It wasn’t easy. The creature might have been weakened, but it was experienced, breathtakingly so. It led me through a bewildering succession of avatars, grabbing a new one whenever the old tired and slowed, as easily as a human would change clothes. First several birds, then a deer, then a woman in a car who veered and swerved all over the road for a moment before the murderer released her. Because, when you take complete control, the avatar’s mind can’t help you.
And my prey did not know how to drive.
But there were things I didn’t know, too. Like how to make the four legs of a deer work together, instead of landing in a tangle on the ground. Flying had been easier, not because I knew how to do that, but because I’d instinctively fallen back on old patterns. Instead of trying to take full control, I had suggested to the bird mind that easy prey lay ahead.
I tried that again, but deer are not predators, and their food is everywhere. And planting the suggestion that a hunter was coming only panicked the poor thing. Which untangled its limbs and scampered away in the wrong direction. But I couldn’t yet join my twin in the car, not while keeping track of an enemy that was ignoring roads, eschewing bridges, and traveling overland. We were out of the city and moving quickly, as my twin was not, being caught in traffic behind me.
Until she suddenly wrenched the car off the road, traversed a shallow ditch, bumped across a patch of open ground behind a gas station, and tore through a fence. And somehow skirted the traffic snarl, slinging out onto the bigger road below us. And then did something that caused the car to shoot ahead.
* * *
* * *
“—say something!” Caedmon said, grabbing for the wheel, why I didn’t know. Like a fey could drive better than me.
“Cut it out!” I told him. “You’re going to make us crash!”
“You appear to be doing that well enough on your own! Have you gone mad?”
“Years ago! And the wheel only steers. It doesn’t make it go!”
“Then what does?”
“This,” I said, and floored it.
I was really wishing I’d grabbed my car, but it had been parked in front of the one Claire had recently bought. Because, while she might be a princess in Faerie, she didn’t rate that level of scratch here on Earth, where her bank account had only ponied up enough for a beater convertible. One with a top that was a pain in the ass even when you weren’t flying down the road at something like a hundred miles an hour!
I struggled with the thing, which was flapping around like it was trying to take off, while Caedmon peppered me with questions despite having his long legs braced and one hand gripping the side of the car like it might just fuse there. Whatever dealings he’d had on Earth, it didn’t look like they’d involved high-speed car chases.
Ones made even more fun when the damned top decided to detach altogether.
Damn it!
“Was it supposed to do that?” Caedmon asked, looking worried.
And that was before maybe a hundred deer decided to jump out in front of us.
“Shiiiiit!” I yelled, the wind in my face, and white tails flashing on all sides. I just knew we were about to crash and flip end over end. And without a top on the car, that was—
Not going to happen, because Caedmon, looking a little pale, had done something that caused the deer to jump clean across us. We plowed through the middle of a herd of what appeared to be every deer in New York State—a tunnel of brown and white bodies and leaping legs—without hitting one, and burst out the other side. Only to have another car peel off the side of the road after us, red lights flashing and siren blaring.
And wasn’t that just all I needed?
“I believe he wants us to stop,” Caedmon said, turning around.
“I know he wants us to stop!”
“And yet you are not,” he pointed out.
“If I do, I’ll lose them!”
“Lose who?”
I didn’t answer, being busy trying to figure out how to shake a tail on an open road while not also shaking that tentative link to my crazy other half, who was somehow flying overhead, although I couldn’t see her.
And then it started to rain again, and I couldn’t see anything.
Because it wasn’t a gentle pitter-patter on the windshield and my head. We drove into a torrent that had been left over from Noah’s day, thick and white and pounding down, like a million tiny strokes of a lash. Which hurt like hell and appeared to be trying to drown us. And was doing a pretty good job, because I didn’t have a top on the damned car!