grin and the laugh trying to break from my lips at his awkwardness, just knowing we were out.
Something was roaring up toward us, swept past us on the road. I took a belated look as it raced away.
That dark brown color in the night had to be Ian’s gold car. And it twisted around a corner, already out of sight, out of the Pulse’s range.
Like Jason and Lucy were running for their lives.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: ALL IN
“Easy, easy, ma’am...”
Ian was crooning reassurances to Mrs. Weems—he’d probably never glanced at his own car racing by.
The rest of the road was still. No trace of whatever had Jason and Lucy squealing around turns and past us.
With shaking hands I grabbed my phone and sent Lucy a quick text... as “We’re here” and “Don’t you worry” sounds filled up the SUV, with everyone behind me worrying over Mrs. Weems. So what are those two doing on the road? We had everyone out safe, so close—what’s wrong with Jason and Lucy?
The text got no answer.
Maya’s steady, inconspicuous driving was bringing us near the turn they’d taken. I whispered “Please, can we—” and motioned after them.
She slowed the SUV and veered to follow.
We swung too wide and hopped up on the curb, before Maya snapped her head upright and pulled us back into the lane.
“What was that?” Sybil said. “Now we’re chasing them? Back on the hunt, now?”
“Hunt? What does that—” Mrs. Weems croaked, before Ian’s voice pressed in with more whispers to rest.
I said “Look, it’s not a hunt. I think.” Where was the calmness my voice needed?
My phone buzzed—the shock nearly jolted it from my hand.
Not a text, a call. From Lucy. I yanked the cell up to my ear.
“You want your friends back?”
The stern voice of “Mister Tell” was a solid, deadly center in the rising murmurs and sounds around me.
He went on “You want them, you bring the Duval cousins to the woods. You know where.” And the call went dead.
“What the hell was that?” Willard said.
Tell had Lucy’s phone, maybe his men had the car too—I saw no sign of it on the dark road ahead. What was the Mob doing, racing that car around to draw me out? God, why’d I ever leave them alone?
“Alright, explain this.” Even being crammed into the back seat space couldn’t take the threat out of Sybil’s voice. “All that noise about sneaking away safe and now you’re changing the plan?”
“Some of us aren’t just about ourselves—” The words shot from my mouth, and I had to clamp it shut and fight to focus.
“What... what are you fighting about now?” Mrs. Weems still sounded weak, but suspicion gathered in her.
“We have a sick woman here,” Ian said. “And that’s just the start of the list. We’ve got to get away, now.”
Of course they’d be like this. “Maya—”
Maya swayed in her seat. She tipped, jostled over, and slumped sideways against the wheel.
The SUV began drifting, twisting—I grabbed the wheel, wrenched myself over to drag her back upright and shove my foot down to the gas pedal, before the engine could die. Because without keys, Maya’s magic might be the only thing that could start it again.
Once I got the great metal mass steady on the road, I could steal a glance at the silent body under my arm. Maya was breathing, the Pulse felt her mind was just sunken into sleep... All those rapid-fire teleports, of course she’d never show what a toll they really took on her.
“Let me up there,” Ian said. “Let me look at her.”
Right. Ian could look after her, she’d finished her part in getting us to safety...
“Get the speed up.” Sybil’s hard voice tightened, just a hint of urgency in it now. “She needs rest, we need a place to hole up.”
Such a simple idea... we have the car, the getaway, everything we need. But they don’t need me.
They’d be safe, but the ugly hollow feeling in my gut told me there’d be no place for me, not knowing Lucy and Jason were in Tell’s clutches. The Duvals were already scowling at me, never interested in my friends—and these killers would be nothing but trouble in a hostage situation anyway.
