The Undead Pool (The Hollows #12)(116)
Author: Kim Harrison

I eased back, knowing the importance of that. “Then she should help,” I said to make Ivy’s brow ease a little, but inside, I was worried.

Someone screamed in fun as we took a corner fast to avoid a roadblock, and I was jostled into Trent. He sat me back upright, and I tried to quell a growing feeling of disaster. Everyone was having so much fun. Through the window, I watched the Hollows pass in the darkness. Most of the streetlights were shot out, and an eerie red sheen reminiscent of the ever-after glowed on the abandoned cars and occasional burnt-out shop front. Dark shapes darted from shadow to shadow like surface demons. It didn’t help that it felt as if I’d gotten into a van of Brimstone heads on their way to a concert. “Ivy, crack the windows,” I asked, but I didn’t think the side windows opened any farther. This might be an issue.

Scott quit fiddling with his ammo and leaned across the open space between us. His face held a wide smile, and he rocked from side to side with the van’s motion, his feet solidly planted on the bare floorboards. “Unless you tell us different, we’ll handle the outside. Keep your escape route open. Hold anyone you might flush out.”

I nodded, thinking he looked too eager, but if he was outside, he couldn’t get himself killed inside. My jaw was clenched, and I blinked when one mystic talking about lights at the mortuary suddenly became six or seven yammering at me. Trent surreptitiously took my elbow to keep me from looking too spaced out. It’d gone wrong already, and we hadn’t even arrived yet.

“What is it?” he breathed in my ear, but the vampires in back heard and took an interest, their eyes dilating at the shiver that passed through me.

Damn vampire pheromones, I thought, grimacing. “I’m seeing lights at the mortuary.”

“They moved the run up!” Jenks shouted. “Tink’s a Disney whore!”

Ivy met my eyes through the rearview mirror. “I’m more concerned about the lights behind us.”

“Behind us?” Scott said, and I jumped when a sledgehammer busted the back window right out of the frame.

“Let me!” Scott demanded, but Ivy took a corner too hard. Vampires sloshed and collided, and in the mess, Scott stuck his head out the window as the guy with the hammer busted out another window. It got windy fast, and I took a grateful breath of the fresher air as four vampires hung halfway out the van and shouted at the three beater cars behind us.

“Weres!” Scott said as he came back inside, the narrow bands of blue around his irises concerning me. “We got our rabbits.”

Ivy tapped the brakes, and everyone else pulled their heads back in. Beside me, Trent was looking ill and a little amazed. I knew how he felt. Ivy was careening about as if she sweated Dramamine, but I was beginning to feel sick. “All of you shut up and look civilized!” she shouted, brown eyes almost entirely black. “We’ve got a roadblock I can’t find a way around.”

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.