The Undead Pool

Heads dropping, they all became very busy checking their ammo. Bis had gone almost invisible apart from the pixy kids on him. Trent smelled really good beside me. Hell, everyone smelled really good. Before us, a bright spot of light turned the road into silver and gray. I could see figures with weapons in hand—big ones.

“We’ll take care of this,” Jenks said as Ivy began to slow, and he darted out one of the busted windows, his kids a surprisingly silent wave behind him. Bis followed, calming my thoughts somewhat as he leaped for Nina’s open front window and crawled out onto the roof. There was the scrape of his nails on the metal, and then nothing.

“Shut up!” Ivy snarled like a substitute school bus driver as she slowly drove into the spot of light and halted where they told her. I.S. officers with weapons barred the road. Trent ducked his head, pulling his knit hat down lower as one of them came to the window. Oh, really.

“Curfew is in effect since sundown,” the officer said brusquely as about five other officers surrounded us, trying to look in the windows only to find smiling vampires in the way. “Get out of the vehicle. All of you. Leave the keys in the ignition.”

“We’re trying to fix this,” Ivy said, her hands firmly on the wheel. “You mind letting us through?”

“Get out. Now!” the officer said, and Trent looked at his feet when the man flashed a light into the back. “You’ll be released at sunrise. If it was up to me, you’d be incarcerated until your trial.”

“For breaking curfew?” Nina said, and the light shone fully on her.

The man’s eyes widened at the grenades. Dropping back, he made a gesture, and I shivered as a magical field went up. I sucked in my breath as a hundred mystics from who knew where flooded me, bringing a hundred different viewpoints of the roadblock. We were surrounded. The three cars that had been following us were hanging back just out of sight, engines running—waiting for the right moment.

“I didn’t think those fields were legal,” Trent said, and I blinked fast, trying to keep from passing out. Too many mystics; it was like looking through the world through bug eyes. Nothing made sense when you looked at it from a hundred viewpoints. No wonder the Goddess was nuts.

Scott lifted his chin, far too eager. “You stay here, missy. We’ll take care of this.”

“No violence!” Trent shouted, and the I.S. officer swore when the light hit him and Trent was recognized.

Mystic vision rocked me, and with a herculean effort, I managed to cycle the multiple viewpoints to one. It was getting easier to figure this out, and I gripped the edge of the seat as an engine revved and I watched almost as if it were a dream as a brown Buick with an orange hood plowed through the blockade, Weres waving their bare asses at the officers in passing.

“Get them!” the man at Ivy’s door shouted, distracted, and I felt the restraining field drop.

“It’s David!” Jenks shrilled as he darted in the front window. “Go! Bis has my kids!”

Three vampires dove out of the van, howling as loud as the second car of Weres as Ivy sedately put the van in drive and crossed the blockade behind it. The cop screamed at us to stop, faltering as he suddenly found himself facing confident vampires, one with a sledge. Angry, he spun to the man running the restraining charm, but he was gone, chasing after the Weres. Bis came in with the sound of sliding leather and pixy chatter, and Ivy picked up speed. Someone shot at us, but it didn’t matter, and we careened around a corner and were gone. Worst-case scenario gave us thirty seconds before they’d find a car and follow; best case had vampires with hammers distracting them long enough for us to slip away.

Okay, maybe this will work, I thought as we outdistanced the mystics we’d left behind. I was getting sporadic mystic reports of laughing Weres being handcuffed and slammed against the hoods of their cars. The Weres on four paws were uncatchable, racing through the streets as they tailed us. The vampires we’d left behind were happily demolishing the roadblock.

Scott, the only vamp left beside Nina, looked positively depressed. “They’ll call for backup,” Nina said as she unbuckled her belt and went to sit with him. “Maybe they’ll try to stop us, and then you can try your gun out.”

“Maybe,” he moaned, and Ivy smirked as Nina put a comforting arm over Scott’s big shoulders. “You’re just trying to make me feel better.”

Beside me, Trent shook his head, smiling.

“Rachel?” Ivy’s voice was low as she fought with her instincts. “Is that David in that last car behind us?”

I’d already heard from a mystic that it was, but I leaned to look out the broken window, my hair streaming. The truck chasing us had three people in the front, and about six wolves in the bed. As I watched, another wolf loped out of the darkness and vaulted into the truck bed, nails scraping. “Can you slow down long enough to get him in here?”