Unknown

I raised my eyebrows. “Are you trying to frighten me?” I asked. When he didn’t immediately answer, I said, helpfully, “I’m only trying to understand what you want. If you’re hoping to frighten me and make yourself feel mightier, then I’m afraid we’re both wasting time. And I can’t afford that. I’m in a hurry. If I have to kill you, I’d like to do it quickly.”

He stared at me hard for a few seconds, and then one of the other men nudged him and jerked his chin up at the eaves of the store. There was a security camera there, which I already knew. The leader stared at it, then turned back to me. “You know what? You’re fucking brain damaged. Better run on to your crystals and moonbeams and pyramids and stop messing with the real world before you get what you’re asking for.” He smiled, entirely falsely. “Have a nice fucking day.”

Silence. The desert air blew cool over my skin and tossed my pale, pale hair around my face, but I didn’t blink. Neither did the biker standing across from me.

These men had not survived to reach the status of roaming predators by accident. Some sense warned him that I was deadly serious, that I was not someone to toy with idly. Between that, and the silent witness of the camera, they would either let it go, or bide their time.

He looked at his friends, shrugged, and gave a sharp nod. Those blocking my motorcycle backed their vehicles away, a complicated maneuvering done in close quarters, accomplished with skill, grace and efficiency. They left me a clear path from my front tire to the highway.

“Thank you,” I said. I had promised Luis to try to use that phrase more often, and this seemed an appropriate moment. I kicked the Victory to life, do

I heard a full-throated roar behind me, and looked in my side mirror to see the entire pack of black-clad bikers spilling out into formation behind me, following. So. They had been biding their time, after all. Well, it was their choice. I had been very clear about the fact that I was in no mood to play games to enhance their egos. I considered the best way to disable their Harleys without undue violence; I could easily shred their tires, for instance. I could soften the metal of the frames, breaking the bikes apart under their own torque. I could simply disengage a few critical co

I was spoiled for choices, and spent a few empty miles considering which of them might result in the least amount of injuries. They pulled steadily closer.

The leader yelled something at me, and I felt a raw, wild excitement in his voice. He meant to take his power back, redeem himself in front of his men.

He meant to fight.

I was not necessarily opposed to obliging him . . . and then I felt a raw surge around me. Wild energy, sweeping through the aetheric and down into the real world like an invisible tornado.

“Get away from me!” I shouted to the bikers, who had closed in around me, engines roaring. The leader leered at me. He thought I was afraid. Idiot. “Get out of here or you’ll be killed!”

For answer, he pulled a pistol from under his leather vest and pointed it at me. “Don’t threaten me, bitch.”

I hadn’t been. I’d been warning him.

It happened before either of us had a chance to make our next moves in this pointless chess game. I felt heat, u

The biker riding close on my right wasn’t as lucky. His motorcycle simply exploded. Fragments blew out in a terrifyingly beautiful ball, like a flower with a heart of fire blooming lethal, twisted petals. The man riding it simply . . . ceased, as a coherent presence. I felt the psychic blow as the impact rippled the air, but I couldn’t note it in any significant way. I didn’t have the time. I dived off the wobbling Victory just as the other motorcycle exploded and flattened myself; heat rippled over me, and an expanding wave of concussion pressed me into the pavement for an instant, then passed. I had two pieces of luck—first, the Victory took the brunt of the shrapnel. Flying metal shredded the beautiful form of my bike, mutilating it, but it protected me from the worst of it for a critical instant as it was blown out, over me, and spun end over end to crash into the ditch on the side of the road. I curled into a ball, well aware of the danger as the bikers lost control all around me; one thick wheel came within a half inch of my face, but somehow missed doing worse than laying greasy road marks on the edge of my sleeve. Metal shrieked and crashed, men yelled, and I smelled burning rubber even over the stench of burning human flesh.

Another gas tank exploded. Screaming erupted.

I rolled clear, moving fast, and dropped into the ditch where my Victory had landed in a sad and twisted heap. It was good that I did, as more explosions sounded, flinging lethal shrapnel—including human bones—through the air above me.

Someone else landed in the ditch with me . . . the leader of the bikers, his leather vest shredded and torn, skin shimmering with blood, eyes wide and dazed. Not dead, surprisingly. Not even badly wounded, beneath the splatter of blood. Unlike some of his fellows, he still had all his limbs.

“Jesus,” he panted, and crawled to put his back to the raw earth of the ditch. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus! What the fuck?”

“They’re not after you,” I told him, and got a blank, uncomprehending look from him. “I told you to leave me alone.”

“Fucking hell, lady, who’d you piss off, the fucking Marines?”

“I wish,” I said. I’d learned the expression from Luis, but from the man’s look, I wasn’t sure I had delivered it properly. “Stay down.”

“Like hell I will. Those are my brothers up there!”

I didn’t know if he meant literally, as in blood relations, or figuratively; it was difficult to determine human relationships at the best of times for me. “Stay down!” I almost snarled it this time, and grabbed him bodily by the shredded leather vest as he tried to put his head up above the road level. “This isn’t your fight!”

It was, however, mine. I looked down at the mournful remains of my beautiful Victory, sighed, and bent my knees to jump up and out of the ditch.

The biker hit me in a flying tackle from the side, taking me completely by surprise. He slammed me down into the packed dirt and scratchy weeds an instant before another motorcycle skidded drunkenly off the road and crashed down right where I had been standing. It had been blown over by another explosion, which hit my ears with a dull crump of sound that told me my hearing had already begun to shut itself off in trauma.

The Harley was undamaged, except for some superficial dents and splatters. I stared at it, then shoved the biker off of me without much regard for his shouted concerns. I turned back to reach into the waistband of his blue jeans and pull out a semiautomatic pistol from a holster he’d concealed there. I checked the magazine— full, and stocked with hollow points—and slammed it home before removing the safety catch.

“Stay. Down,” I said, soft and precise, and straddled the Harley, which was still somehow ru

The road was carnage. Broken bodies, some weakly moving still. Shattered vehicles. Blood and bone.