Taken

I hit a button on the dashboard and the sunroof whirred back, filling the car with a rush of cold air. Variam pulled himself up, standing on the backseat, and turned towards where the constructs were running. Fire magic surged and I felt the pulse of a heat burst behind and to my left.

“Um,” Sonder said over the phone. “Okay. Well, there was a fashion back in the early twentieth century for making constructs with an imbued spell. The idea was they’d be able to use their one spell in the same sort of way as an adept, but it eventually fell out of favour because—”

“Sonder. How do we kill them?”

Again I felt the pulse of Variam’s heat spells and again I heard him swear. I risked a quick glance away from the road to the left but I couldn’t see the constructs. We’d entered a band of heavier traffic that was forcing me to keep my speed down. “Well, theoretically—” Sonder began.

The two constructs blinked in on top of us, one after another. With my second’s warning I was able to swerve away from the first. It appeared to our left at road level and grabbed for the car but missed.

The second appeared an instant later while I was still recovering from the swerve. It landed on the Jaguar’s hood with a thump, blocking my view, and turned to face us.

Anne drew in her breath in a gasp. For the first time I got a clear look at the construct; it had the form of an adult man in cast-off clothing with a blank face and dead eyes. Ignoring Variam, it locked its eyes on Anne and raised a fist to punch through the windscreen.

I stomped on the brakes and the Jaguar slowed in a sudden screech of tyres. The construct clutched at the smooth hood, but there was nothing to grab and it went flying head over heels. It slammed into the motorway ahead of us, rolling over and over. From behind I heard another screech of brakes and I hit the accelerator again. The construct finished rolling, looked up to see the Jaguar about to run it down . . . and vanished in a blink as we shot through the space he’d been in.

“Did you get him?” Variam called.

“No. Did you?”

“No! Every time I’m close they just—”

Horns were blaring from behind. I’d lost sight of the constructs but I could see a traffic jam in the mirrors; it looked like cars were slowing down to avoid something. Anne put the phone back to my ear and I heard Sonder’s voice. “—lex? Alex, are you there?”

“Sonder, we need some ideas,” I said. “Every time we’re about to hit these things they just gate out and I don’t know how long we can keep dodging them.”

“Um,” Sonder said. “Well, theoretically it should take a lot of energy to keep running that spell. They shouldn’t be as tough as normal constructs.”

“That’s great; how are we supposed to hit them?”

I caught a flash of movement in my right mirror. A figure was running along the right side of the motorway by the divider; as I watched it vanished and reappeared much closer. “Variam!” I called and pointed.

Variam pulled himself back up and I felt him aiming another fire spell. “Can you tell what their primary sensory input is?” Sonder asked.

“What?”

“Well, there has to be something that triggers their evasion routine. When they teleport away, is it based on visual data, auditory data, tactile—?”

“How in the name of all that is holy am I supposed to know that?”

“Um . . . You could try attacking them with methods that can only be detected by one type of sense. Then based on which ones they dodge you could—”

“Are you serious?”

Bursts of heat erupted in the path of the construct chasing us but it blinked away, getting closer each time. As it pulled level with our car I cut left into the middle lane, using the stream of traffic as a shield. I had to slow down to do it and for an instant the construct was roughly level with us, its head turned to look into the car as it ran. Variam focused his energy for another spell, aiming to blanket its area, and Sonder started saying something else over the phone.

The construct teleported into the car.

There was a chorus of screams, one of which might have been mine. Variam’s spell went off, the car swerved, and there was one frantic moment in which the car was on course to smash right into the side of a container truck. I pulled it back as the construct’s long arms came reaching around the passenger seat, grasping for Anne’s throat. Anne ducked and the fingers latched onto her hair instead; she yelped as the construct started dragging her back.