Pursuit

A few of these individuals had little reason to surrender their now heavily armed host bodies to their original owners… and even less restraint about placing those bodies at risk.

Strange how these freaks didn't start coming after us until after Ava came back from the desert. She found a whole new kind of trouble out there, and let it follow her home like a bunch of stray cats.

At the moment, Rath guessed that at least a dozen alien-possessed street-folk had them cornered.

Been through worse, he told himself, though at the moment he was hard-pressed to recall just when that was. Though the darkness concealed him from the freaks, it also prevented him from finding a specific target onto which he could focus his powers. My zappers work way better as a rifle than a shotgun, he thought, and those bastards out there know it.

He clenched a fist in frustration, and it began glowing a dull red. They want me to fire blind. They want to tire me out.

Another bullet tore through the drywall nearby, only narrowly missing his glowing fist. He shoved his hand into a vest pocket as he pulled Ava along with him. They had to keep moving.

"If anybody's a 'walking bull's-eye' around here, Rath, it's you," Ava said, looking at his hand, whose glow was still slightly visible, even through the leather vest.

"Shut up," Rath said, though he knew she was right. He continued hustling her along, hoping they'd come upon a door or a window soon. "You seen Lo

Ava laughed bitterly. "Let's hope she's not cutting a deal of her own right now with those nice people shooting at us. It's happened before, you know. “

A familiar voice cut through the intermittent staccato of gunfire. "All right! Hold your fire! I'm go

Rath recognized the voice immediately, despite the creepy echo that the huge, darkened warehouse imparted to it.

Lo

"1 knew it," Ava whispered. "She's go

"Shut it," Rath said. "Lo

"Come on out where we can see you, Vilandra," came the response, a harsh, gravel-coated voice, speaking in perfectly inflected High Antarian. "You can't hope to stand against us all. “

Rath saw shadowy forms moving ahead of him. He wondered if dawn was already breaking, or maybe his eyes were simply adapting to the darkness. With no way to tell the exact time, he hoped for the latter.

Then another shape began to move. It was bathed in a faint glow that the freaks surely had to be able to see.

Lo

At that moment, Lo

They've protected their machines from our powers somehow, Lo

Rath felt despair engulf him, threatening to drown him like that time the riptide had nearly killed him off the Jersey Shore. Great, Lo

No, Lo

Rath gri

Buy us some time, Rath. I can't see them with my eyes yet, but I can feel 'em moving toward me.

Lo

"I can give you Rath and Ava," Lo

"I knew it," Ava muttered. Crouched beside Rath behind one of the shelving racks, she started to rise.

Rath restrained her with a hand to the shoulder. "No. We wait. “

Ava tensed, forming a psionic co

Rath felt as if he were suddenly floating invisibly near the warehouse's high ceiling, and from this vantage he could mentally "see" each of the armed men and women… all of them apparently malnourished drug addicts or other assorted street people… who had surrounded them.

Touch Ava, Lo

Already done, sweetcheeks, Rath answered silently, gri

To Ava, he thought, How many freakazoid brains can you jry at once? Answering inside his mind, Ava seemed ashamed of her earlier distrust of Lo

"So do I have a cease-fire, or what?" Lo

The rough-voiced man who had called out to her earlier answered: "Your 'queen' is trying to pierce our mental defenses. Given that, it seems a truce would be a spectacularly bad idea. “

Oh, crap, Ava thought to Rath. Their machines aren't the only things they've built shields around.

Thanks to Lo

Swept along on a wave of fear and rage, Rath lifted his hands. The power surged and churned within him for a split second before he released it.

The gravel-voiced man with the gun blew apart into countless pieces.

"Move!" Rath shouted at Ava, already on the run. He could hear a fusillade of gunfire as it tore up the space where he had been moments before.

Rath looked toward Lo

Shields up, he thought, suddenly realizing that his lover could do a pretty convincing impression of her dead brother's powers.

The first rays of the sun were slicing through the skylights, and Rath saw Ava dive for cover as a pair of armed thugs… strung-out junkies, from the look of them, all bone and gristle… chased her. He raised his hands and released twin flashes of energy, pushing the two men swiftly backward and impaling them both on a nearby metal rack.

Ava looked horrified. "We don't have to kill them, Rath. They're possessed. They're not responsible. “

But Rath knew he didn't have time to make distinctions between the hostile aliens and their i

"Let the old gods of Antar sort 'em out," Rath said as a red haze swept across his vision while he and Lo