But the rumble was now loud enough to cause little avalanches on the garbage mountains and to vibrate under my feet. The streets were a warren, and the buildings made sound echo everywhere. It was impossible to tell where the noise was coming from.
“Where are they?” I asked, and Ranbir pointed at something I couldn’t see, because we were running now and the map was jittering all over the place.
But a moment later, I didn’t need an answer, because I saw them: vague figures appearing out of the mist behind us. But not vague enough. For a moment, I just stared at yet another example that a lifetime of strange events had not prepared me for supernatural Hong Kong. Not even close.
Because we were being targeted by a group of motorcycle riding samurai.
They were 3-D, with bodies as solid as any of ours. But they were also black and white, as if the magic floating around the dead zones had activated a bunch of illustrations. The closer they got, the more likely that seemed, as they still had the sketch marks and the doesn’t-change-with-the-lighting shading of a drawing.
It was like being charged by a bunch of cartoons.
Sword-wielding cartoons, I realized, as steel glinted in a stray beam of moonlight.
Okay. Running faster now, alongside Sarah, who had noticed our latest problem and was bitching about it in a high-pitched voice. And yeah. Totally not going to rag on her about that later. Assuming there was a later, because the messed-up street had hardly slowed our pursuers down at all, and in fact had helped them by providing a ramp in the form of a fallen wall—
And now they were arcing overhead.
“We can take them!” Tomas said, as the rest of us rolled into the shadow of a bunch of burnt-out cars.
Louis-Cesare reached out and grabbed him, jerking the idiot down as swords rattled against the rooftops overhead. Tomas threw off his hold and glared at us, and I made a be-my-guest gesture. He scowled.
“I thought dhampirs were supposed to be tough!”
“Tough, not stupid.”
He frowned. “Are you calling me stupid?”
“No, just that the bonus stats all went to pretty.”
Louis-Cesare laughed, and even Ranbir’s lip twitched.
Tomas, luckily, took a moment to parse that, and as soon as the last rider arced overhead, we darted into a crumbling edifice.
We’d been trying to stay on the streets, because the structural soundness of a lot of the buildings was in question. Half of the obstructions were composed of the remains of fallen houses and shops, and even some of the ones still standing weren’t looking like they’d be doing it much longer. Like this one, in fact.
But there wasn’t a lot of choice, so we got busy wading through the almost knee-high soot in a lobby, then pelted down a smoke damaged corridor and through a door at the end that let out onto a narrow alley.
Only to find that our pursuers had flanked us.
Ev and Jason let off a barrage that would have discouraged a platoon, strafing them with suppressing fire, only it didn’t suppress much. Bullets from my .44 Magnum likewise rattled off the samurai’s armor, barely even leaving dents in the surface. And when I threw an incendiary, it had no effect at all.
Like the birds, they looked like paper but acted like high grade steel.
The kind that ricocheted weapons’ fire.
“Don’t shoot inside!” I yelled, as more bogies showed up behind us and we ducked into a building across the alley. But either nobody could hear me over the ringing in our ears, or the cluster of animated horrors had freaked them out. Because bullets were suddenly flying everywhere, with Ev and Jason letting loose with a weapon in each hand.
Sarah was yelling and crying and covering her ears, because it was loud enough to hurt. Louis-Cesare got in front of me and her, backing us toward the door to the next room, and taking a couple of bullets in the process. And then Sarah and I abruptly found ourselves standing in what looked like a nursery school.
I glanced back through the door to see that the two vamps had pulled swords, meaning that the sounds of steel on steel had probably just been added to the cacophony of engines revving, people yelling, and a sustained barrage, but I couldn’t tell. My ears were temporarily out of commission, giving me back only ringing white noise.
Which was why I had nothing to distract me from our newest