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Bullets raked along one side of the Hirondel, punching through the thick metal, slamming me back and forth in the driving seat, and forcing the car right across into the other lane. I had to fight the wheel for control, all the time screaming obscenities at the helicopter pilots. Didn’t they realise the Hirondel was a classic car, a genuine antique and a work of art in its own right? You don’t put bullet holes in a work of art! Bloody philistines. Right. Enough was enough. I was angry now. Who the hell did they think they were messing with? I hit one of the Armourer’s concealed switches, and a panel flipped open, revealing a big red button. I pressed my thumb down firmly, and an electromagnetic pulse radiated out from the car, swatting all six black helicopters from the sky like the hand of God.
They plummeted clumsily to the ground as all their electrical systems crashed and fried, and it was a credit to their pilots that only two of them exploded on impact. Thick black smoke curled up into the pale blue sky as I hammered on down the motorway, punching the air with one golden fist. I don’t normally celebrate my kills, but they had got me seriously angry. Killing me was one thing, stealing the Soul of Albion another; but vandalising a classic like the Hirondel…Hell was too good for them.
(Do I really need to explain that the car was shielded from its own EMP pulse? The Armourer’s not an idiot, you know.)
Half a dozen cars came shooting onto the motorway from a side entrance, and I actually relaxed a little, assuming their presence meant the attack was over, and normal traffic was resuming. I should have known better. I noticed almost immediately that each of the cars was a sharp scarlet in colour, glistening like lipstick, and none of them were any make or model I was familiar with. There was something odd, something off, about the six scarlet cars as they crept up behind me. I was still driving the Hirondel flat out, but they had no trouble catching up. They were all long limousines with old-fashioned high tail fins, and they moved smoothly up and alongside me, pacing me effortlessly like hunting cats. For the first time I got a good look at them, close up, and my skin crawled. The hackles stood up on the back of my neck. I could see the driver of the car on my right, and the car was being driven by a dead man. He’d been dead for some time, his gray face shrunken and desiccated, almost that of a mummy. His shrivelled hands had been nailed to the steering wheel, which moved by itself.
These weren’t cars. None of them were cars. These were CARnivores.
I’d read about them, heard about them from other agents, but I had never seen one close up before, and had never wanted to. CARnivores are sentient, meat-eating cars with attitude. Some say they came originally from some other dimension, where cars evolved to replace humans, and some say they evolved right here, ancient predators who’d learned to look like cars so they could prey on humans u
But what the hell were this many CARnivores doing travelling together in bright sunlight, in the middle of the day? I supposed even demon cars could be tempted by a prize like the Soul of Albion. My mission wasn’t a secret any longer; there was a traitor in the family, and he had sold us all out.
The CARnivores pressed in on either side, bumping me hard, first from the left and then from the right. The Hirondel absorbed the impact and just kept going. Sturdy old car. I could see dead men swaying in their driving seats, their eyeless heads lolling back and forth. Another CARnivore rammed the Hirondel from behind, jolting me forward in my seat. Two more bumps, left and right, harder now. CARnivores like to play with their food. The one on my left slowly opened its hood, the bloodred steel rising tauntingly to show me a pink glistening maw within and rows of churning steel teeth. It was hungry, and it was laughing at me.
Underneath the protection of my golden armour, I was sweating. I could feel it ru
They’re meat junkies.
The Hirondel had a lot of extra options built in, but at the end of the day it was still just a car and as vulnerable as any other. And the CARnivores were getting awfully close. They bumped and barged me from both sides almost constantly now, jostling me like bullies in a playground, just for the fun of it. Time to show them who was the eight-hundred-pound gorilla around here. I let my left hand drift over the Armourer’s special control panel. I doubted the EMP would work on the CARnivores, even if it had recharged itself yet; they were too different, too alien, too alive. So I used the rear-mounted flamethrowers instead. Twin streams of raging fire blasted out of the back of the Hirondel, and a thick rush of flames enveloped the CARnivore behind me. The demon car screamed shrilly, thrashing wildly from side to side as it fell back. The fires had taken hold, and the CARnivore blazed brightly, flames and smoke leaping up into the sky.
I hit my brakes hard, the Hirondel’s tyres screeching as my speed dropped by half. The two CARnivores on either side of me shot forward, caught unawares, and I opened up on them with the electric ca
Three down, three to go.
But the other CARnivores had had enough. They slowed right down and took the next exit, not used to prey who fought back. I swept on, checking my inventory. The flamethrowers had exhausted most of their fuel, the ca
I should have expected elves. They’d sell the souls they didn’t have to get their hands on the Soul of Albion, so they could use it to destroy the humans who’d driven them from their ancient ancestral holdings. Not through war or attrition, but just by outbreeding them. The elves hate us, and they always will, because we won by cheating. I could hear their laughter on the wind, cold and cruel and capricious.