Unknown

Rashid. He was facing forward now, staring intently through the front glass and frowning. I slowed as my eyes fought to adjust to the sudden darkness. He glanced aside at me. “Change places,” he said. “I will drive.”

I nodded and shifted over; he brushed against me on the way, and his skin felt summer- hot, and less like skin than burnished metal; with a shock, I realized that he felt like my replacement bronze left hand. It felt as if the merest touch of him would leave a burn, and my flesh tingled in passing.

Rashid’s lonely need was a physical thing, radiating from him into me.

I tried not to allow that to show.

Rashid pressed the accelerator, and the ambulance leapt forward, tires biting hard and engine growling against the weight it was dragging. He drove too fast for a human, especially in the dark, but Dji

We didn’t speak. I focused on Luis again, but though I could hear him breathing in odd, uneven jerks, he didn’t try to communicate with me. Not even to scream. Fear tightened in white-hot bands around my stomach and my throat, and I could only wait.

Wait as Rashid reached the end of the paved road, twisted the wheel, and suddenly crashed the ambulance into a boiling green mass of foliage on the right.

It concealed a road. Gravel at first, then raw dirt—neatly maintained, almost flat. The sides were precisely drawn, and there was no grass growing over the lines.

It was a great deal too precise, for nature, and that spoke of Earth Wardens maintaining the landscape. It seemed a foolish waste of power, until I considered that as a training exercise, it would have been useful in itself—teaching acolytes the control and uses of their power. A Warden who could neatly control grass, trees and bushes from encroaching on the road could also do the opposite—block or destroy a road quickly with the same tools.

It meant that we would have a difficult time getting out once they’d been alerted to our presence.

But I already knew that.

The road wound down a steep hill, twisting like a snake through treacherous switchbacks. Rashid flew down it at an insane speed, teeth bared, eyes flaring bright with pure, risk-taking joy.

He lost his smile for a bare instant, and said, “Hold.” It was all he had time to say before I saw the ground ahead of us crumble and disappear into a sudden, dramatic sinkhole less than five feet from the hood of the ambulance. The hole was at least twenty feet across, and there was no chance of stopping. Still less chance of a clumsy, non- aerodynamic vehicle like an ambulance somehow jumping the chasm.

But Rashid did both. He stopped the van so abruptly that the momentum pitched the back of the vehicle up in an arc, straight up, flipping the ambulance in a sickening full, whipping revolution twice. I clung to the dashboard and the handle above the door, struggling not to lose my grip as gravity’s pull tugged one way, then another . . . and then I saw the road coming up at us from below on the last revolution.

We were somehow right side up. The front tires hit first, and Rashid pressed the gas.

The back wheels slipped into the chasm, but the momentum and the front wheels’ grip dragged them up with a bump, and then we were flying again, moving so fast that the world passed in a twisting blur.

“Five seconds,” he told me. “Be ready.” Rashid sounded utterly focused and calm.

I was still openmouthed and amazed that we had survived that impossible maneuver.

You made a good bargain, some part of myself said. It was probably right. My mission would have ended there in that sinkhole if I hadn’t swallowed my pride to accept Rashid’s help.

I had no idea what we would be coming into in the promised seconds, but the seconds counted down to zero.

Rashid hit the brakes with a violence that threw me forward, then back, and before I could open my passenger door he was out and pulling it open to drag me out. As he did, the ambulance disappeared. No, it was still there, but he had successfully hidden it, shifted it between times and realities. It was a rare Dji

It was good that he was. In another second, as he pulled me at a run away from the spot where the ambulance had been, a white- hot comet of fire hurtled out of the darkness, growing in size as it went, and detonated on the empty grass where the ambulance had been. It would have been utterly wrecked, and us with it. As it was, I felt the pressure wave and heat on my back, and smelled a faint scorch as the ends of my hair blackened. I stumbled against Rashid, who held me upright and pulled me onward, in a crashing run through underbrush, whipped by branches and slashed by thorns, pursued by something that I sensed coursing darkly through the trees like a bounding black pack of dogs. Our pursuers were silent. I tried to turn to face them, but Rashid wouldn’t allow it. Wouldn’t let me so much as slow to look.

“Let go!” I hissed at him. He sent me a burning look out of lambent eyes and ignored me. When I stumbled and almost fell, my feet twisted in tangled roots, he hissed, grabbed me, and threw me over one shoulder with his hand gripping the backs of my thighs. It was a ridiculous, helpless posture, but I dared not struggle. He was moving too fast, and with too much purpose. I tried lifting my head to see what was behind us, but between the veil of my blowing hair and the darkness, I could make out nothing.

And then, quite suddenly, Rashid’s body tensed, exactly as a human’s would have for a great effort, and I felt a tremendous force flow from him to hammer against the ground as he leapt. We rose into the air in a parabolic arc, and below . . . below . . .

Below was a chasm, a deep one, full of sharp rocks and killing drops. Too wide for a human to attempt to jump, no matter how foolhardy. Had I been ru

Looking down, I saw our pursuers burst out of the scrub into the small clearance between the brush and the cliff. Black as the shadows, vaguely dog-shaped, but with the physiques of bears and the speed of panthers. Nothing natural. Chimeras, forced together by the twisted but powerful skills of an Earth Warden of exceptional talent and madness. Two of them, moving faster than the others, toppled over the edge of the cliff and fell in a shower of stones and dirt to the rocks below—a drama that I watched as the arc of our jump began to decline again, and the far side rushed up at us with frightening speed.

Rashid landed, legs tensed, and barely paused before breaking into a run, again.

He only got a few steps before he stopped and bent to lower me back to the ground. I backed a step away from him, caught between a furious snarl and gratitude, and realized why he’d put me down.

“Well?” He cocked an eyebrow at me. “I’m yours to command, mortal. Temporarily.”

From all around us came the metallic clinks of weapons being made ready.

Chapter 9

LIGHTS BLAZED ON, brilliant as morning, illuminating us from two sides, and I saw human shapes stepping out of the trees—dressed in dark trousers, with bulky black vests and dark blue all-weather jackets. Most were armed with assault rifles. Those who weren’t were armed with handguns.

All weapons were pointed at the two of us. This didn’t pose much of a challenge for Rashid, but for me . . .

Agent Ben Turner stepped out of the shadows. His gun was in his holster. He looked exhausted, hollow-eyed, and angry. “You,” he said. “Down on the ground, hands behind your heads. Both of you. Do it now!” He speared Rashid with a glare. “I know you probably aren’t worried about us, but if you don’t comply, she gets shot. Understand?”