Alex moans, “I don’t want to die!” I catch a glimpse of him in the rearview mirror and realize that it’s cloudy and overcast outside, but he already looks like he’s got a bad case of sunburn.
We hit 140 kilometers per hour and I’m sweating bullets and hanging onto the wheel as we rock and roll all over the road. I’m not even trying to stick to my side of the white line; this beast is almost as wide as one of the lanes anyway. The road twists and bends around the base of a low hill, climbing, and there are warded minds on another hilltop beyond it and well off to one side, forming a tight knot of watchful vigilance just over the crest. I punch at them, trying to flick them away, but I can’t concentrate on them without risking losing our grip and there’s something more than a regular ward guarding them. Cassie is singing something in a weird, breathy voice and after a second or two I realize it’s a chant in Old Enochian, some sort of incantation. She feels a lot dimmer than she was back in the camp, and I realize with a sick sense of apprehension that she’s cut off from her servants, unable to draw on the power of the Host.
I hold the armored Mercedes on the road as we hurtle around the curve at the crest of the hill, slowing to a sluggish hundred, then hammering the brakes so hard that the judder of ABS kicks in because there’s a blind hairpin bend right ahead of us and there, that hill over there, that’s where they’re stationed. It’s a watchtower overlooking the road, but this time I’ve got my macro lined up and I swat the men inside and leave them puking over the barrel of their machine gun. Then I’ve got us down to thirty just in time to slew around the bend and register the ruler-straight road ahead, diving downhill into a valley and then up the far side. I floor the gas pedal and aim at the horizon, watching the speedometer needle creep towards two hundred, then on towards two-fifty, and I can just about see the minds of the tank crew so far ahead, but I can’t touch them or recite a memorized trigger incantation, not while I’m trying to keep us alive and on the road.
Something is making my vision blur and I wish it would stop but it’s in the seat beside me and it’d be a bad idea to divert my attention and besides she sounds like Bj?rk with a hangover and it’s kind of pretty, really, telling me that I’m somewhere else, floaty, fifty meters back or a hundred meters sideways or up in the sky above the road. Which is bad, because trying to keep to the middle of the road while flooring it for dear life is hard enough without being unsure where the road even is; whatever illusion Cassie is spinning up is so indiscriminate it’s even fooling me.
Then the hillside I sense in the distance flashes white-hot fire. The sky spits thunder behind us and drives spikes into my ears, and I nearly lose control; but I keep my grip on the wheel and we’re barreling along at nearly 250 kilometers per hour—over 150 miles per hour in old money—and the hard knot of anger on the hillside is lurching into motion from behind cover and rising to meet the horizon, turret and main gun traversing as the tank commander tries to get a firing solution on us. The tank itself is too far away to get to the road before we pass it, but he can see us and what he can see he can kill, if he can see it clearly. We’re barreling along the road as fast as a helicopter, and my copilot is singing a song of delirium and hallucination to blind the tank crew.
There’s another thunder crack and the world turns white for a moment, then the high-explosive shaped charge slams into the ground a hundred yards off to one side. But we’re getting closer all the time, and while our angular velocity past the tank is rising we’re also following a more predictable path and they’re going to get a lead on us and kill us in the next minute if we don’t do something. “Johnny, take the wheel,” I say, “take the fucking wheel,” even though I’m standing on the accelerator and the horizon is closing on us as the tank kicks up a plume of dirt and careens downhill towards the road—
An arm reaches past my shoulder and grabs the steering wheel and we lurch sideways a bit but it’s okay, and I close my eyes and force myself to lift my hands. And then in the retinal darkness I can see them: four minds, eager and focused, closing for the kill as they finally get the thermal imager to work properly—Cassie has the optical sights totally flummoxed, bless her—and they’re getting closer and I can taste them and the wards put up a struggle and force me to really work at them and then—oh fuck I didn’t mean to do that but precision is hard and and and oh fuck I open my eyes and take the steering wheel again.
“You can stop now,” I tell Cassie, and I ease off on the gas because we’re safe, and I drive the rest of the way to the nearest town with tear trails drying on my cheeks because I’ve finally done it, I’ve broken something that shouldn’t have been broken, and I’m really not sure who the monsters are anymore.
*
There is a safe house in a small town in Hampshire. When it’s safe to stop, Johnny and I swap seats and he drives the rest of the way there in silence, sticking within speed limits. I sit in the back with my eyes closed, wishing I could turn back time. Latest rap sheet additions: manslaughter times four. I’m pretty sure our Chief Counsel could make a convincing case that it was self-defense, but if it ever comes up in front of a judge I’m not sure I’d want her to, because I know I’m guilty. I should have stopped and surrendered, I should have worked out another way, I should have known better. Only now it’s too late.
Someone—a Lamplighter from another cell—has already visited and stocked the house with food and clothing, and there are two bathrooms, so I don’t have to wait to shower off the dried blood and tears, although I scrub and scrub until my face hurts. Once I’m done I dress again in sweatpants and a hoodie; I keep nothing I wore but the army boots, and I plan to toss them the instant I can get my trainers back. I don’t just feel guilty and heartsick, I feel drained. I’ve been using the beast in the back of my head without letting it feed properly, right up until the very bitter end of our wild ride. Now there’s nothing to do but eat and sleep and hope I don’t dream, because this is not the successful mission I’d aimed for.
I walk into the living room at the back of the house, adjacent to the open-plan kitchen. The windows are curtained, as a courtesy to Alex. He’s mooching moodily in the vicinity of the kettle; he’s found a teapot and milk and is brewing up, because that’s what the English do when they’ve just broken out of military prison one jump ahead of murderous assassins from an alien death god cult, then survived being shot at by a main battle tank. Johnny has buggered off to get rid of the incriminating set of wheels, because we don’t actually need Raymond Schiller’s personal VIP transport, and the instant it’s reported missing there’s going to be a set of ANPR breadcrumbs leading our way.
“Tea?” Alex asks guardedly.