side, trying to flank them. With their knowledge of the territory, he couldn’t let them do that. Ignoring the jolting, bone-rattling impact of each rut in the plain, he altered his own course so that he could stay head-on.
Krysty had maneuvered herself around so that she was facing front. Impact on one rut lifted her from her seat and slammed her against the dash, eliciting a yelp as her ribs felt like they were turning in and spearing her, driving the breath from her body.
Dust clouds from the two wags as they crossed paths and tried to circle back rose in swathes around the vehicles. The choking blanket obscured vision and trapped in throats and noses as it billowed into the glassless windows. Even in an attempt to counter the attack, Ryan might have miscalculated his play. The other wag had glass to keep the dust clouds at bay. They might not be able to see, but at least they weren’t choking.
Ryan tried to guide the wag over the treacherous terrain, but now even his visual guide was gone. In the yellow-ochre dust cloud he could see little more than a yard or two ahead.
Over the whine of their own engine, he could hear a keening note, growing louder, as the coldhearts’ wag bore down on them.
But from where?
TILSON DIDN’T EVEN KNOW what had hit him until it was too late. He’d made it back to the bar, where Ling and Smith were still deep in incoherent discussion, still half badmouthing their baron, and half holding back lest they be overheard and reported. The other drinkers stayed apart and kept their heads down, lost in their own private hells.
Tilson didn’t have to serve another drink between getting back and closing up. These guys didn’t really want to drink anymore, they just didn’t want to go home because of what awaited them, either awake or sleeping.
As he locked up, Tilson was kind of scared about what waited for him when he closed his eyes. Visions of Corden and Demetriou. Maybe of what they might do to him, which made him think a little more of how he felt about the two men: the way they had greeted his information, the way he had been dismissed…. It was not like usual. He couldn’t exactly say what it was that got under his skin, crawling like a roach up and down his spine, making him want to piss with fear. Just a feeling.
It should have made him careful. It should have made him look over his shoulder. But it didn’t. It just wrapped itself around him, making him look inward rather than out. The slightest noise should have made him start.
He didn’t notice Demetriou, waiting in the shadows for him. The young man was going to step out and take him before he had a chance to yell. Seeing how distracted he was, grinning to himself all the while, Demetriou decided to let him pass. Would Tilson spot him? Would he realize? That would make it more fun, like chasing rabbits.
Tilson was oblivious. Demetriou slipped out of the shadow, fell into step behind him. Nothing. He wasn’t even going to jump, turn around in fright, give Demetriou a chance to show how quick he was by cutting him before he could yell. This was boring. He needed to get it done with.
Demetriou quickened his pace and was on Tilson in three steps. One hand snaked around to cover his mouth. The other, holding a sharp blade, slipped up under the ribs at the back, piercing and twisting.
Tilson’s eyes bugged as the pain hit. Any sound was deadened by Demetriou’s hand and the blood that welled in his throat, filling his lungs. Already dark, the night slipped away to black.
Demetriou let Tilson fall back against him. Twisting the blade to break the vacuum of suction, the young man eased it out. He let Tilson slump, his face up, and looked into his eyes. Demetriou laughed softly before he melted back into the shadows, leaving the corpse alone in the alley, barely aware before its chilling that life had been snuffed like a candle.
Chapter Two
Ryan didn’t even get a chance to curse his shock as they were broadsided by the four-wheel-drive wag. Sky that was visible through the thinning clouds of dust as they rose now became perpendicular to the ground, the lurch of the vehicle as it reached its optimum tilt making their guts spin and churn.
The dust raised by the pursuit had served their opponents well. It had allowed them to flank and corner, to take their prey sideways-on and attempt to halt their progress by simply tipping them over.
But the dust also hindered Ryan’s aim.
Inside the wildly shuddering wag, Mildred and J.B. were thrown against each other and into Jak, who felt his ribs creak at the impact. Sandwiched between the two older companions and the side door of the wag, the albino teen felt breath squeezed from his body, saw flashing lights and stars in his head as he cracked it on the metal of the wag.
Doc was flung over the seats at an obtuse angle, his spine twisting in a way that he wouldn’t have thought possible. The back of his skull cracked on Krysty’s knee, and for a moment all went black before the rising bile in his gullet brought him back to wakefulness. He retched the thin strings over Krysty’s boots, and over the LeMat he had dropped in the shock of impact.
Ryan gripped the wheel. He could do nothing to right the vehicle, but an instinct—perhaps a finely tuned sense of balance—told him that the vehicle could not tip onto its side. There was something about the way in which it slowed and came to a halt, if only momentarily, that told him there was not enough momentum to tip them.
If they landed upright, there was still a chance. He tried to speak, to yell, to tell the others to ready their blasters. But with no breath in his body, and dust choking his lungs, all that emerged was a strangled, hoarse croaking.
The wag engine died. Outside, he could hear the engine of the other wag, purring and ticking over. It was still. Why?
Inside his wag, Ryan could hear the others painfully rasping and coughing as they sucked in breath and dust, trying to break past the pain caused by the collision. He forced himself to move, even though every muscle seemed to have lost its strength and solidity. He felt as if he was moving through quicksand, the dust in the air echoing the effect by his seemingly breathing the same way.
At the back of his mind he felt the urge to give in to the blackness that wanted to enfold him.
He knew he couldn’t do it, even though it seemed so inviting.
“WOO! JASE, what the fuck are you—”
Thornton, raised from his torpor by the impact, yelled at the driver of the coldhearts’ wag, slapping him on the back of the head. Demetriou turned in his seat and glared at Thornton, his eyes dead and cold, looking through his very being as they sized up how he could chill him, slowly and agonizingly. Chambers, eyebrow raised, watched Thornton shrink back.
Corden put a hand on Demetriou’s shoulder, turning him back to the wheel.
“Not now, Jase. He can keep, if you want. We got more important hunting.”
He spoke softly, and with no apparent urgency, even though he felt a quickening pulse in his chest. He knew from experience the way to deal with the young hothead. Jase was the best wag jockey he’d ever known. He was also a stone chiller, with no thought for any consequence. Fearless. Thornton was lucky not to have had his throat slit already.
They were wasting precious seconds while this continued. Corden looked out of the windshield. The dust raised by the close pursuit and stalk was now beginning to settle. Both wags had stopped moving. Closed windows let in little of the dust, but outside it was like looking at
